The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of these lectures I have often explained how a man is not in a sleeping state only during ordinary sleep but that this state also plays into his everyday conscious life. This obliges us indeed to describe the state of complete wakefulness as existing, even in everyday consciousness, for our conceptual life alone. Compared to the conceptual life, what we bear within us as our life of feeling is not so closely connected with our waking state. To the unprejudiced observer our feeling life shows affinity to dream-life; though dream-life runs on in pictures and the life of feeling in the way we all know. Yet we soon realise that, on the one hand, dream-life—which as we know conjures up in pictures, into everyday life, facts unknown to ordinary consciousness—can be judged only by our conceptual faculty of discrimination. It is by means of this same faculty alone that the whole range and significance of our feeling life can be estimated. And what goes on in a will-impulse, in the expression, the working, of the will, is just as hidden from ordinary consciousness as what in dreamless sleep happens to man, as a being of soul and spirit, from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking.

What actually takes place when we perform the simplest act of will, when, let us say, by merely having an impulse to do so we raise an arm or a leg, is in fact just as great a mystery to us as what goes on in sleep. It is only because we can see the result of an act of will that the act itself enters our consciousness.

Having thought of raising our arm—but that is merely a thought—we see when this has taken place how the arm has indeed been raised. It is by means of our conceptual life that we learn the result of an act of will. But the actual carrying out of the deed remains hidden from ordinary consciousness, so that, even during our waking hours, what arises in us as an impulse of will we have to attribute to a sleeping state. And the whole of our life of feeling runs its course just like a dream.

Now what concerns us here is that, when taken as a whole, the facts I have just mentioned can be quite clear to our ordinary consciousness, although perhaps, when given an abstract interpretation certain points may not seem so at once. But by carefully following up the facts in question we shall find what has been said to be correct.

Consciousness when developed is able to follow up these facts. In particular it can observe in detail the conceptual life and the life of the will. We know how through exercises described in several of my works ordinary objective knowledge can be raised to Imaginative knowledge. On being observed this Imaginative knowledge or cognition shows, to begin with, its true relation to the human being as a whole. It will be useful for us, however, to recall certain facts about ordinary consciousness, before going on to what this Imaginative knowledge has chiefly to say about a man's conceptual power and his will.

Let us then look at the actual life of thought—the conceptual life. You will have to admit; If this conceptual life is experienced without prejudice, we shall not feel it to be a reality. Conceptions arise in our life of soul and there is no doubt the inner course of a man's conceptions is something added to the outer course taken by the facts. The outer course of events does not directly demand the accompaniment of an inwardly experienced conception. The fact of which we form an idea could take place without our experiencing it as an idea. Sinking ourselves in these conceptions, however, teaches us too that in them we live in what, compared with the external world, is something unreal. On the other hand, precisely in what concerns the life of will—which seems to ordinary consciousness as if experience in sleep—we become aware of our own reality and of the truth about our relation to the world.

As we form conceptions we find more and more that these conceptions live in us just as the images of objects are there in a mirror. And just as little as, in the case of what is usually called the real world, we feel the mirror-images to be a reality, do we—if our reason is sound—look upon our conceptions as real.

But there is another thing which prevents our ascribing reality to our conceptions, and that is our feeling of freedom. Just imagine that while forming conceptions we lived in them so that they ran on in us in the way nature works. The conceptual life would be like something happening outside in nature, taking place as a necessity. We should be caught up in a chain of necessities from which our thinking would be unable to free itself. We should never have the sense of freedom which, as such, is an actual fact. We experience ourselves as free human beings only when free impulses living in us spring out of pictures having no place in the chain of natural necessities. Only because we live with; our conceptions in pictures outside the necessary natural phenomena are we able, out of such conceptions, to experience free impulses of will.

When observing our conceptual life thus, we perceive it to be entirely unreal; whereas our life of will assures us of our own reality. When the will is in action it brings about changes in world outside—changes we are obliged to regard as real. Through our will we make actual contact with the external world. Therefore, it is only as beings of will that we can perceive ourselves as realities in the external world.

When from these facts—easily substantiated in ordinary consciousness—we go on to those of which Imagination can tell us, we find the following. When we have acquired Imaginative knowledge and, armed with this, try to arrive at a knowledge of man himself, then actually in two respects he appears a quite different being from what he is for ordinary consciousness. To ordinary consciousness our physical body is a self-contained entity at rest. We differentiate between its separate organs and observing an organ in our usual state of consciousness we have the impression of dealing with an independent member of the body which, as something complete in itself, can be drawn in definite outlines.

This ceases the moment we rise to Imaginative knowledge and study from that point of view the life of the body. Then this something at rest shows—if we don't want to be really theoretical, which of course it is always possible to be in a diagram—that it cannot be drawn in definite outline. This cannot be done in the case of lungs, heart, liver and so on, when we rise to Imaginative knowledge. For what this reveals about the body is its never-ending movement. Our body is in a state of continued motion—certainly not something at rest; it is a process, a becoming, a flux, which imaginative cognition brings to our notice. One might say that everything is seething, inwardly on the move, not only in space but, in an intensive way, one thing flows into another. We are no longer confronted by organs at rest and complete; there is active becoming, living, weaving. We cannot speak any more of lungs, heart, liver, but of processes—of the lung-process, heart-process, liver process. And these separate processes together make up the whole process—man. It is characteristic of our study of the human being from the point of view of Imaginative knowledge, that he appears as something moving, something enduring, in a state of perpetual becoming.

Consider what it signifies to have this change in our view of a man; when, that is, we first see the human body with its definitely outlined members, and then direct the gaze of our soul to the inner soul-life, finding there nothing to be drawn thus definitely. In the life of soul, we see what is taking its course in time, something always becoming, never at rest. The soul-life shows itself indeed to be a process perceptible only inwardly, a process of soul and spirit, yet clearly visible. This process in the life of soul, which is there for ordinary consciousness when a man's inner being is viewed without prejudice, this state of becoming in the soul-life, has very little resemblance to the life of the body at rest. It is true that the life of the body also shows movement; breathing is a movement, circulation is a movement. In relation to how a man appears to Imaginative cognition, however, I would describe this as merely a stage on the way to movement. Compared with the delicate, subtle movements of the human physical body revealed to Imaginative cognition, the circulation of the blood, the breathing, and other bodily motions seem relatively static.

In short, the objective knowledge of the human body perceived it ordinary consciousness is very different from what is perceived as the life of soul, that is in a perpetual state of becoming—always setting itself in motion and never resting.

When, however, with Imagination we observe the human body, it becomes inwardly mobile and in appearance more like the soul life. Thus, Imaginative cognition enables us to raise the appearance of the physical body to a level with the soul. Soul and body come nearer to each other. For Imaginative cognition the body in its physical substance appears more like the soul.

But here I have brought two things to your notice which belong to quite different spheres. First, I showed how the physical body appears to Imaginative cognition as something always on the move, always in a state of becoming. Then I pointed out how indeed, for the, inner vision of our usual consciousness, the ordinary life of soul is also ceaselessly becoming, running its course tie—a life, in effect, to which it is impossible to ascribe definite outlines.

When, however, we rise to Imaginative cognition, this life of soul also changes for the inward vision, and changes over in an opposite direction to the life of the body. It is noticeable that when filled with Imaginative knowledge we no longer feel any freedom of movement in our thoughts, in the combining of them with one another. We also feel that by rising to Imaginative cognition our thoughts gain certain mastery over our life of soul. In ordinary consciousness we can add one thought to another, with inner freedom either combine or not combine a subject with a predicate—feel free in our combining of conceptions.

This in not so when we acquire imaginative knowledge. Then in the thought-world we feel as though in something which works through powers of its own. We feel as if caught up in a web of thought, in such a way that the thoughts combine themselves through their own forces, independently of us. We can no longer say I think—but are forced to change it to: It thinks. In fact, we are not free to do otherwise. We begin to perceive thinking as an actual process—feel it to be as real a process in us as in everyday life we experience the gripping of pain and then its passing off, or the coming and going of something pleasant. By arising to Imaginative cognition, we feel the reality of the thought-world—something in the thought-world resembling experience in the physical body.

From his it can be seen how, through Imaginative knowledge, the conceptual life of the soul becomes more like the life of the body, than is the soul-life—as seen through the inner vision of ordinary consciousness. In short, the body grows soul-like. And the soul becomes more like the body, particularly like those bodily processes which to Imaginative consciousness disclose themselves in their becoming.

Thus, for Imaginative cognition the qualities of the soul approach those of the body, and the qualities of the body those of the soul. And we see the soul and spirit interweaving with the bodily-physical the two becoming more alike. It is as though our experience of what is of the soul acquired a materialistic character while our view of the bodily life, physical life generally, were spiritualised

This is an important fact which reveals itself to Imaginative cognition. And when further progress is made to Inspired Cognition, we find another secret about the human being unveiled. Having acquired Inspired knowledge we learn more of the material nature of thinking, of the conceptual faculty; we learn see more deeply into what actually happens when we think.

Now, as I have said, we no longer have freedom in our life of thought. "It thinks,” and we are caught up in the web of this "It thinks.” In certain circumstances the thoughts are the same as those which in ordinary consciousness we combine or separate in freedom, but which in Imaginative experience we perceive to take place as if from inner necessity.

From this we see that it is not in the thought-life, as such, that freedom and necessity are to be found, but in our own attitude, our own relation, to the thought-life of ordinary consciousness. We learn to recognise the actual situation with regard to our experience, in ordinary consciousness, of the unreality of thoughts. We gradually come to understand the reason for this experience, and then the following becomes clear.

By means of the organic process our organism both takes in and excretes substances. But it is not only a matter of these substances separating themselves from the organic process of the body and being thrown out by the excretory organs—certain of these substances become stored up in us. Having been thrown out of the life-process these remain, to some extent, in the nerve-tract, and in other places in the organism. In our life-process we are continuously engaged in detaching lifeless matter. People able to follow minutely the process of human life can observe this storing up of lifeless matter everywhere in the organism. A great part of this is excreted but there is a general storing up of a certain amount in a more tenuous form. The life of the human organism is such that it is always engaged on the organic process—like this (a drawing was made) But everywhere within the organic process we see inorganic, lifeless matter, not being excreted but stored up (which I indicated here with red chalk): I have drawn these red dots rather heavily because it is chiefly the unexcreted, lifeless matter which withdraws to the organ of the human head, where it remains.

Now the human organism is permeated throughout by the ego (I indicate this with green chalk). Within the organism the ego comes in contact with the lifeless substances which have been separated off and permeates them. So that our organism appears as having, on the one hand, its organic processes permeated by the ego, the process, that is, containing the living substance, and of having also what is lifeless—or shall we say mineralised—in the organism permeated by the ego.

This, then, is what is always going on when we think. Aroused by sense-perceptions outside, or inwardly by memory, the ego gets the upper hand over the lifeless substances, and—in accordance with the stimulation of the senses or of the memories—swings these lifeless substances to and fro in us, we might almost say makes drawings in us with them. For this is no figurative conception; this use of inorganic matter by the ego is absolute reality It might be compared to reducing chalk to a powder and then with a chalky finger drawing all kinds of figures. It is an actual fact that the ego sets this lifeless matter oscillating, masters it, and with it draws figures in us, though the figures are certainly unlike those usually drawn outside. Yet the ego with the help of this lifeless substance does really make drawings and form crystals in us—though not crystals like those found in the mineral kingdom (see red in drawing).

What goes on in this way between the ego and the mineralized substance in us that has detached itself as in a fine but solid state—it is this which provides the material basis of our thinking. In fact, to Inspired cognition the thinking process, the conceptual process, shows itself to be the use them ego makes of the mineralised substance in the human organism.

This, I would point out, gives a more accurate picture of what I have frequently described in the abstract when saying: In that we think we are always dying,—What within us is in a constant state of decay, detaching itself from the living and becoming mineralised, with this the ego makes drawings, actual drawings, of all our thoughts. It is the working and weaving of the ego in mineral kingdom, in that kingdom which alone makes it possible for us to possess the faculty of thinking.

You see it is what I have been describing here which dawned on the materialists of the 19th century, though they misconstrued it. The best advocates of materialism—and one of the best was Czolbe—had a vague notion that while thoughts are flitting through us physical processes are at work. These materialists forget, however,—and this is where error crept in—that it is the purely spiritual ego making drawings in us inwardly with what in mineralized. And on this inward drawing depends what we know of the actual awakening of ordinary consciousness.

Let us now consider the opposite side at the human being, the side of the will-impulses. If you recall what I have been describing, you will perhaps perceive how the ego becomes imprisoned in what has been mineralized within us. But it is able to make use of this mineralised substance to draw with it inwardly. The ego is able to sink right down into what is thus mineralised.

If, on the other hand, we study the life-processes, where the non-mineralised substances are to be found, we come to the material basis of the will. In sleep the ego leaves the physical body, whereas in willing the ego is only driven out of certain parts of the organism. Because of this, at certain moments when this is so, there is nothing mineralised in that region, everything there is full of life. Out of these parts of the organism, where all is alive and from which at that moment nothing mineralised is being detached, the impulses will unfold. But the ego is then driven out; it withdraws into what is mineral. The ego can work on the mineralised substances but not on what is living, from which it is thrust out just us when we are asleep at night our ego is driven out of the whole physical body.

But then the ego is outside the body whereas on mineralisation taking place it is driven inside. It is the life-giving process which thrust the ego out of certain parts of the body; then the ego is as much outside those parts as in sleep it is driven out of the whole body. Hence, we can say that when the will is in action parts of the ego are outside the regions of the physical body to which they are assigned. And those parts of the ego—where are they then? They are outside in the surrounding space and become one with the forces weaving there. By setting our will in action we go outside ourselves with part of our ego, and we take into us forces which have their place in the world outside. When I move an arm, this is not done by anything coming from within the organism but through a force outside, into which the ego enters only by being partly driven out of the arm. In willing go out of my body and move myself by means of outside forces. We do not lift our leg by means of forces within us, but through those actually working from outside. It is the same when an arm is moved. Whereas in thinking, through the relation of the ego to the mineralised part of the organism, we are driven within, in willing just as in sleep we are driven outside. No one understands the will who has not a conception of man as a cosmic being; no one understands the will who is bounded by the human body and does not realise that in willing he takes into him forces lying beyond it.

In willing we sink ourselves into the world, surrender ourselves to it. So that we can say: The material phenomenon that accompanies thinking is a mineral process in us, something drawn by the ego in the mineralised parts of the human organism. The will represents in us a vitalising, a widening of the ego, which then becomes a member of the spiritual world outside, and from there works back upon the body.

If we want to make a diagram of the relation between think and willing, it must be done in this way (a drawing was made). You see it is quite possible to pass over from an inward view of the soul-life to its physical counterpart, without being tempted to fall one-sidedly into materialism. We learn to recognise what takes place in a material way in thinking and in willing. But once we know how in thinking the ego plays an actual part with the inorganic, and how, on the other hand, through the organic life-giving process in the body it is driven out into the spirit, then we never lose the ego.

Materialism is therefore justified on the one hand, whereas on the other it no longer holds good. Simply to attack materialism betrays a superficial attitude. For what in a positive sense the materialist has to say is warranted. He is at fault only when he would approach man's whole wide conception of the world from one side.

In general, when the world and all that happens in it is followed inwardly, spiritually, it is found more and more that the positive standpoints of individual men are warranted, but not those that are negative. And in this connection spiritualism is often just as narrow as materialism. In what he affirms positively the materialist has right on his side, as the spiritualist has on his, when positive. It is only on becoming negative that they stray from the path and fall into error. And it is indeed no trifling error when, in an amateurish fashion, people imagine they have succeeded in their striving for a spiritual world-conception without having any understanding of material processes, and then look down on materialism. The material world is indeed permeated by spirit. But we must not be one-sided; we must learn about its material characteristics as well, recognising that reality has to be approached from various sides if we are to arrive at its full significance.

And that is a lesson best taught by a world-conception such as that offered by Anthroposophy.

In my last lecture, I said that one root of the scientific world conception lay in the fact that John Locke and other thinkers of like mind distinguished between the primary and secondary qualities of things in the surrounding world. Locke called primary everything that pertains to shape, to geometrical and numerical characteristics, to motion and to size. From these he distinguished what he called the secondary qualities, such as color, sound, and warmth. He assigned the primary qualities to the things themselves, assuming that spatial corporeal things actually existed and possessed properties such as form, motion and geometrical qualities; and he further assumed that all secondary qualities such as color, sound, etc. are only effects on the human being. Only the primary qualities are supposed to be in the external things. Something out there has size, form and motion, but is dark, silent and cold. This produces some sort of effect that expresses itself in man's experiences of sound, color and warmth.

I have also pointed out how, in this scientific age, space became an abstraction in relation to the dimensions. Man was no longer aware that the three dimensions—up-down, right-left, front-back—were concretely experienced within himself. In the scientific age, he no longer took this reality of the three dimensions into consideration. AS far as he was concerned, they arose in total abstraction. He no longer sought the intersecting point of the three dimensions where it is in fact experienced; namely, within man's own being. Instead, he looked for it somewhere in external space, wherever it might be. Thenceforth, this space framework of the three dimensions had an independent existence, but only an abstract thought-out one. This empty thought was no longer experienced as belonging to the external world as well as to man; whereas an earlier age experienced the three spatial dimensions in such a way that man knew he was experiencing them not only in himself but together with the nature of physical corporeality.

The dimensions of space had, as it were, already been abstracted and ejected from man. They had acquired a quite abstract, inanimate character. Man had forgotten that he experiences the dimensions of space in his own being together with the external world; and the same applied to everything concerned with geometry, number, weight, etc. He no longer knew that in order to experience them in their full living reality, he had to look into his own inner being. A man like John Locke transferred the primary qualities—which are of like kind with the three dimensions of space, the latter being a sort of form or shape—into the external world only because the connection of these qualities with man's inner being was no longer known.

The others, the secondary qualities, which were actually experienced qualitatively (as color, tone, warmth, smell or taste,) now were viewed as merely the effects of the things upon man, as inward experiences. But I have pointed out that inside the physical man as well as inside the etheric man these secondary qualities can no longer be found, so that they became free-floating in a certain respect. They were no longer sought in the outer world; they were relocated into man's inner being. It was felt that so long as man did not listen to the world, did not look at it, did not direct his sense of warmth to it, the world was silent. It had primary qualities, vibrations that were formed in a certain way, but no sound; it had processes of some kind in the ether, but no color; it had some sort of processes in ponderable matter (matter that has weight)—but it had no quality of warmth. As to these experienced qualities, the scientific age was really saying that it did not know what to do with them. It did not want to look for them in the world, admitting that it was powerless to do so. They were sought for within man, but only because nobody had any better ideas. To a certain extent science investigates man's inner nature, but it does not (and perhaps cannot) go very far with this, hence it really does not take into consideration that these secondary qualities cannot be found in this inner nature. Therefore it has no pigeonhole for them. Why is this so?

Let us recall that if we really want to focus correctly on something that is related to form, space, geometry or arithmetic, we have to turn our attention to the inward life-filled activity whereby we build up the spatial element within our own organism, as we do with above-below, back-front, left-right. Therefore, we must say that if we want to discover the nature of geometry and space, if we want to get to the essence of Locke's primary qualities of corporeal things, we must look within ourselves. Otherwise, we only attain to abstractions.

In the case of the secondary qualities such as sound, color, warmth, smell and taste, man has to remember that his ego and astral body normally dwell within his physical and etheric bodies but during sleep they can also be outside the physical and etheric bodies. Just as man experiences the primary qualities, such as the three dimensions, not outside but within himself during full wakefulness, so, when he succeeds (whether through instinct or through spiritual-scientific training) in really inwardly experiencing what is to be found outside the physical and etheric bodies from the moment of falling asleep to waking up, he knows that he is really experiencing the true essence of sound, color, smell, taste, and warmth in the external world outside his own body. When, during the waking condition, man is only within himself, he cannot experience anything but picture-images of the true realities of tone, color, warmth, smell and taste. But these images correspond to soul-spirit realities, not physical-etheric ones. In spite of the fact that what we experience as sound seems to be connected with certain forms of air vibrations, just as color is connected with certain processes in the colorless external world, it still has to be recognized that both are pictures, not of anything corporeal, but of the soul-spirit element contained in the external world.

We must be able to tell ourselves: When we experience a sound, a color, a degree of warmth, we experience an image of them. But we experience them as reality, when we are outside our physical body. We can portray the facts in a drawing as follows: Man experiences the primary qualities within himself when fully awake, and projects them as images into the outer world. If he only knows them in the outer world, he has the primary qualities only in images (arrow in sketch). These images are the mathematical geometrical, and arithmetical qualities of things.

It is different in the case of the secondary qualities. (The horizontal lines stand for the physical and etheric body of man, the red shaded area for the soul-spirit aspect, the ego and astral body.) Man experiences them outside his physical and etheric body,⁵³ and projects only the images into himself. Because the scientific age no longer saw through this, mathematical forms and numbers became something that man looked for abstractly in the outer world. The secondary qualities became something that man looked for only in himself. But because they are only images in himself, man lost them altogether as realities.

As few isolated thinkers, who still retained traditions of earlier views concerning the outer world, struggled to form conceptions that were truer to reality than those that, in the course of the scientific age, gradually emerged as the official views. Aside from Paracelsus,⁵⁴ there was, for example, van Helmont,⁵⁵ who was well aware that man's spiritual element is active when color, tone, and so forth are experienced. During the waking state, however, the spiritual is active only with the aid of the physical body. Hence it produces only an image of what is really contained in sound or color. This leads to a false description of external reality; namely, that purely mathematical-mechanistic form of motion for what is supposed to be experienced as secondary qualities in man's inner being, whereas, in accordance with their reality, their true nature, they can only be experienced outside the body. We should not be told that if we wish to comprehend the true nature of sound, for example, we ought to conduct physical experiments as to what happens in the air that carries us to the sound that we hear. Instead, we should be told that if we want to acquaint ourselves with the true nature of sound, we have to form an idea of how we really experience sound outside our physical and etheric bodies. But these are thoughts that never occurred to the men of the scientific age. They had no inclination to consider the totality of human nature, the true being of man. Therefore they did not find either mathematics or the primary qualities in this unknown human nature; and they did not find the secondary qualities in the external world, because they did not know that man belongs to it also.

I do not say that one has to be clairvoyant in order to gain the right insight into these matters, although a clairvoyant approach would certainly produce more penetrating perceptions in this area. But I do say that a healthy and open mind would lead one to place the primary qualities, everything mathematical-mechanical, into man's inner being, and to place the secondary qualities into the outer world. The thinkers no longer understand human nature. They did not know how man's corporeality is filled with spirit, or how this spirit, when it is awake in a person, must forget itself and devote itself to the body if it is to comprehend mathematics. Nor was it known that this same spirituality must take complete hold of itself and live independently of the body, outside the body, in order to come to the secondary qualities. Concerning all these matters, I say that clairvoyant perception can give greater insight, but it is not indispensable. A healthy and open mind can feel that mathematics belongs inside, while sound, color, etc. are something external.

In my notes on Goethe's scientific works⁵⁶ in the 1880's, I set forth what healthy feeling can do in this direction. I never mentioned clairvoyant knowledge, but I did show to what extent man can acknowledge the reality of color, tone, etc. without any clairvoyant perception. This has not yet been understood. The scientific age is still too deeply entangled in Locke's manner of thinking. I set it forth again, in philosophic terms, in 1911 at the Philosophic Congress in Bologna.⁵⁷ And again it was not understood. I tried to show how man's soul—spirit organization does indeed indwell and permeate the physical and etheric body during the waking state, but still remains inwardly independent. If one senses this inward independence of the soul and spirit, then on also has a feeling for what the soul and spirit have experienced during sleep about the reality of green and yellow, G and C-sharp, warm and cold, sour or sweet. But the scientific age was unwilling to go into a true knowledge of man.

This description of the primary and secondary qualities shows quite clearly how man got away from the correct feeling about himself and his connection to the world. The same thing comes out in other connections. Failing to grasp how the mathematical with its three-dimensional character dwells in man, the thinkers likewise could not understand man's spirituality. They would have had to see how man is in a position to comprehend right-left by means of the symmetrical movements of his arms and hands and other symmetrical movements. Through sensing the course taken, for example, by his food, he can experience front-back. He experiences up-down as he coordinates himself in this direction in his earliest years. If we discern this, we see how man inwardly unfolds the activity that produces the three dimensions of space. Let me point out also that the animal does not have the vertical direction in the same way as man does, since its main axis is horizontal, which is what man can experience as front-back. The abstract space framework could no longer produce anything other than mathematical, mechanistic, abstract relationships in inorganic nature. It could not develop an inward awareness of space in the animal or in man.

Thus no correct opinion could be reached in this scientific age concerning the question: How does man relate to the animal, the animal to man? What distinguishes them from one another? It was still dimly felt that there was a difference between the two, hence one looked for the distinguishing features. But nothing could be found in either man or animal that was decisive and consistent. Here is a famous example: It was asserted that man's upper jawbone, in which the upper teeth are located, was in one piece, whereas in the animal, the front teeth were located in a separate one, the inter-maxillary bone, with the actual upper jawbone on either side of them. Man, it was thought, did not possess this inter-maxillary bone. Since one could no longer find the relationship of man to animal by inner soul-spirit means, one looked for it in such external features and said that the animal had an inter-maxillary bone and man did not.

Goethe could not put into words what I have said today concerning primary and secondary qualities. But he had a healthy feeling about all these matters. He knew instinctively that the difference between man and animals must lie in the human form as a whole, not in any single feature. This is why Goethe opposed the idea that the inter-maxillary bone is missing in man. As a young man, he wrote an important article suggesting that there is an inter-maxillary bone in man as well as in the animal. He was able to prove this by showing that in the embryo the inter-maxillary bone is still clearly evident in man although in early childhood this bone fuses with the upper jaw, whereas it remains separate in the animal. Goethe did all this out of a certain instinct, and this instinct led him to say that one must not seek the difference between man and animal in details of this kind; instead, it must be sought for in the whole relation of man's form, soul, and spirit to the world.

By opposing the naturalists who held that man lacks the inter-maxillary bone Goethe brought man close to the animal. But he did this in order to bring out the true difference as regards man's essential nature. Goethe's approach out of instinctive knowledge put him in opposition to the views of orthodox science, and this opposition has remained to this day. This is why Goethe really found no successors in the scientific world. On the contrary, as a consequence of all that had developed since the Fifteenth Century in the scientific field, in the Nineteenth Century the tendency grew stronger to approximate man to the animal. The search for a difference in external details diminished with the increasing effort to equate man as nearly as possible with the animal. This tendency is reflected in what arose later on as the Darwinian idea of evolution. This found followers, while Goethe's conception did not. Some have treated Goethe as a kind of Darwinist, because all they see in him is that, through his work on the inter-maxillary bone,⁵⁸ he brought man nearer to the animal. But they fail to realize that he did this because he wanted to point out (he himself did not say so in so many words, but it is implicit in his work) that the difference between man and animal cannot be found in these external details.

Since one no longer knew anything about man, one searched for man's traits in the animal. The conclusion was that the animal traits are simply a little more developed in man. As time went by, there was no longer any inkling that even in regard to space man had a completely different position. Basically, all views of evolution that originated during the scientific age were formulated without any true knowledge of man. One did not know what to make of man, so he was simply represented as the culmination of the animal series. It was a though one said: Here are the animals; they build up to a final degree of perfection, a perfect animal; and this perfect animal is man.

My dear friends, I want to draw your attention to how matters have proceeded with a certain inner consistency in the various branches of scientific thinking since its first beginnings in the Fifteenth Century; how we picture our relation to the world on the basis of physics, of physiology, by saying: Out there is a silent and colorless world. It affects us. We fashion the colors and sounds in ourselves as experiences of the effects of the outer world.

At the same time we believe that the three dimensions of space exist outside of us in the external world. We do this, because we have lost the ability to comprehend man as a whole. We do this because our theories of animal and man do not penetrate the true nature of man. Therefore, in spite of its great achievements we can say that science owes its greatness to the fact that it has completely missed the essential nature of man. We were not really aware of the extent to which science was missing this. A few especially enthusiastic materialistic thinkers in the Nineteenth Century asserted that man cannot rightly lay claim to anything like soul and spirit because what appears as soul and spirit is only the effect of something taking place outside us in time and space. Such enthusiasts describe how light works on us; how something etheric (according to their theory) works into us through vibrations along our nerves; how the external air also continues on in breathing, etc. Summing it all up, they said that man is dependent on every rise and fall of temperature, on any malformation of his nervous system, etc. Their conclusion was that man is a creature pitifully dependent on every draft or change of pressure.

Anyone who reads such descriptions with an open mind will notice that, instead of dealing with the true nature of man, they are describing something that turns man into a nervous wreck. The right reply to such descriptions is that a man so dependent on every little draft of air is not a normal person but a neurasthenic. But they spoke of this neurasthenic as if he were typical. They left out his real nature, recognizing only what might make him into a neurasthenic. Through the peculiar character of this kind of thinking about nature, all understanding was gradually lost. This is what Goethe revolted against, though he was unable to express his insights in clearly formulated sentences.

Matters such as these must be seen as part of the great change in scientific thinking since the Fifteenth Century. Then they will throw light on what is essential in this development. I would like to put it like this: Goethe in his youth took a keen interest in what science had produced in its various domains. He studied it, he let it stimulate him, but he never agreed with everything that confronted him, because in all of it he sensed that man was left out of consideration. He had an intense feeling for man as a whole. This is why he revolted in a variety of areas against the scientific views that he saw around him. It is important to see this scientific development since the Fifteenth Century against the background of Goethe's world conception. Proceeding from a strictly historical standpoint, one can clearly perceive how the real being of man is missing in the scientific approach, missing in the physical sciences as well as in the biological.

This is a description of the scientific view, not a criticism. Let us assume that somebody says: “Here I have water. I cannot use it in this state. I separate the oxygen from hydrogen, because I need the hydrogen.” He then proceeds to do so. If I then say what he has done, this is not criticism of his conduct. I have no business to tell him he is doing something wrong and should leave the water alone. Nor is it criticism, when I saw that since the Fifteenth Century science has taken the world of living beings and separated from it the true nature of man, discarding it and retaining what this age required. It then led this dehumanized science to the triumphs that have been achieved.

It is not a criticism if something like this is said; it is only a description. The scientist of modern times needed a dehumanized nature, just as chemist needs deoxygenized hydrogen and therefore has to split water into its two components. The point is to understand that we must not constantly fall into the error of looking to science for an understanding of man.

• 53. One can find the basic reality explained in the chapter “Sleep and Death” in An Outline Of Occult Science and in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 54. Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim: Einsiedein, Kanton Schwytz 1493–1541 Salzburg, Md. Ferrara, Professor in Basel. Accomplished physician, scientist, and philosopher. Wrote about chemistry, medical science, biology, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and theology. The myths about Paracelsus as goldmaker, magician, or charlatan were made up after his death and distorted the picture of his character. Most complete work published by Karl Sudhoff (fourteen volumes). See Riddles of Philosophy.
• 55. Helmont, Johann Baptist van: Brussels 1577–1644. Physician and iatrochemist. He managed the differentiation and separation of gases (hydrogen, carbon). He coined the name “gas” for the airy state.
• 56. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist. Especially see Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15.
• 57. Lecture of April 8, 1911, at the 9th International Philosophical Congress, “The Psychological Foundations of Anthroposophy,” in Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Development, Spring Valley, NY: 1982), pp. 25–55.
• 58. See Steiner, Goethe the Scientist.

It must be answered, not to meet a human “need to know” but to meet man's universal need to become fully human. And in just what way one can strive for an answer, in what way the ignorabimus can be overcome to fulfil the demands of human evolution—this shall be the theme of our course of lectures as it proceeds.

To those who demand of a cycle of lectures with a title such as ours that nothing be introduced that might interfere with the objective presentation of ideas, I would like, since today I shall have to mention certain personalities, to say the following. The moment one begins to represent the results of human judgment in their relationship to life, to full human existence, it becomes inevitable that one indicate the personalities with whom the judgments originated. Even in a scientific presentation, one must remain within the sphere in which the judgment arises, within the realm of human struggling and striving toward such a judgment. And especially since the question we want above all to answer is: what can be gleaned from modern scientific theories that can become a vital social thinking able to transform thought into impulses for life?—then one must realize that the series of considerations one undertakes is no longer confined to the study and the lecture halls but Stands rather within the living evolution of humanity.

Behind everything with which I commenced yesterday, the modern striving for a mathematical-mechanical world view and the dissolution of that world view, behind that which came to a climax in 1872 in the famous speech by the physiologist, du Bois-Reymond, concerning the limits of natural science, there stands something even more important. It is something that begins to impress itself upon us the moment we want to begin to speak in a living way about the limits of natural science.

