The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When speaking about the spiritual worlds as we are doing in these lectures, we should keep the following well in mind: the clairvoyant consciousness which the human soul can develop in itself will change nothing in the nature and individuality of a person, for everything entering that consciousness was already long present in man's nature. Knowing a thing is not the same as creating it; a person learns only to perceive what is already there as a fact. Obvious as this is, it has to be said, for we must lead our thoughts to realize that the nature of the human being is hidden in the very depths of his existence; it can be brought up out of those depths only through clairvoyant cognition. It follows from this that the true, inmost nature of man's being cannot be brought to light in any other way than through occult knowledge. We can learn what a human being actually is not through any kind of philosophy but only through the kind of knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness. To the observation we use in the sense world and to the understanding limited to the sense world, the being of man, the true, inmost nature of man, lies in hidden worlds. Clairvoyant consciousness provides the point of view from which the worlds beyond the so-called threshold have to be observed; in order to perceive and learn, quite different demands are made on it from those in the sense world. This is the most important thing: that the human soul should become more or less accustomed to the fact that the way of looking at and recognizing things that for the sense world is the correct and healthy one is not the only way.

Here I shall give the name elemental world to the first world that the soul of a human being enters on becoming clairvoyant and crossing the threshold. Only a person who wants to carry the habits of the sense world into the higher super-sensible worlds can demand a uniform choice of names for all the points of view the higher worlds can offer.

Fully new demands meet the life of soul when it steps over the threshold into the elemental world. If the human so insisted on entering this world with the habits of the sense world, two things might happen: cloudiness or complete darkness would spread over the horizon of the consciousness, over the field of vision, or else—if the soul wanted to enter the elemental world without preparing itself for the peculiarities and requirements there—it would be thrown back again into the sense world. The elemental world is absolutely different, from the sense world. In this world of ours when you move from one living being to another, from one happening to the next, you have these beings and events before you and can observe them; while confronting and observing them, you keep your own distinct existence, your own separate personality. You know all the time that in the presence of another person or happening you are the same person that you were before and that you will be the same when you confront a new situation; you can never lose yourself in another being or happening. You confront them, you stand outside them and you know you will always be the same in the sense world wherever you go.

This changes as soon as a person enters the elemental world. There it is necessary to adapt one's whole inner life of soul to a being or event so completely that one transforms one's own inner soul life into this other being, into this other event. We can learn nothing at all in the elemental world unless we become a different person within every other being, indeed unless we become similar, to a high degree, to the other beings and events.

We have to have, then, one peculiarity of soul for the elemental world: the capacity for transforming our own being into other beings outside ourselves. We must have the faculty of metamorphosis. We must be able to immerse ourselves in and become the other being. We must be able to lose the consciousness which always—in order to remain emotionally healthy—we have to have in the sense world, the consciousness of ‘I am myself.’ In the elemental world we get to know another being only when in a way we inwardly have ‘become’ the other. When we have crossed the threshold, we have to move through the elemental world in such a way that with every step we transform ourselves into every single happening, creep into every single being. It belongs to the health of a person's soul that in passing through the sense world he should hold his own and assert his individual character. But this is altogether impossible in the elemental world, where it would lead either to the darkening of his field of vision or to his being thrown back into the sense world.

You will easily understand that in order to exercise the faculty of transformation, the soul needs something more than it already possesses here in our world. The human soul is too weak to be able to change itself continuously and adapt itself to every sort of being if it enters the elemental world in its ordinary state. Therefore the forces of the human soul must be strengthened and heightened through the preparations described in my books Occult Science and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds from these the life of soul will become stronger and more forceful. It can then immerse itself in other entities without losing itself in the process. This being said, you will understand at once the importance of noting what is called the threshold between the sense world and the super-sensible world. We have already said that the clairvoyant consciousness of a human being on earth must go back and forth continually, that it must observe the spiritual world beyond the threshold while it is outside the physical body and must then return into the physical body, exercising in a healthy way the faculties which lead it to the right observation of the physical sense world.

Let us suppose that a person's clairvoyant consciousness, when returning over the threshold, were to take back into the sense world the faculty of transformation it has to have in order to be at all aware of the spiritual world. The faculty of transformation I have been speaking about is a peculiarity of the human etheric body, which lives by preference in the elemental world. Now suppose that a person were to go back into the physical world keeping his etheric body as capable of transformation as it has to be in the elemental world. What would happen? Each of the worlds has its own special laws. The sense world is the world of self-contained forms, for here the Spirits of Form rule. The elemental world is the world of mobility, of metamorphosis, of transformation; just as we continually have to change in order to feel at home in that world, all the beings there are continually changing themselves. There is no enclosed, circumscribed form: all is in continual metamorphosis. A soul has to take part in this everchanging existence outside the physical body if it wants to unfold itself there. Then in the physical sense world we must allow our etheric body, as an entity of the elemental world capable of metamorphosis, to sink down into the physical body. Through this physical body I am a definite personality in the physical sense world; I am this or that distinct person. My physical body stamps my personality upon me; the physical body and the conditions of the physical world in which I find myself make me a personality. In the elemental world one is not a personality, for this would require an enclosed form. Here, however, we must note that what the clairvoyant consciousness recognizes in the human soul is, and always has been, present within it. Through the forces of the physical body, the mobility of the etheric body is restrained only for the time being. As soon as the etheric body sinks back into the physical encasement, its powers of movement are held together and adapted to the form. If the etheric body were not tucked into the physical body as if into a tote bag, it would always be impelled to continuous transformation.

Now let us suppose that a soul, becoming clairvoyant, were to carry over into the physical world this desire of its etheric body for transformation. Then with its tendency towards movement it will fit rather loosely into the physical body, and thus the soul can come into contradiction with the physical world that wants to shape it into a definite personality. The etheric body, which always wants to move freely, can come back over the threshold in the wrong way, every moment wishing to be something or someone else, someone that may be quite the opposite of the firmly imprinted form of the physical body. To put it even more concretely: a person could be, say, a Scandinavian bank executive, thanks to his physical body, but because his etheric brings over into the physical world the impulse to free itself from physical constraints he may imagine himself to be the emperor of China. (Or, to use another example, a person may be—let us say—the president of the Theosophical Society, and if her etheric body has been loosened, she may imagine that she has been in the presence of the Director of the Universe.)

We see that the threshold that sharply divides the sense world from the super-sensible world must be respected absolutely; the soul must observe the requirements of each of the two worlds, adapting and conducting itself differently on this side and that. We have emphasized repeatedly that the peculiarities of the super-sensible world must not unlawfully be carried over when one comes back into the sense world. If I may put it more plainly, one has to understand how to conduct oneself in both worlds; one may not carry over into one world the method of observation that is right for the other.

First of all, then, we have to take note that the essential faculty for finding and feeling oneself in the elemental world is the faculty of transformation. But the human soul could never live permanently in this mobile element. The etheric body could as little remain permanently in a state of being able to transform itself as a human being in the physical world could remain continually awake. Only when we are awake can we observe the physical world; asleep, we do not perceive it. Nevertheless we have to allow the waking condition to alternate with the sleeping one. Something comparable to this is necessary in the elemental world. Just as little as it is right in the physical world to be continually awake, for life here must swing like a pendulum between waking and sleeping, so something similar is necessary for the life of the etheric body in the elemental world. There must be an opposite pole, as it were, something that works in the opposite direction to the faculty of transformation leading to perception in the spiritual world. What is it that makes the human being capable of transformation? It is his living in imagination, in mental images, the ability to make his ideas and thoughts so mobile that through his lively, flexible thinking he can dip down into other beings and happenings. For the opposite condition, comparable to sleep in the sense world, it is the will of the human being that must be developed and strengthened. For the faculty of transformation, thinking or imagination; for the opposite condition, the will.

To understand this, we should consider that in the physical sense world the human being is a self, an ego, an ‘I’. It is the physical body, as long as it is awake, that contributes what is necessary for this feeling of self. The forces of the physical body, when the human being sinks down into it, supply him with the power to feel himself an ego, an ‘I’. It is different in the elemental world. There the human being himself must achieve to some degree what the physical body achieves in the physical world. He can develop no feeling of self in the elemental world if he does not exert his will, if he himself does not do the willing. This, however, calls for overcoming something that is deeply rooted in us: our love of comfort and convenience. For the elemental world this self-willing is necessary; like the alternation of sleeping and waking In the physical world, the condition of ‘transforming oneself into other beings’ must give way to the feeling of selfstrengthened volition, just as we have become tired in the physical world and close our eyes, overcome by sleep, the moment comes in the elemental world when the etheric body feels, ‘I cannot go on continually changing; now I must shut out all the beings and happenings around me. I will have to thrust it all out of my field of vision and look away from it. I now must will myself and live absolutely and entirely within myself, ignoring the other beings and occurrences.’ This willing of self, excluding everything else, corresponds to sleep in the physical world.

We would be mistaken if we imagined that the alternation of transformation with strengthened ego feeling were regulated in the elemental world just as naturally as waking and sleeping are in the physical world. According to clairvoyant consciousness—and to this alone it is perceptible—it takes place at will, not passing so easily as waking here passes into sleep. After one has lived for a time in the element of metamorphosis, one feels the need within oneself to engage and use the other swing of the pendulum of elemental life. In a much more arbitrary way than with our waking and sleeping, the element of transforming oneself alternates with living within with its heightened feeling of self. Yes, our consciousness can even bring it about through its elasticity that in certain circumstances both conditions can be present at the same time: on the one hand, one transforms oneself to some degree and yet can hold together certain parts of the soul and rest within oneself. In the elemental world we can wake and sleep at the same time, something we should not try to do in the physical world if we have any concern for our soul life. We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you do not find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop—you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.

Thus we see that the habits of our soul life must change when we cross the threshold from the physical into the super-sensible world. If we were then to return to the physical world with the activity we have to bring to bear on the living thought entities of the elemental world and failed to develop in ourselves sound thinking with these passive thoughts, wishing rather to hold fast to the conditions of the other world, our thoughts would continually run away from us; then hurrying after them, we woud become a slave to our thoughts.

When a person enters the elemental world with clairvoyant soul and develops his faculty of metamorphosis, he delves into it with his inner life, transforming himself according to the kind of entity he is confronting. What is his experience when he does this? It is something we can call sympathy and antipathy. Out of soul depths these experiences seem to well up, presenting themselves to the soul that has become clairvoyant. Quite definite kinds of sympathy and antipathy appear as it transforms itself into this or that other being. When the person proceeds from one transformation to the next, he is continually aware of different sympathies or antipathies, just as in the physical world we recognize, characterize, describe the objects and living beings, in short, perceive them when the eye sees their colour or the ear hears their tones, so correspondingly in the spiritual world we would describe its beings in terms of particular sympathies and antipathies. Two things, however, should be noted. One is that in our usual way of speaking in the physical world we generally differentiate only between stronger and weaker degrees of sympathy and antipathy; in the elemental world the sympathies and antipathies differ from one another not only in degree but also in quality. There they vary, just as yellow here is quite different from red. As our colours are qualitatively different, so are the many varieties of sympathy and antipathy that we meet in the elemental world. In order therefore to describe this correctly, one may not merely say as one would do in the physical world—that in diving down and entering this particular entity one feels greater sympathy, while in immersing oneself in another entity one feels less sympathy. No, sympathies of all sorts and kinds can be found there.

The other point to note is this. Our usual natural attitude to sympathy and antipathy cannot be carried over into the elemental world. Here in this world we feel drawn to some people, repelled by others; we associate by choice with those who are sympathetic and wish to stay near them; we turn away from the things and people who are abhorrent and refuse to have anything to do with them. This cannot be the case in the elemental world, for there—if I may express it rather oddly—we will not find the sympathies sympathetic nor the antipathies antipathetic. This would resemble someone in the physical world saying, ‘I can stand only the blues and greens, not the red or yellow colours. I simply have to run away from red and yellow!’ If a being of the elemental world is antipathetic, it means that it has a distinct characteristic of that world which must be described as antipathetic, and we have to deal with it just as we deal in the sense world with the colours blue and red—not permitting one to be more sympathetic to us than the other. Here we meet all the colours with a certain calmness because they convey what the things are; only when a person is a bit neurotic does he run away from certain colours, or when he is a bull and cannot bear the sight of red. Most of us accept all the colours with equanimity and in the same way we should be able to observe with the utmost calmness the qualities of sympathy and antipathy that belong to the elemental world. For this we must necessarily change the attitude of soul usual in the physical world, where it is attracted by sympathy and repelled by antipathy; it must become completely changed. There the inner mood or disposition corresponding to the feelings of sympathy and antipathy must be replaced with what we can call soul-quiet, spirit-peacefulness. With an inwardly resolute soul life filled with spirit calm, we must immerse ourselves in the entities and transform ourselves into them; then we will feel the qualities of these beings rising within our soul depths as sympathies and antipathies. Only when we can do this, with such an attitude toward sympathy and antipathy, will the soul, in its experiences, be capable of letting the sympathetic and antipathetic perception appear before it as images that are right and true. That is, only then are we capable not merely of feeling what the perception of sympathies and antipathies is but of really experiencing our own particular self, transformed into another being, suddenly rising up as one or another colour-picture or as one or another tone-picture of the elemental world.

You can also learn how sympathies and antipathies play a part in regard to the experience of the soul in the spiritual world if you will look with a certain amount of inner understanding at the chapter of my book Theosophy that describes the soul world. You will see there that the soul world is actually constructed of sympathies and antipathies. From my description you will have been able to learn that what we know as thinking in the physical sense world is really only the external shadowy imprint, called up by the physical body, of the thinking that, lying in occult depths, can be called a true living force. As soon as we enter the elemental world and move with our etheric body, thoughts become—one can say—denser, more alive, more independent, more true to their own nature. What we experience as thought in the physical body relates to this truer element of thinking as a shadow on the wall relates to the objects casting it. As a matter of fact, it is the shadow of the elemental thought-life thrown into the physical sense world through the instrumentality of the physical body. When we think, our thinking lies more or less in the shadow of thought beings. Here clairvoyant spiritual knowledge throws new light on the true nature of thinking. No philosophy, no external science, however ingenious, can determine anything of the real nature of thinking; only a knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness can recognize what it is.

The same thing holds good with the nature of our willing. The will must grow stronger, for in the elemental world things are not so obliging that the ego feeling is provided for us as it is through the forces of the physical body. There we ourselves have to will the feeling of ego; we have to find out what it means for our soul to be entirely filled with the consciousness, ‘I will myself’; we have to experience something of the greatest significance: that when we are not strong enough to bring forth the real act of will, ‘I will myself’, and not just the thought of it, at that moment we will feel ourselves falling unconscious as though in a faint. If we do not hold ourselves together in the elemental world, we will fall into a kind of faint. There we look into the true nature of the will, again something that cannot be discovered by external science or philosophy but only by the clairvoyant consciousness. What we call the will in the physical world is a shadowy image of the strong, living will of the elemental world, which grows and develops so that it can maintain the self out of its own volition without the support of external forces.We can say that everything in that world, when we grow accustomed to it, becomes self-willed.

Above all, when we have left the physical body and our etheric body has the elemental world as its environment, it is through the innate character of the etheric body that the drive to transform ourselves awakens. We wish to immerse ourselves in the other beings. However, just as in our waking state by day the need for sleep arises, so in the elemental world there arises in turn the need to be alone, to shut out everything into which we could transform ourselves. Then again, when we have felt alone for a while and developed the strong feeling of will, ‘I will myself’, there comes what may be called a terrible feeling of isolation, of being forsaken, which evokes the longing to awaken out of this state, of only willing oneself, to the faculty of transformation again. While we rest in physical sleep, other forces take care that we wake up; we do not have to attend to it ourselves. In the elemental world when we are in the sleeping condition of only willing ourselves, it is through the demand of feeling forsaken that we are impelled to put ourselves into the state of transformation, that is, of wanting to awaken.

From all this, you see how different are the conditions of experiencing oneself in the elemental world, of perceiving oneself there, from those of the physical world. You can judge therefore how necessary it is, again and again, to take care that the clairvoyant consciousness, passing back and forth from one world to the other, adapts itself correctly to the requirements of each world and does not carry over, on crossing the threshold, the usages of one into the other. The strengthening and invigorating of the life of soul consequently belongs to the preparation we have often described as necessary for the experience of super-sensible worlds.

What must above all become strong and forceful are the soul experiences we can call the eminently moral ones. These imprint themselves as soul dispositions in firmness of character and inner resolute calm. Inner courage and firmness of character must most especially be developed, for through weakness of character we cripple the whole life of soul, which would then come powerless into the elemental world, this we must avoid if we hope to have a true and correct experience there. No one who is really earnest about gaining knowledge in the higher worlds will therefore fail to give weight to the strengthening of the moral forces among all the other forces that help the soul enter those worlds. One of the most shameful errors is foisted on humanity when someone takes it on himself to say that clairvoyance should be acquired without paying attention to strengthening the moral life. It must be stressed once and for all that what I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as the development of the lotus flowers that crystallize in the spirit body of a student/clairvoyant may indeed take place without attention to supportive moral strength, but certainly ought not to do so.

The lotus flowers must be there if a person wants to have the faculty of transformation. That faculty comes into existence when the flowers unfold their petals in a motion away from the human being, in order to grasp the spiritual world and adhere to it. Whatever a person develops as the ability to transform himself is expressed for the clairvoyant vision in the unfolding of the lotus flowers. Whatever he can acquire of a strengthened ego-feeling becomes inner firmness; we can call it an elementary backbone. Both of these must be correspondingly developed: the lotus flowers so that one can transform oneself, and an elementary backbone so that one can unfold a strengthened ego in the elemental world.

As mentioned in an earlier lecture, what develops in a spiritual way can lead to a high order of virtues in the spiritual world. But if this is allowed to stream down into the sense world, it can bring about the most terrible vices. It is the same with the lotus flowers and elemental backbone. By practising certain methods it is also possible to awaken the lotus flowers and backbone without aiming for moral firmness—but this no conscientious clairvoyant would recommend. It is not merely a question of attaining something or other in the higher worlds, but of knowing what is involved. At the moment we pass over the threshold into the spiritual world we approach the luciferic and ahrimanic beings, of whom we have already spoken; here we meet them in quite a different way from any confrontation we might have in the physical world. We will have the remarkable experience that as soon as we cross the threshold, that is, as soon as we have developed the lotus flowers and a backbone, we will see the luciferic powers coming towards us with the intention of seizing the lotus flowers. They stretch their tentacles out towards our lotus flowers; we must have developed in the right way so that we use the lotus flowers to grasp and understand the spiritual events and so that they are not themselves grasped by the luciferic powers. It is possible to prevent their being seized by these powers only by ascending into the spiritual world with firmly established moral forces.

I have already mentioned that in the physical sense world the ahrimanic forces approach us more from outside, the luciferic more from within the soul. In the spiritual world it is just the opposite: the luciferic beings come from outside and try to lay hold of the lotus flowers, whereas the ahrimanic beings come from within and settle themselves tenaciously within the elementary backbone. If we have risen into the spiritual world without the support of morality, the ahrimanic and luciferic powers form an extraordinary alliance with each other. If we have come into the higher worlds filled with ambition, vanity, pride or with the desire for power, Ahriman and Lucifer will succeed in forming a partnership with each other. I will use a picture for what they do, but this Picture corresponds to the actual situation and you will understand that what I am indicating really takes place. Ahriman and Lucifer form an alliance; together they bind the petals of the lotus flowers to the elementary backbone. When all the petals are fastened to the backbone, the human being is tied up in himself, fettered within himself through his strongly developed lotus flowers and backbone. The results of this will be the onset of egoism and love of deception to an extent that would be impossible were he to remain normally in the physical world. Thus we see what can happen if clairvoyant consciousness is not developed in the right way: the alliance of Ahriman and Lucifer whereby the petals of the lotus flowers are fastened onto the elementary backbone, fettering a person within himself by means of his own elemental or etheric capacities. These are the things we must know if we wish to penetrate with open eyes and with understanding into the actual spiritual world.

My dear Friends,

I am sorry these explanations have had to be so improvised and brief, so that they scarcely go beyond mere aphorisms. It is inevitable. All I can do during these days is to give you a few points of view, with the intention of continuing when I am here again, so that in time these explanations may be rounded off, to give you something more complete. Tomorrow I will give a few concluding aspects, also enabling us to throw some light on the educational use of scientific knowledge. Now to prepare for tomorrow, I must today draw your attention to the development of electrical discoveries, beginning no doubt with things that are well-known to you from your school days. This will enable us, in tomorrow's lecture, to gain a more comprehensive view of Physics as a whole.

You know the elementary phenomena of electricity. A rod of glass, or it may be of resin, is made to develop a certain force by rubbing it with some material. The rod becomes, as we say, electrified; it will attract small bodies such as bits of paper. You know too what emerged from a more detailed observation of these phenomena. The forces proceeding from the glass rod, and from the rod of resin or sealing-wax, prove to be diverse. We can rub either rod, so that it gets electrified and will attract bits of paper. If the electrical permeation, brought about with the use of the glass rod, is of one kind, with the resinous rod it proves to be opposite in kind. Using the qualitative descriptions which these phenomena suggest, one speaks of vitreous and resinous electricities respectively; speaking more generally one calls them “positive” and “negative”. The vitreous is then the positive, the resinous the negative.

Now the peculiar thing is that positive electricity always induces and brings negative toward itself in some way. You know the phenomenon from the so-called Leyden Jar. This is a vessel with an electrifiable coating on the outside. Then comes an insulating layer (the substance of the vessel). Inside, there is another coating, connected with a metal rod, ending perhaps in a metallic knob (Figure IXa). If you electrify a metal rod and impart the electricity to the one coating, so that this coating will then evince the characteristic phenomena, say, of positive electricity, the other coating thereby becomes electrified negatively. Then, as you know, you can connect the one coating, imbued with positive, and the other, imbued with negative electricity, so as to bring about a connection of the electrical forces, positive and negative, with one another. You have to make connection so that the one electricity can be conducted out here, where it confronts the other. They confront each other with a certain tension, which they seek to balance out. A spark leaps across from the one to the other. We see how the electrical forces, when thus confronting one another, are in a certain tension, striving to resolve it. No doubt you have often witnessed the experiment.

Here is the Leyden Jar,—but we shall also need a two-pronged conductor to discharge it with. I will now charge it. The charge is not yet strong enough. You see the leaves repelling one another just a little. If we charged this sufficiently, the positive electricity would so induce the negative that if we brought them near enough together with a metallic discharger we should cause a spark to fly across the gap. Now you are also aware that this kind of electrification is called frictional electricity, since the force, whatever it may be, is brought about by friction. And—here again, I am presumably still recalling what you already know—it was only at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries that they discovered, in addition to this “frictional electricity”, what is called “contact electricity”, thus opening up to modern Physics a domain which has become notably fruitful in the materialistic evolution of this science.

I need only remind you of the main principles. Galvani observed the leg of a frog which was in touch with metal plates and began twitching. He had discovered something of very great significance. He had found two things at once, truth to tell,—two things that should really be distinguished from one-another and are not yet quite properly distinguished, unhappily for Science, to this day. Galvani had discovered what Volta, a little later, was able to describe simply as “contact electricity”, namely the fact that when diverse metals are in contact, and their contact is also mediated by the proper liquids, an interaction arises—an interaction which can find expression in the form of an electric current from the one metal to the other. We have then the electric current, taking place to all appearances purely within the inorganic realm. But we have something else as well, if once again we turn attention to the discovery made by Galvani. We have what may in some sense be described as “physiological electricity”. It is a force of tension which is really always there between muscle and nerve and which can be awakened when electric currents are passed through them. So that in fact, that which Galvani had observed contained two things. One of them can be reproduced by purely inorganic methods, making electric currents by means of different metals with the help of liquids. The other thing which he observed is there in every organism and appears prominently in the electric fishes and certain other creatures. It is a state of tension between muscle and nerve, which, when it finds release, becomes to all appearances very like flowing electricity and its effects. It was then these discoveries which led upon the one hand to the great triumphs in materialistic science, and on the other hand provided the foundations for the immense and epoch-making technical developments which followed.

Now the fact is, the 19th century was chiefly filled with the idea that we must somehow find a single, abstract, unitary principle at the foundation of all the so-called “forces of Nature”. It was in this direction, as I said before that they interpreted what Julius Robert Mayer, the brilliant Heilbronn doctor had discovered. You will remember how we demonstrated it the other day. By mechanical force we turned a flywheel; this was attached to an apparatus whereby a mass of water was brought into inner mechanical activity. The water thereby became warmer, as we were able to shew. The effect produced—the development of warmth—may truly be attributed to the mechanical work that was done. All this was so developed and interpreted in course of time that they applied it to the most manifold phenomena of Nature,—nor was it difficult to do so within certain limits. One could release chemical forces and see how warmth arose in the process. Again, reversing the experiment which we have just described, warmth could be used in such a way as to evoke mechanical work,—as in the steam-engine and in a multitude of variations.

It was especially this so-called transformation of Nature's forces on which they riveted attention. They were encouraged to do this by what began in Julius Robert Mayer's work and then developed ever further. For it proves possible to calculate, down to the actual figures, how much warmth is needed to produce a given, measurable amount of work; and vice-versa, how much mechanical work is needed to produce a given, measurable amount of warmth or heat. So doing, they imagined—though to begin with surely there is no cause to think of it in this way—that the mechanical work, which we expended for example in making these vanes rotate in the water, has actually been transformed into the warmth. Again, they assumed that when warmth is applied in the steam-engine, this warmth is actually transformed into the mechanical work that emerges. The meditations of physicists during the 19th century kept taking this direction: they were always looking for the kinship between the diverse forces of Nature so-called,—trying to discover kinships which were to prove at last that some abstract, everywhere equal principle is at the bottom of them all, diverse and manifold as they appear. These tendencies were crowned to some extent when near the end of the century Heinrich Hertz, a physicist of some genius, discovered the so-called electric waves—here once again it was waves! It certainly seemed to justify the idea that the electricity that spreads through space is in some way akin to the light that spreads through space,—the latter too being already conceived at that time as a wave-movement in the ether.

That “electricity”—notably in the form of current electricity—cannot be grasped so simply with the help of primitive mechanical ideas, but makes it necessary to give our Physics a somewhat wider and more qualitative aspect,—this might already have been gathered from the existence of induction currents as they are called. Only to indicate it roughly: the flow of an electric current along a wire will cause a current to arise in a neighbouring wire, by the mere proximity of the one wire to the other. Electricity is thus able to take effect across space,—so we may somehow express it. Now Hertz made this very interesting discovery:—he found that the electrical influences or agencies do in fact spread out in space in a way quite akin to the spreading of waves, or to what could be imagined as such. He found for instance that if you generate an electric spark, much in the way we should be doing here, developing the necessary tension, you can produce the following result. Suppose we had a spark jumping across this gap. Then at some other point in space we could put two such “inductors”, as we may call them, opposite and at a suitable distance from one-another, and a spark would jump across here too.

