The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When the subject of theosophy or the theosophical worldview comes up, people often think: Oh, we are dealing with something that leads to remote realms of thought, something that takes us to nebulous, fantastic regions. In any case, many people have the idea that Theosophy or, as we can also say in the true sense of the word, spiritual science, that Theosophy or spiritual science is not for practical people, for people who are fully immersed in life, that it is not for them!

Now, my esteemed audience, but the one who delves deeper into what Theosophy or spiritual science has to give, and then is able to see life, our immediate existence, in the light of this spiritual science, will soon be able to notice how this Theosophy is something that leads to the right, true life practice, as it is not just some theoretical knowledge, some speculation, but something that makes people capable, able to work in life, hopeful, confident, yes, healthy, because it makes our everyday life immediately understandable to us - if we start from the right points of view - makes it transparent.

This everyday life truly offers us enough puzzles. We can only solve these puzzles if we are able to grasp what lies behind the sensual phenomena, if we are able to rise to the world of supersensible facts. The few times that I have been permitted to speak to you here in this city about Theosophical matters have already familiarized the audience with what underlies the Theosophical worldview. Therefore, only a brief reference will be made here.

The Theosophical worldview rests on two pillars, on two pillars of knowledge. The first is that it shows people that there is a supersensible, a superphysical world above our sensual, our physical world. Secondly, it familiarizes people with the fact that they can penetrate these supersensible realms themselves — if they only want to — and that they can draw their powers and abilities from within.

In this way, however, Theosophy is confronted with widespread prejudices in the present day, but even if it does not change overnight, over time more and more of these prejudices, which today affect wide circles of our present-day people, will fade.

Many people today say: To speak of supersensible worlds, of a spiritual background to existence, is unseemly in our enlightened times, in our time of great scientific achievements... In the childhood cultures of humanity, where imagination still held sway, it was said that people dreamt of supersensible facts, of supersensible phenomena behind our sensory world. But now we are at the point where science, with its tools and methods, is revealing to us the world as one would think, in its natural, lawful context and does not make it necessary to assume anything behind what can be seen and what can be grasped by the mind. Many of our contemporaries think they are quite enlightened when they deny everything that lies behind the phenomena!

This brings us to the question: in what sense does Theosophy speak of supersensible worlds? Not in the sense that these supersensible worlds lie somewhere in a cloud cuckoo land, but in a completely natural sense, in a completely logical sense, Theosophy speaks of higher worlds than the one that is accessible to our are accessible to our senses, in the same sense that a German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, spoke of these worlds when he was at the height of his thinking: in 1809, for example, in front of his audience in Berlin. At that time he said: “I have something to tell you about worlds that lie beyond the ordinary sensual world and therefore cannot be perceived with the ordinary physical senses.” Therefore, anyone who is only willing to acknowledge a world that can be perceived by the physical senses can easily consider everything that can be said about supersensible worlds to be fantasy. But — it was not I who said this, but Fichte. Imagine going through a world of blind people as the only one who can see and telling these blind people about the world of colors and the world of light. If they want, they can also say: All that you are telling me about color and light is empty dreaming, mere fantasy...

... and we can now tie in with Johann Gottlieb Fichte's thoughts and say: Let us assume that a person born blind is led into this room of ours and that we are able to operate on him here, to give him sight. What was around him before, what you can all see with your physical eyes, light and color, was not there for him; for him, the world was only what was given to his sense of touch and the other senses. But now that he has had the operation, light and color and radiance are emerging bit by bit from the bleak darkness and gloom. They were around him, but for him they have become a world only after he had the organs for them.

Not every physically blind person can be operated on, but it is possible for everyone to awaken the abilities and powers slumbering within them – what Goethe calls “spiritual eyes” – to open them up, to opens up by itself through appropriate behavior, and he becomes aware of an awakening of a higher, more brilliant kind than that through which the blind person sees a new world entering him when he is operated on.

Who can logically deny that there are worlds around us that the senses cannot perceive? Logically, no one can! Logically, a person can only make a statement about what he sees and perceives, never about what he does not perceive. But there have always been people in the world, and there are people today, who awaken these abilities and powers slumbering within us and who know from their own experience that spiritual worlds exist around us, know of worlds that are active and whose forces have an effect in our world.

And it is of these worlds that spiritual science, theosophy, speaks – we only call it secret science because in order to gain access to it, man must first awaken the forces slumbering in him, and until he has done so all this remains hidden from him. But when he becomes a citizen of these worlds, when the spiritual lights around us dawn on him, then entities reach into this life for him that he can only now recognize, that... and in this way he attains knowledge that makes him fully able and willing to work.

This will now become clear to us when we look at our own human life from the standpoint of this supersensible knowledge, not at something remote but at the most everyday things there are for us. Then we will see how we can apply this spiritual science.

As far as I am concerned, someone can come and say: There are such twisted minds, oddballs, who call themselves Theosophists and bring all sorts of confused stuff, they may keep it to themselves, it is not for a reasonable person! Good, he may act on it!

But now there is another point of view that says: Well, since things don't look so unreasonable after all, let's try to live life and work in life as if these assumptions were correct, and if they prove themselves in life, then we can talk to them. This is a thoroughly healthy point of view, and today's question in particular will enable us to find such a kind of truth, such proof of the theosophical premise, if we try to apply what the lecture contains to life.

First, however, we must take a brief look at the human being in the theosophical or esoteric sense.

If we look at the human being from this point of view, then what the senses can see, what eyes can see and hands can grasp, appears to us as only a part, a single limb of the entire human being. In the spiritual sense, we call this part of the human being the physical body.

This physical body is shared by the human being with all the seemingly inanimate beings around him; the same substances and forces that are found outside in the inanimate minerals are also found in the physical human body. However, in this physical human body – and in fact in the body of every living being are so intricately combined and interwoven that the physical body of a living being, if it is left to the physical substances and forces alone, then it disintegrates into itself.

No matter what a merely materialistically thinking wisdom may say – the theosophist knows very well what it can say – and no matter what it may say, there is a principle embedded in the physical body of every living being that can be logically , who is able to consider these things only philosophically, perceptible for him who has developed the higher abilities, the spiritual eyes, as Goethe says. For the materialistically-minded, it is of course a nothing, one can well understand that. ...

For the person who sees through things, this etheric or life body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body in every moment. In all of you, this life body is a fighter that prevents physical substances and forces from following their own laws. At the moment of death, the physical body separates from the etheric body, and then the physical body follows its own substances and forces, then it is a corpse, then it decays. So we have this second link, the etheric body, in every living being, which the human being has in common with all plants and animals.

The third link is the so-called astral body... This too is a fact for the spiritual seer. But you can get a logical idea of it if you consider the following: when you look at the person standing in front of you, you have not only what you can perceive as a physical body with your physical senses, not only what as an etheric and life body constantly protects this physical body from decay... but there is something else in this space in front of you: something is in it that is much closer to many people than the physical body and the etheric body. The details of the physical body, what do many people know about that... but there is something that is infinitely close to the simplest human being, much closer than his physical body, and that is the sum of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of urges, desires and passions. The sum of all sensations that rise and fall in the soul, that which we call the inner life or human inner life. And the carrier of this human inner life, in spiritual science we call this the astral body, the human being no longer shares this with plants and minerals, but only with the animal world. As long as we hold the view that this astral body, or if we want to speak in everyday terms: that drives, desires and passions, feelings and instincts and the surging and surging sensations, that these are only evoked by the physical body...

Only at that moment do we have the right to speak of it... where we see the original not in the physical and not in the etheric body, but precisely in this astral body the original...

It would take us too far today to show fully – we have a different goal today – that the physical body and the etheric body relate to this astral body as ice, for example, relates to water.

If a child comes and shows you a piece of ice and you tell him that this is water in solid form, the child may not immediately see it, and you will have to make it clear to him in some way that the ice is water in a different form.

Just as the child may not know that ice is just water in a different form, so someone who is accustomed to looking at things from a materialistic point of view does not yet know that the physical body and etheric body is only, basically speaking, let us say, condensed, condensed, crystallized out of this spiritual carrier of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, urges, desires and passions and perceptions.

Everything that is physical is generated out of the spiritual, let us say condensed, crystallized out of the spiritual.

... You get an idea of this... if you take this as a small theoretical down payment for what spiritual science is gradually showing you comprehensively. Take the very simple two phenomena that a person experiences within himself: the feeling of shame or the feeling that arises when something near us puts people into fear and terror. Fear and terror make him pale, his blood takes on very specific movements, it changes in the body, it goes, if we may say so, from the outer surface to the center. The opposite happens with shame...

So we have an external physical process under the influence of mental agitation.

This is a small example of how one can see material effects arising from the spiritual. Imagine these effects increasing until the process of building the external physical... the material itself, is built out of the spiritual. Then you have something to which you cannot, admittedly, arrive in an instant, but which you can arrive at through patient study... to which spiritual science can lead you more and more.

But now there is one thing by which man stands out above all the visible earthly creatures around him. We come to this when we study a very simple fact of human experience, which is only usually not properly interpreted and paid attention to; you will come to it when you go through a very simple contemplation with me, which is indeed somewhat subtle.

Anyone can say “table” to the table, “clock” to the clock, and anyone can pronounce the name given to the external object in the language; but there is only one name, one little name, in the German language that not everyone can pronounce to the one that this name denotes.

This is the name that lies in the little word “I”. Only one person can pronounce “I” if this “I” is to mean what it is.

If the “I” is to mean you yourself, then no one can ever say “I” to you. You are a you to everyone else, everyone else is a you to you! If the little word “I” is to mean you yourself, then it must resound from the innermost part of the soul itself. That is why all religions and world views... that were based on spiritual science... called this short little word 'I' the unspeakable name of God... so that the power within can pronounce this name, which cannot access the soul through external senses and organs... that was called the divine power, the spark of God that is in us...

Yes, you make a god out of man, many say. ...

Anyone who makes this accusation can see from another example]... I have taken a drop of water out of the great, all-encompassing sea and I now claim that this drop is the same substance and essence as the sea, but it is not the whole sea...

In the same way, the theosophist does not make a god out of the human ego when he declares: This “I” is a drop, a spark of divine substance. ... This “I” and the sum total of powers and principles that enable a person to let this divine, this God, speak within them, we call the fourth link of human essence, that makes man the crown of earthly creation. ... This is what distinguishes him from all other beings on earth. ...

Thus, the human being stands before us as a four-part entity... Today, we will not discuss the further, higher aspects of human nature. ... This classification suffices for us today. ... When we consider these aspects of the human being and look at the human being, then in his development from birth to death, then spiritual science shows us that these individual aspects by no means develop in the same way or in the same times. ...

When we have a person before us at any age, we do not have them before us in such a way that these four elements are always present in the same way. We only understand the human being when we know that the development of the human being takes place in different ways at different ages... After all, a person's life is preceded by a prenatal life...

We know that when a person is born, they have a life behind them in their mother's womb, where their physical body was enclosed on all sides by the physical womb, where all organs have gradually developed to such an extent that when the person sees the light of day, their physical body was previously protected by an outer physical shell... which they now shed...

We speak of the external physical birth of a person when the person sheds this physical shell around him, and his physical body is exposed to the external physical elements. Before that, the rays of light could not penetrate the eyes. Had these rays of light penetrated his eyes immediately, these eyes would not have been able to develop into today's human eyes.... And so it is with all organs of the human being.... Only then can he be directly exposed to external impressions and influences when these organs, protected by this cover, have matured for such influences...

Now spiritual science also speaks of other births of man. ... When the spiritual seer now looks at man as he is born after his physical birth, he sees how the physical body is handed over to the external physical elements... but the second link of the human being is not yet handed over to the external powers, which act on the etheric body.

What we have described as the etheric body is still surrounded by an - albeit ethereal - shell... and we speak of a second birth, through which it also sheds this etheric shell. When a person is born physically, his etheric body still has an etheric mother around it, which protects him, and it protects him until the change of teeth, until the time when the person loses the so-called milk teeth and gradually gets his own teeth, around the seventh year, then the human being is born of his second link; he sheds the protective etheric cover, as with the physical birth the physical mother shell. We will soon learn the full implications of these spiritual facts.

But there is still another birth; this occurs because, even though the human being has freed his etheric body from external influences when his teeth change, for example, he is still surrounded by a protective astral mother-shell, as it were, around the third limb of his being, and this continues until sexual maturity.

With this sexual maturity, around the age of 14 to 15, this further spiritual birth is also slowly taking place, that is, the astral mother shell is being shed, and thus the astral body of the person becomes free and can be directly exposed to the astral influences... that are working around him.

Only later is there a time when, in a similar way, what we call the “ego” is born. ...

One can only understand the course of a person's life, and one can only educate a person reasonably, if one knows and applies all of this to the fullest extent. ...

Let us now first look at the ascending life. ...

This brings us to an important field of human activity, that of education and teaching. Let us consider this and see how it presents itself to us when we consider the human being in terms of his or her entire nature and being.

We know that from the time of his physical birth until he changes his teeth, the human being is enveloped in an etheric covering, which he then sheds. If we observe this, we will say to ourselves: We must keep away everything that has a direct effect on the etheric body or life body until this second birth has taken place.

For the spiritual seer, it is just as nonsensical to allow direct effects on the etheric body with its etheric mother shell before the birth of the etheric body,

as it would be for the ordinary consciousness of a person to allow direct effects on the physical body of the child before its physical birth.

The first thing that happens is that the physical body, which was previously under the protective cover, is exposed to direct external physical influences. The time from birth to the seventh year is especially the time when we have to monitor the direct influence of physical elements on the physical human being.

The detailed development of this results in many, many rules that spiritual science can provide for a healthy pedagogy. Above all, it is a matter of knowing what is happening during these developmental years until the change of teeth. Spiritual science tells us that up to this point of the change of teeth, the forms, the physical forms of the physical body, are established. ...

The forms continue to increase in size only, but the plasticity of the forms, including the finer plasticity of the form, the balance of power in which they will develop, are determined up to the seventh year. And whatever has been neglected in the development of the human being up to that point can never be made up for later; it has been neglected for the whole of life...

Because from the seventh year onwards, it becomes possible to influence the etheric body. ... The physical body is then under the influence of the etheric body, which then further regulates growth...

It follows that the physical environment must be carefully arranged in the way it is designed until the teeth change. Not only the coarse, but also the finer structural and formative conditions of the physical body are formed under the influence of this physical environment....

A rough comparison:...

If you strain any muscle, that is, expose it to what it belongs to, it becomes strong, powerful and expands... this is how it is with all the internal forms of the physical body... SO it is with our visual abilities, our vision...

The forces that are in our physical body are tools that serve the soul to perceive the physical world...

For example, it is not irrelevant what kind of color environment a person experiences in their physical environment between birth and the age of seven. Depending on the colors we choose for the child's environment, the inner formative forces will develop in opposition to this world of colors. Let us assume, for example, that we have a fidgety child, a nervous child, and in the other case an overly calm, “dead” child, who is “dead” in his behavior, his mannerisms. ... Both types, in order to develop in the appropriate way, must be placed in the right physical environment. ... Someone who only sees the world with their physical eye will probably place a fidgety child in an environment of so-called calming colors, of blue or green, while believing that a calm child should be placed in an environment of red or yellow...

Countless mistakes are made here. ... Because the exact opposite is correct. If you want to proceed in the right way, you should, if possible, place a fidgety child in a red or reddish-yellow environment and a calm child in a blue or blue-green one.

If you know how the internal structure of the organs is formed, you will be able to see this through pure logic. You stare at a red spot on a white surface and then, after staring at it for some time, you suddenly look at a different spot on the white surface, so you see the green counteraction on the empty white surface...

What does this mean? While you are looking at the red color on the outside, the inside of the body tends to develop the opposite color. If you look at the red, the body adjusts itself internally so that it forms the green, and this is important for the internal formation of the plastic organs. ...

If you have a restless, nervous child and you give him a red environment, then a countervailing force towards green, blue-green, is formed internally, and this has a calming effect on the plastic forces of the internal organs...

Here things are much deeper than an external sensory observation usually shows...

Sometimes I have been told: But that is really quite strange. When I work with any lamp that has a red shade, it makes me feel agitated; so why should it have a favorable effect on the child? - ... I have not claimed that a red glow has a favorable effect on a man of 56 years; I have only said that it stimulates the internal organs, the plastic of the internal organs of the child in a calming sense. ...

Similarly, something extraordinarily important arises when we consider children's toys from this point of view. You will have often observed that a child with a healthy mind rejects dolls with beautifully painted faces and natural hair, or at least puts them aside soon. Let's take a closer look at this doll and admit to ourselves: it is, of course, hideous...

But if you ever make a doll for your child out of an old napkin, you will have a completely different experience. The child will enjoy the so-called beautiful doll for a while. But then the child will soon throw it away and always return to the homemade napkin doll. This is a very correct, healthy instinct. ... For a power is constantly at work in the child to shape the organs plastically.

If the child now has this self-made doll in front of them, the following occurs: the child must make an effort to first turn it into a human being through inner imagination; they must first apply forces to the imperfect doll in order to create the human image. This is beneficial for them internally and shapes the internal organs in a more perfect way. These inner plastic forces are not activated when you present the child with such a “beautiful” doll; these forces remain inert, and what should be active internally, the forces of the organs to form, cannot happen. The tools in our physical body, which should be active forces, are formed when we give the child something to do that requires it to be active through its imagination. The child must imagine something that the external object does not give it, it merely stimulates.

And people have no idea how much harm they do to children if they do not give them the opportunity to develop this inner counterforce in the appropriate way. ...

Oh, the one who looks deeper into human nature also knows something else. He knows that there is a huge difference between keeping a child busy putting together figures out of individual stones and keeping him busy with a toy that gives the impression of being alive, inwardly animated. ... Something completely different happens inside... and vividly brings the body to life... when you give the child a toy that creates the illusion of life through the way it moves when the child plays with it... There used to be old picture books in which whole scenes were presented in moving pictures, whole stories, and which thereby evoked the inner sculpture. They were wonderfully suited to developing the organs in a plastic way during the time when they had to be developed. Those who look more deeply into this want to... when they often and often have to watch with a bleeding soul as everything, absolutely everything, is neglected due to instinctive materialism....

Those who can see into our time with spiritual eyes can trace materialistic thinking back and see how it has been brought about that children have been given construction kits instead of living toys, with which they build something out of individual parts. This is what creates the materialistic mind, much more than materialistic literature... Materialistic theories are the least dangerous aspect of materialism. But if, instead of observing the inner life, a child who is putting together his body, this instrument of the human being, at the time when it should be developing its forms plastically, is concerned with putting the individual parts together, then he comes to imagine that the world is made up of individual clusters of atoms. ...

So you see how spiritual science works in practice. But it goes even further. ... Right down to the instincts of eating, you can understand the course of human life and influence its shaping from the perspective of spiritual science.

Spiritual science can draw attention to the fact that something that needs to be developed in the child's soul is being held back by certain foods...

In the child's soul, the tools for healthy instincts and desires must develop. We do not have a certain desire for nothing. ... That is why they are there, so that when the instinct arises and is satisfied, life is steered in healthy directions. ... See how animals walk across the pasture and carefully choose the foods that are beneficial to them, leaving the others standing... What is the upward development into a human being? It gives man higher gifts, but it exposes him to the possibility of error, which the animal with its instinctive certainty is not exposed to. What matters is that man, with his higher gifts, nevertheless retains this security. And we can preserve this security of healthy instinct for the child if we do not stuff him full of an excess of such substances that kill such an instinct.

Overfeeding children with protein-rich food is, many people believe today, the greatest care in the care of young children. But this is not true at all. The moment the child receives too much protein, the moment it is overfed with protein, it loses its sure instincts for nourishment, while another child sometimes rejects what is harmful to it, even down to a glass of water, and desires what is good for it, what is healthy.

This is extremely important. It is an example of the practical knowledge of life that can flow from spiritual science. ... We could do a lot if we only wanted to pay attention to the principles of the matter...

We can raise the question: What is the law of the human life cycle up to this change of teeth? ... This is described in a word that resonates like a magic [word] for everything that is influenced by these years. Imitation is the magic of education in these years, when the physical body has become accessible to the immediate influence of the outside world. The child strives to emulate what it sees. Therefore, education must, above all, be based on the child's intention to imitate; it should not demand or admonish, as this is not the main thing in these years. The main thing is that the child can follow what it sees during these years, and that nothing happens that the child is not allowed to imitate. ...

However, there are a number of points to be considered. Imagine a couple... — I always tell such cases as examples that have really happened — they have a child who is very well-behaved, nothing to complain about, suddenly one day the child has stolen, as they say, from his parents' cash box. The child is so good that it did not use this money for itself, but gave it to others whom it believed needed it. ...