A personality of extraordinary philosophical stature still looks over to us with a certain vitality out of the first half of the nineteenth century: Hegel. Only in the last few years has Hegel begun to be mentioned in the lecture halls and in the philosophical literature with somewhat more respect than in the recent past. In the last third of the nineteenth century the academic world attacked Hegel outright, yet one could demonstrate irrefutably that Eduard von Hartmann had been quite right in claiming that during the 1880s only two university lecturers in all of Germany had actually read him. The academics opposed Hegel but not on philosophical grounds, for as a philosopher they hardly knew him. Yet they knew him in a different way, in a way in which we still know him today. Few know Hegel as he is contained, or perhaps better said, as his world view is contained, in the many volumes that sit in the libraries. Those who know Hegel in this original form so peculiar to him are few indeed. Yet in certain modified forms he has become in a sense the most popular philosopher the world has ever known. Anyone who participates in a workers' meeting today or, even better, anyone who had participated in one during the last few decades and had heard what was discussed there; anyone with any sense for the source of the mode of thinking that had entered into these workers' meetings, who really knew the development of modern thought, could see that this mode of thinking had originated with Hegel and flowed through certain channels out into the broadest masses. And whoever investigated the literature and philosophy of Eastern Europe in this regard would find that the Hegelian mode of thinking had permeated to the farthest reaches of Russian cultural life. One thus could say that, anonymously, as it were, Hegel has become within the last few decades perhaps one of the most influential philosophers in human history. On the other hand, however, when one perceives what has come to be recognized by the broadest spectrum of humanity as Hegelianism, one is reminded of the portrait of a rather ugly man that a kind artist painted in such a way as to please the man's family. As one of the younger sons, who had previously paid little attention to the portrait, grew older and really observed it for the first time, he said: “But father, how you have changed!” And when one sees what has become of Hegel one might well say: “Dear philosopher, how you have changed!” To be sure, something extraordinary has happened regarding this Hegelian world view.

Hardly had Hegel himself departed when his school fell apart. And one could see how this Hegelian school appropriated precisely the form of one of our new parliaments. There was a left wing and a right wing, an extreme left and an extreme right, an ultra-radical wing and an ultra-conservative wing. There were men with radical scientific and social views, who felt themselves to be Hegel's true spiritual heirs, and on the other side there were devout, positive theologians who wanted just as much to base their extreme theological conservatism on Hegel. There was a center for Hegelian studies headed by the amiable philosopher, Karl Rosenkranz, and each of these personalities, every one of them, insisted that he was Hegel's true heir.

What is this remarkable phenomenon in the evolution of human knowledge? What happened was that a philosopher once sought to raise humanity into the highest realms of thought. Even if one is opposed to Hegel, it cannot be denied that he dared attempt to call forth the world within the soul in the purest thought-forms. Hegel raised humanity into ethereal heights of thinking, but strangely enough, humanity then fell right back down out of those heights. It drew on the one hand certain materialistic and on the other hand certain positive theological conclusions from Hegel's thought. And even if one considers the Hegelian center headed by the amiable Rosenkranz, even there one cannot find Hegel's philosophy as Hegel himself had conceived it. In Hegel's philosophy one finds a grand attempt to pursue the scientific method right up into the highest heights. Afterward, however, when his followers sought to work through Hegel's thoughts themselves, they found that one could arrive thereby at the most contrary points of view.

Now, one can argue about world views in the study, one can argue within the academies, and one can even argue in the academic literature, so long as worthless gossip and Barren cliques do not result. These offspring of Hegelian philosophy, however, cannot be carried out of the lecture halls and the study into life as social impulses. One can argue conceptually about contrary world views, but within life itself these contrary world views do not fight so peaceably. One must use just such a paradoxical expression in describing such a phenomenon. And thus there stands before us in the first half of the nineteenth century an alarming factor in the evolution of human cognition, something that has proved itself to be socially useless in the highest degree. With this in mind we must then raise the question: how can we find a mode of thinking that can be useful in social life? In two phenomena above all we notice the uselessness of Hegelianism for social life.

One of those who studied Hegel most intensively, who brought Hegel fully to life within himself, was Karl Marx. And what is it that we find in Marx? A remarkable Hegelianism indeed! Hegel up upon the highest peak of the conceptual world—Hegel upon the highest peak of Idealism—and the faithful student, Karl Marx, immediately transforming the whole into its direct opposite, using what he believed to be Hegel's method to carry Hegel's truths to their logical conclusions. And thereby arises historical materialism, which is to be for the masses the one world view that can enter into social life. We thus are confronted in the first half of the nineteenth century with the great Idealist, Hegel, who lived only in the Spirit, only in his ideas, and in the second half of the nineteenth century with his student, Karl Marx, who contemplated and recognized the reality of matter alone, who saw in everything ideal only ideology. If one but takes up into one's feeling this turnabout of conceptions of world and life in the course of the nineteenth century, one feels with all one's soul the need to achieve an understanding of nature that will serve as a basis for judgments that are socially viable.

Now, if we turn on the other hand to consider something that is not so obviously descended from Hegel but can be traced back to Hegel nonetheless, we find still within the first half of the nineteenth century, but carrying over into the second half, the “philosopher of the ego,” Max Stirner. While Karl Marx occupies one of the two poles of human experience mentioned yesterday, the pole of matter upon which he bares all his considerations, Stirner, the philosopher of the ego, proceeds from the opposite pole, that of consciousness. And just as the modern world view, gravitating toward the pole of matter, becomes unable to discover consciousness within that element (as we saw yesterday in the example of du Bois-Reymond), a person who gravitates to the opposite pole of consciousness will not be able to find the material world. And so it is with Max Stirner. For Max Stirner, no material universe with natural laws actually exists. Stirner sees the world as populated solely by human egos, by human consciousnesses that want only to indulge themselves to the full. “I have built my thing on nothing”—that is one of Max Stirner's maxims. And on these grounds Stirner opposes even the notion of Providence. He says for example: certain moralists demand that we should not perform any deed out of egoism, but rather that we should perform it because it is pleasing to God. In acting, we should look to God, to that which pleases Him, that which He commands. Why, thinks Max Stirner, should I, who have built only upon the foundation of ego-consciousness, have to admit that God is after all the greater egoist Who can demand of man and the world that all should be performed as it suits Him? I will not surrender my own egoism for the sake of a greater egoism. I will do what pleases me. What do I care for a God when I have myself?

One thus becomes entangled and confused within a consciousness out of which one can no longer find the way. Yesterday I remarked how on the one hand we can arrive at clear ideas by awakening in the experience of ideas when we descend into our consciousness. These dreamlike ideas manifest themselves like drives from which we cannot then escape. One would say that Karl Marx achieved clear ideas—if anything his ideas are too clear. That was the secret of his success. Despite their complexity, Marx's ideas are so clear that, if properly garnished, they remain comprehensible to the widest circles. Here clarity has been the means to popularity. And until it realizes that within such a clarity humanity is lost, humanity, as long as it seeks logical consequences, will not let go of these clear ideas.

If one is inclined by temperament to the other extreme, to the pole of consciousness, one passes over onto Stirner's side of the scale. Then one despises this clarity: one feels that, applied to social thinking, this clarity makes man into a cog in a social order modeled on mathematics or mechanics—but into that only, into a mere cog. And if one does not feel oneself cut out for just that, then the will that is active in the depths of human consciousness revolts. Then one comes radically to oppose all clarity. One mocks all clarity, as Stirner did. One says to oneself: what do I care about anything else? What do I care even about nature? I shall project my own ego out of myself and see what happens. We shall see that the appearance of such extremes in the nineteenth century is in the highest degree characteristic of the whole of recent human evolution, for these extremes are the distant thunder that preceded the storm of social chaos we are now experiencing. One must understand this connection if one wants at all to speak about cognition today.

Yesterday we arrived at an indication of what happens when we begin to correlate our consciousness to an external natural world of the senses. Our consciousness awakens to clear concepts but loses itself. It loses itself to the extent that one can only posit empty concepts such as “matter,” concepts that then become enigmatic. Only by thus losing ourselves, however, can we achieve the clear conceptual thinking we need to become fully human. In a certain sense we must first lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again out of ourselves. Yet now the time has come when we should learn something from these phenomena. And what can one learn from these phenomena? One can learn that, although clarity of conceptual thinking and perspicuity of mental representation can be won by man in his interaction with the world of sense, this clarity of conceptual thinking becomes useless the moment we strive scientifically for something more than a mere empiricism. It becomes useless the moment we try to proceed toward the kind of phenomenalism that Goethe the scientist cultivated, the moment we want something more than natural science, namely Goetheanism.

What does this imply? In establishing a correlation between our inner life and the external physical world of the senses we can use the concepts we form in interaction with nature in such a way that we try not to remain within the natural phenomena but to think on beyond them. We are doing this if we do more than simply say: within the spectrum there appears the color yellow next to the color green, and on the other side the blues. We are doing this if we do not simply interrelate the phenomena with the help of our concepts but seek instead, as it were, to pierce the veil of the senses and construct something more behind it with the aid of our concepts. We are doing this if we say: out of the clear concepts I have achieved I shall construct atoms, molecules—all the movements of matter that are supposed to ex-ist behind natural phenomena. Thereby something extraordinary happens. What happens is that when I as a human being confront the world of nature [see illustration], I use my concepts not only to create for myself a conceptual order within the realm of the senses but also to break through the boundary of sense and construct behind it atoms and the like I cannot bring my lucid thinking to a halt within the realm of the senses. I take my lesson from inert matter, which continues to roll on even when the propulsive force has ceased. My knowledge reaches the world of sense, and I remain inert. I have a certain inertia, and I roll with my concepts on beyond the realm of the senses to construct there a world the existence of which I can begin to doubt when I notice that my thinking has only been borne along by inertia.

It is interesting to note that a great proportion of the philosophy that does not remain within phenomena is actually nothing other than just such an inert rolling-on beyond what really exists within the world. One simply cannot come to a halt. One wants to think ever farther and farther beyond and construct atoms and molecules—under certain circumstances other things as well that philosophers have assembled there. No wonder, then, that this web one has woven in a world created by the inertia of thinking must eventually unravel itself again.

Goethe rebelled against this law of inertia. He did not want to roll onward thus with his thinking but rather to come strictly to a halt at this limit [see illustration: heavy line] and to apply concepts within the realm of the senses. He thus would say to himself: within the spectrum appear to me yellow, blue, red, indigo, violet. If, however, I permeate these appearances of color with my world of concepts while remaining within the phenomena, then the phenomena order themselves of their own accord, and the phenomenon of the spectrum teaches me that when the darker colors or anything dark is placed behind the lighter colors or anything light, there appear the colors which lie toward the blue end of the spectrum. And conversely, if I place light behind dark, there appear the colors which lie toward the red end of the spectrum.

What was it that Goethe was actually seeking to do? Goethe wanted to find simple phenomena within the complex but above all such phenomena as allowed him to remain within this limit [see illustration], by means of which he did not roll on into a realm that one reaches only through a certain mental inertia. Goethe wanted to adhere to a strict phenomenalism. If we remain within phenomena and if we strive with our thinking to come to a halt there rather than allow ourselves to be carried onward by inertia, the old question arises in a new way. What meaning does the phenomenal world have when I consider it thus? What is the meaning of the mechanics and mathematics, of the number, weight, measure, or temporal relation that I import into this world? What is the meaning of this?

You know, perhaps, that the modern world conception has sought to characterize the phenomena of tone, color, warmth, etc. as only subjective, whereas it characterizes the so-called primary qualities, the qualities of weight, space, and time, as something not subjective but objective and inherent in things. This conception can be traced back principally to the English philosopher, John Locke, and it has to a considerable extent determined the philosophical basis of modern scientific thought. But the real question is: what place within our systematic science of nature as a whole do mathematics, do mechanics—these webs we weave within ourselves, or so it seems at first—what place do these occupy? We shall have to return to this question to consider the specific form it takes in Kantianism. Yet without going into the whole history of this development one can nonetheless emphasize our instinctive conviction that measuring or counting or weighing external objects is essentially different from ascribing to them any other qualities.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact,a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter—so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm—while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them; on the other hand, one must not draw absurd conclusions from them. And to this very day philosophical thinking has failed in the most extraordinary way to come to grips with this most fundamental epistemological question. We thus see how a contemporary philosopher, Koppelmann, overtrumps even Kant by saying, for example—you can read this on page 33 of his Philosophical Inquiries [Weltanschauungsfragen]: everything that relates to space and time we must first construct within by means of the understanding, whereas we are able to assimilate colors and tastes directly. We construct the icosahedron, the dodecahedron, etc.: we are able to construct the standard regular solids only because of the organization of our understanding. No wonder, then, claims Koppelmann, that we find in the world only those regular solids we can construct with our understanding. One thus can find Koppelmann saying almost literally that it is impossible for a geologist to come to a geometer with a crystal bounded by seven equilateral triangles precisely because—so Koppelmann claims—such a crystal would have a form that simply would not fit into our heads. That is out-Kanting Kant. And thus he would say that in the realm of the thing-in-itself crystals could exist that are bounded by seven regular triangles, but they cannot enter our head, and thus we pass them by; they do not exist for us.

Such thinkers forget but one thing: they forget—and it is just this that we want to indicate in the course of these lectures with all the forceful proofs we can muster—that the natural order governing the construction of our head also governs the construction of the regular polyhedrons, and it is for just this reason that our head constructs no other polyhedrons than those that actually confront us in the external world. For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth—I shall discuss that tomorrow—but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

So now we must above all pose the question: how is it that we arrive at any mathematical-mechanical judgment? How do we arrive at a science of mathematics, at a science of mechanics? How is it, then, that this mathematics, this mechanics, is applicable to the external world of nature, and how is it that there is a difference between the mathematical-mechanical qualities of external objects and those that confront us as the so-called subjective qualities of sensation, tone, color, warmth, etc.?

At the one extreme, then, we are confronted with this fundamental question. Tomorrow we shall discuss another such question. Then we shall have two starting-points from which we can proceed to investigate the nature of science. Thence we shall proceed to the other extreme to investigate the formation of social judgments.

Dr. Steiner: First, I would like to return to the situation in the 9b class. Although I already spoke about this, I want to return to it because that situation has some principle significance. First, I would like to say that the discussion with the boys occurred, and I would like to hear what consequences it has had in their behavior. The discussion also showed that something we could expect at this age is present in the boys, namely very strongly developed intellectual forces. These intellectual forces become apparent at puberty. Particularly with boys, this often arises as a certain subconscious desire to exercise their intellectual strength. It is natural that, when left to themselves, boys see rowdy behavior as the only possibility of expressing those intellectual forces. If we do not want them to do that, we must direct them toward other things. Intelligence is simply bursting out of those five boys, though to the least extent with K.F., and it demands to be freed.

At that age, pedagogical activity needs to take a different direction, as I have mentioned in some lectures. The boys must learn to take interest in something that will use their intellect. Otherwise, it remains unused and will live itself out in such things as we have experienced. The main thing is that we work with the boys during the course of instruction so they can exercise their intellect in a way that brings it into a kind of tension and then finds resolution. That is something you can weave into every lecture. You can pose questions that lead to a kind of tension and then allow the students to experience the resolution. Particularly at this age, simply listening has an unfavorable effect. There is no doubt that in the 9b class, you have counted too much upon their simply listening, at least at times. As soon as the boys are occupied, they become well behaved. If they have to just listen, that changes because their intellect, their inner strengths, stagnate.

It would be good if you recognized that their behavior was not the result of disrespect, but arose from a genuinely appropriate human standpoint, and that they denied nothing. You should also be aware that they did not try to gloss over anything. They were quite convinced that they had done quite useless things and that they really should not have done them. They showed an honorable human perspective when they described how T.L. made himself into their spokesman in a most natural way. He began by stating that he actually had no right to speak about the situation since he was the one who had most misbehaved. But, since things had gone so far, he wanted to speak. He spoke very reasonably. They are really very good boys, including F.R. In regard to their understanding of themselves, many adults could learn something from them. They do not embellish things. They recognized that it was very wrong to write on the bathroom doors. Something goaded them on. All the other bathrooms were smeared, and that one was still clean. They did not see why they should not decorate that one, too. When such thoughts arise out of latent intelligence, then that intelligence forces them to smear over blank surfaces so that they are like the others. In that case, a certain attitude has taken over, which we cannot say arises out of boredom.

They said that the school administration signed other documents, so when they wrote something, they thought it should also be signed by the administration. In all these things, we can see that they acted with a great deal of style. The boys were as though possessed, and now they are all very sorry about it. All these things are moods we need to look into, but we need to have some humor; otherwise the boys will get us down.

The boys see the actual cause of the problem in the statement by the 9a class teacher that the 9b class was worthless. They said that if he came into their class, which he knows nothing about, he would learn what it is like. That is quite intelligent. They are filled with a kind of feeling for truth. The boys are not dumb. If we can guide their intelligence in the proper direction, they may, without doubt, be able to achieve a great deal. They are really wonderful boys. I have to say that if you judge them too harshly, then, in my opinion, you have forgotten your own youth some fifteen years ago. Things are different, but if you can remember, some of you will certainly have been there. The main difference is that some years ago, boys did such things more secretively, but now they are more open.

To me, the important thing is that we can expect no improvement if we do not succeed in getting the boys to use their intelligence in class. The situation is such that we must find a way to use their intelligence in our teaching, otherwise it will remain unoccupied and they will use it for getting into trouble.

I asked F.R. how it was that he came to place the discussion between Raphael and Grünewald in the Marquardt Hotel in his essay. He said he knew nothing about Raphael or Grünewald, so he wrote it that way. T.L. then added that he had written something reasonable later.

I said they should let me see something they had written on the walls, but they said they could not say such things to a polite person. They are ashamed and trying to behave.

I would now like to hear what has happened since then. They promised me they would behave as proper young men with the teacher and would be polite to the girls.

A report is given about what occurred in the class since then.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot give the children riddles. I tried that with the anthroposophists in Dornach. You need to use their intelligence as you teach. A great deal is needed to direct your teaching toward the thinking of children at that age and then to maintain that.

In the humanities, there is a danger of teaching unprepared. That is, you are in danger of leaving the material as you know it now, as you learned it yourself. You need to rework it. That is one problem.

The other problem is that you are often too anthroposophical, like Mr. X. Yesterday, I was sitting on pins and needles worrying that the visitors would think the history class was too religious. We should not allow the history class to be too religiously oriented. That is why we have a religion class. The visitors seem to have been very well-meaning people. Nevertheless, had they noticed that, they could easily have categorized the Waldorf School as being too anthroposophical and of bringing that into the classroom.

I came into one class, eurythmy, and it was immediately obvious not only that the students were well behaved, but that they had behaved well before I arrived. We could present such an exemplary class as the 9a eurythmy class to the entire world. You could quite clearly see the class had been well behaved before I came in. You can easily see if a class begins to behave well only when you step into the room. That was a very exemplary class.

Concerning the 8a and 8b classes, I could not see that they were such terribly clever misbehaved children. Initially, you will have to reach B.B. in the only way you can reach him, through his intellect. You cannot reach him through commands. On the other hand, if you make it clear to him that what he wants to do is nonsense, he will do what you ask of him. You could explain things to him as I recently did. He had written in his notebook with a pencil. There is no sense in telling someone with his temperament that he may not write with a pencil. If you do so, you can be certain that things will get worse. I told him he had smeared over everything, and that it looks horrible. I had barely turned around before he picked up his feather, prepared it, and then began to write in ink. Everything depends upon the way you present it. You need to meet the boy with what he understands and does not understand. He is a troubled boy. Sometimes it will occur to him to make a face, but he is a very well intentioned boy. You need to teach him that his faces do not look good. At the proper time, you need to teach him that he looks ugly when he does that. That is something you need to take into account at this age. They no longer accept commands. The power of authority quickly diminishes just when you have become strongly oriented in that direction. Then you encounter opposition. You need to be observant there. I would recommend that you read the four lectures I gave about adolescents. Read them and you will find all kinds of ways you can avoid that. I hope we can move beyond it.

A teacher gives a detailed report about a visit Dr. Steiner and three teachers made to the Ministry of Education and about what they learned regarding the requirements in the various subjects of the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: They are also tested in freehand drawing. Mr. Wolffhügel should take that up in the twelfth grade. I told the men that after we have sufficiently developed our curriculum, I would attempt to develop the teaching of freehand drawing using Dürer’s Melancholia as a basis. It contains all possible shades of light and dark, and it can also be transformed into color. If the children really understand that picture, they should be able to do everything.

In order to find something out, I asked whether, aside from the condition that the student must be eighteen years old, a student who had studied completely privately, who had never gone to school, would be allowed to take the examination. I was told that such a student would be admitted. From that, he admitted that we are not required to obtain official certification from the school board. I asked this question to see if there was some possibility that people could force us to come under the control of the School Review Board. Aside from some of the things that have occurred, the Education Law in Württemberg is one of the most liberal. No other place in Germany or Switzerland has such a liberal education law. Nevertheless, things could change for the twelfth grade.

Now that we know the students will be tested only on the material from the twelfth grade, I think it would be advisable to complete everything else and then begin on what the people there want.

We need to do a little more to complete chemistry and then go on to more of what is required in the final examination. We have done little in geology and the children learn about geological formations only very slowly. Before the holidays, we should at least awaken a little geological thinking, so they know what geological formations are, what kinds of stone and fossils they contain. We could give an overview before the holidays so that the students could learn the details afterward. We need to limit some things. Technology and eurythmy will end in February, as will religious instruction.

You could give some work to X. (a newly hired teacher). I have hired X. so that he will find support within the faculty. If he wastes his time, I will hold you responsible for it. He is so talented that you could give him work; he can do it if he wants to. The whole faculty is responsible for looking after him. For the time being, you need to try to finish chemistry. Before the holidays, give the students an overview about geology up to the Ice Age. Afterward, we will have to teach them about alcohol, the nature of alcohol, concepts about ethers, the nature of essential oils, then the nature of organic poisons, alkaloids, and some idea about cyanide compounds in contrast to organic compounds. They need to understand qualitative relationships. They can understand all of it from that perspective.

When speaking about geology, I recommend you go backward, beginning with the present, the alluvial period to the diluvial. Then discuss the Ice Age. Use the change in the axis of the Earth to give them an idea of the relationship of such events as the Ice Age to things outside the tellurian, without tying them to specific hypotheses. From there you can go back to the Tertiary period. Explain when the second and first realms of mammals arose. When you get back to the carbon period, you can simply teach the change. It would be better if you made the transition in the following way. In the later formations, we have the minerals precipitated out and the vegetable and animal fossilized. Now we are back in the Carboniferous period. What could be fossilized of animals does not exist. We only find fossilized vegetable material. The Carboniferous period is all plant. There is no differentiation, as nothing more than plant material exists. We can go still further back where we find things completely undifferentiated. Tell them in that way.

Perhaps you could give a lecture of mine. I once explained geology to the workers in a living way. I told them everything about geology in two hours. Those two lectures were certainly important. You could find them and work in the same way.

Earlier forms were only etheric. We should imagine the Carboniferous period such that we recognize that the individualization of plants was not nearly so strong as people imagine. Today, people think there were ferns, but actually what petrified was a much more undifferentiated soup. The etheric was continuously active in that soup, resulting in secretions that precipitated and held the organic mass in a nascent state, which then petrified. I would like to take this opportunity to give you, with some reservations, the divisions that can serve as a theme. Though there are some limitations, you could treat the entirety of zoology by dividing the animals into three groups with four divisions each, resulting in twelve classes or types of animals.

FIRST GROUP

1. Protists, completely undifferentiated infusoria, and protozoa
2. Sponges, corals, and anemones
3. Echinoderms from sea lilies to sea urchins
4. The ascidians, in which a proper outer shell is no longer present, that is, the shell formation has receded.

SECOND GROUP

5. Mollusks
6. Worms
7. Articulates
8. Fish

THIRD GROUP

9. Amphibians
10. Reptiles
11. Birds
12. Mammals

In discussing the zodiac, you should begin with the mammals, represented by Leo; then birds, Virgo; reptiles, Libra; amphibians, Scorpio; fish, Sagittarius; articulates, Capricorn; worms, Aquarius. Then continue on the other side, where you have the protists, Cancer; corals, Gemini; echinoderms, Taurus; ascidians, Aries; mollusks, Pisces. You should realize that the zodiac arose at a time when the names and classifications were very different. In the Hebrew language, there is no word for fish, so it is quite reasonable that you would not find fish mentioned in the story of creation. They were seen as birds that lived in water. Thus, the zodiac is divided in this way, into seven and five parts for day and night.

There is also something in that which corresponds to the threefolding of the human being. The first group are the animals related to the head, namely, the protists, sponges, echinoderms, and ascidians. The second group are the rhythmic animals, the mollusks, worms, articulates, and fish—that is, the middle part of the human being and the head. The third group are the animals of the limbs, so you can see how each aspect is added. Thus, we have the limbs, the rhythmic system, and the head. These all tend toward a threefolding, but are not yet complete.

If you look at it from the perspective of the human being, the head corresponds to the first group, the human rhythmic system to the second group, and the human limbs to the third group.

From a geological perspective, things begin with the head. You need to follow geological formations through the twelve stages. You should begin with the first group, go on to the second, and then to the third. You need to complete that with geological formations. The infusoria go back to the beginning and are the first group. The forms of that first group that still exist are degenerated forms of the etheric forms from very early times. The forms of the second group are half degenerated. Actually, only their antecedent nondegenerated forms belong to that. Only in the third group do we find really primary forms not yet degenerated, which therefore form the basis for teaching about formations.

When teaching animal geography, you need to consider the zodiac in connection with what I have just said, that is, look at the projection of the zodiac upon the Earth. You will then find the areas of the animal groups on the Earth. You have some globes where the zodiac is drawn upon the Earth. They will provide you with what you need.

We can actually not speak about volcanic formations, only volcanic activity that goes through geological formations.

We should also try to bring the plants into twelve groups. I will do that later.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: You have already read nineteenth-century German literature. You should, of course, try to give the students some examples. You could read Tieck’s Phantasus and some small pieces from Zacharias Werner. They should also read from Wilhelm Müller, Novalis, Immermann, Eichendorff, Uhland, including some small examples from Herzog Ernst, then Lenau, Gustav Schwab, Justinus Kerner, Geibel, Greif, Heine, but only his decent things, Hebbel, a little of Otto Ludwig, and Mörike. That is approximately what they need. Also, Kleist and Hölderlin. I would advise some of the other things in the curriculum for other classes, namely, Lessing, Herder, and Klopstock. Logau was good—better sayings were never written. He makes up wonderful sayings. Then, also, Gottfried Keller and Grillparzer. From the poets that I mentioned, use only lyric examples. The students need to read something from Keller, but tell them Der grünen Heinrich (Green Henry). Read Richard Wagner also.

[That was all given as preparation for the final examination.]

Dr. Steiner: I wanted to discuss the zoological division and the curriculum. What remains to discuss?

A teacher: What should we tell students about the examination?

Dr. Steiner: You need to tell them only that we are completely informed about it. There is a basic inner rule of pedagogy that those being taught should never know or discuss the secrets of education. That has become a problem here and must be eliminated as quickly as possible. It cannot continue. The perspective which has slowly arisen that no differences of age are taken into account has led to the children’s thinking about how they are taught and the methods used.

We could tell them the following: You need to be eighteen years old, and you need a report from us. We could go on to say that we know what is needed, and that if they study industriously, they will pass the examination. What more can we do? We can say only external things. It is not good for the children to become accustomed to having conferences with us. They should feel that the teachers will do what is right. They are afraid they will miss a number of interesting things.

A number of classes were cancelled because of the heat.

Dr. Steiner: Those are natural events. Winter will certainly be cold again.

(Speaking to an eighth-grade teacher) The children should know that when you are occupied with one or two, others may still be questioned. The children should be interested in the others in the class. Basically, when it is not a question of helping with an arithmetic problem, but is some instruction that can be heard by the others, it should be interesting not only to one individual, but to everyone. They should expect to be called upon at any time. You should do it in such a way that you continue with one of the others who has been inattentive. Then, they will get the feeling that they may be required to continue with the reading at any time.

When you ask about material previously covered, you must do it in a different way. You must ask the questions so that the children can answer. In time, you will learn how to do that in practice, but you will need to be lively in your manner. You should skip from one student to the other so that the children notice that you are skipping around. You now have a contact with the students that a few years ago you did not have at all. On the other hand, I think you too often “show them how.” Many classes are terribly restless because they are always being shown how to do something. That should be limited. You can do that by calling more often upon specific students who are able to respond.

One thing is troubling me, and that is the question of how to solve the problem of painting in the notebooks. The children should paint only on stretched paper. We cannot afford painting boards because they are too expensive. We could just use smooth boards. Wouldn’t it be possible in the shop class to make smooth boards for stretching the paper? It is not good to have the children paint in their regular notebooks. When they begin painting, they should also stretch their paper.

Ch.O. has a dangerous condition. He is clearly malnourished, and he will soon have a blood problem. When you go through these classes and look at the children, it is terrible. We need to determine which children are right on the edge. The real problem is not how much they eat, but that they digest it properly.

There are also a number of troubled children we need to give some attention to. St.B. in the first grade sees astral flies. He needs to be treated with something. His whole astral body is in disarray. There is a strong asymmetry of the astral body in all directions. Try to have him do some curative eurythmy exercises where he has his hands behind his back. Have him do exercises we normally do toward the front, but have him do them toward the back.

Anthroposophy and Threefolding: Their Nature and Their Defense

Dear attendees! It has not been my custom to say a special word of thanks after greetings. Today I want to do it because I really thank you very much for this greeting in the interest of the matter. Anyone who is attached to the matter I represent here may also express his thanks when he sees that it has retained its old sympathies despite the attacks it has suffered here. For almost two decades I have been giving lectures here in Stuttgart every year on the anthroposophical worldview, and in these lectures everything has been mentioned that makes it possible to form an opinion about the anthroposophical movement. More recently, I have also spoken about things that are more loosely connected with what I represent as the anthroposophical worldview: the so-called threefold social order. And I do not believe that any of the words I have spoken in the latter context have in any way violated the spirit and content of what, as I said, I have been advocating for almost two decades as an anthroposophical worldview.

Today, however, I face the outside world as if before a caricature of what I myself have to describe as the anthroposophical worldview. From all sides, I am confronted with descriptions of what this anthroposophical worldview is supposed to be. I must confess that most of these descriptions are such that I do not recognize the picture of the anthroposophical world view that I have drawn here. Everything seems so alien to me, just as what has been said in numerous personal attacks from all sides seems alien to me. It will therefore be forgiven if today I depart from the custom I have otherwise almost always observed here of speaking purely impersonally about the anthroposophical world view, and that I also take into account in a few places the personal attacks that have been made against me. But I promise you that I will not go into these things any further than they are related to the matter in hand in any direction.

First of all, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the origin and starting point of the anthroposophical world view. This origin and starting point lies entirely in the scientific world view of modern times. Anyone who goes through the somewhat long series of my writings will be able to see that my starting point never lies in any religious problems, even though, of course, anthroposophy, by its very nature, as we shall see, must lead to religious feeling and religious views. The starting point was not religious views, the starting point was the scientific world view that I grew into in my younger years. Anyone who grows into this scientific worldview of the present day will initially feel an extraordinary respect for what science has achieved in modern times, and above all, they will gain an even greater respect for both the experimental and observational methods of scientific research and for the training in thinking and methodical schooling that contemporary science can introduce to people. And I must confess that, for me, since I entered the natural sciences, the most valuable thing about them was this training of thought, this conscientious discipline of thinking and researching. And more than from individual results of natural science, I have always started from what natural science research brings up in you as a training in thinking. But in doing so, one thing became clearer and clearer to me. When I — and I believe that what I am about to say is sufficiently clear from my 'Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings', which appeared in the 1880s — when I repeatedly looked at what lives in the human soul in terms of yearning for the spiritual world, what views of a spiritual world live in the human soul, then the fundamental question arose for me: How can that which undoubtedly forms the great triumph of modern times, scientific research, be reconciled with these longings, with these justified impulses of the human soul?

Dear attendees! This question has brought me together with personalities in particular who, familiar with the scientific way of thinking of modern times, led a tragic inner life of the soul in dealing with the same question. An example: In my early youth, I encountered a person who, I might say, was completely infiltrated by the scientific way of thinking - a way of thinking that is fully justified in its field and points to the origin of our planet Earth, our entire world system, as a purely material primeval nebula, through whose inner forces all being has gradually formed, ultimately including man. But in man, so this personality said to himself, the processes of this concentrated nebula world took on very special forms; ideals arise in man, religious convictions, the longing arises in man to know something about that which lies beyond birth and death, because a life that only covers the period between birth and death seems so meaningless. But everything that appears in the so-called life of the soul in a human being is, as this personality put it, just smoke and fog, something that arises like a haze from what alone can be scientifically accepted. And the mental life of this personality was tragic, for it said to itself: It must be a mere deception, a mere illusion, what emerges from material life and presents itself to man as a mirage.