This, after all, is a phenomenon not unlike what you would have if here for instance—Figure IXb—were a source of light and here a mirror. A cylinder of light is reflected, this is then gathered up again by a second mirror, and an image arises here. We may then say, the light spreads out in space and takes effect at a distance. In like manner. Hertz could now say that electricity spreads out and the effect of it is perceptible at a distance. Thus in his own conception and that of other scientists he had achieved pretty fair proof that with electricity something like a wave-movement is spreading out through space,—analogous to the way one generally imagines wave-movements to spread out. Even as light spreads out through space and takes effect at a distance, unfolding as it were, becoming manifest where it encounters other bodies, so too can the electric waves spread out, becoming manifest—taking effect once more—at a distance. You know how wireless telegraphy is based on this.

The favourite idea of 19th century physicists was once again fulfilled to some extent. For sound and light, they were imagining wave-trains, sequences of waves. Also for warmth as it spreads outward into space, they had begun to imagine wave-movements, since the phenomena of warmth are in fact similar in some respects. Now they could think the same of electricity; the waves had only to be imagined long by comparison. It seemed like incontrovertible proof that the way of thinking of 19th century Physics had been right.

Nevertheless, Hertz's experiments proved to be more like a closing chapter of the old. What happens in any sphere of life, can only properly be judged within that sphere. We have been undergoing social revolutions. They seem like great and shattering events in social life since we are looking rather intently in their direction. Look then at what has happened in Physics during the 1890's and the first fifteen years, say, of our century; you must admit that a revolution has here been going on, far greater in its domain than the external revolution in the social realm. It is no more nor less than that in Physics the old concepts are undergoing complete dissolution; only the physicists are still reluctant to admit it. Hertz's discoveries were still the twilight of the old, tending as they did to establish the old wave-theories even more firmly. What afterwards ensued, and was to some extent already on the way in his time, was to be revolutionary.

I refer now to those experiments where an electric current, which you can generate of course and lead to where you want it, is conducted through a glass tube from which the air has to a certain extent been pumped out, evacuated. The electric current, therefore, is made to pass through air of very high dilution. High tension is engendered in the tubes which you here see. In effect, the terminals from which the electricity will discharge into the tube are put far apart—as far as the length of the tube will allow. There is a pointed terminal at either end, one where the positive electricity will discharge (i.e. the positive pole) at the one end, so too the negative at the other. Between these points the electricity discharges; the coloured line which you are seeing is the path taken by the electricity. Thus we may say: What otherwise goes through the wires, appears in the form in which you see it here when it goes through the highly attenuated air. It becomes even more intense when the vacuum is higher. Look how a kind of movement is taking place from the one side and the other,—how the phenomenon gets modified. The electricity which otherwise flows through the wire: along a portion of its path we have been able, as it were, so to treat it that in its interplay with other factors it does at last reveal, to some extent, its inner essence. It shews itself, such as it is; it can no longer hide in the wire! Observe the green light on the glass; that is fluorescent light. I am sorry I cannot go into these phenomena in greater detail, but I should not get where I want to in this course if I did not go through them thus quickly. You see what is there going through the tube,—you see it in a highly dispersed condition in the highly attenuated air inside the tube.

Now the phenomena which thus appeared in tubes containing highly attenuated air or gas, called for more detailed study, in which many scientists engaged,—and among these was Crookes. Further experiments had to be made on the phenomena in these evacuated tubes, to get to know their conditions and reactions. Certain experiments, due among others to Crookes, bore witness to a very interesting fact. Now that they had at last exposed it—if I may so express myself—the inner character of electricity, which here revealed itself, proved to be very different from what they thought of light for instance being propagated in the form of wave-movements through the ether. What here revealed itself was clearly not propagated in that way. Whatever it is that is shooting through these tubes is in fact endowed with remarkable properties, strangely reminiscent of the properties of downright matter. Suppose you have a magnet or electromagnet. (I must again presume your knowledge of these things; I cannot go into them all from the beginning.) You can attract material objects with the magnet. Now the body of light that is going through this tube—this modified form, therefore, of electricity—has the same property. It too can be attracted by the electromagnet. Thus it behaves, in relation to a magnet, just as matter would behave. The magnetic field will modify what is here shooting through the tube.

Experiments of this kind led Crookes and others to the idea that what is there in the tube is not to be described as a wave-movement, propagated after the manner of the old wave-theories. Instead, they now imagined material particles to be shooting through the space inside the tube; these, as material particles, are then attracted by the magnetic force. Crookes therefore called that which is shot across there from pole to pole, (or howsoever we may describe it; something is there, demanding our consideration),—Crookes called it “radiant matter”. As a result of the extreme attenuation, he imagined, the matter that is left inside the tube has reached a state no longer merely gaseous but beyond the gaseous condition. He thinks of it as radiant matter—matter, the several particles of which are raying through space like the minutest specks of dust or spray, the single particles of which, when charged electrically, will shoot through space in this way. These particles themselves are then attracted by the electromagnetic force. Such was his line of thought: the very fact that they can thus be attracted shews that we have before us a last attenuated remnant of real matter, not a mere movement like the old-fashioned ether-movements.

It was the radiations (or what appeared as such) from the negative electric pole, known as the cathode, which lent themselves especially to these experiments. They called them “cathode rays”. Herewith the first breach had, so to speak, been made in the old physical conceptions. The process in these Hittorf tubes (Hittorf had been the first to make them, then came Geissler) was evidently due to something of a material kind—though in a very finely-divided condition—shooting through space. Not that they thereby knew what it was; in any case they did not pretend to know what so-called “matter” is. But the phenomena indicated that this was something somehow identifiable with matter,—of a material nature.

Crookes therefore was convinced that this was a kind of material spray, showering through space. The old wave-theory was shaken. However, fresh experiments now came to light, which in their turn seemed inconsistent with Crookes's theory. Lenard in 1893 succeeded in diverting the so-called rays that issue from this pole and carrying them outward. He inserted a thin wall of aluminium and led the rays out through this. The question arose: can material particles go through a material wall without more ado? So then the question had to be raised all over again:

Is it really material particles showering through space,—or is it something quite different after all? In course of time the physicists began to realize that it was neither the one nor the other: neither of the old conceptions—that of ether-waves, or that of matter—would suffice us here. The Hittorf tubes were enabling them, as it were, to pursue the electricity itself along its hidden paths. They had naturally hoped to find waves, but they found none. So they consoled themselves with the idea that it was matter shooting through space. This too now proved untenable.

At last they came to the conclusion which was in fact emerging from many and varied experiments, only a few characteristic examples of which I have been able to pick out. In effect, they said: It isn't waves, nor is it simply a fine spray of matter. It is flowing electricity itself; electricity as such is on the move. Electricity itself is flowing along here, but in its movement and in relation to other things—say, to a magnet—it shews some properties like those of matter. Shoot a material cannonball through the air and let it pass a magnet,—it will naturally be diverted So too is electricity. This is in favour of its being of a material nature. On the other hand, in going through a plate of aluminium without more ado, it shews that it isn't just matter. Matter would surely make a hole in going through other matter. So then they said: This is a stream of electricity as such. And now this flowing electricity shewed very strange phenomena. A clear direction was indeed laid out for further study, but in pursuing this direction they had the strangest experiences. Presently they found that streams were also going out from the other pole,—coming to meet the cathode rays. The other pole is called the anode; from it they now obtained the rays known as “canal rays”. In such a tube, they now imagined there to be two different kinds of ray, going in opposite directions.

One of the most interesting things was discovered in the 1890's by Roentgen ... From the cathode rays he produced a modified form of rays, now known as Roentgen rays or X-rays. They have the effect of electrifying certain bodies, and also shew characteristic reactions with magnetic and electric forces. Other discoveries followed. You know the Roentgen rays have the property of going through bodies without producing a perceptible disturbance; they go through flesh and bone in different ways and have thus proved of great importance to Anatomy and Physiology.

Now a phenomenon arose, making it necessary to think still further. The cathode rays or their modifications, when they impinge on glass or other bodies, call forth a kind of fluorescence; the materials become luminous under their influence. Evidently, said the scientists, the rays must here be undergoing further modification. So they were dealing already with many different kinds of rays. Those that first issued directly from the negative pole, proved to be modifiable by a number of other factors. They now looked round for bodies that should call forth such modifications in a very high degree—bodies that should especially transform the rays into some other form, e.g. into fluorescent rays. In pursuit of these researches it was presently discovered that there are bodies—uranium salts for example—which do not have to be irradiated at all, but under certain conditions will emit rays in their turn, quite of their own accord. It is their own inherent property to emit such rays. Prominent among these bodies were the kind that contain radium, as it is called.

Very strange properties these bodies have. They ray-out certain lines of force—so to describe it—which can be dealt with in a remarkable way. Say that we have a radium-containing body here, in a little vessel made of lead; we can examine the radiation with a magnet. We then find one part of the radiation separating off, being deflected pretty strongly in this direction by the magnet, so that it takes this form (Figure IXc). Another part stays unmoved, going straight on in this direction, while yet another is deflected in the opposite direction. The radiation, then, contains three elements. They no longer had names enough for all the different kinds! They therefore called the rays that will here be deflected towards the right, ß-rays; those that go straight on, γ-rays; and those are deflected in the opposite direction, α-rays.

Bringing a magnet near to the radiating body, studying these deflections and making certain computations, from the deflection one may now deduce the velocity of the radiation. The interesting fact emerges that the ß-rays have a velocity, say about nine-tenths the velocity of light, while the velocity of the α-rays is about one-tenth the velocity of light. We have therefore these explosions of force, if we may so describe them, which can be separated-out and analyzed and then reveal very striking differences of velocity.

Now I remind you how at the outset of these lectures we endeavoured in a purely spiritual way to understand the formula, v = s/t. We said that the real thing in space is the velocity; it is velocity which justifies us in saying that a thing is real. Here now you see what is exploding as it were, forth from the radiating body, characterized above all by the varying intensity and interplay of the velocities which it contains. Think what it signifies: in the same cylinder of force which is here raying forth, there is one element that wants to move nine times as fast as the other. One shooting force, tending to remain behind, makes itself felt as against the other that tends to go nine times as quickly. Now please pay heed a little to what the anthroposophists alone, we must suppose, have hitherto the right not to regard as sheer madness! Often and often, when speaking of the greatest activities in the Universe which we can comprehend, we had to speak of differences in velocity as the most essential thing. What is it brings about the most important things that play into the life of present time? It is the different velocities with which the normal, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic spiritual activities work into one-another. It is that differences of velocity are there in the great spiritual streams to which the web and woof of the world is subjected. The scientific pathway which has opened out in the most recent times is compelling even Physics—though, to begin with, unconsciously—to go into differences of velocity in a way very similar to the way Spiritual Science had to do for the great all-embracing agencies of Cosmic Evolution.

Now we have not yet exhausted all that rays forth from this radium-body. The effects shew that there is also a raying-forth of the material itself. But the material thus emanated proves to be radium no longer. It presently reveals itself to be helium for instance—an altogether different substance. Thus we no longer have the conservation,—we have the metamorphosis of matter.

The phenomena to which I have been introducing you, all of them take their course in what may be described as the electrical domain. Moreover, all of them have one property in common. Their relation to ourselves is fundamentally different from that of the phenomena of sound or light for example, or even the phenomena of warmth. In light and sound and warmth we ourselves are swimming, so to speak, as was described in former lectures. The same cannot be said so simply of our relation to the electrical phenomena. We do not perceive electricity as a specific quality in the way we perceive light, for instance. Even when electricity is at last obliged to reveal itself, we perceive it by means of a phenomenon of light. This led to people's saying, what they have kept repeating: “There is no sense-organ for electricity in man.” The light has built for itself in man the eye—a sense-organ with which to see it. So has the sound, the ear. For warmth too, a kind of warmth-organ is built into man. For electricity, they say, there is nothing analogous. We perceive electricity indirectly.

We do, no doubt; but that is all that can be said of it till you go forward to the more penetrating form of Science which we are here at least inaugurating. In effect, when we expose ourselves to light, we swim in the element of light in such a way that we ourselves partake in it with our conscious life, or at least partially so. So do we in the case of warmth and in that of sound or tone. The same cannot be said of electricity. But now I ask you to remember what I have very often explained: as human beings we are in fact dual beings. That is however to put it crudely, for we are really threefold beings: beings of Thought, of Feeling and of Will. Moreover, as I have shewn again and again, it is only in our Thinking that we are really awake, whilst in our feelings we are dreaming and in our processes of will we are asleep—asleep even in the midst of waking life. We do not experience our processes of will directly. Where the essential Will is living, we are fast asleep. And now remember too, what has been pointed out during these lectures. Wherever in the formulae of Physics we write m for mass, we are in fact going beyond mere arithmetic—mere movement, space and time. We are including what is no longer purely geometrical or kinematical, and as I pointed out, this also corresponds to the transition of our consciousness into the state of sleep. We must be fully clear that this is so. Consider then this memberment of the human being; consider it with fully open mind, and you will then admit: Our experience of light, sound and warmth belongs—to a high degree at least, if not entirely—to the field which we comprise and comprehend with our sensory and thinking life. Above all is this true of the phenomena of light. An open-minded study of the human being shews that all these things are akin to our conscious faculties of soul. On the other hand, the moment we go on to the essential qualities of mass and matter, we are approaching what is akin to those forces which develop in us when we are sleeping. And we are going in precisely the same direction when we descend from the realm of light and sound and warmth into the realm of the electrical phenomena.

We have no direct experience of the phenomena of our own Will; all we are able to experience in consciousness is our thoughts about them. Likewise we have no direct experience of the electrical phenomena of Nature. We only experience what they deliver, what they send upward, to speak, into the realms of light and sound and warmth etc. For we are here crossing the same boundary as to the outer world, which we are crossing in ourselves when we descend from our thinking and idea-forming, conscious life into our life of Will. All that is light, and sound, and warmth, is then akin to our conscious life, while all that goes on in the realms of electricity and magnetism is akin—intimately akin—to our unconscious life of Will. Moreover the occurrence of physiological electricity in certain lower animals is but the symptom—becoming manifest somewhere in Nature—of a quite universal phenomenon which remains elsewhere unnoticed. Namely, wherever Will is working through the metabolism, there is working something very similar to the external phenomena of electricity and magnetism.

When in the many complicated ways—which we have only gone through in the barest outline in today's lecture—when in these complicated ways we go down into the realm of electrical phenomena, we are in fact descending into the very same realm into which we must descend whenever we come up against the simple element of mass. What are we doing then when we study electricity and magnetism? We are then studying matter, in all reality. It is into matter itself that you are descending when you study electricity and magnetism. And what an English philosopher has recently been saying is quite true—very true indeed. Formerly, he says, we tried to imagine in all kinds of ways, how electricity is based on matter. Now on the contrary we must assume, what we believe to be matter, to be in fact no more than flowing electricity. We used to think of matter as composed of atoms; now we must think of the electrons, moving through space and having properties like those we formerly attributed to matter.

In fact our scientists have taken the first step—they only do not yet admit it—towards the overcoming of matter. Moreover they have taken the first step towards the recognition of the fact that when in Nature we pass on from the phenomena of light, sound and warmth of those of electricity, we are descending—in the realm of Nature—into phenomena which are related to the former ones as is the Will in us to the life of Thought. This is the gist and conclusion of our studies for today, which I would fain impress upon your minds. After all, my main purpose in these lectures is to tell you what you will not find in the text-books. The text-book knowledge I may none the less bring forward, is only given as a foundation for the other.

I think that it may after all be necessary to introduce into our medical and biological study what we might term an inquiry into tho real origins of pathological conditions. Of late there has been a cumulative tendency to disregard the origins proper, and to fix attention on superficial appearances and events. And with this superficiality is bound up the habit in current medicine and pathology of beginning the description of a disease by stating what bacillus caused the disease by invading the human organism. Of course it is very easy to refute arguments and objections against the invasion of micro-organisms, for the simple reason that we no longer need to point out that these micro-organisms really exist. And since they have different characteristics in different diseases, it is again quite comprehensible that stress is laid on these differences, and specific diseases linked with specific types of micro-organisms.

Now an obvious error enters this whole point of view, namely, that attention is diverted from the primary element. Suppose that in the course of an illness, bacteria appear in considerable numbers in some bodily area. It is only natural that they should cause symptoms such as are the result of any foreign body in the organism, and that from the presence of these bacteria all manner of inflammations arise. But if all these results are ascribed wholly to the action of the bacteria, attention is actually directed only to the activity of these micro-organisms. Attention is thus drawn away from the true origin of the disease, for whenever lower organisms find suitable soil in the human frame for development, that soil has been made suitable by the real primary causes of the disease. And attention must be directed to the region of these primary causes. We must therefore return to the paths of thought we have already traversed and for a short time give them our attention.

Consider the stratum of plant life that covers the earth's soil, i.e. the entire content of vegetation. We must understand that this flora which grows outwards from the soil towards cosmic space, is not only sent out from the earth, but is also drawn outwards by forces that are in continuous operation, and as essential to the growth of plants as the forces working from the earth itself. There is a constant interaction between the forces passing into the plant from the earth, and those acting on the plant from the cosmos outside the earth. What is the essential factor in this interaction that permeates our whole environment? Should these cosmic forces attain their full expression and take full possession of the plant, and should the planets not ensure that these forces can withdraw again, then the plant in its growth from the stalk to the blossom and seed would have the perpetual tendency to become animal. There is a tendency towards animalisation. But this tendency, which expresses Cosmic forces passing into the plant, is counteracted and balanced by the opposite tendency towards suppression of the plant-nature in mineralisation.

I would thus emphasise the essential nature of plants: it holds the balance between the tendency to salification, to the deposit of mineral constituents within the vegetable substance, i.e., to mineralisation; and on the other hand to self-ignition, to animalisation. This is what is perpetually at work in external nature.

This same counteraction, however, goes on, interiorised and centralised, in the human organism itself. By virtue of its lungs the human organism is a genuine earth in miniature, and all the pulmonary processes work downwards in the same manner as the forces of earth work upwards into the plant, passing from the earth to the plant's organisation. All that comes to meet the inner metabolism of the lungs, from the breathing and heart activity, has the same method of operation as the external cosmic forces.

Now there is a special requirement of the human organism: all that is focused from out of the organism, in the heart's action, must be held apart from the forces that organise and concentrate themselves in the internal metabolism of the lungs. These two sets of activities may only interact through the barrier—if I may so express myself—of an etheric or even an astral diaphragm. They must be kept separate from one another. And so we come to the question: Does this diaphragm—and I only use the term in order to give a picture—really exist? Is there such a diaphragm, which prevents the activities of head, throat and lungs from blending with those of abdomen and breast, except through the external rhythm of the breath? Yes—there is such a diaphragm, and it is nothing less than the rhythm of breathing itself. Here you find the attunement of the upper with the lower sphere in man. What is termed rhythmic activity in man, the rhythmic pulsation, whose external physical manifestation is in the rhythm of the breathing, continues into the etheric and astral activities and holds apart the telluric forces of the upper human being, which centre in the lung, and the cosmic forces of the lower human being. The latter forces, with their expression ultimately in the heart, work upwards from below, just as cosmically they work from the periphery inwards, towards the earth's centre.

Suppose now that this rhythm is disturbed and does not work normally. In that case, the symbolic diaphragm, to which I have referred—which has no physical existence, but which results from the interplay of the rhythms—is not in order. Then there may ensue a process analogous to excessive action of the earth on vegetation. If the earth's saline action on plants became excessive, the plants would become too mineral. And the result is that the etheric plant inserted into the lung, that grows out of the lung so to speak as the physical plant springs from the soil becomes the cause of pulmonary sclerosis. Thus we find that the trend of the plant towards mineralisation may become excessive even in the organism of man.

And the contrary trend towards animalisation may also exceed normality. When this happens, a region is created in the upper portion of the organism which should not exist. In this region the affected organs are embedded as in an etheric sphere, and this favours the multiplication of what should not multiply in our organism, namely the minute forms of life between animal and plant. We need not trouble to inquire whence they come. We need only interest ourselves in the factors which create a favourable sphere of life for them. This favourable sphere of life should not exist for them. It should not arise as a specially enclosed sphere; it should permeate and operate throughout the whole organism. If it does so, it sustains the life of the whole organism. If it works only within a small enclosure, it becomes the appropriate medium for the presence and multiplication of little plant-animals, of microscopic forms of life, which can be detected in much—if not in all—that causes illness in man's upper organic sphere.

So in going back to the rhythmic activity and its disturbance we must trace the emergence of a special area within the organism, and thus solve the riddle of the working of bacilli in it. But unless we go back to the spiritual causes, we shall not reach the solution of the riddle.

Just the same processes as work on the life of plants—in the external sphere of the earth that is to say—are also at work in the same region on the external life of animals and of man. These forces here (see Diagram 27—orange) at work on animal and man, come from the extra-telluric cosmos, and are met and opposed by forces that come from within. The latter, coming from the interior of the earth, are localised in man in certain organs of the upper bodily sphere; whilst the forces that pour on to the earth from outside are localised in man in organs belonging to the lower bodily sphere, again, if I may so express myself, a dividing wall must be set up between the two forms of action. The regulation of this separation is normally achieved through the activity of the spleen, and in this connection we again find rhythm active in the human organism, but a rhythm different from that of respiration. The rhythm of the breath is in short pulsations, and it continues throughout life; it must be in order, if illnesses of the upper sphere—or such diseases as can affect that upper sphere only—are not to develop. Bear in mind that there may be illnesses which affect the upper sphere yet have their original in the lower—for the process of digestion extends both above and below. This we must clearly realise. We cannot picture man divided diagrammatically into compartments, but the various members interpenetrating one another. At the same time, there must be a barrier between that which works from above as though coming from the earth, and that which works upwards from below, as though from celestial space. For we do indeed send the forces of our lower sphere out against those of our upper, and there must be a regulated rhythm for each human individuality between these two sets of forces; a rhythm manifesting in a proper alternation between waking and sleeping. Every time we wake, there is in a certain way the one beat of this rhythm, and every time we sleep, there is the other beat. And this rhythm of waking-sleeping waking-sleeping, is intersected with other minor rhythmic oscillations which are due to the fact that in the waking state, we wake in our upper sphere but sleep in our lower. There is a continuous rhythmic systole interplay, between the upper and lower man, which is only captured so to speak in major rhythms through the alternation of waking and sleeping.

Now suppose that the barrier set up by this rhythm between the upper and lower man is broken through. What happens in such a case? As a general rule, what happens is that the activities of the upper sphere break through into the lower. This means that an etheric breach takes place. The forces that should only act etherically in the upper organic sphere of man penetrate downward into the lower. It is a breaking through of more subtle forces; but by this fact a special area is created in the abdomen, which should not be localised there, but should permeate the whole body. The result is a species of poisoning, a toxication of the lower abdominal regions. The functions proper to the lower abdominal sphere can no longer be adequately performed under this intrusion of the upper sphere. Moreover, this new sphere creates a favourable condition for lower organisms of the type intermediate between animal and plant. So you may sum up as follows: Through the downward escape of forces from the upper sphere, something is provoked in man that becomes abdominal typhus. The creation of this atmosphere provides, as a by-product, the suitable soil for the typhus bacilli.

In this way you have a clear-cut distinction between what is primary and what is secondary. You will realise that it is necessary to distinguish between the original causes of such illness and the secondary phenomena, which are simply inflammatory and due to the proliferation of legions of intestinal fauna—or flora, especially in the smaller intestine. All the physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither in the smaller intestine represent the reaction to this escape of the upper activities of the human organism into the lower activities. These physical manifestations include the working of the bacilli whether vegetable or animal—we need not trouble ourselves with their precise origin—for they could neither vegetate nor “animalise” if an atmosphere had not been suitably prepared. All this is a result, a secondary phenomenon. And the curative effect must be sought not in the treatment of the secondary manifestations but of the primary. We shall discuss this later, for it is only possible to speak about these things if one is in a position to trace their true causes. This is hardly possible within the boundaries of the official medicine of today for current medicine excludes a point of view that passes from the material process to that of the spirit. But beneath and behind all material existence, there is spirit. And you will easily envisage the symptomatology of typhus abdominalis if you keep in mind what has just been put before you. Remember that this particular disease is very often accompanied by disturbances of consciousness. The symptoms of pulmonary catarrh appear because the upper sphere is deprived of what emerges in the lower. In the same way, the organs mediating consciousness in the upper human sphere, can no longer work properly if what should be mediator to their activity has broken through into the lower sphere. If you once grasp this primary causation, you will have the whole picture of typhus abdominalis before you.

The whole series of external and apparently independent symptoms, which otherwise are only perceived from without, so to speak, become so clearly evident that they might almost be painted in their inner relationships. And in certain circumstances, the human consciousness may be so strongly impressed that there arises an urge to objectify prophetically this picture before it portrays itself in the organism. In such cases, a person will feel compelled to depict or symbolise the elements of which his upper organic sphere is deprived, by painting blue spots of colour on the wall, and to represent the elements of which the lower sphere is deprived by spots of red. In the case of an individual with a belief that his vocation is art, as distinct from tailoring or shoemaking, but with little knowledge of the craftsmanship of painting, you may find that if at the same time he is robust enough to repress the constantly arising tendency to diseases of the lower abdomen, these diseased conditions are exteriorised and “thrown off” on wall or canvas, instead of developing internally. The paintings of the expressionist school supply examples of this remarkable activity. Examine much of what comes to light in these paintings, in the red and yellow colors; there you can trace the painter's condition in the lower abdominal sphere. And in the blue and blue-violet parts you can find a clue to his condition in the upper bodily sphere, in the lungs, and all that moves rhythmically upwards towards the head. If you study such things carefully, they will lead you to discover a remarkable harmony between the general type of action of a given individual and his internal organisation. You will be in a position to form a certain intuitive impression of the functional conditions of his body from his way of living and behaving. For as a matter of fact it is wholly erroneous to believe that the soul activity of a man in the external world, through actions and behaviour, is only connected with his nervous system. It is connected with the whole man, and is an image of the whole man. We can grasp intuitively in children how man's intellectual part behaves and how it strives towards the later age. We only have to consider, e.g., how somebody may be doomed in later life to cope with all the embarrassments of an arrested growth; and how in childhood he showed plainly that the forces that did not allow him to complete his growth make him clumsy and rough in his behaviour. From the way in which the child behaves, as for instance whether he puts his feet lightly on the ground or strongly, you may form an intuitive picture of the way of its growth. Numerous other manifestations suggest that the whole gesture and behaviour of the individual is nothing else than the interplay of internal organic parts, transferred into movement.