You can perhaps imagine that the parents would be outraged if they did not know that during this time, until the permanent teeth have come in – and these things do not abruptly follow one another – during this time, everything is characterized by imitation, the child has always seen that the parents themselves take money out... and what it sees its parents doing is right for the child; it imitates it. To apply moral concepts here, such as stealing or the like, is in no way appropriate. The child only imitates what its parents demonstrate to it. Therefore, we know that in terms of everything we want to cultivate in the child, a plastic molding must be called forth from within through imitation.

Therefore, we must build everything on imitation in the child during this first period, that is, the adults around him must not do or say anything that the child should not also do in exactly the same way. ... This is of profound significance. ...

If imitation is the magic word for education until the seventh year of a child's development, then from the time when the teeth change and the etheric or life body is freed for direct external influence ... the word 'authority' applies, and succession. What can be understood by these words must be the guiding principle of education for these years. ...

Just as children must be able to imitate what is going on around them until their teeth change... so now, in the second phase of life, there must be someone alongside them who can be called an authority.

... In detail, we can say something like this: only after sexual maturity does the time come when a person, through the powers of their mind, understands what is good or bad, clever or stupid....

We do young people an injustice if we place too much emphasis on intellectual insight and education before this time, prematurely. During this time, until sexual maturity is reached, it is necessary for a personality of some kind to stand beside the child and determine what is true or false, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. These concepts must have an authoritative effect on the child at this age, not through mental judgments but through the power of the personality.... And it is the greatest joy for a child to have such personalities in their lives during these years, to whom they can look up as natural authorities who are truly worthy of emulation. A person becomes mature enough to judge when, during these years of their life, they have been influenced by an authoritative personality whom they looked up to and followed in awe. This is a beneficial power that affects a person throughout their life. Oh, if only people could know what it means for a person's whole life when something like this happens to them, such as hearing about a much-admired personality in the family whom they have not yet seen. Timid reverence already sits in his soul, the heart pounds until he is allowed to see the personality for the first time.... These are the most beautiful, wonderful feelings in his soul for the rest of his life, the moments of celebration that ignite forces that are as important as hardly anything else for the whole life of a person until death.

Everything that one carries within the etheric body, the body that carries all growth, but also temperament, habits, and character, is decisively influenced in this way during this time between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

And it is important, for example, that this etheric or life body is also the carrier of memory. Therefore, it is essential that conscious care is taken during this time, above all, in the development of memory. In this respect, there is

confusion has arisen. Precisely in our time, as a result of materialistic basic views, many educational efforts work towards having children do mental work as early as possible, so that they calculate and do similar things based on their own judgment. That looks quite progressive, but it is nevertheless extremely harmful for the development of the growing human being. First you have to have a store of knowledge and insights in your memory; only then can you form judgments about them. The time for judgment comes with sexual maturity. Until then, it is a time for purely memorized learning. The memory must be formed in the time until then. It is not important – as one would like to say today – that the child is already able to judge, for example, what he or she has to learn in history. It is precisely this that is so damaging, to want to evoke judgment at this time. In this time, the events must be presented to the soul in a purely factual and objective way, in large images, through an authority that is taken for granted. These events must first live in the soul of the child; only then has the time for judgment come.

And what is very important at this time is that, because the etheric body now receives the direct influence of the forces that express themselves in memory and in other spiritual faculties, we will particularly develop these forces during this time, the qualities that are anchored in the etheric body. Above all, what is anchored there is what is called the pictorial power of human vision. ... Many people today look at the world so unimaginatively and soberly because the world has not been presented to them in vital images during this time. ... Man should first get to know this world in images. If you want to give people a healthy foundation for the higher supernatural truths, then you have to teach them the corresponding images at this age. During this time, the truths must first be brought to people in images and symbols if they are to be truly grasped later on. If in later life a person is to be able to say to himself: The human soul is immortal, when the human being passes through the gate of death, then the soul rises to higher regions, only the body remains behind and decays, then this is properly prepared in this age, when one tells the child, for example, “Watch the caterpillar as it transforms into a chrysalis and thus falls into deathly rigidity, and then how the chrysalis breaks something and the butterfly rises from the breaking shell into an airy, light existence."

But it would be a mistake for teachers to use these images today. They no longer have an effect because those who use these images no longer believe in what they are supposed to express. Only when the image is a reality for them, then something in it takes effect, which naturally passes over into the soul of the child and works as a force that later awakens the right knowledge. For the spiritual scientist, the given is an image of immortality in reality, in truth. For him, it is not something that he laboriously devises with his mind, but rather, for him, life passes through a series of stages... and on the lower stage, the butterfly's emergence from the chrysalis is truly what, on the higher stage, is the soul's emergence from the dying body. If this is the case for you, then you will naturally be able to bring about an emotional understanding in the child first, in the magical touch of imagery, before you cultivate the sober judgments of the mind, which is only made possible by the correct understanding of the whole personality at a later stage.

Here we see reason in something that is often viewed as unreasonable today. I know what misunderstandings we are exposed to in this matter, but it must be said not out of a reactionary sense, but out of a sense of truth.

How clever we have become, many think today, how they look back on our forefathers, who told their children all kinds of tall tales. ... Today we must no longer tell such lies to children. Our forefathers taught their children things that are not true at all, such as the story of the stork. But, again, it must be said that, although not out of reactionary sentiment, their way of doing so was much more correct than the modern approach. For once you have seen through things, there is nothing more childish and naive you can say to a child than that nothing more is needed for a human being to come into the world than the purely physical process. ... That is fundamentally wrong from a deeper perspective. The reality is: the human being comes from a spiritual world... from a spiritual existence before birth, and the physical process is only the mediator of the spiritual person's entry into this sensual world, and what our enlightened people want to teach children today is much, much more untrue and unreal than the old stork tale. ... Everything that has been said in the image of the flying was the image of the spiritual for our ancestors. ...

The image of something flying always appears when the spiritual is to be pointed out in a fairy tale. For example, in the children's song “Fly, little bird, fly... your mother is in Pommerland”... Pommerland is not Pommern... Pommerland is Kinderland... “fly, little beetle, fly”... the same image is everywhere, and it is the basis of the stork fairy tale. ... Man from a different developmental period before the time when he should have soberly understood it in everyday life, believed in the stork fairy tale himself, because at the time the magic touch of imagery had been breathed over what is in the world around us. ...

And it is quite different when I have first had a mysterious natural process in front of me in the picture... first carried this image around with me for a long time and only then was faced with the task of understanding it intellectually. Only then did I mature and then I absorb what came later in a completely different way.

This shows us, in turn, how we must know those forces that develop at a certain age. ... And so we can specify for each age what it is in detail. ... So then, around the 14th or 15th year, the time of sexual maturity is an important stage. For it is at this time that the growing human being's astral mother-shell is cast off and the astral body, to which, for example, judgment and many other things adhere, is released to the direct influence of the outer world. Therefore, it is only during this time that the human being is mature enough to be exposed to external judgment and to acquire independent judgment. If we bring this judgment forward, we arrive at these things that force their way into today's life as formidable dark sides... where people grow into them without consideration...

Only when puberty has occurred should independent judgment be formed on the basis of what has developed in terms of imagery, of noble feelings... under the influence of authority.... otherwise we see that the youngest people, who have not even been born yet, people who should first learn to mature their judgment, are already making their appearance with their own judgment at the time when they should only be developing it....

But this is also the time when the astral body emerges with the instincts and drives for life that are inherent in it. ... These forces arise in the form that we call “youthful ideals”, “springtime hopes”, hopes for life. A dry, sober person can easily look down on what he has experienced in his youthful soul as a mere infatuation. Even if none of this materializes, even if these are hopes that are left out in the cold in life, the fact remains that they were hopes, ideals, and that is during the time when the astral body gradually emerges. What matters is not that hopes are fulfilled, that ideals are realized, but that they are there. For they are forces in the soul and as forces they are formative, they give life inwardness, they give life strength, even if they have been there as hopes that were later destroyed. Therefore, we must do everything to ensure that these spring hopes of life are developed during this time, that they are there.

Then the time gradually comes for the human being to give birth to his or her full self, which now approaches the world around in a completely free way. ...

And just as there is an ascending life, there is also a descending life in the second half. Just a few words about this: the birth and gradual development of the ego comes to an end with normal life around the age of 35. At this point, the human being is at the zenith of life. Everything that was laid down in him at birth has emerged in him by this time. But now something else begins; now begins the time when, just as before, things have been shaped out of life, just as before, the abilities have been developed, so now begins the time when they are processed and consumed in pieces, from the age of 35 onwards, when in normal life, first of all, the forces of the astral body are gradually consumed inwardly. We see all astral things gradually receding again. The person becomes sober, develops more sense of reality... he becomes what, in our times, is fashion, what one can call a Philistine.

While until then the person had more to do with himself, from the age of 35 begins the time when he acquires value for his environment. Before that, he had to use his time to mature his judgment and enter into a firm, definite relationship between his ego and the world around him. Now, what he is begins to have value for his fellow human beings. Now his judgment has weight, now people start to listen to him, now he radiates valuable things that he himself has to consume. Now he shows, even to an intimate observer, whether the ascending path was the right one. Now it becomes clear how barren and empty are the judgments of someone who has not grown under the influence of ideals in the period from 14 to 21 years...

In order to radiate, one must first have acquired the right kind of thing at the right time.

All esoteric development is subject to strict laws... those who have become teachers in this spiritual science strictly observe the rules... and today things are such that, precisely because of our culture, no one is let loose on the world by the appointed authorities before this mid-life...

The true secret teachers do not allow their students to present themselves to the world with what they are supposed to give before they are ready. Everyone's tongue is only loosened at this midpoint in life. And if personalities appear before this time, you can be sure that they are doing so without a mandate, without the authorization of the individuals behind our movement. On average, no one is let loose on people before this time... Only the nonsense of our time makes it... that in these areas... the nonsense that young people, who are far from being finished with themselves, also appear in these areas...

And then we see further how, roughly from the 1940s onwards, a new epoch is reached with the descending life, even if no such great regularity can be observed here as in the ascending life. ...

Now that the astral body has been consumed, the time comes when the human being also begins to consume his etheric body, which he built up in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This is then depleted again around the fiftieth year... You can see this in certain signs that occur at this age.

Try to look at life in its truth, and you will see how, in this period, the memory is just what cannot receive new impressions, new forces. On the other hand, just what was in this etheric body, that comes out just now, that which this etheric body has taken in, that occurs in the sharpest, strongest memory at this age. ... Observe life from this point of view and you will experience time and again how people of this age come back again and again and have a good memory of what was incorporated into them at those ages. See the sense of well-being that old people experience at this time when they can tell their memories of their youth over and over again... and consider what good you can do them by enabling them to tell such stories...

And then, in the last stage of life, see how little by little the physical body is consumed too... see how the bones become more and more calcified, how they become more physical. The cartilages ossify... this last stage of life also consumes the physical body...

Once the ascending life is properly regulated, another thing will show up, which is often ignored today.

From the age of 35 onwards, a person radiates such judgments, which are decisive and have value for his environment... Then he comes to not only radiate judgments for his environment, but also to the fact that what he radiates as authority may also be considered authoritative for his environment...

First the judgments become decisive, then in the penultimate epoch of life the life radiations themselves become decisive and a value for the environment... and last of all... man gains such judgment, such inner fullness, that what he then gives of himself has something mature not only for his time, but for all times.

Those who see into things therefore also see in a completely different way... why certain people speak of this time in a very special way... With Dante, for example, you can see this in the very first lines of his “Divina Commedia”. There you can see how he says: “In the midst of life I saw all this...”

And so you can look at all the great minds in this way... And if you look at a person like Goethe... you have to take into account the difference between what he created when he was in ascending development and what he created after the middle of his life. That by which he has become for humanity what he is to it, that falls after the middle of life...

But if we look at the second half of life, we see that nothing external is developed for the temporal human being, for the outer limbs, physical body, etheric and astral body. This is consumed. But the moment the outer shell begins to disintegrate, that is when enrichment and the development of the essential begins. The forces of the inner being, the forces of the actual self, become ever more powerful and powerful in that which lives in these shells, for which the outer being begins the descending development. In the second half of life, the eternal, the lasting, the immortal in man develops, and when death occurs, we see how the outer shell falls away and how, even though it may have seemed for a while as if the inner life has receded, then we see how what the person has... how, at death, as a birth for the spiritual, the eternal, how that emerges at death as what he has developed valuably within himself, in his inwardness.

Death is physical death, but spiritually for the spiritual world it is a new birth and... this is prepared in the second half of life. At this time, when the outer layers gradually die off, the human being shapes what remains, what is eternal about him.

The great poet sensed that when the outer layers die away, the inner form, the spiritual form, that which is lasting and eternal, develops within. Great minds have always sensed and said what a wisdom that deeply penetrates the spiritual effects must confirm in every detail...

What Schiller said cannot be presented to you as blind faith, but as fully valid knowledge.

Today, only brief, cursory allusions could be given... about the course of human life... If we allow ourselves to be completely permeated by this practice of life, which can arise from spiritual science, then we will experience that life is shaped in such a way that we become hopeful, able to live and work through it, because we understand correctly in every moment:

Only the body lends those powers
That weave the dark destiny,
But free from every temporal violence,
The companion of blessed natures
Walks above in the corridors of light
Divine among gods the form.

Question and Answer

Question: What are the right ideals for young people?

Rudolf Steiner: In this respect, we must learn to place the principle of freedom above all else in relation to the developing human being. It is easy to believe that these or those ideals are the right ones at first. But we must not create stereotyped ideals for ourselves. The developing human being is a mystery that the educator has to solve, and he learns just as much from the mysterious human being who is gradually emerging from his or her shells and allows himself to be guided by this human being to the ideals that are right for him or her. So we learn to respect the freely developing individuality when we know that the spirit is realizing itself...

The question can only be solved by education in life in each individual case...

However, there are certain basic ideals that are appropriate almost everywhere... above all, there is a beautiful ideal: a human being who is as complete as possible in every single detail, whom we can justifiably depict from history. ... when we create figures of world history and let our own powers be ignited by the great figures... but when we then come up with practical life, we can also ignite these ideals with practical life... what is important is to keep alive the sense of the transformation of the world, to maintain the sense that the world can change. ...

On the real meaning of ideals: Fichte, “On the purpose of the scholar”.

My dear friends,

A large number of anthroposophical friends have appeared at the Class today who have not been here before, so I am obliged to say a few introductory words about the School's arrangements. It is to be remembered in all earnestness that with the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum a new element has entered into the anthroposophical movement. Especially the members of our Free School for Spiritual Science must be aware of this new element. I have often indicated this, but I know that many anthroposophical friends are here for the first time who have never heard it, so I must emphasize it once again.

It is true that before the Christmas Conference it was always emphasized that the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society must be held strictly separate.

The anthroposophical movement represented the inflow of spiritual wisdom and life impulses into human civilization today which can and should be obtained for our present time directly from the spiritual world. This anthroposophical movement exists not because people like it to exist but because the spiritual powers which guide and lead the world and affect human history consider it right that spiritual light, which can come through anthroposophy, flow today into human civilization in the appropriate manner.

The Anthroposophical Society was founded in order to act as an administrative society for the body of anthroposophical wisdom and life. And it had to be continually emphasized that anthroposophy as such is beyond and above any societal organization and the Anthroposophical Society is the exoteric administrator.

That has changed since the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Since the Christmas Conference the opposite is the case. And only because the opposite is the case was I able to declare myself willing, together with the Executive Committee (Vorstand) which was formed during the Christmas Conference and with whom the appropriate work to be done can be carried out, to take over the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society which was founded at Christmas. I can explain what this means in one sentence: Until then, anthroposophy was administered by the Anthroposophical Society; now whatever happens through the Anthroposophical Society must itself be anthroposophy. Since Christmas the Anthroposophical Society must occupy itself with anthroposophy. Every single act must have an esoteric character. The investment of the Vorstand was thus an esoteric measure, a measure which must be thought of as coming directly from the spiritual world. Only when our anthroposophical friends are conscious of this can the Anthroposophical Society thus founded thrive. So, the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society have now become identical.

Thus, the Vorstand at Dornach is an initiative-Vorstand, as was emphasized during the Christmas Conference. Of course, there must be an administration. But that is not what it considers to be its principal task, but rather to make anthroposophy flow through the Anthroposophical Society and to do everything possible to achieve this objective.

The position of the Vorstand at Dornach within the Anthroposophical Society is therewith given. And it must be clear that from now on every relationship within the Anthroposophical Society will not be based on some bureaucratic measure or other, but it will be based on the strictly human. Therefore, at the Christmas Conference statutes that contain paragraphs which detail what members must believe or agree to were not presented; rather do the statutes describe what the Vorstand intends. And that is how the Anthroposophical Society is constituted. It is founded upon human relationships.

It is a minor thing, but I must emphasize it: every member is issued a membership card, which is signed by me, so that even if it's an abstract thing, the personal relationship is at least present. It has been suggested that I have a rubber stamp made with my signature. I'm not going to do that - despite it not being exactly comfortable to sign twelve thousand membership cards, little by little. But I will not have the stamp made, first of all because, although very abstract, a relationship is at least established to each and every member when, if only for minutes the eye rests on the name of the person who carries the membership card. Obviously, all the other relationships will be even more human, but by this means a concrete beginning is made within our society.

I must also stress that it must be clear to the members - I stress it because it has already been sinned against - that when the name “General Anthroposophical Society” is used, the agreement of the Vorstand at the Goetheanum is first obtained. In the same sense, when something comes from the Goetheanum and is then used as something esoteric, the use is based upon an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum. This means that nothing by way of formulations and teaching which appears in the name of the General Anthroposophical Society will be recognized by us here as valid unless an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum has taken place. In the future, no abstract relationship will be possible, only concrete ones. Anything said to come from the Goetheanum must really come from the Goetheanum. Therefore, the use of the title “General Anthroposophical Society” for lectures to be given somewhere or for the use of formulations and so forth which originate here and which an active member wishes to distribute, should write to the Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, that is, to Mrs. Wegman, in order to obtain the Vorstand's agreement. It is important that in future the Vorstand at the Goetheanum be understood as the center of the anthroposophical movement.

Furthermore, the relation of this School to the Anthroposophical Society must be clearly understood by the membership. One who becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society feels the inner heartfelt need to learn and live what circulates in the world as anthroposophical knowledge and living impulse. One assumes no responsibilities other than those which come to the heart and soul from anthroposophy itself. Once one has been a general member of the General Anthroposophical society for a certain time - presently the minimum is two years - he can apply for membership in the Free School for Spiritual Science.

In this Free School for Spiritual Science one assumes truly earnest responsibilities for the Society, for anthroposophy, that is, that as a member one wishes to be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world. That is necessary today. The leadership of the Free School for Spiritual Science cannot agree to work together with someone as a member under other conditions.

Do not say, my friends, that this is a limitation of freedom. Freedom demands that everyone involved be free. And just as one can be a member of the School and be free in this relationship, the leadership of the School must also be free to determine with whom it wishes to work and with whom not. Therefore, if the leadership for any reason is of the opinion that a member cannot be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world, it must be possible for the leadership of the School to either not approve that person's application or, in the case where he is already a member, to say that his membership must be revoked. This must be strictly observed in this future, so that in fact a free cooperation exists between the School's leadership and the members.

Step by step we will try to make arrangements so that those who cannot take part in the continuing work of the School in Dornach can partake in some manner. We can only take the fifth step after the fourth, not the seventh step after the first; we must take one step after the other and there has been much to do here since the Christmas Conference. But it will all be arranged to the extent possible. We will have a newsletter through which those who reside elsewhere can participate in the School's activities. We were able to make a beginning with a newsletter that Dr Wegman sent to the physicians who were thus able to participate in the work of the School. Things will develop as much as possible, and I ask that you be patient in this respect.

Something else to be mentioned is that the School must be understood not as having been established by a human impulse, but from the spiritual world. A decision made from the spiritual world has been obtained with the means which are possible. So that this School is to be understood as an institution of the spiritual world for the present time - as has been the case with the Mysteries in all times. Therefore, we may say today: This School must develop into a true Mystery School for our times. Thus, it will be the soul of the anthroposophical movement.

This makes clear how serious membership in this School should be understood to be. It is obvious that all the previous esoteric work achieved here will flow into the School's work. For this School is the esoteric foundation and source of all esoteric activity within the anthroposophical movement. Therefore, if anyone wishes to initiate any kind of esoteric work in the world without a connection to the Vorstand at the Goetheanum, they must either reach an understanding with the Vorstand or they cannot include things which originate in the Goetheanum in their teaching or impulse. Whoever wants to do esoteric work under conditions other than those just mentioned cannot be a member of this School. They must then do the esoteric work outside the confines of this School and unrecognized by it, but must clearly understand that it cannot include anything which originated in this School. Relations with the School must be clearly understood. So the members must understand that [the leadership of] the School must be able to consider that each member is a true representative of anthroposophy in the world, and that every member represents anthroposophy exoterically (sic) as a member of the School should.