One may find such a way of thinking more or less justified, more or less opposed, it was there in numerous cases, and it was there in such personalities, for whom it was in vain to object: Yes, natural science on the one hand is an exact science, on the other hand the world of faith is the subjective world. Our ideals arise from this subjective world, our religious convictions arise from this subjective world. One must know the one, believe the other. There were just so many such personalities who could not do this, who said to themselves: If it is the case that the human being has arisen from what science presents to us, then ethical ideals and religious convictions are illusions. I could cite many examples along these lines. But what I want to say with it is sufficiently indicated. And so the question arose for me more and more out of life itself: Is there not a possibility, between what lives inside of man in terms of spiritual aspirations and what natural science has established, is there not a connection in between, is there not a bridge from one to the other?

And now, what offered me above all the possibility of finding such a bridge, that was not, at first, looking at inner, subjective visions; that had become clear to me from the beginning. No matter how convincingly or intensely subjective visions may present themselves to the soul, one has no right to accept them as objective on account of their subjective appearance, if one is not in a position to build a bridge from the scientifically established to the spiritual world. I have already tried to build this bridge in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”. I then devoted special attention to this in the elaboration of my small work “Truth and Science” and my larger book “The Philosophy of Freedom”.

It is quite certain that if the scientific world view alone is right, then we as human beings are the works of a necessity, then the idea of freedom is impossible, then even in this so convincing experience of our inner life, the fact that we have free will seems to stand only as a deception before our soul. And so for me the question of the justification of freedom became one of those problems, one of those riddles that occupied me intensely as a young man, and I saw that it is impossible to find a foundation for the question of freedom without a foundation for all of philosophical thinking. That was therefore the task I set myself at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: to find a foundation for philosophical thinking. I first put aside everything that might arise to me as visions of a spiritual world. Above all, I wanted to have a secure philosophical foundation that was in harmony with the scientific research of modern times. And starting from this point of view, I examined above all the nature of human thinking. I tried all possible ways of arriving at the answer to the question: What is human thinking essentially according to its nature?

Anyone who reads my “Philosophy of Freedom” will find how these paths to fathoming the nature of human thinking were sought. And for me it turned out that only someone who sees something in the highest expressions of this thinking that takes place independently of our physicality, of our bodily organization, can understand human thinking correctly. And I believe I succeeded in demonstrating that the processes of pure thinking in man take place independently of bodily processes. In bodily processes, natural necessities prevail. What emerges from these bodily processes in the way of dark instincts, will impulses and so on is, in a certain respect, determined by natural necessity. What a person accomplishes in his thinking ultimately turns out to be a process that takes place independently of the physical organization of the person. And I believe that through this “Philosophy of Freedom” nothing less has emerged than the supersensible nature of human thinking. And once this supersensible nature of human thinking had been recognized, then the proof was provided that in the most ordinary everyday life, when man rises to real thinking, through which he is determined by nothing other than the motives of thinking itself, then he has a supersensible element in this thinking. If he then directs his life by this thinking, develops himself in this way, is educated in this way, that he goes beyond the motives of his physical organization, beyond drives, emotions, instincts, and bases his actions on motives of pure thinking, then he may be called a free being. To explain the connection between supersensible pure thinking and freedom was my task at that time.

One can stop at this point and pursue such a train of thought merely in theory. But if such a train of thought is not pursued merely in theory, but becomes a fulfillment of one's whole life, if one sees in it a revelation of human nature itself, then one pursues it not merely in theory, but in practice. What is this practical pursuit? Well, once one has grasped the supersensible nature of thinking, one learns to recognize that the human being is capable of becoming independent of his bodily organization in a certain activity. One can now try whether, in addition to pure thinking, the human being is also capable of developing an activity that is modeled on this pure thinking. Anyone who calls the method of research that I use to underpin my anthroposophical spiritual science clairvoyance must also call ordinary pure thinking, which flows from everyday life into human consciousness and into human action, clairvoyance. I myself see no qualitative difference between pure thinking and what I call clairvoyance. My view is that through the process of pure thinking, man can first develop a practice of how to become independent of one's physical organization in one's inner processes, how to accomplish something in pure thinking in which the body has no part. In 1911, at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna, I explained in a very philosophical way that pure thinking is something that is carried out in man without the physical organization having any part in it. And here, in a large number of lectures, I have confirmed this from the most diverse points of view.

But then, when one knows the process by which one arrives at such pure thinking, something can be developed through what true, deeper philosophy gives, which I then presented in the most diverse ways as a method of knowledge for the higher worlds in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science”. Just as pure thinking ultimately emerges from the ordinary everyday activities of the human soul, for which no special training is needed, so, by further developing this process, one can arrive at what I have called in the above-mentioned book and in the second part of my “Occult Science” the stages of higher knowledge — that is, imagination, inspiration, intuition. What is expressed in pure thinking becomes our own simply by virtue of being born; it is inherited by us in our present stage of human development. That which, in accordance with the pattern of pure thinking, can appear as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, must likewise be cultivated in the adult, just as certain abilities are cultivated naturally in the child.

If some people find it astonishing, some paradoxical, and some even curious, what I describe as methods in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then it must be clear that when a person tries to develop an inner life within himself, he needs something other than what is available in everyday life. Therefore, other terms are needed. Anyone who penetrates the meaning of these terms without being malicious from the outset will see that the only intention of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is to show people how to develop certain abilities that are latent, that is, dormant, in every soul: the ability to have certain images present in consciousness. The fact of the matter is that through those methods – which I will not describe again today, I have described them here very often – that through those methods, which I have described in the books mentioned, the human being makes himself capable not only of attaining such abstract concepts as are contained in pure thinking, but that he makes himself capable of presenting to his soul fully substantial, if I may use the expression, more saturated contents of consciousness, which are as full of content as otherwise only sensual impressions. What is called for here is essentially a strengthening of ordinary thinking power, and if one wishes to call it clairvoyant power, so be it. Certain exercises must be done to develop such abilities, just as certain exercises must be done by the child to develop certain abilities.

Professor Wilhelm Bruhn, who lectured on anthroposophy and related subjects in Kiel for a semester, has observed that the preparations to be made in order to arrive at such imaginative and then at an inspired knowledge are, in a certain respect, of an ethical nature, that certain ethical forces must be applied, must be trained if man is to penetrate to the knowledge of the higher worlds. And this Wilhelm Bruhn, who is an opponent of the anthroposophical world view in the strongest possible terms, emphasizes the ethical seriousness of these preparations, which is unmistakable. Bruhn alone – and I may well base myself on him here precisely because in his small work, which appeared in the collection 'Aus Natur und Geisteswelt' (From Nature and the Spiritual World), he has a kind of compendium of everything that can be said against anthroposophy – he particularly asserts that by encouraging people to develop their inner soul abilities, I am in fact leading them to initially have pictorial representations that are expressed in colors, lines or figures. This is one of the gross misunderstandings that must be corrected if Anthroposophy is not to be completely misunderstood.

In my “Theosophy” I expressly pointed out what is important here. I said: It is not important that the one who, as a spiritual researcher, seeks the way into the higher worlds, sees exactly the same thing that is described in the sensual life as yellow and red, as pointed or blunt, but rather, said: the person who has a somewhat finer perception does not simply gaze at yellow, at green, at red, but has an inner experience of the yellow, of the green, of the red. You can read about these interesting inner experiences of colors in Goethe's Theory of Colors in the chapter “Sensual-moral Effect of Colors.” When you have this experience, this particular specific experience of yellow, green, red, blue, then you know something that is purely spiritual. And you get this experience when you rise to imaginative knowledge. By soaring to imaginative knowledge, one has, as I say in my Theosophy, an experience such as one has with yellow, an experience such as one has with blue; the experience is a purely soul process. If one wants to have designations for it, then one expresses oneself in such a way that one experiences something that is illustrated by yellow, by blue, and one speaks just as little of this color yellow and blue as one speaks of a reality, as one, when one draws a triangle or a square on the blackboard, which is to depict something, confuses this triangle or square with the reality that is to be depicted.

Everything that is striven for in this anthroposophical schooling is striven for in full consciousness; nothing unconscious or subconscious prevails in it. Everything is striven for in such a way that one emulates those inner soul processes that one has acquired through mathematical schooling. In such consciousness, in such inner development of the will, one strives for that which is to lead up into the higher worlds. One simply comes to a visualization that one depicts through colors. And when one has progressed so far in a certain way that one can have a new world, a completely new world before oneself, a world that one is urged to represent by colors or by other sensualizations, then one is ripe to advance to inspired knowledge. When one develops the element of love, which is present even in ordinary life, to its highest expression as an inner soul power, then one is given the opportunity not only to have such images arising in one's consciousness, but also to be able to remove them from one's consciousness. One is not a slave to these images, nor is one a mere psychic; one is in full command of them. But just as one knows when one puts one's finger on a hot iron that one is not just dealing with the idea of the hot, but with a reality, as one can only state this through life, through the context of life, it turns out that what one experiences inwardly in this way in imaginative experience refers to an objectively spiritual reality. And if one develops the ability to love in the appropriate way, then one comes to erase these images from one's consciousness, so to speak, and then one has spiritual substance in one's pure, inner experience.

This spiritual essence, as far as it is accessible to me, I have described in my books, and at the same time I have followed the method that on the one hand, through books like my “Theosophy” and my “Secret Science”, I have described what arises from such research. And on the other hand, in such a book and in some other books, such as 'How to Know Higher Worlds', I have described exactly the path by which every human being can come to such knowledge. And I have expressly made it clear that every person can come to such realizations; but I have also made it clear that the one who handles the inner essence of pure thinking does not need schooling of the mind, but he can, when the knowledge gained by such schooling of the mind is communicated to him and he receives it without prejudice, he can receive it inwardly as a conviction, just as he receives what astronomy gives, without becoming an astronomer himself.

This, esteemed attendees, is the method for entering the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world as into a reality, which one then knows to be a reality as that which is handed down to us by science. If we now turn back to the method of natural science, we say to ourselves: After all, we do not really apply any other method, any other inner soul activity, to the supersensible world than the one we have already applied in natural science, but adapted to things outside ourselves that can be perceived by the senses. Yes, one finally realizes that natural science has become great precisely because, I would say, the same inner training of thought was used in the first stage, which can then be applied to supersensible knowledge.

That is why I said that what interested me most about science was what emerged from it as a training in thinking. I have wrestled with such problems as those presented by Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), where he comes to the conclusion that one can only arrive at the supersensible by going beyond science. But I have seen that one can only make such a statement as Du Bois-Reymond does here if one believes that the way in which one masters scientific facts, brings them into laws, is not already dominated by thinking, which is similar to the supersensible capacity for knowledge.

As for how the world judges such things, there are only a few hints. I must start by saying that Wilhelm Bruhn fundamentally misunderstands much of anthroposophy. He reproaches me, for example, with offering nothing more than a kind of filtered sensuality in supersensible knowledge. What I say in the passages quoted in my Theosophy and what I say in my Occult Science cannot be applied to words such as Bruhn utters. He says:

In any case, Steiner also teaches a sufficient knowledge of reality in some sensory form.

No, I have never taught that. Every such statement as Bruhn's is simply a misunderstanding of what I have always said as the most essential thing. When someone misunderstands so thoroughly, it seems understandable that he should make the strange statement: 'What I am giving as exercises to get up into the supersensible worlds is exactly the same as the spiritual exercises that Jesuit pupils have to do. Now, yet another Protestant theologian has found a similarity between what I write in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and the Jesuit spiritual exercises. But a Catholic theologian, Canon Laun, firmly rejects this and says that anyone who claims that my exercises are similar to those of the Jesuits does not know the exercises of the Jesuits.

Dear attendees! In this case, I must absolutely agree with Canon Laun, even though I do not agree with him on anything else, but what I have now explained to you in principle has truly nothing to do with the Jesuit retreats. No wonder that when something is misunderstood in the way I have indicated, people are led to believe that I am describing the content of the spiritual world as a series of cinematic images – that is how Bruhn expresses himself. Now, it is true that Whoever rises to the spiritual world, as I have described, also grasps his own spiritual soul, grasps this spiritual soul as it is as eternal. Through contemplation, he penetrates the riddles of death and immortality, for whom a scientific path to the eternal forces of that which lives in man reveals itself.

But if we consider the temporal forces that live in man between birth and death, what do we find? Well, we do not just have a consciousness of the moment. In our ordinary life, we look back to a very early point in our childhood, and we know that the human soul would be ill if one could not look back to this point in childhood in a continuous stream of memory. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, fundamentally, we are nothing more at this moment than what we have become through our experiences, which can be brought up again through the memory stream. If one delves into one's temporal existence between birth and the present moment and reveals to oneself, not cinematically but in inner experience, the recent past of one's own self, then, if one sees through this process in the right way, it will no longer wonderful that if you now familiarize yourself with the eternal, with the immortality of the soul, which was present in all processes that preceded even our formation on earth, you can also familiarize yourself with what this eternal part of the soul has experienced. If you familiarize yourself with what the soul has experienced eternally, then you have the cosmic environment around you, just as you have your personal environment around you through ordinary memory. This supersensible ability to read is in the so-called Akashic Chronicle, that is, in what one surveys through the experiences of the soul in relation to the soul's eternal; it is nothing other than that the soul these experiences are presented and revealed, so that one's ordinary memory, which otherwise reaches back to birth – or at least to a point near birth – is expanded to cosmic vision.

That, my dear audience, people who listen to ordinary mystics cannot see through in its true essence. These ordinary mystics usually take what has been seen by others and embellish it with all kinds of nebulous things. And in this way, what I would like to call the justified rejection or even the justified caution towards everything that appears as spiritual-scientific results has also come about. Nebulous mystics have brought too much all kinds of number symbolism and the like to that which is observed just as accurately, only by applying the developed soul abilities of man, as for example in physics the rainbow or the seven-color spectrum. The true spiritual researcher, when speaking of the sevenfold human being, can only speak as one speaks of the seven-coloured rainbow, and he means nothing mysterious by it, any more than the physicist means anything mysterious when he speaks of the seven-coloured spectrum. But then come the mystics, the nebulous ones, who attach all kinds of stuff to these things; as a result, much of honest spiritual research has been discredited. And if one is forced to use the number seven or the number nine somewhere, it is resented.

You see, Bruhn, as I said, provided the compendium for the opposition. Bruhn, the Kiel professor, finds a kind of mythology in what I present and finds, affirms what he says about mythology by the fact that I have to use such numbers as 7 and 9 and the like. I find this strange in a gentleman who, for his part, admits: there is intuitive knowledge, there are intuitive truths, supersensible truths – and who now lists what he calls supersensible truths in this way, and he numbers them : 1. one's own ego, 2. the ego of others, 3. the existence of things in space, 4. events in time, 5. beauty, 6. morality, 7. the divine.

Yes, my dear audience, it does not occur to me to accuse Mr. Bruhn of some nebulous number mysticism just because he mentions seven truths. However, these truths are, I would say, very meager. And even though he admits that the content of these seven truths was attained intuitively, that is, in a way that signifies a purely inner vision, he must also admit the possibility that this path, which leads to these simple, meager truths, can perhaps be developed as a very exact path like the mathematical one, and that one can then also come to other, richer, more substantial truths. Instead, such seven truths are nailed up, and what is basically drawn from the same sources – only after these sources have first been sought in the right way – is called mythology.

In a peculiar way, one relates to what appears here as an anthroposophical worldview. Recently, a newspaper here turned to an authority so that this authority, which belongs to a neighboring university, would give an authoritative judgment on anthroposophy. Now, among the many things – and you really can't read them all – that now appear to be opposed, I just got this article and read it. I came across a passage where the author objects to my statement about supersensible facts and supersensible beings. He says that in my spiritual realm, supersensible beings move just as tables and chairs move in the physical realm! Now, ladies and gentlemen, just imagine the logic that leads to saying that tables and chairs move by themselves in physical space. I am aware of states of human life in which there is a subjective appearance of tables and chairs moving by themselves, but I do not believe that the good theologian meant to refer to such a state. Now, Bruhn also betrays himself through a similar kind of logic, but I would like to say explicitly, just so that I am not misunderstood, that the earnest way in which he approaches anthroposophy is thoroughly commendable. You have to take Bruhn seriously, so I take him seriously. But now he also says that I am clinging to the gross-sensual and that I only present the supersensible, the spiritual, as a sensual, which is why one has to object that one does not get closer to the unknown spiritual through such a method. You get just as little close to this unknown spiritual as a mountaineer – so says Bruhn – who moves away from the earth and climbs up a mountain; he may move away from what is below, but the sky is still just as far above him.

Now, my dear audience, the sky that arches above us is, as is well known, not there at all; one looks out into the infinite space of the universe. One can see from the sensualizations that these people give when they want to hit something that comes from spiritual science that their logic is in a strange way ordered. And so I would like to point out right away that it is said that in the account I give of the course of the world through supersensible knowledge, one could understand Christ in the same way as any other particularly distinguished personality, such as Socrates, Plato or Buddha. — This is simply an objective untruth compared to what I have presented in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. There I showed how everything in the pre-Christian era was directed towards the mystery of Golgotha, but how nothing in the pre-Christian era can be compared with what appears in the being of Christ Jesus. I have characterized it concretely in the course of spiritual history, and I have further shown how everything that has happened since the mystery of Golgotha is thoroughly impelled by this event. I have expressly shown that anthroposophy leads to the placing of this event of Golgotha in the center of the becoming of the earth. But this is what must be taken into account, what must not and should not be criticized by simply applying quite different, alien thoughts to the same.

And so a critic like Bruhn also finds that what I present as supersensible intuitions I actually only get through my thoughts operating in some way unknown to me, that I construct them out of thoughts without knowing, however, that what then becomes an image only proceeds in the unconscious, that thus, so to speak, the intuitions are only ideas after all. In his essay on Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Bruhn says that Schiller had already objected to Goethe's Urpflanze, saying that Goethe's image of the Urpflanze was an idea and not a vision. In my books and lectures, I have often described how Goethe defended himself against Schiller's statement, and Bruhn says that I must accept the same objection. Well, I am happy to do so! But I would like to point out that such an objection arises from the fact that the objector does not recognize how imaginative knowledge, how beholding, rises from the abstract idea to something more saturated, to something more fully substantial, and only in this way can that which is still a formal element in the abstract become a visualization of higher spiritual realities.

If one misunderstands in such a way what is expressed by the spiritual science meant here, then one can also very easily come to the conclusion that this spiritual science wants to be a substitute for religion. And then one says, as Bruhn has often said, that religion must not be something that one grasps in clear recognition, but that religion must be something irrational. Bruhn expresses it, I admit, very beautifully. He says it should be a blissful enjoyment as a closeness to God and a homesickness as a distance from God. It should not be a supersensible knowledge, but it should be a touch of the divine.

Now, the error lies in the fact that anthroposophy does not want to be a substitute for religion. Religion is formed, however, through a personal relationship with the founder of the religion. This personal relationship to the founder of the religion is irrational, just as, on a smaller scale, every relationship we have with any human being is irrational. The relationship we have with any human being is something we naturally refrain from reducing to any kind of idea, however supersensible, because we would accept any tittle-tattle from him. Thus the relationship one has to the Christ Jesus is something irrational, something that should not be conceptualized, not even in supersensible concepts, but should become a fact in the inner, fully human experience alone. On the other hand, especially for those who have knowledge of nature, there is the necessity to strive for supersensible knowledge in order to have the possibility of penetrating to the soul and spiritual as something real. Once one is familiar with supersensible knowledge, one will seek to find through this supersensible knowledge that which is most valuable to one in the world. And so many people have the urge to understand that which they have as an irrational nature, which they blissfully enjoy as being close to God, which they feel homesick for as being far from God, in terms of its historical and cosmic reality. It can be understood in a philological way; this has been achieved through external science. It can also be approached through supersensible knowledge; this has been achieved through anthroposophy. The aim is not to shake people out of their irrational relationship with religion, but to seek a path of knowledge to Christ Jesus. The human being who needs it - and many people already need it today, and more and more will need it - must, on the one hand, form his view of the world of the senses and of the spirit, and on the other hand, of that which has become religiously valuable to him, in order to then find harmony between the two.

This is what tears the soul apart if one is not able to bring one's knowledge to what has become religiously valuable to one. Anthroposophy is not intended to found a religion. Anthroposophy is neither a sect nor the founding of a religion, but rather the realization of the supersensible. And since that which has embodied itself through Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha is a supersensible being, and since the event of Golgotha itself is a process in which the supersensible lives, there must be a path from supersensible knowledge to this Mystery of Golgotha. The aim is not to create a substitute for religion, but to expand our knowledge so that we can also understand what we experience religiously. This does not make religious experience more superficial, nor does it strip religious experience of its piety. Rather, it allows us to turn our inner gaze to what is religiously valuable to us in the mystery of Golgotha through contemplation, with firm inner strength.

Dearly beloved attendees, I can only give examples of what I have to say about the nature of spiritual science, of anthroposophy, and what I have to say in its defense. But just as the points I have touched on, others could be presented here if I were able to give many lectures and did not have to content myself with one lecture. Therefore, I will now move on to what has been added in recent years to what I have previously presented here over many years as the anthroposophical worldview: the idea of social threefolding.

The fact that this social threefolding exists at all can be traced back to the fact that a number of people came to me during the sad days of the war and afterwards and wanted to know my thoughts on how social life could progress from these tragic events of the war. I was asked, people came to me, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this explicitly for the reason that it is far too little seen, because usually things are presented as if I were some kind of fanatical agitator who would forcefully bring things to people. I have never done anything else in the anthroposophical worldview, except give lectures, dear attendees. I appealed to those people who wanted to come to these lectures; they came – whether they were from the aristocracy or the proletariat, they were always equally welcome to me. And those who then became my so-called followers became so because they heard me. I did not go after anyone – I would not say such a thing if I were not compelled to do so. And if anyone presents these things as if I, as a fanatical agitator, had followed one person one time and another person another time, then it must be said that I have never followed anyone with any idea. The social threefolding is even used today to cast suspicion on that aspect of the anthroposophical world view from which it actually draws its very best roots. And here I would like to come back to Bruhn, who at least is to be taken more seriously than other critics.

Bruhn says: No matter how much he may have to fight it, something like anthroposophy has its origin in the “bankruptcy of our intellectual culture”. One has to get out of this intellectual culture, and he attributes to me that I did not strive to get out of this intellectual culture in the same way as those whom I 97 as the nebulous Theosophists, but that I had gone through Goethe and Haeckel, had struggled through German idealism, that I was “occidentally” oriented, that the roots of my view would rest in “western-Germanic culture” and in “scientific training.

I am not saying this out of immodesty – you can read it in Bruhn's small writing, and you will find that this can be important to me in the face of the various hostilities that are now coming from all sides. As a young man, I was among those who, in Austria in the 1880s, had to fight a difficult battle in defense of Germanness against the other nationalities. I edited the Viennese “Deutsche Wochenschrift” for a short time. I got to know all the difficult struggles that one had to go through, especially in Austria, if one wanted to make the German character and German abilities, which are considered valuable for humanity, part of the content of the whole of human culture.

Dear attendees, I only refer to such small episodes in a spirit of urgency: when I was once asked to speak at a Bismarck Commers in Weimar, where I was in the 1890s, I concluded with the words of our Austrian poet Robert Hamerling – one only needs to know his works to know that his Germanness could not be doubted – I concluded at the time, when I spoke in Weimar, in Germany, as an Austrian at the Bismarck Commers, with the words of Hamerling: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland!”

Dearly beloved, in all my life I have never for a moment deviated from this view. And those who approached me in 1918 to ask me what Anthroposophy thought about how to proceed from there knew full well that my answer was rooted in German spirituality. I have – I make no boast of this, but in the face of the fierce attacks it must be said – I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, from Paris to Helsinki; I have given them everywhere in German. In May 1914 – please note the date – I gave a public lecture in Paris in German, based on German spirituality, not to a German colony but to the French. Every sentence had to be translated afterwards.

Now, out of the same spirit, what was then called the “threefold social order” has emerged. I would like to start by quoting something, again from an opponent, so that one can see how opponents think about the threefold order, which actually does not even belong to the most serious ones, because they overlook something, although they are nevertheless trained in thinking, as for example the Jena professor Rein. To begin with, he is preaching to the converted when he says: All ideas are sterile when the concept of humanity plays a decisive role in them. I quite agree, because the abstract, nebulous, mystical concept of humanity makes no sense. Humanity consists of people, of nations, and anyone who wants to work for humanity must, of course, move out of the national and into the general human. How one can do that, everyone who has any impartiality at all should admit that one can have a definite opinion based on one's own assumptions. And now Professor Rein goes on to say that the state cannot be overcome without further ado, because the state has already developed to such an extent among us Germans that one cannot go back to earlier conditions. Again, I agree! Yes, one can even completely agree with what Rein now cites as individual state demands. He says: The state must, first of all, be responsible for the care of art and science, morality and religion. Secondly, it must advocate the equalization and reconciliation of contradictions, the cooperation of the estates and professions, of employees and employers. All this, says Rein, must work together in the state as the three limbs work together in the human organism, of which Rein says - in a discussion of threefolding - that it is also threefold.

Now, just to make it clear how the three limbs should work together in the threefold social organism, I used the comparison with the threefold human being. It never occurred to me to speak of a “tripartite division”. Just as one cannot have the head separately from the human being, one cannot have the circulatory system separately, one cannot have the metabolic system separately, so one cannot have spiritual life, economic life and legal life separately in the social organism. Just as the blood supplies everything in the human organism, so within the state there are impulses that supply everything in all three limbs. And the opinion was that the three limbs of the social organism – spiritual life, legal life, economic life – work together in the right way when they exist in relative independence, just as the three limbs of the human organism are characterized by relative independence.

What, for example, does someone like Professor Rein want, who admits all this but then says that he must nevertheless fight the threefold order? He says, for example, that the state cannot be creative, but only regulatory and controlling. So what does he demand for spiritual life? A cultural parliament! And Professor Rein imagines this cultural parliament to consist of school chambers, state school chambers and so on; he imagines it to a certain extent as self-governing. And if I examine objectively how this cultural parliament of Professor Rein differs from what I have stated as the self-government of the spiritual member of the social organism, I find no difference other than that Professor Rein - and and this is open to discussion - wants to have the parents elected to his cultural parliament, but I would like to hand over the self-administration to those who are experts in this field, to the teachers and educators themselves. I do not want a cultural parliament, but something that arises without parliamentary chatter as a proper administrative organism made up of experts.

It is indeed strange that people like Professor Rein should fight against the threefold order. I really must ask myself why Professor Rein fights against the threefold order and describes it as dangerous to the state. Well, one may well ask why he does so. For in the same article in which he does so, he says: We Germans have every need to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. – So says Professor Rein, and then he says: Threefolding, rightly conceived, shows the way in which this can be done – namely, to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. And further: This way will be especially welcome to those who aim to eliminate the political parties, together with parliamentarism, which they repeatedly present as a corrupting institution.

I asked: What does Professor Rein want more than for threefolding to fulfill this ideal task of his? I cannot find any reason why he opposes it, since he says that, properly understood, threefolding points the way for what he wants to happen. I cannot find any other explanation than the one that emerges from a few words of Professor Rein: He says that he has explained his understanding of this threefold order in the new edition of his “Ethics”, which will be published soon. I am very interested to see when this threefold division appears in his Ethics, but I could not help speaking of this threefold division earlier, since I was asked about it earlier. And it seems to me that gentlemen like Rein are only angry because I forestalled them. I cannot help that.

Now, there is one more point I must mention: I have spoken here again today - and as I said, for 15 to 16 years - about supersensible knowledge. I have not only spoken of these supersensible insights as something that is, so to speak, shot from a pistol, but I have spoken of them in such a way that I have given precise details of the paths by which one comes to such insights. And with that, everyone is given the opportunity to verify it. Anyone who wants to go this way can come to the verification. And it is therefore quite unjustified when, today, out of the thought habits of the present — the thought habits that I have to fight against in many respects — the demand arises that what I call clairvoyant knowledge should be examined in a different way than the way I have indicated. I have said in my book “Theosophy”: For everything that I present in this book, I advocate that it be presented as a fact to me, as external sensory facts are. The one who has written them down does not want to present anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to how an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

Dear attendees, through such a method, the way is to be found to create a bridge from one human inner being to another. Above all, a pedagogical path is to be sought, the pedagogical path on which we base our teaching at the Freie Waldorfschule, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, the path without which a truly free spiritual life in the three-part social organism is not possible. We must seek such a path for the child too. But such a path is far removed from today's materialistic age; it is so far removed that it seeks the path to the child in a completely different way. And this has given rise to a strange psychology of the soul, which, according to many people, should also find its way into education. Because it is no longer possible to find the way to the child's soul through inner experience, the child is to be subjected to all kinds of procedures according to the methods of experimental psychology, whereby one determines what abilities the child has, for example, from the speed with which it absorbs certain words or with which it forgets words — quite externally, as if one were experimenting on an object because one can no longer do it inwardly. This examination of abilities is applied in a particular way in that area of Europe that has reached the extreme development of social materialism in social terms; this principle of examining children externally - as one examines external apparatus - is applied in a particular way in Bolshevik Russia. This has already been officially introduced there as a method of testing children's abilities – basically a terrible procedure, an indictment of the ability of the human soul to build a bridge to a person's mental abilities. And it is quite characteristic that it is precisely Bolshevism, this destructive worldview that destroys everything human, that is advancing to this pedagogical practice.

Now there are certain people who would like to apply this method to spiritual vision as well. They demand that I or one of my students should submit to such tests as one examines external apparatus. My dear audience, I have presented to humanity for decades what is created through my methods. I have indicated the methods by which it can be tested. I have shown how people who think of such tests, such as Professor Dessoir, who now even wants to form a society for such tests, approaches the anthroposophical spiritual science that I mean. I have shown in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' how he has presented objective untruth about objective untruth about anthroposophy. Well, anyone who wants to test any kind of fortune teller, card reader or sorcerer may demand such methods. I have never presented fortune telling, sorcery or such so-called soul abilities or clairvoyance, which Professor Dessoir or Professor Oesterreich or similar people speak of, who might also want to test mathematical abilities in such an external way. I can only say: anyone who demands such tests does not understand the slightest thing about what lives in anthroposophical spiritual science. And it would not occur to me to engage in what arises from a Bolshevist attitude. No, my dear audience, people may behave as German national as they like – but they shall be recognized by their fruits! If they make such demands as these, then it is not worth discussing their Germanness with them, and I will not engage in any further discussion. I have given my answer.

Now I come to something else. And there I would have to demand that the gentleman who asked the question, “What evidence can you give for your clairvoyant abilities?” First explain who “Mr. Winter” was, by whom I was supposedly converted to anthroposophy in 1900, before he acquires the right to ask me such questions. Dear attendees, the gentleman who wants to ask me questions today once spun his audience a yarn about how I was converted to anthroposophy by lectures given by a “Mr. Winter” in Berlin in 1900. He has probably read as closely as one reads when one only reads the first words of my writing about these winter lectures. In fact, I myself gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1900/1901, through which I am said to have been converted. These, my winter lectures, became “Mr. Winter's” lectures in this gentleman's mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I further demand that my Jewishness not be mentioned again and again in any insidious allusion, after I have spoken here in sufficient detail about my family tree. And I further demand that I not be slandered by saying that I worked under the tutelage of Mr. Liebknecht. What I experienced at the beginning of this century, however, is that I was thrown out of the proletarian schools where I taught because of my representation of a spiritual conception of history by the satellites of old Liebknecht; I was thrown out of the workers' training schools because I never bought into [the materialist conception of history] and the like.

And I demand that the claim of any kind of suggestive influence or even of post-hypnotic suggestion, as it has been raised by this side, be retracted. And I further demand that the first thing to be done is to clarify what has been stated by this side about my relationship with the late Chief of Staff, Field Marshal von Moltke. My dear audience, I have no need to entertain you this evening with these matters, but I do want to say something about some of the things that have been said here. I have, as I have already said this evening, never followed anyone. I never appeared at Mr. von Moltke's house without having been invited, without having been requested to do so; and so I have been a guest at Mr. von Moltke's house almost every week since 1904. I have learned to respect Mr. von Moltke, I have learned to respect him so much that I may describe him as one of the noblest of men; I want to leave no doubt about that. I have never been to his house without having been invited. Before the outbreak of the war, I never had a conversation with Mr. von Moltke about anything military or political. Whatever was discussed arose from Mr. von Moltke's need to get to know spiritual science. That was his personal matter; I accommodated him.