It would indeed seem wise to include these subjects in the medical curriculum. When a medical student is about twenty the most favourable conditions obtain for this kind of knowledge. In the thirties one loses this gift; it becomes harder to enter into these things. But it is possible to educate and train oneself to enter into such intuitive knowledge. In spite of the devastating routine of the intermediate and later states of our university education, it is possible (by means of a return to the forces active in childhood) to train this insight into the human being. But if organised medical study attached due weight to the more intimate aspects of plastic anatomy and physiology, it would be of immense assistance in the whole treatment of mankind.

So too must those diseases which can appear as epidemics be studied according to their primary causes. To take an example: in all persons with a disposition to disturbance and damage of the head and breast rhythms, which find their crudest expression in the respiratory rhythm, there is a tendency to be much affected by a certain atmospheric and extra-telluric conditions. Others again, in whom the respiratory system is congenitally sound, are able to resist such influences. Of course we must make allowances for additional influences, and other factors of a complicated kind, but this brief and bare outline may make the principle understood.

Let us suppose a winter season, in which there is a powerful influence on the solar activity—and note please, not the operation of light, but the solar action—through the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A constellation of that description in the winter operates quite differently from the unimpeded action of the Sun, when Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are at a greater distance. In such a winter the atmospheric conditions will differ from the norm; and there will be a remarkable influence (on persons constitutionally so disposed) upon the rhythmical activity between chest and head, of which the most conspicuous is the act of breathing itself. We may state, however, that such cosmic conditions considerably strengthen the inclination to make this rhythm regular in people who have been born from sound conditions, and who are inwardly robust—though their external appearance may be very slight and delicate. In the case of such persons the respiratory rhythm is very well regulated and so also is the whole rhythm between chest and head. Such a stabilised inner rhythm is not easily disturbed from outside; serious injuries are required to affect it. But on persons with an irregularity of this rhythm, the external influences referred to work very strongly to disturb still more the already disturbed rhythm. Thus everyone with this disposition and resident in those parts of the earth under the special influence of the constellation in question, become liable to the complaints grouped as influenza and grippe. These conditions and factors must be in operation, in order to create favourable soil for such ailments as influenza.

The following example is of a more complex nature. The whole rhythmic activity within man is a unity; although the one continuous rhythm which has its crudest expression in breathing, and that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm in breathing, that other and wider rhythm determined by the alternation of sleep and waking, form a separate unity in themselves. It may come to pass that owing to a weakness of the upper rhythm (between chest and head), the lower rhythm becomes relatively too pronounced. It follows that the upper process, already enfeebled and out of gear, is made more so by the powerful impact of the lower, which is focused in the splenetic function, as well as in others of which we shall treat later. If this lower rhythm is working too strongly upwards, it causes a tendency to a kind of hypertrophy of the upper digestive process, with all its sequelæ. Again a most favourable sphere is created for certain lower organisms. There ensue phenomena of inflammation and paralysis in the upper organisation, even rudiments of organic malformation, new organic formations; in short we have the picture of diphtheria. Diphtheria might be termed a sort of break through from below upwards, an inversion of the typhus breaking through from above downwards, and its main origin is as I have described. Of course, in all these conditions, the age of the individual must be taken into account.

You need only keep in mind that during childhood the whole interaction of the upper and lower spheres, and of the rhythmic action that links the two, must differ widely from that of later life; e.g., during childhood there must be much more powerful and pronounced action of the upper human being upon the lower than in maturity. Actually the child “thinks” very much more than does the adult. This may sound strange but it is true; only, the thoughts of the child are not conscious thoughts, they are absorbed into the organism, manifesting in its growth and formation. Especially in the earliest years of life, thinking activity is used mainly for the formative processes of the growing body. Then there comes a stage wherein the body does not need to use up so much of the formative forces, and thus they are, as it were, dammed back, and become the fundamental forces of memory. So memory emerges only when the organism requires less formative force for itself. The forces which supply the organic foundation of memory are the transformed growth forces and formative forces plastically at work at the beginning of life. Everything is fundamentally based on metamorphosis. That which we observe as a spiritual element, is only the re-spiritualisation of what worked in a more bodily way when the spirit incarnated into the material. So it can be understood that there must be strong defensive forces in the child to cope with particular processes of the lower abdominal sphere. This sphere is the special scene of action for cosmic-celestial forces, that is to say, for extra-terrestrial forces.

Now turn again to the regions outside the earth; let us assume that a special constellation results from the position of Sun and planets, which gives rise to a powerful reflection in the lower abdominal organs of man. What will be the result? It will be relatively unimportant in adults, for in them the upper and lower organic rhythms have reached a certain equipoise. But in children there will of necessity be a vigorous resistance to the cosmic conditions that seek a mirror and replica in the abdominal parts. So if the cosmic configurations act forcibly on the lower abdominal sphere in the child, the upper bodily sphere must defend itself with all its powers. From the convulsive exertion of powers which should not be used so much in the immature upper organic sphere, Cerebral Meningitis can result—Meningitis cerebro-spinalis epidemica. Here, then, you have an illustrative example of the influx of such diseases into man from extra-human nature. If you keep these origins in the background of your thought, as it were, you will be able to reconstruct the whole clinical picture of meningitis, including the typical rigidity of the muscles in the nape of the neck. For this strain and effort of the upper organic sphere in the child, is bound to lead to inflammatory states of the upper organs in the membranes of the brain and spinal cord, and these acute inflammations provoke the other symptoms typical of meningitis.

We need above all to sharpen our perception for seeing and as a whole both as regards the interactions of his organic parts, and as regards the interactions of human functions with the external world, and even with the extra-terrestrial world. These hints are not meant to increase the meddling with horoscopes and so on, which I consider the greatest nonsense in the form it takes today; but we should realise the origin of the forces in question; such knowledge is necessary for the healing art. It is not so important to be able to trace this or that condition to the quartile aspect of such and such stars—that knowledge can sometimes help towards a cosmic diagnosis, but the main matter for us is to be able to cure. So tomorrow I propose to pass from our present inquiry to the consideration of substances in external nature that are defensive, i.e., contain defensive powers against the extra-telluric influences pouring into the human organism. It would seem necessary that this distinction between the upper and lower organic spheres in man should receive recognition in medicine, for I suggest that such recognition would promote greater co-operation within the profession in the interests of human health. Too often, a physician loses interest in man as a whole, if he specialises in one direction. Far be it from me to suggest that physicians should not specialise; the manifold technique evolved in the course of time, necessitates a certain amount of specialisation. But if specialisation has occurred, then, as an equipoise, the socialisation, the co-operation of the specialising experts should steadily increase.

This becomes obvious if we study a condition on which a question has been put: Pyorrhœa alveolaris, the inflammation of the alveolar rim. If pyorrhœa develops, it is not solely owing to some local cause, as many suppose, but it is due to a tendency of the whole organism, a tendency localised only in the mouth and teeth. If it were accepted as part of the professional routine that dentists who observed the onset of this condition were somehow to suggest to physicians that the patient suffering from this particular alveolar inflammation was very probably also liable to diabetes, much good could be done. For that same process—already outlined in these lectures—which manifests as diabetes, is also (while it remains localised in the upper sphere and amenable to treatment) the germ of Pyorrhœa alveolaris. It is far too little realised that the lower sphere can, as it were, seize or invade the upper; and in consequence there is either an impoverishment or an undue augmentation of the one sphere or of the other. If the inflammatory tendency is first manifest in the upper sphere, one form of disease ensues; if first manifest in the lower sphere, there ensues its polar opposite. So very much depends on this knowledge.

It will therefore also be readily understood that the whole etheric body, containing the forces of growth in man, must work differently in childhood and in maturity. In childhood, the etheric body must intervene much more in the physical functions; and must have organs as its direct points of attack, so to say. It is especially necessary in the foetal stage that the etheric body should have these points for direct working upon the physical; but the need persists in early childhood, when there is not only organic formation, but growth as well, and during growth the plastic activity must be exercised. Hence the need for organs such as the thymus gland, for instance (and even to some extent the thyroid as well); these have their greatest task in childhood, and then enter on a phase of regression, and if too much seized upon by the physical forces, degenerate during the retrogressive phase. During childhood, there must of necessity be a powerful chemism at work within the body, which is replaced, at a later stage, by the working of warmth. One might say that during the life of the individual, man passes through something of which the prismatic spectrum is a symbol: inasmuch as we observe the more strongly chemical extremity (blue and violet), and then the luminous portion (green and yellow), finally the other extremity, connected with heat (red). For man experiences constitutional changes of this nature and in this direction. (see Diagram 27). During childhood, the human being is more dependent on activities working chemically, then passes on to those which act through light, and those acting through warmth. The organs which enable the etheric body to promote the chemism in the physical body, are such glands as the thyroid and thymus. On the activity of these organs (to which in a certain sense the chemism is bound) there also depends the particular individual complexion and skin colouring—that is to say, on the etheric activity behind the physical organs. Among the functional offices of the adrenal glands is the determination of the complexion, and if the adrenals degenerate there must be changes in pigmentation in consequence. As an example you need only consider what is known as Addison's Disease, arising from degenerative conditions in the adrenal glands—when the whole skin becomes brown. All this strongly indicates a certain chemism in the human organism. It is at work more especially in the foetus, while the action of light has more importance after approximately fourteen years of age. And then appear the activities connected with the life of warmth. Here we have a most significant indication and gauge for the whole course of human life. The period of childhood, and before birth, especially the latter, the foetal stage, represents a certain predominance of the salt-process; early middle life is predominantly a mercurial process and later life and old age, in the relation referred to, represent a kind of sulphur process. This implies that in childhood most attention should be paid to the salt-process, in middle life to the mercurial, and in later life to the sulphuric or phosphoric, and these require regulation. Here again, if you realise this triad of organising chemism—organised light process, organised mercurial process and organised saline process at work in the human organism, you will gain a conception of the manner in which the whole of life works on man, organising him. The manner of life—not only the diet, but the whole habit and action of life—operates chemically on the child, impinging strongly upon the organism; the even more strong light process has such a great influence on the very young, that it sows a seed that may even manifest in disorders of the soul. In youth, man is most sensitively receptive to all the impressions of the external world. Whether at this stage of life we encounter an external world formed regardless of reason and logic, or one which is formed according to reason and logic, has a great significance for the whole constitution of the soul in later life. We shall go further into this in the next lecture, passing from the pathological aspects just considered, to the therapeutic.

In turning our attention now to the study of remedies, we will also discuss the remedies we have already introduced. I have no interest, of course, in describing how the idea forms in me that this or that can be a remedy. Instead I want you to come to an insight into why this or that substance can be used as a remedy. I would like the perception of the remedial value of a substance to be formed, as it were, in your own souls. Therefore I would like to direct the discussion today in such a way that we undertake a theoretical investigation of how one arrives at the view that something can be used as a remedy.

Of course it must be stated at the outset that an acquaintance with the main principles of an anthroposophical knowledge of the human being provides the basis for this. A correct interpretation of remedies can arise only if one is impelled from the ground up to conduct the whole investigation in an anthroposophical sense. Thus you will also see that what I have said in the last few days will flow into the theoretical investigations presented today.

Let us proceed from the fact that the interaction between the human being and his environment can be studied by investigating the plants. By first comprehending the processes in the plant world, one acquires a correct insight into the continuation of mineralizing processes into the inner aspects of the human being. In presenting this type of investigation, however, we must realize that something shaped out of the whole cosmos is at work in the entire process of plant formation—in the formation of roots, leaves, blossoms, seeds, and so on. This follows from everything we have studied in the last few days. This process that tends particularly to shaping the plants, even to shaping them inwardly, cannot be replaced by an artificial synthesis, by a chemical synthesis. At most, it can only be replaced in this way in very few cases. For example one must be clear about the following: In the roots of a plant we have to do with the part of the plant-forming process that is bound to the more-or-less inner forces of the earth's surface. Soul-spiritually, the human being is a being growing in a plant-like fashion from above downward. His head harbors many of the forces that interact with the forces of the earth itself. There is a deep kinship between that which shapes the root in plants and all the forces of the human head. Thus, when clear ideas need to be gained about the process that takes place in root formation in plants, it must always be realized that this process has a reciprocal relation to the human head.

Let us examine the root of gentian (gentiana lutea) as an example of how to explore such matters. Gentian is a plant in which the blossoming forces come to strong outward expression. Therefore in the root we will find forces that tend very strongly toward the blossoming element. In other words, the root's forces are somewhat weak, a great deal is expended in the direction of blossoming and leaf formation. Nevertheless, the whole form of the blossom shows that the root nature is still present very strongly. Thus we cannot count on gentian, as a matter of course, strongly affecting the activities in the human organization proceeding directly from the head, i.e., as outer physical effects. Rather we should expect gentian to act on what supports breathing from out of the head. Since effects in the organism always are polaric, we must imagine that especially the digestive organs begin to breathe very strongly in the way I explained yesterday if we administer gentian roots. This stimulates an active breathing activity in the stomach and intestines, but we must keep in mind what we have learned in these lectures regarding the necessity of first treating the plant substances if these are to stimulate this breathing activity. We must boil the roots, and administer the decoction.

Let us now turn to some external aspects of the plant. We notice that the gentian root has a bitter taste and a strong smell; thus it acts very strongly on the astral. We therefore have an effect on the astral nature in the digestive realm of the human being. Moreover, gentian root contains sugar. You will recall that I have frequently pointed out how the process of working through sugar in the human organization involves a strong stimulation of ego activity. I have said that you can study this even in external statistics. For example, Eastern Europeans and Russians, in whom the ego activity is somewhat withdrawn, use a very small quantity of sugar each year, whereas the statistics show a greater consumption of sugar the further West we go, i.e., among the English, in whom the ego develops an extraordinarily vigorous activity. Such things must certainly be taken into account if one wishes to gain knowledge in the world.

Gentian root is also rich in fatty oils. Fatty oils, when passing through digestion, have a strong effect on the lower breathing, since fatty oil intensifies the mobility, the inner mobility, of the stomach and intestinal organs. Therefore you can see how it is possible really to describe what is taking place in the human organism. One notices at once that the astral activity is stimulated and therefore that the breathing mobility of the stomach and intestinal tract is stimulated. One can therefore say that the intestines develop a greater activity and the stomach is strengthened. This whole effect is the result when the astral body is strengthened generally. The whole effect calls forth mineralizing processes, but only to the extent that these solidify the organs and make them stronger. This is the slight influence of the ego acting through the sugar. Thus if we use a decoction of gentian roots, we stimulate the activity of the astral body and, acting through the sugar content of the root, allow the ego to assist.

There is a danger, however, of the ego going too far. If the ego continues to work below like a whip, a reaction is set up polarically in the head, and one can observe that such patients suffer from headaches as a side-effect. Nevertheless, the effects I have mentioned are produced. We observe an intestinal activity that is essentially of an enhancing, stimulating character, and we will use such a remedy, either alone or in some combination, if we notice that an illness manifests in connection with loss of appetite or dyspepsia, and especially if there is a generally sluggish digestive activity. In this way the metabolism is inwardly stimulated and becomes more active. By this means we can therefore work against tendencies toward gout and rheumatic conditions. In addition, in applying gentian root we will have made appropriate use of something that has a mildly antipyretic effect. This is because the deficient intestinal activity induces a reaction in the upper human being, and the febrile activity proceeds from this. Thus if we strengthen the lower human being, creating a counterweight to the upper human being, we have introduced an antipyretic activity.

This is the approach we must take if we wish to come to concrete relationships of the outer world to what is within the human being. It is quite correct to draw attention to currents acting on the human being from outside. In this respect, a man like Rosenbach has made remarkably good preliminary studies. However, if we only speak about these currents in abstractions, we do not at first realize that what acts from outside emerges from concrete things. It emerges from the fact that such relationships prevail between the root-nature of the plant world, the forces that are active in the root nature, and these forces once they have entered the human being. In this way we grasp things that otherwise are only characterized abstractly as currents. Spiritual science is concerned with working out of concrete processes.

Let us study a most instructive plant from this standpoint—the clove [clove root] (geum urbanum). We will again take the root and prepare a decoction from it. It is extraordinarily interesting if you investigate the clove root and recall something of what was said about the gentian root. Of course we must again assume an interaction with the head forces, because we are dealing with the root. Now clove root has a tart taste, exceptionally tart. In clove root we have etheric oils, i.e., oils that we must assume act on those parts of the organism not situated close to or within the intestinal tract, like those we spoke of in discussing the root of the gentian. Rather we have more to do with what should take place in the stomach, or perhaps only in the esophagus. We must also take into account another most essential fact here, namely the starch present in the clove root. Therefore we must appeal to forces that work in a more intensive way than the forces that are necessary to digest sugar. To digest starch, the process has to begin earlier. The sugar has first to be produced. You see, one must really pursue the processes in detail.

The clove root also contains tannin, and this too we must take into consideration if we wish to investigate the remedial effect of anything. Tannin points to the fact that the starch is working more toward the physical, becoming something that cultivates that which opposes even tannin. In the case of the clove root, then, the whole effect must be ascribed more to the ego than to the astral body. We have here an intensification of the ego's activity. Because of this, we have to do with what takes place in the lower human organism. This effect is a complete polar opposite to the stimulation of the head that takes place through the ego. We have to do with what I would like to call the outer digestion, laying hold of substances while still in the stomach, before they have gone over into the intestinal activity. Every system extends through the entire human organism, and the part of the nerve-sense apparatus still present in the intestines and digestive organs is stimulated; we therefore have to do with a predominance of the ego's influence.

What is the consequence of this? First, we have in clove root a strong antipyretic force; second, by working on the earlier digestive processes we can affect those later on, i.e., the actual intestinal activity. We give the intestinal activity less to do. In this way we can combat diarrhea in particular, and also mucous discharges from the intestines, for these things are due to overburdening the inner digestive activity. Thus you see that these investigations lead to a perception of the way outer forces penetrate what is within the human being.

This study of roots is of special significance, so let us take another root, for example the the root of iris germanica. Here we will also prepare a decoction from the root. The iris shows us even by its outer manifestation that it works strongly on the ego. The repulsive smell and bitter taste of the root reveal at once that the ego here interacts strongly and physically with the outer world. In the iris root there is something that stimulates this physical activity very much, that is, tannic acid. We also find something else that works upon the ego activity: starches. Finally, we find something that, through its physical effect, has an influence wherever it is stimulated to do so; we have resins in the iris root. Through all this the ego is brought into an especially lively activity. This lively activity of the ego—this driving force of the ego—can be noticed first in the urine activity, where a purgative, diuretic effect appears. These are outward expressions of ego activity.

We can find the conditions treatable by this remedy if we simply ask, “What is the human organism suffering from when these things are not in order?” The answer is dropsy and similar conditions. In decoctions of iris root we therefore have something with which we should try to combat dropsy and similar edematous conditions.

In taking a step upward in our study of the plants, let us consider the green leafy parts of the plant. We will take a characteristic plant like marjoram (majorana origanum). We must realize, when we come to the leaf, that nature herself completes certain processes that we must first carry to completion in the roots. When we take the leaf therefore, it is not good to prepare a decoction directly. We need the finer forces of the leaf and can obtain these by preparing an infusion. The forces that we really need are made available through preparing the leaf in an infusion. Here again you can grasp what we are dealing with by means of the senses. The infusion of marjoram has the peculiar flavor that might be called the “warming” flavor. At the same time, it has a certain bitterness. Then you have the aromatic smell, the ethereal oil, that proves so clearly that here something is working outward. In addition, you have something that need only be added to intensify all this, but whose physical effect does not manifest as early as other products. This aspect does not appear in its physical effect until it has passed through the stomach and has reached the intestines. These are the various kinds of salts present in the leaf, especially in marjoram. You may therefore say that this leaf-infusion has a particularly strong effect on the breathing activity of the inner organs: it calls forth a certain breathing activity in the inner organs. This finds expression in the sweat-provoking effect of this infusion, i.e., the inner organic activity in the form of breathing is stimulated. It has a diaphoretic effect, and the reaction therefore strengthens the activity of the inner organs. With infusions of marjoram leaves, one can work on the one hand against upper respiratory congestions, rhinitis, etc. and on the other hand against uterine weaknesses.

All this will become clearer when we move on to the effect of blossoms. Let us look at this effect in an instance where the plant shows it with special clearness, for example, where many small blossoms are clustered together in an inflorescence, as in the elder (sambucus nigra) or lilac. Let us be quite clear that here the plant is penetrated by precisely those forces that have a great deal to do with the environment of the earth, that contain cosmic influences, cosmic radiations. From this we note that elder flowers also contain ethereal oils. We notice it particularly from the fact that these flowers contain sulfur. In these flowers we therefore have something from the mineral kingdom that proves especially effective if we wish to stimulate breathing, but now from the other side: to stimulate the actual breathing organization, whereas earlier we spoke of stimulating breathing in the digestive organs and organs near them, before the breathing of the actual respiratory organs intervened. When we use elder flowers in the form of an infusion we stimulate particularly the etheric activity of the human organism, and only by way of this etheric activity do we stimulate the activity of the astral body. It is especially the breathing in the upper, posterior organs that is stimulated, not so much the head organs as those belonging to the actual respiration. Of course, reactions such as purging and sweating naturally appear everywhere. Now, however, the organs of breathing are stimulated. The normal breathing activity is intensified and—because this has to have an effect on the blood—the blood circulation is stimulated from inside the human being.

We can immediately conclude from these observations that it is possible to work against catarrhs by such means, and also inhibited sweat-formation, hoarseness, and coughing. And, because the effect that before appeared directly, now appears polarically, we can also use this remedy in rheumatic conditions. It is always a question of determining what curative forces a remedy may contain from the way it acts.

Let us now consider situations in which it may be necessary to act especially upon the head organization. What is it that really depends on the head organization? Digestion, its polar opposite, depends on it. Indeed, the cruder digestive processes, the cause of so many serious illnesses, depend on the head organization. Hence we must realize that we can influence the head through the cruder digestive processes. If we want to support what takes place within the human being—thus having an effect on digestion—so that the substances stream up into the head and are therefore able to unfold their effect from there, we must naturally do everything we can to bring this about. Therefore, although we want first of all to introduce the plant substance to the inner part of the body, we must form it in such a way that it works into the head. We can observe such an effect especially when we make use of seeds. Seeds by their very nature are especially suitable to influence the cruder digestive processes. And by acting directly on the cruder digestive processes, they act on the head in calling forth reactions. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to promote the effect from the digestion to the head. Therefore it will be useful to make a very concentrated decoction of the seeds, if this agrees with the patient. We can study this especially well if we consider the effects of decoctions of caraway seeds. These contain ethereal oils, which act essentially upon the ego; wax, which has a very strong physical effect; and also resins, which also unfold strong effects in the physical. The powerful effect is also shown by the aromatic smell. In addition, this decoction contains levulose.

If we consider all this in connection with what we have studied in the last few days, we will see that it strengthens the activity of the ego to an extraordinary degree. It affects the nerve-sense activity concealed in the digestive organs. It works especially on this weak nerve-sense activity in the digestive organs—this activity extends throughout the digestive organs in a very faintly formed metamorphosis. The effect of such a decoction on the lower human being resembles what one might call a subconscious metamorphosis of our outer sense perception. We are stimulated to perceive with the digestive system what is developing as process there. Hence this remedy is very valuable when administered through an enema. When given by enema, it calls forth a process that must act on the nerve-sense activity. This is an outer administration of the finer forces of the caraway seeds, and in this way a kind of subconscious perception is evoked in the digestive organs. The lethargic tissue fluid is especially stimulated by this means. By thus introducing a process strengthening the nerve-sense activity, perception is driven much further into the human being. The patient becomes a perceiver in his digestive organs, and this works against the opposite pole that we find when an inner activity begins that can also be perceived—consisting, indeed, of inner perception—when our organism begins to express itself in eruption-like states. By our strong perception of our organism when it develops such an organic activity, so that we are actually perceiving ourselves, we dampen down such activity and therefore have a curative effect on it. Such an activity represents a perception from within outward, a nerve-sense activity similar to, though a metamorphosis of, outer perception. Thus we can work beneficially with this remedy in cases of stomach cramps, colicky conditions, and flatulence.

Yet another process is extremely interesting to observe. Picture vividly to yourselves the subconscious process developed in such a case. This subconscious activity is extraordinarily similar to the activity of outer sense perception, but it takes place within. Consider that the outer activity of perception and the reflex activity are connected in a certain way. Perceptions that appear subconsciously can call forth defensive movements immediately. Study this cooperation of perceptive activity and the reflex reaction against it, and carry this over to the inner activity of the tissue fluid. You carry out this outer perceptive activity in floating in the air, in a sense. Sketching this schematically, let this be the air in which we carry ourselves (see drawing, bright). It is permeated with light, etc. Outer perception (red) unfolds in this direction; the inner reaction (blue) unfolds in this direction. In every sense organ there is a cooperation between external action and inner reaction. If you want an outer, abstract picture of this process, you should not choose the one chosen by the modern materialistic view, namely, that of a centrifugal and a centripetal nerve activity. Such a view is no more intelligent than saying: when a rubber ball is pressed it recovers its former shape by means of another force, i.e., by the counterpart of the pressure itself. It is no more intelligent to speak of motor-nerves than to explain the elasticity of a rubber ball by ascribing to it some center within that pushes out what has been pushed in. What happens in both cases is really no more than the restitution of the original form; it is the reaction that sets in, requiring no special nerves, because the whole phenomenon—action and reaction—is embedded in the astrality and ego nature.

Now picture this whole process working by way of the etheric activity in the tissue fluid (see drawing, yellow). Of course, a sense process does not take place in the tissue fluid under normal conditions, but it can be evoked in the way I have just indicated. A kind of contracting tendency arises, a tendency to work in toward the organism, and I will sketch that in this way, just as I indicate here the action of perception. But this (see drawing, red) is a process that in a sense assaults the outwardly directed forces in the tissue fluid (violet). Here is the action, and this is the reaction. Thus one is inserting a sense process, a metamorphosis of the sense process, into the tissue fluid. It is extraordinarily interesting to observe this insertion of a metamorphosis of the outer sense process into the tissue fluid. Now we must search for something similar that takes place in normal life, that is, some condition in which a kind of metamorphosis of these sense processes within the human being, a densified sense process, arises in the tissue fluid. This takes place when a woman secretes milk. Here, in fact, we have a densified metamorphosis of the outer sense process transferred inward. Now, if this milk secretion is deficient when it is supposed to be there, we have every cause to intensify this densified internal sense process in the tissue fluid. We can evoke this process with a decoction of caraway seeds, thus supporting the secretion of milk.

I have presented these things as examples of the way the whole working and weaving of the human organism and its connection with the outer world can be considered. Consider precisely what I have said: that a decoction of caraway seeds contains resin and wax, i.e., something whose consistency evokes very strong physical effects. Resin and wax are thereby very similar to what makes an impression on me from outside, only inwardly densified. This seed also contains etheric oils and levulose. This is something that stimulates the reaction of the ego. Taking all this together, you have everything contained in the sense process: action from outside, and the reaction extending to the ego from within. If you now metamorphose this sense process by not creating a sense impression but transferring this interaction inward into the tissue fluid's system of forces, you then have what evokes an inner sense process in you. The secretion of milk is such a process. You will see how the entire organization can be understood in this way.