Before I was President of the Anthroposophical Society an attempt was made to organize the Goetheanum in the way other universities are organized. But that doesn't work under certain circumstances. Here esoteric studies will take place which are not found in other universities. And there is no intention to compete with other universities in the world, but to begin with questions about any field of life posed by honestly seeking people, which cannot be answered outside the esoteric.

Therefore, in the future, especially for members of the School, nonsense which keeps being repeated must cease, because with the Christmas Conference something real has happened and for the Goetheanum to fulfill its mission all the members of the School must frankly and freely declare: I am a representative of the anthroposophy which comes given from the Goetheanum. Whoever will not do this, who thinks that one should be silent about anthroposophy, prepare people slowly, whoever wants to play politics and thinks that he can advance by denying us and then people will come to us - they generally don't - would be well advised to give up membership in the School right away. I can promise you that in the future membership in the School will be taken very seriously indeed. For those members of the School whose work is really about anthroposophy and not something else, this will be accepted readily and gladly. Those who continually claim that you can't confront people with anthroposophy immediately, that you must somehow talk them into it gradually, may choose to exercise their opinion outside the School.

These are the conditions which must be adhered to, and I had to mention them today because so many anthroposophical friends are present who had not yet participated in the School. And this is the reason why you have had to wait so long for the lesson to begin, and listen to this introduction. So, we can consider the lesson today to be a kind of preparation. I will hold a second lesson, date to be announced, in which no new friends may participate. So, I ask those who wish to attend in the future to have patience, because if every time a lesson is held here new people come, we would never get anywhere. Of course, one can still become a member, but only members who have attended today will be admitted to the next lesson. It will be a continuation of today's lesson.

I wish to begin today's lesson - without you taking notes, only listening at first - by speaking the mantric formula which points to what has resounded throughout the ages, first from the Mysteries, but previously for the Mysteries from the script written in the stars, in the whole cosmos, and which resounds in the human soul, in the human heart, as the great challenge to humanity to strive for a true knowledge of self. This challenge; “O man, know thyself!” rings forth from the whole cosmos.

We look up at the stars, which reveal an especially clear writing in the zodiac, which through their composition in certain forms reveal the grand cosmic script. For one who understands the script the cosmic words will sound forth: “O man, know thyself!”

When we look up at what the planets reveal by their movements, first the sun and moon, but also the planets which belong to the sun and moon, then just as the movements of the stars reveal the powerful, forceful cosmic word, so do these planetary movements reveal the heart and feeling content.

And through what we experience from the elements which surround us on the earth and in which we partake through our skin, through our senses, through everything in us, that enters into us and acts in our bodies - earth, water, fire, air - through them the will element pours into these words.

We can therefore let this cosmic word, which rings out to humanity, act on our souls through the mantric words:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the cosmic-word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it vast in spirit.

Who speaks so vastly cosmic?
Who speaks so deeply heartfelt?

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

Is it you yourself who,
Feeling space, experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destroying flow.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, there exists no knowledge which is not closely tied to the spiritual world. Everything we call knowledge which is neither investigated in the spiritual world nor imparted by those who are able to investigate in the spiritual world, is not real knowledge. We must be clear about the fact that when we look around in the world, in the kingdoms of nature, see the colors and the radiance manifested, see what lives above in the shining stars, in the warming sun, what springs up from the depths of the earth - it is all sublime, grand, beautiful, full of wisdom. And we would be very mistaken to ignore this beauty, sublimity, this wisdom. If one wishes to become an esotericist, if he strives for real knowledge, then he must have a sense for the world around him - an open, free sense. For during the time between birth and death, during his earthly existence, he is obliged to absorb his strength from the forces of the earth, and to return the results of his work to the forces of the earth.

But although it is true that man must really participate in all the colors on colors, sound on sound, warmth on warmth, star on star, cloud on cloud, creatures of the kingdoms of nature which surround him, it is also true that if when he looks out at all the grand, powerful, sublime, wise, beautiful things his senses convey, he still does not discover what he himself is. Rather is it just then, when he has a correct sense of the sublimity, beauty and grandeur of his surroundings in his life on earth, that he will realize: In this light-filled kingdom of earth the inmost source of my being is not present. It is elsewhere. Full recognition of this causes us to seek the state of consciousness which moves us on to what we call the threshold to the spiritual world. This threshold, which lies immediately before an abyss, we must approach and remember that in all that surrounds us in earthly existence the primal source of humanity is not found.

Then we must know: at this threshold stands a spiritual figure called the Guardian of the Threshold. This Guardian takes care - beneficially to man - that one does not cross the threshold unprepared, without having experienced deeply in the soul those feelings I have spoken about. But then, when he really is prepared with inner earnestness for spiritual knowledge - whether by means of clairvoyant consciousness or through healthy human understanding of what he has been told, for both ways are valid, only then is it possible for the Guardian of the Threshold to reach out with a helping hand and allow him to look over the abyss. There, beyond the threshold where the human being's inmost being originated, utter darkness lies at first.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, we seek light in order to see in the light the origin of our own being. At first darkness reigns. This light which we seek must radiate out from the darkness. And it only radiates out from the darkness when we become aware of how the three fundamental impulses of our soul-life, thinking, feeling and willing, here is this earth-life are held together by our physical bodies. Thinking, feeling and willing are conjoined in physical existence.

If I schematically draw how they are conjoined, it looks like this. Feeling (green) extends into thinking (yellow); willing (red) extends into feeling. So, in earthly existence the Three are conjoined.

One must learn to feel that the Three separate from each other. And if more and more he uses the meditations suggested to him here by the School as the content of his soul life, he will note the following [drawing again]: thinking (yellow) is freed, detaching itself from feeling, feeling [green] is on its own as is willing [red]. For one learns to perceive without the physical body.

The physical body had held thinking, feeling and willing together, had pressed them into each other. [Around the first drawing an oval is drawn.] Here [in the second drawing on the right] the physical body is not present.

Through the meditations which he receives here at the School, one gradually comes to feel himself outside his body; and he comes to regard the world as self, and what self was, as world. We stand here on the earth in our earthly existence: we feel like human beings; we say, as we become inwardly aware: this is my heart, these are my lungs, this is my liver, this is my stomach. What we call our organs, what we call the physical human organization, we consider to be our own. And we point up: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, the clouds, that is a tree, a stream. We identify these things as being outside us. We are within our organs. We are outside of those things we indicated as: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, and so on.

When we have prepared our souls enough so that they can perceive without the body, that is, outside the body in the spiritual universe, then the reverse consciousness comes about. Now we speak of the sun as we speak of our heart here in earthly existence: that is my heart. We speak of the moon: that is the creator of my form. We speak of the clouds more of less as we speak on earth of our hair. We call our own organism what people on the earth see as components of the universe. And we point out: look there, a human heart, human lungs, a human liver - that is objective, that is world. Just as when we are in our physical bodies we look out from here to the sun and moon and to the world, when from the universe we look at the sun and the moon and clouds and rivers and mountains and they are within us. And when we look at man he is our outer world. The difficulty is only in the spatial relationships. And the difficulty will be overcome.

As soon as we leave our physical bodies with our thinking, we perceive this thinking as one with all that is manifested in the stars. Here on earth we call our brain our own, as the instrument of our thinking. But now we begin to feel the stars, especially the stars of the zodiac, as our brain when we are out in the universe and look down at man external to us.

And we perceive the circling planets as our own feeling. Our feeling follows then the course of the sun, of the moon, and of the other planets. Between what we experience as thinking in the fixed stars and feeling, is the sun in ourselves [the sun sign is inserted between the yellow and green of the second drawing]; and the moon lies between feeling and willing - which we also feel within us. [The moon sign is inserted between green and red.] And by simply meditating on this figure, it has the force to bring us closer and closer to spiritual vision. It must be realized that what I am saying here can really be experienced: leaving the physical body, expanding throughout the cosmos, feeling the elements of the cosmos - sun and moon, stars and so on - as one's own organs, observation of humanity as our exterior world.

What must be perfectly clear however, is that our thinking, our feeling and our willing which on earth is a unity held together by the physical body, now becomes threefold. And we learn to feel this threefold nature above all when we observe thinking.

Dear friends, dear sisters and brothers, this thinking which man uses on earth between birth and death is a corpse. It does not live. Whatever he may think with his brain about the beautiful, sublime, grand earth in his surroundings: these thoughts do not live. They lived in pre-earthly existence. They lived, these thoughts, when we had not yet descended to the physical world, but still lived above in the soul-spiritual world as soul-spiritual beings. There the thoughts which we have on earth were alive, but our physical body is the grave in which the moribund thought-world is buried when we descend to the earth. And here we carry the corpses of thought within us. And we think about our sense-perceptible surroundings on earth not with living thoughts but with the corpses of thought. But before we descended to this physical world a living thinking existed within us.

My dear friends, we only need to immerse ourselves in these truths again and again with inner strength and we come to the conscious conclusion that it really is so. One comes to know the human being in this way. One comes to know him and sees him so: This is the human head. [The outline of a head is sketched.] This human head is the bearer and support for earthly corpse-thinking. From it spring forth - but dead - the thoughts which spread over what is perceived by the eyes, by the ears, by the sense of warmth, by the other senses. We observe the thinking that corresponds to life on earth.

But gradually we learn to see through this thinking. Within the spiritual cell of the human head is the lingering sound of the true, living thinking in which we lived before descending to the physical world. When one looks at man, one sees at first his dead thinking [sketch: red part of the head]. But behind this dead thinking in the head's spiritual cell is the living thinking [yellow part of the head]. And this living thinking has brought with it the force necessary to form our brain. The brain is not thinking's creator, but the product of pre-earthly living thinking.

So when we look at the human being with the correct awareness, dead earthly thinking is manifested on the surface of the head; if we look within to the spiritual cell behind, we see the living thinking, which is like a will, such as the will we are otherwise aware of in the human motor system, which is really sleeping in us. For we don't know how thought descends to our muscles and so on - when it intends to will this or that. Then we observe what lives in us as will: we see it as thinking in the spiritual cell behind the sense oriented thinking. But then this will, which we become aware of as thinking, is creative for our thinking organ. For this thinking is no longer human thinking, it is cosmic thinking.

If we can understand the human being so that we look through the earthly thinking to the thinking which made the brain the basis for thinking on earth, then sensory thinking flows out into the cosmic void, and eternal thinking arises as will.

We become conscious of all this when we let the following mantric words act in us:

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

This imagination must gradually stand before you, my dear friends, this imagination of dead thinking directed toward the sensory world streaming out from the head. Behind it lurks - at first in darkness - the true thinking which glows through sensory thinking and which builds the brain as man descends from the spiritual to the physical world. It is, however, like will. And one sees then how from out of man the will arises [white lines from below to above], spreading in the head, to become cosmic thinking because what lives in the will as thinking is already cosmic thinking.

We should therefore try to better understand and bring closer the mantric thoughts which we can imbue in the soul in the following way:

[The first verse is written on the blackboard:]

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell

- that is, one must look behind thinking - [“behind” is underlined]

Willing arises from the body's depths;

- one must become strong in the soul to let normal sensory thinking flow away -

Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

These seven lines contain the secret of human thinking's connection to the universe.

We must not pretend to understand these things with the intellect, but must let them live in feeling as meditation. And these words have force. They are constructed harmoniously. “Thinking”, “willing”, “cosmic void”, “will” and “cosmic thought creating” [these words are underlined] are arranged here in inner organization of thoughts so they can work on the imaginative consciousness.

Just as we can look at the human head and it becomes a means for us to look into cosmic-thought-creating, we can also look at the human heart as the physical imaginative representative of the human soul. As thinking is the abstract representative of the human spirit, we can look upon the human heart as the representative of feeling. And we can look into feeling, as it applies to human earthly existence, but now no longer behind, but into it. [In the drawing a yellow oval.] For just as we perceive cosmic-thought-creating in the spiritual cell behind thinking, we can also perceive feeling, whose representative the heart is, streaming through something which from the cosmos goes in and out of man: we perceive cosmic life, cosmic life which becomes human soul-life.

As here [in the first verse] must be: “behind thinking's sensory light”, now it must be: “in feeling's” in the second mantra, which must be harmonically interwoven with the first.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

[This second strophe is written on the blackboard:]

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams

Feeling is only a wakeful dreaming. Feelings are not as conscious as thinking is. They are as conscious as the pictures in dreams. Thus, feeling is a waking dream. Therefore:

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life

Here [in the first verse] “willing” arises from the body's depths; whereas here “Life” streams in from cosmic distance.

streams in from cosmic distance;

[In the drawing 4 horizontal arrows are added.]

As here [in the first verse] thinking is to flow into the cosmic void through strength of soul, now we let the dreams of feeling gust away, but in their place, we perceive in the psychic weaving of feeling what streams in as cosmic life. When feelings' dreams completely dissolve in sleep, when individual human feeling stops, then cosmic life weaves into man.

Life streams in from cosmic distance

[Writing continues:]

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

Here [in the first verse] we need strength of soul; Here [in the second verse] we need complete tranquility, for the dreams of feeling dissolve in sleep, and the divine cosmic life streams into the human soul.

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

[Writing continues, and the words “drift away”, “cosmic spirit life” and “Man's true force of being” are underlined.]

Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

In these seven lines the whole secret of human feeling is contained, if it can become independent when the unity [of thinking, feeling, willing] becomes threefold.

In this way we can also observe the human limbs, in which the will is revealed [Drawing: white arrow pointing downwards]; here we cannot say: “See behind”, “See into”. Here we must say “See above”, for thinking streams down to the will from the head, although man with normal consciousness cannot see it. But the thoughts stream from the head into the limbs in order for the will to be able to act in the limbs.

When we observe the will acting in the limbs, when we see in every arm movement, in every leg movement how the will streams in, then we also realize how in this will there is a secret thinking, a thinking which directly grasps earthly existence. Actually, it is our being in earlier earthly lives, which grasps earthly existence through the limbs in order that in grasping it we can live our present life on earth. Thinking descends into the limbs. When we see how thinking descends, we are seeing thinking in the will [drawing: red descending from the head through the arm].

Then, because we are seeing with the soul, we see how thinking lives in the arms, in the hands, in the legs, in the feet, in the toes, a process otherwise hidden from us, then we must see how this thinking is light. Thinking as light streams through arms and hands, through legs and toes. And the will, which otherwise is sleeping in the limbs, transforms itself and thinking appears as a magical being of will that transplants the human being from earlier lives - after becoming spirit - into the present-earth life:

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

It conjures, that is, it acts magically on the invisible thinking in the will of the limbs. He understands the human being who knows that the thought which is not seen in the will - because we are sleeping in the will - acts magically in the limbs as will. And only by seeing as magical the thoughts which pass through the arms and hands, through legs and toes is true magic understood.

[The third strophe is written on the blackboard with the words “thinking”, “transform” and “magical being of will” underlined.]

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

Therein is contained the secret of human will, which creates magically from out of the universe into man.

Let us then, my dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, consider this a foundation for building later on at a time to be announced, a foundation for again and again in meditation letting the mantric words flow through the soul.

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as magical being of will.

This lecture-cycle deals with a subject which concerns Man very closely, namely, the exact nature and life of Man himself. Although so close to man, because it concerns himself; the subject is a difficult one to approach. For if we turn our attention to the challenge ”Know thyself!”, a challenge that has forced itself upon man through all the ages, as we may say, from mystic, occult heights, we see at once that a real, true self-knowledge is very hard of attainment. This applies not only to individual, personal self-knowledge, but above all to knowledge of the human being as such. Indeed it is precisely because man is so far from knowing his own being and has such a long way to go in order to know himself, that the subject we are about to discuss in the course of these few days will be in a certain respect something alien to us, something for which much preparation is necessary. Moreover it is not without reason that I myself have only reached the point where I can at last speak upon this theme as the result of mature reflection covering a long period of time. For it is a theme which cannot be approached with any prospect of arriving at a true and honest observation unless a certain attitude, often left out of account in ordinary scientific observation, be adopted. This attitude is one of reverence in the presence of the essential nature and Being of Man. It is, then, of vital importance that we maintain this attitude as a fundamental condition underlying the following reflections.

How can one truly maintain this reverence? In no other way, than by first disregarding what he appears to be in everyday life, whether it be oneself or another is of no consequence, and then by uplifting ourselves to the conception: Man, with all that he has evolved into, is not here for his own sake; he is here as revelation of the Divine Spirit, of the whole World. He is a revelation of the Godhead of the World! And, when a man speaks of aspiring after self-knowledge, of aspiring to become ever more and more perfect, in the spiritual-scientific sense which has just been indicated, this should not be due to the fact that he desires merely from curiosity, or from a mere craving or knowledge, to know what man is; but rather that he feels it to be his duty to fashion ever more and more perfectly this representation, this revelation, of the World Spirit through Man, so that he may find some meaning in the words, “to remain unknowing is to sin against Divine destiny!” For the World Spirit has implanted in us the power to have knowledge; and, when we do not will to acquire knowledge, we refuse what we really ought not to refuse, namely, to be a revelation of the World Spirit; and we represent more and more, not a revelation of the World Spirit, but a caricature, a distorted image of it. It is our duty to strive to become ever increasingly an image of the World Spirit. Only when we can give meaning to these words, “to become an image of the World Spirit”; only when it becomes significant for us in this sense to say, “We must learn to know, it is our duty to learn to know,” only then can we sense aright that feeling of reverence we have just demanded, in the presence of the Being of Man. And for one who wishes to reflect, in the occult sense, upon the life of man, upon the essential quality of man's being, this reverence before the nature of man is an absolute necessity, for the simple reason that it is the only thing capable of awakening our spiritual sight, our entire spiritual faculty for seeing and beholding the things of the spirit, of awakening those forces which permit us to penetrate into the spiritual foundation of man's nature. Anyone who, as seer and investigator of the Spirit, is unable to have the very highest degree of reverence in the presence of the nature of man, who cannot permeate himself to the very fibres of his soul with the feeling of reverence before man's nature, must remain with closed eyes (however open they may be for this or that spiritual secret of the world) to all that concerns what is really deepest in the Being of Man. There may be many clairvoyants who can behold this or that in the spiritual environment of our existence; yet, if this reverence is lacking, they lack also the capacity to see into the depths of man's nature, and they will not know how to say anything rightly with regard to what constitutes the Being of Man.

In the external sense the teaching about life is called physiology. This teaching should not here be regarded in the same way as in external science but as it presents itself to the spiritual eye; so that we may look beyond the forms of the outer man, beyond the form and functions of his physical organs into the spiritual, super-sensible foundation of the organs, of the life-forms and life processes. And since it is not our intention here to pursue this “occult physiology,” as it may be called, in any unreal way, it will be necessary in several cases to refer with entire candour to things which from the very beginning will sound rather improbable to anyone who is more or less uninitiated. At the same time, it may be stated that this cycle of lectures, even more than some others I have delivered, forms a whole, and that no single part of any one lecture, especially the earlier ones—for much that is to find expression in the course of this cycle will have to be affirmed without restraint—should be torn from its context and judged separately. On the contrary, only after having heard the concluding lectures will it be possible to form a judgment with regard to what really has been said. For this reason, therefore, it will be necessary to proceed in a somewhat different way, in this occult physiology, from that of external physiology. The foundations for our introductory statements will be confirmed by what meets us at the conclusion. We shall not be called upon to draw a straight line, as it were, from the beginning to the end; but we shall proceed in a circle so that we shall return again, at the end, to the point from which we started.

It is an examination, a study, of Man, that is to be presented here. At first he appears before our external senses in his outer form. We know, of course, that to what in the first place the layman with his purely external observation can know concerning man, there is to-day a very great deal which science has added through research. Therefore, when considering what we are able to know of the human being at the present time through external experience and observation, we must of necessity combine what the layman is in a position to observe in himself and others with what science has to say, including those branches of scientific observation which come to their results through methods and instruments worthy of our admiration.

If we bear in mind first, purely as regards external man, all that a layman may observe in him (or may perhaps have learned from some sort of popular description of the nature of man), then it will perhaps not seem incomprehensible if, from the very beginning, attention is called to the fact that even the outer shape of man, as it meets us in the outside world, really consists of a duality. And for anyone who wishes to penetrate into the depths of human nature, it is absolutely necessary that he becomes conscious of the fact, that even external man, as regards his form and stature, presents fundamentally a duality.