I was asked to come to Berlin in the first few days of August, as I was not in Berlin when the war broke out. I refused, in anticipation of what might come from a malicious source about these things. For only once, on August 27 [correctly: 26] of 1914, was I in Koblenz, but not at headquarters, but with a family of friends. Herr von Moltke visited me there for half an hour. My dear attendees, there was truly no reason to talk about war at the time. We were in the midst of the triumphal march; it was still relatively far to the Battle of the Marne. Not a word was spoken about military or political matters during that half-hour conversation that Herr von Moltke had with me back then, certainly not at a time when he could have missed something, because the triumphal march continued even afterwards. I did not see Herr von Moltke again until October, long after the Battle of the Marne. There is no way to place anything I discussed with Herr von Moltke before his dismissal in a political or military context. But what was said between Mr. von Moltke and me is one of those personal matters that no one should allow another to prohibit; and it would be sad if we had come to a point where snooping into such matters were considered justified today. From this, the objective untruth arose that some kind of theosophical events in Luxembourg had a paralyzing effect on Mr. von Moltke's health. Mrs. von Moltke herself has now stated that this is an objective untruth. None of this really concerns me; I have no business to speak about it.

Other untrue things have come to light in connection with the threefold social order. And it will be considered justified that, after I have been personally insulted in this way – I do not usually need the word personally – after I have been personally insulted in this way, I would not find it dignified to enter into a discussion with these people before these things are not taken back – despite the fact that I am open to any other discussion.

That is why I sent a registered letter that arrived a few days ago, with “General von Gleich” as the sender, back unopened by return of post. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how individuals would behave in such a case; I know how I behave. General von Gleich then wrote an open postcard – which of course I could not return because it was put in the letterbox – in which he repeated what he had said in his letter and in which he expressly confirmed that he had received the letter I had returned. Well, my dear attendees, with my understanding of the mutual relationship between people, I cannot understand such intrusiveness.

My dear attendees, it has been said at this time, and even in a well-known German weekly magazine, that the former minister Simons is supposed to be my student, that he was inspired by me for all the horrible things he did in London. Now, it seems to me necessary to look at this matter a little more closely. Some time ago I came across an interview with a French journalist. This French journalist said that he had just had an interview with Minister Simons. Minister Simons had spoken to him about the threefold order and said that he found something agreeable in it, just as he did in the views of the Italian minister Giolitti. It seemed to me that there was something fishy about it – I had never got to know Minister Simons very well before – and for me there was only one thing, and I said it in front of many people at the time, even in public meetings, long before the accusations against Simons started here. I said that a German minister would be more likely to know about the threefold order than a French journalist. You see, perhaps out of a prejudice that comes from national backgrounds, I had more sympathy for a German minister than for a French journalist. Then, however, I was urged to talk to Mr. Simons, and lo and behold, Mr. Simons told me that he had not known about the threefold order, that the French journalist had only just told him about it. Well, then I saw Mr. Simons again when he spoke here in Stuttgart about the politics of the time. He wanted to see the Waldorf School. How this visit went has been presented here in a public announcement.

No one who is familiar with what happened at the time will be able to deny that I did anything other than be courteous to the German Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs. Politeness, especially in such a case, does not seem to me to be particularly punishable. And anyone who claims that a different relationship existed is claiming an objective untruth. In this case, however, I am not surprised at this objective untruth. For when this public notice was posted, a letter was produced that was said to have been written in Cologne and which stated that I had boasted in Cologne that I had spoken to Minister Simons here in Stuttgart about the threefold order before his London mission. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been to Cologne for many years, and I have not been to Cologne at all recently.

Bruno Roos: Here is the letter!

That may be. The letter can only be a forgery! And that is no wonder, because a lot of work has been done here with forged letters. I don't care what the letter says. The truth is that there was never any relationship between me and Minister Simons other than the one I have described here, and that I have not been to Cologne at all in the last few years, I don't think I've been there for four or five years. So it is a lie that I could have said anything in Cologne. Someone may read or show you a letter – if it says what appeared in the newspaper, then the content of the letter is a blatant forgery. There is no need to engage with people who use such letters to wage a fight.

Dear attendees, many other things have been brought up recently. It is late, and I will only be able to address a few of them. The aim of all these opposing arguments is to distort the essence of threefolding and to present it as questionable by slandering me. For example, there is repeated mention of certain changes that I am supposed to have undergone in my world view. Now, anyone who reads what is contained in my first “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings” about my engagement with Haeckel will see that I was not a blind admirer of Haeckel in my entire life, but that I did struggle with it in the nineties, trying to come to terms with the things said, even in the details, by such a brilliant naturalist as Haeckel. At that time, it was around the time when Haeckel's “Welträtsel” had not yet been published, but his Altenburg speech on “Monism as a bond between religion and science” had been published. At that time, I gave a speech against this monism at the Vienna Scientific Club about my spiritual monism. And at that time I wrote an essay on ethical questions in the “Zukunft”, and it was Haeckel who approached me at that time, at the beginning of the nineties. I answered his letter and later sent him a copy of the lecture I gave on spiritual monism. Then Haeckel developed the material that became his one-sided book 'The World Riddles'. This led to a fierce battle against Haeckel, especially on the part of philosophers. And I still admit today: the one who was the greater at that time, on whose side the principal right was, was not Haeckel's opponents, it was Haeckel. And I stood up for the one who was relatively more in the right. And from this point of view one must understand what I have often said. Anyone who wants to do spiritual scientific research must be able to immerse himself in everything. This must not be just a phrase; one must also be able to immerse oneself in foreign worldviews. That was always my endeavor: to be able to be objective about foreign worldviews. This may have justified the view of those who from the outset held malicious opinions that I somehow stood in the position myself, in which I found myself; no one who cannot find themselves in foreign points of view can come to spiritual-scientific views. This reproach regarding “changes” is settled by what I presented in an issue of Das Reich, where I showed how what I represent as spiritual science grows out of my original epistemological views in a completely consistent way.

However, I only want to point out these things. It has even been claimed – and this shows how everything is dug up today that can somehow lead to the disparagement of the bearer of the threefold idea – that I was connected with an occult society that practices some evil practices. Dearly beloved, whatever I have advocated, internally or externally, is contained in what I have said in my “Theosophy”: the person who has written it down - and I must say, who has spoken it - does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to which an experience of the external world is a fact for the eye and ear and the ordinary mind. The fact that a gentleman, who later in Berlin even became the director of a larger theater, once introduced me to a person as being in need of support does not change that, and that person then received support from me for years through a kind of, I would like to say foolish, good-naturedness. No other relationship than that I supported this person, who would otherwise have had nothing to eat, has led to the assertion that worthless things, which were spoken and agreed between me and this person, have led to the assertion that I had some kind of occult relationship with this person or with an order he represented. I never had a single spiritual scientific conversation with this personality, not least because this personality understood nothing of spiritual science. And when the brazen claim is now made that I received something of the content of my spiritual science from that side, it means that one has understood nothing of what courses through my writings and my speeches.

When such things are stated, one need not be surprised if the claim has also been made that the un-German, the un-national nature of anthroposophy has been revealed in its position on the Upper Silesian question. No one who has sought advice from us in any way has been given any advice other than that those who stand in our ranks should vote for Germany when it comes to the vote. No one was ever given any other advice. What was said in addition to this was, however, that one should not only bring about this vote, but that one should bring about such a relationship for Upper Silesia as an integral country, so that it would be united internally with the German spirit. The idea was not just to call for a plebiscite, but at the same time to introduce a nuance into the agitation that would not only result in a worthless yes-saying in the face of the terrible will of the Entente, but would also lead to something being established that would show Upper Oberschlesien as a region turns out to be, which, through its inner structure, through what it can develop in terms of German spiritual impulses precisely in these difficult struggles, can, I would say, establish its inner affiliation with Germany in the germ. That, my dear attendees, I say in response to all those variously nuanced and from all sorts of dark backgrounds emerging accusations regarding the Upper Silesian question.

This question has been used particularly as a slander because one knows how it works, even by those who then added: One does not get the impression that Steiner's mother tongue is German. - Well, my dear attendees, I have not yet shown anyone outside of this room a document that I have here right now. Those who know me are aware that I do not use such documents to boast about myself or to engage in any kind of self-aggrandizement, but I may read out a sentence here from a letter I received many years ago, immediately after the publication of my first independent work, 'The Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview':

I can only say here that your struggle to gain a firm point of view between idealism and realism is extremely interesting to me, that your booklet has revealed a meaningful life of thought to me, that so many fine and pretty remarks have spoken to me from it and that the tone and style of the whole - despite some content-related suggestions for objections - has touched me sympathetically from beginning to end.

Dear attendees, I have only ever made use of this document in my thoughts when people complained about my style. I have not yet responded to it, but I have remembered that what I have read to you was written to me from Graz on January 30, 1887 by the German poet Robert Hamerling, who probably also understands something about the German style and the German mother tongue. So when the threefold social order emerged here, it was born out of German idealism, oriented towards the West, and it is born out of the longing to present to the world what has emerged from the world forces in Goethe, Schiller, in German Romanticism, in German philosophy, as a German creation, as German power.

Dear attendees, do you think it was easy to work on an eminently German construction in the northwestern corner of Switzerland during the entire war, in a highly visible location? Do you think it was easy to be labeled a Pan-German, that is, an All-German, by the French and the English throughout the entire period? That is what happened to me: across the border I am an Alldeutsche, within Germany I am an enemy of the Alldeutsche and their like-minded people, a traitor to Germanness. Well, that is how the views face each other, just as the views of the Protestant and Catholic priests face each other. Whether I give people Jesuit or anti-Jesuit exercises, both are essentially a distortion and have nothing to do with what threefolding really wants to be. It wants to bring to independent existence that which is genuine German spiritual life. Therefore, it wants the self-administration of spiritual life. In order that man may rightly relate to man, everything that can exist among equals and that can sustain the other two members of the social organism, which must shape themselves out of their own specialized activities in self-government, must unfold in the state. The threefold social organism in Germany will certainly be a vital organism, arising out of the genuine German spiritual life, and if it is only understood, it will bear its fruits. It will work in such a way that German spiritual power will become for the whole world what it can be by its very nature. Much of this German spiritual power has now been shaken, and much of it is slandered, which wants to work precisely from the deepest German essence.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they go to great lengths in this regard. And I would like to share the latest product of such processes with you at the end. Just a few days ago, an article appeared in the Chicago Daily News with the following content:

Chicago Daily News

The Germans have a pale pink theory about losing the war. The Battle of the Marne was lost because Moltke was studying science.

By Georg Witte. Spezial Kabel: Chicago Daily News, field service. Copyright. 1921. By the Chicago Daily News Co.

Berlin, Germany, May 4. – “Anthroposophy”, a new communist theory of the pale pink variety, is directing the fortunes of Germany according to the enemies of Foreign Secretary Simon. Yesterday they came out with the confirmation that he was only a puppet in the hands of his anthroposophical directors. The Vossische Zeitung, which has continually attacked Dr. Simon during the past week, prints the following:

"Dr. Steiner, creator of a new theory.

Recently, during a meeting of opponents of the new theory, it was confirmed that the influence of Dr. Steiner, the creator of the Theosophical theory, extended as far as Wilhelmstrasse and Dr. Simons, who, before leaving for the London conference, visited Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart and also had lunch with Director Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria School, where Anthroposophy is taught.

It has also been established that Dr. Simons is in constant touch with the exponents of the new theory, who are never refused entry to his house, even at this critical time.

Was General von Moltke a victim?

The anthroposophical theory was first widely noticed when its enemies claimed that the Battle of the Marne was lost because General Moltke, the chief of staff, neglected to go to the front because he was too absorbed in studying the new theory, which completely governed all his actions. General von Gleich, who makes this accusation, describes Anthroposophy as a “very dangerous idea, destined to have a pernicious influence on both the individual and family life, undermining the authority of the state and dissolving national unity.”

Dr. Steiner's theory, according to the Vossische Zeitung, provides for a division of national strength into three parts, with a communist system under anthroposophical auspices as the ultimate goal.

Now, you see, when someone spreads such a slander that General von Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne because of anthroposophy, and then makes a weak retraction of this claim, this does not prevent this disparagement of General von Moltke's personality from crossing the ocean to America, and that as a result of this slander, General von Moltke's good name is dragged through the mud across the sea.

I also had to mention this fact here, because I was asked by a certain party whether I had inspired a writing that was written against General von Moltke by a person close to him. Just as Hofrat Seiling once became an enemy and wrote a book full of objective untruths against me – because a book by him could not be accepted by our publishing house and was returned to him – so, basically, all of General von Gleich's hostility stems from the fact that a person close to him married someone whom he probably does not consider to be his equal. I am supposed to be responsible for this fact. Well, I can only say that the lady to whom that personality married spoke to me only once, long before the marriage; if she were introduced to me today, I would first have to get to know her again. I knew so little about this connection, and so far I have not been notified of the marriage by an announcement in the papers. I believe that in those circles where such outward appearances are highly valued, one could even argue that I know nothing about this marriage at all, because it has never been objectively indicated to me. And when the writing in question was composed, it was sent to me in Dornach. But I forgot about it. And when I was asked on the telephone about this writing - there are witnesses for it - I said: I completely forgot to read this writing. - That was just before it appeared in print. I have no connection whatsoever with this writing, and I am very far from infringing on anyone's freedom.

My Philosophy of Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is meant seriously and honestly, and therefore do not count it as immodesty on my part if I - to affirm that threefolding originated in the attitude I have described to you today, I quote here the judgment of an opponent of my Philosophy of Freedom, for ultimately the idea of threefolding rests on my Philosophy of Freedom. I will read to you at the end, because time is already so short and I do not want to bother you any longer with going into all kinds of details - perhaps this will come up in the question - I will therefore read to you at the end the judgment of a fierce opponent of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” In this judgment, it says right at the beginning:

These lines are addressed exclusively to the philosopher, not to the anthroposophist Steiner. And in the main, to his by far most important book, 'Philosophy of Freedom', which the later work 'The Riddles of Philosophy' does not come close to. It goes without saying that Steiner the person is not considered here. I count myself among Steiner's most outspoken opponents and have also publicly expressed this opposition (in my writing “The Thinker”). But the form in which the polemic against Steiner often degenerates into wild agitation is more than unpleasant. And there it must be said...

— Please do not accuse me of immodesty, here it is written:

... that a man capable of a book like “The Philosophy of Freedom” could not possibly have the small and lowly character that is made out of him. In their clarity and noble calm, Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical writings are among the most formally noble products of our new philosophical literature.

Dear attendees, in no other situation than the one in which anthroposophy and threefolding find themselves today would I somehow bother you with reading such a passage, which might seem immodest; but today it seems to me to be a duty to point out how someone can be an opponent but at the same time a decent person.

It has been said that I do not expose myself to scientific discussions. My dear audience, take the long series of my writings; they are available to the world. It is not my fault that the internal lectures are only now beginning to appear in public. They were urgently requested, but I did not have time to review them. It is not because of the slanderous intentions that they state that they have not been reviewed by me – for my sake they could always have been published for the greatest possible public after I had reviewed them – but I really have not had the time to review them, just as I really do not have the time to deal with all the possible hostile writings that have sprung up from all sides in recent times.

After today's allusions and after what a large number of you have heard in my many lectures over the past years, allow me to say: I stand for what I stand for because, from the innermost strength of my soul, I cannot stand for anything else, and because what I stand for lives in me in such a way that I must stand for it. If it is the truth, it will work its way through despite all opposition. If it is not the truth, which is, however, quite unlikely, then it will be replaced by the truth, because that which is truth will find its way through even the greatest obstacles. But anyone who believes that they can represent the truth from any side must do so. I have always stood before you from these underground bases, I stand before you today from these underground bases, and I will work from these underground bases as long as it is granted to me. No matter how many attacks are made, I will always use honorable means against honorable opponents. But what has emerged in recent times cannot claim that it can be dealt with by means of personal vilification, because it tries to attack the cause indirectly.

But I have to think in terms of standing up for this cause. I will stand up for it. That is what I must express to you today at the end of this discussion, and I have the confidence that if what I have to advocate is the truth, it will prevail because truth itself is something spiritual, something divine, and that which must triumph over all hostile powers is, after all, divine, spiritual truth.

After the previous great unrest in the hall.

Dear attendees, after this heated discussion, I would now like to answer the questions put to me in peace.

How is it possible, if, as you quite rightly noted, our thoughts are a resultant of previous impressions in the cerebral cortex, i.e. changes in a part of our body, that one can free oneself from the influence of the body with one's thoughts, as you explained at the beginning of your lecture. Do you have the ability to free your thoughts in this way?

Now, I have already spoken quite clearly about this matter; I now want to state here some more that follows from spiritual science itself for this question. We humans have in us, in a physical sense, an ascending life and also a descending life. This, I might say two-fold current of our life is usually not sufficiently taken into account. All ascending life consists in our developing growth forces and those forces that drive the absorbed nutrients to all, even the finest, organizational links in our organism. Now, alongside these processes, which are thoroughly constructive, others take place that are destructive, so that we constantly have destructive processes within us. This too is something that can only be established through spiritual science, which is not yet sufficiently known to ordinary materialistic physiology today. Now, all those phenomena that dampen our consciousness and put us into a state of partial or complete sleep are connected with the organic anabolic processes. The processes of our thoughts now go hand in hand with the catabolic processes in our organism, and all the other mental processes, such as instinctive perceptions, perceptions of drives, which actually always put us in a down-tuned state of consciousness, are connected with the organic ascending processes; the actual life of thinking is connected with the catabolic processes. This thinking life is already so in every single person that it develops independently of the organism; there must only be a process of degradation, that is, a process of dissociation in the brain, if thinking is to take hold in us.

If you consider this, my dear audience, you will say to yourself: Our organic building processes extend as far as thinking, then they recede, and thinking is precisely tied to the organic processes limiting themselves. So one becomes free of the organic processes through thinking, and one then continues this freedom by rising from thinking to higher spiritual knowledge. It is therefore absolutely the case – as is explained in more detail in my “Philosophy of Freedom” – that thinking, when it is practiced as pure thinking, is already a clairvoyant process. Even if people do not recognize it in ordinary life, we learn to know the peculiar true nature of higher knowledge precisely when we grasp ordinary thinking in terms of its essential being.

Why were you in a neutral country during the war and not in your homeland?

Dear attendees, I have had my work in Dornach. During the war, I was really, I may say it, more in Germany here than in neutral foreign countries, and I have done what could be done by me as a job, which has been recognized from various sides, during the war. And those who want to know about it, look at the events. It is not true that I did not work for the German people during this time.

Is it true that the ideas of threefolding are partly based on extrasensory knowledge and insights gained through it? And what are these extrasensory experiences and insights?

Dear attendees, I have specifically said that the idea of threefolding has loosely connected to the anthroposophical worldview because what appears in the anthroposophical worldview is a result of supersensible knowledge. For threefolding and for everything that I have presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, one does not need clairvoyance. Look through the entire Kernpunkte and see if at any point it appeals to anything other than common sense. Any association of clairvoyance with the threefold order is pure nonsense and malicious slander.

Anyone who follows the method according to your books “Geheimwissenschaft” and “Erkenntnisse höherer Welten” and so on, you claim that he will achieve supersensory knowledge or vision. As a master of this method, I can demand of you that you can do this. And so I ask you, tell me the feeling, not the physical one, that I have gained from you through your lecture: the feeling is, I ask you, is...

The rest cannot be read. Well, what the questioner asks on this piece of paper cannot be brought out, cannot be read.

Why does a doctrine, if it is good, have to defend itself? Good never needs to defend itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, no one would be happier than I if I did not need to defend myself in any way. And to the one who asks why the good must defend itself – if he regards what I have just presented as the good – I refer him to the address of my opponents, because what one clings to with all the fibers of one's soul must, when it is attacked, be defended.

If anthroposophy has nothing to do with Buddhism and Theosophy, then why are the Sanskrit words karma, reincarnation and so on used?

Reincarnation is not a Sanskrit word. And I use the word karma only because — and not even I always use it, those who have heard my lectures often will know this — because in an old, instinctive spiritual vision, the word “karma” was used. However, I very often replace it by saying: fate as it unfolds through successive earthly lives. I do not attach any importance to these words, but they are often used by others and by myself for the reason that our modern world view is intimately connected with our coinages and therefore one often has to go a long way for the words one has to form.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Steiner said that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion. Why then does anthroposophy not remain neutral?

Dear attendees, I did not say that. I said: Anthroposophy, as I represent it, has arisen from natural science; it has its sources in natural science. — I said: It is not a substitute for religion. —- And I have said: It leads from the side of knowledge to that which is irrationally as a religious experience in the human soul. — And there I can say nothing other than: Just as external philology leads to the dissection of the Bible, so does a supersensible knowledge lead to the knowledge of the spiritual that underlies world development in a religious way. I did not say that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, I only said that it did not arise from it and that it does not want to be a substitute for religion.

Why is the neutrality of true and pure theosophy and Christianity not more sharply outlined and clearly presented?

Well, I have never lacked clarity in this respect in the various lectures I have given here, for those who are at all able to grasp the fundamentals of the anthroposophical worldview. And to anyone who demands that anthroposophy should relate to some religion in some subjective way, I can say nothing other than that, according to what I can discern, Christianity is at the center of earthly evolution , that all the other religions of antiquity are moving towards Christianity, culminating in the Mystery of Golgotha, and that everything we have in the way of civilization since then comes from the Christ impulse and is influenced by it. If someone wants a different neutrality, I cannot offer a different neutrality. It is not out of some subjective wish that I place Christianity at the center of earthly development, but out of what I believe I can support as objective knowledge.

I distinguish between what lives irrationally in man as Christianity, as a religion, and what then leads to the spiritual interpretation of the content of this religion. Anthroposophy is concerned with the latter in the sense in which I have expressed it. I will not allow myself to be influenced by the fact that non-Christians may not take kindly to my placing Christianity at the center of attention. For me, this is not a subjective fact, but an objective one. Those who disagree in any direction may be willing to go along with Anthroposophy as far as the discussion of religious questions; after that, they can leave.

But I believe I have presented the relationship between my anthroposophical worldview and the Christian religion very conscientiously in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. And in addition to all that I have said, I will only add this: When a malicious source says that I have taken something from Anglo-Indian Theosophy, the fact is that I wrote “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” entirely on my own, before I had any relationship to Anglo-Indian Theosophy before I had read any book that had emerged from the Theosophical Society, I wrote my “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” and that I was invited to give lectures to Theosophists.

I said in the lecture: I did not follow anyone; I did not follow the Theosophists either. They came to me because they wanted to hear me. I did not tell you anything that I learned from the Theosophical Society; I said what came from me, and I will defend that in the future everywhere where people want to hear it. I will not ask what views or what kind of societies prevail among those who want to hear me, but I will take it as my right to speak whenever I am wanted in any circle.

Dear attendees! The subject of today's reflection will somewhat cross the boundaries that have usually been drawn here in such spiritual scientific reflections. Nevertheless, it seems useful to me to consider human spiritual life in a broader sense in relation to what the human soul can feel about the results of this spiritual science. Moreover, if we consider contemporary history, this evening's reflection, perhaps, as a kind of spiritual-scientific challenge, places itself directly into this spiritual life of the present, for the consideration of Raphael, if we consider it in the way it is usually done, presents people with many puzzles, really great spiritual-cultural-scientific puzzles.

And perhaps we may be confronted with the necessity of extending our spiritual-scientific considerations to such areas in particular, especially if we allow the fate of a significant contemporary art researcher in relation to Raphael to have some effect on our souls – an art historian who, I believe, is so not only in the scholarly, in the usual scientific sense, but who is so above all because the nineteenth century beat in his heart as directly as in few personalities: Herman Grimm. He is one of those art historians who were always not only with reason and intellect, not only with the usual scientific sense, but with the whole soul in their subject. And anyone who is familiar with Herman Grimm's art and cultural writings knows how much of what is directly moving the present intellectually pulsates within him, how his riddles about many subjects of intellectual life are the riddles of our era. And if spiritual science is to prove more and more fruitful, then it will have to seek contact with the way in which the entire spiritual cultural life seeks to approach such riddle-questions.

Herman Grimm – he was the son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm, the great linguist – was truly a nineteenth-century spirit. This great expert on Goethe and this significant spirit, who wrote the wonderful book about Michelangelo, died at the turn of the twentieth century.

Now it is, in a sense, characteristic that Herman Grimm also wrote a “Life of Raphael”. However, he felt differently about this “Life of Raphael” than he did about the Life of Michelangelo or even the Life of Goethe. Herman Grimm himself confessed that he had repeatedly tried to solve the riddle of Raphael and that at certain times he had indeed sought a kind of conclusion with his Life of Raphael; but every time he approached the riddle of Raphael again, he knew how imperfectly he had dealt with Raphael in his own soul. Again and again he made a new approach; and so we have a wonderful essay that he wrote shortly before his death, which is only the introduction to a book that should have been more extensive, in which he once again attempts, shortly before his death, to place the image of Raphael before his own soul, to solve the riddle of Raphael for himself in a certain way, insofar as such riddles can be solved by human souls at all.

Thus we see on the one hand a struggling spirit who, in accordance with his entire disposition, is immersed in artistic life and in the contemplation of artistic life, who creates a wonderfully rounded image of Michelangelo, we see how he is aware that he has really to have brought this image to a kind of conclusion; we see how this struggling soul fights throughout his entire life to present the enigma of Raphael, and does not finish it, so that he makes a new attempt immediately before his death, which again is not finished. Why is that? Yes, a mere scholar would have been finished in some sense, but not a mind like that, which immersed itself in its task with all its soul and wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael. The closer Herman Grimm approached Raphael, the more he wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael in his soul, the more it revealed itself to him as emerging in an enigmatic way from the entire human development; it presented itself to him in such a way that, the more closely one looks at it, one is led to delve into the deepest mysteries of the human soul itself and to gain an understanding of what such a human soul is, which grows out of the entire picture of human development as a great mystery. And when one follows the other side of Herman Grimm's work, one has the feeling that a mind such as his, which has grown so intimately together with the spiritual culture of the nineteenth century, is making attempts everywhere to find the way – yes, which way? The path that the spiritual researcher knows as his own. I can only gently hint here at the wonderfully intimate way in which Herman Grimm presents a death, a dying, at the end of his significant book 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Powers), and in this dying the detachment of what has been presented here more often than the detachment of the etheric body from the physical body. We see Herman Grimm's soul wrestling tenderly and intimately, but no less urgently, to find the paths that spiritual science in particular wants to unlock.

Thus, when one contemplates this remarkable art historian, one can really get the idea: something lives in him that is a question of our age in particular. And because the pulse of our time lived in him, this question lived with particular vibrancy in his soul - the spiritual-scientific question that we wanted to approach in all the considerations that have been employed here. But it is precisely in such a struggle as Herman Grimm's with Raphael's image that one sees that if one gets stuck in the nineteenth-century way of looking at things, one will not be able to cope with the greatest riddles, if one sincerely and without hypocrisy tries to solve such riddles with the awareness of having to delve into ever deeper depths. From the contemplation of spiritual science, the answer will emerge more and more, which I can only hint at, why Herman Grimm could not finish his contemplation of Raphael. However grotesque it may sound to some, the reason for this is that he was able to approach the gate of spiritual science everywhere, but could not unlock this gate anywhere according to the spirit of his century, according to the conditions of the whole becoming of the nineteenth century. So let the attempt be made to approach Raphael, not from some spiritual-scientific dogma or law, but with that which, as the whole mood of the soul, is able to penetrate into our minds when we face Raphael's painting. In spiritual scientific research it is much more important – and this is ultimately what impresses itself on our souls – that we look at the things of the world in a certain mood, than to apply all possible laws that may arise from spiritual research in a stereotypically abstract way. That is certainly not what the human soul should do in spiritual science.

How did Raphael appear to Herman Grimm, this nineteenth-century spirit? This man speaks strange words. I will quote them to you verbatim so that we can, so to speak, fully immerse ourselves in the way this man seeks to gain a personal relationship to his subject through his research. Thus Raphael appears to him as a spirit, to understand which he needs to draw on the most intimate depths of human development. Not on the basis of an epoch, but as if born out of the whole development of humanity – great and powerful on the background of human development, that is how he appears to him; and for those who can feel, words such as those written by Herman Grimm in the last fragmentary pages about Raphael, which he wrote as if born out of a final attempt to understand Raphael, have a profound effect. There Herman Grimm says:

Raphael is a citizen of world history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, came from paradise.

No matter what scholars may think about it, someone who can open his soul to something very special will experience something special in his soul when he looks at a person like Herman Grimm, who has immersed himself in an object throughout his life and in whose feeling something lives that makes him speak about Raphael in such a way that he elevates him to a citizen of world history, to a being that stands out from the entire development of humanity. And Herman Grimm, too, may appear differently to others, if one wishes to do him justice from a certain emotional point of view. Herman Grimm said:

If Michelangelo were called away from the dead by a miracle to live among us again, and if I met him, I would respectfully step aside so that he could pass by; but if Raphael came my way, I would walk behind him to see if I could catch a few words on his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo, one can limit oneself to recounting what they once were in their day. With Raphael, one must start from what he is today. A soft haze has settled over the others, but not over Raphael. He is one of those whose growth is far from over. Generations of people living in the future can always conceive of new enigmas that Raphael will pose for them [...].

And so the question is raised: What riddles can Raphael's appearance pose to someone who has penetrated his soul through what comes from the spiritual-scientific contemplation of the world? Well, spiritual science speaks of development in time in a dual sense; this dual sense has been touched on here several times. First of all, spiritual science speaks of how humanity progresses from epoch to epoch in its earthly development, so that one recognizes that spirit and meaning are in this development, that spiritual laws can therefore be found. In terms of these spiritual laws, we can see how humanity in prehistoric times was led in a different way in its development across the earth than it was later; we can see how other, [new] impulses and impacts worked in accordance with these spiritual laws into our time. In the spiritual-scientific sense we distinguish precisely between the individual epochs, and therefore one cannot be satisfied with the trivial statement that natural development never makes a leap. This statement can certainly be quite correct if it is interpreted in a certain way; but just try to observe nature: you will see how such a saying, which is so easily spoken in a trivial way, has only a very limited meaning. Nature makes leaps: plants make a giant leap in their development between the root and the green leaf, then another giant leap between the green leaf and the blossom, and yet another between the blossom and the fruit. Nature leaps everywhere, and it is no different in the history of mankind. The individual epochs do not, as a comfortable worldview would have it, simply and successively merge into one another, but rather they are sharply distinguished from one another in character. And anyone who takes a close look at these human epochs will find that the human soul is capable of recognizing something special in each epoch, of experiencing something special. Even if one finds the word pedantic that Lessing used: that world history is an education of the entire human race - in a certain sense this word is justified. Just as the individual, starting from a primitive stage of his spiritual life, rises to ever new impulses, which he then experiences in the outer world and in his own inner being, so it is also the case for all of humanity throughout the earth. This is one way in which spiritual science views the development of humanity across the earth.

The other way of looking at it relates to the human soul's participation in this ongoing education. And here spiritual science - as has been explained so often and also the day before yesterday here - states as a result: the human being goes through this earth development in repeated earth lives, so that the human soul participates in the successive epochs that we, looking back, can ask ourselves how our own souls in earlier epochs of the development of the earth, in earlier lives on earth, participated in what the development of the earth could give the human soul each time. Again and again our souls were embodied on earth in bodies to absorb that which then became impulses for later epochs. Thus, in its successive lives, the human soul participates in everything that can flow into it from the impulses of the entire human development on earth.

There are, let us say, compassionate minds who forgive Lessing for speaking from such a point of view at the height of his life in his significant work “The Education of the Human Race” about repeated lives on earth, because only through this - [through this idea of repeated lives on earth] - did it become clear to him which forces actually carry the whole evolution of humanity through history: only through the fact that the human souls themselves carry over what they absorb in one epoch into other epochs, and the human soul does not belong to only one epoch in isolation, but recurring again and again to the successive epochs, so that it is a citizen of all of history. If we can start from this point of view, that in a very peculiar way, what each human soul has absorbed as impulses in earlier epochs, then it comes to us before the soul, as in particular an outstanding mind [like Raphael] can be found in the outcome of all that his soul has gone through in earlier lives on earth in any epoch.