These are the matters you must study if you wish to consider the effects of the substances of the outer world within the body. For example, if you study the effect of metal-mineral remedies, you will readily understand what you have learned from the influence of the plant element, but you will also realize something else: that the mineral element has undergone a change in passing into the plant process and continuing its activity there. In this mineralizing and “vegetabilizing” process, a transformation of the mineral forces has taken place. Part of the healing process thus depends on the transformation of the mineral forces. Imagine we were to build a sanatorium in the country. Then we could surround it with fields and manure these fields with various mineral substances, creating a soil whose content is known to us. We can sow there various plants from which we will use the root, leaf, fruit, and so on. Thus we will have control of the process by which the plant transforms the mineral into a remedy. We can strengthen this process by growing the plants we have just discussed and treating them in the way I just mentioned. We want to do this at our Research Institute in Stuttgart, but this must still be arranged. One can go still further, however. One can take what has been obtained from the plant itself as a remedy and can use it as a kind of manure, thereby intensifying its force. In this way ordinary triturated preparations will be made much more effective, for nature herself, and the forces active in nature, are allowed to do some of the work of preparation.

Of course we have to be clear about the following: for example, how should a mineral-metallic remedy act in order to have an effect? Salts, which are really mineral remedies, produce effects more toward the inside of the human being. The most peripheral activities, however, are influenced by just those mineral-metallic substances that are most firm. Here we have a direction for research, but always on the basis of spiritual scientific knowledge, for otherwise our thoughts will split up and run in every possible wrong direction. The thoughts of spiritual science guide our thinking in the right direction. When we look at a metal, we know it can only be weakly taken hold of by the inner human organism. There the activity of the ego must be highly stimulated, for it is the ego that, in a sense, undermines and penetrates into the interior of the substance, shaping this for its own purposes and summoning it to ego activity in the organism. The ego can be strengthened in this activity by the astral body. Thus when we make use of metals or minerals, we must always see whether we are stimulating the ego activity or the astral activity that then works back on the ego, or whether we are stimulating the interaction between the astral and ego activity.

Such stimulation can be achieved, for example, in the following way: We prepare a metallic ointment and apply it, let us say, to a skin eruption; we thereby stimulate the peripheral ego activity. This ego activity is similarly stimulated by a reaction within the human being. This arises within the human being first in an intensified nerve-sense activity in some organ. This leads from there to an intensified breathing activity, passing over to the astral. The effect is that those forces within the body then work against the skin eruption. We appeal to the whole body to work against the skin eruption.

On this basis the various metallic and mineral substances can be studied in a similar way. In lead, for instance, you have a substance that acts with extraordinary strength on nerve-sense activity, and then, dependent on this, on the inner breathing activity, including the inner breathing activity that takes place in the outer, peripheral organs, for example. If we use lead, either as an ointment or internally, we can achieve a good deal when it is necessary to evoke what I have just described. When we give it internally, however, we must realize that we are evoking the reaction of the upper human being by means of the activity stimulated in the digestive organs. If we apply carefully prepared lead ointment to the upper human being, we act directly on this upper system. In patients suffering from weaknesses in the head region—i.e., in which the upper human being develops neither a proper nerve-sense activity nor a proper breathing activity—we will be able to achieve a great deal with such lead cures, provided we do not go too far and cause lead-poisoning.

We must take into account something else with everything we may gather from the presentations in the last few days and in the previous course. It is most important to be aware of a great contrast here. Those substances tending more toward silver have a polar relationship to those tending more toward lead. In regard to these matters our classifications of minerals are most deficient. These defects are fundamental, for a reasonable classification of minerals would have to take into account these family relationships of the metals. We should see lead and its compounds at one pole, and at the other pole silver, while gold, for example, would be in the middle, and the other metals arrayed appropriately. I call silver and lead opposites because silver acts directly on the metabolic- limb system, especially on its periphery, on the part of the metabolic-limb organism that lies nearer the surface. Lead acts, likewise, on the part of the head organism lying closer to the surface. Thus silver stimulates the nerve-sense activity in the metabolic-limb system and from there calls forth the activity that permeates the whole body and that stimulates the breathing in everything that yesterday I called a metamorphosis of the central heart organ.

On the other hand, what proceeds from lead works on the nerve-sense activity of the head and on the breathing activity stimulated from there. Hence it stimulates the head formation, lung formation, and liver formation, that is, the organs belonging to the other path of metamorphosis. These organs in a sense surround the other organization of the human being, just as the lungs surround the heart, showing us the archetypal form of that which, as the “circulatory human being,” is in a certain respect the whole human being. We have the lungs surrounding the heart, the lungs embracing, as it were, the circulatory being with the respiratory being. Likewise, when we study the human being in regard to his brain formation, lung formation, and liver formation, that is, the whole upper posterior human being, we have a more all-encompassing breathing embracing all the blood vessels together with the heart. The digestive organization and also the sexual organization are surrounded in this way by the upper posterior human being. The human organization is such that the upper posterior human being surrounds the lower anterior human being. We must thoroughly understand the mutual relationships and differentiations of the upper posterior human being and the lower anterior human being, which comes to expression primarily in the interrelationship of heart and lungs; we must study this properly, the rhythmic interplay involved in this, the nerve-sense activity lying above and to the back, and the opposite pole in the metabolic-limb processes lying below and to the front. We must study the other manifestations of the upper and lower human being, and only then will we have the whole human being before us. Only in this way can we then master his other processes as well.

From this starting point, we will move on tomorrow to a special discussion of our individual remedies. In doing so, we will naturally be led to deal with some of the questions that have been posed here.

In the last lecture¹ I drew your attention to the necessity, as a point of departure in teaching, for a certain artistic shaping, to engage the whole being, above all, the “will-life.” From the discussions which we have pursued you will see at once why it is important, and you will see, further, that teaching must be managed so as always to take into account that man contains a dead, a dying element, which must be transmuted into something living. When we approach nature and other realms of the world in a merely contemplative attitude, by mental pictures, we are in the line of death; but when we approach nature and other world-beings with our will, we take part in a process of vivification. As educators, then, we shall have the task of continually vivifying dead substance, to protect from total expiration that quality in man which gravitates towards death; even, in a sense, to fertilize it with what vivifying element the will can give rise to. For this reason we must not be afraid of beginning our work with the child with a certain artistic form of teaching.

Now everything which approaches man artistically falls into two streams—the stream of the plastically formative and the stream of the musically poetical. These two domains of art, that of the plastically formative and the musically poetical, are really poles apart, although precisely through their polar antithesis they are well able to be reconciled in a higher synthesis, in a higher unity. You will be familiar, of course, with the fact that this duality of the artistic element comes to light even in racial terms during the course of the evolution of the universe. You need but remember certain writings by Heinrich Heine for this duality to be evident—he showed that what proceeded from the Greek people, or was related to them, that is what grew racially from their inner nature, is pre-eminently disposed towards the plastically formative shaping of the world, whereas all that sprang from the Jewish element is especially disposed to the really musical element in the world. You find, then, these two streams racially distributed, and anyone who is sensitive to these things will very easily be able to trace them in the history of art. Naturally there are continually arising aspirations, justified aspirations, to unite the musical with the plastically formative. But they can only really be completely united in a perfectly developed Eurhythmy, where the musical and the visible can become one—naturally not yet, for we are only at the beginning, but in the aims and ultimate achievement of Eurhythmy. It must, therefore, be remembered that the whole harmonious nature of man contains a plastically formative element towards which the will-impulse in man inclines. How, then, can we properly describe this human talent for becoming plastically creative?

Were we to be purely intellectual beings, were we only to observe the world through conceptions, we should gradually become walking corpses. We should, in actual fact, make the impression here on earth of dying beings. Only through the urge we feel within us to animate plastically-creatively with the imagination what is dying in concepts, do we save ourselves from this dying. You must beware of wanting to reduce everything to unity in an abstract way, if you wish to be true educators. Now you must not say: “We are not to cultivate the death-giving element in man, we are to avoid cultivating the conceptual, the thought-world in the human being.” In the psychic spiritual realm that would result in the same error as if doctors, turning into great pedagogues, were to contemplate the course of civilization and to say: “The bones represent the side of death in man; let us, then, protect man from this dying element, let us try to keep his bones alive, soft.” The opinion of such doctors would end in giving everyone rickets. It always implies a false principle to proceed to say, as many theosophists and anthroposophists like to do, if there is any talk of Ahriman and Lucifer² and their influences on human evolution; they say these things harm human nature, therefore we must beware of them. But that would be equivalent to excluding man from all the elements which should form his constitution. In the same way, we cannot prevent the cultivation of the conceptual element; we must cultivate it, but at the same time we must not neglect to approach human nature with the plastically formative. In this way there results the desired unity. It does not result from the extinction of the one element, but from the cultivation of both, side by side. In this respect people to-day cannot think in terms of unity. For this reason, too, they do not understand the Threefold State.³ In social life the only right solution is for the spiritual life, economic life, and the life of rights, to stand side by side and for their union to take place of itself, creatively, and not through human abstract organization. Only imagine what it would mean if people were to say: “As the head is a unity, and the rest of the body, too, the human body is really an anomaly; we ought to evolve the head from the rest of the body and allow it to move freely in the world!” We only act in accordance with nature when we allow the whole to grow out of one-sided aspects.

The question, then, is to develop the one isolated aspect, conceptual education. Then the other isolated aspect, the plastically formative, animates what is developed in the mere concept. The question here is to elevate these things into consciousness without losing our naivety, for this age always annihilates consciousness. There is no need to sacrifice our naivety if we fashion things concretely, not abstractedly. For instance, it would be a very good thing from all points of view to start as early as possible with the plastically formative, by letting the child live in the world of colour, by saturating oneself as a teacher with the instructions given by Goethe in the didactic part of his “Theory of Colour” (Farbenlehre). What is the basis of the didactic part of Goethe's Farbenlehre?⁴ The secret is that Goethe always imbues each separate colour with a feeling-shade. He emphasizes, for instance, the rousing quality of red, he emphasizes not only what the eye sees, but what the soul experiences in red. In the same way he lays stress upon the tranquillity, the self-absorption, experienced by the soul in blue. It is possible, without jarring on the child's naivety, to introduce him into the world of colour so that the feeling-shades of the world of colour issue forth in living experiences. (If, incidentally, the child gets itself at first thoroughly grubby it will be a good step in his education if he is trained to get himself less grubby.)

Begin as early as possible to bring the child in touch with colours, and in so doing it is a good idea to apply different colours to a coloured background from those you apply to a white surface; and try to awaken such experiences in the child as can only arise from a spiritual scientific understanding of the world of colour.⁵ If you work as I have done with a few friends at the smaller cupola of the Dornach building,⁶ you acquire a living relation to colour. You then discover if, for instance, you are painting with blue, that the blue colour itself possesses the power to portray inwardness. We can say, then, that in painting an angel impelled by his own inwardness you will feel the spontaneous urge to keep to blue, because the shading of blue, the light and dark of blue, produces in the soul the feeling of movement pertaining to the nature of the soul. A yellow-reddish colour produces in the soul the experience of lustre, giving a manifestation towards the external. If, then, the impression is aggressive, if we are encountered by a warning apparition, if the angel has something to say to us, if he desires to speak to us from his background, we express this by shades of yellow and red. In an elementary fashion we can invite children to understand this living inwardness of colours.

Then we ourselves must be very profoundly convinced that mere drawing is something untrue. The truest thing is the experience of colour; less true is the experience of light and shade, and the least true is drawing. Drawing as such already approaches that abstract element present in nature as a process of dying. We ought really only to draw with the consciousness that we are essentially drawing dead substance. With colours we should paint with the consciousness that we are evoking the living element from what is dead. What, after all, is the horizontal line? When we simply take a pencil and draw a horizontal line, we do an abstract, a dead thing, something untrue to nature, which always has two streams: the dead and the living. We extract the one trend and affirm that it is nature. But if I say: “I see green and I see blue, which are different from each other,” the horizontal line emerges from the contiguity of the colours and I express a truth. In this way you will gradually realize that the form of nature really arises from colour, that therefore the function of drawing is abstraction. We ought to produce already in the growing child a proper feeling for these things, because they vivify his whole soul's being and bring it into a right relation with the outside world. Our civilization is notoriously sick for lack of a right relation to the outside world. There is absolutely no need, I wish to remind you, to return to one-sided-ness again in teaching. For instance, it will be quite wise gradually to pass from the purely abstract art which people produce in their delight in beauty, to concrete art, to the arts and crafts, for humanity to-day sorely needs truly artistic productions in the general conditions of civilization. We have in actual fact reduced ourselves in the course of the nineteenth century to making furniture to please the eye, for example to making a chair for the eye, whereas its inherent character should be to be felt when it is sat on. To that end it should be fashioned; we should feel the chair; it must not only be beautiful; its nature must be to be sat on. The whole fusion of the sense of feeling with the chair, and even the cultivated sense of feeling—with the way in which the arms are formed on the chair, etc.—should be expressed in the chair, in our desire to find support in the chair. If, therefore, we were to introduce into school-life teaching in handiwork and manual skill with a decided technical-industrial bias, we should render the school a great service. For just imagine what a great cultural problem the individual who means well to humanity is faced with to-day, when he sees how, for instance, abstractions are on the point of inundating modern civilization: there will no longer be even a residue of beauty in civilization; this will be exclusively utilitarian! And even if people dream of beauty, they will have no sense of the compulsion we are under to emphasize more emphatically than ever the necessity for beauty, because of the socializing of life towards which we gravitate. This has to be realized.

There must, therefore, be no reservations with the plastically formative in teaching. But just as little must there be reservations in the true experience of that dynamic element which is expressed in architecture. It is very easy here to fall into the error of introducing the child too early to this experience. But, in a sense, even this must happen; I had addressed a few words to the children of Münich who were on holiday at Dornach, eighty of them, and who had had twelve lessons in Eurhythmy from Frau Kisseleff,⁷ and who were able to demonstrate what they had learnt to a group of their staff and Dornach anthroposophists. The children had their hearts in their work, and at the end of the complete Eurhythmy performance, which also included demonstrations by our Dornach Eurhythmists, the children came up and said: “Did you like our performance too?” They had the real urge to perform as well. It was a beautiful thing. Now at the request of the people who had arranged the whole entertainment, I had to say a few words to the children. It was the evening before the children were to be taken back again to Münich and district. I expressly said: “I am saying something to you now which you do not understand yet. You will only understand it later. But notice if you hear the word ‘Soul’ in future, for you cannot understand it yet!” This drawing of the child's attention to something which he does not yet understand, which must first mature, is extraordinarily important. And the principle is false which is so much to the fore in these days: We are only to impart to the child what he can at the moment understand—this principle makes education a dead thing and takes away its living element. For education is only living when what has been assimilated is cherished for a time deep in the soul, and then, after a while, is recalled to the surface. This is very important in education from seven to fifteen years of age; in these years a great deal can be introduced tenderly into the child's soul which can only be understood later. I beg you to feel no scruple at teaching beyond the child's age and appealing to something which he can only understand later. The contrary principle has introduced a deadening element into our pedagogy. But the child must know that he has to wait. It is one of the feelings we can promote within the child that he must be ready to wait for a perfect understanding until much later. For this reason it was not at all a bad idea in olden times to make the children simply learn 1 × 1 = 1, 2 × 2 = 4, 3 × 3 = 9, etc., instead of their learning it, as they do to-day, from the calculating machine. This principle of forcing back the child's comprehension must be overthrown. It can naturally only be done with tact, for we must not depart too far from what the child can love, but he can absorb a great deal of material, purely on the teacher's authority, for which understanding only dawns later.

If you introduce the plastically formative element to the child in this way you will see that you can vivify much of what is sapping away life.

The musical element, which lives in the human being from birth onwards, and which—as I have already said—expresses itself particularly in the child's third and fourth years in a gift for dancing, is essentially an element of will, potent with life. But, extraordinary as it may sound, it is true that it contains as it plays its part in the child, an excessive life, a benumbing life, a life directed against consciousness. The child's development is very easily brought by a profoundly musical experience into a certain degree of reduced consciousness. One must say, therefore: “The educational value of music must consist in a constant inter-harmonizing of the Dionysian element springing up in the human being, with the Apollonian. While the death-giving element must be vivified by the plastically formative element, a supremely living power in music must be partially subdued and toned down so that it does not affect the human being too profoundly.” This is the feeling with which we should introduce music to children.

Now this is the position: Karma develops human nature with a bias towards one side or the other. This is particularly noticeable in music. But I want to point out that here it is over-emphasized. We should not insist too much: This is a musical child; this one is not musical. Certainly the fact is there, but to draw from it the conclusion that the unmusical child must be kept apart from all music and only the musical children must be given a musical education, is thoroughly false; even the most unmusical children should be included in any musical activity. It is right without a doubt, from the point of view of producing music more and more, only to encourage the really musical children to appear in public. But even the unmusical children should be there, developing sensitiveness, for you will notice that even in the unmusical child there is a trace of the musical disposition which is only very deep down and which loving assistance brings to the surface. That should never be neglected, for it is far truer than we imagine that, in Shakespeare's words

The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; ...
Let no such man be trusted.

The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I.

That is a very fundamental truth. Nothing should therefore be left undone to bring in touch with music the children considered at first to be unmusical.

But of the greatest importance, particularly socially, will be the cultivation of music in an elementary way, so that, without any paralysing theory, the children are taught from the elementary facts of music. The children should get a clear idea of the elements of music, of harmonies and melodies, etc., from the application of the most elementary facts, from aural analysis of melodies and harmonies, so that in music we proceed to build up the structure of the artistic element as a whole in just the same elementary way as we do with the plastically formative element, where we begin with the isolated detail. This will help to mitigate the persistent intrusion into music of dilettantism; although it, must not for a moment be denied that even musical dilettantism has a certain utility in the social life of the community. Without it we should not with ease be able to get very far, but it should confine itself to the listeners. Precisely if this were done it would be possible to give due prominence within our social life to those who can really produce music. For it should not be forgotten that all plastically formative art tends to individualize people: all the art of music and poetry, on the other hand, furthers social intercourse. People come together and unite in music and poetry; but they become more individual through plastic and formative art. The individuality is better preserved by the plastically formative; social life is better maintained in common enjoyment and experience of music and poetry. Poetry is created in the solitude of the soul—there alone; but it is understood through its general reception. With no intention of inventing an abstraction we can say that man discloses his innermost soul in the creation of poetry, and that his inner soul finds response again in the innermost soul of other people who absorb his creation. That is why pleasure, above all things, in, and yearning for, music and poetry, should be cultivated in the growing child. In poetry the child should early become familiar with real poetry. The individual to-day grows up into a social order in which he is tyrannized over by the prose of language. There are to-day innumerable reciters who tyrannize over people with prose, and place in the foreground of the poem nothing but the prose-content. And when the poem is so recited that the emphasis is laid on the thought content, we consider it nowadays the perfect recitation. But a really perfect recitation is one which particularly emphasizes the musical element. In the few words with which I sometimes introduce our Eurhythmy demonstrations, I have often drawn attention to the way in which in a poet like Schiller a poem arises from the depth of his soul. In many of his poems he first feels the lilt of an undefined melody, and only later into this undefined melody does he sink, as it were, the content, the words. The undefined melody is the element in which the content is suspended, and the poetical activity lives in the fashioning of the language, not in the content, but in the measure, in the rhythm, in the preservation of the rhyme, that is in the music which underlies poetry. I said that the present mode of recitation is to tyrannize over people, because it is always tyranny to attach the greatest value to the prose, to the content of a poem, to its abstract treatment. Spiritual-scientifically we can only escape the tyranny by presenting a subject, as I always try to do, from the most different angles, so that comprehension of it is kept fluid and artistic. I felt particular pleasure when one of our artistically gifted friends said that certain cycles of my lectures, purely in virtue of their inner structure, could be transformed into a symphony. Something of this kind actually does underlie the structure of certain cycles. Take, for instance, the cycle given in Vienna⁸ on the life between death and a new birth, and you will see that you could make a symphony out of it. That is possible because an anthroposophical lecture should not make a tyrannical impression, but should arouse people's will. When, however, people come to a subject like the “Threefold State,” they say that they cannot understand it. In reality it is not difficult to understand; only they are not used to the mode of expression.

It is consequently of extreme importance to draw the child's attention in every poem to the music underlying it. For this reason the division of teaching should be arranged so that the lessons of recitation should come as near as possible to those of music. The teacher of music should be in close contact with the teacher of recitation, so that when the one lesson follows the other a living connection between the two is achieved. It would be especially useful if the teacher of music were still present during the recitation lesson and vice versa, so that each could continually indicate the connections with the other lesson. This would completely exclude what is at present so very prominent in our school-life, and what is really horrible—the abstract explanation of poems. This detailed explanation of poems, verging perilously on grammar, is the death of all that should influence the child. This “interpretation” of poems is a quite appalling thing.

Now you will object: But the interpreting is necessary to understand the poem! The answer to that must be: Teaching must be arranged to form a whole. This must be discussed in the weekly Staff-meeting. This and that poem come up for recitation. Then there must flow in from the rest of the teaching what is necessary for the understanding of the poem. Care must be taken that the child brings ready with him to the recitation lesson what he needs to understand the poem. You can quite well—for instance, take Schiller's Spaziergang—explain the cultural-historical aspect, the psychological aspect of the poem, not taking one line after the other with the poem in your hand, but so as to familiarize the child with the substance. In the recitation lesson stress must be laid solely on the artistic communication of art.

If we were to guide the artistic element like this, in its two streams, to harmonize human nature through and through, we should have very important results. We must simply consider that when a human being sings it is an infinitely valuable achievement of companionship with the world. Singing, you see, is itself an echo of the world. When the human being sings he expresses the meaningful wisdom from which the world is built. But we must not forget that when he sings he combines the cosmic melody with the human word. That is why something unnatural enters into song. This can easily be felt in the incompatibility of the sound of a poem with its content. It would mean a certain progress if one were to pursue the attempt already begun, to maintain sheer recitative in the lines, and only to animate the rhyme with melody, so that the lines would pass in a flow of recitative and the rhyme be sung like an aria.⁹ This would result in a clean severance of the music of a poem from its words, which, of course, disturb the actually musical person.

And again, when the musical ear of the individual is cultivated he himself becomes more disposed to a living experience of the musical essence of the world. This is of the supremest value for the evolution of the individual. We must not forget: In the plastically formative we contemplate beauty, we live it; in music we ourselves become beauty. This is extraordinarily significant. The further back you go into olden times the less you find what we really call music. You have the distinct impression that music is only in process of creation, in spite of the fact that many musical forms are already dying out again. This arises from a very significant cosmic fact. In all plastic or formative art man was the imitator of the old celestial order. The highest imitation of a world-heaven order is the plastic formative imitation of the world. But in music man himself is creative. Here he does not create out of a given material, but lays the very foundations for what will only come to fulfilment in the future. It is, of course, possible to create music of a kind by imitating musically, for instance, the rushing of water or the song of the nightingale. But true music and true poetry are a creation of something new, and from this creation of the new will arise one day the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions.¹⁰ In linking up with music we retrieve, in a sense, what is still to be; we retrieve it for reality out of the present nullity of its existence.

Only in linking up in this way with the great facts of the world do we acquire a right understanding of teaching. Only this can confer on it the right consecration, and in receiving this consecration it is really transformed into a kind of divine service.

I have set up more or less an ideal. But surely our concrete practice can be ranged in the realm of the ideal. There is one thing we ought not to neglect, for instance, when we go with the children we are teaching—as we shall, of course—into the mountains and the fields, when, that is, we take them out to nature. In introducing these children like this to nature we should always remember that natural science teaching itself only belongs to the school building. Let us suppose that we are just coming into the country with the children, and we draw their attention to a stone or a flower. In so doing we should scrupulously avoid allowing so much as an echo of what we teach in the school-room to be heard outside in nature. Out in the open we should refer the children to nature in quite a different way from what we do in the class-room. We ought never to neglect the opportunity of drawing their attention to the fact that we are bringing them out into the open to feel the beauty of nature and we are taking the products of nature back into the school-room, so that there we can study and analyse nature with them. We should, therefore, never mention to the children, while we are outside, what we explain to them in school, for instance, about plants. We ought to lay stress on the difference between studying dead nature in the class-room—and contemplating nature in its beauty out of doors. We should compare these two experiences side by side. Whoever takes the children out into nature to exemplify to them out of doors from some object of nature what he is teaching in the class room is not doing right. Even in children we should evoke a kind of feeling that it is sad to have to analyse nature when we return to the class-room. Only the children should feel the necessity of it, because, of course, the disturbance of what is natural is essential even in the building up of the human being. We should on no account suppose that we do well to expound a beetle scientifically out of doors. The scientific explanation of the beetle belongs to the class-room. What we should do when we take the children out into the open is to excite pleasure in the beetle, delight in the way he runs, in his amusing ways, in his relation to the rest of nature. And in the same way we should not neglect to awaken the distinct sense in the child's soul that music is a creative element, an element that goes beyond nature, and that man himself becomes a fellow-creator of nature when he creates music. This sense will naturally have to be formed in a very rudimentary manner as an experience, but the first experience to be felt from the will-like element of music is that man should feel himself part of the cosmos.

• 1. Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, third lecture (the accompanying course. See Preface).
• 2. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science, Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, also the Four Mystery Plays.
• 3. R. Steiner, The Threefold State.
• 4. See the Introduction to Goethe's works on Natural Science, edited by Rudolf Steiner.
• 5. R. Steiner's Theory of Colour.
• 6. Wege zu einem neuen Baustil (“Ways to a New Style in Architecture”) five lectures by Rudolf Steiner, with 104 illustrations. The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
• 7. Eurhythmy teacher at the Goetheanum, 1913–27.
• 8. Inneres Wesen des deuschen und Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Gebrut, 1914.
• 9. Paul Baumann, Songs of the Free Waldorf School.
• 10. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science.

My dear friends,

We have been considering the human being's relation to the Guardian of the Threshold and have led our souls step by step to see what our relation is to the Guardian of the Threshold on the path of knowledge. Today we intend to enliven the situation of standing before the Guardian in order to advance a step further in this esoteric consideration.

I will repeat what has been considered in the previous lessons regarding this situation. Man leaves the physical world in which he develops his normal consciousness. He realizes that although this sensible-physical world can be wonderful, joyful as well as painful and full of suffering, it can also be majestic—and that he has every reason to consciously be a part of it. But he also realizes that he can never know himself if he merely directs his attention and his feelings to this physical world. He must say to himself: As wonderful as it is, with all its amazing variety of colors and forms, what I myself am, what my origin and being are, cannot be found in the scope of this environment.