One part of man, which we can clearly distinguish, consists of everything that is to be found enclosed in organs affording the greatest protection against the outside world: that is, all that we may include within the region of the brain and the spinal cord. Everything belonging in this connection to the nature of man, to the brain and spinal cord, is firmly enclosed in a secure protective bony structure. Taking a side view, we observe that what belongs to these two systems may be illustrated in the following way. If a in this diagram represents all the super-imposed vertebrae along the whole length of the spinal cord, and b the cranium and the bones of the skull, then inside the canal which is formed by these super-imposed vertebrae, as well as by the bones of the skull, is enclosed everything belonging to the sphere of the brain and the spinal cord. One cannot observe the human being without becoming conscious of the fact that everything pertaining to this region forms a totality complete within itself; and that the rest of man (which we might group physiologically in the most varied ways, as the neck, the trunk, the limb-structure) keeps its connection with all that we reckon as brain and spinal cord by means of more or less thread-like or ribbon-shaped formations, pictorially speaking, which must first break through this protective sheath, in order that a connection may be brought about between the portion enclosed within this bony structure and the portion attached to it as exterior nature of man. Thus we may say that, even to a superficial observation, everything constituting man proves itself to be a duality, the one portion lying within the bony structure we have described, the firm and secure protective sheath, and the other portion without.

At this point we must cast a purely superficial glance at that which lies within this bony structure. Here again we can quite easily distinguish between the large mass embedded within the skull-bones in the form of a brain, and that other portion which is appended to it like a stalk or cord and which, while organically connected with the brain, extends in this thread-like outgrowth of the brain into the spinal canal. If we differentiate between these two structures we must at once call attention to something which external science does not need to consider, something of which occult science, however, since its task is to penetrate into the depths of the being of things, must indeed take note. We must call attention to the fact that everything which we consider as the basis of a study of man refers, in the first place, only to Man. For the moment we enter into the deeper fundaments of the separate organs, we become aware (and we shall see in the course of these lectures that this is true) that any one of these organs, through its deeper significance in the case of man, may have an entirely different task from that of the corresponding organ in the animal world. Or, to put it more exactly, anyone who looks upon such things with the help of ordinary external science will say: “What you have been telling us here may be just as truly affirmed with reference to the animals.” That which is said here, however, with reference to the essential nature of the organs in the case of the human being, cannot be said in the same way with regard to the animal. On the contrary the occult task is to consider the animal by itself, and to investigate whether that which we are in a position to state regarding man with reference to the spine and the brain, is valid also for animals. For the fact that the animals closely related to man also have a spine and a brain does not prove that these organs, in their deeper significance, have the same task in both man and animal; just as the fact that a man holds a knife in his hand does not indicate whether it is for the purpose of carving a piece of veal or in order to erase something. In both cases we have to do with a knife; and he who considers only the form of the knife, that is, the knife as knife, will believe that in both cases it amounts to the same thing. In both cases, he who stands on the basis of a science that is not occult will say that we have to do with a spinal cord and a brain; and he will believe, since the same organs are to be found in man and animal, that these organs must therefore have the same function. But this is not true. It is something that has become a habit of thought in external science, and has led to certain inaccuracies; and it can be corrected only if external science will accustom itself gradually to enter into what can be stated from out of the depths of super-sensible research regarding the different living beings.

Now, when we consider the spinal cord on the one hand, and the brain on the other, we can easily see that there is a certain element of truth in something already pointed out more than a hundred years ago by thoughtful students of nature. There is a certain rightness in the statement that when one observes the brain carefully it looks, so to speak, like a transformed spinal cord. This becomes all the more intelligible when we remember that Goethe, Oken, and other similarly reflective observers of nature, turned their attention primarily to the fact that the skull-bones bear certain resemblances of form to the vertebrae of the spine. Goethe, for example, was impressed very early in his reflections by the fact that when one imagines a single vertebra of the spinal column transformed, levelled and distended there may appear through such a reshaping of the vertebrae the bones of the head, the skull-bones; thus, if one should take a single vertebra and distend it on all sides so that it has elevations here and there, and at the same time is smooth and uniform in its expansions, the form of the skull might in this way be gradually derived from a single vertebra. Thus we may in a certain respect call the skull-bones reshaped vertebrae.

Now, just as we can look upon the skull-bones which enclose the brain as transformed vertebrae, as the transformation of such bones as enclose the spinal cord, so we may also think of the mass of the spinal cord distended in a different way, differentiated, more complex, till we obtain out of the spinal cord, so to speak, through this alteration, the brain. We might likewise, for instance, think how out of a plant, which at first has only green foliage, there grows forth the blossom. And so we might imagine that through the reshaping of a spinal cord, through its elevation to higher stages, the entire brain could be formed. (Later on, it will become clear how this matter is to be considered scientifically.) We may accordingly imagine our brain as a differentiated spinal cord.

Let us now look at both of these organs from this standpoint. Which of the two must we naturally look upon as the younger? Certainly not that one which shows the derived form, but rather the one which shows the original form. The spinal cord is at the first stage, it is younger; and the brain is at the second stage, it has gone through the stage of a spinal cord, is a transformed spinal cord, and is therefore to be considered as the older organ. In other words, if we fix our attention upon this new duality which meets us in man as brain and spinal cord, we may say that all the latent tendencies, all the forces, which lead to the building of a brain must be older forces in man; for they must first, at an earlier stage, have formed the tendency to a spinal cord, and must then have worked further toward the re-forming of this beginning of a spinal cord into a brain. A second start, as it were, must therefore have been made, in which our spinal cord did not progress far enough to reach the second stage but remained at the stage of the spinal cord. We have, accordingly, in this spine and nerve system (if we wish to express ourselves with pedantic exactness) a spine of the first order; and in our brain a spinal cord of the second order, a re-formed spinal cord which has become older—a spinal cord which once was there as such, but which has been transformed into a brain.

Thus we have, in the first place, shown with absolute accuracy just what we need to consider when we fix our attention objectively upon the organic mass enclosed; within this protective bony sheath. Here, however, something else must be taken into account, namely, something which really can confront us only in the field of occultism. A question may suggest itself, when for instance we speak as we have just been doing about the brain and the spinal cord, taking perhaps the following form: when such a re-formation as this takes place, from the plan of an organ at a first stage to the plan of an organ at a second stage, the evolutionary process may be progressive, or it may be retrogressive. That is, the process before us may either be one which leads to higher stages of perfection of the organ, or one which causes the organ to degenerate and gradually to die. We might say therefore, when we consider an organ like our spinal cord as it is to-day, that it seems to us to be at the present time a relatively young organ since it has not yet succeeded in becoming a brain. We may think about this spinal cord in two different ways. First, we may consider that it has in itself the forces through which it may also one day become a brain. In that case, it would be in a position to pass through a progressive evolution, and to become what our brain is to-day; or secondly, we may consider that it has not at all the latent tendency to attain to this second stage. In that case its evolution would be leading toward extinction; it would pass into decadence and be destined to suggest the first stage and not to arrive at the second. Now, if we reflect that the groundwork of our present brain is what was once the plan or beginning of a spinal cord, we see that that former spinal cord undoubtedly had in it the forces of a progressive evolution, since it actually did become a brain. If, on the other hand, we consider at this point our present spinal cord, the occult method of observation reveals that what to-day is our spinal cord has not within itself, as a matter of fact, the latent tendency to a forward-directed evolution, but is rather preparing to conclude its evolution at this present stage.

If I may express myself grotesquely, the human being is not called upon to believe that one day his spinal cord, which now has the form of a slender string, will be puffed out as the brain is puffed out. We shall see later what underlies the occult view, so as to enable us to say this. Yet, through this simple comparison of the form of this organ in man and in the lower animals, where it first appears, you will find an external intimation of what has just been stated. In the snake, for example, the spine adds on to itself a series of innumerable rings behind the head and is filled out with the spinal cord, and this spinal column extends both forward and backward indefinitely. In the case of man the spinal cord, as it extends downward from the point where it is joined to the brain, actually tends more and more to a conclusion, showing less and less clearly that formation which it exhibits in its upper portions. Thus, even through external observation, one may notice that what in the case of the snake continues its natural evolution rearward, is here hastening toward a conclusion, toward a sort of degeneration. This is a method of observation through external comparison, and we shall see how the occult view affects it.

To summarise, then, we may say that within the bony structure of the skull we have a spinal cord which through a progressive development has become a brain, and is now at a second stage of its evolution; and in our spinal cord we have, as it were, the attempt once again to form such a brain, an attempt, however, which is destined to fail and cannot reach its full growth into a real brain.

Let us now proceed from this reflection to that which can be known even from an external, layman's observation, to the functions of the brain and the spinal cord. It is more or less known to everyone that the instrument of the so-called higher soul-activities, is in a certain respect, in the brain, that these higher soul-activities are directed by the organs of the brain. Furthermore, it is recognised that the more unconscious soul-activities are directed from the spinal cord. I mean those soul-activities in which very little deliberation interposes itself between the reception of the external impression and the action which follows it. Consider for a moment how you jerk back your hand when it is stung. Not very much deliberation intervenes between the sting and the drawing back. Such soul-activities as these are in fact, and with a certain justification, even regarded by natural science in such a way as to attribute to them the spinal cord as their instrument.

We have other soul-activities in which a more mature reflection interposes itself between the external impression and that which finally leads to action. Take, for example, an artist who observes external nature, straining every sense and gathering countless impressions. A long time passes, during which he works over these impressions in an inner activity of soul. He then proceeds to establish after a long interval through outward action what has grown, in long-continued soul-activity, out of the external impressions. Here there intervenes, between the outer impression and that which the man produces as a result of the outer impression, a richer activity of soul. This is also true of the scientific investigator; and, indeed, of anyone who reflects about the things that he wishes to do, and does not rush wildly at every external impression, who does not as it were, in reflex action fly into a passion like a bull when he sees the colour red, but thinks about what he wishes to do. In every instance where reflection intervenes, we encounter the brain as an instrument of soul-activity.

If we go still deeper into this matter we may say to ourselves: True, but how then does this soul-activity of ours, in which we use the brain, manifest itself? We perceive, to begin with, that it is of two different kinds, one of which takes place in our ordinary waking day-consciousness. In this consciousness we accumulate, through the senses, external impressions; and these we work over by means of the brain in rational reflection. To express it in popular language—we shall have to go into this still more accurately—we must picture to ourselves that these outer impressions find their way inside us through the doors of the senses, and stimulate certain processes in the brain. If we should wish, purely in connection with the external organisation, to follow what there takes place, we should see that the brain is set into activity through the stream of external impressions flowing into it; and that what this stream becomes, as a result of reflection, that is the deeds, the actions, which we ascribe to the instrumentality of the spinal cord.

Then, there also mingles in human life as it is to-day, between the wide-awake life of day and the unconscious life of sleep, the picture-life of dreams. This dream-life is a remarkable intermingling of the wide-awake life of day, which lays full claim to the instrument of our brain, and the unconscious life of sleep. Merely in outline, in a way that the lay thinker may observe for himself, we will now say something about this life of dreams.

We see that the whole of the dream-life has a strange similarity, from one aspect, to that subordinate soul-activity which we associate with the spinal cord. For, when dream-pictures emerge in our soul they do not appear as representations resulting from reflection, but rather by reason of a certain necessity, as, for instance, a movement of the hand results when a fly settles on the eye. In this latter case an action takes place as an immediate, necessary movement of defense. In dream-life something different appears, yet likewise because of an immediate necessity. It is not an action which here appears but rather a picture upon the horizon of the soul. Yet, just as we have no deliberate influence upon the movement of the hand in the wide-awake life of day, but make this movement of necessity, even so do we have no influence over the way that dream-pictures shape themselves, as they come and go in the chaotic world of dreams. We might say, therefore, that if we look at a man during his wide-awake life of day, and see something of what goes on within him in the form of reflex movements of all sorts, when he does things without reflecting, in response to external impressions; if we observe the sum-total of gestures and physiognomic expressions which he accomplishes without reflection, we then have a sum of actions which through necessity become a part of this man as soul-actions. If we now consider a dreaming man we have a sum of pictures, in this case something possessing the character not of action but of pictures, which work into and act upon his being. We may say, therefore, that just as in the wakeful life of day those human actions are carried out which arise and take shape without reflection, so do the dream-conceptions, chaotically flowing together, come about within a world of pictures.

Now, if we look back again at our brain, and wished to consider it as being in a certain way the instrument also of the dream-consciousness, what should we have to do? We should have to suppose that there is in some way or other something inside the brain which behaves in a way similar to the spinal cord that guides the unconscious actions. Thus, we have, as it were, to look upon the brain as primarily the instrument of the wide-awake soul-life, during which we create our concepts through deliberation, and underlying it a mysterious spinal cord which does not express itself; however, as a complete spinal cord but remains compressed inside the brain, and does not attain to actions. Whereas our spinal cord does attain to actions, even though these are not brought about through deliberation; the brain in this case induces merely pictures. It stops midway, this mysterious thing which lies there like the groundwork of a brain. Might we not say, therefore, that the dream-world enables us in a most remarkable way to point, as in a mystery, to that spinal cord lying there at the basis of the brain?

If we consider the brain, in its present fully-developed state, as the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, its appearance for us is that which it has when removed from the cavity of the skull. Yet there must be something there, within, when the wakeful life of day is blotted out. And here occult observation shows us that there actually is, inside the brain, a mysterious spinal cord which calls forth dreams. If we should wish to make a drawing of it, we could represent it in such a way that, within the brain which is connected with the world of ideas of the life of day, we should have an ancient mysterious spinal cord, invisible to external perception, in some way or other secreted inside it. I shall first state quite hypothetically that this spinal cord becomes active when man sleeps and dreams, and is active at that time in a manner characteristic of a spinal cord, namely, that it calls forth its effects through necessity. But, because it is compressed within the brain, it does not lead to actions, but only to pictures and picture-actions; for in dreams we act, as we know, only in pictures. So that because of this peculiar, strange, chaotic life that we carry on in dreams, we should have to point to the fact that underlying the brain, which we quite properly consider to be the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, is a mysterious organ which perhaps represents an earlier form of the brain—which has evolved itself to its present state out of this earlier form—and that this mysterious organ is active to-day only when the new form is inactive. It then reveals what the brain once was. This ancient spinal cord conjures up what is possible, considering the way it is enclosed, and induces, not completed actions, but only pictures.

Thus the observation of life leads us, of itself, to separate the brain into two stages. The very fact that we dream indicates that the brain has passed through two stages and has evolved to the wide-awake life of day. When, however, this wakeful day-time life is stilled, the ancient organ again exerts itself in the life of dreams. Thus we have first made types out of what external observation of the world furnishes us, which shows us that even observation of the soul-life adds meaning to what a consideration of the outer form can give us, namely, that the wide-awake life of day is related to dream-life in the same way as the perfected brain at the second stage of its evolution is related to its groundwork, to the ancient spinal cord which is at the first stage of its evolution. In a remarkable way, which we shall justify in the following lectures, occult, clairvoyant vision can serve us as a basis for a comprehensive observation of human nature, as it expresses itself in those organs enclosed within the bony mass of the skull and vertebrae.

In this connection you already know, from spiritual-scientific observations, that man's visible body is only one part of the whole human being, and that in the moment the seer's eye is opened the physical body reveals itself as enclosed, embedded, in a super-sensible organism, in what, roughly speaking, is called the “human aura.” For the present this may be here affirmed as a fact, and later we shall return to it to see how far the statement is justified. This human aura, within which physical man is simply enclosed like a kernel, shows itself to the seer's eye as having different colours. At the same time, we must not imagine that we could ever make a picture of this aura, for the colours are in continual movement; and every picture of it, therefore, that we sketch with pigment can be only an approximate likeness, somewhat in the same way that it is impossible to portray lightning, since one would always end by painting it only as a stiff rod, a rigid image. Just as it is never possible to paint lightning, so is it even less possible to do this in the case of the aura, because of the added fact that the auric colours are in themselves extraordinary unstable and mobile. We cannot, therefore, express it otherwise than to say that at best we are representing it symbolically.

Now, these auric colours show themselves as differing very remarkably, depending upon the fundamental character of the whole human organism. And it is interesting to call attention to the auric picture which presents itself to the clairvoyant eye, if we imagine the cranium and the spine observed from the rear. There we find that the appearance of that portion of the aura belonging to this region is such that we can only describe the whole man as embedded in the aura. Although we must remember that the auric colours are in a state of movement within the aura, yet it is evident that one of the colours is especially distinct, namely around the lower parts of the spine. We may call this greenish. And again we may mention another distinct colour, which does not in any other part of the body appear so beautiful as here, around the region of the brain; and this in its ground-tone is a sort of lilac-blue. You can get the best conception of this lilac-blue if you imagine the colour of the peach-blossom; yet even this is only approximate. Between this lilac-blue of the upper portion of the brain, and the green of the lower parts of the spine, we have other colour nuances surrounding the human being which are hard to describe, since they do not often appear among the ordinary colours present in the surrounding world of the senses. Thus, for instance, adjoining the green is a colour which is neither green, blue, nor yellow, but a mixture of all three. In short, there appear to us, in this intermediate space, colours which actually do not exist in the physical world of sense. Even though it is difficult to describe what is here within the aura, one thing may nevertheless be stated positively: beginning above with the puffed-out spinal cord, we have lilac-blue colour and then, coming down to the end of the spine, we have a more distinctly greenish shade.

This I wish to state as a fact, along with what has been said to-day in connection with a purely external observation of the human form and of human conduct. Following this, we shall endeavour to observe also that other part of the human being which is attached to the portion we have discussed to-day, in the form of neck, trunk, limbs, etc., as constituting the second part of the human duality, to the end that we may then be able to proceed to a consideration of what is presented to us in the complete interaction of this human duality.

Anthroposophy, when properly understood, will guide us back more and more into that immediate life from which a materialistic way of thinking, quite paradoxically, estranges us.

We have said this frequently, here and at other places, at many different occasions, and always in order to characterize the mission of our anthroposophical movement. The above statement will make a strange impression on many of our contemporaries, for they are of the opinion that true life, or what they call life, is to be sought elsewhere than in what anthroposophy has to give; and they are also of the opinion that anthroposophy is least qualified to show them how to lead a practical everyday existence. Such is not the case. Anthroposophy will help us in all ways, great and small! Its teaching, when thoroughly assimilated, will enable those who are engaged in public or other matters to solve the problems of the day in the way in which they should be solved if mankind is to lead a complete life. The many disorders and unhealthy conditions of our age which are now being approached, from one standpoint or another, in a more or less amateurish manner, could, if our contemporaries were to permeate themselves with anthroposophical truths, be successfully handled. I just wanted to touch on this issue, it will not be the focus of our contemplation today.

Today it will be more the emotional aspect of anthroposophy with which I ask you to occupy your thoughts. It will be noticed how to a deeper, feeling permeated comprehension of life, a time like the present must seem to be abstruse, uninteresting, matter-of-fact and theoretical. When Christmas, Easter or Whitsuntide approaches, we can see how certain outward forms and external ceremonies are adhered to But there is very little left of what our forefathers felt to be alive in their very souls—that deep current of feeling penetrating into the soul which was peculiar to our forefathers with regard to the relationship of mankind to the whole cosmos and its divine foundations. This feeling was particularly alive at the time of such festivals. Then it was something tangible for the soul, for then it received impressions different from those gained during the rest of the year.

No true conception is formed today of that which filled the souls of our ancestors when the days grew shorter, the end of the year approached and the birthday of Christ Jesus was about to be celebrated; or when, at the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, the snow was slowly melting, and what the earth had hidden appeared once more on the surface. It would seem indeed that our life were concrete. In reality the feelings of our contemporaries have become abstract, matter-of-fact and empty. People pass through the streets, and hardly feel more about Christmas than that it is a time for giving and receiving presents. Should they have any other feeling, there is little connection between it and that deep feeling which absorbed our forefathers at that time of the year. Mankind has lost its true relationship with life. To show how to regain this relationship is one aspect of the mission of anthroposophical spiritual science.

One who only grasps with his mind and understanding what is usually called the anthroposophical conception of the world has understood only the very least part of anthroposophy. It is only understood by him who realizes that the whole of man’s feelings and emotions must be altered when anthroposophy lives itself into the heart and soul. What was abstract for a certain time, and even forgotten in its significance—the true meaning of our festivals—will again penetrate into our souls when the intimate connection of the whole surrounding world with man is realized again, as it may be through a spiritual perception.

The deeper meaning of the Christmas festival has often engaged our attention at this time. Today, we shall look at it from another aspect. This can only be done if at first we make quite clear to ourselves what impression anthroposophical thoughts and ideas produce on our feelings, how they really have the power of making out of a human being something quite different from what he is at present, something through which he will again know what it is to have an immediate experience of the pulsation of the spiritual life of nature—actually to feel the warmth which passed through creation, animating every being. When a man looks today at the starry sky with the help of the abstruse science of astronomy, he sees it inhabited by abstruse material worlds. But these celestial bodies will again appear to him as the bodies of souls and spirits; space will once more appear to him permeated by spirit and soul. He will experience the whole cosmos as filled with warmth, and have the feeling that he has when reclining on the bosom of a friend; though of course experiencing the spirit of the cosmos is much more majestic and sublime.