We will not search pedantically and abstractly for cause and effect, but we will acquire a feeling for how a soul can become immersed in an epoch, and we feel in this soul, basically, in a very special way, the entire previous life on earth that such a soul - and every human soul - has lived through in its own unique way. If we now look at a relatively short period of time in terms of the development of the earth, but one that is close at hand for the present study of humanity, namely the historical millennia, and compare it with the millennia that preceded the historical ones , then something arises for spiritual scientific research that has been mentioned here often: the human soul itself has undergone transformations so that it was very different in ancient times than in later times or than in the present. It must be pointed out that our ordinary present intellectual thinking, which has achieved its triumph in science, is a product of development that has only gradually emerged. Spiritual science must take the word 'development' very seriously and see this development not only in the succession of external forms, but above all in the work of the human soul. Only in spiritual science does this development of the human soul present itself differently than in external science.

Spiritual science turns its gaze back to ancient times, to times even earlier than the historical ones, and finds that the human soul was endowed with a kind of primitive clairvoyance. Today I can only hint at these things; they are explained in more detail in other lectures. What our intellectual thinking is today, through which we come to self-awareness and recognize ourselves inwardly as human beings, had to develop first. In ancient times, the whole imaginative life of man was such that he had certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, like dream images. These were not mere dream images, but they were symbolic expressions of the reality that surrounded him. He perceived in a kind of ancient clairvoyance. Then humanity developed further, and our present understanding, our imagination and other things, as they are peculiar to present humanity, were incorporated as an element of a new impulse.

Now we find a significant break in the great period of human development that precedes us, which presents itself to us through a very wonderful epoch of this human development. That is the time of Greek culture. For those who look at human development with the trained eye of a spiritual researcher, Greek culture appears as a kind of middle ground between two separate lines of development in human history. If we look at Greek culture, then, because our present consideration is to culminate in the view of an artist, the artistic aspect is the most important for us. This artistic aspect was, however, in full harmony with the whole Greek spirit, and this Greek spirit only appears to him who, shortsightedly, regards the development of humanity — as today's spirit does — in such a way that human souls were actually about the same as they are today. For those who look closely at the characteristic features of human development, the picture is quite different.

I would like to start with a specific example: when an artist approaches his art today, let us say sculpture, it is quite natural and self-evident for our present time, because it lies in the character of our time, now, let us say it dryly, that he works from a model, that he has the model of nature before him, that he imitates nature. This corresponds to our current view, our current environment, which artistically suggests the soul's contemplation that confronts nature and seeks the truth by conjuring up images of things in the soul. This is what modern science does, and in a certain way this is also what modern art does. [But this is only right and proper for our time, for this is what the intellectual contemplation of the world wants; it wants man to gain the true or the false image of nature through contemplation and to create images of nature in his imagination, which he then confronts as a self-aware human being. This was not yet the case in Greek times, and those who believe that the Greek artist did it the same way as the modern artist are wrong. The modern artist has to do it this way because the human soul has become more and more internalized; because in our time the human soul is no longer able to form that intimate bond with nature by immersing itself in the objects themselves. It presents itself as distinct from the things, it imitates them. This is how today's man acquires his power of judgment, but it is also how he acquires his full self-confidence in the world.

It was different in the Greek world. In the Greek world, the soul was still intimately connected with all that is physical, corporeal; and because it was more intimately connected with all this, it was also intimately connected with what the physical, corporeal is connected with, with the surrounding nature. What lives and moves in nature, experienced this in the human soul as it really is in nature. The human soul did not stand opposed to nature, it was in nature, living with the foundations of nature. If a Greek artist wanted to create any old statue in sculpture, spiritual research shows us that it would have been quite unnatural for him to imitate something externally. If he wanted to depict a statue, say of Mars or Zeus — figures that he all humanized —, it was his primary concern to feel what the soul of Mars or Zeus experienced. And because the soul impulses and feelings poured directly and objectively into the soul, the artist felt in every gesture, in every movement, in every posture, in every look, what the soul experienced. He was actually inwardly Mars, Zeus, and therefore knew what a hand, what a muscle looked like. He created his immediate inner experience. He did not create according to nature because the soul did not merely experience the soul, but also experienced what was bodily in the environment. This separation [of the soul's co-experience from nature] – that has only come about.

In ancient Greece, the soul was still part of natural existence. But if we go back even further than ancient Greece, we come closer and closer to the times when there was still a kind of clairvoyance, when man went beyond the physical and felt the spiritual that lay behind it – and was connected to the spirit that hovers behind the sensual world. From the innermost depths of the world, from the laws that do not resemble the external, the soul created those forms that now correspond all the more to the laws of the external world. Even in philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras and Socrates, we find human souls that still reach down below the surface. In Greek thought, the soul is not yet internalized in the human personality; it is still rooted in the world of the senses. Modern man has freed himself; he can only confront nature and imitate it. But in this way the soul, having become stronger, attains inner stability and a firm footing within itself. Thus the human soul of primeval times was unfree and dependent on the all-pervading spirit; thus the Greek soul was directly within nature, not yet separating spirit and nature; and thus the modern soul is set apart from its surroundings, grasping itself in its inwardness.

Now there is no period of time for art that shows us as clearly as in a leap in the characterized sense how this art, on the one hand, still demands the greatness and significance of experiencing nature and, on the other hand, has to reckon with the deepened inwardness of the human soul - [it is the time in which great artists like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their works]. It is characteristic that the event falls into the time of Greek culture, which gave the human soul internalization above all else and which, through its impulses, contributes to the education of the human soul: the emergence and establishment of Christianity. And it seems mighty and wondrous to us when we look at the development of humanity from the most comprehensive interdenominational point of view, regardless of any narrow-denominational point of view, and see how, from the time of the emergence of Christianity, what we can call the internalization of the human soul arises in a lawful manner, and which I am now trying to characterize.

You can particularly see this when you try to look at a mind from the first Christian centuries, a mind like Augustine's. Just delve into something like the “Confessions” of Augustine – worth reading for anyone who wants to delve into the spirit of the times, in the best sense of the word. And one thus gains a sense of the infinite inwardness of human soul experience, which breaks into human development and shows itself in a soul like that of Augustine. And compare the whole life, the whole inward nature of Augustine's soul life with what [all of] Greek art, even the harrowing tragedies of an Aeschylus, of a Sophocles, could give. In the great Aeschylus and the great Sophocles we find the connection between man and his environment everywhere. However ingenious the characterizations may appear to us, the people everywhere do not stand out in such a way that we can speak of an internalization of the soul life to the same degree as in the powerful and forceful way in which this inwardness of the human spirit appears to us in Augustine.

We will only be able to see the whole spiritual course of human development when we recognize this impulse of internalization as an historical law, even if we do not want to tie in with the Christ impulse in any conventional way. For these things are present, as surely as the sun is present in space. They can be grasped spiritually as the effects of the sun on the planets in space. [This development has particularly led to a certain inartistic way of looking at things in the so-called Renaissance, the golden age of human-spiritual development.] But art will never be able to disappear from human development; it will only seek for itself that which is possible for it in the lawful general character of an age. And so we see in the epoch at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, in which Raphael's life also falls, how there is a struggle, firstly, to make art possible and, secondly, to take into account in art what has also occurred in the development of art in a lawful manner with the internalization of the human soul.

In this mighty transitional epoch, Raphael's spirit matured. And how does he appear to us? In a wonderful way he appears to us! Raphael was born in Urbino in 1483, the son of a goldsmith who was also a painter and from whom he received his first painting lessons. Orphaned at an early age, Raphael was apprenticed to the most important painter in Italy at the time, Pietro Perugino in Perugia. From Perugino, we see Raphael receiving, so to speak, the first stimulus for what would then rise to such tremendous greatness. But when you consider Raphael's environment, first in Urbino, then in Perugia, and then again Raphael's soul itself, this consideration becomes a mystery wherever you look; for this Raphael soul stands within its environment like something that does not grow out of this environment itself, but that places itself within this environment as if coming from completely different home climes. And only those who are short-sighted with regard to these things can still strive to explain Raphael in terms of what surrounded him.

Raphael grew up in Perugia, where he learned from the most important painter in Italy at the time. If we first look at the master himself, we see a thoroughly Christian man, counting on the Christian moment of the soul's interiorization. If we let the overall impression of his pictures sink in, we find this justified everywhere. Yes, out of the traditions of his time, this master of Raphael painted the Christian figures, the inner soul of man seeking the paths of eternity. He painted the figures of the holy legend in such a way that the struggling, searching human soul, in need of eternity, finds satisfaction in these figures. But in every stroke of these paintings by Perugino, we also see that he was not present with the innermost fibers of his soul in what he painted from tradition. You can see this clearly when you look at the still existing pictures, at the mild, but still quite understandable face of Perugino from his time: This soul, living in these features, has sought to internalize the art from what he has conjured up on the canvas, from tradition; but the soul was not completely there. This not fully internalized tradition, that was the essential thing that Raphael had of his master.

If we consider the surroundings of Perugia, we see wonderful nature that awakens in every sentient human soul a feeling for the riddles of natural existence, for the eternal values that lie in earthly existence. But what took place in this environment? Struggle after struggle within a passionate people. And it must be assumed that the place where Raphael grew up learning was characterized by struggles, by terrible struggles, which the individual families and clans fought among themselves in the struggle for supremacy in the city. Entire families moved out and then besieged those left behind in the city. Raphael was surrounded by all this. Try to imagine someone who grew up in Perugia and compare him to Raphael. You would see how the former would have lived with all of this and absorbed the life around him – you can almost touch it.

There is a promising tale told by a chronicler, a historian who was just such a person, who was there; he tells how, among these warring factions, one of the heroes of such a faction rode into the city like a sort of St. George or Mars, riding into the city on horseback, powerfully fighting for his followers, and how he rode down everything that opposed him with his horse - a picture from Perugia at that time! We see this scene, as described by the chronicler, depicted in a painting by Raphael - elevated to the spiritual and soul realm, in which everything that has a direct effect on the observer of this scene is swept away. We see how a life confronts us here that only a soul can experience, which hovers above the whole and only captures what is inwardly, spiritually presented in such a scene, and then later conjures it onto the canvas. This is how Raphael appears to us: at home in worlds that do not belong to this sensual world, at home in spiritual realms with which his soul is completely interwoven in its inwardness. And the immediate environment in which he is placed gave him nothing else than that he was allowed to look at it. A spirit, as if from completely different homelands, who can never be explained by his environment for clear thinking and clear observation, who brings something with him, adds something that is not in the environment.

And what did Raphael learn from his master? It is precisely that which makes Raphael the wonderful phenomenon of artistic and human development that he did not learn from his master. For we feel with Raphael that the main feature of the newer period, the internalization of the human soul - the self-evident internalization that is connected with everything he creates - is precisely what is missing in Perugino, but that it is present in every fiber of Raphael and pours directly into what he lives out in his forms, in his art. We feel how a piece of Raphael's deepest inwardness lives on the canvas everywhere when we immerse ourselves in his paintings. This was something that Raphael took from the heights of heaven and not from Perugino, something that he brought in like a messenger from completely different worlds. Whoever tries to grasp this internalization not only in dogmas and doctrines, in external laws that can be grasped in concepts, but with the whole soul, will feel it flowing out of every creation of Raphael, so that in Raphael's greatest creations we have precisely that which we can say: It is now something quite different from what lies in Greek art. There lived that which man has directly experienced in soul and body and at the same time shaped in forms. In Raphael, we see the inner soul of man as poured out and confronting us in forms, the soul that has separated itself from natural existence, pouring out and confronting us as a new world, as a creation of the most inwardly human soul - not in a certain way in nature, but like a new creation - the interior of the human soul striving outwards again and artistically embodying itself there.

Those who call only those a Christian who believe in Christian dogmas, we want to leave to themselves for today's reflection. Those who recognize the Christian trait in the inwardness of the human soul, who see this Christian impulse at work, who see how the human soul breaks away from the outer world and turns inwards to reflect, how it seeks the Christ impulse within - because the human being, having separated from nature, needs such a point of support - will understand why this impulse was given precisely at this time. Those who are able to recognize and feel this more than dogma-less Christianity, this Christianity that is no longer regarded as Christian by some, will understand when the spiritual scientist researcher feels how in Raphael's soul, even before his birth, the basic trait of Christianity was alive, how in all that Raphael felt and experienced, a Christian soul was born, a soul that entered the whole environment as a Christianized soul, a soul with which the Christian way of life was born at the same time, a soul that was Christian through everything that lived in it. And this Christianity in Raphael's soul cannot be explained by anything in the environment. When it is put this way, it looks like an assertion, and it cannot be proven with mathematical certainty; such things arise through intimate immersion in the essence of such a soul. You can see in Raphael, when you let his soul pass before you, how it stands out and differs from another soul that only during its life entered into the internalization of Christianity. By contrasting Raphael with another figure, we can see the difference between a soul that is born a Christian and therefore incorporates the Christian message into every line of its creations, and a soul that only gradually embraces Christian impulses.

Let us continue to observe Raphael in relation to his immediate surroundings. When he was transferred to Florence in 1504, he came into an environment where the after-effects of Savonarola were still vividly felt and where the atmosphere was still strongly influenced by what Savonarola had brought to Florence. The spirit of Savonarola himself was still perceptible in the followers and opponents of Savonarola in Florence, for example in Fra Bartolommeo, who was one of Raphael's friends. When you place a soul like Savonarola's side by side with Raphael's, so to speak, as a contemporary soul, you notice a difference. How naturally the Christianized, the way of the whole Christianized soul, comes to us in Raphael; this soul of Raphael does not first have to become Christian, it does not fanatically represent Christianity; it never does that. Raphael's soul does not need to indulge in Christian dogmas either; this soul draws such lines, applies such colors, as correspond to Christian interiorization; it lives Christian from birth. How different is the soul of Savonarola! He assimilates Christianity in such a way that he fights for the heroic, the great, the significant, and the moral of Christianity bit by bit. He is kindled bit by bit during his development by what one can feel as an impression of Christianity. She is a soul who is only becoming familiar with Christianity, who is fanatical about Christianity, and we can see how she is gradually drawn to Christianity and lives so close to Christianity that the internalized Christian soul must pour out again - powerfully, and therefore one-sidedly and fanatically. There is an enormous difference.

If you do not dogmatize, but consider how, in the moment when one ascends to spiritual-scientific contemplation, everything becomes infinitely versatile, where the evidence does not arise as in the field of mathematics, where everything has sharp contours, then it becomes clear to him who is not merely acquainted with scientific dogmas and laws but has imbued himself with the impulses of spiritual science that this, which has just been attempted to be developed, is illuminated with infinite clarity by the two souls. When spiritual science shows us how Raphael's soul - I only want to hint at these things gently, not roughly, as it must be done in spiritual science when one comes across individual concrete facts - when spiritual science illuminates for us how a soul like Raphael's was already in an earlier life , how it absorbed the power of Christianity and passed through life between death and a new birth with this power of Christianity, then one can also understand the transformation by which he can now live out in a serene form in soul-spiritual powers that which he once experienced with strength. The only way to make sense of the riddle is to say to oneself: Yes, that which has direct Christian impact, right down to the dogmatic, has not been experienced by a soul like Savonarola in the past, but was only in that life at the time of Raphael that it was able to gradually live its way into Christianity from other forms of life, into a stage that the Raphael soul had already passed through in an earlier life.

Of course, I too find it natural that a large part of humanity today still finds what has just been said absurd and ridiculous. I will never be surprised - together with all those who know the fundamentals of spiritual science - when something like this is found to be absurd and ridiculous. But the time will come when people will realize how deeply rooted is what can be said about human souls through the spirit, which has just been used to explain the very different nature of the soul of Savonarola compared to that of Raphael. The doctrine of repeated earthly lives will prove fruitful.

And yet another trait comes to light when we study Raphael's soul. If we probe his soul in this way, we find that it is so thoroughly Christian that Raphael was not at all disturbed by the unchristian environment of the popes when he came to Rome. Indeed, a soul in which Christianity lived so naturally could more easily cope with the environment, not taking offense at Julius II, the pope of whom Machiavelli, who was certainly not particularly moral himself, said that he was a devilish soul, a man who would have liked to bare his teeth at anyone who crossed him. And of the following popes, with whom Raphael lived, there is not much of a Christian tale to tell either. A soul like Savonarola's clashes with such popes. He confronts them as the Baptist once confronted people in his apt words, but not the soul of Raphael, who has already gone through this in some previous life, which we will not talk about here. Raphael's soul remains untouched in its Christian self-evidence.

But artistically, his soul must be active. Artistry must be a continuation of what appeared as art in the Greek world. He must seek what he does not have within himself, and he must seek it in his surroundings. We see him, for example, walking around among the excavated ruins and ancient tombs in Rome, taking in everything, really absorbing from the outside that which is peculiar to Greek art, which he must marry with that which is self-evident to him, with Christian inwardness. It is as if Raphael's soul in a previous life had had the opportunity to be so close to Christianity that Christianity was born as a matter of course with this soul in the existence of Raphael, but that in a previous life it had been far removed from Greek culture and now had to absorb this Greek culture from the outside in order to marry it with the Christianity that he brings with him as a matter of course from a previous life. It is as if what appears out of the spiritual as a necessary result of a previous existence on earth grows together with what this soul must now take in from the outside - in contrast to the Savonarola soul. Thus the two kinds of forces that confront us in this Raphael soul grow together. And it will no longer be absurd and ridiculous to look for Raphael in an earlier life somewhere in a Christian environment that was far removed from Greek culture, which at that time poured powerful impulses into this soul, which remained dormant until this soul life had been transformed - until the next birth, of course, now without any fanaticism and without many other things that are only remotely similar to fanaticism. When this soul was reborn, it sought, because it had been far removed from Greek culture, to find it where it could, in order to absorb this Greek culture into itself.

If we can recognize the spiritual currents that came together in Raphael from a spiritual scientific perspective, can we grasp them, then we learn to understand how both had such a significant effect on this soul: [on the one hand] the natural Christian internalization through his individuality and [on the other hand] the Greek element, through the environment into which the soul was drawn because it lacked that which was an important, a great point of passage through all epochs of human development. We see how Raphael, through the merging of these two things, one individual and one rooted in the general development of humanity and not received from Raphael's earlier incarnation, rises on the great tableau of general human development as if to a [special] summit. Then we understand that what arises in his soul, so infinitely internalized, is what now confronts us from his creations. If Raphael is a typically Christian soul and in it the Christian principle and the general human element of Greek culture are combined in a lawful manner, if Raphael thus absorbs the great currents of the present cycle of human development, then we may assume that something lives in his soul itself that is like an image of the lawfulness of human progress.

And so that my explanations do not seem too “mystical” to you and the “fantasy” does not seem too grotesque to you, I would now like to show you how a soul takes in something like an image of the great currents of world development , how it presents, as it were, small epochs within itself like images of great human epochs – for it is in such epochs that the development of humanity takes place – I would like to show, not with my words, but again with the struggling Herman Grimm, who says something very remarkable. In his last work, Herman Grimm wants to depict the most important highlights of Raphael's work, but how strangely he speaks of this creative, creating soul of Raphael, how curiously. For Herman Grimm, the development of Raphael's creations becomes a law of the whole world – he regards seven works as the greatest in Raphael's development. And of these seven works he says:

At twenty-one years of age he painted the Marriage of the Virgin, four years later the Entombment; four years after that the Camera della Segnatura was completed, four years after that the cartoons for the tapestries were painted and soon after that the two Madonnas. The “Transfiguration” stood at the foot of the deathbed.

A spirit that appears to the unprejudiced observer as if it were to incorporate the epochs of human development, such a spirit appears to the art observer, who looks for the characteristic, in his development in such a way that he ascends from year to year to higher and ever higher peaks; and because the last four years are not complete, the last work is also not finished.

It is often said that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm; an epochal spirit like Raphael appears to us here as a microcosm of human and spiritual development itself. And how does he embody this? We need only turn our gaze to the two large and powerful, if now, one might say, poorly overpainted and poorly preserved, two rooms in the Vatican in the Camera della Segnatura, one of which - whether rightly or wrongly, it remains to be seen - is called “The School of Athens” and the other “The Disputa”. The whole of human development is depicted in these two pictures, which are placed opposite each other and touch the human soul so deeply. In one of the pictures, Greek culture is represented by the ennobled figures on the left and right, as it were expressing itself in the question: [Where has humanity come to, to what point has it progressed in the entire age of Greek culture,] where man still lived with the immediate surroundings of the outside world? Everything, down to the architecture, reflects the spirit of this development in this single image.

It is wrong to comment on it or interpret it in a pedantic, philistine way; it is right to try to summarize in a feeling what humanity has received on its way to Greek culture, where life in the external world has been replaced by the internalization of the human soul of the human soul, if one summarizes the entire life of humanity in an elapsed time with everything for which the human soul has longed, what it has striven for, has achieved, in one feeling: It flows towards us, it lives in this image that which this feeling fulfills with content. It is not necessary to paint the individual figures. I consider it a bad thing when travelers stand in front of a painting with a “Baedeker” in their hands and read: This is such and such - Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Pythagoras. What do we care about all the names, what do all the comments and explanations give us? The artistic breath that comes down from this picture is also what streams out of the Greek work of art – the breath that is there from the development of humanity itself, when we look at it with a sensitive, artistic heart. Then the epoch of interiorization on the opposite wall: above, the symbols of the supernatural; below, representing people, how the supersensible flows into their souls in order to interiorize them. The whole mighty contrast of an ancient time and the time of internalization, and again the breath of the new internalization itself, they flow towards us from what is called - again rightly or wrongly - “Disputa”.

From what Raphael's soul had grown, he conjured it into these scenes. And one feels it so clearly, if one can feel truthfully what lies in the souls in these two different cycles of human development, the pre-Christian and the post-Christian times. If one abstains from all intellectual judgment, all inartistic commenting – that nonsense of subjective interpretation that has become so widespread, especially in theosophical circles – and abandons oneself to direct sensation, if one artistically immerses oneself in the things one feels drawn to Raphael, to a human soul that has married interiorization in artistic creation with kinship with all spiritual things in nature, as it was present in earlier epochs.

Again – when you cross over from Florence to Bologna and have the picture in front of you: in the middle the female figure, looking upwards in a visionary manner – I don't need to mention the name, you may assume, for my sake, that this is the “Saint Cecilia” - so expressed that in every gesture, in every line, in every color scheme, the soul's detachment from the physical is shown. She looks up, so that both from the central figure, as from the four surrounding ones, it is clear: The earthly instruments fall to the ground directly from the feeling; but the soul, which is directed upwards – we feel that its tones have fallen silent – listens to what is born as if from the supersensible, what sounds through the world, warming it like the music of the spheres, in the presence of which earthly music fades away. Only a soul that feels so inwardly as the Raphael soul could conjure this on the canvas, on the wall. And only a soul that was like the Raphael soul could create the highest that the human soul can feel, straight from the depths of the human soul. If spiritual science in its universality wants to elevate the human soul to the origin of human existence, then it comes to what has been explained here many times: that we may be surrounded by many things on earth, that we may look at many things, but that precisely that which presents itself to us in strict spiritual scientific contemplation as the innermost part of our nature, that is of extra-terrestrial origin – it lives, as I said the day before yesterday, in the spiritual and soul that surrounds us, just as the Earth's atmosphere physically surrounds us; and we feel that this, which is the most human of all, is born out of the spirit.

If we want to have a representation of that, of the most human of the human, if we want to feel and experience in our soul what spiritual science is able to stimulate in the soul, then we feel the earth with everything that belongs to the earth, we disappear and the most human of the human floats by, our soul is absorbed in the extra-terrestrial worlds. It turns its gaze outwards to seek in these extra-terrestrial worlds that which is the origin of man; and it transports itself outwards, seeking to sensualize the supersensible in the cloud-forming regions. From the cloud-forming regions, we find the image of the most human of humanity pressing towards the earth, as Raphael lets this mysterious union of mother and son float in, born out of the stylized clouds. Our soul rises from the feeling that flashes in us in the figure of the so-called “Saint Cecilia” to the delicately tangible supersensible feeling of the mystery of man originating from extraterrestrial worlds.

And when we allow this feeling, which awakens an infinite warmth in our soul, to be just feeling – it is the one feeling into which the currents of spiritual scientific contemplation ultimately converge – when we allow this feeling to prevail within us and seek a satisfactory representation – seek something that meets the feeling from the outside – then we imagine the “Sistine Madonna” from Dresden. The spiritual feeling grows together with what Raphael has depicted in this picture. Line and color, hand movement and gesture present to us what is meant: the encounter of spiritual ideals with the highest artistic ideals, with the religious feelings in us, the encounter of that feeling which, in all that is pictorial, is able to flame, the encounter of this feeling with what flows towards us from Raphael's creation, the encounter of the feeling with the creature of the imagination, which itself has grown out of such a feeling.

One may gladly fall silent when one has reached the description of the feelings that ultimately lead to the grasp of the supersensible. Raphael, however, appears to us as a riddle that is the task of spiritual science. And deep down we can understand why someone like Herman Grimm, who everywhere penetrates to spiritual science and longs to find in Raphael's figures something that corresponds to spiritual science, but because he cannot find it, leaves his observation unfinished. Such an example shows quite clearly what has had to be said so often: the legacy of the nineteenth century consists in the fact that the external science of that century, the external observation and the external recreation of nature, was destined to reach a peak that cannot be admired enough. But it has left behind riddles, so that in our age this external science must lead to spiritual science.

One is enriched and stimulated to occupy oneself with Raphael spiritually when one considers the peculiar struggle of Herman Grimm. And then one can feel how peculiar it must have been in the soul of Herman Grimm, and one comes to say the same thing that has been attempted here with all too inadequate means. It is strange that in the introduction to his consideration of Raphael we find a peculiar thought sprouting up in Herman Grimm's soul – just as thoughts sometimes arise from the deep, subconscious regions of the soul – a peculiar thought that makes one wonder: why precisely this thought when considering Raphael's soul?

I see developments of humanity that I will be denied the opportunity to participate in...

- he doubts that the soul will truly live again in later incarnations.

... but which seem to me so gloriously beautiful that for their sake it would be well worth while to begin human existence all over again.

It is strange, one might say, grotesquely dryly: precisely where Herman Grimm cannot approach Raphael's life because he cannot view it from the point of view of repeated earthly lives, the idea of repeated earthly lives occurs to him. When one looks at Raphael, he says, one is drawn to the thought of starting life all over again.

We need not comment further on such a thought, but merely let it hint, as it does from the subconscious in Herman Grimm, who will one day be the solution to the Raphael riddle. And if we must see the solution to many of the riddles that live in every human soul - the smallest as well as the greatest - in the fact of repeated lives on earth, then the great riddles of human development will also become particularly understandable to us at their peak if we are able to draw on the doctrine of repeated lives on earth. Then an infinitely deep meaning flows into the developmental history of humanity.

And when we are imbued with the feeling that souls like Raphael's themselves put the forces of humanity into them, in order to apply them in a new life in new forms, then we feel vividly towards Raphael what Herman Grimm once concluded and at the same time began his reflection on Raphael with, and with what we also want to conclude what should be explained by today's reflections on Raphael. Particularly when one sees, in the sense of spiritual-scientific observation, how deeply Raphael's soul is rooted in the whole sense of human development, then one really feels what Herman Grimm suggests at the beginning of his consideration of Raphael. And here too spiritual science shows us, not in abstract forms, what the inner life of the soul is, but it kindles devotion to everything that is full of spirit, full of strength and fruitful in human development. What Herman Grimm was able to say from the depths of his soul can only emerge from such a contemplation as we have given today. Yes, with such a feeling we may look up to Raphael, and so we can say:

Everyone wants to know about the life's work of such a person. Raphael has become one of the elements on which the higher education of the human spirit is based. We want to approach him because we need him for our well-being.

Yes, and the development of humanity is intertwined with such a power, which flows into its sphere because it will, must live in ever new aspects in this soul, and this power will in turn flow out into other souls. So spiritual research can also express the same words that Herman Grimm said:

People will always want to know about Raphael. About the young, beautiful painter who surpassed all the others. Who had to die young. Whose death was mourned by all of Rome. Even if Raphael's works are lost, his name will remain ingrained in people's minds.

And spiritual science can add: The power that was in his soul will live on and on, in ever new and new forms, in ever more creative development of humanity!

The greatest mysteries of life, which have universal human significance, are not presented to us through special scientific research, but we encounter them at every turn in life. And the greatest questioner is surely life itself, which constantly confronts us, a questioner who not only arouses our curiosity with his questions, but who, through his questions, can mean happiness and suffering, satisfaction or even despair for our soul. Spiritual science, as presented in these lectures, is intended primarily to answer these questions posed by life itself, to the extent that human cognitive ability is allowed to look into the secrets of existence. Even if this spiritual science appears to be something new and unusual compared to today's conventional science, this is understandable for anyone who takes just a glance at those branches of conventional science that deal with questions of the soul, with questions of spiritual life. What is today called psychology or soul science can, to a large extent, be researched to the extent that it presents itself, and it will be found that precisely the great existential questions, the great riddles of life, are very much neglected in this conventional science.

One of the greatest contemporary researchers of the soul, Franz Brentano, stated the following in his “Psychology”: How questions are actually answered in current research into the soul, or at least how they are attempted, how one idea follows another, how one sensation evokes another in the soul, how perhaps those soul forces within our consciousness , which we call memory, all this – Franz Brentano also believes – could not be a substitute for what soul research once sought to fathom as a certain solution to the mystery associated with the name of the immortality of the human being. Today, questions such as that of the immortality of the soul are sought in vain in the usual humanities or spiritual science, and the same applies to other questions. They cannot even be raised from this usual spiritual science, so to speak.

One might say that the most trivial words could be used to raise the most everyday great riddles of mental life, namely with the words: How can man come to terms with himself and the world when he experiences in himself how he becomes a different person at every age, how every age presents him with new tasks even in the time between birth and death? How can man answer the great riddle of existence that confronts him every day and that, as everyone can see, is intimately connected with the whole being of man? The great mystery: how is it that everything that flows in and out of us from morning till evening when we are awake, in the form of ideas, drives, desires, passions, affects and so on, sinks into an uncertain darkness when we fall asleep and is resurrected from this uncertain darkness when we begin the new day? — Sleep and waking, which are so intimately connected with the riddle of human existence, science itself must admit and admits more and more that it hardly knows how to answer these riddle questions. And then there is the enigma of death, as already mentioned, about which a significant researcher of the recent past, as already mentioned here, knows nothing to say except what, so to speak, observation of the external physical world reveals. Huxley cites them right at the beginning of his “Outlines of Physiology” the words of the melancholy Danish prince Hamlet:

The great Caesar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole that lets the north wind through;
Oh that the earth, to which the world did bend,
Might fling a barrier to the wind and rain!

And further, he explains what he wants to say by showing that the individual material parts that make up a person, when he passes through the gate of death, gradually dissipate, as it were, into all winds, into the other matters that surround us, and how we would have to search there for what a person was, if we were to look for the material atoms where they can be found after some time, in the vastness of the world.

That this, what has become of the atoms of the great Caesar, is not at all the question that actually concerns the human soul, this is no longer felt, so to speak, by external scientific observation. That the question is this: Where are the soul forces that worked in Caesar? What has happened to them? How do they continue to work in the world? — that this is the great question, even an external science can no longer feel that. And then there is the question that is contained in the meaningful word destiny, the fateful question that really confronts us at every turn in life, that presents us with the great riddle that shows itself to us everywhere. We see a person entering into existence, born into poverty and misery, so that we can predict at his cradle that he will have a less than favorable destiny. Or we see him entering into life with seemingly insignificant talents, so that we can again predict that he will be of little advantage to himself and to others. In another we see how he enters life, born in happiness and abundance, surrounded by caring hands from the cradle, endowed with abilities that show from the outset that he could become a useful member of the world order for himself and his fellow human beings. How much of all that we call happiness and sorrow, and what daily, hourly befalls us, is included in this fateful question! One would like to say that the great questions of existence only begin where science, so to speak, must end. And anyone who today tries to familiarize himself with such a world view, which is shaped by purely scientific principles, will say to himself: What is offered to me as a summary, however beautifully formulated, of scientific truths, shows me only the beginning of the question, the question of how I must pose the great riddles of existence; there are not yet many answers to be found.

In the face of all this, however, it must be emphasized that in the broadest sense of today's education, there is no possibility of addressing the vital questions of the human soul, for the simple reason that, as a result of phenomena and facts that have taken place over the last few centuries – and which will be discussed in the next lectures will be addressed, human thought habits, the entire faculties of human thinking, have been directed more towards external material and only feel reassured when they can apply their judgment and their research to something that is apparent or accessible to the brain-bound intellect. These habits of thinking are often deprived of the possibility of looking only at what is soul life, at those events within which what takes place is not exhausted in the physical, but is specifically soul-based.