Nevertheless, from all sides the words resound as the most important task in the life of the human being: O man, know thyself!

And it also becomes clear that in normal life we are protected from entering unprepared into the world which is the world of his real being. And the Guardian of the Threshold is the one who protects us from consciously perceiving his environment when we are sleeping at night, for what we would then perceive, unprepared, would be such a terrible shock that we would not be able to lead a normal human waking life.

The Guardian of the Threshold also makes it clear to us that he—the Guardian of the Threshold—is the true, the real gateway to the spiritual world.

Thus the person realizes that before he enters the kingdom of knowledge, he comes to an abyss, which at first seems bottomless. The support of the physical world ends here. He cannot cross it. One can only cross this abyss by freeing oneself from the physical, when one—symbolically speaking—“grows wings”, in order to cross the abyss as a psychic-spiritual being.

But the Guardian of the Threshold calls forth to him how to beware of the abyss, especially to be aware of the beasts which rise up as spiritual figures from this abyss, that one should realize that these beasts are the outer reflections of impure willing, feeling and thinking—that they first must be overcome. And in a graphic image one sees how his willing, feeling and thinking appear in three animals—one ghastly, one horrid to look at, and so forth.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold shows us how thinking, feeling and willing can strengthen themselves after having consciously determined to overcome the beasts. To enter the spiritual world, to visualize the spiritual world, we need to develop situation-meditations, in order to feel how the cosmos speaks to us, how the hierarchies speak to us, how at first everything foretells what awaits us there in the spiritual world.

And from what has entered our souls through the mantras, we will realize ever more that the human being must become different when he crosses the abyss, when he wishes to live into what is beyond the abyss. We will realize ever more: Here on earth we associate with the beings of the three nature kingdoms and with men; beyond we associate with disembodied souls and with the spirits of the higher hierarchies. It is a different kind of relating, which requires a different state of mind. [original: Seelenverfassung = soul-constitution].

It is again the task of the Guardian of the Threshold to strongly indicate how the human being must comport himself when faced with the fact that when he crosses the abyss and experiences something of the reality of the spiritual world, he must do so with a completely different state of mind.

The person will realize that two states of mind can be a reality within him: the one on this side of the abyss with normal consciousness; and the one beyond the abyss, outside the physical and etheric bodies—the state of mind in the purely spiritual world.

When the difference between these states of mind appears, great dangers await him, dangers which appear at first to be slight deviations from the normal state of mind which are always present within the psyche, but which are pathological deformities when carried to an extreme. Of course it must be emphasized: When the journey to the higher worlds is undertaken as it is carefully described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, in many shorter works which have appeared in anthroposophical circles, and in the second part of my An Outline Of Occult Science, then aberration from the normal condition of the mind cannot occur, not even in the slightest degree. The person will cross into the spiritual world in the full consciousness of normal human understanding, first in knowledge and also through initiation. But he must know how, in two ways, he may lose the everyday capacity for understanding, which holds him securely to life, if he does not adhere to the right guidelines into the spiritual world.

Here on this side of the threshold we are standing on the earth, on the solid earthly elements. The ground is beneath our feet, it is our support. Around us is the watery element, which also participates in the formation of our own bodies. In ordinary life this watery element cannot support us, but it interpenetrates us, transforms itself into our blood. It is contained in our growth, in our forces of nutrition. We breathe the air. The airy or gaseous element is all around us. Warmth is all around us: the warmth ether, the fourth element.

In ordinary life they are separate from each other. Where there is solid earth there is not water; where there is water there is not air; where there is air there is not water. Only fire—warmth—interpenetrates all. It is the only thing which interpenetrates everything.

The moment we leave the physical body—also with the first push, my dear friends—this separation of the elements ceases. We enlarge ourselves, we expand, and at the same time we are in earth, water, fire, air. We can no longer distinguish them from each other and the individual attributes of these four elements have ceased to exist. The earth is no longer our support, for it is no longer solid. The water no longer forms us, for its formative force has ended. Once in the spiritual world it is as though we were dissolving, as ice melts in warm water, for we have become one with the water. We could not float in it, for that would mean that we were still separate from it. The blood is no longer a separate element in the blood vessels, but our blood becomes one with the all-pervading watery element of the universe. And air: it ceases being the formative breathing force in us. Warmth ceases to enkindle us to an I, and make us feel that we are a Self within the warmth. It all ends. We must meet this ending of the differentiation between earth, water, air and fire in the right frame of mind.

Imagine that we have already flown over the abyss. We have arrived on the other side, my dear sisters and brothers. The Guardian of the Threshold calls out to us, we should turn around again and face him.

Imagine it vividly, my dear sisters and brothers. The person has arrived on the other side, where the truths and knowledge of the spirit will be revealed to him. He stands on the other side. The Guardian of the Threshold invokes him to turn around in order to receive the advice he needs now that he has been touched by the state of mind which is on the other side of the threshold, where one lives within the four elements: in earth, water, air, fire.

He encounters there—pardon the trivial expression, my dear sisters and brothers—the illusion of being in love with release from the solid earth, from the formative water force, from the creative force of air, from the selfhood awakening force of warmth; he feels delight in spiritual beatitude, dedicated to it and wishes to remain in this state of spiritual beatitude. It overcomes him because the Luciferic temptation is approachng him. Depending on his karma, he can be more or less susceptible to this temptation. If he is so susceptible that he is utterly in love with the experience of dissolving into earth, water, air and fire, the luciferic forces will apprehend him and he will no longer leave this state of mind. He succumbs to the danger of continuing in this state of mind when he returns to everyday life.

The Guardian of the Threshold must call out to him: You may not do that. You may not succumb to Lucifer. You may not merely feel the delight of bliss in dissolving in earth, water, fire, air. When you return to the physical world you must again take on the state of mind of ordinary consciousness; otherwise in the future you will be an unstable person in the physical world.

That is the luciferic danger, that upon return from the spiritual world, from beyond the threshold, one becomes an unstable, confused person, no longer versed in the ways of the world, a dreamer who confuses dreaming for idealism and who is contemptuous of ordinary consciousness. That you must not do. And the Guardian of the Threshold urgently admonishes us that we must resolve to live in the world, be it the earthly, be it the spiritual, in the way which corresponds to each.

But the Guardian of the Threshold adds a second admonishment: that when we cross over with separated thinking, feeling and willing, we must pay attention to what extent earthly inclinations are still present in this thinking, feeling and willing.

The person may be inclined to fixate on his experiences on this side of the threshold because of having the earth's support, and cross the threshold in a materialistic state of mind, cross with the congealed formative forces of water. If so, he can be plagued by earthly arrogance and say to himself: In life on earth I breathed, inhaled that breath from which the Father-God once created the human soul, human life. I can also do that if only I am freed from earthly limitations.

But if the person wants to bring over into the spiritual world what he has of creative divine force through his breath, he will succumb to the Ahrimanic temptation. Then he will not be able to return, because before he does so he will become faint. He will be more or less unconscious. His consciousness will be paralyzed. Because his consciousness has been paralyzed, he more or less becomes an instrument of the Ahrimanic powers in the spiritual world.

Although today humanity is crudely hardened by materialism, since the beginning of the Michael age it is almost being dragged over into the spiritual world by spiritual life itself. And what it means when the ahrimanic powers seize humanity when its consciousness is paralyzed, though otherwise in a fully waking state, has been amply demonstrated, my dear friends, by the outbreak of the great [first] World War.

When this World War broke out, I said to many people: The history of this war can not be written from the physical plane alone. Documents alone do not speak the truth, because of the thirty or forty men in Europe who directly participated in the outbreak of the war, many of them had dimmed consciousness at the decisive moments. They became instruments for the ahrimanic powers on this side. So that much of what happened during this war was instigated by the ahrimanic powers. The war can only be written about in an occult way.

What is seen—in many respects modified on this side of the threshold—in many leading personalities at the outbreak of this World War, can be observed in those who preserved the habits of the mind and carried them over beyond the threshold and whose consciousness became paralyzed, muted, and they became instruments of the ahrimanic powers.

It must be perfectly clear that the human being may not carry over to this side the state of mind applicable to beyond the threshold, and that he may not carry over to the other side the state of mind applicable to this side. Rather must he develop a strong inner human consciousness for each domain—for this side and for beyond the threshold.

That applies to all four elements in the Guardian of the Threshold's admonition. We shall now work on these admonitions in meditation.

So let us imagine, my dear sisters and brothers, that you are standing on the other side of the threshold. The Guardian beckons. You look at his face. At first he calls out to you, admonishing:

Where is the earth's solidity which supported you?

We no longer have it. But the inner heart is motivated to give an answer. But this heart can be innerly motivated in a threefold way to an answer from the cosmos.

It can be motivated from the Christ and his power. Then it answers:

I abandon its foundation—the earth's solidity, that is—as long as the spirit supports me.

That is the correct attitude, that I abandon the earth's support as long as the spirit carries me in the spirit-domain, as long as I am out of the body. But the heart can also be motivated by Lucifer. Then it answers:

I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

That is how one speaks with arrogance, with pride, as though he also does not need the support when he returns to the physical world.

Or the heart can be motivated by Ahriman. Then it answers:

I will hammer it down even harder—the support—with the spirit's power, and bring it over with me.

No one should recoil from meditatively calling to mind again and again all three answers in order to freely choose the first one. For he must feel: the inner self tends to waver to Lucifer, and to Ahriman. One must keep this in mind during meditation.

For the earth element the meditation must therefore contain:

[The first part of the mantra is written on the blackboard. (Writing is always shown in italics).]

1) The Guardian—speaks—Where is the earth's solidity, which supported you?

The Human heart must answer. If it is motivated by Christ, it answers:

Christ: I leave its foundation as long as the spirit supports me.

If the soul is motivated by Lucifer, it answers:

Lucifer: I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

Now the heart omits “as long as” if it wants to replace the temporal with the eternal, which transforms the sentence. If the heart is motivated by Ahriman, it answers:

Ahriman: I will hammer it down even harder—the support—with the spirit's power.

In order that the soul fully dedicate itself to what is coming, we have the Guardian of the Threshold's second admonition, which is related to water's formative force. This formative force of water forms the solid organs in us from the liquid elements. All that we consume for nourishment must first become liquid, from which the organs are formed. All our sharply contoured organs are formed out of the liquid element. This formative force terminates once we tread the realm beyond the threshold. The Guardian warns us that this is the case. He calls to us once we stand on the other side of the Threshold facing his stern countenance:

[The second part of the mantra is written on the blackboard.]

Guardian: Where is the water's formative force which pervaded you?

The person answers if he is motivated in his heart by Christ:

My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.

Christ: My life extinguishes it (“it” is the formative force), as long as the spirit forms me.

Again, modestly, “as long as” is used.

Now, when one is over there, out of the body, the spirit is beginning to form.

If the soul is motivated by Lucifer, it leaves out “as long as” and forms the sentence in a prideful, arrogant way:

Lucifer: My life melts it away—what is extinguished can be re-kindled; what melts remains melted—so I am released from it.

If the soul is motivated by Ahriman, it answers:

Ahriman: My life solidifies it, so I transfer it to the spirit-realm.

Observe, my dear sisters and brothers, how everything in mantric verses is innerly certain and meaningfully formed. Here [in the first verse] is: “I leave”, “I feel”, “I will”. The “I” speaks in the answer. In the second verse the I no longer speaks egocentrically, but it says: “My life”: “my life dissolves”, “my life melts”, “my life solidifies”. It is all appropriate to reality if correctly spoken in the spirit. The carelessness in formulating sentences, which is common in the physical realm, may not be brought over into the spirit-realm. In the spirit-realm all that is spoken must be precise and exact.

You must understand, my dear friends, the reality that this Esoteric School is not established by human will, but by the spiritual world, as I said at the beginning. Everything given here in the Esoteric School of the Goetheanum is only spoken through my lips, but is dictated by the spiritual world. It must be that way in every legitimately existing esoteric school—also in the present and in the immediate future, as it was in the ancient holy Mysteries. And this Esoteric School is the true Michael- School, the institution of those spiritual beings who possess the inspiration of Michael's cosmic will.

In respect to air, the Guardian of the Threshold speaks again, warningly: Where is the air's stimulating force which awakened you?—awakened you to existence.

Just as Jehovah formed a feeling being from a merely living being by means of living breath and the stimulating power of air, so can a human being become a feeling being through the stimulation exercised on his senses by the outer world. What, though, are the senses?

My dear sisters and brothers, the senses are nothing other than differentiated breathing organs. Eye, ear—all are refined breathing organs. Breathing expands to all the senses. As it lives in the lung, it lives in the eye. Except that in the lungs it combines with carbon, and in the ears with highly rarefied silica. Carbon dioxide is formed in the organism. [He draws on the blackboard: “Kohlensäure” = carbon dioxide (red)] In the senses, very fine silicic acid is formed [“Kieselsäure” = silicic acid, yellow.]

Man lives downward by converting oxygen to carbon dioxide. He lives upward into the zone of his sense-nervous system by combining oxygen with silica, forming very fine silicic acid. [green]. So we live in a way that when breath turns to blood, it generates carbon dioxide; when breath passes around the senses it generates silicic acid—downward and outward through breath: carbon dioxide; toward the senses and back from the senses to the breathing process in very fine doses of silicic acid.

The Guardian of the Threshold calls to us about all that is in the air:

Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

He who is motivated in his heart by Christ answers:

My soul breathes the air of heaven—no longer the air of earth, the air of heaven—as long as the spirit surrounds me.

The heart motivated by Lucifer answers:

My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

The heart motivated by Ahriman answers:

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

As Jehovah once created with air, the ahrimanically-minded absorbs the air in order to carry it over to the spiritual world.

The Guardian speaks to the human being:

[The third part of the mantra is written on the blackboard:]

Guardian: Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

The heart motivated by Christ speaks:

Christ: My soul breathes the air of heaven, as long as the spirit surrounds me.

The heart motivated by Lucifer speaks:

Lucifer: My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

The heart motivated by Ahriman speaks:

Ahriman: My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

About fire, the warmth element, the Guardian now speaks the last of his element-words, warning the human not to lose himself in the warmth element as it is experienced in physical earthly existence, but also not to carry it over to the spiritual world.

Beforehand, my dear sisters and brothers, I want to draw your attention to the ascending direction:

“I” the human being says at first.

“My life” the human being says.

“My soul” says the human being.

Now the Guardian speaks warningly about the fire element:

[The fourth part of the mantra is written on the blackboard:]

Guardian: Where is fire's cleansing—or purification—which ignited your I?

Our I lives in what pervades us as warmth, as fire. In these esoteric classes, my dear sisters and brothers, I have already indicated once that his solid element remains in man's unconscious, the liquid element also, although one does feels pleasure at being in the liquid element; when sated or hungry, he also feels the liquid element's attributes. Man already feels the air element in his soul: he finds breathing difficult when the air's composition is not right and with breathing difficulty, angst. Warmth is something in which the human being feels completely immersed. He accompanies his cold and warm states with his whole I. Fire ignites the I.

The heart motivated by Christ answers:

Christ: My I blazes in God's fire, as long as the spirit ignites me.

Man does not need earthly-material warmth when the spirit enflames or ignites: the I blazes in divine fire, not in earthly warmth, not in earthly fire.

But the heart motivated by Lucifer answers:

My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

In immense pride the I—ensnared by Lucifer—wants to usurp for itself the fire element that comes from the sun, instead of only for the time the spirit sets it ablaze—keep it forever, never give it away.

Lucifer: My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

The heart motivated by Ahriman answers as though it wants to keep for itself the fire it had captured on earth and carry it over to the spiritual world—to master the spiritual world with the I-fire of the physical world.

Ahriman: My I has its own fire, which ignites through self-enfoldment.

The I wills not to blaze in the spirit, but to develop its own fire.

There is again an ascending direction in the formulation:

The person first says “I”:

I leave

I feel

I will

He then becomes more objective in that what is in him refers to “My”:

My life extinguishes

My life melts

My life solidifies.

He goes more within, what is within makes him objective:

My soul breathes

My soul cares not

My soul absorbs it.

Now he delves deeper into himself. And—note the difference, my dear sisters and brothers—before only “I” was said. Now the “I” becomes objective: “My I”, as though it were another, as if one were to speak of the other as a possession. One is more outside of the physical body—which disposes one to speak so egoistically of the “I”—and speaks:

My I

as of an object. That is the correct speech here.

One gets to know this way of speaking in all its intensity, my dear sisters and brothers, when one speaks with souls who have passed through the gates of death and have been a while in the spiritual world. They never say “I”, but they say “my I”. I have not yet heard a dead person say “I” after death, at most only shortly after death. But after a certain time after death they always say “my I”, for they see the I with the eyes of the gods. They become completely objective. It is characteristic. Therefore, an enunciation from a dead person who has been dead a long time can never be true if he says “I” and not “my I”. So the soul speaks this “my I” here in the fourth place when standing before the Guardian of the Threshold.

That, my dear friends, is the wonderful conversation at the threshold between the Guardian of the Threshold and the human being. It is distinctive. And this distinctiveness is really present when one stands before the Guardian of the Threshold in this situation. When one practices the meditation of this dialog in the right way, as has been described here, one must be able to intuitively hear it. Therefore, we meditate these words correctly, which have come to you here today as mantric words, my dear sisters and brothers, when in a sense we hear ourselves speaking the words after the Guardian has been heard in our souls. Thus we meditate first hearing the Guardian of the Threshold four times as I, II, III and IV, as earth, water, air and fire; then as when we let our own soul answer, but in such a way that first we hear the answer innerly ensouled by Christ, the second answer as the voice of the tempter, the third answer as the voice of the inflated materialistic Ahriman-spirit, which approaches the human being with the desire to carry the mineralized human being into the spiritual world.

Therefore, to end this esoteric lesson today, the way this is to be meditated resounds in us:

Where is the earth's solidity, which supported you?

I leave its foundation, as long as the spirit supports me.

I feel rapture, for from now on I do not need its support.

I will hammer it down even harder with the spirit's power.

Where is the water's formative force which pervaded you?

My life extinguishes it, as long as the spirit forms me.

My life melts it away, so I am released from it.

My life solidifies it, so I transfer it to the spirit-realm.

Where is the air's stimulating force, which awakened you?

My soul breathes the air of heaven, as long as the spirit surrounds me.

My soul regards it not in the spirit's rapture.

My soul absorbs it, that I may learn divine creation.

Where is fire's cleansing, which ignited your I?

My I blazes in God's fire, as long as the spirit ignites me.

My I has the force of flame through the spirit's solar power.

My I has its own fire, which ignites through self-enfolding.

Today we will explain a great allegory, and deal with an object which is known to occult science as the image or teaching of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt. I have explained in earlier lectures¹ why in occult science one starts from such images; today we shall see what an enormous number of ideas are contained in essence in this image. Thereby I will also have to touch upon a theme which is much misunderstood by those who know little or nothing about theosophy. There are some people who do not understand that theosophy and practical [everyday things] go hand in hand, that they must work together throughout the whole of life. Therefore I shall have to speak about the connection between theosophy and the practical things of life. For, basically, when we take up the theme of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt, we are speaking about everyday work.

I shall, indeed, thereby be in the position of a teacher who prepares his pupils for building a tunnel. The building of a tunnel is something eminently practical. Someone might well say: building a tunnel is simple; one only has to start digging into a hill from one side and to excavate away until one emerges at the other side. Everyone can see that it would be foolish to think in this way. But in other realms of life that is not always perceived. Whoever wishes to build a tunnel must, of course, first of all have a command of higher mathematics. Then he will have to learn how it is to be made, technically. Without practical engineering knowledge, without the art of ascertaining the right level, one would not be able to keep on course in excavating the mountain. Then one must know the basic concepts of geology, of the various rock strata, the direction of the water courses and the metallic lodes in the mountain, and so on.. It would be foolish to think that someone would be able to build a tunnel without all this prior knowledge, or that an ordinary stone mason could construct a whole tunnel.

It would be just as foolish if one were to believe that one could begin building human society from the point of view of ordinary life. However, this folly is perpetrated not merely by many people, but also in countless books. Even one today supposes himself called upon to know and decide how best to reform social life and the state. People who have hardly learnt anything write detailed books about how society should best be shaped, and feel themselves called to found reform movements. Thus there are movements for reform in all spheres of life. But everything done in this way is just the same as if someone were to try to cut a tunnel with hammer and chisel. That is all a result of not knowing that great laws exist which rule the world and spring forth out of the life of the spirit. The real problem of our day consists in this ignorance [of the fact] that there are great laws for the building of the state and of the social organism, just as there are for building a tunnel, and that one must know these laws in order to carry out the most necessary and everyday tasks in the social organism. Just as in building a tunnel, one has to know about the interaction of all the forces of nature, so must anyone wishing to start reforming society know the laws [which interweave between one person and the next] . One must study the effect of one soul on another, and draw near to the spirit. That is why theosophy must lie at the basis of every practical activity in life. Theosophy is the real practical principle of life; and only he who starts from theosophical principles and carries them over into practical life can feel himself called as able to be active in social life.

That is why theosophy should penetrate all spheres of life. Statesmen, social reformers and the like are nothing without a theosophical basis, without theosophical principles. That is why, for those who study these things, all work in this field, everything done today to build up the social structure, is external patchwork and complete chaos. For one who understands the matter, what the social reformer is doing today is like somebody cutting stones and piling them one on top of another in the belief that a house will thereby come into being of its own accord. First of all a plan of the house must be drawn up. It is just the same if one asserts that, in social life, things will take shape of their own accord. One cannot reform society without knowing the laws of theosophy.

This way of thinking, which works according to a plan, is called Freemasonry. The medieval Freemasons, who dealt with and made contracts with the clergy, about how they should build, wanted nothing else than to shape outer life in such a way that—along with the Gothic cathedral—it could become an image of the great spiritual structure of the universe. Take the Gothic cathedral. Though composed of thousands of individual parts, it is built according to a single idea, much more comprehensive than the cathedral itself. To become complete in itself, divine life must flow into it, just as light shines into the church through the multi-coloured windows. And when the medieval priest spoke from the pulpit, so that the divine light shone in his listener's hearts just like the light shining through the coloured panes, then the vibrations set up through the preacher's word were in harmony with the great life of God. And the life of just such a sermon, born out of the life of the spirit, set itself forth in the cathedral itself. In like manner, the whole of outer life should be transformed into the Temple of the Earth, into an image of the whole spiritual structure of the universe.

If we go still further back in time, we find that it is just this way of thinking which was mankind's from the very earliest times. Let me explain what I mean by way of an example. Our epoch is the time of the chaotic interaction of one human being with another. Each individual pursues his own aims. This epoch was preceded by another one, the age of the ancient priestly states. I have often spoken about the cultural epochs of our fifth Great Epoch. The first of these was the ancient Indian epoch, the second, that of the Medes and the Persians, the third, that of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Semites, and the fourth was the Graeco-Roman period. We are now in the fifth epoch.

The fourth and fifth cultural epochs were the first ones to be based on the intelligence of men, of individual men.

We have a great monument to the conquest of the old priestly culture by the intelligence of men in art, in the Laocoon.² The Laocoon priest entwined with serpents—the symbol of subtlety—symbolises the conquest, by the civilisation of intelligence, of the old priestly culture, which held other views about truth and wisdom, and about what should happen. It is the overcoming of the third cultural epoch by the fourth. That is represented in still another symbol, in the saga of the Trojan Horse. The intelligence of Odysseus created the Trojan Horse, by means of which the Trojan priestly culture was overthrown.

The development of the old Roman State out of the ancient Trojan priestly culture is described in the saga of Aeneas. The latter was one of the outstanding defenders of Troy, who afterwards came over to Italy. There it was that his descendants laid the foundation of ancient Rome. His son Ascanius founded Alba Longa and history now enumerates fourteen kings up to the time of Numitor and Amulius. Numitor was robbed of his throne by his brother Amulius, his son was killed and his daughter, Rhea Silvia, was made to become a vestal virgin, so that the lineage of Numitor should die out. And when Rhea gave birth to the twins, Romulus and Remus, Amulius ordered them to be thrown in the Tiber. The children were rescued, suckled by a she-wolf, and brought up by the royal shepherd Faustulus.

Now history speaks about seven Roman kings: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tuflus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Tarquinius Pliscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus.

Following Livy's account³ it used to be believed that the first seven kings of Rome were real personalities. Today, historians know that these first seven kings never existed.

We are therefore dealing with a saga, but the historians have no inkling of what lies behind it. The basis of the saga is what follows:

The priestly state of Troy founded a colony, the priestly colony of Alba Longa (Alba, an alb, or priest's vestment).⁴ It was a colony of a priestly state and Amulius belonged to the last priestly dynasty. A junior priestly culture sprang from this, which was then cut off by a civilisation based on cleverness. History tells us no more about this priestly culture. The veil which was spread over the priestly culture of the earliest Roman history, is lifted by theosophy. The seven Roman kings represent nothing else than the seven principles as we know them from theosophy. Just as the human organism consists of seven parts—Sthula-Sharira [physical body], Linga-Sharira [etheric], Kama-Rupa [astral], Kama-Manas [ego], higher Manas [spirit-self], Buddhi [life-spirit] and Atma [spirit-man]—so the social organism was conceived, as it formed itself at the time, as a sequence in seven stages. And only if it was developed according to the law of the number seven, which lies at the base of all nature, was it able to prosper. Thus the rainbow has seven colours; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Likewise there are seven [intervals in the scale]: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on; likewise the atomic weights in chemistry follow the rule of the number seven. And that permeates the whole of creation. Hence it was self-evident to the Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom that the structure of human society must also be regulated by such a law. According to a precisely worked out plan, these seven kings are seven stages, seven [integral] parts. This was the usual way of inaugurating a new epoch in history at that time. A plan was devised, since this was considered a means of preventing any stupidities, and a law was written for it. This plan was actually there at the beginning. Everyone knew that world history was guided according to a fixed plan. Everyone knew: When I am in the third phase of the fourth epoch, I must be guided by this and that. And so, at first, in ancient Rome, one still had a priestly state with a plan at the basis of its culture, which was written down in books, called the Sibylline Books. These are nothing else than the original plan underlying the law of the sevenfold epoch, and they were still consulted when needed in the earliest days of the Roman Empire.

The physical body was taken as a model for the foundations. That is not so unreasonable. Today people are inclined to treat the physical body as something subordinate. People look down on the physical with a kind of disdain. However, that is not justified, because our physical body is our most exalted part. Take a single bone. Take a good look at the upper part of a thigh bone and you will see how wonderfully it is constructed. The best engineer, the greatest technician, could not produce anything so perfect, if he were set the task of attaining the greatest possible strength using the least amount of material. And so the whole human body is constructed in the most perfect way. This physical body is really the most perfect thing imaginable. An anatomist will always speak with the utmost admiration of the human heart, which functions in a wonderful way, even though human beings do little else throughout life than imbibe what is poison for it. Alcohol, tea, coffee and so on attack the heart in the most incredible fashion. But so wonderfully has this organ been built that it can withstand all this into ripe old age.