We know that we have to seek in man alone such a soul as we are cognizant of in man—an individual soul, which, so to say, lives in a single body. The soul of the other creatures which surround us, we must seek in another way and in a different form. The animals which live in our midst also have souls, but we shall look in vain for them here on the physical plane. The animal-ego, which we name a “group ego”, is to be found on the astral plane; and a whole group of related animals, for example the lion-group, the tiger-group, the cat-group, all separate groups of related forms, have each of them a common soul, a common ego. The separation by space here on earth makes no difference; every lion belongs to the same lion-ego, whether one lion is here in a zoo, and another in Africa. The spiritual scientist can find the animal ego on the astral plane; and there these group-egos are individual personalities, just as your personality here on the physical plane is individual. As your ten fingers belong to your individual personality, so does every lion belong to the group-ego of the lions. If we could become acquainted with the individual group-egos on the astral plane, we would find that wisdom is their most conspicuous characteristic, although to us here on earth separate animals may not appear very wise. Nobody ought to judge the characteristics of the group-ego, of animal individuality on the astral plane, on the basis of the characteristics of the separate animals here on earth. Just as little as your ten fingers show the characteristics of an individual ego, just so little does the single animal show the characteristics of the group-ego.

These group-egos act very sagaciously, and are wiser than you imagine; for what you know here as the achievements of animals are brought about by these group-egos. They live in the atmosphere surrounding our earth, they are to be found round about us. If you follow the flight of birds as they migrate at the approach of autumn from the north-east to the south-west, and at the approach of spring return once more from the south-west to the north-east, you might ask yourself: who guides their flight so wisely? In your search for the individual directors and rulers you will come, as a student of spiritual science, to the group-egos of the different genera or species. The astral ego, which is just as much an ego on the astral plane as the human ego is here, lives in every animal community. The group souls or personalities or astral egos, who have their individual members here on the physical plane, are much wiser than the egos of mankind on the physical plane; everything which is so wisely organized in the animal-world is the manifested wisdom of the group-egos of animals. We walk differently through the world if we know that at every pace forward, we step through beings whose deeds we are able to see.

Now let us look at the plant kingdom: the egos of this plant world are to be found in a still higher world than the one in which the group-egos of the animals live. The egos of plants (there are actually very few of them) are to be found in the spirit-world or Devachan; each one of the plant-egos embraces many, very many, of the individual plants which are found here on earth in such great variety. If we should seek the place where these plant-egos are to be found in space, we would come to the center of the earth. All plant-egos are united at the center of the earth.

It would reflect a rather primitive mental life if, when considering the spirit of the egos, you were to ask: Is there room enough for all these different egos? In the spirit everything in-terpenetrates. He who does not understand this comes to the point of view expressed just now in a book which is particularly recommended to theosophists. This book certainly speaks of spiritual worlds, but speaks about them by using arguments such as: If in the course of a thousand years thirty billion people had lived whose souls are now in the atmospheric surroundings of the earth, then there would be such a great number of souls, that there would scarcely be room for them all in the earth’s periphery.—This book is well intentioned, but it is extremely trivial. (“Unknown Powers,” by C. Flammarion.)

We have to seek the plant-egos in the center of the earth, because the earth itself as a planet is a complete organism. In the same relation in which the hairs of your head art to your organism, so are the plants to the organism of our earth. These plants are not independent beings but are members of the earth organism.

Feelings of pleasure and pain in plants are the pleasure and pain of the earth’s organism; we need only recall what you were told a few weeks ago about pleasure and pain in the plant-kingdom. He who is able to observe these things knows that if you injure a plant in the part above the earth, the injury is not connected with a feeling of pain in our earth organism. On the contrary, it gives a pleasant feeling to the earth, in the same way in which the cow suckling her calf gets and bestows a pleasurable sensation. Thus the green of the plant which springs out of the earth, even though fixed, may be compared with the milk of the animal organism. And when in autumn the reaper cuts the grain with his scythe, it is more than an abstract occurrence to one who understands how to transform anthroposophical ideas into feelings of the soul. The reaping calls forth a breath of joy which goes over the whole field, and the mowing of the grass fills the field with pleasurable sensations.

Thus we learn to feel with the earth organism as we feel on the bosom of a friend. We feel pain with the earth when we understand that as soon as we tear out the plants by their roots, the earth feels pain. It ought not to be objected here that under certain conditions it might be better to transplant a whole plant with roots rather than to pick its blossoms. Such an objection is not relevant here. If a person begins to get grey hair, and in order to remain younger looking pulls out the first grey hairs, does the action hurt the less?

Thus we learn to feel with nature around us; more and more we learn to experience nature as permeated by soul and spirit. When we enter a quarry and watch the men breaking stones, this act remains with us as something concrete, not abstract, if we deepen our anthroposophical ideas on the subject into feelings of the soul. Then we do not only see the stones flying out of the rocks—not even if a rock were blasted would it seem abstract to us. On the contrary, we learn to feel what nature, permeated by soul and spirit, is feeling outside us. If we have a glass of water before us and throw into it some salt or a lump of sugar, and watch how the salt or sugar dissolves, this arouses the feeling that there is soul in it. If we would know what kind of a soul is contained therein we must not bring forward ordinary analogies. It would be very easy to believe that when the quarry-man breaks off the stone, his action causes nature to feel pain, but in reality the exact opposite is the case. What is called division into fragments in the mineral kingdom gives nature the greatest joy, an internal sensation of well-being. There is also an internal sensation of well-being when we dissolve a piece of sugar or salt in water. Feelings of pleasure flow through the water during the dissolving of the mineral bodies. It is different under different circumstances.

We can call to mind the primeval age on earth—that time when our earth was a fiery-fluid body with every mineral and metal dissolved in it. It was not possible for our earth to remain in such a state, it had to become the place on which we live, the solid body on which we can walk about. The metals and minerals had to solidify out of the liquid element; it was necessary for them to harden, to pull themselves together. Everything that was dissolved in the liquid element had to congeal and become crystallized. A similar process to what can be observed with salt dissolved in a glass of water: let the water evaporate and you will be able to see the salt crystals as firm particles. If you follow the feelings which are brought into action by such happenings you will see that pain can be felt even in the apparently dense mineral kingdom. Everything which appears to us as demolition and breaking into fragments gives a feeling of pleasure to the earth; whereas consolidation, compression, crystallization give a feeling of pain. The minerals and rocks of the planet on which we live have been formed under conditions of pain. And this has, more or less, been the case during the hardening of the earth’s crust.

If we look into the future development of our earth, we must imagine that what is firm and solid will become more and more flexible and liquid, until at last the earth changes into that which is called the “astral earth.” Thus the earth matter will have become rarer and rarer; so that we, in the first half of our earth’s evolution, must regard the elements of the mineral kingdom as that which, under the influence of pain and suffering, has formed the solid stage for our existence. Towards the end of the earth’s evolution there will be more peaceful feelings, the whole earth will be full of feelings of joy; it will change into a heavenly planet, which, in the cosmos, will be astral.

When the initiated talk about these things, deep mysteries lie hidden in their words. They express themselves in such a way that their words have several levels of meaning, because they contain so much. St. Paul, who was an initiate, spoke with words which always had several hidden meanings. The further we advance in the comprehension of the cosmos, of the spirit worlds, the better we shall understand these expressions of St. Paul and their hidden meaning. St. Paul knew that the earth suffered during the time it was becoming firm, and that it is longing for its release into a spiritual, heavenly state: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the adoption.” (Romans viii, 22) By these words the initiate Paul referred to the pain accompanying the formation of the hard minerals whereon we stand and move.

So long as we only consider Anthroposophy as a system of thought we do not understand it rightly. It is the characteristic mark of Anthroposophy, that ideas must change into feelings, and we become different beings when, at every step, we feel and are conscious of all that we see about us. Those who really understood the esoteric teaching of Christianity were also of this opinion. You can follow the Christian writers as far as the eighteenth century and discover many who had sympathy with all the pleasure and all the pain of living nature. In their writings they use words which are for mankind today but empty sounds, or at the most allegories or pictures, whereas to those who understand them they are truths: “You shall not alone think upon nature, but you shall perceive it and taste it and feel it!”

They meant that when the reaper cuts the grain, we should taste the feeling that passes over the field during this action.

When we see the man in the quarry breaking off the stone, we should enjoy with nature her sensation of well-being. When we notice a deposit of earth where a river flows into the sea, we should at the same time learn to feel the pain which accompanies the deposition of earth.

Thus we can begin to experience nature completely permeated by soul. Our souls will then gain the power of growing out of their confinement. Feeling streams into the world in which we live, and we become one with the whole of nature. When we become one with it, piece by piece, we will also feel the spirituality and soul-nature of the great yearly occurrences. In the spring, when the days gradually become longer and longer, and more light falls on the earth; when out of her womb the plants, whose seeds were in the earth, spring up, and when everything is once more clothed in green, then we feel that not only what we see—as the shimmering green- is coming forth, but we feel as well that something akin to soul activity is taking place.

When winter draws near, the days grow shorter, less light falls on our earth, the plants retire to their winter sleep, and the green changes, we too experience a similar feeling to that which we have at night when we fall asleep. On the other hand, the awakening of external nature in the spring draws from us its corresponding feeling, for these events are no allegory, but realities. We feel the changes in nature, and also the changes in the soul and spirit of nature. In the latter half of the summer we feel how everything seems to decline, how the soul of our earth approaches sleep.—Then in the evening, when we ourselves fee1 sleepy, we have a real example before us of the living process which we have often described. Gradually, the astral body with the ego withdraws from the physical and etheric body, frees itself, and floats as it were into its own, its very own original world. If a man could do today, in the present condition of the evolution of humanity, what he will be able to do in the future, a spiritual consciousness would light up when the astral body lifts itself out of the etheric and physical bodies; spiritual forces and a spirit world would surround the body; man would simply leave his physical body in order that he might enter into another form of existence. This, in fact, he does today too, but he knows nothing about it in his present stage of development.

The same thing also occurs to our earth. The astral body of our earth changes during the year. (The changes are not the same in the two opposite hemispheres, but this does not concern us today). The astral body of our earth is occupied with the external natural existence of our earth during the time in which plants and life generally spring up out of the earth. When plants grow, it is the astral body that looks after everything that grows and flourishes on the earth. In the autumn, when a kind of sleepiness comes over the earth, this astral body returns to its spiritual activity.

Those who are able to really feel this earth-process know that during the height of the sun—from spring right into autumn -in everything which grows and increases out of doors, they must see the outer revelation of the spirit of the earth. But when autumn approaches they are directly in contact with the liberated astral body of the earth; when the days are shortest, that is, when the outer physical life approaches nearest to sleep, then the spiritual life awakens. What is this “spiritual life” of the earth? Who is the “spirit of the earth?”

This “spirit of the earth” described Himself as such when He spoke these words: “He that eateth My bread, treadeth Me with feet”; and when He made reference to that which the earth brings forth as true nourishment for man and said, “This is My body!” and again when He was referring to that which flows as the sap of life and said, “This is My blood!” In these sayings He described the earth itself as His organism.

This was quite different in pre-Christian times—different from what it is in the Christian era at a definite moment of the earth’s evolution. During the short days when the sacred mysteries of the ancients were being observed, those who were initiated turned with their whole soul towards the sun; at midnight on the day which we know as Christmas Day, those about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries were advanced so far that they were able to see the sun at the midnight hour. They were then promoted to being clairvoyant. We today cannot see the sun at the midnight hour because it is then at the other side of the earth; but the physical earth presents no obstacle to the seer, he can see the sun. He sees it in its spiritual essence. When the seers saw the sun at the midnight hour in the holy mysteries they saw the sun’s sovereign ruler—the Christ. Those saw Him who were able to come into contact with Him, but at that time still in the sun.

The flowing of blood from His wounds on Golgotha was an event fraught with meaning for the whole of the earth’s evolution. Nobody understands that event who has not the power of understanding that Christianity is built upon a mystical fact. If someone with clairvoyant sight could have watched the development of the earth from a distant planet for some thousands of years, he would not only have seen the physical body, but the astral body of our earth as well. This astral body of the earth would have emanated definite lights, definite colors and definite forms during those thousands of years. In one moment this was changed.

Other forms appeared, other lights and colours shone forth -and this moment was when the blood flowed out of the wounds of our Saviour at Golgotha. This was not only a human, but a cosmic event. Through it the Christ-Ego, which up to this time could only be discovered in the sun, passed to the earth. It linked itself with the earth, and in the spirit of the earth we find the Christ-Ego, the sun ego. The initiate is henceforth able to see in Christ himself the sun-spirit which formerly, at the time of Christmas, was only to be seen at the midnight hour on the sun in the holy places of the ancients.

Christian consciousness, not only the consciousness of the ordinary Christian, but the consciousness of the Christian initiate, lies in the living feeling of union with the spirit of Christ. This takes place every year when the days are becoming shorter and the physical earth is beginning to fall asleep. It is then possible for us to come into direct connection with the spirit of the earth. Therefore, to place the birth of our Savior in the time of the shortest days and the longest nights was not the outcome of an arbitrary decision, but the result of initiation. Bound up with the shortening of the days and the lengthening of the nights, we see something infinitely spiritual, and we feel at the same time that in this event there is a living soul—the highest soul which we are able to feel in the earth’s evolution.

When the first Christians uttered the name of Christ, they did not express any doctrine or any particular mode of thought. It would have seemed quite impossible for them to call anyone a Christian who believed only the words which Christ Jesus spoke as a Christian teacher. It cannot be denied that these doctrines are also to be found in other religious beliefs, and no one wishes to regard them as something singular. Today, however, for the first time in history, par-ticularly in the educated classes, special stress is laid on the fact that the teaching of Christ Jesus is in harmony with other religious beliefs. It is quite true that it is difficult to find a single precept which had not already been taught before; but this has nothing to do with the matter. Not by doctrine alone is the Christian made one with Christ. He is not a Christian who believes in the doctrine, but he is a Christian who believes in the Christ-Spirit. In order to be a Christian we must have the feeling of union with Him, the feeling of union with the Christ who actually dwells on earth. Simply to avow the teaching of Christ is not preaching Christianity. To preach Christianity means to be able to see in Christ the Spirit Whom we have just characterized as the regent of the sun; Who in the moment when the blood flowed out of His wounds on Golgotha, transferred His work to the earth and through this act drew the earth into the work of the sun.

On this account those who were the first to preach Christianity laid very great stress on proclaiming the person of Christ Jesus, and very little stress on His words: “We have seen Him when He was with us on the holy mount.” They attached great value to the fact that He was there—that they saw Him. “We have placed our hands in His wounds.” They valued the fact that they had touched Him. What was felt at the time was that the whole of the future evolution of mankind on earth proceeds from this historical event. On this account the disciples said: “We value the fact that we were with Him on the holy mount; but we also think it a great thing that the words of the prophets have been fulfilled in Him—those words inspired by very truth and wisdom.” What the prophets foretold has been fulfilled. By “prophets” was then meant initiates, men who could predict the Christ, because they had seen Him at the midnight hour at Christmas time in the Holy Mysteries. The first disciples considered the event on Golgotha as a fulfillment of that which has always been known; and a rapid and total change took place in the feelings and thoughts of the initiated.

If we look into the time before the Christian era, and even let our thoughts wander further to a more remote time, we find that all love and affection is bound up with the tic of blood relationships. In the Jewish race, out of which Christ Himself issued, we see love only between those who are kinsfolk—we see that those love one another in whom the same blood flows; even earlier than this, love always rested on the natural foundation of a common blood-relationship. Spiritual love, which is independent of flesh and blood, was first introduced on earth by Christ. On this depends the fulfillment of the saying: “Who forsaketh not father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, cannot be My disciple.” He who makes love conditional upon the natural foundation of blood-relationship, is not according to this sense a Christian. Spiritual love, which as a great fraternal bond will permeate all mankind, is the result of Christianity.

Christianity teaches mankind how to acquire the most perfect freedom and inner cohesiveness. The ‘Psalmist said, “I remember the days of old and ponder times long past”. To look back upon one’s first ancestors was a persistent experience of the olden times. The men of old could feel the blood of their ancestors flowing through their veins, and felt that their ego was connected with the ego of their ancestors. If it were desired to really feel this connection, even amongst the old Jewish people, it was customary to utter the name of Abraham; he who uttered this name felt that some of the blood which descended from Abraham flowed through his veins. When he wished to express his highest nature the Jew said: “I am one with Abraham!” After the death of his body, his soul returned into Abraham’s bosom—this has a deep, a very deep meaning. At that time man was not in possession of the self-dependence which first entered his consciousness through Christ Jesus. The conscious understanding of the “I am” was awakened by Christ Jesus. At that time they could not have felt the whole divinity of the inner divine being of man. They felt “I am,” but they connected it with their ancestors; they felt it in the common blood which flowed through their veins since the time of Abraham. Then Christ Jesus came and with Him the consciousness that there is something older and more independent in mankind. The “I am” is not only to be sought in what is common to a nation, but is something in the individual personality, which therefore must again seek love with its own personality, beyond itself. The ego which is today confined in you, cut off from everything outside itself, seeks spiritual love beyond itself.

This ego does not feel itself one with the father who was in Abraham, but with the spiritual Father of the world: “I and My Father are one!” A more profound saying than this—although this is the most impressive—because it appeals more to the understanding, is the one in which Christ made it clear to mankind that they are not expressing the utmost when they say, “I existed before in Abraham.” He points out that the “I am” is of older date, emanating from God Himself:

“Before Abraham was, I Am.” In this way does the saying appear in the original—which usually is so expressed that nobody quite understands what it means—“before Abraham was born, I am.” The “I am,” the innermost spiritual being, which everyone has within him, existed before Abraham.

One who understands this saying penetrates deeply into the essence of Christian intuition and life, and understands why Christ also refers to it in the words: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” Therefore we also ought to feel the true hidden meaning of the expression in the Christmas hymn, which tells us every year anew at Christmas the original secret of the existence beyond time of the “I am.” The hymn is not sung as a reminder, “Today we remember that Christ was born”, rather we sing every time: “Christ is born in us today!” For this event is eternal, and that which once took place in Palestine can happen anew every Christmas night for those who have the power of transforming the teaching into feelings and experiences.

Anthroposophy will help mankind really to feel and understand again what is meant when we celebrate such a festival. Its mission is not to teach an abstract doctrine, an abstract theory, but to lead man back into fuller life—to make this life appear not as something abstract but as something which is filled with soul. We feel this soul when we go into the quarry and watch the stones being split off; when we see the migration of birds; when we see the scythe going through the grain; when the sun rises and sets. And the more profound the events we contemplate, the deeper do we feel their soul nature. At the great turning-points of the year we feel the most important soul events. What is most important for us is that we shall again learn to feel at those great turning-points of the year which are marked out in our festivals.

Thus our festivals will again become like a living breath permeating the soul of man; at the time of such festivals man will again become familiar with the whole weaving and working of the full soul and spirit nature. The anthroposophist must for the present act as a pioneer with regard to what these festivals may once more become when mankind understands their spirit anew—understands anew what is called “the festival spirit.” It will belong to those forces which will once more lead man out into the cosmos, when anthroposophists at such festivals feel and realize something of the feelings and sensations of nature, and remember at these important moments what Anthroposophy is able to restore to mankind through its teachings. Anthroposophy will then become a living factor in the soul, and will be genuine “life-wisdom”, vitaesophia. Anthroposophy can accomplish this best when the world-soul comes down amongst us, and is united with us in an especially intimate manner at the festival of the birth of Christ.

In 1921 the sculptress Edith Maryon endeavoured to make models of the eurythmy gestures. However, it was found that eurythmy could not be suitably represented in this medium, and Steiner then designed the wooden eurythmy figures that have since become well known. He gave indications regarding the production and colouring of these figures, some of which remain extant in the original and some in copies by Edith Maryon. The complete set was published as Skizzen zu den Eurythmiefiguren [Dornach 1957] (‘Sketches for the eurythmy figures’). The two following examples (the only ones for music) for the major and minor chords are reduced in size by about one third. The figures have been redrawn and newly coloured by Annemarie Bäschlin, and are published as Die Eurythmie-Figuren von Rudolf Steiner [Dornach 1989] (Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy figures’).

The words written in the two sketches are : orange—orange, violett—violet, rot-Karmin—carmine red, blaurot—bluish red, grün—green, Melos—Melos, Rhythmus—rhythm, Takt—beat. (See also Endnote 47 in Vol. 2.)