It is clear from the lectures already given this winter that the question is not so much whether man can look into those regions where the answers to the questions raised can be found by means of the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the paths into the supersensible life, which were indicated in the last lecture here, but rather whether he can do so through the It has been emphasized several times that certain things must be investigated in this way, but that then the unbiased human understanding, the unbiased judgment, is quite capable of grasping what supersensible research can give. If this is the case, then it will also be understandable that the path of supersensible knowledge described in the last lecture always offers the possibility of looking at what is present in life in any case, what presents itself everywhere in life, in the right way and of getting answers to the great riddles of existence through the right view.

The spiritual in man is present everywhere, it is always there, and in order for it to proclaim its immortality, it is not so much a direct glimpse into the supersensible world that is needed as a right contemplation - which, however, can be drawn upon and refined - a right contemplation of the immediate events of our soul life itself. This should be the main focus when judging what is referred to here as spiritual science: the way in which life is observed, the way in which the phenomena of direct soul life present themselves through the unique thinking brought about by spiritual science. If we observe carefully, we find that spiritual science regards the phenomena of the immediate life of the soul in connection with the outer life of matter in such a way that the great riddle of existence, as indicated, can be answered from the direct observation of life.

It has been suggested here several times that spiritual science today is in a similar situation to that of natural science in the days of the dawn of modern education, when, for example, Francesco Redi expressed the great truth that is now generally accepted and recognized: living things can only come from living things. This meant that a powerful prejudice had been combated, a prejudice that was not limited to lay circles at the time, but dominated all of science at that time – and this time is only a few centuries ago: three centuries ago, for example, when Francesco Redi appeared, it was still believed that lower animals, such as fish, earthworms and the like, could arise from river mud through mere combination of the external material. Francesco Redi showed that this was an inaccurate observation. He showed that nothing of living existence can arise without a germ of life, originating from a similar living being, being placed in the unorganized matter, and he established the proposition: Living things can only arise from living things. Within the limits of the application of this law, it is recognized by all, from Haeckel to Du Bois-Reymond. It was not recognized at the time of Francesco Redi. He first had to show how it is based only on an inaccurate observation when one believes that inanimate matter can form itself into a living being.

In the same situation is spiritual science today in relation to the spiritual, as it was in relation to living things for Francesco Redi. Today, spiritual science shows, through the way it is able to consider the phenomena of the soul, that it is based on inaccurate observation to believe that what enters into existence with a person in terms of inner soul life could, for example, come from inheritance, from parents or grandparents, etc., or could only come from what the soul of the person absorbs through external experience, through external experience of the environment. Spiritual science has to show that the belief that it could be so is based on inaccurate observation just as much as the belief that a formed living thing could be formed from inanimate substance. Just as inorganic matter can only be gathered together by a living germ, so everything that is formed in the human soul in the way of inherited traits and qualities, everything that it absorbs from the external world through the senses and the intellect, can only be joined together to that which lives and weaves in us as a living soul being, if there is a living spirit-germ, a spirit-germ that joins together within itself both the inherited traits and everything that is taken in from the external environment.

Spiritual science focuses on this spirit or soul germ, and in doing so it certainly confronts a very, very widespread prejudice of the present day. When we speak today of the character of the human soul, when we speak of everything that a person experiences, then we will - and this has been done through the most conscientious research, which should be fully recognized in its own right - point to this or that, which is “inherited” from one's ancestors. We shall always be tempted to see what lives in the human soul and what the human being develops, so to speak, assembles through these or those causes that lie within the line of inheritance, on which we only want to influence what once storms in from outside to the human being for the overall shaping of the human soul.

A certain harmony between natural science and spiritual science will come about in this field when consideration is given to a question that must always be in the mind of the spiritual scientist when speaking of the core of the human soul and inherited tendencies: the question that is linked to the preservation of the human species as a whole. Within the life of the species, within that which is inherited in the being of generations from grandfather and father to son and so on, we do see characteristics passing from generation to generation. But one thing confronts us as a question when we consider this succession of human existence over the course of generations: that man reaches, so to speak, the age of fertility, sexual maturity, at a certain time, and at the time when he has reached this, he is in a position, so to speak, to bring a complete human being into existence again in the generative sense. In other words, having attained sexual maturity, the human being is capable of producing his own kind, and thus has the abilities that are necessary to produce his own kind.

So human development up to sexual maturity is such that the human being develops within himself all the abilities that make it possible for him to produce a being of his own kind. But the human being continues to develop after sexual maturity. New formations, new soul content also arise after sexual maturity, and it is impossible to relate what the soul undergoes in its development after sexual maturity to the whole development of the human species in the same way as what the human being undergoes to establish the human species until sexual maturity. A sharp distinction must be made in man's whole attitude to the world in relation to his development up to sexual maturity, and in relation to the time after that. This is a question that, as we shall soon see, can only be properly addressed by spiritual science.

Another significant question arises from this, but it shows how what is meant by the term “inheritance” is to be understood, in contrast to what actually takes place in the human soul and belongs to human development. We can see what occurs in man and clearly shows itself to be a product of heredity within the human species in a radical case where heredity occurs under all circumstances, simply because man is human and descends from a being of the same kind, a being of his own kind. One such thing, for example, is the change of teeth at around the age of seven. This is something that lies within the powers that man has inherited, that occur under all circumstances, even if we remove the person from the human community and place him on a lonely island, where he would grow up wild.

This is the case with all characteristics that are actually only based within the line of inheritance. But let us take something that is as intimately connected with the human soul as language, and we immediately find that the concepts of inheritance let us down. Where it is justified to speak of inheritance, the inherited characteristics will appear as with the change of teeth. But if we take a person to a lonely island and let him grow up wild, so that he hears no human sound, then language does not develop. That is, we have something that shows us that there is something in the human soul that is not bound to inheritance in the same way as the forces that we have to address in the eminent sense as inherited.

We could cite many more examples that show how little we can get by with the forces of inheritance to explain the whole being of man. But when it comes to the spiritual side, where one starts out with a prejudiced approach, one makes mistake after mistake, mistakes that simply turn out to be logical mistakes. For example, it is repeatedly believed that spiritual science wants to rebel against something that natural science has to say, while it actually holds the achievements of natural science in the highest esteem.

For example, one might think this when spiritual science asserts that what we call the human soul core does not merely come from the parents, grandparents and so on, but as a spiritual and soul core goes back to a previous, far-distant life of the person, going back so far that spiritual science has to say: The life of man on earth is not a single occurrence but a repeated one. When we enter earthly existence through birth, a soul core comes into existence that has absorbed certain peculiarities and certain forces in previous lives. Because it has absorbed these forces in previous lives, so to speak, concentrated them within itself, it enters a new body and a new physical environment in a certain sense. Just as the living germ in the physical life places itself in its inorganic surroundings and absorbs the inorganic forces and substances from there, so the human soul nucleus, coming from previous earthly lives, approaches the inherited traits, binds them, concentrates them, takes what the external world can give, and thus forms and shapes the new life that we then live through the time from birth to death. The present life is again such a contraction of partly inherited traits and partly of what the outer life offers us. And when we pass through the gate of death, then this soul core is most concentrated. Then, in the time between death and a next birth, it passes through a purely spiritual existence and, if it has continued to mature in this, enters a new earthly life through a new birth or conception.

Unfortunately, it is only a popular prejudice that anything of what today are conscientious and well-researched scientific results should be opposed or even touched by such views of spiritual science. Spiritual science is fully understood - this has already been mentioned - when the natural scientist comes and shows how, through the mixing of the paternal and maternal germ in each individual case, a special individualization of the child's germ takes place, so to speak, and how the individualities of the individual children can be different simply by this mixing of the paternal and maternal elements. Spiritual science in its depth does not engage in the trivial assertion that it is proof of a special human individuality that in one and the same family the children are different from each other, because this individualization can be understood from the different mixing of the paternal and maternal elements. If, on the other hand, the natural scientist comes and points out how what man experiences in life could point to this or that organic constitution, to this or that formation of the brain, and so on, then spiritual science is in complete agreement with this, and it remains amateurish in spiritual science if one does not want to go into it. But if what natural science has to say in this field, and quite rightly so, is to be an objection to the results of spiritual research, then a logical mistake is made that can be characterized something like this: Despite all the results of natural science research, the human soul kernel first draws on the inherited characteristics to shape a life.

Let us assume that a person sees another person breathing healthily in front of him and says: “The fact that this person is alive and standing before me as a living being is due to the air and lungs that are present.” Who would dispute that this is completely true! Just as little as this can be disputed by any spiritual science, just as little can it be disputed when the natural scientist comes and considers the material conditions from the line of inheritance in order to explain the individual form of the soul's life. It is just as true as when the natural scientist says: There stands a man before me who lives at this moment because there is air outside him and lungs inside him.

Can the natural scientist therefore consider the spiritual scientist to be refuted when spiritual science says: Despite everything that has been said, what happens to your soul is determined, spiritually and mentally determined, in a purely spiritual way by what the soul has experienced in previous lives. Despite all this, is the whole destiny of man determined by the fact that man himself has prepared this destiny in previous lives? No, the naturalist must not consider the spiritual researcher who makes such an assertion to be refuted. The naturalist who says, “The man standing before me lives at this moment because there is air outside him and lungs within him,” must not consider the spiritual researcher to be refuted, just as he who says to him: No, that is not why he lives, but he lives in this moment through something quite different; this man once wanted to hang himself, and he would most certainly have died in his then attempt at hanging if I had not intervened. But I cut it short, and that is why he is now alive.

From this we see, then, how the objective truth that the other person only lives because there is air outside him and lungs inside him does not contradict the fact that he only lives at this moment because the other person cut his rope! Just as this latter irrefutable truth does not contradict the natural scientist's realization that a person lives because air and lungs are present, so what natural science has to say does not contradict what spiritual science has to offer: that the ultimate, spiritual reasons for a person's existence lie in repeated lives on earth.

The important thing here is to direct our attention to the right thing in the right way, and here we can look at language as a good example. Every spiritual researcher who penetrates into the depths of things and understands natural science can grasp that one can easily be tempted to say: Man can speak because he has a speech center in his brain. That is certainly true. But it is equally true that this speech center of the brain has only been formed into a living speech center by the fact that a language exists in the world at all. Language has created the speech center. Likewise, everything that exists in the formations of the brain and the entire organic apparatus of the human being has been created by the spiritual and soul life. It is the soul that has impressed upon the human material the reality of spiritual life. Therefore, we must seek the true creative power in the human soul, in the spiritual-soul. We must not regard the spiritual-soul as a product of the brain, but rather the reverse: the brain, with its delicate formation, as a product of the spiritual-soul.

When we consider human life, we find that this is the case in every respect, so that a healthy consideration of life confirms what has just been said. Let us consider for a moment what we can call human development, going beyond the generic, that is, what still develops in man even when, so to speak, the forces within the inheritance are fully developed, when he has become manly, in order to carry within him the forces that can produce his own kind. The soul forces that constitute human development present themselves to us in a completely different way when we contrast them with those forces that are present throughout human life and express themselves, for example, in the preservation of the species and in reproduction. Within the sphere of the powers of reproduction we see how everything unfolds from the inside outwards, so to speak, how man brings forth beings like himself beside him through the powers that play in this sphere, that is to say, how what is within him makes its way outwards. The forces that belong to inner human development take exactly the opposite path. One must be able to see the spiritual as real in the first place. Then one will accept the consideration that is to be given now as a justified one from the outset.

How do we live our lives when we consider the inner soul? We live our lives in the opposite way to how we live life within the species: in the species, all development takes place outwards, in the individual life, all development takes place inwards. This happens in such a way that we absorb what comes to us from the outside, process it within us, and do not push it outwards as in reproduction, but rather we concentrate what we live through in ourselves more and more intensely, stripping it more and more intensely, so to speak, of its character as the outside world and making it the content of our own ego.

Anyone who looks at human life impartially will find that it would be impossible, for example, for our soul life to ever have everything that the soul has lived through, everything it can remember, really in its memory at any given moment. Let us imagine that any one of the people sitting here at this moment should have alive in his soul everything that has ever lived in the soul in terms of concepts, ideas, sensations, affects, and so on. That would be a pure impossibility. But has what we have gone through in the past, what we have inwardly taken in soulfully, been lost because we cannot remember it at this moment? It is not lost. If we compare our soul life in successive moments of time, we will find that perhaps more important than what we remember is what we seem to have forgotten, but what has worked on us and made us a different person.

In the course of our development, we are always a different person, feeling imbued with ever-changing content. If we observe ourselves as we are now and compare ourselves with what we were, say, ten years ago, we will not be able to deny that we are a different person and that what has brought this about are the processed experiences, what has flowed into us, been absorbed by us and taken the opposite path to the forces that serve reproduction. We destroy, as it were, with our looking at things, with our remembering in our imagination, that which we experience, but we take it into our I instead. Our I is continually changing. Therefore, we can say: a precise observation of life shows us how this I changes throughout life, and how it has changed through the experiences it has taken in. We feel how the I becomes inwardly fuller, permeates itself more and more, becomes richer and richer than it was when we entered life as young people. This is based on a very significant phenomenon of life, which is usually not given enough attention.

Goethe, the profound connoisseur of life, who above all saw life as it presented itself to him in his own personality, uttered the sentence: In old age we become mystics. What did he mean by that? What does it mean to become a mystic in Goethe's sense? We must remove from this sentence what is unclear and nebulous about it. What Goethe meant was that as man becomes ever more mature and mature, he has less and less of what the world offers him externally, but draws the forces of experience from the wells of his own soul, into which he has let them descend. “Man becomes a mystic” means: his soul has become fuller and fuller, has contained more and more forces within itself.

If we take a closer look at what our soul core has united within us, how it has absorbed what it has experienced and what it has made of it, then those who have become mystics independently of any age can help us to understand a little better what actually happens in the human soul. Let us ask the mystics! What do the mystics talk about most of all? About a “second self”, about a “higher human being” in man, about the fact that in this human self, which grows up with us from youth, a second self can take hold, which many mystics interpret as a “divine” one. But that is not what matters, but how they felt that as a person grows up, something matures like a second person, which he holds fast, which is concentrated within him. We see the exact opposite of what happens in reproduction: that a second person is born alongside the first, that the second is rejected. What becomes the “second self” is not something that the person rejects, but something that he concentrates more and more within himself.

Thus we can indeed say: by living his life, man shapes something in his individuality that takes the opposite direction from that of reproduction. He does not give birth to anything out of himself; he concentrates something within himself, does not let something emerge from his ego, but imbues something within himself, which the mystic quite well describes as a second human being, which develops, as it were, within the skin of the first human being and acquires more and more spiritual and soul-like determination. This is more or less evident in one person or another; but the sense of the developing human being is based on the fact that we undergo an opposite germination process, where we do not unfold, but on the contrary concentrate something within us. If we call the direction of reproduction an evolution, a development, then we can call what the I undergoes an involution, a wrapping up, an inner shaping of the experiences. And it is self-evident that the inner resilience that the I, having grown up, carries within itself as a second I, is greatest when we are at the end of our physical life, when we pass through the gate of death.

If we examine this once and take a closer look at what has developed as a second self, then we have to say: the human being is not always inclined to take a closer look. Life takes up a lot of his time and he does not pay enough attention to the second being that he is developing. But if he pays sufficient attention to it, he will find that this second being has very definite qualities, and above all bears within itself a significant urge to be independent and free in relation to what we can take up in our further life. In our further life we live in a certain linguistic context. As a result, our concepts always have a certain coloring from this linguistic context. But what we have developed within strives to free itself from what only a particular linguistic context can give, and to shape an outlook on life that is free and independent of any linguistic context. We want to grow beyond what a particular linguistic context can give, and in doing so we also grow beyond what we have grown into from our youth. From our youth on, we have to develop a certain ear, for example. We notice that what we develop within our I is something that wants to become ever freer and freer from our outer physicality. We form a new human germ that is independent of the one that has formed out of our outer physicality when we are adults.

This is what spiritual science wants to direct the soul towards: that a second self develops out of the human self in the course of life, the essence of which consists precisely in feeling more and more fully and intensely, the more independently it can feel from what has grown since youth. And if we take a closer look at this second self that has been formed in our self, we will see that it has such inherent strength that we can characterize its whole nature by saying: this self contains the strength to form a new, different human being than the one through which it itself was formed.

It is not an analogy, but only a clarification, when we say: the I that we have within us can be compared to the plant germ that has developed from the root through the stem and green leaves to the flower. Then it is most capable of life and can provide the basis for a new plant. The whole nature of the plant is concentrated in the germ, and when the germ is ripe, what has grown in the way of stem, green leaves and blossom dies off. In this way, a spiritual-soul core matures in us. Just as the germ of the plant grows more and more, even when the leaves wither and the outer physical form of the plant is approaching death, so the spiritual-soul core in man matures, while the outer layer dies more and more, as the sheaths of the organs gradually wither and approach death. Hence, when we observe our soul properly, we see the remarkable fact that the inner powers of a new ego are strongest when we pass through the gate of death. Then we carry the systems of forces, the interrelationships of forces, through the gate of death into a world that cannot have anything to do with the world in our body.

Even if we do not want to pursue further — which the following lectures will show us — how the spiritual researcher can also show us what happens to these spiritual-soul cores, formed in the I, in a purely spiritual world, which the man experiences in the time between death and the next birth, we can still say: in the same way that the natural scientist goes about understanding the plant, we can go about understanding the human being. The natural scientist turns his gaze to the germ of the plant and sees how the germ can now bring a new plant life to flourish. In this way, he seeks to understand the new plant from the germ, how the remaining germ appears again in a new plant. In the same way, the spiritual researcher can also look at the human being as he enters into life through birth or conception. There we see how the human being initially shows nothing externally other than that his organs develop in a certain way. Then the soul life appears, which we have already characterized by saying that when it appears, the moment also comes for the human being to remember back to later. For he will say to himself: I was obviously already there before this point in time, but I can only remember back to a certain point. It is the point in time when the human being is able to feel himself as an ego; but there is no doubt that he already existed as a spiritual-soul being before that. Why, spiritual science may ask, does the possibility of remembering the past only arise from a certain point in time? Were the inner powers that bring about remembering the past not there before? It would be completely illogical to think that the soul and spirit only begin at the point in time to which man later remembers. Everyday sleep can teach us how the soul and spiritual forces live in us before remembering the past awakens.

Today, people have all kinds of strange ideas about sleep. The correct idea about it has already been partially brought to light in the lectures on waking and sleeping. For example, today people have the idea that sleep is only what can be called sleep if it is brought about by fatigue. I would ask the listeners to the earlier lectures to bear in mind that spiritual science wants to speak precisely. If someone wanted to say that spiritual science itself says that sleep comes from fatigue, that is not entirely correct, because it was said: sleep is there to remove fatigue. In spiritual science, it is always important to understand things very precisely, because the aim must also be to present things accurately.

Can fatigue be the cause of sleep? Anyone who claims this is refuted by life itself. Anyone who claims that people only need to sleep because they are tired is already refuted by looking at himself or considering how the often not at all tired pensioner falls asleep in his chair in the afternoon, even though he is not at all tired. And it is especially refuted when he considers when most sleep occurs: not when one is most tired, but in childhood one sleeps most. Things must only be considered correctly.

Spiritual science now shows that during the ordinary state of sleep as well as during the dull state of consciousness of the child, those forces that are used for conscious experience are sent into the organism and work there. The forces that we use from waking to sleeping to form perceptions, sensations and so on, these same forces work on us during our sleep, but in such a way that the used up bodily forces are replaced, restored. There they regenerate us, repair what is worn and used up, that is, they form, they shape. While they deform in the waking day life, dissolve the design, and while the waking day life consists precisely in the fact that we dissolve the design, sleep is there to restore the form, that is, to work directly on the human structure. Because we often use our powers of consciousness during sleep to build up certain decayed powers, these powers elude us and we sink into unconsciousness. Because at the beginning of life, before the moment occurs that we can later remember, we use the same forces that live in us and fill our consciousness to refine and shape the brain organization and blood circulation in the first years of childhood, they therefore elude the conscious ego. The self is present during childhood, and it is a strange thing today when the way the self first appears is considered decisive for the study of the human being. Again, a grandiose logical error! |

Today you can go through entire works in which it says: We see how self-consciousness arises, how it is formed in man. You cannot imagine anything more wrong than this, and in every other field you would strictly reject such a consideration, as you would, for example, reject someone who would only gain knowledge of a clock by paying attention to how the clock is created. This is not the case in any other field. In the same way, when it comes to self-awareness, one should show, when one wants to trace how representations arise, how grandiose mistakes are made in this regard. This can only be done by someone who engages with things in a more precise way, from a spiritual-scientific perspective. Otherwise, it cannot be recognized. The way we experience our sense of self and self-awareness is such that our gradual knowledge of the self and how it develops has nothing to do with the reality of the self itself. Rather, because the self, the human being, continuously develops from the times when it is not yet conscious in the child to the times when it is then consciously experienced, we cannot say: it is not there! It is there, shaping the human being in his finer structure. Yes, much more: it shapes the human being in his connection with the whole of human life, which we only notice when we enter into human life in a more or less selfless way.

In the usual way in which people look at life, they can say about their fate: this or that happens to me. One of them I find pleasant, the other unpleasant; one of them I regard as good luck, the other as bad luck; one of them as an acceleration, the other as a deceleration of my life. But that is only a superficial consideration, because a person could convince himself that at every moment of his life he is nothing other than his concentrated destiny. What is it that makes me speak to you now? It is my concentrated destiny. It is my life experiences that speak to you, and I am nothing but my life experiences, my destiny. If I wanted to extract my destiny, I would have to cut a piece out of myself. Man is what he has made of himself, what his destiny is, what he is at a given moment. We cannot separate our self from us, from our destiny, and see the self as something different in terms of content from destiny.

Now, however, we see that we are placed in a certain context of life as a child, and that we are not only determined by our abilities, by our self, even if we are not yet aware of it, by our self working on our blood circulation, and by developing very specific talents and so on, but we also see that we are placed in a specific national context, that we are children of a specific pair of parents, grow up in a specific climate and have to live together with these or those people. This is how we see ourselves as destined for our whole life. If we examine what we can consciously pursue and address as our destiny, it is self-evident that we must address this as the destiny connected with our ego, as we are placed in a life through our circumstances, which is either laborious and laden, or surrounded by caring hands. Not only our later destinies are connected with what we have done ourselves, but also the blows of fate that come to us from the unconscious, and which we cannot follow with our consciousness.

Thus we are led to the spiritual and soul essence of man, which contains within itself all the systems of forces that developed the brain, shaped the blood system and so on, and thereby determined us. But we are also determined by fate by the same I, which places itself in a particular context of life. In the field of nature observation, everyone admits this when they say, for example, “When I look at an Alpine plant, I know that it belongs to the whole Alpine nature, and that is why the Alpine plant cannot grow in the plains.” What everyone admits in the observation of nature need only be transferred to a spiritual-soul core of being. Then one will see that the spiritual-soul core of one's being, which provides its physicality with very specific abilities, is adapted to its physicality on the one hand, seeks out this physicality, enters into it, but on the other hand also seeks out its destiny.

If this destiny is perceived as hard and then one is told: you have created this yourself, you have brought it with you through your spiritual and soul essence. If you ascribe the blame for the hard fate you feel to the person as a whole, then this feeling is based on a short-sighted observation. A deeper principle judges differently, and we can understand how it judges if we take an example from life to illustrate it. Let us imagine a young man who, because his father was wealthy, lived in such a way that he lived out of his father's pocket and did not have much to worry about. Then his father loses all his wealth through some misfortune, and the son can no longer live as he did before. He may say: What a bitter fate has befallen me! How unhappy I am! But if he learns something, if he is huffed and puffed by life and has become an able person, will he say the same when he is fifty years old? No, but now he might say: That twist of fate was quite good for my personal life, because otherwise I might have become a good-for-nothing; my father's misfortune contributed to my happiness.

What can be said from the standpoint of eighteen years of age is not particularly far-sighted; at fifty years of age we shall see further. That which is the deeper principle of life in us seeks misfortune, seeks adversity and misery, because it is only by overcoming the obstacles in adversity and misery that we have developed ourselves further towards a happiness and have become something that we would not otherwise have become. Seen from a higher vantage point, and as soon as we admit that a deeper core of being lives in a person, which passes from life to life and makes it necessary for us to look at life from a higher vantage point, much immediately presents itself to us as understandable.

If we can look at a person in such a way that, as they age, they develop a system of forces within that is directed towards a new human being who is virtually independent of what the person has developed externally from their previous life or from the circumstances of his present life, and when we see how he carries an inner tension of forces through the gate of death, then we can say: This person cannot possibly enter into existence again immediately after death. Why not? What would happen if he did enter existence again immediately? He would still find the outer environment similar to the one he has just left and from which he wanted to free himself by developing the inner core of his soul. Just as the inner soul-core has no direct relationship to itself in the sense of immediately wanting to be “itself” again, so too man cannot embody himself again immediately after death, for he would grow into himself. But this means that the inner soul-core can only re-embody itself after a certain time. During this time it lives in a purely spiritual atmosphere, not in the physical world. What has developed as a spiritual core, in the same way that a plant germ develops within the stalk, leaves and blossom, lives in a spiritual world, and will only feel drawn to to outwardly embody that which it has developed only when different conditions have arisen; that is, when the earth has changed so that the human being grows into different conditions so that he can continue to develop.

That is why so much time passes between death and the next birth, so that, for example, we are not born again into the same language area and so that the other circumstances around us have also changed. We know that conditions on the outer earth change over the centuries and millennia. But what has happened in the meantime, purely externally in culture, we learn through teaching, through education. So we step out of a certain epoch with our spiritual and soul cores, with the forces that we wanted to free, and wait until new conditions on earth are brought about. But what we have not been able to participate in during the intervening period, we have to catch up on through education and teaching. Therefore, education and teaching must be added to what we have in the way of special aptitudes and abilities, which we bring up from the fruit of earlier lives.

In the relatively short time available to me, I was unable to develop anything other than what could be called a way of looking at the human soul in such a way that this observation is, on the one hand, strictly scientific, but, on the other hand, sees something real in these spiritual and soul experiences and that it is seen how, in fact, in the person as he lives before us, what occurs in a next life is already developing as a germ, which draws on the forces of heredity as well as the forces of the environment to develop further.

A world view such as that arising out of spiritual science can have an eminently healing influence, not only on the theoretical questions of life, but also on strength and security and on the power of life. Of course, anyone who does not want to familiarize themselves with spiritual science will not understand that a healthy outer life is in many essential respects conditioned by a healthy soul life, that the healthy soul life radiates its forces into the physical body, and that when the soul is desolate and cannot draw out of its own depths that which fills its consciousness with satisfaction, then the dissatisfaction, the incoherence, the mystery of the soul life is imprinted in nervousness and so on as an unhealthy influence right into the physical body. Those who do not understand this may experience it. Life poses the greatest riddles, and in cases that are meaningful to everyone, what can be expressed by asking: Where else do certain symptoms of a life that is not satisfied with itself come from, if not from the fact that the soul life is not healthy, not complete, and therefore does not radiate health to the body? But anyone who is willing to consider the healing influence of a healthy soul life on the body will also be able to say the following: If in our time we repeatedly point out the inherited characteristics and, for example, with regard to what we feel as a predisposition to illness in us, repeatedly say to this or that person: “We have inherited this from our ancestors, we cannot change it”, then this thought means something that must weigh heavily upon our innermost soul life and must mean a depression of the soul life, which will very soon exert an unfavorable influence on the outer life of the body and must be felt by the person concerned as something depressing that cannot be changed because it lies in the purely physical line of inheritance. But anyone who, on the basis of spiritual science, can gain the conviction that what lives in him is not just a combination of inherited traits and inherited powers, but something that goes from life to life as a spiritual-soul core, can, if spiritual science is not just a theory for him but something that can constantly remind himself that, in spite of all inherited traits and powers, his spiritual and mental core lives, from which he can draw the strength to become a victor, no matter how much the line of inheritance may point to decadence.

The consciousness that can be gained from spiritual science not only answers life's riddles that are theoretical, but answers all questions that reach the whole mind as riddles that we must have answered in order to live in our soul. If we know nothing of that spiritual-soul core that hurries from life to life, then we feel oppressed and weak under the yoke of heredity. We only feel strong and vigorous and live as spiritual-soul beings when we stand upright in the constitution of our spiritual-soul core and can say: The powers of our spiritual-soul core are inexhaustible, for they alone are the sum of what is given to us in the line of inheritance, and through them we can bring what appears to be doomed to decline, from the center of our soul, to ascend again. In this way, the solutions of spiritual science are written into life itself. Only then will spiritual science bear its true fruit, when it can be integrated in this way into the whole of the soul's attitude and mood, and when we become strong, not just clever, through spiritual science. But we also become more proficient in our thinking, especially with regard to certain finer distinctions in life, and we gain in strength and judgment for a finer conception of life.

Just one example of this! When those who like to attribute everything to heredity examine any significant person in relation to his line of ancestors, they may well say: “You can see that of what this person shows in himself, in one ancestor this quality is found, in another that quality.” And then it is said: This has added up and been inherited, and then the inherited traits have merged into a soul being. — One then coins the sentence: So you can see that genius stands at the end of a line of inheritance and has been inherited from one's ancestors.

Expressed in this way, a thought is, so to speak, crossed. For who would have proved anything by this line of thought? One would only have proved something if one could show that the genius was at the beginning of a line of inheritance, but not if it showed itself at the end of it. For if it occurs at the end of a line of ancestors, this proves nothing other than, if one may say so: if a man has fallen into water and comes out of it, he is wet. It only proves that he has passed through a certain element and has absorbed something from it, just as a person is wet when he is pulled out of the water. If one wanted to prove something through the line of inheritance, one would have to show that genius is at the beginning and not at the end of a line of inheritance. But one will leave that alone, because the world speaks against it.

To put the questions correctly and answer them everywhere, that is what follows from spiritual science. Then one will realize that spiritual science does not contradict natural science, but also that a scientific answer to the great riddles of life is not enough. The greatest wisdom will probably be drawn from spiritual science when one day all human education can be placed in the light of spiritual science, when man grows up in such a way that his growth means becoming aware of the spiritual-soul core.

Then the spiritual-soul core of the being will grow with the human being between birth and death in such a way that not only does the soul enter into reality with the full content of which was spoken earlier, but that the soul also becomes aware of the second I, that germ that concentrates more and more. Then the consciousness will pass into another form of life. Then man will indeed see the time approaching when the hair turns white, the face wrinkles and the strength of the bodily organs diminishes. But he will then look up at what he has seen growing from youth, which is the remainder and inheritance of a previous life, and will feel as one feels with a plant germ when the falling leaves announce the end of the plant's form, but the germ grows stronger and stronger. Thus man will feel himself as the germ of a new life and say to himself: What falls away from you must pass through death, for you cannot remain in that; for it must be something else that can be your covering, you must build yourself another body, for you have already prepared it within you. Man will feel the life ripening within him, which he will have to live through again in distant times.

That the repetitions of life are not without beginning or end, and how the question will be answered as to what extent these incarnations of the human essence have a beginning and an end, will be answered later.

When man thus regards life as the germ of a subsequent life, he will also see how this again develops a germ. Then he does not cling to a doctrine of immortality, which he examines philosophically, as it were, but then he puts life to life, which he sees flourish and thrive, and imbues himself with the consciousness of immortality, because he knows that a new germ of life must arise from every life. In the ever-growing and hope-inspiring spiritual and soul life germ, man answers the questions about the riddle of life and death. He answers them not only theoretically, but in a living inner experience he grasps, comprehends, and experiences immortality. He does not merely say, “I have grasped immortality,” but he grasps the soul in its essential nature as a being that cannot be other than immortal, because out of every life it develops a new germ of life. Man beholds inwardly the maturing of this new germ of life. Therefore we may say: spiritual science does not only answer the question about the riddle of life and death in theory, it does not only give a theoretical certainty, but it can inwardly transform our life in such a way that we gather strength and feel what goes from life to life by grasping immortality, and thus go through all lives.

In this way, theory is transformed into life practice, the immortality puzzle into an understanding of the question of immortality itself. This is always the best fruit of spiritual science when it transforms itself from mere contemplation into something that then lives within us. And it may be said that when spiritual science is grasped by man in this sense, then it is not only something that makes him understand something, but something that sinks into his own soul like a life force and lives in him.

Therefore, we may summarize today's reflection by saying that spiritual science teaches us by also vividly verifying for the human soul what a view of the whole rest of the world teaches us, the great contemplation of the perpetual transformation of life, but at the same time also of the permanence in all change that shows itself to us over and over again; it teaches us the eternal in all that is temporal. As if written in iron tablets, the great law of life is graven on our soul: Everything that lives in the universe lives only by creating the germ of new life within itself. And the soul surrenders only to aging and death in order to mature immortalized into ever new life!