The physical body, the lowest of the bodies, therefore possesses the greatest perfection. Less perfect, on the other hand, are the higher bodies, which have not yet gained such perfection in their development: the etheric body and the astral body continually offend against our physical body through the attacks of our lust, desires and wishes. Then follows, as the fourth [principle], the real baby [of them all], the human ego, which like a wandering will-o’-the-wisp, must still wait for the future to offer it those rules which will act as a guide for its conduct, just as the physical body has long since had.

When we develop a social structure, we must have that which will make the foundations firm. Thus the saga allows Romulus, the first Roman king, who represents the first principle, to be raised to heaven as the god Quirinus. The second king, Numa Pompilius, the second principle. embodies social order; he brought laws for ordinary living. The third king, Tullus Hostilius, represents the passions. Under him, the attacks against divine nature begin, causing discord, struggle and war, through which Rome became great. Under the fourth king, Ancus Martius, the arts develop, those things which spring out of Kama-Manas, [the human ego].

Now the four lower principles of man are not able to give birth to the three higher principles, the fifth, sixth andc seventh. This is also symbolised in Roman history. The fifth-Roman king, Tarquinius Priscus, was not engendered out of the Roman organism, but was introduced into Roman culture from the Etruscan culture as something higher. The sixth king, Servius Tullus, represents the sixth member of the human cyclic law, Buddhi. He is able to rule over Kama [the astral body], the physical-sensual counterpart of Buddhi. He represents the canon of the law. The seventh king, Tarquinius Superbus, the most exalted principle, is he who must be overthrown, since it is not possible to maintain the high level, the impulse, of the social system.

We see it demonstrated in Roman history that there must be a plan underlying the building of the state, just as for any other building in the world. That the world is a temple, that social life must be structured and organised, and must have pillars like a temple, and that the great sages must be these pillars—it is this intention which is permeated with the ancient wisdom. That is not a kind of wisdom which is merely learned, but one which has to be built into human society. The seven principles were correctly applied. The only person able to work towards the building up of society is he who has absorbed all this knowledge, all this wisdom, into himself. We would not achieve much as theosophists if we were to restrict ourselves to contemplating how the human being is built up from its different members. No, we are only able to fulfil our task if we carry the principles of theosophy into everyday life. We must learn to put them to use in such a way that every turn of the hand, every movement of a finger, every step we take, bears the impress, is an expression of the spirit. In that case we shall be engaged in building the lost temple.

Along with that, however, goes the fact which I mentioned recently—that we should take into ourselves something of the greatness and all embracing comprehensiveness of the universal laws. Our habits of thought must be permeated by that kind of wisdom which leads from great conceptions into the details—just in the same way as house construction starts from the finished and complete plan and not by laying one stone upon another. This demand must be made if our world is not to turn into chaos. As theosophists we should recognise the fact that law is bound to rule in the world as soon as we realise that every step we make, every action of ours, is like an impression stamped in wax by the spiritual world. Then we shall be engaged in the building of the temple. That is the meaning of the temple building: whatever we set ourselves to do must be in conformity to law.

The knowledge that man has to include himself in the construction of the great world temple has become increasingly forgotten. A person can be born and die today without having any inkling of the fact that laws are working themselves out in us, and that everything we do is governed by the laws of the universe The whole of present-day life is wasted, because people do not know that they have to live according to laws. Therefore the priestly sages of ancient times devised means of rescuing, for the new culture, something of the great laws of the spiritual world. It was, so to speak, a stratagem of the great sages, to have hidden this order and harmony in many branches of life—yes, even so far as in the games which men use for their recreation at the end of the day. In playing cards, in the figures of chess, in the sense of rule by which one plays, we find a hint, if only a faint one, of the order and harmony which I have described. When you sit down with someone to a game of cards, it will not do if you do not know the rules, the manner of playing. And this really conveys a hint of the great laws of the universe. What is known as the sephirot of the Cabbala, what we know as the seven principles in their various forms, that is recognised again in the way in which the cards are laid down, one after the other, in the course of the game. Even in the allurements of playing, the adepts have known how to introduce the great cosmic laws, so that, even in play, people have at least a smack of wisdom. At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted. These are secrets, how the great Adepts intervene in the wheel of existence. If one told people to be guided by the great cosmic laws, they would not do so. However, if the laws are introduced unnoticed into things, it is often possible to inject a drop of this attitude into them. If you have this attitude, then you will have a notion of what it is which is symbolised in the mighty allegory of the lost temple.

In the secret societies, among which Freemasonry belongs, something connected with the lost temple and its future reconstruction has been described in the Temple Legend. The Temple Legend is very profound, but even the present-day Freemasons usually have no notion of it. A Freemason isnot even very easy to distinguish from the majority of people, and he does not carry much of importance with him in new life. But if he lets the Temple Legend work upon him, it is a great help. For whoever absorbs the Temple Legend receives something which, in a specific way, shapes his thinking in an orderly fashion. And it [all] depends on ordered thinking. This Temple Legend is as follows:

Once one of the Elohim united with Eve, and out of that Cain was born. Another of the Elohim, Adonai or Jehovah-Yahveh, thereupon created Adam. The latter, for his part, united with Eve, and out of this marriage Abel was born. Adonai caused trouble between those belonging to Cain's family and those belonging to Abel's family, and the result of this was that Cain slew Abel. But out of the renewed union of Adam with Eve the race of Seth was founded.

Thus we have two different races of mankind. The one consists of the original descendants of the Elohim, the sons of Cain, who are called the Sons of Fire. They are those who till the earth and create from inanimate nature and transform it through the arts of man. Enoch, one of the descendants of Cain, taught mankind the art of hewing stone, of building houses, of organising society of founding civilised communities. Another of Cain's descendants was Tubal-Cain, who worked in metal. The architect Hiram-Abiff was descended from the same race.

Abel was a shepherd. He held firmly to what he found, he took the world as it was. There is always this antithesis between people. One sticks to things as they are, the other wants to create new life from the inanimate, through art. Other nations have portrayed the ancestor of these Sons of Fire in the Prometheus saga⁵ It is the Sons of Fire who have to work into the world the wisdom, beauty and goodness from the all-embracing universal thought, in order to transform the world into a temple.

King Solomon was a descendant of the lineage of Abel. He could not build the temple himself; he lacked the art. Hence he appointed the architect Hiram-Abiff, the descendant of the lineage of Cain. Solomon was divinely handsome. When the Queen of Sheba met him, she thought she saw an image of gold and ivory. She came to unite herself with him.

Jehovah is also called the God of created form,⁶ the God who turns what is living into a living force, in contrast with that other Elohim who creates by charming life out of what is lifeless. To which of these does the future belong? That is the great question of the Temple Legend. If mankind were to develop under the religion of Jehovah all life would expire in form. In occult science, that is called the Transition to the Eighth Sphere.⁷ But the point in time has now arrived when man himself must awaken the dead to life. That will happen through the Sons of Cain, through those who do not rely on the things around them, but are themselves the creators of new forms. The Sons of Cain themselves frame the building of the world.

When the Queen of Sheba saw the temple and asked who the architect was, she was told it was Hiram. And as soon as she saw him, he seemed to her to be the one who was predestined for her. King Solomon now became jealous; and indeed, he entered into league with three apprentices who had failed to achieve their master's degree, in order to undermine Hiram's great masterpiece, the Molten Sea. This great masterpiece was to be made by casting it. Human spirit was to have been united with the metal. Of the three apprentices, one was a Syrian mason, the second was a Phoenician carpenter, and the third was a Hebrew miner. The plot succeeded: the casting was destroyed by pouring water over it. It all blew apart. In despair the architect was about to throw himself into the heat of the flames. Then he heard a voice from the centre of the earth. This came from Cain himself, who called out to him: ‘Take here the hammer of the world's divine wisdom, with which you must put it all right again.’ And Cain gave him the hammer. Now it is the spirit of man which man builds into his astral body, if he is not to let it remain in the condition in which he received it. This is the work which Hiram now had to do. But there was a plot against his life. We shall proceed from there next time.

I wanted to recount the legend up to this point, to show how, in the original occult brotherhoods, the thought lived, that man has a task to fulfil; the task of restructuring the inanimate world, of not being satisfied with what is already there. Wisdom thus becomes deed through its penetration of the inanimate world, so that the world should become a reflection of the original and eternal spirituality.

Wisdom, Beauty, Strength are the three fundamental words of all Freemasonry. So to change the outer world, that it becomes a garment for the spiritual—that is its task. Today, the Freemasons themselves no longer understand this, and believe that man should work on his own ego.⁸ They regard themselves as particularly clever when they say that the working masons of the Middle Ages were not Freemasons. But the working masons were precisely those who have always been Freemasons, because outward structure was to become the replica of the spiritual, of the temple of the world, which is to be constructed out of intuitive wisdom. This is the thought which formerly under lay the great works of architecture, and was carried through into every detail.

I will illustrate by an example the superiority of wisdom over mere intellect. Let us take an old Gothic cathedral, and consider the wonderful acoustics, which cannot be matched today, because this profound knowledge has been lost.

The famous Lake Moeris in Egypt is just such a wonder-work of the human spirit. It was not a natural lake, but was constructed through the intuition of the wise men, so that water could be stored in time of flood, for distribution over the whole country in time of drought. That was a great feat of irrigation.

When man learns to create with the same wisdom with which the divine powers have created Nature and made physical things, then will the temple be built [on earth]. It does not depend upon how many separate things we have the power to create out of our own wisdom; we must however just have the attitude of mind that knows that only by means of wisdom can the temple of humanity be created.

When, today, we go about the cities, here there is a shoe shop, there a chemist, further on a cheese-monger and a shop selling walking sticks. If just now we do not want anything, why should that concern us? How little does the outward life of such a city reflect what we feel, think and perceive! How very different it was in the Middle Ages. If a person walked through the streets then, he saw the house fronts built in the resident's style, manner and character. Every door knob expressed what the man had lovingly shaped to suit his spirit. Go, for instance, through a town such as Nuremberg: there you will still find the basis of how it used to be. And then, by contrast, take the fashionable abstraction that no longer has anything to do with people. That is the age of materialism and its chaotic productions, to which one has step by step come from an earlier spiritual epoch.

Man was born from a nature which was once so formed by the gods that everything within it fitted the great scheme of the world, the great temple. There was once a time when there was nothing on this earth upon which you could gaze without having to say to oneself: Divine beings have built this temple to the stage in which the human physical body was perfected. Then the higher principles (the psychic forces) [of man's nature] took possession of it, and through this disarray and chaos came into the world. Wishes, desires and emotions brought disarray into the temple of the world. Only when, out of man's own will, law and order once again shall speak in a loftier and more beautiful way than the gods once did in creating Nature, only when man allows the god within him to arise, so that like a god he can build towards the temple—only then will the lost temple be regained.

It would not be right if we were to think that only those who are able to build should do so. No, it depends upon the attitude of mind, even if one knows a great deal. If one has the right direction to one's thinking, and then one engages in social, technical and juristic reform, then one is building the lost temple which is to be rebuilt. But should one start reforms—however well-intended they may be—lacking this attitude of mind, then one is only bringing about more chaos. For the individual stone is useless, if it does not fit into the overall plan [of the building]. Reform the law, religion, or anything else—as long as you only take account of the particular item, without having an understanding of the whole, it only results in a demolition.

Theosophy is thus not just theory, but practice, the most practical thing in the world. It is a fallacy to suppose that theosophists are recluses, not engaged in shaping the world. If we could bring people to engage in social reform from a theosophical basis,⁹ they would achieve much of what they want swiftly and surely. For, without needing to say anything against particular movements, they only lead to fanaticism if pursued in isolation. All separate reform movements—emancipators, abstainers, vegetarians, animal protectors and so forth—are only useful if they all work together. Their ideal can only be properly realised in a great universal movement that leads in unity to the universal world temple.

That is the idea that lies behind the allegory of the lost temple which has to be rebuilt.

Notes from replies to questions

Question: What is the difference between the sons of Cain and the sons of Abel?

Answer: The sons, of Cain are the unripe ones; the sons of Abel are the over-ripe ones. The sons of Abel turn to the higher spheres when they have finished with these incarnations. The sons of Abel are the Solar Pitris [those who underwent their human stage on the Old Sun]; the sons of Cain are the most mature of the Lunar Pitris [those who passed their human stage on the Old Moon].

Question: Why have so many mystical and masonic associations developed?

Answer: All higher work is only to be undertaken in an association. The Knights of the Round Table generally numbered twelve.

Question: Are you acquainted with the work of Albert Schaffle?¹⁰

Answer: Albert Schaffle wrote a work about sociology, and the account he gives is much more masonic than what emanates from the lodges of Freemasonry.

• 1 . e.g., lectures 3 and 5 of 30th September and 4th November 1904.
• 2 . In this connection see lecture held in Munich, 14th March 1910, published in: Metamorphoses of the Soul.
• 3 . Titus Livius (59 B.C.—A.D. 17), Roman historian; author of a history of Rome (Annales) from the foundation of the city to the death of Drusus (9 B.C.); of the 142 books of this history, 35 of them and epitomes of most of the rest are extant.
• 4 . A white vestment reaching to the feet, worn by the celebrant at Mass over the cassock and having long pointed sleeves. The oldest type of vestment derived from Egyptian and Hebrew times.
• 5 . See lecture 4 of 7th October 1904 in the present volume.
• 6 . See lecture of 25th October 1905 in: Foundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983.
• 7 . See note 26 to lecture 6 given on 11th November 1904.
• 8 . At this point the texts diverge: according to Seiler it is ‘egoistical’ egos; according to Vegelahn and Reebstein ‘spiritual’ egos, which might have resulted from a mis-hearing or mistake in writing and could have been ‘own’ egos—(geistigen = eigenen).
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was working towards establishing a reform of the social life soon after the end of the Great War. See: ‘The Threefold Order of the Body Social.’ RSE 252, 253 and 254.
• 10. Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle, 1831–1903, sociologist, wrote much on this subject. In another connection Rudolf Steiner mentions his work: Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (‘Construction and Life of the Body-Social’), a four volume work published in Tübingen, 1875–78.

I stated yesterday that those Beings who are to be considered as Folk Spirits have reached a stage of development when they work from within the ‘I’ upon their etheric or life-body, when they fashion this body from out of the inmost depths of the soul.

Now it will be said, of course, that the work upon the etheric body is not immediately perceptible to the senses or to external observation but only to clairvoyant consciousness, and this must be admitted. None the less, if the activity of these Beings, of these Folk Spirits, invades the life of man, then there must be on the other hand some visible indication, some tangible evidence, some kind of impression or reflection of this work of the Folk Spirits or Archangelic Beings, in proof of this. Furthermore these Beings must also possess in a certain sense a physical body. They must be able to express their corporeality in some form or other. And these Beings whose activity is expressed in this physical form must give some indication of their presence in the world of man, for in the final analysis the human body must be associated with the work of these spiritual Beings.

Let us begin with the etheric body of these Beings and their work in the transformation of this body. Here we must first of all refer to the investigations of clairvoyant consciousness. Where does clairvoyant research find evidence for the existence of the etheric body of these Archangelic Beings? And how are we to understand this work? You all know that the surface of the Earth shows different configurations and that the different regions of the Earth provide widely differing conditions for the unfolding of attributes peculiar to the various peoples. The materialist believes that climate, vegetation, or perhaps water availability and other factors determine the distinctive features or characteristics of a particular people. That such is the outlook of the materialist is not surprising, for his consciousness is limited to the phenomenal world. Clairvoyant consciousness presents a different picture. Whoever is endowed with clairvoyant consciousness and visits the various countries is aware that his familiarity with the particular kind of vegetation, with the characteristic configuration of the rocks, does not exhaust his knowledge of that country or provide a complete picture of a particular geographical area. To speak of a particular aroma and aura associated with a certain region is, in the eyes of the materialist, to deal in unrealities. To clairvoyant consciousness there extends over every region of the Earth a peculiar spiritual cloud-like formation that we call the etheric aura of that particular region. This etheric aura varies according to the landscape: in Switzerland it is different from Italy and again different in Norway, Denmark or Germany. Just as every man has his own etheric body, so a kind of etheric aura hovers above every region of the Earth's surface.

This etheric aura differs considerably from other etheric auras, from that of man, for example. The etheric aura of the human being is part of him as long as he lives. It is united to his physical body and only undergoes modification in so far as man progressively develops during his lifetime and lifts himself to a higher moral and intellectual plane. Then we are always conscious that this etheric aura begins to be inwardly transformed, develops a certain inner light, a luminous quality. The etheric auras that can be perceived over the various countries are of a different nature. Admittedly they preserve a fundamental tone or quality which persists over long periods of time. But, at the same time, these etheric auras are prone to rapid changes, and in this respect they differ from the human auras which change slowly and gradually, and only from within. These auras extending over the various countries change in the course of human evolution when a people migrates and occupies new territory. The strange feature is that the etheric aura over a certain region depends in fact not only upon the etheric emanations from the soil, but also upon the people which was last domiciled there.

Those, therefore, who wish to follow how the destinies of our human race are shaped on Earth, endeavour to follow the interpenetration of this aspect of the etheric auras which is peculiar to the different geographical regions. The various etheric auras of Europe underwent considerable change at the time of the migrations of the peoples. Thus the etheric aura of a particular, region is subject to change, to sudden transformations which may even have their source in external factors to some extent. Every one of these etheric auras is, in a certain respect, a fusion of the emanations from the soil and the inheritance of the migrations of the peoples. When we observe this aura we must clearly understand that the saying, everything in the external world apprehended by the senses is only maya or illusion, which is so freely quoted by Theosophists is seldom grasped in its fullest implications. Though often repeated, its implications are largely ignored, and it rarely leads to a change of attitude to life. It becomes virtually an empty phrase; in face of the stern realities of life it is forgotten and people cling to their old materialistic outlook. The green vegetation, the peculiar configuration of the landscape which we see around us is, in reality, only maya or illusion; it is a precipitation, as it were, of the active principle in the etheric forces. Indeed only that aspect of the external world is dependent upon this etheric aura, upon which this aura, i.e. a living, organizing principle, can exert an influence. The Archangels who embody the spiritual laws cannot intervene in the physical laws. Where, therefore, only physical laws are operative, as in the configuration of mountain ranges, in the contours of the landscape and so on, in all cases where physical conditions determine the great changes in a people, the influence of the Archangels cannot take effect. They are not sufficiently advanced in their evolution to be able to intervene in purely physical conditions. Because they are unable to do this, because they are not free agents, they are compelled at certain times to wander over the surface of the Earth, They incarnate somewhat after the fashion of a physical incarnation, in that which is represented by the configuration of the landscape, in that which is subject to physical laws. The etheric body of the people cannot as yet enter into this domain, cannot, as yet, penetrate into it and organize it. Therefore a suitable territory is selected and from this union of the etheric body now permeated with spiritual soul-forces, and the geographical area, is born that charm or fascination which a people radiates, which is dimly sensed by one who is not clairvoyant, but which a clairvoyant who sees into the secret hearts and minds of the people is able to discern.

Now how does the activity of the Archangels, the Folk Souls, work into the etheric aura that extends over a country? What is the function of the Archangel, how does he work into the people who inhabit this country and live within this aura of the Folk Spirit? This influence expresses itself in three ways. The etheric aura of the people interpenetrates, permeates man; it affects three aspects of his being. The interplay of these three aspects creates the peculiar characteristic of the person who lives in this etheric aura of the people. This etheric aura acts upon the three temperaments, the choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments, which are themselves rooted in his affective life, but not upon the so-called melancholic temperament. In general, therefore, the potent influence of the etheric aura of a people streams into these three temperaments. In the single individual these three temperaments may be variously commingled and interact in a wide variety of ways. There are infinite possibilities of interaction, as when one temperament influences another or dominates it, and so on. Here lies the source of the multiplicity of types we meet with in Russia, Norway and Germany. The national characteristics of an individual are determined by that which works into the temperaments. The difference between the several individuals depends entirely upon the extent to which the three temperaments are commingled. National temperaments, therefore, vary in accordance with the extent of the interpenetration of the folk-aura.

Thus the Folk Spirits are active everywhere. They follow, however, the path peculiar to them. The fact that they work into the temperaments is not vital for their own development; they only do so because they are involved in the interplay of cosmic and terrestrial forces. It is a volitional act, a necessary part of their mission. At the same time their own ego-development must be taken into account. They themselves must further their evolution, move across the face of the Earth and incarnate in a particular region. This is central to their mission; their influence upon the temperaments of men is of secondary importance. Naturally, man himself also benefits through their work; it reacts upon him. And equally, the activity of man reacts upon the Folk Spirits. We shall discuss later the significance of the individual human beings for the Folk Spirit. This is important. But it is essential that we should be able to follow the progress of one of these Folk Spirits and see how he incarnates on Earth, lives again for a time in the spiritual world and then incarnates again elsewhere. When we observe these recurrent changes we are still only observing the ego-interests of these Beings. Picture to yourselves quite realistically the etheric body of the human being embedded in the etheric body of the people; then picture the interaction of the human etheric body and the etheric body of the people, and think too of how the latter is reflected in the temperaments of the people, in the mingling of temperaments in the single individuals. Therein lies the secret of how the Folk Spirit or Nation Spirit reveals his character within a particular people. Having said this, we have, in effect, described the full scope of the most important work of the true Archangels or Folk Spirits.

We should by no means have exhausted the characteristics of a people if we were to take into consideration only the character of an individual member of this people. This is the function of the Archangelic Beings, who are the real Spirits of the indigenous groups of the same language-stock.

Now, as you can readily imagine, this does not complete the picture of a people, for if the Archangel, the guiding Folk Spirit, did not contact other Beings on the same territory and did not work in conjunction with them in the etheric body of man, many of the characteristics of a people would not originate at all. Man is the stage upon which the Archangels meet with yet other Beings who cooperate with the Archangels and, so to speak, work in conjunction with them. From this cooperative endeavour something totally different emerges.

When, with clairvoyant consciousness, we study the different peoples, we find, strange to relate, besides the Archangelic Beings already described, other mysterious Beings who are related to the Archangels in certain respects, but who are otherwise totally different from them, in that they are more potent Beings than the Archangels themselves. In this weaving into the temperaments the Folk Spirit works in an extremely subtle and intimate way upon the individual human soul. But there are other Beings who exercise a much more potent influence. From our general knowledge of the Hierarchies we must be quite clear about these Beings; we shall then be able to name these other Beings who are perceived by clairvoyant consciousness. You must think of the sequence of the Hierarchies of Spirits in the following way:

• Man
• Angels
• Archangels
• First Beginnings, Archai or Spirits of Personality
• Powers (Exusiai) or Spirits of Form

There are yet other Spirits of a higher order who do not concern us today.

If you recall what we spoke of yesterday—and you will find a detailed description in the information contained in my books Cosmic Memory¹ and Occult Science—an Outline you will know that it was the Archangels who underwent their human stage on Old Sun. At that time those Beings whom we call Spirits of Form or Powers, who are now two stages higher than the Archangels, were at the Archangel stage; they were Beings such as the Folk Spirits we have described today. That was their normal stage of evolution.

Now there is a strange mystery attaching to evolution—the law of deferred development. In accordance with this law certain Beings remain behind at each stage of evolution, so that in the succeeding stage they have not reached their normal rank. They retain the characteristics which belong to earlier stages. Throughout the evolution of mankind there have always been Beings who remained behind and amongst them are also certain Spirits of Form or Powers. Their deferred development took a very singular form. Whilst they are Spirits of Form or Powers in terms of certain attributes, and by virtue of certain attributes are able to exercise the powers that belong at the present time solely to the Spirits of Form who have bestowed the ego upon man at the Earth-stage, they cannot, as yet, realize this completely because they do not possess the necessary attributes. They have remained behind, with the result that they did not undergo their Archangelic stage on the Old Sun, but are now experiencing it in the Earth-stage. Hence they are Beings who are now at the stage of the Folk Spirits, but endowed with quite different attributes. Whilst the Folk Spirits work in a subtle way into the life of man because they are two stages above him and are consequently still related to him, these Spirits of Form are four stages above the human stage. They possess, therefore, a vast array of potent forces which would not be suitable for working so intimately into man. They would act more vigorously and would have no other sphere for their activity than that in which the normal Folk Spirits work.

The difficulty is that one must first learn to discriminate in the spiritual world. Those who imagine that a few ideas suffice for the understanding of the higher worlds are very much mistaken. With a few superficial ideas they would certainly contact the Archangels. But one must distinguish between the Archangels who have reached the Archangel stage in the normal way and those who ought to have reached that stage during the Old Sun condition of the Earth. Thus, other Beings are at work in the same domain as the Folk Spirits or Archangels, Beings who stand at the same level as the Archangels, but are endowed with very different, with more robust attributes such as are possessed by the other Spirits of Form and who are able therefore to penetrate deeply into human nature. In what respects has man been influenced by the Spirits of Form during his Earth existence? He could not have developed ego-consciousness if the Spirits of Form had not given the brain its present form. Beings such as these are able to work even into the configuration of the human form although they are only at the stage of the Archangels. They compete with the Folk Spirits in the domain where the Folk Spirits are active.

The first and major effect of this contact between these Spirits with their different approaches is the birth of language which could not arise without the fully developed form and structure of the human body. In the structure of man we see the activity of these other Folk Spirits who are associated with the forces of Nature and with man. We must not ascribe the birth of language solely to these Beings who subtly work into the folk temperament and who, as Beings two stages above man, imprint their formal configuration upon a people. The Beings who are responsible for language are Beings of great creative energy for they are in reality ‘Powers’, i.e. Spirits of Form. They exercise effective influence upon the Earth because they have remained on Earth, whereas their colleagues, the normal Spirits of Form, work in the ‘I’, work from the Sun into the cosmic spaces. Before the advent of Christ Jesus men worshipped Jahve, or the Jehovah Being; thereafter they worshipped the Being of Christ as the One who shed His Spirit upon them from the Cosmos. As to the Spirits of language, we must say that man cherishes precisely that aspect of language which has remained on Earth. We must learn to accustom ourselves to new points of view. Man is in the habit of projecting his own ideas into the universe. He would be wrong to regard the sacrifice these higher Beings have made in their evolution after the fashion of a schoolgirl who has failed to gain promotion. They do not remain behind because they have neglected their studies, but from motives of higher wisdom which is omnipresent in the world. If certain Beings had not renounced their normal stage of development on Old Sun and had not undergone their evolution on Earth, we should never have known the birth of language on Earth. In certain respects man should feel deep affection for his native language because it was from motives of love that higher Beings remained behind with him and renounced certain attributes in order that man should be able to evolve in accordance with the decrees of higher wisdom. Just as we must regard “hurrying forward” as a kind of sacrifice, so we must also look upon “remaining behind” at earlier stages of evolution as a kind of sacrifice and we must clearly realize that man could not have acquired certain attributes if such sacrifices had not been made.