My dear friends,

Before we continue the observations of yesterday which we have nearly brought to a conclusion, let us carry out a few experiments to give support to what we are going to say. First we will make a cylinder of light by allowing a beam to pass through this opening, and into this cylinder we will bring a sphere which is so prepared that the light passes into it, but cannot pass through. What happens we will indicate by this thermometer (see drawing Fig. 1). You will note that this cylinder of energy, let us say, passing into the sphere reveals its effect by causing the mercury column to sink. Thus we are dealing with what we have formerly brought about by expansion. And indeed, in this case we have to assume also that heat passes into the sphere, causes an expansion and this expansion makes itself evident by a depression of the column of mercury. If we placed a prism in the path of the light we would get a spectrum. We do not form a spectrum in this experiment, but we catch the light—gather it up and obtain as a result of this gathering up of what is in the bundle of light, a very market expansion. You can see the definite depression of the mercury. Now we will place in the path of the energy cylinder, an alum solution, and see what happens under the influence of this solution. You will see after a while that the mercury will come to exactly the same level in the right and left hand tubes. This shows that originally heat passed through, but under the influence of the alum solution the heat is shut off, not more goes through. The apparatus then comes only under the influence of the heat generally present in the space around it and the mercury readjusts itself to equilibrium in the two tubes. The heat is stopped as soon as I put the alum solution in the path of the energy cylinder. That is to say, from this cylinder which yields for me both light and heat, I separate out the heat and permit the light to pass through. Let us keep this firmly in mind. Something still rays through. But we see that we can so treat the light-heat mercury that the light passes on and the heat is separated by means of the alum solution.

This is one thing we must keep in mind simply as a phenomenon. There is another phenomenon to be brought to our attention before we proceed with our considerations. When we study the nature of heat we can do so by warming a body at one particular spot. We then notice that the body gets warm not only at the spot where we are applying the heat, but that one portion shares its heat with the next portion, then this with the next, etc. and that finally the heat is spread over the entire body (Fig. 2). And this is not all.

If we simply bring another body in contact with the warm body, the second body will become warmer than it formerly was. In modern physics this is ordinarily stated by saying that heat is spread by conduction. We speak of the conduction of heat. The heat is conducted from one portion of a body to another portion, and it is also conducted from one body to another in contact with the first. A very superficial observation will show you that the conduction of heat varies with different materials. If you grasp a metallic rod in your fingers by one end and hold the other end in a flame, you will soon have to drop it, since the heat travels rapidly from one end of rod to the other. Metals, it is said, are good conductors of heat. On the other hand, if you hold a wooden stick in the flame in the same way, you will not have to drop it quickly on account of the conduction of heat. Wood is a poor conductor of heat. Thus we may speak of good and poor conductors of heat. Now this can be cleared up by another experiment. And this experiment we are unfortunately unable to make today. It has again been impossible to get ice in the form we need it. At a more favorable time the experiment can be made with a lens made of ice as we would make a lens of glass. Then from a source of heat, a flame, this ice lens can be used to concentrate the heat rays just as light rays can be concentrated (to use the ordinary terminology.) A thermometer can then be used to demonstrate the concentration by the ice lens of the heat passing through it. (See Fig. 4).

Now you can see from this experiment that it is a question here of something very different from conduction even though there is a transmission of the heat, otherwise the ice lens could not remain an ice lens. What we have to consider is that the heat spreads in two ways. In one form, the bodies through which it spreads are profoundly influenced, and in the other form it is a matter of indifference what stands in the path. In this latter case we are dealing with the propagation of the real being of heat, with the spreading of heat itself. If we wish to speak accurately we must ask what is spreading, then we apply heat and see a body getting warmer gradually piece by piece, we must ask the question: is it not perhaps a very confused statement of the matter when we say that the heat itself spreads from particle to particle through the body, since we are able to determine nothing about the process except the gradual heating of the body?

You see, I must emphasize to you that we have to make for ourselves very accurate ideas and concepts. Suppose, instead of simply perceiving the heat in the metal rod, you had a large rod, heated it here, and placed on it a row of urchins. As it became warm the urchins would cry out, the first one, then the second, then the third, etc. One after another they would cry out. But it would never occur to you to say that what you heard from the first urchin was conducted to the second, the third, the fourth, etc. When the physicist applies heat at one spot, however, and then perceives it further down the rod, he says: the heat is simply conducted. He is really observing how the body reacts, one part after another, to give him the sensation of warmth, just as the urchins give a yell when they experience the heat. You cannot, however, say that the yells are transmitted.

Now we will perform also an experiment to show how the different metals we have here in the form of rods behave in respect to what we call the conduction, and about which we are striving to get valid ideas. We have hot water in this vessel (Fig. 3). By placing the ends of the rods in the water, they are warmed. Now we will see how this experiment comes out. One rod after another will get warm, and we will have a kind of graduated scale before us. We will be able to see the gradual spreading of the effect of the heat in the different substances. (The rods consisted of copper, nickel, lead, tin, zinc, iron.) The iodide of mercury on the rods (used to indicate rise in temperature) becomes red in the following order: copper, nickel, zinc, tin, iron and lead. The lead is, therefore, among these metals, the poorest conductor of heat, as it is said.

This experiment is shown to you in order to help form the general view of the subject that I have so often spoken to you about. Gradually we will rise to an understanding of what the heat entity is in its reality.

Now, from our remarks of yesterday we have seen that when we turn our attention to he realm of corporeality, we can in a certain way, set limits to the realm of the solids by following what it is essentially that takes on form. We have the fluids as an intermediate stage and then we go over to the gaseous realm. In the gaseous we have a kind of intermediate state, exactly as we would expect, namely the heat condition. We have seen why we can place it as we do in the series. Then we come, as I have said, into an X region in which we have to assume materialization and dematerialization, pass then to a Y and a Z. This is all similar to the manner in which we find in the light spectrum the transition from green through blue to violet and then apparently on to infinity. Yesterday we convinced ourselves that we have to continue below the solid realm into a U region. Thus we think of the world of corporeality as arranged in an order analogous to the arrangement in the spectrum. This is exactly what we do when we pursue our thinking in contact with reality.

Now let us further extend the ideas of yesterday. In the case of the spectrum we conceive of what disappears at the violet end and at the red end in the straight line spectrum as bent into a circle. In exactly the same way we can, in this different realm of states of aggregation, imagine that the two ends of the series do not disappear into infinity. Instead, what apparently goes off into the indefinite on the one side and what goes off into indefiniteness on the other may be considered as bending back (Fig. 1) and then we have before us a circle, or at least a line whose two ends meet.

The question now arises, what is to be found at the point of juncture? When we observe the usual spectrum, we can in that case find something at this point. In Goethe's sense you know that the spectrum considered as a whole with all its colors included shows as its middle color on one side green, when we make a bright spectrum. On the other side peach blossom which is also a middle color when we make a dark spectrum. Thus we have green, blue, violet extending to peach blossom. By closing the circle we note that at the point where it closes, there is the peach blossom color.

If we then construct a similar circle in our thinking about the realm states of aggregation, what do we find at the point of juncture? This brings us to an enormously important consideration. What must we place in the spectrum of states of aggregation which will correspond to the peach blossom of the color spectrum? The idea that arises naturally from the facts here may perhaps be easier for you to grasp if I lead you to it as follows: What do we have in reality which disappears as it were in two opposite directions—just as in the color spectrum the tones shade off on the one side into the region beyond the violet and on the other side into the region beyond the red? Ask yourselves what it is. It is nothing more or less than the whole of nature. The whole of nature is included in it. For you cannot in the whole of nature find anything not included in the form categories we have mentioned. Nature disappears from us on the one hand when we go through corporeality into heat and beyond. She disappears from us on the other when we follow form through the solid realm into the sub-solid where we saw the polarization figures as the effect of form on form. The tourmaline crystals show us now a bright field, now a dark one. By the mutual effect of one form on another there appear alternately dark and light fields.

It is essential for us to determine what we should place here when we follow nature in one direction until we meet what streams from the other side. What stands there? Man as such stands there. The human being is inserted at that point. Man, taking up what comes from both sides is placed at that point. And how does he take up what comes from the two sides? (Fig. 2) He has form. He is also formed within. When we examine his form among other formed bodies we are obliged to give him this attribute. Thus, the forces that give from elsewhere are within man. And now we must ask ourselves, are these forces to be found in the sphere of consciousness? No, they are not in the human consciousness. Think of the matter a moment. You cannot get a real understanding of the human form from what you can see in either yourselves or other men. You cannot experience it immediately in consciousness. We have a corporeality, but this form is not given in our immediate consciousness. What do we have in our immediate consciousness in the place of form?

Now, my friends, that can be experienced only when one gradually and in an unbiased manner learns to observe the physical development of man. When the human being first enters physical existence, he must be related very plastically to his formative forces. That is, he must do a great deal of body building. The nearer we approach the condition of childhood, the greater the body building, and as we take on years there is a withdrawal of the body building forces. In proportion as the body building forces withdraw, conscious reasoning comes into play. The more the formative forces withdraw the more reasoning advances. We can create ideas in regard to form in proportion as we lose the ability to create form in ourselves. This considered in a matter of fact way, is simply an obvious truth. But now you see, we can say that we experience formative forces—forces that create form outside the body can be experienced. And how do we experience them? In this way, that they become ideas within us. Now we are at the point where we can bring the formative forces to the human being. These forces are not something that can be dreamed about. Answers to the questions that nature puts to us cannot be drawn from speculation or philosophizing, but must be got from reality. And in reality we see that the formative forces show themselves where, as it were, form dissolves into ideas, where it becomes ideas. In our ideas we experience what escapes us as a force while our bodies are building.

When we place human nature before us in thought, we can state the matter as follows: man experiences as ideas the forces welling up from below. What does he experience coming down from above? What comes into consciousness from the realms of gas and heat? Here again when you look at human nature in an unprejudiced way, you have to ask yourselves: how does the will relate itself to the phenomena of heat?

You need only consider the matter physiologically to see that we go through a certain interaction with the heat being of outer nature in order to function in our will nature. Indeed heat must appear if willing is to become a reality. We have to consider will related to heat. Just as the formative forces of outer objects are related to ideas, so we have to consider what is spread abroad as heat as related to that which we find active in our wills. Heat may be thus looked upon as will, or we may say that we experience the being of heat in our will.

How can we define form what it approaches us from within-out? We see it, in this form, in any given solid body. We know that if conditions are such that this form can be seized upon by our life processes, ideas will arise. These ideas are not within the outer object. It is somewhat as if I observed the spirit separated from the body in death. When I see form in outer nature, what brings about the form is not there in the object. It is in truth not there. Just as the spirit is not within the corpse but has been in it, so is that which determines form not within the object. If I therefore turn my eyes in an unprejudiced way towards outer nature I have to say: Something works in the process of form building in objects, but in the corpse this something “has been active,” while in the object its activity is becoming. We will see that what is there active lives in our ideas.

If I experience heat in nature, then I experience what works in a certain way as my will. In the thinking and willing man we have what meets us in outer nature as form and heat respectively.

But now there are all possible intermediate stages between will and thought. A mere intellectual self-examination will soon show you that you never think without exercising the will. Exercise of the will is difficult for modern man especially. The human being is more prone to will unconsciously the course of his thoughts, he does not like to send will impulses into the realm of thought.

Entirely will-free thought content is really never present just as will not oriented by thought is likewise not present. Thus when we speak of thought and will, of ideas and will, we are dealing with extreme conditions, with what from one side builds itself as thought and from the other side builds itself as will. We can therefore say that in experiencing will permeated by thinking and thinking permeated by will, we experience truly and essentially the outer forms of nature and the outer heat being of nature. There is only one possibility for us here and that is to seek in man for essential being of what meets us in outer nature.

And now pursue these thoughts further. When you follow further the condition of corporeality on the one hand you can say that you proceed along a line into the indeterminate. The opposite must be the case here. And how can we state this? How must it be within man? We must indeed, find again here what goes off into infinity. Instead of it going off into infinity, so that we can no longer follow it, we must picture to ourselves that it moves out of space. What wells up in man from the states of aggregation we must think of as going out of space. That is, the forces that are in heat must so manifest themselves in man that they move out of space. Likewise, the forces that produce form, pass out of space when they enter man.

In other words, in man we have a point where that which appears spatially in the outer world as form and heat, leaves space. Where the impossibility arises, that that which becomes non-spatial can still be held mathematically.

I think we can see here in a very enlightening way how an observation of nature in accordance with facts obliges us to leave space when we approach man, provided we properly place him in the being of nature. We have to go to infinity above and below (the scale of that states of aggregation.) When we enter the being of man, we leave the realm of space. We cannot find a symbol which expresses spatially how the facts of nature meet us in the being of man. Nature properly conceived, shows us that when we think of her in relation to man, we must leave her. Unless we do, when we consider the content of nature in relation to man, we simply do not come to the human being.

But what does this mean mathematically? Suppose you set down the lineal series among which you are following states of aggregation to infinity. The words one after another may be considered as positive. Then what works into the nature of man must be set down as negative. If you consider this series as positive, the effects in the human being have to be made negative. What is meant by positive and negative will be cleared up I think by a lecture to be given by one of our members during the next few days. We have to conceive, however, of what comes before our eyes plainly here in this way that the essential nature of heat, insofar as this belongs to the outer world, must be made negative when we follow it into the human being, and likewise the essentiality of form becomes negative when we follow it into man. Actually then, what lives in man as ideas is related to outside form as negative numbers are to positive numbers and vice versa. Let us say, as credits and debits. What are debits on the one hand are credits on the other and vice versa. What is form in the outside world lives in man in a negative sense. If we say “there in the outside world is some sort of a body of a material nature,” we have to add: “if I think about its form the matter must be negative, in a sense, in my thinking.” How is matter characterized by me as a human being? It is characterized by its pressure effects. If I go from the pressure manifestation of matter to my ideas about form, then the negative of pressure, or suction, must come into the picture. That is, we cannot conceive of man's ideas as material in their nature if we consider materiality as symbolized by pressure. We must think of them as the opposite. We must think of something active in man which is related to matter as the negative is to the positive. We must consider this as symbolized by suction if we think of matter as symbolized by pressure. If we go beyond matter we come to nothing, to empty space. But if we go further still, we come to less-than-nothing, to that which sucks up matter. We go from pressure to suction. Then we have that which manifests in us as thinking.

And when on the other hand you observe the effects of heat, again you go over to the negative when it manifests in us. It moves out of space. It is, if I may extend the picture, sucked up by us. In us it appears as negative. This is how it manifests. Debits remain debits, although they are credits elsewhere. Even though our making external heat negative when it works within us results in reducing it to nothing, that does not alter the matter. Let me ask you again to note: we are obliged by force of the facts to conceive of man not entirely as a material entity, but we must think of something in man which not only is not matter, but is so related to matter as suction is to pressure. Human nature properly conceived must be thought of as containing that which continually sucks up and destroys matter.

Modern physics, you see, has not developed at all this idea of negative matter, related to external matter as a suction is to a pressure. That is unfortunate for modern physics. What we must learn is that the instant we approach an effect manifest in man himself all our formulae must be given another character. Will phenomena have to be given negative values in contrast to heat phenomena; and thought phenomena have to be given negative values as contrasted to the forces concerned in giving form.

My dear friends,

At this point I would like to build a bridge, as it were, between the discussions in this course and the discussion in the previous course. We will study today the light spectrum, as it is called, and its relation to the heat and chemical effects that come to us with the light. The simplest way for us to bring before our minds what we are to deal with is first to make a spectrum and learn what we can from the behavior of its various components. We will, therefore, make a spectrum by throwing light through this opening—you can see it here. (The room was darkened and the spectrum shown.) It is to be seen on this screen. Now you can see that we have something hanging here in the red portion of the spectrum. Something is to be observed on this instrument hanging here. First we wish to show you especially how heat effects arise in the red portion of the spectrum. Something is to be observed on this instrument hanging here. These effects are to be observed by this expanding action of the energy cylinder on the air contained in the instrument, which expanding action in turn pushes the alcohol column down on this side and up on this one. This depression of the alcohol column shows us that there is a considerable heat effect in this part of the spectrum. It would be interesting also to show that when the spectrum is moved so as to bring the instrument into the blue-violet portion, the heat effect is not noticeable. It is essentially characteristic of the red portion. And now, having shown the occurrence of heat effects in the red portion of the spectrum by means of the alcohol column, let us show the chemical activity of the blue-violet end. We do this by allowing the blue portion to fall on a substance which you can see is brought into a state of phosphorescence. From the previous course you know that this is a form of chemical activity. Thus you see an essential difference between the portion of the spectrum that disappears on the unknown on this side and the portion that disappears on this other side; you see how the substance glows under the influence of the chemical rays, as they are called. Moreover, we can so arrange matters that the middle portion of the spectrum, the real light portion, is cut out. We cannot do this with absolute precision, but approximately we can make the middle portion dark by simply placing the path of the light a solution of iodine in carbon disulphate. This solution has the property of stopping the light. It is possible to demonstrate the chemical effect on one side and the heat effect on the other side of this dark band. Unfortunately we cannot carry out this experiment completely, but only mention it in passing. If I place an alum solution in the path of the light the heat effect disappears and you will see that the alcohol column is no longer displaced because the alum, or the solution of alum, to speak precisely, hinders its passage. Soon you will see the column equalize, now that we have placed alum in the path, because the heat is not present. We have here a cold spectrum.

Now let us place in the light path the solution of iodine in carbon disulphate, and the middle portion of the spectrum disappears. It is very interesting that a solution of esculin will cut out the chemical effect. Unfortunately we could not get this substance. In this case, the heat effect and the light remain, but the chemical effect ceases. With the carbon disulphide you see clearly the red portion—it would not be there if the experiment were an entire success—and the violet portion, but the middle portion is dark. We have succeeded partly in our attempt to eliminate the bright portion of the spectrum. By carrying out the experiment in a suitable way as certain experimenters have done (for instance, Dreher, 50 years ago) the two bright portions you see here can be done away with. Then the temperature effect may be demonstrated on the red side, and on the other side phosphorescence shows the presence of the chemically active rays. This has not yet been fully demonstrated and it is of very great importance. It shows us how that which we think of as active in the spectrum can be conceived in its general cosmic relations.

In the course that I gave here previously I showed how a powerful magnet works on the spectral relations. The force emanating from the magnet alters certain lines, changes the picture of the spectrum itself. It is only necessary for a person to extend the thought prompted by this in order to enter the physical processes in his thinking. You know from what we have already said that there is really a complete spectrum, a collection of all possible twelve colors; that we have a circular spectrum instead of the spectrum spread out in one dimension of space. We have (in the circular spectrum) here green, peach blossom here, here violet and here red with the other shades between. Twelve shades, clearly distinguishable from one another.

Now the fact is that under the conditions obtaining on the earth such a spectrum can only exist as a mental image. When we are dealing with this spectrum we can only do so by means of a mental picture. The spectrum we actually get is the well-known linear one extending as a straight line from red through the green to the blue and violet—thus we obtain a spectrum formed from the circular one, as I have often said, by making the circle larger and larger, so that the peach blossom disappears, violet shades off into infinity on one side and red shades off on the other, with green in the middle.

We may ask the question: how does this partial spectrum, this fragmentary color band arise from the complete series of color, the twelve color series which must be possible? Imagine to yourselves that you have the circular spectrum, and suppose forces to act on it to make the circle larger and larger and finally to break at this point (see drawing). Then, when it has opened, the action of these forces would make a straight line of the circle, a line extending apparently into infinity in each direction. (Fig. 1).

Now when we come upon this straight line spectrum here under our terrestrial conditions we feel obliged to ask the question: how can it arise? It can arise only in this way, that the seven known colors are separated out. They are, as it were, cut out of the complete spectrum by the forces that work into it. But we have already come upon these forces in the earth realm. We found them when we turned our attention to the forces of form. This too is a formative activity. The circular form is made over into the straight-line form. It is a form that we meet with here. And considering the fact that the structure of the spectrum is altered by magnetic forces, it becomes quite evident that forces making our spectrum possible are everywhere active. This being the case, we have to assume that our spectrum, which we consider a primary thing, has working within it certain forces. Not only must we consider light variation in our ordinary spectrum, but we have to think ofthis ordinary spectrum as including forces which render it necessary to represent the spectrum by a straight line. This idea we must link up with another, which comes to us when we go through the series, as we have frequently done before (Fig. 2), from solids, through fluids, to condensation and rarefaction, i.e. gases, to heat and then to that state we have called X, where we have materialization and dematerialization. Here we meet a higher stage of condensation and rarefaction, beyond the heat condition, just as condensation and rarefaction proper constitute a kind of fluidity of form.

When form itself becomes fluid, when we have a changing form in a gaseous body, that is a development from form as a definite thing. And what occurs here? A development of the condensation-rarefaction condition Keep this definitely in mind, that we enter a realm where we have a development of the condensation-rarefaction state.

What do we mean by a “development of rarefaction”? Well, matter itself informs us what happens to it when it becomes more and more rarefied. When I make matter more and more dense, it comes about that a light placed behind the matter does not shine through. When the matter becomes more and more rarefied, the light does pass through. When I rarefy enough, I finally come to a point where I obtain brightness as such. Therefore, what I bring into my understanding here in the material realm is empirically found to be the genesis of brightness or luminosity as a heightening of the condition of rarefaction; and darkening has to be thought of as a condensation, not yet intense enough to produce matter, but of such an intensity as to be just on the verge of becoming material.