In this winter series of lectures, I have taken the liberty of alternating purely spiritual lectures with those inspired by the great and significant events of the present. Today's reflections on the nature of the German national soul and its relationship to other national souls in Europe are also intended to be inspired by the feelings evoked by our time. Tomorrow, another reflection will follow, which is purely spiritual scientific. In the introduction to today's reflection, I will take the liberty of pointing out some things that have already been discussed from a different point of view in one of the previous lectures, which also dealt with the nature of the folk soul.

If one speaks of folk souls today, one encounters many misunderstandings if one takes the point of view that is to be adopted here. One is often reproached for thinking something purely fantastic. And that is basically quite in order; because our present-day world view cannot help but see a fantasy in what must be addressed as the folk soul, in addition to other real, concrete spiritual beings. It is therefore only natural that, when the folk soul, among other spiritual beings, was spoken of as a real being in my book 'Theosophy', this chapter in particular was found to be particularly strange. That is precisely what a purely externalistic world view will never admit: that alongside those entities that can be perceived by the senses, that can be grasped by the intellect and are connected with the brain, there are also other supersensible, invisible entities beings that can only be seen with what Goethe called the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. These beings have a reality, however, just as the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms around us have reality. And so spiritual science also speaks of the German national soul as a real, actual entity. It speaks of this entity as conducting the dialogue — subconscious, unconscious dialogues with the individual human soul — already mentioned in the previous lecture on the supporting forces of the German spirit. It is impossible to give an indication of the nature of the real, true national soul without saying at least a few words about what spiritual research will eventually have to say to mankind about the nature of the individual human soul. The present official science of the soul, or psychology, approaches the human soul in such a way that it sees in it, I might say, a more or less chaotic but ordering unity, in which will, feeling and thinking act in confusion.

But now spiritual science must speak of this human soul in a sense that physics speaks of color and color nuances that arise from light. Physics is aware that it can only study the essence of light if it seeks out this light in its effects, which appear as the different color nuances of the rainbow, the spectrum. On the one hand, we have the reddish-yellow color nuances, in the middle the greenish ones, and on the other hand the violet-bluish color nuances. Just as physics now already admits that the nature of light can be fathomed by studying the effect of light through matter in the various color nuances, so the spiritual science of the future will most certainly have to distinguish in the human soul as a whole that which one could call the revelation of the human soul light, that this is lived in the human soul in three parts, as it were in the three distinct nuances, one of which must be called the nuance of the sentient soul, corresponding to the reddish-yellowish band of colors of the rainbow or the color spectrum; thus, one must speak of the soul of understanding or feeling, corresponding to the middle green color nuances of the rainbow; and thus one must speak of the soul of consciousness, corresponding to the bluish-violet color nuances of the rainbow. And it is not a matter of an arbitrary classification of the soul activities, but rather of something that has to do with the reality of the human soul, just as the colors have to do with the reality of light. For spiritual science shows that what on the one side of the spectrum of the soul must be recognized as the sentient soul reveals primarily those powers of the soul that stream out of the impulses of will and feeling and express themselves in a certain instinctive way in man ; but at the same time it shows, and this is the remarkable thing, that precisely in this instinctive nature of the soul, in this nuance of feeling of the human soul, is contained that which we shall show tomorrow to pass through births and deaths as the eternal of the human soul. It is mainly in this part of the human soul that the eternal essence of the soul is contained.

Then we have, as it were, the middle color nuance of the human soul, the intellectual soul. In this, soul expressions directed equally to the eternal and to the sensual-real, the transitory, can be found; instinctive tendencies and those which rise above them and look at the senses in order to spiritually comprehend the world of the senses.

Thirdly, we have the consciousness soul, which, in the present stage of human development, elevates man to his self-awareness, which makes it possible for man to stand in his soul in such a way that he can say: “Within me, even within my physicality, between birth and death, there dwells an I.” But at the same time, it is that which is in these powers, that which, for the present development of humanity, contains the feelings of the human soul life that are turned towards the transitory, the external, obvious reality. Just as light reveals itself in the different color nuances, so what is the unity of the human soul reveals itself in these different members of the human soul. And one can say: just as light lives in red, green and blue, so the human ego lives in all three aspects of the life of the human soul.

Now, for spiritual science, what is to be regarded as the folk soul is a real supersensible entity, not merely what a more materialistic world view sees, a totality of characteristics that climate, education or otherwise are peculiar to a nation, but for spiritual science the folk soul is a spiritual entity that works from the supersensible worlds into what are the functions of the human soul.

And now, according to the way in which the folk soul works in what is the work of the human soul, the basic character of the folk soul life can be seen through different European peoples. These are things that spiritual science has to say, so that one day it will form a science, just as the physics of color within natural science forms a real scientific discipline.

I would also like to make it clear this time that what I am going to say about the interaction of the national soul with the individual soul elements in the various European nations has not been caused or provoked by the current war events and the existing conditions of the European nations. Rather, many of the listeners here can confirm that I have been saying for years, based on spiritual science, that We are dealing, for example, when we consider the more southern peoples, when we consider the soul of the Italian people, with an interaction of this national soul with the individual human being in such a way that what the national soul does, what it has to accomplish in a dialogue with the individual soul, flows directly into the sentient soul. So that one can say: insofar as a member of the Italian nation is Italian, he expresses himself from the character of his nation in such a way that the forces of his national spirit tremble and have an effect in his sentient soul. It is with this sentient soul that the national spirit, the national soul, holds its dialogue. Of course, it must always be emphasized that the individual soul can rise and take on the general human character in every nation. What has been said here about the relationship between the national soul and nationality applies to the extent that the individual is connected to the national soul through the expressions of his life. And everything that the Italian national soul arouses in the individual sentient soul of the Italian is, in essence, Italian culture. Hence the Italian culture, which emerges directly from the passions, can be traced from the individual impulses of the people to the mighty painting that Dante created of the world. That is why what is called humanism was also imprinted on European culture from Italy. The connection of the whole human being with the sentient soul through what one feels, what one has in one's emotional impulses, insofar as that comes into its own, flows through the whole of Italian culture. Spanish culture is similar and related to this.

When we consider French popular culture, we have to say that it is the result of the direct interaction of the folk soul with what is called the rational soul. Hence the peculiarity of the French national character, which seeks to bring everything into a certain system, even if it is the system of feeling and art. A certain mathematical character is inherent in everything that belongs to this culture. You only have to surrender to the flow of a French poem or the course of a French drama to feel this result of the relationship between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind everywhere. If you look at it from a spiritual scientific point of view, this mathematical disposition of the French character becomes highly understandable.

And again, when we look at the English national character, we must bear in mind those relationships that develop between the national soul and the consciousness soul. That is to say, the English national character is primarily shaped as follows: through the consciousness soul, the English national character is directed outwards to the struggles and congruities of physical reality, to that which is transitory in life. Hence the empirical character, the outward-looking character of English culture, which can be traced right back to Shakespeare, despite the greatness of Shakespeare.

And if we then go to the center of Europe, preferably to German culture, we must point to a relationship to the folk soul, a relationship of the individual to the folk soul that can be expressed directly as a connection of the folk soul not with a single soul element, but directly with the self, with the I. Therefore, the impulses that the national soul has to stimulate flow directly into the individual Germans. And it can then express itself as the ego struggles to reveal itself not only in one direction, but through the various members of the soul life, alternately or cohesively. Hence what I had to say eight days ago about the supporting forces of the German spirit, the direct influence of the spiritual world on the individual human personality. Therefore, it is not the human passions, the human passions wrestling with something transcendental, nor the ratio, the intellect wrestling with the transcendental, nor the consciousness soul being active, but always the direct confrontation of the individual human being with his divinity, of the individual human being with the spirits of the transcendental world. But this brings about the peculiar thing in the whole German development, that the individual German must always take up the highest impulses of spiritual life. We have a German development in which we see individual great characters appear. Again and again, the individual great character has to start anew, so to speak, without being able to tie in with what is historically given, because he has to let what the soul of the people has to give him shine in his deepest inner being.

But there is another aspect to this: since the German is always compelled to establish a direct, elementary relationship with the folk soul, this folk soul must also have an ever-present effect on him with its elemental power, and he always again impelled to go back to the purest sources of popular life; and he feels strengthened and refreshed when he can sense his connection with this popular life.

That is what the German feels impelled to express when he wants to consider his relationship to the supersensible world. This is also what gives the German world poem, Faust, its special magic. We see Faust living in the midst of a culture that has grown old, as it were; we see how he has allowed the individual expressions of this culture to take effect in him, and how he now strives to go directly to the sources of all knowledge, to enter into a relationship with individual spirits, with the spirit of the earth, the world spirit. We see how he strives to achieve what could be called a rejuvenation of the whole human soul. There has even been mockery, at least contemptuous talk about what stands as a kind of rejuvenation scene at the beginning of the second part of “Faust”, where Faust is in a kind of sleep state and the spirits of the cosmos permeate him, in epochs, as the night passes, with what they have to give him. But anyone who knows that such things can only be depicted in images will not be able to succumb to such a misunderstanding. After Faust has first tried to rejuvenate what has grown old in him through sensory life and the world of external science, a relationship is established in him between the elemental forces of his soul life and the supersensible world, and through this he is rejuvenated so that he can then accomplish all that is presented to us in the second part of Faust: that he can enter the great world in order to work there as an active force; that he can take the path to the mothers, where he has to discover the primal forces of being in that sphere, of which the materialist will always say it is a nothing, of which the one who knows something about the spirit must always use Faust's words: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

But we also see in Faust how the rejuvenating powers of spiritual life work in him through the fact that he is portrayed as a German spirit. These rejuvenating powers work in him in such a way that in the end, when he goes blind, everything that could be called his connection to the physical-sensual world dies. And while it grows dark around him, a bright light shines within him. That is to say, he has come to the forces that Goethe really drew from the essence of the German national soul and that are awakened in him in such a way that he has sensed the rejuvenating power of true German life in the external culture that has grown old. These rejuvenating forces work in the soul in such a way that what his soul thinks and feels and does is seen directly in his inner being as the thoughts, feelings and will of the divine-spiritual beings themselves. spiritual beings themselves and feels connected to the spiritual world itself, which works in him as a rejuvenating force that does not allow his culture to grow old; which always gives him hope that, if any branch of culture has become spiritually dry, so to speak, the rejuvenating forces can bring about a new germ. This direct proximity of the national spirit to the individual soul of the human being, in turn, distinguishes the soul of the Central European from that of the Eastern European.

In a remarkable way, Russian Slavdom presents itself to spiritual science. The Russian has his national spirit as a ruling power, so that this national spirit does not, as with the Italian, for example, directly into the sentient soul or as with the Frenchman into the intellectual soul or as with the British into the consciousness soul nor does it dips into the ego; but that the folk soul, as a spiritual, hovers over the individual, to which it is looked up like to a cloud, while below, with their soul forces, the individual works, into whose soul forces the folk soul does not reach. Hence we see among these Eastern peoples that the individual soul powers, which have not yet been grasped in the stage of development, work together in an anarchic way. Because the national soul-life does not bring about their inner harmony, these three soul-forces work as if in anarchic confusion; they cannot find the possibility of being in harmony with each other. This is the peculiarity that seems strange to the Western European when he turns to the spiritual culture of the East. This lack of togetherness of the national soul in relation to the togetherness of the national soul with the individual human soul is what distinguishes the German from the Russian. And this distinction becomes particularly apparent when we turn our spiritual attention to the actual forces of the German national soul.

How does the development of German culture enter into the whole evolution of the world? After the Germans had had their encounters with the Romans and the southern peoples, German culture presents people who are directly seized by the power of the human in their being here in the world. To mention just one figure, we see Siegfried before us; we see the other figures of the Nibelungen before us. They carry the forces through which they are called to work in the world directly in their souls, and they feel that which they have there in their soul as that which guides, rules and sustains the world in general. What has been preserved in the popular mind, in the spiritual life, of this relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul, as it already appears at the beginning of Central European culture, what has been preserved there, we can find it characteristically in a similar way to how the relationship to the spiritual world appears to us in mysticism. The mystic feels that which courses through him as the same that courses through the entire cosmos. He feels himself to be part of what he calls the Divine, the spiritual. One need only compare what pulses through Siegfried or the other figures, which are echoes of the oldest coexistence of the German folk soul with the individual soul, with the figure that has maintained great popularity within Russian folk life, the figure of Ilya Muromets. There we see how he, as a human being, feels the divine-spiritual in the distance, how he looks up to it, how it is something for him that is not directly in his soul, for which he can at most sacrifice himself and give as a champion. The courage, the strength in the Siegfried nature, the humility, the direct sacrifice in the Muromez nature.

And we can say: That which we see in the early days of the German flowering is like something that then disappears in the turmoil of the later times, succumbing to foreign influences. And then, in a wonderful way, from the twelfth, especially the thirteenth century onwards, we see a renewed effort of the German spirit shining through the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul.

Take figures such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. We see how figures and poetic subjects are indeed taken from the West, but how what is taken from the West is only the scaffolding and how an immediate connection with the most elementary forces of the supersensible world, for example, inspires Wolfram von Eschenbach to to make out of his Parzifal one who undergoes his journey to the Grail through the powers of his own soul; in that he seeks in the outer world, he wants to expand his soul powers with every step and to the same extent bring about a spiritualization in his soul. In this period, to which Wolfram von Eschenbach belongs, we see a deepening and at the same time a rejuvenation of the German character.

And then we see again how foreign influences gradually assert themselves; how, as it were, the German character ages. But we see the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul at work throughout all this aging. And we see these rejuvenating forces of the German national soul emerge in a remarkable way after Germany was made like a cultural desert by the enemies all around it in the Thirty Years' War; we see these forces glowing, we see a working out of the national forces, which in turn undergo a complete rejuvenation. Where do these rejuvenating forces come from? Here we must refer to Lessing, who in his works, in what is his spiritual testament, points to the immortal, the eternal in human nature – in that testament, however, in which the very clever do not want to believe. But at the end of his testament, he also pointed out how he sought knowledge, not the knowledge of the learned, who think they are at the pinnacle of education, but the knowledge of the simplest, most elementary forces of the people in primeval times. A rejuvenation, a refreshment of knowledge is what Lessing means when he says: Must every single person have traveled the path by which the human race achieves perfection in the same lifetime? Why could not every individual have existed more than once in this world? Is this hypothesis ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by the sophistry of the school, immediately fell into it?

And so we have this deliberate immersion in the popular in order to arrive at the highest wisdom. Anyone who considers his connection with the development of the German people can only say: in Lessing we see an influx of the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

And again, in Herder and in Goethe, we see how they, the one supported by the other, delve into the German folk song, into German antiquity, and how they, stimulated by the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul, achieve an elevation of the poetic and cognitive potential within them. And we see how Goethe created his Faust out of what had arisen in the midst of the people – the Faust figure, which he first knew only through the puppet theater, that is, through what lived within the people. Goethe and Herder experienced a rejuvenation of their lives through their penetration into the impulses of the folk soul. It was Lessing who also placed the Faust problem in its time, who pointed out that what was fundamentally present in drama in his time – figures such as those that lived in the people in old plays – should be brought to the stage again. And he gave a scene that draws on an old folk tradition, that draws on the connection with the spiritual world.

And if we visualize the trend of the Romantics, who sought a connection with the spirit through immersion in German folklore and mysticism, we see, for example, in Novalis, a deep immersion into the spiritual world.

When we consider all these circumstances, many things can be explained that have certainly already been emphasized, that have been accepted as something that has been recognized through observation, but that have not been understood in their context. The extraordinarily brilliant Karl Hillebrand has beautifully juxtaposed the characteristics of Western and Central European peoples. What he has to say in his very beautiful treatise on the Western world view finds complete confirmation, but also a thorough illumination, through what spiritual science has to say. Hillebrand emphasizes that the Italians brought European culture, the Spaniards mathematism, the English empiricism. And now he ponders: What is it, then, that the German spirit has to contribute to the general spiritual process of humanity? And in his answer he really does come up with an excellent, precise characterization of what the German spirit has to bring to humanity: “The German spirit is the first to have found the idea of the organism.” For those who think only in a British way, the organism does not exist. The essential is viewed from the outside, but the direct organic life and weaving does not appear to the eye. The rationalist of the West seeks to understand reality through historical ideas; but to immerse oneself in the real so that life is grasped in the real — Hillebrand also knows that this is the peculiarity of the German mind. And so it is precisely through spiritual science that the misunderstandings prevailing among European nations with regard to Germanness will come to light more and more.

It must truly be said: It is understandable how the German spirit, in its struggle for an inner, elementary, direct connection with the soul of the people, can be so difficult to understand. That which characterizes him, that which is in his own nature, and that which exists within his nature, is something that is organically connected with the spirit, that he must experience directly in the objective connection with his soul, and that is so difficult for the spirit, for example, which in his soul life grasps the folk soul only with the consciousness soul. Herman Grimm, who had such a thorough and beautiful understanding of the workings of the German national soul, says a beautiful word about the Englishman Lewes' biography of Goethe, which is indeed outstanding in certain respects: “When one reads the biography, then, if one, as a German, experiences Goethe's nature directly, one must say: Yes, this Mr. Lewes, he writes about a person who was born in August born in Frankfurt in August 1749, who experienced a youth so similar to Goethe's, a person to whom Goethe's life events are attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, who dies in March 1832, but from whom nothing is noticeable that the German observer feels and strives to prove in his Goethe.

And it is, after all, very understandable that the most intimate German conception of the world, the comprehension of the organic-living, seems improbable to the Western people. And so it could come about that, in a grotesque misunderstanding, the French philosopher Bergson was able to give a lecture around Christmas time in which he said that the German essence lacked a living grasp of the organic-living in the present, that the whole German essence had become a mechanism.

One has the feeling that this French philosopher, Bergson, who certainly has many depths in his nature, which he owes precisely to German idealism – Schelling – and which he then expresses in his own way, is lacking in depth when it comes to the German nature.

One may find it strange that this philosopher views the German nature as mechanistic because he believes that the old idealistic life has vanished. He judges the German people by the fact that German cannons are now facing his people. It is just as if Bergson had expected the French to be met, not by rifles and cannons, but by Germans reciting Goethe or Schiller poems to them. Since they do not do this, people, including philosophers, notice nothing of the German spirit, but only see the German mechanism, which confronts them in rifles and cannons.

But in many other respects, too, what is most intimate in the German spirit is difficult for those to understand who do not want to get involved in the most intimate peculiarity of German intellectual life, in which the soul of the people and the soul of the individual interact. Because this seems to me to be quite characteristic, I would like to share three sentences that were born, so to speak, out of the deepest, most intimate peculiarities of German development; these sentences are formulated as if the German wanted to express the essence of his soul in them, as he has overheard it in his national spirit.

The first sentence: “In the mind lives the spark in which the world soul reveals itself in the human soul.” This sentence was spoken by Eckhart, the German mystic. It may well be said that it is truly spoken from the essence of the interaction of the folk soul with the individual soul. Now try to translate this sentence into any Western European language in such a way that it is really translated. You will not be able to do so because the folk spirit of another language does not produce what the translation of this sentence would be, which so correctly expresses the content of the sentence in the sense of German mysticism.

The second sentence: “The German does not want to remain in a closed state of being, he always wants to become.” The German thus regards his nationality as something that he sees as an ideal to strive for. Fichte says: One is Italian, one is French, but one becomes German by feeling one's Germanness intensively and effectively within oneself; just as Faust feels that which he “always strives for”. “The German becomes, he does not want to remain in a closed state of being.” Try to translate that again so that it conveys this intimate sense. You will see that you cannot.

The third sentence is one in which Hegel expresses what appears to him to be the connection between the supersensible and the individual human soul. Hegel says that in the transition from being to non-being, from non-being to being, lies the living becoming, in which Fichte also grasped the essence of man in the ego. Not in the rigid state of being, but in that which is always creating, which always has within it the potential for transition from non-being to being, from being to non-being. This third sentence is eminently German: “Being and non-being unite in becoming to form a higher unity.” Try to translate this sentence into a Western European language, and you will not be able to.

What is German in the sense indicated will be particularly difficult for Eastern Europeans and Russians to understand. And it must be right to focus on the nature of the Russian people in our present day. For it is precisely the infinite vilifications that come to us from all sides, including from the east, that show the greatest lack of understanding of the German character. For decades, the eastern European character has been preparing to erect a barrier, a chasm, to the central European character.

Of course, in Western Europe, people are trying to capture in strict logic what the German seeks in a variety of ways, including in a variety of back and forth ways, because he must always remain in living unity with the supersensible if he is a German in the truest sense of the word. But this logic is, after all, a strange logic. And it is especially apparent to us now, when, out of such strange logic, it is still being said, despite everything that has happened: Who wanted the war? and then the strange implication is made that the people of Central Europe wanted this war. These logical arguments are on the same logical level as the sentence: “It is your fault, Germans, that the present wars can be waged at all, because you invented gunpowder.” The reasons that sound out to us from the immediate events of the present are more or less the same. We can even be blamed for the fact that the war in the newspapers is being waged against us, because the Germans also invented the art of printing. If this had not happened in Central Europe, the invective and abuse of the West could not now befalling us.

Many currents must be emphasized, which, when viewed in their entirety, compose everything that comes to us like a spiritual atmosphere from the East. There we see how, after the first half of the last century, something arose in Russia that was called Slavophilism. If we consider Slavophilism as it has now developed, we can discern three aspects in present-day Pan-Slavism. The first aspect, which arose radically, is that Slavophilism believes that Western culture is corrupt, that it is ripe for decline, and that Russian culture must save European culture. That is the first aspect. The second is: in the West, individualism reigns. This is not entirely incorrect if one understands it correctly, because one can call that coexistence of the individual soul with the folk soul an individualism; the individual wants to experience his divine-spiritual directly with his own soul powers. But Slavophilism considers this individualism to be something harmful.

And as a third reason is given: that the Western European and the Central European live out their religious feelings out of the enthusiasm of their soul, not out of mere humble devotion to a spiritual element that hovers like a cloud above the people and above the individual. This is why Dostoyevsky, for example, said: “We Russians must form the synthesis; that is, we must synthesize, we must form the confluence of all European cultures. For just as we speak all languages and understand all civilizations, so we also understand everything that has influenced all cultures and can express it in all freedom. We also understand human life in such a way that man stands by his God as the one who humbly bows before what he recognizes as the God hovering above the individual. Therefore we do not let ourselves be bound by a legal system; that contradicts what the individual directly experiences in his childlike humility. Thirdly, Dostoyevsky cites the Orthodox religion, of which he says that it never appeared as a militant church like the Western European one.

What these three statements of Slavophilism express is basically what has inspired many, at least the important minds of the East, what has filled their souls and then also become popular, what has been passed down from leading personalities to the people, and what has an enormous effect. We can distinguish different phases in this Slavophilism. Take, for example, Khomyakov. He still approaches the matter from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge. Orest Miller, a thoroughly noble man who was deeply immersed in Russian folklore, turns away from the dark side of Slavophilism and takes up what Khomyakov also emphasized: that the Russian ideal is not yet alive in every individual Russian. Thus we read in this Slavophile: “Our fatherland condemns the yoke of bondage, godless flattery and servility, nauseating falsehood, soulless and disgraceful apathy, black lawlessness in the courts and all manner of shameful deeds.” Or: “We will be the democrats among the other nations of Europe and the heralds of humanitarian principles that promote the free and independent development of each tribe.”

Orest Miller, who is well known in Russian folklore, was also enthusiastic about such a national ideal. However, when Khomyakov increasingly began to deify the Russian people instead of seeking the divine in the heavens, Orest Miller dared to voice a few objections. The result was that he was dismissed. But we see how what has been smouldering in the East for a long time is now haunting the West and is taking shape entirely out of the Russian character.

Thus we see how perhaps the most outstanding Russian, Soloviev, takes it up in his own way, but idealizes it, one might say spiritualizes it, elevating it to the spiritual, how he ties in with Slavophilism. But not in the way that a German would say: If the power that lives in the folk soul is to take effect, it must take hold of the individual human being, it must work through the soul forces of the ego; the individual human being must be the channel of what the folk soul has to say to the world. Thus Solowjew does not stand by the forces of the national soul, but he stands so that he also points upwards to that cloud-like spiritual image which stands above the individual in a spiritual height, in a spiritual distance. And then he says to himself: This Divine-Spiritual will work on the national soul. This Divine-Spiritual has set itself the task of carrying out a certain mission through the Russian people. And it does not matter what the Russian people are like. Whatever the case may be, what has to happen will happen by a miracle. Sinful or not sinful, vicious or not vicious, foolish or wise – that can do nothing to help it; but that which is at work there, it works through a cosmic miracle, simply through people, however they are. These are Solovyev's own words:

“That power which will give a new and complete content to the history of mankind can only be a revelation of that higher, divine world; but the people in whom that power will reveal itself must become the mediator between the human race and the superhuman reality, the free, self-conscious instrument of the latter.”

The human race, by which he means his people, is to become the instrument for the divine miracle that will take place, without the national soul allowing the individual souls to receive the powers for what the Russian people will accomplish in the development of humanity.

When we see that one of the most significant and best seers is far removed from what constitutes the character of the German being, we understand that a man like Boris Chicherin, who died in 1904, was unable to penetrate very far when he wanted to place himself on the peculiar basis of German thinking, when he wanted to tie in with Hegel. In his great work 'Science and Religion', Boris Chicherin attempts above all to develop the idea of how the human soul, through the ideas and thoughts it can develop within itself, gradually finds its way up to a point where it can mystically grasp the great divine rule. He tried to carry out this idea in jurisprudence and political science. But he fell from favor and was dismissed as Mayor of Moscow after Alexander III came to power, when he gave a speech that was completely imbued with the idea that what man can grasp in his soul can truly merge with the Russian essence.

More and more, we see how Slavophilism takes hold of that which those who could see through it a little had to say: it is no longer about some ideal, about something conceptual, but about something quite different. It is about asserting not some supernatural, not some conceptual, but simply the immediate physical powers of a race. And I believe it is good if a Western European does not choose a star witness who is a Western European, but someone who could have known. And someone who could know, as we shall see in a moment, says of Slavophilism, after it had passed through the minds of Katkov and Aksakov and others: “Slavophilism had become a fairground commodity, filling with wild, animalistic shouting all the dirty streets, squares and back alleys of Russian life.”

But the man who said this, and who also said another telling word about what Slavophilism had gradually become, he knew! The other word he said, directing it against Danilevsky, was: “The Russian writer lacks the strength to rise above the gloomy present; he content himself with the task of summarizing the contradictions prevailing among humanity into a well-rounded system and to draw from this system some practical postulates for his own fraction of humanity to which he himself belongs.”

All this can be seen as a consequence of what has been said: that the individual soul forces work chaotically, inharmoniously, at the moment when the divine life hovering over the individual is not grasped, not grasped in the soul of the individual himself. And this is particularly emphasized by this knowledgeable spirit in these words. And who is the knowledgeable spirit? It is the same one about whom a well-known Russian speaks the following words:

The man of whom the Russian prince Trzbeizkos says these words spoke, as I have quoted it, in turn of Slavophilism, from which he himself also started, even if he idealized it; for it is Solowjew himself who speaks about Slavophilism in this way. What is important is that we hear from an informed source what has been brewing in the East and is now coming towards us.

But, you see, even at the highest level of Soloviev's thinking, there is still something anarchic in the soul of the Eastern man. For whereas Solowjew, as early as 1880, in his “Criticism of Abstract Principles,” expressed himself as I have quoted, he comes, at the end of the eighties, to realize how far what is reality, what surrounds him as reality, is removed from what he has dreamed. Then the demand arises in him that politics should become moral. In “Morality and Politics,” Solowjew says the following: “We must not delude ourselves: the politics of selfish interest, which in international and social relations has hatred in its train, is transformed into the politics of anthropophagy (he means man-eating), which in the end destroys all morality, even in private and family life. For man is a logical being and cannot long remain in the monstrous discord between the principles of private and political activity. We are preached about our special sublimity and mission, but let us remember that the resulting and mutually exclusive claims must ultimately, in the name of cultural sublimity, lead to a fight to the death and the right of violence."

Thus Solowjew himself, who must gradually look away from reality in order to live in peace, one might say in peace of mind, with what he has dreamed up as an ideal, a spiritual Slavophilism: “The Russian people are not only an ethnographic unit with its innate characteristics and material interests, but a people that feels that above these characteristics and interests the cause of God hovers; a people ready to sacrifice itself for this cause; a theocratic people by vocation and duty.

But Solowjew also sees that what he dreams of and sees has not yet become a duty, not even an awareness, in his people. And one may use his words when answering the question he raises: why Europe cannot love what is really going on in the East. Solowjew himself raises the question: Why does Europe not love us? And he gives the answer. It is at the same time the answer for much that comes to us from the East like a spiritual aura in our immediate present. He asks this question: Why does Europe not love us? And he answers it in 1888: “Europe looks at us with disgust, because it sees the decisive thing not in the power and mission of Russia, but in its sin.” So Solowjew. But there were also very hard realities that had to be faced by this soul in order for it to arrive at such a conviction. It was especially hard for him when he had to see what Slavophilism had gradually become, which he himself had to say had become a fairground commodity. And finally, he finds it only logical that this Slavophilism should have come about in the end, because the Russian people, without looking at what they themselves first wanted to make of themselves, were to give Europe directly what they are. Solowjew finds it consistent that the Moscow University professor Yarosh should have praised Ivan the Terrible as “the perfect model of the qualities of a Russian in general and of an Orthodox and a tsar in particular”. This was said not in jest but in complete earnest, and Solowjew finds it consistent. For, he argues, if you look at what the Slavophiles actually have in mind when they speak of the Russian people, then it basically comes out typically in Ivan the Terrible. Nothing else could have come out as the ultimate consequence, Solowjew argues. But now he asks himself the question: how does Slavophilism come to such strange forms? Solowjew saw before him how the Slavophiles gradually said: the West is rotten, we can't use anything from it; new, young life must flow from the West to the East, and this new, young life is to be found with us. Solowjew saw all this. But in a certain respect he is thoroughly a genuinely Russian man, such a Russian man that he had something left over, one would like to say, for those who at least had the courage to carry this last consequence through. Of Katkov he said: “He had the courage to strip rational religion of all ideal embellishment and to present the Russian people themselves as the object of religious worship, not in the framework of the supposed virtues of the people, but in the name of factual power, of which the state is the living word or the embodiment of the deified people.”

That is what Solowjew says. But he asks himself: Yes, but where does the Russian, who is full of humility, get it all from? That was a question for Solowjew. He wanted to examine where it actually is in the Russian that is shown by those who threw the provocative Slavophilism into the people as a firebrand. And lo and behold, he found a strange answer. He examined the works of Danilevsky, the successor of Katkov and Aksakov. And he found that the people who hurl and have hurled fiery torches against the West had initially borrowed them in the thought-forms, in the whole logic, from the French Jesuit pupil Joseph de Ma istre, Solowjew could prove that the whole stamp of thought of the Slavophiles is borrowed from the one who is a Western European spirit; that Western European spirit who at the beginning of the 19th century established the doctrine: People cannot come into the spiritual through what is within themselves, but only and alone through authority, and he means the papal authority. That which she decrees can lead people to the spiritual world. If you want to read about de Maistre, you need only read the beautifully written article that Georg Brandes, the all-rounder, wrote in his “Geistesströmungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (Spiritual Currents of the Nineteenth Century) – the same Brandes who who is, of course, less a gardener of intellectual culture, who does not like to plant, but who knows how to cut the flowers everywhere and put together fantasy bouquets that may seem very ingenious to people. But if you want to get an idea from these bouquets, you can easily get everything from Brandes.

Thus Solowjew had made a strange discovery, which was illuminating for him, though. That with which Europe is to be invaded and overcome from the east comes from the— as Solowjew says—Jesuit pupil, that is, from his thoughts into the thoughts of the Slavophiles. And so Soloviev has no choice but to say the characteristic words at the end: “A tiny morsel from the intellectual banquet of the West proved sufficient to nourish our national and political consciousness for half a century, and a single one of the countless twigs from the Western European tree of knowledge of good and evil were not only proudly contrasted with the whole tree from which they had been plucked, but even contrasted with it as the Russian tree of life, which should grow and embrace the whole world.

That was indeed a remarkable discovery. But Solowjew pursued the matter further. And finally he discovered a remarkable book by Bergeret: 'Principes de politique.' And he found that this reactionary spirit Bergeret also reappears with his thought forms in the Russian Slavophiles. And finally he discovered a German book written in 1857 by a 'strange fellow', Heinrich Rückert. I do not believe that there is a person here in this hall who knows anything about this book. I also do not believe that there is anyone in Berlin who knows anything about it, except perhaps scholars in this specialized field. The book is entitled: 'Textbook of World History in Organic Development'. But Solowjew says: Russian patriots have also copied from this book. Now he had it together. Now he knew the forces that had come together to be effective, to be led into the field against the West. Now he knew what had seduced even such fine minds as Orest Miller and others. And Solowjew spoke the words:

“Our patriots condemn various views because they are Masonic. In this case, their own view of Russia and patriotism is doubly condemnable, from our point of view and from theirs, because it is alien, un-Russian, slavishly transplanted from foreign soil.”