Thus we see how two kinds of Beings of different rank work alternately in the etheric body of man and in that of the Folk Spirit in question, namely, the Archangels who have followed a normal development and those Spirits of Form who have remained behind at the Archangel stage and have sacrificed their own evolution in order to implant in man during his life on Earth his native language. They had to be endowed with the power to transform the larynx and the organs of speech in such a way that these organs could manifest physically as speech. National sentiments, national temperament, together with the national language must be seen as the result of the cooperation of these Beings. Language, speech and national characteristics, these can be compassed solely by the Folk Spirits in conjunction with the Spirits of Form, because with their greater energy and superior powers the latter had remained behind at the Archangel stage. Cooperation of this nature takes place therefore in the realms where the Folk Spirits are active. Similar cooperative activity is also to be found in yet another domain.

I pointed out yesterday that other forces also are active—the First Beginnings, the Archai or Spirits of Personality, who during the Earth-existence represent what is called the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age. These work in such a way that from their own ego, from their psychic organization, they work into the physical body and thus activate the forces of the physical body. If, at a certain moment, something arises as a result of the activity of the Zeitgeist, something manifests itself in the Spirit of an Age which furthers the progress of mankind, we must assume that this corresponds to the utilization of physical forces in our Earth life. A moment's reflection will show that definite prior conditions of a physical order are necessary in order to provide for certain contingencies in the Spirit of the Age. Kepler, Copernicus and Pericles could not possibly have lived in any other age or under other circumstances. Personalities are the product of the specific conditions of their time, conditions which at a definite moment of time are created and determined by the higher Beings working on the physical plane. Now these physical conditions must not be regarded as isolated phenomena, but as particular configurations in the physical constitution of our Earth. Sometimes these configurations stand out in bold relief; at other times, when the Spirit of the Age directs his influence in a certain direction, physical objects will inevitably take on a quite definite pattern. You will recall that on one occasion, when for the first time specially polished lenses were used, some children playing in the glass polisher's workshop assembled them in such a way as to create the optical effect of a telescope, so that the inventor of the telescope, having discovered from observation the underlying principle, only needed to apply it to achieve practical results. This is an historic fact. Imagine the number of physical processes involved before this result could be achieved. The lenses had first of all to be invented, polished and then assembled in the appropriate manner. Chance would account for this, you might say, but only on condition that you refuse to acknowledge the law that operates in such circumstances. This concatenation of outward circumstances is the work of the Archai, the Primal Forces. Their work is the consequence of focusing their activity at a particular place, an activity which otherwise, as Spirit of the Age, is expressed in a variety of ways. Think of how many inventions would remain forever unknown if this work of the Archai had not taken place in their etheric bodies. It is really the work of the Archai which acts in this way and is directed to this end.

Now if the activity of the Archai takes this form and is responsible for directing the Spirit of the Age, the question arises: how do these Spirits of the Age intuitively sense the progress of mankind? They create a situation in which man appears to be stimulated fortuitously by external circumstances. It must not be accounted as pure fiction if this sometimes occurs. I need only remind you of the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa where, by observing the regular oscillations of the lamp, Galileo discovered the law of the pendulum and how, later on, Kepler and Newton were stimulated to make their discoveries. I could quote innumerable cases of the coincidence of external events and human thought which would explain how the prevailing ideas of an age are intuitively sensed by the Archai, ideas which influence man's development, determine his progress and subject it to law. In this domain also, those Beings who have normally become Spirits of Personality during our Earth-existence, work in conjunction with other Beings, who, because they remained behind on the Old Moon, are at present not Spirits of Form or Powers as they ought to be on Earth, but are now for the first time working as Spirits of Personality.

Thus those Beings who remained behind in their evolution not at the Old Sun stage, but only at the Old Moon stage, are now Spirits of Personality. They do not possess the attributes which they should normally have, i.e. they do not “intuit” in the manner of the backward Spirits of Form. They do not stimulate man from without; they work more subtly, they leave it to man himself to observe the changes in his physical being; they stimulate inwardly, fashion the inner configuration of the brain and encourage a certain trend of thought. Hence the thought-life of man at different epochs is motivated from within, so that each epoch has its own definite mode of thought. This depends upon the delicate configurations of the thought-life, upon its inner patterns. Here the backward Spirits of Form who preserve the characteristics of the Spirits of Personality work within man and create a certain way of thinking, a quite specific pattern of ideas. Thus, from epoch to epoch, man is not only guided according to the will of the intuiting Spirits of Personality who induce him of his own volition to follow a certain course of action, but he is impelled as if by inner forces, so that thought starts from within and manifests itself externally in a physical form, just as language, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the backward Spirits of Form. Thus the way of thinking is an expression of those Spirits of Form who in our age are known as Spirits of Personality. These are not, therefore, Spirits of Personality who work in a subtle and intimate way and leave man to his own devices; they take possession of him and drive him irresistibly on. Hence you can always find in those men who are stimulated by the Spirit of the Age, these two types. Those persons who are stimulated by the true Spirits of the Age at their normal stage of development are the true representatives of their time. We can look upon them as men who were destined to appear; we feel certain that their activities were predestined. There are also others, however, in whom are active those Spirits of Personality who are, in reality, Spirits of Form. Those are the Spirits whom we called the ‘Thought Spirits’, who during the Old Moon cycle advanced to their present rank. Man is the stage upon which the activities of these Beings are coordinated. This is demonstrated by the mutual interaction between language and thought, by the reciprocal relationship not only between the Spirits at the same stage of development, but also by the reciprocal relationship between the normal Archangels who determine national sentiment and temperament and those just described—i.e. not only between the Spirits of Form who are at the Archangel stage, but also between those Spirits of Personality who, in reality, are ‘backward’ Spirits of Form.

These two kinds of Beings are reflected in the make-up and being of man. It is extremely interesting to observe this relationship when, with occult knowledge and insight, we study the different peoples. We are then able to follow the way in which the normal Folk Spirits work and take their directions from the Spirits of the Age; how these Folk Spirits work in the inner being of man in conjunction with the Spirits of language and also with the Spirits of thought who work into the thoughts of man. Within man there are not only normal and abnormal Archangels, but also the Archangels in contrast to the abnormal Spirits of Personality who from within determine the pattern of thought of a particular epoch. I have already mentioned that I proposed to touch upon conditions which you must accept with your spiritual understanding and which must be clothed in ordinary language because no language has as yet been invented which would make all this clear and credible. I am therefore obliged to use a terminology which is somewhat figurative. None the less MY description of the situation accords with an important fact in the evolution of mankind. It is most interesting and instructive to follow the evolution of humanity in recent times and to discover that a mutual agreement was once arrived at between one of the guiding Folk Spirits who is a normal Archangel, and an abnormal Spirit of Personality who works in the inner being of man as Spirit of the Thought-forces. The far-reaching consequences of this agreement are reflected in a particular epoch of history. In order to make this agreement fully effective a harmonious relationship was established with the corresponding normal Archangel who was the guiding Spirit of language at that time. Thus there was a moment in the evolution of mankind when the normal and abnormal Archangels worked together and when; furthermore, the mode of thinking which was brought about from within by an abnormal Spirit of Personality, was super-added. The harmonious relationship between these spiritual Beings is reflected in the ancient Indians of the first post-Atlantean epoch. It was owing to the concatenation of circumstances at the time of the ancient Indian culture that these Beings were able to work in closest harmony. This is the source of the historical role of the Indian people. The prolonged effects of this concerted action could still be felt in those later epochs when records of ancient Indian tradition were still extant. That is the reason why the sacred Sanscrit language exercised such a powerful influence and had such telling effects upon culture, both in the past and in later epochs. This power was the work of the Archangels who were responsible for language. The strength of the Sanscrit language depends upon that harmonious relationship of Beings of which I have just spoken. It accounts for the uniqueness of Indian philosophy which, as creative thought expressive of the inner life, is unsurpassed by any other people, and it also explains the inner perfection of thought so characteristic of the Indian culture. In all other continents different conditions prevailed. The picture I have just presented refers only to the Indian culture of that epoch. Hence it is so infinitely fascinating to follow up these trains of thought which assume their characteristic pattern because they have resulted, not from the predominance of the normal Archangel over the abnormal Archangel, but from the harmonious interaction of these Beings, because every thought was literally assimilated by the temperament of the people and elaborated with loving care at the time when the Indian people represented the first flowering of the post-Atlantean culture. And the language preserved its powerful influence because conflict had not arisen there which otherwise might have arisen, because the normal and abnormal Archangels acted in concert. Thus language, the spontaneous overflow of a pure, uncorrupted temperament, is itself an expression of that temperament. That is the secret of the first post-Atlantean civilization.

And we must also bear in mind that in all other peoples these Beings or forces cooperate in their diverse ways—the normal Folk Spirit or Archangel, the abnormal Archangel and the abnormal Time Spirit who works through the brain (working. not as a normal Time Spirit, but from within the body); and finally the true Time Spirit who transmits intuitively the thought-life to the people. We shall really understand a people when we feel intuitively the activity of these Beings or forces and estimate; the contribution each makes to the constitution of a people. It is difficult, therefore, for those who do not take into consideration the occult forces in the evolution of mankind, to provide a satisfactory definition of the word ‘folk’. If you look up the word ‘folk’ or ‘people’ in a book on ethnology you will find the strangest assortment of definitions. The authors must of necessity give different interpretations because one will respond more to what stems from the normal Archangels, another to what stems from the, abnormal Archangels and a third to what stems from the several personalities of the people. Each has a different response which will modify his definition. But we have learned through Spiritual, Science that these definitions need not of necessity be false; they are simply subject to maya or illusion. A writer's statements will betray how far he is the victim of Maya or how far he has left out of account the various forces at work. If, from the anthroposophical standpoint, we compare a people such as the Swiss who occupy the same territory and are trilingual with peoples who are uni-lingual we shall inevitably have widely different conceptions of what constitutes a people.

We shall discuss later why it is that in some peoples the Spirit of Personality is the more active agent, that is, why their mode of life is determined by the cooperation of the several personalities. We shall also meet with peoples on Earth whose life is largely determined by the abnormal Spirit of Personality. These Spirits of Personality do not contribute to the further development of the peoples. A study of the character of the North American people shows a people who, for the time being, are under an abnormal Spirit of Personality. We shall therefore only understand world history, in so far as it consists of the history of peoples, if we observe the normal and abnormal Archangels, the normal and abnormal Spirits of Personality in their mutual relationships and cooperative activity and at the same time follow up their influence upon the successive peoples in the course of the world's history.

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• 1. Original title: Aus der Akasha Chronik. Published with the title of Cosmic Memory by Rudolf Steiner Publications, Inc., New York. (Obtainable from Rudolf Steiner Press, London. See the list of literature at the end of this volume.)

We have seen that we must search for a harmony between the processes taking place in and with Man, and the processes that take place in the outer Universe. Let us once again recall briefly the point whither our study of yesterday led us. We said that Man had to be regarded, to begin with, from four points of view. Firstly, from the standpoint of the forces which are responsible for his form; secondly from that which comprises all the forces expressing themselves in the circulation of the blood, lymph, etc., in short the forces of internal motion. (You already know that the formative forces are to a large extent in a state of rest in the fully grown man, whereas the inner motion is in a state of continual flow.) Thirdly, we have the organic forces, and fourthly, the actual metabolism.

To begin with we must consider all that has connection with the formative forces. These are the forces which work outward from within until they reach the outermost periphery, the limits of man's circumference. If we formed a silhouette of man, seen as it were from all sides, we should comprehend and enclose the outermost extremities of the activities resulting from these inner forces, which build from within outwards.

Now it should not be difficult to understand that these forces of formation must be connected with other forces, which, like them, belong to the periphery of man, and are to be discovered there. These latter are the forces having their activities in the senses. The senses of man lie, as you know, upon the periphery. They are of course distributed over it and differentiated, but in order to come into contact with the forces acting in the senses you must look for them at the periphery, and this justifies us in saying that the formative forces must have a connection with the activity of the senses.

We shall perhaps understand this point better if we remember the words that Goethe quotes as having been uttered by one of the old mystics.

“Were the eye not Sun-like in itself,
How could we see the Sun?”

Now it cannot be the light-activity surrounding us all the time that is meant when the eye is said to be sun-like or light-like, for this light-activity can be perceived by the eye only when the eye is completely formed. It cannot therefore be this that is meant, when we are speaking of the building up of the eye. We must imagine this light-activity as something intrinsically different. And it is a fact that we arrive at a certain conception of what underlies this saying, if we follow man during the time between death and a new birth. For during this period his experiences consist in part—but of course, only in part—in a perception of the gradual transformation of the forces within him from the preceding physical life to the new one; and he perceives how the limb-man is transformed in the time between death and a new birth into the head-form. These experiences are no less rich in content than are those experiences we live through in this life, when we watch the gradual quickening of the plants in Spring and their decay in Autumn, etc.

All this building up that goes on in man in the time between death and re-birth is a great wealth of events, a wealth of real happenings which are by no means so easy to grasp as the mere abstract idea of them. All that takes place during this time to effect the transformation of the forces of the limb-man into those of the head for the new incarnation, is extraordinarily manifold. Man himself partakes in the process. He experiences for instance, something akin to the building up of the eye. But he does not experience it in the same manner as he did during the long evolutionary period, when he passed through the various evolutionary stages preceding our Earth, namely, those of Moon, Sun and Saturn. The forces of the Stellar Universe then acted upon him in a different way. This Stellar Universe was also in a different form from what it is now.

It is of great importance to form clear ideas on these matters. If we consider our present perceptions of what is around us, what are they? They are really pictures. Behind these pictures, of course, lies the real world; but it is the world that lies behind these pictures, which actually built up man before he had evolved sufficiently to be able to perceive these pictures. Today we perceive with our eyes the pictures of the surrounding world. Behind these lies that which has built up our eyes. This brings us to the truth: Had not the forces residing behind the picture of the Sun constructed the eye, the eye could not perceive the picture of the Sun.

The saying, you see, has to be modified, for while the perception of light today gives pictures, yet what first built up the organs into the periphery of man were not pictures, but realities. So that when we look around us in this world, what we perceive are really the forces that have built us up—our own formative forces. They have now drawn into us; that which acted from without up to the Earth period, now works from within.

We will retain this thought for our succeeding studies and will now bring together the first and fourth of these forces.

1. Forces of Form.
2. Forces of Inner Movements.
3. Organic Forces.
4. Assimilative, or metabolic forces.

Let us, for the moment, consider the last named. The process of metabolism has already become in some degree irregular; but there are natural causes which still lead Man to hold to a certain regularity in this respect; and you all know that he is inconvenienced if, for some reason or other, he fails in the rhythmic process of assimilation. He can deviate from it within limits, but he always endeavours to return again to a certain rhythm; and you know that this rhythm is one of the first essentials of physical health. It is a rhythm that embraces day and night. Within 24 hours the rhythmic process of metabolism is completed. Twenty-four hours after breakfast you again have an appetite for breakfast. All that is connected with assimilation is connected also with the day's course. I would now ask you to compare the solidity, the firmness of the bodily periphery with the mobility of the forces of assimilation. One can say that no alterations take place in the former, while assimilation repeats itself every 24 hours. A great deal takes place inside your organism, but your periphery remains unchanged. Now try to discover, in the outer world, something corresponding with this inner mobility in relation to firmness, that you find in Man. Look at the Universe of Stars. Note how the constellations move as little as do the particles on the surface of the human periphery. You will find that the constellation of Aries is always at a fixed distance from the constellation of Taurus, just as your two eyes remain at the same distance from one another. But apparently this whole stellar heaven moves; apparently it revolves around the Earth. Well, in respect of this, men are today no longer ignorant, they know that the movement is merely apparent, and ascribe its appearance to a revolution of the Earth upon her own axis.

Many have been the attempts to find proof for this revolution of the Earth on her axis. It was really only during the fifties of the last century that man began to have the right to speak of such a revolution, for it was only then that the pendulum experiments of Foucault showed this turning of the Earth. I will not go into this further today. We have however, in this way, valid proof of this terrestrial process, which repeats itself every 24 hours. It represents, in relation to the fixed constellations, the analogy of the rhythmic course of metabolism in man as compared to the fixed nature of his peripheric form; and here you can find, if you examine thoroughly all the conditions and relationships, exact evidence for the movement of the Earth in the processes of metabolism in man.

In these times we come across various so-called theories of relativity which claim that we cannot really speak of absolute motion. If I look out of the window of a railway carriage and think that the objects outside are moving, in reality it is the train and myself that are moving. Neither however can it be strictly proved that the world outside is not also moving in an opposite direction! All this kind of talk is, as a matter of fact, not of much value. For if one man walks forward and another man stands still in the distance while he approaches him it is, relatively speaking, immaterial whether he says: “I approach him” or “he approaches me”. Looked at in this way there seems to be no difference. Such considerations as this form, as you know, the foundations of the Einstein theories of relativity.

It is all very well—but there is a way whereby one can strictly prove the motion, for the person who remains at rest will not experience fatigue, whereas the one who walks will do so. By means of inner processes the absolute reality of motion can thus be proved; indeed there are no other proofs but the inner processes. Applying this to the Earth, we can truly speak there too of absolute motion, for through Spiritual Science we learn to realise that this motion is the equivalent of the inner motion of metabolism as compared with the fixed form of man. We should not lay so much stress upon the fact that the Earth rotates round its axis and thereby brings about an apparent Solar motion in space, but should instead relate this terrestrial motion to the whole Starry Universe; we should not speak of Sun days, but rather of Star days—which are not synonymous, for the Stellar day is shorter than the Solar day. A correction is always necessary in formulae dealing with the Solar day. Hence we can truly speak of this movement of the Earth on her axis as of something derivable from Man's nature; for as already pointed out, with the revolution considered in its relation to the fixed starry heavens is connected the inner motion of metabolism in Man. To sum up, the relation of metabolism in Man to the forces responsible for the form of Man is the relation of the Earth to the Heaven of Fixed Stars, which latter is represented for us by the Zodiac.

When we look at the Zodiac, it forms for us the outer cosmic representative of our own outer form. When we consider the Earth, we have before us the representative of the assimilative forces within us; and the relation of movement in each case corresponds.

Now it will be a little more difficult to find the relationship between (2) and (3), between Inner Movements and Organic Forces. We can however make the matter comprehensible in the following way. If you consider the movements within the human organism, you will readily conclude that they are something in Man that is in no way so fixed as his outer periphery. They are in motion. But something further is connected with this movement. The movements include that of the blood as well as the nerve-fluid, lymph, etc. We need not give a detailed list of them here, but there are seven of these inner movements. Connected with these movements are the individual organs. The forces of motion have produced, within their courses, these organs; in the latter we must recognise the results of these motions. I have often drawn attention recently to the real truth concerning the human heart. The materialistic view of the world, as I have pointed out, is of opinion that the heart is a kind of pump, forcing the blood through the whole body. But this is not the case; on the contrary, the pulsation of the heart is not the cause but the effect of circulation. Into the living inner motions or movements is inserted the functioning of the organs.

If we try to discover a cosmic equivalent for this, we will find it by observing, on the one hand, the movements of the Planets, especially if we consider their motions in relation to the movements of the moon. You will know—having already had this explanation in previous lectures—the connection between the lunar motion and the phenomena of the tides; and much more besides is connected with this lunar motion. Were we to study the phenomena of Nature more deeply, we should find that not only does light appear as a result of the sunrise, but other—and indeed more material—effects in our Earth-environment are to be connected with the planetary motion. When once this is made the basis of real, genuine study, we shall realise the harmony existing between many phenomena on the Earth and the motions of the planets. We shall study the effects of the planetary influence upon air, water and earth, in the same way as we have to study—in the human body—the influences upon their respective organs of the forces of inner movement existing in the circulation of the blood and in other circulations. In this way we shall discover a certain reciprocal action between the organic activities and the forces of inner movement. Just as we have already observed a correspondence between Earth and the Fixed Stars, so now we shall in fact have before us a similar correspondence between earth, water, air, fire (heat) and the planets—among which we reckon, of course, the Sun.

Thus we arrive at a certain relation between occurrences within the human organism and those taking place outside in the Macrocosm. For the present, however, we need concern ourselves only with the organic forces. How are they built up in the human body? They are built up in such a manner that as we follow the human life during the periods of this building-up process of the organs, we may recognise with a fair degree of accuracy that the process is related to the course of the year as metabolism is related to the course of the day. Observe how this building process takes place in the child, commencing at conception and proceeding until he first ‘sees the light of the world’ as it is beautifully expressed. After this, and especially during the first months after birth, the building-up process proceeds still further; so that, in very fact, we have here to do with a year's course. Then we have another period of about one year to the appearance of the first teeth. Thus, in the building process of the organs we have a yearly course. But this course stands in a similar relation to the forces of inner movement in Man as the varied conditions of the year's activity—Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter—do to the planets. Here again we discover something in Man that has correspondences in the Macrocosm. We cannot study these matters in any other way than by comparing details with each other. All I can do today is to draw your attention to certain facts that bear upon this subject, for were we to examine the connections in detail it would take us too long; but by studying certain relationships in Man during the actual building process of the organs, and seeing them in connection with the forces of inner movement, you can find everywhere analogies of that which takes place in the quarterly changes in the Seasons, as seen in their relationship to the forces of planetary motion. But we must avoid commencing our examination upon the basis of the heart being a pump; on the contrary, the heart must be viewed as a creation of the circulation of the blood. We must, so to speak, insert the heart into a living blood-circulation. The movement of the Sun too must be thought of as similarly inserted into the movements of the Planets. An unbiased examination of the intra-human conditions compels us to speak of a revolution of the Earth on her axis causing an apparent motion of the starry heavens—for this constitutes the equivalent of the movements connected with metabolism in their relations to the human outer form. But we cannot speak of a movement of the Earth around the Sun during the year. We cannot do this, if we understand the inner man which lives in close connection with the Macrocosm; for we must not conceive of that which moves towards the heart, in any other manner than we would the other flows of movement within man. We must therefore recognise that we are concerned not with an elliptical movement of the Earth in the course of the year but rather with a movement which corresponds to the Solar motion. That is, Earth and Sun move together in the course of the year; the one does not circle around the other. The latter opinion is the result of judging appearances; in actuality we have here the motion of both these bodies in space with a certain connection between the two. This is something in the Copernican theory that will have to be substantially corrected. But there is yet another way in which we must conceive the relation of man with macrocosmic nature.

What really is the nature of the process which we observe in the daily movement of metabolism? Only part of this process is carried on in such a way as to be accompanied by the phenomena of our consciousness, another part being accomplished while consciousness is shut off, while the Ego and astral body are separated from the physical and etheric. Now we must especially note the following. Man does not experience in the same way what takes place between awaking and going to sleep and what takes place between going to sleep and awaking. Just consider the relation between the two moments of time—going to sleep and awaking. If you do this with an unprejudiced mind, you will arrive at an unequivocal view of this matter. When you go to sleep, you are, as it were, at the zero of your being; the condition of sleep is not merely one of rest, it is the antithetical condition of the waking state. When you awake, you are, from the standpoint of your life, really in the same relation to yourself and your environment as you are at the moment of going to sleep. The one is the equivalent of the other, the only difference being that of direction. Awaking means passing from sleep to the waking state; falling asleep is the reverse. Apart from direction they are absolutely alike. Therefore if we could indicate the movements of metabolism by a line, then it cannot be a straight line or a circle, for they would not contain the points of awaking and of falling asleep. We must find a line which actually depicts the movements of metabolism, so as to contain these points, and the only one—search as long as you like—is the lemniscate. Here you have the point of awaking in one direction and the point of falling asleep in the other direction. The directions alone are opposite, the two movements being equal as regards life-condition. We can now distinguish in a real way the cycle of day and the cycle of night.

Whither does all this lead? If we have grasped the fact that the motion of the daily metabolism corresponds to the motion of the Earth, we can no longer, with the Earth here (diagram) attribute to any one point a circular motion. On the contrary, we must form the conception that the Earth in actual fact proceeds along her path in such a way as to produce a line like that of the lemniscate. The motion is not a simple revolution, but a more complicated movement; each point of the terrestrial surface describes a lemniscate, which is also the line described by the metabolic process.

We cannot therefore imagine the Earth's movement to consist merely of a turning round the axis, for in reality it is a complicated motion in which every point upon which you stand, describes—actually in order to form the foundation for the movement of your metabolic processes—a lemniscate. It is absolutely necessary to seek in the movements of the outer Universe the equivalent of movements taking place within Man. For only by a study of the changes within physical Man can we arrive at an understanding of the planetary motions exterior to Man. When a man sets his limbs in motion and becomes tired, we cannot go on arguing the point as to whether he is in relative or actual motion! It is out of the question to say: Perhaps the movement is only relative, perhaps the other man whom he is approaching is after all really approaching him! Theories of Relativity no longer hold water, when the inner motion proves that man moves. And it is impossible also to prove the movements in the interior of the Earth, except by means of the inner changes that go on in Man. The movements of metabolism, for example, are the true reflection of that which the Earth executes as motion in space. And again, that which we have termed the organ-building forces, active in the course of the year, are the equivalent of the annual motion of Earth and Sun together. We shall have occasion to speak more specifically of these things later; at the moment I should like to draw your attention once more to our model, where I have pointed out that the Earth moves behind the Sun in a screw-like line, the Earth moving along always with the Sun. And then if we view the line from above, we get a projection of the line and the projection shows a lemniscate.

Now all this will make it clear that we can certainly speak of a daily motion of the Earth around her axis, but by no means of a yearly motion of the Earth around the Sun. For the Earth follows the Sun, describing the same path.

Various other facts show that we have no right to speak of such a revolution. To give one instance, the fact that it was found necessary—I have spoken of this before—simply to suppress one statement of Copernicus. Were the Earth revolving round the Sun, we should of course expect her axis, which owing to its inertia remains parallel, to point in the direction of different fixed stars during this revolution. But it does not! If the Earth revolved round the Sun, the axis could not indicate the direction of the Pole-star, for the point indicated would itself have to revolve round the Polestar; it does not however do this, the axis continually indicates the Pole-star. That line which should be apparent to us and which would correspond to the progressive motion of the Earth in her relation to the Sun, is not to be found.

It is in a spiral, screw-like path that the Earth follows the Sun, boring her way, as it were, into cosmic space.