Now you see how I place the realm of light above the heat realm and how the heat is related to the light in an entirely natural fashion. But when you recollect how a given realm always gives a sort of picture of the realm immediately above it, then you must look in the being of heat for something that foreshadows, as it were, the conditions of luminosity and darkening. Keep in mind that we do not always find only the upper condition in the lower, but also always the lower condition in the upper. When I have a solid, it foreshadows for me the fluid. What gives it solidity may extend over into the non-solid realm. I must make it clear to myself, if I wish to keep my concepts real, that there is a mutual interpenetration of actual qualities. For the realm of heat this principle takes on a certain form; namely this, that dematerialization works down into heat from above (see arrow). From the lower side, the tendency to materialization works up into the heat realm.

Thus you see that I draw near to the heat nature when I see in it a striving for dematerialization, on the one hand, and on the other a striving for materialization. (If I wish to grasp its nature I can do it only by conceiving a life, a living weaving, manifesting itself as a tendency to materialization penetrated by a tendency to dematerialization.) Note, now, what an essential distinction exists between this conception of heat based on reality and the nature of heat as outlined by the so-called mechanical theory of heat of Clausius. In the Clausius theory we have in a closed space atoms or molecules, little spheres moving in all directions, colliding with each other and with the walls of the vessel, carrying on an outer movement. (Fig. 3) And it is positively stated: heat consists in reality in this chaotic movement, in this chance collision of particles with each other and with the walls of the vessel. A great controversy arose as to whether the particles were elastic or non-elastic. This is of importance only as the phenomena can be better explained on the assumption of elasticity or on the assumption that the particles are hard, non-elastic bodies. This has given form to the conviction that heat is purely motion in space. Heat is motion. We must now say “heat is motion,” but in an entirely different sense. It is motion, but intensified motion. Wherever heat is manifest in space, there is a motion which creates the material state striving with a motion which destroys the material state. It is no wonder, my friends, that we need heat for an organism. We need heat in our organism simply to change continuously the spatially-extended into the spatially non-extended. When I simply walk through space, my will carries out a movement in space. When I think about it, something other than the spatial is present. What makes it possible for me as a human organism to be inserted into the form relationships of the earth? When I move over the earth, I change the entire terrestrial form. I change her form continually. What makes it possible that I am in relation to the other things of the earth, and that I can form ideas, outside of space, within myself as observer, of what is manifested in space? This is what makes it possible, my being exists in the heat medium and is thus continually enabled to transform material effects, spatial effects, into non-spatial ones that no longer partake of the space nature. In myself I experience in fact what heat really is, intensified motion. Motion that continually alternates between the sphere of pressure and the sphere of suction.

Assume that you have here (Fig. 4) the border between pressure and suction forces. The forces of pressure run their course in space, but the suction forces do not, as such, act in space—they operate outside of space. For my thoughts, resting on the forces of suction, are outside of space. Here on one side of this line (see figure) I have the non-spatial. And now when I conceive of that which takes place neither in the pressure nor in the suction realms, but on the border line between the two, then I am dealing with the things that take place in the realm of heat. I have a continually maintained equilibrium tendency between pressure effects of a material sort and suction effects of a spiritual sort. It is very significant that certain physicists have had these things right under their noses but refuse to consider them. Planck, the Berlin physicist, has made the following striking statement: if we wish to get a concept of what is called ether nowadays, the first requisite is to follow the only path open to us, in view of the knowledge of modern physics, and consider the ether non-material. This from the Berlin physicist, Planck. The ether, therefore, is not to be considered as a material substance. But now, what we are finding beyond the heat region, the realm wherein the effects of light take place, that we consider so little allied to the material that we are assuming the pressure effects—characteristic of matter—to be completely absent, and only suction effects active there. Stated otherwise, we may say: we leave the realm of ponderable matter and enter a realm which is naturally everywhere active, but which manifests itself in a manner diametrically opposite to the realm of the material. Its forces we must conceive of as suction forces while material things obviously manifest through pressure forces. Thus, indeed, we come to an immediate concept of the being of heat as intensified motion, as an alternation between pressure and suction effects, but in such a way that we do not have, on the one hand, suction spatially manifested and, on the other hand, pressure spatially manifested. Instead of this, we have to think of the being of heat as a region where we entirely leave the material world and with it three-dimensional space. If the physicist expresses by formulae certain processes, and he has in these formulae forces, in the case where these forces are given the negative sign—when pressure forces are made negative—they become suction forces. Attention must be paid to the fact that in such a case one leaves space entirely. This sort of consideration of such formulae leads us into the realm of heat and light. Heat is only half included, for in this realm we have both pressure and suction forces.

These facts, my dear friends, can be given, so to speak, only theoretically today in this presentation in an auditorium. It must not be forgotten that a large part of our technical achievement has arisen under the materialistic concepts of the second half of the 19^th century. It has not had such ideas as we are presenting and therefore such ideas cannot arise in it. If you think over the fruitfulness of the one-sided concepts for technology, you can picture to yourselves how many technical consequences might flow from adding to the modern technology, knowing only pressures—the possibility of also making fruitful these suction forces. (I mean not only spatially active suction which is a manifestation of pressure, but suction forces qualitatively opposite to pressure.)

Of course, much now incorporated in the body of knowledge known as physics will have to be discarded to make room for these ideas. For instance, the usual concepts of energy must be thrown out. This concept rests on the following very crude notions: when I have heat I can change it into work, as we saw from the up and down movement of the flask in the experiment resulting from the transformation of heat. But we saw at the same time that the heat was only partly changed and that a portion remained over of the total amount at hand. This was the principle that led Eduard von Hartmann to enunciate the second important law of the modern physics of heat—a perpetuum mobile of the second type is impossible.

Another physicist, Mach, well known in connection with modern developments in this field, has done quite fundamental thinking on the subject. He has thought along lines that show him to be a shrewd investigator, but one who can only bring his thinking into action in a purely materialistic way. Behind his concepts stands the materialistic point of view. He seeks cleverly to push forward the concepts and ideas available to him. His peculiarity is that when he comes to the limit of the usual physical concepts where doubts begin to arise, he writes the doubts down at once. This leads soon to a despairing condition, because he comes quickly to the limit where doubts appear, but his way of expressing the matter is extremely interesting. Consider how things stand when a man who has the whole of physics at his command is obliged to state his views as mach states them. He says (Ernst Mach, Die Prinzipien der Warme Lehre, p. 345): “There is no meaning in expressing as work a heat quantity which cannot be transformed into work.” (We have seen that there is such a residue.) “Thus it appears that the energy principle like other concepts of substance has validity for only a limited realm of facts. The existence of these limits is a matter about which we, by habit, gladly deceive ourselves.”

Consider a physicist who, upon thinking over the phenomena lying before him, is obliged to say the following: “Heat exists, in fact, that I cannot turn into work, but there is no meaning in simply thinking of this heat as potential energy, as work not visible. However, I can perhaps speak of the changing of heat into work within a certain region—beyond this it is not valid.” And in general it is said that every energy is transformable into another, but only by virtue of a certain habit of thinking about those limits about which we gladly deceive ourselves.

It is extremely interesting to pin physics down at the very point where doubts are expressed which must arise from a straightforward consideration of the facts.

Does this not clearly reveal the manner in which physics is overcome when physicists have been obliged to make such statements? For, fundamentally, this is nothing other than the following: one can no longer hold to the energy principle put forth as gospel by Helmoltz and his colleagues. There are realms in which this energy principle does hold.

Now let us consider the following: How can one make the attempt symbolically (for fundamentally it is symbolic when we try to set the outlines of something), how can we make the attempt to symbolize what occurs in the realm of heat? When you bring together all these ideas I have developed, and through which in a real sense I have tried to attain to the being of heat, then you can get a concept of this being in the following manner.

Picture this to yourselves (Fig. 5). Here is space (blue) filled with certain effects, pressure effects. Here is the non-spatial (red) filled with suction effects. Imagine that we have projected out into space what we considered as alternately spatial and non-spatial. The red portion must be thought of as non-spatial. Using this intermediate region as an image of what is alternately spatial and non-spatial, you have in it a region where something is appearing and disappearing. Think of something represented as extended and disappearing. As substance appears, there enters in something from the other side that annihilates it, and then we have a physical-spiritual vortex continually manifesting in such a manner that what is appearing as substance is annihilated by what appears at the same time as spirit. We have a continual sucking up of what is in space by the entity which is outside of space.

What I am outlining to you here, my dear friends, you must think of as similar to a vortex. But in this vortex you should see simply in extension that which is “intensive” in its nature. In this way we approach, I might say figuratively, the being of heat. We have yet to show how this being of heat works so as to bring about such phenomena as conduction, the lowering of the melting point of an alloy below the melting point of its constituents, and what it really means that we should have heat effects at one end of the spectrum and chemical effects at the other.

We must seek the deeds of heat as Goethe sought out the deeds of light. Then we must see how knowledge of the being of heat is related to the application of mathematics and how it affects the imponderable of physics. In other words, how are real formulae to be built, applicable to heat and optics.

According to incomplete, summary notes

Dear attendees, there is no need to dwell on the reasons why these two lectures are dedicated to the consideration of German intellectual life in these fateful times. Our feelings must naturally be directed towards what the German people have to defend, locked inside a great fortress. Not only do our enemies today talk about their own bravery in such a way that they not only count on their weapons, but also on the hunger over which they believe they have power. They are also trying hard to persuade themselves and others that the German people have a spiritual essence within them that is not worth preserving. We are like being locked in a fortress, not only surrounded by the roar of weapons, but also, in a cowardly manner, by hunger. The question arises as to what the German essence, the German spirit is, which is to be defended in the face of the changing winds. It goes without saying that spiritual science can only be expressed as a result, as an attitude. What was most attacked before spiritual science emerged in modern culture was something that modern culture had more or less lost. The concept of the folk soul is not abstract for certain character peculiarities, but it is a real entity for the spiritual eye, so that, as we allocate the entity of outer nature to the four realms, we recognize beings with individuality in spiritual science, beings with individuality. Therefore, we speak of different folk souls of the individual peoples, as one speaks of what is in reality of the outer senses. Only when one tries to see the German national soul within the German nation does one get a true idea of spiritual science. However, one must then also speak of the soul of the individual. Psychology speaks of it, but in such a way that it sees a chaotic jumble of will impulses and thoughts. Spiritual science cannot speak in this way.

The world will increasingly recognize that a genuine scientific consideration of the soul must take into account the threefold nature of the soul. Just as a physicist distinguishes the rainbow shades of yellowish-reddish, green, and blue-violet in light, so too, in the same genuine scientific sense, spiritual science will have to acknowledge that the soul expresses itself in three forms: as a sentient soul, inasmuch as it encompasses everything instinctual that does not arise from the brightness of thought, as in the reddish-yellowish. In green, the soul of reason reveals itself. As the blue-violet is in the light, so is the human soul, which can be called the soul of consciousness. This distinction is not arbitrary, but arises from a closer examination of what it means to be human, what is connected to the human spirit through the noblest core, what goes through birth and death, the eternal, where it all leads to, what is in the subconscious, even in the dream-like: the eternal core of being. The intellectual soul stands in the midst of the soul's nuances, like the color green in the midst of light. Through ideas and concepts, it is connected to the eternal and pours out onto the outside with the temporal and the transitory. In the present, it lives out with all the qualities that keep the human being firmly grounded, but which are also the temporary ones that only reveal themselves between birth and death. This structure is something truly real. The light lives in all color nuances, and so the human ego lives as the actual self-grasping in all three soul nuances.

The folk souls in the sense of spiritual science differ in such a way that one folk soul, for example, preferably takes hold of the individual in the scale of feeling. Of course, the individual human being can rise above the popular to the general human. What I say applies as long as he experiences himself in his nationality. The way in which the human being stands in his nation offers, as it were, a relationship between the sentient soul and the national soul. What works in will take hold of the drives and passions. We have this in the Italian nationality. In a second case, when the national soul works in the intellectual soul, permeating the views, thinking, concepts and ideas of individual nationalities, we can observe this within the French nationality. And where the national soul works in the consciousness soul, which is currently the most transient and is completely bound to the physical world, we can observe this in the British people at the present time.

I am aware that what I am saying is not based solely on observations of the present. Many here know that I have been saying this for years. On the other hand, I know that it will gradually become part of human knowledge, just as light in its various colors is part of physical science. Since a direct relationship to the folk soul is expressed in all three soul-members, to the whole rule and weave of the soul within the human being, we have considered the relationship of the individual German, insofar as he belongs to Germanness, to his folk soul. In this way, one can gain insights into the peculiar national cultures of the individual peoples. One can say even more for the sake of enlightenment.

The Western nations had a special link to the collective soul of the folk soul. They added this to the culture in such a way that they participate in a folk age that is different from that of the Germans. They tie in with what comes from Greco-Roman and earlier cultures. So they tie in with what emerged as a current from ancient times, which appears as an immature age of nations compared to the German one, where the individual grasps himself as a special thinker, where he does not listen to mythologies, to something coming from outside, but seeks to arrive at a worldview through his own judgment. The German entered European culture in manhood. Thus, one people can be understood while another people is going through a completely different age. One must know that all peoples went through a clairvoyant age before that. I have mentioned how Ludwig Laistner has not yet fully recognized that all myths, all pictorial narratives, come from a time when people still had clairvoyance, not a dream state, but not fully awake, a state that shows reality, but in images. What the Greeks, the Romans, the peoples of Europe depict in their myths and legends is only one expression of what the individual peoples have really experienced. This has already been done in the “Riddles of the Sphinx”. It depends on how a people goes through the transition from ancient clairvoyance to later clairvoyance, one could say to scientific knowledge. We find everywhere that the world view of the German goes into the whole disposition, while the others were still in a less mature state of mind when they came out of ancient clairvoyance. Their world view has formed itself as if [instinctively]. Their self was not fully present. Even Christianity is still felt as if it were brought from outside. When one sees pictures, one says, they are there, so say these peoples, the world view is there.

The German people are different. They confront us as they experience the great clash with the Romance peoples of the south; there they are already beyond the stage that we have in the oldest stories, myths, the personality is what is emphasized. We feel in the “Nibelungenlied” that everything depends on the human personal qualities playing out, courage and so on, what the human being can suffer. The other people are confronted with what they are looking at. In the “Nibelungenlied”, the German is personally linked to what he has had depicted. When the “Nibelungenlied” was already overcome, a figure from it was used by Richard Wagner; Brünhilde, Hagen, Siegfried. In the “Nibelungenlied” we see how the Central European Germanic peoples connected with other cultures. It was necessary for the Germanic peoples to form a worldview through their own efforts. It had to differ from that which was unfolding all around them. What appeared at the height of Italian art in Dante must be compared with Wolfram von Eschenbach's “Parzival”. In Dante's “Divine Comedy”, a sum of images leads up, connected at the top with medieval scholasticism. And how Dante's personalities are shaped by the passions. How isolated Dante's “Divine Comedy” is from the human. In “Parzival,” the portrayal of the human soul is such that the soul itself is present with everything that lives in it, that the soul only progresses through that with which it lives in its most intimate. Then we see that the German spirit cannot go to a worldview that is presented to it as a revelation, but that it wants to have it as an intimate experience of the soul, as every concept wants to be experienced.

One must see in the time of German mysticism, Meister Eckhardt, Tauler, how they describe the coexistence of the individual human souls with the spirit. It is, as it were, a dialogue between the individual German and the spirit of the people, in which the soul is present with all its sufferings and bliss. The soul must become very still, throw out what it is itself, and be only in its secret closet, then it is with its God, experiences what pervades it as the divine. The mood that it can undergo is wonderful, what rules and moves in the universe, when it lets God rule in it. Later, in Angelus Silesius, this intimate togetherness is expressed in dogmatic sayings. He mentions:

I neither die nor live. God himself dies in me,

And what I am to live, he also lives for and for.

I die and live God: if I want to live for him forever,

Then I must also give up the ghost for him forever.

The soul is filled with the divine spiritual, but since God cannot die, death is only an appearance. Thus, someone like Jakob Böhme, who is very popular in German spiritual life, feels the soul, which does not pass through the vital organs but is the eternal core of being within the body, still fully conscious in the body.

Dying is a new birth: “He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies,” that is, he who does not turn his attention to what passes through the portal of death. Wherever we look, we can see the German spirit's world view in such a way that nothing shines forth from the old point of view into the time when he wants to gain a new world view. His self is firmly established in carrying all his strength and efficiency into the outer world of sense. We see, when in the Romanic culture the nations accepted Christianity, how a strong ascetic current emerges, how the human self separates, its thinking separates. But the German cannot so easily cast aside what is his own self, and so he will carry this into many views of the spiritual and divine in nature, just as in the Song of the Nibelungs, lamentation is derived from bliss and sorrow from suffering. Nature cannot fully satisfy the soul; if it does not see the supersensible in it, it must appear tragic until one sees through the veil of nature that by which one does not perish. Therein lie the roots of German spiritual life.

What was produced later produced the flower in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which leads to a worldview. Always in the national, not in the individual, we see everything in Italy coming out in relation to the passions, in France that which stimulates the mind, that which encourages abstract ideas-tendencies. All schematizing, all bringing into a system, behind which the self runs. They say there that rhymeless verses are not poetic, that there is no rounding off. It is the same everywhere, especially in relation to rationalism. It is the same in all fields, one cannot see beyond it, one must elevate oneself with the self to what is schematized. The German essence should live intimately in what it unfolds as experience up to the supersensible. In alliteration, the soul's immediate feeling passes over, there it is striven for by the intimate progression of the soul itself, not by rhyme.

Within British nationality, that which relates to the transitory, to the external sense world, would be. It is empiricism, as rationalism is in French nationality. Idealism is basically the original field, which becomes the direct roots of German intellectual life. From this it can be understood how Darwin's system of nature was able to pursue the purely material from the British mind, as with the philosopher Locke, and to glimpse the religious aspect alongside it, without grasping it through experience, as the German mind does.

The English mind was prevented from making the same radical mistake by its adherence to matter that Haeckel made out of the merits of the German mind: to make a monistic world view out of Darwin's system of nature. Little by little, spiritual science must unfold in such a way that it not only has idealism, but also imbues it with spiritual weaving. It is uncomfortable to live up to the great German philosophers in terms of what they experienced at the full sap of their thoughts. One sees how this includes the fruit of real, actual spiritual realizations. The German spirit has advanced from the root to the flower, which includes the hope that the fruit, the spiritual realization, will come from it. This German spiritual insight will still have much to say about the development of the world as a whole. It concerns us, and it is this that will have to be defended against the enemies who rail and revile, who go so far as to fall prey to mental illness over the German essence.

In the prime of German intellectual life stands Lessing. I would like to draw your attention to his testament, “The Education of the Human Race.” He sees himself forced to assume that the soul must pass through life not just once, but repeatedly. Clever people say that Lessing was already growing old at the time. One can move from Lessing to Herder, who, in opposition to Voltaire's rationalism that ideas should live out in history, said that it is not ideas, but behind them are weaving, real entities, concrete spirit. He already points to spirit-cognition, says that the culture of the earth will not perish before enlightenment has occurred.

One flowering of this intimate coexistence of the individual soul with the spiritual, of the striving for a worldview from within the real personality, is “Faust”, which no other nation can match. It is not artistically rounded off, and the second part is aesthetically contestable in many ways. But the striving for a popular worldview becomes in it a continuous experience of the self, of the I. Faust strives to go beyond what can be given from the outside, to enter into dialogue with the concrete spirit. He really has it around him in all reality, and when he wants to lead it to the sources of life, his counterpart Mephisto comes to meet him. Faust calls out to him: “In your nothingness, I hope to find the All”. This is a truly German saying, it does not lead to nothingness, but to the source of existence. Through pain and suffering, Faust seeks what is inadequate for the merely external. Those who immerse themselves in the intimate striving of the German spirit are left with the impression of madness, as expressed by the world in a journal that has indeed gone mad: “Robbery was the slogan of the German race at all times”.

That is how far the European world has come in its judgment of the German spirit with the unilluminated intellectual! Hebbel said: “Everyone basically hates the German essence - that was a long time ago - as the bad hate the good. If they would succeed in eradicating it, they would have to scrape it out of the grave with nails afterwards.”

The moods that are now coming from abroad as pathological phenomena have long since been formed as intellectual currents from the passions present in the nationalities, to which only one image of the soul is assigned, while the German must sacrifice the whole soul on the altar of intellectual existence. Only the sacrificed soul gives back what arises from the sacrificial fire. The others seek only through individual shades of the soul. This may now be emphasized, where the German essence is so reviled.

Is there not some truth in the words of someone who says: “Germany made [the most significant revolution of modern times], the Reformation.” This is a proud word about the German essence, which relates to the others as higher mathematics relates to elementary mathematics. It was said in Paris in 1870 by Ernest Renan. In the same letter, when compared with it, one can see what a contrast there is between what Central Europe strives for in terms of world view and how it wants to live it out, and how it is in the West, even when tackling the highest problems such as “The Life of Jesus”.