I have already indicated however that there is another movement which manifests in the phenomena of the precession of the equinoxes—the movement of the point of sunrise at the Spring-equinox through the Zodiac, once in 25,920 years. This also is the equivalent of a certain motion in Man. What can we find within Man corresponding to it? You may be able to come to a conclusion on this point from what I have said above. We have to find a motion equivalent to the relation of the Sun to the Fixed Stars, for the point of sunrise progresses through the complete Zodiac—or fixed stars—once in 25,920 years. The equivalent in Man is the relation between the forces of inner movement and the forces of form; this must therefore also be of long duration. The forces of inner movement in Man must change in some way, so as to alter their position in relation to the periphery of Man.

You will remember what I said about something that has been observable since the period of ancient Greece. I said that the Greeks used the same word for ‘yellow’ and ‘green’, that they really did not see blue in the same way as we do, but actually, as reported by Roman writers, realised and used four colours only in their art, namely yellow, red, black and white. They saw these four living colours. To them the sky was not blue as we see it; it appeared to them as a kind of darkness. Now this is an assertion that can be made in all certainty, and Spiritual Science confirms it. This change in Man has taken place since the time of ancient Greece. When you ponder over the fact that the constitution of the human eye has undergone such a degree of modification since the period of ancient Greece, you can then also conceive of other alterations in the human organism, taking place upon the periphery and occupying still longer periods of time for their accomplishment. Such alterations upon the periphery must of necessity bear a relation to the forces of inner movement, for, of course, they cannot be produced by the digestion or the organic functions. These peripheric modifications correspond, as a matter of fact, to the course of the vernal equinox in the Zodiac, to a period, that is, of 25,920 years. During this period the human race undergoes complete change. We must not make the mistake of thinking that previous to that time humanity appeared as we now see it. Consideration of the circumstances connected with physical existence makes it absurd to use the figures given us by modern geology for the purpose of following human evolution in time, for we can comprise this only in the period of 25,920 years, and part of that is still in the future. When the vernal equinox has come back again to the same place, the alterations that will have taken place in the whole human race are such that the human form will be quite dissimilar to what it is now. I have already told you something derived from other sources of cognition about the future of the human race and about its age. And here we see how the consideration of physical conditions compels a recognition of the same knowledge.

As a result of the above we arrive at the realisation that what we call the ‘movements of the heavenly bodies’ are not quite as simple as present day astronomy would have us believe, but that we enter here into extremely complicated conditions—conditions that can be studied from the standpoint of Man's connection with the Macrocosm. I have already been able to point out to you certain details of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and we shall in course of time learn more and more about them from other sources. You will be able already to see one thing—that man is not wholly dependent upon the Macrocosm. With what lies deep down in the subconscious, with the processes namely of assimilation, he is still in a certain way—but only in a certain way—bound to the Earth's daily revolution around her axis. Nevertheless, he can lift himself out of this connection. How is this? It is possible because man as he now is, built up in accordance with the forces of the periphery and of inner movement, with the forces too of the organs and of the metabolic system, is complete and finished in his dependence on the forces from without; and now he is able, with his complete and finished organisation to sever himself from this connection. In the same sense that we have in waking and sleeping a copy of day and night, having thus in ourselves the inner rhythm of day and night, but not needing to make this inner rhythm correspond with the outer rhythm of day and night (i.e. we need not sleep at night, nor wake during the day), so in a similar way does Man sever his connection with the Macrocosm in other departments of his existence. Upon this is founded the possibility of human free-will. It is not the present formation of Man that is dependent upon the Macrocosm, but his past formation. Man's present experiences are fundamentally a picture or copy of his past adaptation to the Macrocosm, and in this sense we live in the pictures of our past. Within these we are enabled to evolve our freedom, and from them we receive our moral laws, which are independent of the necessity ruling in our nature. It is when we understand clearly how Man and Macrocosm are related to each other that we recognise the possibility of free-will in Man.

Finally we must think over the following. It is clear that in Man the metabolic forces are still, in a certain respect, connected with the rhythm of his daily life. The forces of form have solidified. Now consider the animal instead of Man. Here we shall find a much more complete dependence upon the Macrocosm. Man has grown out of or beyond this dependence. The ancient wisdom therefore spoke of the Zodiac or Animal Circle, not of the Man Circle, as corresponding to the forces of formation. The forces of form manifest themselves in the animal kingdom in a great variety of forms, while in Man they manifest essentially in one form covering the whole human race; but they are the forces of the animal kingdom, and as we evolve beyond them and become Man, we must go out beyond the Zodiac. Beyond the Zodiac lies that upon which we, as human beings, are dependent in a higher sense than we are upon all that exists within the Zodiac, that is, within the circle of the fixed stars. Beyond the Zodiac is that which corresponds to our Ego.

With the astral body—which the animal also possesses—we are fettered to a dependence upon the Macrocosm, and the building up of the astral vehicle takes place in accordance with the will of the Stars. But with our "I" or Ego we transcend this Zodiac.

Here we have the principle upon which we have gained our freedom. Within the Zodiac we cannot sin, any more than can the animals; we begin to sin as soon as we carry our action beyond the Zodiac. This happens when we do that which makes us free from our connection with the Universal forces of formation, when we enter into relationship with regions exterior to the Zodiac or region of fixed stars. And this is the essential content of the human Ego.

You see, we may measure the Universe in so far as it appears to us a visible and temporal thing, we may measure its full extension through space to the outermost fixed stars, and all that takes place by way of movement in time in this starry heaven, and we may consider all this in its relation to Man; but in Man is being fulfilled something that goes on outside this space and outside this time, outside all that takes place in the astral. There beyond, is no ‘necessity of Nature’, but only that has place which is intimately connected with our moral nature and moral actions. Within the Zodiac we are unable to evolve our moral nature; but in so far as we evolve it, we record it into the Macrocosm beyond the Zodiac. All that we do remains and works in the world. The processes taking place within us from the forces of formation to the forces of metabolism, are the result of the past. But the past does not prejudge the whole of the future, it has no power over that future which eventuates from Man himself in his moral actions.

I can only lead you forward in this study step by step. Keep well in mind what I have said today and in my next lecture we will examine the matter from yet another point of view.

The ideas which we have drawn from various sources concerning man's inclination to the Luciferic nature on the one hand, and to the Ahrimanic on the other hand, have shown us how essential it is for him to find a balance between them. Both tendencies, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, are false paths and man must find the equilibrium. Now a question may arise which is a difficult problem of knowledge and conscience for modern humanity. The question is this: how does one find this equilibrium, this state of balance, so that one need not succumb to the Luciferic danger or to the Ahrimanic?

The answer to this question must be given in different ways for the differing periods of human evolution; for we must know how in a particular epoch men are drawn more to the one or the other side. We have a general idea of what attracts man to the Luciferic tendency or the Ahrimanic, but we must bring it once more definitely to mind in relation to our own age.

Since the beginning of the Fifth post-Atlantean period, that is, since the fifteenth century, both the intellectual life and the social life among civilised peoples have essentially changed in comparison with earlier times. Intellectual life has increasingly acquired a character where the human being himself is definitely excluded from a world-conception. Man examines nature, and the greatest progress has been made by modern mankind in natural science. But the characteristic element is this, namely, that the actual knowledge of the human being has not only made no advance through the knowledge of nature, but has in a certain sense been cast out of human knowledge. Man has an excellent knowledge of everything else in the world, but he no longer knows himself. He has studied the stages in the animal kingdom, has founded his evolutionary theory on this, and believes that he understands how the different orders have evolved from the most elementary to the more perfect. He then adds man to the sequence, applying to the human being all that he has learnt about the animals. People arrive at nothing new that would explain the being of man, they seek the elements of explanation within the animal world and simply say: Man is just the highest stage. Nothing particular is said about the human being; he is just the highest stage. And this includes all human characteristics and is said with an instinctive obviousness. The result is that there is absolutely no real knowledge of man.

This particular sort of knowledge prevails not only in the various sciences but has already become accepted in the widest circles throughout the world. It has become something that the man of today absorbs with his newspaper reading. And if he does not absorb it with his newspaper, then in some other way, for in fact it is already inoculated into children at school. This character of modern science has more and more become general property and it fills people with ideas and concepts that constitute their general state of mind. Man reaches a certain consciousness of the world but in this consciousness he himself is omitted, That is the one thing.

The other is modern social life. You need only study the social life that obtained in times that preceded the fifteenth century. The world was filled, so to say, with judgments that were derived from an ancient and honoured social wisdom, and were the property of all men in common. One did not judge for oneself what was good or bad. Nor had one any doubt about it, for one grew up in a social order that possessed a common judgment on good and bad, whether it had reference to the people or to religion. Man decided whether he should do this or that out of this common judgment, out of something hovering authoritatively over the social order.

Much of what was at one time far more intensely established in the social order of humanity, we have today merely in our language, and since our language has in many respects become phrases we have it in the phrase. Just recollect in how many cases and to what an extent people are accustomed to use the little word “one”—“one” thinks so, “one” does this, “one” says this, and so on, although in most cases it is merely a phrase and means nothing at all. The little pronoun “one” really has meaning only in the speech which still belongs to a people in which the separate member has not become such a strong individuality as in our time, in which the words of a single person express with a certain right a common judgment.

The contents of the human soul which are gradually being given by the character of modern science and which have led man to forget himself in his world-conception, lead to the Ahrimanising of mankind in our age. And in social life that which leads man out of a life in common, which, for example, in industry has led him from the old interdependent life of the Guilds to the modern free economy, this leads to the Luciferising of man. Yet both are entirely necessary; both had to arise in the evolution of humanity. For in the earlier knowledge which man gained and which formed the constitution of his soul, man himself was always contained. In earlier times one could not gain knowledge of nature, for example, without at the same time gaining knowledge of man. One could not gain knowledge about Mars without at the same time getting to know in what way Mars has significance for human life. One could not gain knowledge about gold without gaining certain facts about man.

All that was human at that time has been thrust out. In this way one came to a pure concept of nature, freed from everything pertaining to man. This concept of nature had then to be the foundation for modern technics.

Modern technics can only furnish the great triumphs of recent times when it contains nothing but what a man can survey with his pure intellect. Look at any machine, look at any organisation of modern technical life, apart from the actual social life, and you will see that everything is organised in such a way as to exclude the human being from what is actually involved. Modern technology had therefore to have recourse to the expedient, although not conscious of it, of using merely the corpse of nature.

When we construct a machine, we break up the material that will form it, just as nature breaks up the human being when it makes a corpse out of the still animated organism. Everywhere in our mechanism we have the corpses of nature's existence. But man is not born from this corpse of nature of which our mechanical world consists, the world we have gradually produced as technics. He is born out of the nature that lives, that is alive even to the mineral kingdom. To this nature we have added in modern technics another nature, a corpse of nature, After the geological strata of the earth have been formed (see diagram, blue, orange) we have, as it were, superimposed a topmost geological stratum (green) over them, which consists of our machines and no longer contains anything of living nature. We work in the dead part of nature inasmuch as we have added modern technics to what was formerly there.

This is something that makes a shattering impression on a man who considers it in its full extent, particularly when he realises how detached modern mankind has made life, not only through external mechanical technics, but through the technical mode of thought.

Consider something like the end of the war which took place between China and Japan towards the close of the nineteenth century. What took place after the conclusion of peace as the necessary settlement? The Chinese Minister wrote an immense sum in millions on a cheque. This cheque was taken to a bank. Some subordinate official accepted it and purely through Banking procedure the cheque was the occasion by which the Japanese envoy in China received the vast sum of millions which the Chinese Minister wrote upon the cheque. Something took place there in a corpse-like—externally of course—one might say, in a shadowy corpse-like manner. Nothing else has been brought about by it except that the credit of millions which the Chinese Empire up to then had had at the Bank of England had passed over to Japan through the writing and delivering of the cheque. What would it have meant if one had wanted by old procedure to pay these millions of war-damages which were simply credited to Japan through a cheque from China? I will even take the mildest form—paying in cash. What would it have meant if the whole of this money, supposing Chinese money to be what it is now, or was a short time ago, had had to be sent over from China to Japan? Thus, where one still has to do with realities the simplest form shows one what modern life has become relatively rapidly in the last third of the nineteenth century. Man's whole mode of thinking has been taken hold of by such things and has familiarised itself quite naturally. Intellectualism, which in fact Ahrimanises humanity, has become a matter of course.

On the other hand, man has had to experience in social life what has been experienced. Just as he could not have come to pure natural science without intellectualism, he would not have come to the consciousness of his freedom without what he has gone through in the social life. Man has been hollowed out through the nature of modern science. He no longer knows anything of himself, he cannot understand the being of man. But on the other hand there has arisen in him the greatest strain and tension, the great demand upon his being to act from his own original impulse, for man is to act as a free being.

If one wants a symbol for what has really come about one can only say this: Man has increasingly lost the fulness of his being and become a total cipher, a blank in his own eyes. For modern natural science contains nothing of man. He has become gradually a total cipher and now in the cipher the impulse of freedom must stream out (see diagram).

That is the discord in modern man. He is to be free, that is, find the impulses of his nature and his actions within himself, but when he tries to penetrate to where these impulses are to arise and understand them, he finds a blank, a cipher, he is inwardly hollowed out. It is necessary for this to have come about, but it is also a necessity for modern humanity to come out beyond it again. For in this freedom lies the Luciferic danger unless one finds the equilibrium, and in the modern scientific life lies the Ahrimanic danger if one does not reach the state of balance.

How does one come to the state of balance? Here we must indicate something that might be called “the Golden Rule” of modern Spiritual Science—that is good. Science had to arise in modern evolution, but it must be widened. It needs a knowledge of the human being, and this can alone be brought through Spiritual Science. It is no knowledge of man to dissect him and take the brain and the liver and the stomach and the heart, for then one only gets what is also to be found in the animal kingdom but in a somewhat other form. All that is of no real value for the knowledge of man as such. Only the knowledge of man gained from Spiritual Science has value. The moment one knows that the human being with his actual ego is rooted in the will, that his will-filled ego represents his actual earthly spirituality and that this in the earthly realm makes use of the metabolism, one has an essential fact from which one can proceed to study the human metabolism and its specification throughout the organism. One comes from the spiritual element to an understanding of the human bodily nature. One must learn to know the rhythmic system and how it is expressed in the shaping of the course of the breath, the course of the blood, and one must break with the superstition that the heart is a pump which somehow drives the blood through the organism like a flood. One must learn that the Spirit is at work in the blood-circulation and that therefore rhythm there lays hold of the metabolism, causes the blood-circulation and then, in the course of human development, in the very embryo, plastically moulds the heart out of the blood-circulation, so that the heart is formed out of the blood-circulation, out of the spiritual. If one then learns to know how in the nerves-senses-system the life of concepts breaks down again the metabolic process, if one recognises the nerve as something that is left behind from the conceptual life, then one sees into the human being in a way in which one cannot penetrate the animal, for in the animal all these things are quite different.

The materialist imagines that here is a nerve (see diagram, red) and this nerve produces something as a picture. No, that is not the reality. In reality the conceptual life proceeds, and while it proceeds it destroys the organic matter, creates, as it were, a groove of waste matter within the nerve (black). That is a deposit created by the life of concepts, something excreted from the organism. And the nerve is the excretory organ for the conceptual life.

In the materialistic age people have used a materialistic comparison—that the brain excretes thoughts as the liver excretes gall. That is nonsense, for the reverse is true. The brain is excreted by the thoughts, separated off continually and continually replaced by the metabolic organism. A modern scientific man will not be able to find anything right in such an idea; he will say that it all refers equally to the animal, the animal has a brain and such and such organs, and so on. This shows. however, an ignorance of himself; anyone who speaks like this of man and animal makes the same mistake as a legislator would make if he had all the razors to be found at all the barbers of a town carried to the restaurants, since he connected with a knife solely the idea of eating and concluded that an instrument formed in a certain way could only have one purpose.

The important point is to recognise that the organ in man does not fulfil the same service as in the animal; moreover the whole mode of observation which I have just employed in its most elementary elements has not at all a similar meaning in the case of the animal. It is precisely the knowledge of what man possesses out of the spiritual as material organs that is so immensely important; this concrete self-knowledge is the essential point. All the idle talk and chatter of the various mysticisms of today which proclaim that man must grasp himself inwardly, all this dreaming is nothing; it leads not to a real self-knowledge but only to an inner pleasant feeling of wellbeing. Man must study with patience and industry how his different organs are plastically formed out of the spirit. Genuine science must be based on the spiritual. One must take man as he stands before us and imitatively model him plastically, as it were, out of the spirit. That is the one thing.

While humanity lives today as it does, letting authoritative sciences issue from the various establishments, there exists in the spiritual worlds a sacred decree; external science must be supplemented by the science of the knowledge of man' It will be disastrous for mankind if it receives only external science, The Mysteries existed in ancient times in order not to let anything harmful approach man, but that is not compatible with the modern spirit. Mankind therefore in its conscious members must care for what was formerly cared for by outside powers. Those personalities who have come to understand something of these things must take care that the different sciences cannot cast their shadows, by confronting the shadows, which would darken humanity, with the light of a real, genuine, concrete self- knowledge of man. Sciences without this self-knowledge are harmful, for they Ahrimanise humanity-, Sciences with the counterpart of human self-knowledge are beneficial, for they lead mankind in reality to what it must reach in the immediate future. There should be no science which in one respect or another is not brought back to the human being. There should be no science which is not followed up right into the inmost being of man, where, if it is thus followed up, it first acquires its true meaning.

Thus, through this actually concrete self-knowledge one arrives at the equilibrium that the sciences have destroyed. Present-day man is for the most part not in the least interested in what sort of being he is in the world. If he wants to be particularly profound he lets himself “prattle” about being some sort of little god or the like—without having any real idea of the god. It is of little interest to him, however, how his individual human form is formed out of the whole universe.

The social life becomes Luciferic if it leads purely to the promotion of freedom inside that which has become nil, blank. Man will not be a nil to himself if he comes to a real self-knowledge, for then he will know how the whole structure of the universe creates an image of itself in what is within his skin, how every human being carries inside his skin a product of the whole world, The impulse of freedom is brought to equilibrium in the social life if we learn what underlies the world as spirit, if we get beyond the merely material view of the world which is characteristic of the development of knowledge during recent centuries.

Man has been lost. The outer world has become empty of man. In external astronomy we observe the sun, the planets, the fixed stars, the comets; they seem to pass through space as some kind of objective bodies. We seek their laws of motion. There is nothing there of man. Read my “Occult Science” and bring before your mind the description given there of world evolution. Directly you read of Old Saturn you are reading nothing described by modern astronomy, but at once you read of what appears as the first rudiments of the human being. In the description of Saturn is contained all that existed as the first rudiments of humanity during the Saturn evolution. With the history of world evolution you follow at the same time the whole of human evolution. Nowhere do you find there a world devoid of man. What you yourselves are is to be found described stage for stage in the evolution of the world itself.

What is the consequence? If you go into what modern science gives you about some sort of ancient mist which then conglomerated into a ball from which our present world is supposed to have arisen, but in which the human being cannot be found, you have nothing human in it at all, it all remains purely intellectual. You find something there that can interest your head, but it does not grip your whole nature. Your whole human being can only he gripped by a knowledge which contains this human being. In fact it is only the indolence of modern man, who, when he takes in something, is not at all accustomed to develop feelings and will-impulse as well. If someone reads this evolution of Saturn, Sun, Moon to the Earth and then further reads the perspective for the future, it is indolence if, in spite of its all being given in pure concepts, he does not feel stimulated in his feelings, if he does not feel; There I stand in the world, there I am together with this whole world, there I know myself to be one with this whole world!

This knowledge of oneself as being one with the world distinguishes the knowledge of the world given through Spiritual Science from the view of the world that obtains today. But let that permeate the men of today in whom it is lacking, let men be filled with the consciousness of belonging to the whole world, then a social spirit can emerge that can lead men forward. Whereas what has arisen and could indeed lead to the claiming of freedom, but gives no feeling of responsibility, this has only brought men to the point of producing the chaos in which we are now living. Luciferising can only be prevented if men recognise their position in the cosmos, if they penetrate not only the physical nature of the cosmos, that which is given to the senses, but the spiritual element as well, feel themselves as spirit in the spirit of the universe. This realisation of man's connection with the spiritual world gives rise to real social feeling, it enables man to fructify the social life on earth.

What the feeling of freedom has produced in man's social life has led above all to Luciferising, though modern men may feel nothing of it. But in the spiritual world in which we are all the time rooted, there stands again a sacred decree which proclaims to man: You must not allow the impulse of freedom to remain without a feeling of the cosmos! Just as the knowledge of man must be added to the external sciences, so must cosmic feeling be added to what has evolved as social life in our time.

These two, knowledge of humanity and feeling with the whole universe, give man equilibrium. And this he can find if in the most modern sense he really grasps the Christ-Mystery, grasps it as Spiritual Science can give it to him. For there we speak of the Christ as a cosmic Being Who has descended to earth out of the infinities of the universe. We learn to feel cosmically and must only seek to give this feeling a content. This we can do only through Anthroposophy, otherwise the Christ-concept too is empty for us. The Christ-concept becomes phrase unless it becomes something through which we understand the cosmos itself, humanly.

Just feel how from a universe that contains the Sun described by modern Astronomy and the spectral-analysis described by modern Physics—feel how from such a universe the Christ could not have descended to earth. One who adheres merely to this description of the cosmos as knowledge, can attach no meaning at all to any true, real Christ-Being. Such a Christ remains empty or becomes such as Harnack imagines. To learn to know and to feel the Christ today as Cosmic Being one needs the history of evolution that looks for man through the Saturn, Sun, Moon periods. There, where the human element is within the cosmos, one finds also the knowledge which permits the Christ to come forth from the cosmos. And if one learns to know how man's material part, what lies within his skin, is created out of the spiritual, then one learns to know him in such a way that one learns to know the Mystery of Golgotha, the incarnating of the Cosmic Christ in the individual man. Such a human being as modern science—from mathematics to psychology—can describe would find it impossible to imagine that the Christ had in any way incorporated in him. In order to understand this one must come to real self-knowledge. There is no Christianity today which can be accepted by the modern mind except through the self-knowledge and the cosmic knowledge of man which are given by Spiritual Science.

The nature of these connections can be discovered throughout our anthroposophical literature, and they should be compared with what is essential in our time for the progress of mankind. What people have received up to now in various ways from education and custom, they like to have on the one hand as a sort of shadowy abstract knowledge for Sunday, but would then prefer to regard the rest of life as quite apart from this knowledge—not basing their life on it. Any deeper need of the soul is met by the Sunday pulpit, any external requirements, by the State. Both are accepted traditionally and no thought is given as to where one must come if this traditional acquiescence were to continue.

I have constantly and from very many aspects pointed out the gravity of our time. Today I wished to indicate how the whole course of scientific life must not be pursued further unless every science is illumined by self-knowledge, and how social development must not be tolerated unless a cosmic feeling is introduced, a conception of the universe in which the human being is present in the conception itself. It is characteristic of Anthroposophy that when we study it we perceive the whole universe in the single human being and when we contemplate the world we find that everywhere it contains man.

Such things are no doubt reminiscent of Inspirations and Imaginations which humanity has had in the past, but they are not renewals of an external kind, they are drawn forth from the consciousness to which mankind is actually summoned today out of the spiritual world itself. What man sees around him in this physical world does not simply happen of itself. Man is standing within the spiritual world just as he stands as physical organism within the physical world. And something is happening, something is going on in this spiritual world in which he stands. According to what man is has he a meaning for the events of the spiritual worlds.

Let us suppose that someone only considers what goes on around him in the physical world; at most he pays a certain heed to a traditional faith which, however, has no relation to the world and only talks abstractions, and that this man now engages in traditional science, He can pursue this science, empty as it is of man, he can fill his soul with it as millions and millions today cram themselves with it more or less consciously. In this way, however, men stand likewise in a world of the Spirit, for cramming ourselves full with this science is of significance too for the spiritual world. What significance has it for the spiritual world? If that goes on in the same way then Ahriman reaps his reward. For he is the spirit who slinks eagerly round modern educational establishments and would like to keep them as they are; for that serves his interests. The Ahrimanic being, this cold ossified, bald-pated Ahriman—to speak figuratively—slinks round our modern educational centres and would like them to remain as they are. He will certainly lend his assistance if it is a matter of destroying something like this Goetheanum.

On the other hand, in the social life in which men establish their earthly claims without a feeling of the cosmos, and inasmuch as they only speak of these earthly claims without being penetrated, inflamed and inspired with the cosmic consciousness—here actually the Luciferic beings come into their own. There we see how Lucifer lives. I cannot here use the picture, which is a picture but yet is born actually from genuine Ahrimanic concepts, the picture of the ossified, slinking, bald-pated Ahriman, who slinks round educational institutes and wants to preserve them as they are. This picture would not apply to the nature of Lucifer. But another picture would apply: Let opinions be expressed out of mere egoism, with no feeling of the cosmos, even with good will and well-meant social intentions, then the true nature of Lucifer breaks out from what is being expressed. With the social demands that are promoted in the world without cosmic feeling, man spits out of himself what then becomes the beautiful Lucifer. He lives in men themselves, in their stomachs, ruined through the social mis-instincts—understood spiritually—in their ruined lungs, there lives the Luciferic source. It wrests itself free, man spits it out of his whole being and hence our spiritual atmosphere is filled with this Luciferic nature—filled with social instincts that do not feel the connection of man with the cosmos. The bald Ahriman, lanky, skeleton-like, haggard, slinking round our abstract culture on the one hand, on the other hand that which extricates itself slimily out of man himself and assumes the semblance of beauty by which man is deluded, these are pictures—but they are the realities of our time. And only through self-knowledge and only through a feeling of the connection of man with the cosmos does man find the balance between the ossified and the semblance of beauty, between the bony Being and the slimy Being, between that which slinks round him and that which wants to extricate itself out of him. And this equilibrium must be found. The fruit of the culture, the civilisation of modern times, is, in fact, nothing else than what one could call the marriage between the bony and the slimy. Man is living his life in such a way that civilisation is entering on the Spengler-prophesied downfall. As a matter of fact, Spengler could only describe the world in the way he does, for he has before him the world that has arisen out of the marriage of the bony with the one covered with slime. But man must find the equilibrium.

The times are grave, for man must become man. He must learn how to get rid of the bony as well as the slimy and become man, become man in such a way that the intellect is permeated by the heart and the heart warmed through by the intellect. Then he will find the equilibrium. And then in fact man will neither sink into—speaking spiritually—slimy mysticism nor bald-pated science, but will open himself to what is man, what I perhaps may call, after having characterised it, the Anthroposophical. That stands in the middle, the truly human, the Anthroposophical, it stands really in the midst between these two opposites into which civilisation has gradually come. The Anthropos is in truth when he really manifests his being, neither the ossified nor the slimy; he is the one who holds the balance between the intellect and the heart. That must be sought for.

What must be grasped today out of the very depth of human and cosmic existence, you will understand when you think over the two pictures which I have set before you, purely as pictures. They are meant as pictures, but as pictures that point to true realities.

We will speak further of this.