We always have to hear that Central Europe wanted the war. But let us listen from France to Germany. He – Renan – believes that the Germans should be careful not to take land from the French, and that the French would then improve and realize that they had started the war unjustly. David Friedrich Strauß, to whom the letter was addressed, replied that Renan should forgive him, but that he could not see Gaul as a penitent Magdalene. Renan then says that there is a current in France that says that if France's integrity is saved, we – the French – will make up for the mistake of the previously stolen Alsace-Lorraine, not through revenge; it is different if they have to cede Alsace-Lorraine, then there will be hatred, and the eternal goal will be the destruction of the German race.

Rationalism is capable of saying: just as in higher mathematics, annihilation follows from the alliance with anyone who offers himself. Such logic is a bitter pain, a contradiction that mocks everything that is natural feeling. There is no need to sing the praises of self in order to characterize what has become of the German people through the pursuit of an intimate worldview.

In the West and Northwest, among the British people, there is no understanding; it is impossible for them to even absorb the basic nerve of the German being, nor in the East. Slavophilism has developed there, and it is imbued with the idea that what lives in the West as culture is rotten and must be replaced by what it itself has. And we are in the West of Russia! The individual Russian person is so attached to his or her national soul that it does not yet have an effect on them, that it has not yet taken hold of either the individual soul nuance or the whole self, but rather it hovers like a cloud over what the individual person experiences. The individual soul is not yet reached by it.

In what Italian culture produces in the way of emotional culture, in French rationalism, in British empiricism, we can see the popular soul coming to life. With the Russian people, it hovers over the experience, which is why the Orthodox religion, which has become completely rigid, is allowed to spread over the individual, who bows down under it but is not seized by it. He does not strive to receive spiritual life, but humbles himself under the yoke, bending from the outside. It is a saddening impression to attend such an Orthodox service at the Österfeiern, as the individual behaves quite impersonally towards what is happening, taking in nothing personal. It is precisely in this that superiority to the West is sought. In what is produced as a necessary result of the whole Central European spirit, salvation could be found there in the east, but in Slavophilism they resist developing the mind, absorbing something of what should have been incorporated into the soul of the Russian people. Those who have risen above the level of brutal Slavophilism, who have brought the torch of war and brutal warfare, have realized this.

One of these discerning minds was Solowjow. He is not a Faustian soul, but wants to look up in humility. Therefore, what remains in him is what lives in the individual Russian soul, an anarchy of the soul. We can follow it up to Solowjow, despite his tremendous greatness. [...] Solowjow had to ask himself: What can we offer from here in Central Europe? There is a deep misunderstanding between the East and Central Europe. Why is Central Europe hated by Eastern Europe? He says: When Europe looks at our pretensions and demands, it is heard that it is something great, but what we can offer from the substance of our people, we can only babble phrases.

Even where the German spirit is fully experienced, there is everywhere such hatred, which had been preparing for a long, long time, as it is now, one can say, in a morbid way. What presents itself as a sign in this fateful time is an admonition to the German soul to become truly aware of its mission. This war can be a kind of warning for many. We will have to unlearn many things if we are to become aware of the German spirit.

It was possible that this man was admired as one of the reconciling spirits between Germany and the West. The novel was celebrated as a work of art, as if born out of the spirit of music itself, according to the critic Stefan Zweig of the “Berliner Tageblatt”. Then people were amazed that Romain Rolland joined the chorus of vilification against Germany. There we see how the events that are now unfolding have been prepared.

One can only say that from all that this time will and must bring, from the sum of blood, suffering, death, but also of courage and bravery, a warning must arise for everyone to become aware of what that body, which can be called the German people, holds in its striving to grasp the spiritual world, to grasp that which can enlighten people about their destiny. Nothing can be emphasized sharply enough in the present to lead to a deepening of that which has emerged from the roots over the centuries to flourish, and which now gives the hope of also bearing fruit. Anyone who takes spiritual science concretely and not just as an abstract hope can say that the individual person can die, but that a nation must not die before it has fulfilled its task. It is therefore feelings of hope and confidence that this event can awaken in us if we immerse ourselves more and more in the roots and blossoms of German intellectual life.

I will not choose my words to summarize, but rather a poem from the collection of an Austrian poet, Fercher von Steinwand, “German Sounds from Austria”: “Kyffhäuser Guests”. Each person in this poem expresses in his own way how the German spirit works, but one person expresses very deeply and powerfully what the German people can express when they draw from the roots and blossoms of the German spirit: what springs from the riddles of this earth,

what finds hearts, what masters minds,
What flows eternally speaking from the stars
And discloses an inimitable God;
What seemingly has been lost from time and world
And yet shoots around us in a thousand streams:
That is the primal power inherent in the German spirit,
To speak this out clearly, he has consciously sworn!

Someone told the story of “Mary’s Child,” first for melancholic and then for sanguine children.

RUDOLF STEINER: I think in the future you will have to pay more attention to your articulation. The two versions, as you gave them, were too much alike. The difference must also lie in the articulation. If you bring out these details more emphatically you will not fail to impress the melancholic children. For the sanguines I would introduce more pauses into the story, especially at the beginning, so that the children are compelled to listen to you again each time their attention wanders. But now I would like to ask how you would apply these stories when you are actually teaching? Imagine yourselves standing in front of the class; what would you do? I would advise you to tell the story in the melancholic version and then have it retold by a sanguine child and vice versa.

A person comments: First, I think it would be advisable to seat the sanguine children directly in front of the teacher so they may be constantly within view, whereas melancholic children should be sitting where they like as much as possible.

RUDOLF STEINER: An excellent suggestion.

The individual who commented then related the story of “The Long-tailed Monkey,” first in a style for the sanguine and then for the melancholic children, adding the remark that melancholic children do not want to hear too many sad stories.

RUDOLF STEINER: You should also remember that, but the contrasting styles were good. Now I think we can go on to how we should make further use of these things later. I would not decide which child is to tell the story, but after a day or two I would say (in a lively way): “Now listen! You can choose for yourselves which part of the story you would like to retell. Then the next day or the day after that any child who wants to can come out and tell a portion of the story to the class.

Someone else told another story in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: You all have the feeling, don’t you, that something like this can be done in various ways. Now it is really very important, particularly for those who want to work as teachers, to get rid of the habit of unnecessary criticism. As a teacher you should develop a strong feeling for this; you should definitely be conscious that it is not a question of always trying to improve on what has already been done. A thing can be good in a variety of ways. And so I think it will be good to view what has been presented as something that can certainly be done as you have proposed.

But there is one thing I would like to add. In all three stories I think I noticed that the first rendering, both in style and purpose, was the better of the two. Which did you work out first in your mind, Miss A? Which did you feel you could do better? [It was determined that the version worked out first was for the melancholic temperament, and this was the better of the two]. I would now like to recommend that all three of you work out a version for the phlegmatic child. This version is very important from the perspective of style. But if possible please try to work this out tentatively today, then sleep on it and come to your final decision about the style tomorrow. It has been found by experience that when you have something like this to do, you can only discover its new form in a different spirit when, after the preparation, you allow it to pass through a period of sleep. On Monday bring us a version for the phlegmatics, but prepare it first and then later work out its final form. Having the Sunday in between will make this possible.

Someone showed a drawing, a design in blue and yellow for a melancholic child. Dr. Steiner drew the same design in green and red for a sanguine child.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now you can say to the children: This blue and yellow one can be seen best when it is getting dark; you take it into sleep with you, because that is the color with which you can appear before God. This one, the green and red one, can meet your eyes when you awake. You can gaze at it when you wake up in the morning and enjoy it for the rest of the day!

A drawing for a sanguine child was then displayed, red on a white ground. Dr. Steiner drew the same design for a melancholic child, long and thin on a black ground. Dr. Steiner called the impudent form sticking out a “little kicker.”¹

RUDOLF STEINER: In the design for the melancholics this little creature withdraws into the form. Here you see the contrast, a kind of contrast where you would primarily use the colors in order to work on one child or another, and you should certainly show the same thing twice. What would you say to the children?

I would ask them which one they liked best.

RUDOLF STEINER: You would then make your own discoveries! You would recognize the sanguine children from their joy in this contrast of colors. You should not miss the opportunity to use simple forms like these for the children.

Someone recommended forms pointed outward for the choleric:

to be changed to an enclosed form

or to be changed to:

For the phlegmatic he recommended the opposite way, to start from the circle and have figures drawn inside it or to break up a circle in some way:

RUDOLF STEINER: For the phlegmatic child I would add the following in this method. I should say:

“Look, here is a circle. You like that don’t you?

“But now I’ll draw something else for you:

“And if I simply take away the circle, then you have the form as it should be. You must get into the habit of not muddling things up together.”

By drawing things and rubbing them out again the phlegmatic child can be torn out of his phlegma. Now I will also ask you, Frau E., to work out the same design for other temperaments again, making use of the method of sleeping over what you have done.

A description of a gorilla was given in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: Of course nothing can be said against your inventing things without depending on any particular naturalists, although you may very well get suggestions from them. I would ask you, however, to awaken a closer contact with your students when you tell them a story of this kind. It would also be possible to use a long story and to make an impression with that. You must, however, not be absorbed in your own thoughts, but maintain closer contact with your students. If you are too absorbed in yourself you could easily lose contact with the children.

A horse was described for phlegmatic and choleric children.

RUDOLF STEINER: In giving descriptions of animals it is especially important that, in every detail, we should remain clear in our minds that a human being is really the whole animal kingdom. The animal kingdom in its entirety is humankind. You cannot, of course, present ideas of this kind to the children theoretically, and you certainly should not do so.

Let’s suppose, however, that someone has to work out in detail the subject Mr. L. introduced, and also distinguish between the phlegmatic and choleric groups. The phlegmatics are not as easily interested and they are not likely to remember much of what you tell them about an ordinary animal, such as a horse. They have seen horses often enough that they have very little interest in them.² But it is important to focus their attention, so I should say to the phlegmatic children, “Well now, what is the real difference between you and a horse? Let’s take some minor differences. You all have a foot like this, don’t you? Here are the toes, here is the heel and here is the instep.

“Now look at a horse’s foot. This is the hind foot of a horse. Where are the toes? Where is the heel? And where is the ankle? With you the knee is farther up. Where is the knee of a horse? Now look, here are the toes, the heel is right up there and the knee farther up still. It is very different. Just imagine how different a horse’s foot looks from yours.” You will now find that this will surprise the phlegmatic child into alertness, and what you have said will not be forgotten.

For the choleric children I would tell a story about how a child meets a horse out in the woods somewhere. The horse is running; and far behind, running after it, there is a man from whom it has bolted, and the child has to catch the horse by the bridle. If I know I have a choleric child before me I can try to show how the child should do this, how to get hold of the bridle. To get the child’s fantasy working to discover how the horse should be caught is a very good thing. Even a choleric child feels a little nervous about such a procedure, but you are meeting the need of the choleric temperament when you expect the child to do it. Such a child will become a little disconcerted and less arrogant. Something is expected of the child that can only be expected of a choleric child.

I would also like to say that, especially at first, you should make all such stories very short. So I will ask Mr. M. in this case to tell his story for sanguine and melancholic children, but let both stories be exceedingly short. Mr. L., you could do the same but choose particular incidents that will be remembered and serve to arouse the children’s eager interest.

We must realize that we should use the subject matter of our teaching primarily to capture the child’s powers of will, feeling, and thought; it is not so important to us that the children remember what they are told, but that they develop their soul faculties.

Someone spoke of how to consider the four temperaments in arithmetic, but explained that he had not really managed to work this out properly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I had foreseen that, because this problem is very difficult. You will have to sleep on it very thoroughly.

But please take the following as a fresh problem. Imagine to yourself a class in which there are children of eight and nine years old. In the teaching of the future it will, of course, be important that we develop as many social instincts as possible, that we educate the social will. Now imagine three children of whom one is a pronounced phlegmatic, another a pronounced choleric, and the third a pronounced melancholic. I will say nothing about their other qualities. Let’s suppose that in the third or fourth week after school had begun these children come to you and say, “None of the other children can stand me!” Immediately it would be obvious that these are the “Cinderellas” of the class, and all the other children are inclined to avoid them. By Monday I would like you to think over how the teacher can best try to remedy this evil. Please give your whole mind to thinking this through, and view it as a very important educational problem.

• 1. Kickerling = indicating a small football player.
• 2. This statement may not apply to the children of today, as it did in 1919.

Today I want to discuss some elementary aspects of the idea of multidimensional space [among other things, in connection with the] spirited Hinton.

You will recall how we arrived at the concept of multi-dimensional space, having considered the zeroth dimension [last time]. I would like to briefly repeat the ideas of how we can move from two- to three-dimensional space.

What do we mean by a symmetrical behavior? How do I align a red and a blue [flat figure, which are mirror images of each other]?

With two halves of a circle, I can do this relatively easily by sliding the red [half] circle into the blue one (Figure 10).

This is not so easy in the following [mirror]symmetrical figure (Figure 11). I cannot make the red and blue parts coincide [in the plane], no matter how I try to slide the red into the blue.

But there is a way [to achieve this anyway]: if you step out of the board, that is, out of the second dimension [and use the third dimension, in other words, if you] place the blue figure on the red one [by rotating it through the space around the mirror axis].

The same applies to a pair of gloves: I cannot match one with the other without stepping out of [three-dimensional] space. You have to go through the fourth dimension.

Last time I said that in order to develop an understanding of the fourth dimension, you have to make [the relationships in] space fluid, thereby creating conditions similar to those you have when moving from the second to the third dimension. In the last lesson, we created spatial structures out of paper strips that intertwined. Such interweaving causes certain complications. This is not a game, but such interweavings occur in nature all the time. Anyone who reflects on natural processes knows that such interweavings really do occur in nature. Material bodies move in such intertwined spatial structures. These movements are endowed with forces, so that the forces also intertwine. Take the movement of the earth around the sun and then the movement of the moon around the earth. The moon moves in an orbit that is itself wound around the earth's orbit around the sun. It thus describes a spiral around a circular line. Because of the movement of the sun, the moon describes another spiral around this. The result is very complicated lines of force that extend through the whole space.

The heavenly bodies behave in relation to each other like the intertwined strips of paper [by Simony, which we looked at last time]. We have to keep in mind that we are dealing with complicated spatial concepts that we can only understand if we do not let them become rigid. If we want to grasp space [in its essence], [we must first conceive it as rigid, but then] make it completely fluid again. [You have to go as far as zero]; the [living] point can be found in it.

Let us once again visualize the structure of the dimensions]. The point is zero-dimensional, the line is one-dimensional, the surface is two-dimensional and the body is three-dimensional. The cube has the three dimensions: height, width and depth. How do the spatial structures [of different dimensions] relate to each other? Imagine that you are a straight line, that you have only one dimension, that you can only move along a straight line. If such beings existed, what would their concept of space be like? Such beings would not perceive one-dimensionality in themselves, but would only be able to imagine points wherever they went. Because in a straight line, if we want to draw something in it, there are only points. A two-dimensional being would only encounter lines, so it would only perceive one-dimensional beings. [A three-dimensional being like] the cube would perceive two-dimensional beings, but could not perceive its [own] three dimensions.

Now, humans can perceive their three dimensions. If we reason correctly, we must say to ourselves: Just as a one-dimensional being can only perceive points, a two-dimensional being only straight lines, and a three-dimensional being only surfaces, so a being that perceives three dimensions must itself be a four-dimensional being. The fact that humans can define external beings in terms of three dimensions, can [deal with] spaces of three dimensions, means that they must be four-dimensional. And just as a cube can perceive only two dimensions and not its third, so it is clear that man cannot perceive the fourth dimension in which he lives. Thus we have shown [that man must be a four-dimensional being]. We swim in the sea [of the fourth dimension, like ice in water].

Let us return once more to the consideration of mirror images (Figure 11). This vertical line represents the cross-section of a mirror. The mirror reflects an image [of the figure on the left]. The process of reflection points beyond the two dimensions into the third dimension. [To understand the direct and continuous connection between the mirror image and the original, we have to add a third dimension to the two.

[Now let us consider the relationship between external space and internal representation.] The cube here apart from me [appears as] an idea in me (Figure 12). The idea [of the cube] is related to the cube like a' mirror image to the original. Our sensory apparatus [creates an imagined image of the cube. If you want to align this with the original cube, you have to go through the fourth dimension. Just as the third dimension has to be transitioned to (during the continuous execution of the two-dimensional) mirroring process, our sensory apparatus has to be four-dimensional if it is to be able to establish a [direct] connection [between the imagined image and the external object].

If you only imagined [two-dimensionally], you would [only] have a dream image in front of you, but you would have no idea that there is an object outside. Our imagination is a direct inversion of our ability to imagine [external objects by means of] four-dimensional space.

The human being in the astral state [during earlier stages of human evolution] was only a dreamer, he had only such ascending dream images.” He then passed from the astral realm to physical space. Thus we have mathematically defined the transition from the astral to the [physical-] material being. Before this transition occurred, the astral human being was a three-dimensional being and therefore could not extend his [two-dimensional] ideas to the objective [three-dimensional physical-material] world. But when he [himself] became physical-material, he still acquired the fourth dimension [and could therefore also experience three-dimensionally].

Due to the peculiar design of our sensory apparatus, we are able to align our perceptions with external objects. By relating our perceptions to external things, we pass through four-dimensional space, imposing the perception on the external object.

How would things appear if we could see from the other side, if we could enter into things and see them from there? To do that, we would have to pass through the fourth dimension.

The astral world itself is not a world of four dimensions. But the astral world together with its reflection in the physical world is four-dimensional. Anyone who is able to see the astral world and the physical world at the same time lives in four-dimensional space. The relationship of our physical world to the astral world is a four-dimensional one.

One must learn to understand the difference between a point and a sphere. In reality, this point would not be passive, but a point radiating light in all directions (Figure 13).

What would be the opposite of such a point? Just as there is an opposite to a line that goes from left to right, namely a line that goes from right to left, there is also an opposite to the point. We imagine an enormous sphere, in reality of infinite size, that radiates darkness from all sides, but now inwards (Figure 14). This sphere is the opposite of the point.

These are two real opposites: the point radiating light and infinite space, which is not a neutral dark entity, but one that floods space with darkness from all sides. [As a contrast, this results in] a source of darkness and a source of light. We know that a straight line that extends to infinity returns to the same point from the other side. Likewise, it is with a point that radiates light in all directions. This light comes back [from infinity] as its opposite, as darkness.

Now let us consider the opposite case. Take the point as the source of darkness. The opposite is a space that radiates light from all sides.

As was recently demonstrated [in the previous lecture], the point behaves in this way; it does not disappear [into infinity, it returns from the other side] (Figure 15).

[Similarly, when a point expands or radiates out, it does not lose itself in infinity; it returns from infinity as a sphere.] The sphere, the spherical, is the opposite of the point. Space lives in the point. The point is the opposite of space.

What is the opposite of a cube? Nothing other than the whole of infinite space, except for the piece that is cut out here [by the cube]. So we have to imagine the [total] cube as infinite space plus its opposite. We cannot do without polarities if we want to imagine the world as powerfully dynamic. [Only in this way] do we have things in their life.

If the occultist were to imagine the cube as red, the space around it would be green, because red is the complementary color of green. The occultist not only has simple ideas for himself, he has vivid ideas, not abstract, dead ideas. The occultist must enter into things from within himself. Our ideas are dead, while the things in the world are alive. We do not live with our abstract ideas in the things themselves. So we have to imagine the infinite space in the corresponding complementary color to the radiating star. By doing such exercises, you can train your thinking and gain confidence in how to imagine dimensions.

You know that the square is a two-dimensional spatial quantity. A square composed of four red- and blue-shaded sub-squares is a surface that radiates differently in different directions (Figure 16). The ability to radiate differently in different directions is a three-dimensional ability. So here we have the three dimensions of length, width and radiance.

What we did here with the surface, we also think of as being done for the cube. Just as the square above was made up of four sub-squares, we can imagine the cube as being made up of eight sub-cubes (Figure 17). This initially gives us the three dimensions of height, width and depth. Within each sub-cube, we can then distinguish a specific light-emitting capacity, which results in a further dimension in addition to height, width and depth: the radiation capacity.

You can imagine a square made up of four sub-squares, a cube made up of eight different sub-cubes. And now imagine a body that is not a cube, but has a fourth dimension. We have created the possibility of understanding this through radiative capacity. If each [of the eight partial cubes] has a different radiating power, then if I have only the one cube that radiates only in one direction, if I want to obtain the cube that radiates in all directions, I have to add another one on the left, doubling it with an opposite one, I have to put it together out of 16 cubes.

Next lesson we will have the opportunity to consider how we can think of a multidimensional space.