That was certainly an important revelation. And after this revelation, Solowjew did not find many friends among those who had been his friends before. But this Solowjew was really a strange person. After his first Slavophile period, after Alexander II had been murdered, he gave a fiery speech in which he advised the successor to prove himself to be truly Russian. Solowjew saw this “genuinely Russian” in the fact that Alexander II naturally had to pardon the murderers of his predecessor; the idea of the sublime must first be expressed in this. And they “behaved Russian” in response to this speech. Solowjew was chased away, he was chased out of his position. He had already had the fate of seeing that some of the things he had seen in his idealism were different in reality than he had dreamed them up.

Now, when you bring in such an impeccable star witness as this great philosopher is, you can see how, little by little over decades, a current bordering on megalomania has arisen in the East that must necessarily lead to arson in the end.

I have chosen to invoke Soloviev as a characterizer of the Russian character and the Russian national soul in contrast to the German national soul because we are particularly accused by Russia of not being able to understand the Russian character. Well, I think we can help ourselves by not characterizing it ourselves, but by having it characterized by someone who lived in such a way that he was interwoven with Slavophilism, albeit an ideal Slavophilism; that we call upon such a one, upon whom we may indeed call.

And if we now add this to what has been said about the relationship of Germans and Central Europeans to the outside world, then much of what has happened becomes understandable from its intellectual underpinnings. What is said about Germany in our times often coincides with nonsense and futility.

What the German feels to be his essential nature must be particularly offensive to him in this time; offensive for the very reason that from such a consideration what has been said from other points of view can also be derived: the great hope for the future of German activity and of the German spirit. This German spirit, when we consider its relation to the soul of the German people, appears as a spirit that tends to deepen the spiritual life of the whole cultural development of mankind.

If only those who so glibly speak of the German character from abroad would observe in detail the struggles of those souls who are truly gripped by the German national spirit. Then they would not, as I stated last time, depict something like Romain Rolland's “Schultze”, but they would see something different; because in many places something different can be seen, as I have only given a few examples of.

In this lecture, I wanted to point out how German idealism itself is still a germ, how it must develop into a flower, into fruit, into a complete grasp of the spiritual world, which is grasped in its true, concrete vitality, precisely because the German national soul is connected with the individual souls.

A personality comes to mind, a man who died as a grammar school headmaster in Bromberg in 1867. He is a very different kind of spirit in German intellectual life from this 'Schultze' of Romain Rolland. He is Johann Heinrich Deinhardt. His treatises are written from a thoroughly German way of thinking. They contain a remarkable passage. His treatises were published by his friend Schmidt, including a treatise on the immortality of the soul, which was written in a simple style to his friend, who was then his editor. In it, he wants to show how it occurred to him that man, even while he is here in life, is working on an immortal body; that everything he accomplishes serves to organize an immortal body that passes through the gate of death. — Thus we see this simple school teacher on the path of spiritual science.

And so much more might be cited. In such instances the co-working of the German national soul is fulfilled through what the individual strives for. In such matters it is revealed how this German national soul provides the individual soul with the impulses to work towards the very first sources of knowledge and to link the individual soul life of the human being to the eternal in the soul life. But we will continue this discussion tomorrow.

Today, however, I would like to summarize what I had to say about the supporting forces that are contained in Germanness and that are shown precisely in this ever-renewed connection to the very first sources of human knowledge and human experience; I would like to conclude the consideration that I have given to the German national soul in relation to other national souls, with the words of a little-known Austrian poet, who, from a truly German soul, one might say, from a dialogue with the German national soul, published his “German Sounds from Austria” in 1881. In these “German Sounds from Austria” by Fercher von Steinwand, we find a poem that shows so well how vividly the individual German can feel in it, in what lives and moves, always rejuvenating the German essence, as the German folk soul. It presents itself to us as in a vision. As if all those who are interested in it come to the Kyffhäuser mountain to see as guests the mystery of the Kyffhäuser, the mystery of Emperor Barbarossa resting within, who keeps the power of the German essence hidden like a mystery. And for Fercher von Steinwand, one of the guests who come here represents the German spirit: the spirit, as already mentioned, that Fercher von Steinwand, the poet of “Deutsche Klänge aus Österreich” (German Sounds from Austria), also feels as the spirit that constantly rejuvenates the soul of each individual because it always allows that which speaks from the world of the stars, from suns and moons, to shine within; the spirit that speaks to the heart in the most intimate sense, because it speaks of the vastness of the universe; this German spirit, this rejuvenating German spirit, is what the German poet from Austria, Fercher von Steinwand, lets speak with words, in which I would like to summarize what I have tried to hint at today in terms of my feelings about the German spirit, especially in comparison with other European national spirits:

What springs from the riddles of this earth,
What finds hearts, what masters minds,
What flows eternally speaking from the stars
And reveals an inimitable God,
What seemingly gets lost in time and the world
And yet shoots around us in a thousand streams:
That is the primal power of the German spirit,
And to speak it clearly is the oath it has sworn!

[ 1 ] At the end of the New Testament stands a reAmarkable document, the Apocalypse, the Secret Revelation of St. John. We have only to read the opening words to feel the deep mystic character of this book. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants how the necessary things are shortly going to happen; and this is sent in signs by the angel of God unto his servant John.” What is here revealed is “sent in signs”. Therefore we must not take the literal meaning of the words as they stand, but seek for a deeper meaning of which the words are only signs. But there are other things also which point to a hidden meaning. St. John addresses himself to seven churches in Asia. Not actual, material churches can be meant: the number seven is the sacred number, clearly chosen on account of its Symbolic meaning. The actual number of Asiatic churches was different. And the manner in which St. John arrived at the revelation also points to something mysterious. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, ‘What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches.'” Thus, we have to do with a revelation received by St. John in the spirit. And it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Wrapped in a hidden meaning, there appears what Christ Jesus manifested to the world. Therefore we must look for this hidden meaning in the teachings of Christ. This revelation bears the same relation to ordinary Christianity as the revelation of the Mysteries bore to popular religion in pre-Christian times. On this account the attempt to treat the Apocalypse as a Mystery appears to be justified.

[ 2 ] The Apocalypse is addressed to seven churches. To see the reason for this, we have only to single out one of the seven messages sent. In the first of these it is said: “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: and hast borne, and hast patience, and for m) name’s sake hast labored, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy highest love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the best works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” This is the message addressed to the angel of the first community. The angel, who represents the spirit of this community, has entered upon the path pointed out by Christianity. He is able to distinguish between the false adherents of Christianity and the true. He wishes to be Christian and has founded his work on the name of Christ. But it is required of him that he should not bar his own way to the highest love through any errors. He is shown the possibility of taking a wrong course through such errors. Through Christ Jesus the way for attaining to the Divine has been pointed out. Perseverance is needed for advancing further in the spirit in which the first impulse was given. It is also possible to believe too soon that one has grasped the right spirit. This happens when the disciple lets himself be led a short way by Christ and then leaves His leadership and gives way to false ideas about it. The disciple thereby falls back again into the lower self. He strays from the highest love. The knowledge attached to the senses and intellect may be raised into a higher sphere, becoming wisdom by being spiritualized and made divine. If it does not reach this height it remains in the realm of the perishable. Christ Jesus has pointed the path to the Eternal, and knowledge must with unwearied perseverance follow the path that leads to its becoming divine. Lovingly must it trace out the methods which transmute it into wisdom. The Nicolaitanes were a sect who took Christianity too lightly. They saw one thing only, that Christ is the divine Word, the eternal wisdom born in man. Therefore they concluded that human wisdom was the Divine Word, and that it was enough to pursue human knowledge in order to realize the Divine in the world. But the meaning of Christian wisdom cannot be construed thus. The knowledge which in the first instance is human wisdom is as perishable as anything else, unless it is first transmuted into divine wisdom: Thou art not thus, says the spirit to the angel of Ephesus; thou hast not relied merely upon human wisdom. Thou hast patiently trodden the Christian path. But thou must not think that the very highest love is not needed to attain to the goal. A love is necessary which far surpasses all love for other things. Only such can be the highest love. The path to the divine is an endless one, and it must be understood that when the first step has been gained it can only be the preparation for ascending higher and higher. Such is the first of these messages, as they are to be interpreted. The meaning of the others may be found in a similar way.

[ 3 ] St. John turned and saw “seven golden candlesticks,” and “in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.” We are told (I, 20) that “the seven candlesticks are the seven churches.” This means that the candlesticks are seven different ways of attaining to the Divine. They are all more or less imperfect. And the Son of Man “had in his right hand seven stars” (I, 16). “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches” (I, 20). The guiding spirits, or daimons (cf. p- 71), of the wisdom of the Mysteries have here become the guiding angels of the churches. The churches are represented as bodies for spiritual beings; and the angels are the souls of those bodies, just as human souls are the guiding powers of human bodies. The churches are the imperfect ways to the Divine, and the souls of the churches were to become guides along those paths. For this purpose they must themselves have for their leader the being who has in his right hand seven stars. “And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.” This sword is also found in the Mysteries. The candidate for initiation was terrified by a sword (cf. p. 17). This indicates the situation of one who wishes to know the Divine by experience, so that the face of wisdom may shine upon him like the sun. St. John also goes through this experience. It is to be a test of his strength (cf. p. 17). “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not” (I 17) . The candidate for initiation must pass through the experiences which otherwise man only undergoes in death. His guide must lead him beyond the region in which birth and death have any meaning. The initiate enters upon a new life. “And I was dead; and, behold: I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”

Thus prepared, St. John is led on to learn the secrets of existence. “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.” The messages to the seven spirits of the churches make known to St. John what is to take place in the physical world in order to prepare the way for Christianity. What he now sees “in the Spirit” takes him to the spiritual fountain-head of things, hidden behind physical evolution, but to be realized as a subsequent spiritualized age by means of physical evolution. The initiate experiences now in the spirit what is to happen in the future. “And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” In this way is described the source of the world of sense in the pictures in which it appears to the seer. “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold” (IV. 4). Beings far advanced on the path of wisdom thus surround the fountainhead of existence in order to gaze on its infinite Beingness and bear testimony to it. “And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings; and they were full of eyes round about and within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.” It is not difficult to see that the four beasts represent the supersensible life underlying physical forms of life. Afterwards, when the trumpets sound, they lift up their voices, that is, when the life expressed in sense-forms has been transmuted into spiritual life.

[ 4 ] In the right hand of him who sits on the throne is the book in which the path to the highest wisdom is traced out (V, 1). There is only one worthy to open the book. “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof.” The book has seven seals—human wisdom is sevenfold; and the fact that human wisdom is represented as being sevenfold is again associated with the sacred character of the number seven.¹ The mystic wisdom of Philo designates as seals the eternal cosmic thoughts that come to expression in things. Human wisdom seeks those creative thoughts; but only in the book scaled with them is Divine Truth to be found. First the fundamental thoughts of creation must be unveiled, the seals opened: before that which is in the book can be revealed. Jesus, the Lion, has power to open the seals. He has given a direction to the great creative thoughts which, through them, leads to wisdom. The Lamb that was slain and has bought its divinity with its blood, Jesus, who received the Christ into Himself, and who thus passed through the Life-Death Mystery in the supreme sense, opens the book (V, 9, 10). And as each seal is opened (VI), the four beasts declare what they know.

At the opening of the first seal, St. John sees a white horse on which sits a rider with a bow.² The first universal power, an embodiment of creative thought, becomes visible. It is directed into the right course by the new rider, Christianity. Strife is allayed by the new faith. At the opening of the second seal a red horse appears, ridden by one who takes Peace, the second universal power, away from the earth, so that humanity may not, through sloth, neglect to cultivate divine things. The opening of the third seal shows the universal power of Justice, guided by Christianity. The fourth discloses the power of Religion which, through Christianity, has received new authority.

The meaning of the four beasts thus becomes plain. They are the four chief universal powers, to which Christianity gives a new direction: War (the lion); Peaceful Work (the bull); Justice (the being with the human face); and Religious Ardor (the eagle). The Meaning of the third being becomes clear when it is said at the opening of the third seal: “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny,” and that the rider holds “a pair of balances”. And at the opening of the fourth seal a rider becomes visible whose name “was Death, and Hell followed with him”. This rider is Religious Justice (VI, 6, 8). [ 5 ] When the fifth seal is opened there appear the souls of those who have already acted in the spirit of Christianity. Creative thought itself, embodied in Christianity, shows itself here; but by this Christianity is meant at first only the first Christian community which was transitory like other forms of creation. The sixth seal is opened (VI); it is made evident that the spiritual world of Christianity is an eternal world. The people at large appear permeated by that spiritual world out of which Christianity itself proceeded. What it has itself created becomes sanctified. “And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (VIL, 4) . They are those who prepared for the Eternal before the coming of Christianity, and who were transformed by the Christ-Impulse.

The opening of the seventh seal follows. It becomes evident what true Christianity is to mean to the world. The seven angels, “which stood before God,” appear (VILI, 2). Again these angels are spirits from the ancient Mysteries transferred to Christianity. They are the spirits who lead to the vision of God in a truly Christian way. Therefore what occurs next is a leading to God: it is an initiation bestowed upon St. John. The proclamations of the angels are accompanied by the signs necessary during initiations. “The first angel sounded and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.” And similar things take place when the other angels sound their trumpets.

At this point we sec that this was not merely an initiation in the old sense, but that a new one was taking the place of the old. Christianity was not to be confined, like the ancient Mysteries, to a few elect ones. It was to belong to the whole of humanity. It was to be a religion of the people; the truth was to be given to everyone who “has ears to hear”. The old initiates were singled out from a great number; the trumpets of Christianity sound for every one who is willing to hear them. It is for him to approach. This is the reason why the terrors accompanying this initiation of humanity appear enormously intensified. What is to become of the earth and its inhabitants in a far distant future is revealed to St. John at his initiation. Underlying this is the thought that initiates are able to foresee in higher worlds what is realized in the lower world only in the future. The seven messages represent the meaning of Christianity to the present age, the seven seals represent what is being prepared through Christianity for future accomplishment. The future is veiled and sealed to the uninitiated; it is unsealed in initiation. When the earthly period is over, during which the seven messages hold good, a more spiritual time will begin. Then life will no longer be as it appears in physical forms, but even outwardly it will be a copy of its supersensible forms. These are represented by the four animals and the other seal-pictures. In a still more distant future appears that form of the earth which the initiate experiences through the trumpets.

Thus the initiate learns prophetically what is to happen. And the Christian initiate learns how the Christ-Impulse intervenes and works on in earthly evolution. After it has been shown how everything perishes that clings too closely to the transitory to attain to true Christianity, there appears the mighty angel who has open in his hand a little book which he gives to St. John. “And he said unto me, Take it and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey” (X, 9) . St. John was not only to read the little book, he was to absorb it and let its contents permeate him. What avails any knowledge unless man is vitally imbued with it? Wisdom has to become life, man must not merely recognize the Divine but must himself unite with it. Such wisdom as is written in the book no doubt causes pain to the perishable part of man: “it shall make thy belly bitter;” but so much the more does it make happy the eternal part: “but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.”

Only by such an initiation can Christianity become actual on the earth. It kills everything pertaining to the lower nature. “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” By this is meant the followers of Christ who are ill-treated by the temporal powers. But what is ill-treated is only the mortal part of human nature which they will then have conquered by their true being. Thereby their fate is an imitation of the model destiny of Christ Jesus. “Spiritual Sodom and Egypt” is the symbol of a life which cleaves to the outer and is not changed by the Christ-Impulse. Christ is everywhere crucified in the lower nature. Where the lower nature conquers, all remains dead. The dead bodies of men lie about in the public places of cities. Those who overcome the lower nature and awaken the crucified Christ hear the trumpet of the seventh angel: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (XI, 15). “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament” (XI, 19).

In the vision of these events the initiate sees renewed the old struggle between the lower and the higher natures. For everything the former neophyte had to go through must be repeated in one who follows the Christian path. Just as Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon, so now “the great dragon, that old serpent” (XII, 9) must be overcome. Woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it is not raised to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. In the Apocalypse it appears as the “old serpent”. From the remotest times the serpent had been the symbol of knowledge in all mystic wisdom. Man may be led astray by this serpent—knowledge—if he does not bring to life in himself the Son of God, who crushes the serpent’s head. “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (XII, 9). These words disclose the purpose of Christianity: a new kind of initiation. What had been attained in the Mysteries was to be attained in a new form. For in them, too, the serpent had to be overcome, but this was no longer to take place in the old way. The one primary Mystery, the Christian Mystery, was to replace the many Mysteries of antiquity. Jesus, in whom the Logos had been made flesh, was to become the initiator of the whole of humanity, and humanity was to be His own community of initiates.

What was to take place was not a segregation of the elect but a linking together of all. As each grows up to it so does he become an initiate. The good tidings are announced to all, and he who has an ear to hear hastens to learn the secrets. The voice of the heart is to decide in each individual case. Not this person or that is to be introduced into the Mystery temples, but the word is to be spoken to all; and to one it will then appeal more strongly than to another. It will be left to the daimon, the angel within each human breast, to decide how far the initiation can go. The whole world is a Mystery-temple. Not only is salvation to come to those who see the wonderful rites in the temples devoted to initiation which give them a guarantee of eternal life, but “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Even if at first they grope in the dark, the light may nevertheless come to them later. Nothing is to be withheld from anyone; the way is to be open to all.

The latter part of the Apocalypse describes clearly the dangers threatening Christianity through antiChristian powers, and the final triumph of Christianity. All other gods are merged into the one Christian Divinity: “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (XXI, 23). The secret of the Revelation of St. John is that the Mysteries are no longer to be kept under lock and key. “And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.”

The author of the Apocalypse has set forth what he believes to be the relation of his church to the churches of antiquity. His purpose was to express in a spiritual Mystery what he thought about the Mysteries themselves. He wrote his Mystery on the Isle of Patmos, and he is said to have received the “revelation” in a grotto. These details indicate that the revelation was of a Mystery character.

Christianity, then, grew out of the Mysteries. Its wisdom is born as a Mystery in the Apocalypse, but a Mystery that aims to transcend the limits of the old Mystery world. The individual Mystery was to become the universal Mystery.

It may appear to be a contradiction to say that the secrets of the Mysteries were revealed through Christianity, and that nevertheless a Christian Mystery is to be seen again in the spiritual visions of the writer of the Apocalypse. The contradiction disappears directly when we reflect that the secrets of the ancient Mysteries were revealed by the events in Palestine. Through these there became manifest what had previously been veiled in the Mysteries. There is now a new secret, namely, that which has been infused into the evolution of the world through the appearance of the Christ. The initiate of ancient times, when in the spiritual world, saw how evolution points to the as yet hidden Christ. The Christian initiate experiences the concealed effects of the manifested Christ.

• 1. An explanation of the meaning of the number seven may be obtained in my book, Occult Science, an Outline.
• 2. The meanings of the Apocalyptic signs can only be given very briefly here. Of course, all these things might be much more thoroughly explained, but the scope of this book does not allow this.

[ 1 ] At the end of the New Testament stands a remarkable document, the Apocalypse, the secret revelation of Saint John. We need only read the opening words to feel the esoteric character of this book. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God granted him, to show to his servants how the necessary events will shortly run their course; this is sent in signs by the angel of God to his servant John.”⁶⁸ What is revealed here is “sent in signs.” Therefore we must not take the literal sense of the words as they stand, but seek for a deeper sense, of which the words are only signs. But there are also many other things which point to such a “secret meaning.” John addresses himself to seven communities in Asia. This cannot mean actual, material communities. For the number seven is the sacred symbolic number which must be chosen because of its symbolic meaning. The actual number of the Asiatic communities would have been different. And its esoteric character is further indicated by the manner in which John arrived at the revelation: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a voice like a trumpet, saying; What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven communities.” Therefore we are dealing with a revelation received by John in the Spirit. And it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. What became revealed to the world through Christ Jesus appears in an esoteric form. Such an esoteric sense therefore must be sought in the teaching of Christ. This revelation bears the same relationship to ordinary Christianity as the revelation of the Mysteries in pre Christian times bore to the folk religion. Hence the attempt to treat this Apocalypse as a Mystery appears justified.

[ 2 ] The Apocalypse is addressed to seven communities. What does this mean? We need only single out one of the messages to perceive the sense. In the first of these is said: “Write to the angel of the community of Ephesus: The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lights. I know your deeds and what you have suffered and also your patient endurance, and that you will not support those who are evil, and that you have called to account those who call themselves apostles, and are not, and that you have recognized them as false. And you are enduring patiently and building up your work upon my name, and you have not grown weary of it. But I demand from you that you should attain to your highest love. Realize then from what you have fallen, change your thinking and accomplish the highest deeds. If you do not, I will come and move your light from its place, unless you change your thinking. But this you have, that you despise the deeds of the Nicolaitians, which I also despise. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the communities: To him who is victorious I will give food of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.” (Rev. 2:1–7)—This is the message addressed to the angel of the first community. The angel, who represents the spirit of his community, has entered upon the path marked out by Christianity. He is able to distinguish between the false adherents of Christianity and the true. He wishes to be Christian, and has founded his work on the name of Christ. But it is required of him that he should not bar his own way to the highest love by errors of any kind. He is shown the possibility of taking a wrong course through such errors. Through Christ Jesus the path toward attainment of the divine has been marked out. Patient endurance is needed for further advancement in the sense of the first impulse. It is possible to believe too soon that one has grasped the right sense. This happens if someone allows himself to be led part of the way by Christ and then, after all, leaves this leadership by surrendering himself to false ideas about it. Thereby he relapses into his lower self. He has left the “first love.” The knowledge arising out of material perception may be raised into a higher sphere, becoming wisdom by being spiritualized and made divine. If it does not reach this height, it remains among transitory things. Christ Jesus has pointed out the path to the Eternal. With unwearied, patient endurance knowledge must follow the path leading to its apotheosis. Lovingly it must follow the steps which transform it into wisdom. The Nicolaitians were a sect who took Christianity too lightly. They saw but one thing: Christ is the divine Word, the eternal wisdom which will be born in man. Therefore they concluded that human wisdom is the divine Word. Hence it follows that one need only pursue human knowledge in order to realize the divine in the world. But the meaning of Christian wisdom cannot be construed thus. The knowledge which begins as human wisdom is as transitory as anything else unless it is changed into divine wisdom. You are not thus, says the “Spirit” to the angel of Ephesus; you have not relied merely upon human wisdom. You have trodden the Christian path with patient endurance. But you must not believe that the very highest love is not needed to attain this goal. For this a love is necessary which far surpasses all love for other things. Only this is the “highest love.” The path to the divine is an infinite one, and it must be understood that when the first stage has been reached it can be only the preparation for ascending to ever higher stages. In this way, through the first of the messages is shown how they should be interpreted. The sense of the others can be found in a similar manner.

[ 3 ] John turned and saw “seven golden lights,” and “in the midst of the lights the image of the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his loins; his head and his hair were gleaming white like wool or snow, and his eyes were sparkling in the fire.” We are told (Rev.1:20) that “the seven lights are the seven communities.” This means that the lights are seven different ways of attaining to the divine. All of them are more or less imperfect. And the Son of Man “had seven stars in his right hand” (verse 16). “The seven stars are the angels of the seven communities” (verse 20). Here the “guiding spirits” (daemons) of the wisdom of the Mysteries have become the guiding angels of the “communities.” These communities are represented as bodies for spiritual beings. And the angels are the souls of these “bodies,” just as human souls are the guiding powers of human bodies. The communities are the paths to the divine in the imperfect, and the souls of the communities should become guides along these paths. For this purpose they themselves must grow in such a way that their leader is the being who has the “seven stars” in his right hand. “And out of his mouth issued a two-edged sharp sword, and his countenance in its glory was like the shining sun.” In the Mysteries this sword is also found. The neophyte was terrified by a “drawn sword.” This indicates the situation of one wishing to know the divine by experience, so that the “countenance” of wisdom may “shine upon him with a glory like the sun.” Through this experience John also goes. It is to be a test of his strength. “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead; and he laid his right hand upon me and said: Do not be terrified” (verse 17). The neophyte must go through experiences which otherwise come to man only when he goes through death. His guide must lead him beyond the region where birth and death have meaning. The initiate enters upon a new life, “and I was dead, and behold, I became alive throughout the cycles of life; and I have the keys of Death and the Realm of the Dead.”—Thus prepared, John is lead onward in order to learn the secrets of existence. “After this I looked, and behold, the door to heaven was opened, and the first voice which became audible sounded to me like a trumpet, and said Come up hither, and I will show you what will happen after this.” The messages of the seven spirits of the communities announce to John what is to occur in the material, physical world in order to prepare the way for Christianity; what he now sees “in the Spirit” leads him to the spiritual, primal source of things, hidden behind physical evolution, but which will be realized in a spiritualized age in the near future by means of physical evolution. The initiate experiences now in the Spirit what is to happen in the future. “And immediately I was withdrawn into the realm of Spirit. And I beheld a throne in heaven, and one seated on the throne. And he who sat there appeared like the jasper and carnelian stone; and a rainbow surrounded the throne that looked like an emerald.” In this way the primal source of the material world is described in the pictures in which it clothes itself for the seer. “And in the sphere around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated upon the twenty-four thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white flowing garments, and with golden crowns upon their heads.” (chapter 4, verses 1, 2)—Beings far advanced upon the path of wisdom thus surround the primal source of existence, to gaze on its infinite essence and to bear testimony to it. “And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind. And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second like a bull, the third looked like a human being, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. And each of the four living creatures had six wings, full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to proclaim: Holy, holy, holy, the God, the Almighty, who was, and is, and is to be.” It is not difficult to perceive that the four beasts represent the supersensible life underlying the forms of life presented by the material world. Afterward, when the trumpets sound, they raise their voices, that is, when the life expressed in material forms has been transmuted into spiritual life.

[ 4 ] In the right hand of him who sits on the throne is the scroll in which the path to the highest wisdom is marked out (chapter 5, verse 1). Only one is worthy to open the scroll. “Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” The scroll has seven seals.^c9 The wisdom of man is sevenfold. That it is designated as being sevenfold is again connected with the sacred character of the number seven. The mystical wisdom of Plato designates as seals the eternal cosmic thoughts which come to expression in things.⁶⁹ Human wisdom seeks for these creative thoughts. But only the scroll which is sealed with them, contains the divine truth. The fundamental thoughts of creation must first be unveiled, the seals must be opened, before what is in the scroll can be revealed. Jesus, the Lion, has power to open the seals. He has given a direction to the great creative thoughts which, through them, leads to wisdom. The Lamb who was strangled and sacrificed his blood for God; Jesus, who bore Christ in himself and who thus, in the highest sense, passed through the Mystery of life and death, opens the scroll (chapter 5, verses 9–10). And as each seal is opened (chapter 6) the four living creatures declare what they know. At the opening of the first seal a white horse upon which sits a rider with a bow^c10, appears to John. The first cosmic power, an embodiment of creative thought, becomes visible. It is directed into the right course by the new rider, Christianity. Strife is quieted by the new faith. At the opening of the second seal a red horse appears, on which again there is a rider. He takes peace, the second cosmic power, from the earth so that through sloth humanity may not neglect to cultivate the divine. The opening of the third seal reveals the cosmic power of justice, guided by Christianity; the fourth brings the power of religion, which has received new dignity through Christianity. The meaning of the four living creatures thus becomes clear. They are the four chief cosmic powers which are to receive new leadership through Christianity, War: the lion; Peaceful Work: the bull; Justice: the being with the human face; and Religious Enthusiasm: the eagle. The meaning of the third being becomes clear when it is said at the opening of the third seal: “A quart of wheat for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling,” and that the rider holds a balance. At the opening of the fourth seal a rider becomes visible whose name was “Death, and Hell followed him.” Religious justice is the rider (chapter 6, verses 6 and 7).

[ 5 ] And when the fifth seal is opened there appear the souls of those who have already acted in the spirit of Christianity. Creative thought itself, embodied in Christianity, is manifested here. But by this Christianity is at first meant only the first community of Christians, which is transitory like other forms of creation. The sixth seal is opened (chapter 7), it is evident that the spiritual world of Christianity is an eternal world. The people seem to be permeated by that spiritual world out of which Christianity itself proceeded. What it has itself created becomes sanctified. “And I heard the number of the sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand who were sealed of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (chapter 7, verse 4). They are those who prepared for the eternal before Christianity existed, and who were transformed by the Christ impulse. The opening of the seventh seal follows. What true Christianity should mean for the world becomes evident. The seven angels who “stand before God” (chapter 8, verse 2) appear. Again these angels are spirits from the ancient Mystery-conceptions transferred to Christianity. They are the spirits who lead to the vision of God in a truly Christian way. Therefore what is next accomplished is a leading to God; it is an “initiation” which is bestowed upon John. The announcements of the angels are accompanied by the signs necessary at initiations. “The first angel sounded and hail came out of fire mingled with blood, and it fell on the earth. And a third of the earth was burnt up, also a third of the trees was burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.” And similar things happen at the announcements of the other angels when they sound their trumpets. At this point we see we are not dealing with an initiation in the old sense but with a new one which should take the place of the old. Christianity should not be confined, like the ancient Mysteries, to a few elect. It should belong to the whole of humanity. It should be a religion of the people; the truth should be given to each one who “has ears to hear.” The ancient mystics were singled out from a great number; the trumpets of Christianity sound for every one who is willing to hear them. Whether or not he draws near, depends upon himself. This is why the terrors accompanying this initiation of humanity are so enormously enhanced. What is to become of the earth and its inhabitants in a distant future is revealed to John at his initiation. Underlying this is the thought that initiates are able to foresee in the higher worlds what is realized only in the future for the lower world. The seven messages represent the meaning of Christianity for the present age; the seven seals represent what is now being prepared for the future through Christianity. The future is veiled, sealed to the uninitiated; in initiation it is unsealed. When the earthly period is over, during which the seven messages hold good, a more spiritual time will begin. Then life will no longer flow on as it appears in physical shapes, but even outwardly it will be a copy of its supersensible forms. These latter are represented by the four animals and the other images contained in the seals. In a yet more distant future appears that form of the earth which the initiate experiences through the trumpets. Thus the initiate prophetically experiences what is to happen. And one who is initiated in the Christian sense experiences how the Christ impulse penetrates and continues to work in earthly life. And after it has been shown how everything that clings too closely to the transitory to attain true Christianity has met with death, there appears the mighty angel with a little scroll open in his hand, and which he gives to John (chapter 10, verse 9): “And he said to me Take it, and eat: it will be bitter to your stomach but sweet in your mouth like honey.” John was not only to read the little scroll; he was to absorb it, letting its contents permeate him. What avails any cognition unless man is vitally and thoroughly permeated by it? Wisdom should become life; man should not merely perceive the divine, but become divine himself. Such wisdom as is written in the scroll no doubt causes pain to the transitory nature: “it will be bitter to your stomach;” but so much the more does it make the eternal part happy: “but it will be sweet in your mouth like honey.”—Only through such an initiation can Christianity become actual on the earth. It kills everything belonging to the lower nature. “And their dead bodies will lie in the square of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Christ was crucified.” This refers to the believers in Christ. They will be mistreated by the powers of the transitory world. But it is only the transitory members of human nature that will be ill treated, which the true essence will then have conquered. Thereby their destiny is a copy of the exemplary fate of Christ Jesus. “Spiritually Sodom and Egypt” is the symbol of a life which clings to the external and does not change itself through the Christ impulse. Christ is everywhere crucified in the lower nature. Where this lower nature conquers, everything remains dead. Human corpses cover the squares of the cities. Those who overcome the lower nature and bring about an awakening of the crucified Christ, hear the trumpet of the seventh angel: “The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign from cosmic age to cosmic age” (chapter 11, verse 15). “And the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple” (verse 9). In the conception of these events the initiate sees the old struggle between the lower and higher nature renewed. For everything the neophyte formerly had to go through must be repeated in the one who follows the Christian path. As once Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon, so now the “great Dragon, the old Serpent” (chapter 12, verse 9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it does not raise itself to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. Here in the Apocalypse it appears as the “old Serpent.” In all mystical wisdom from the remotest times the serpent has been the symbol of cognition. Man may be led astray by this serpent, by cognition, if he does not bring to life in him the Son of God who crushes the serpents head. “And the great Dragon was thrown out, that old Serpent, whose name is Devil, and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world: he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (chapter 12, verse 9). In these words one can read what Christianity would be. A new method of initiation. In a new form was to be attained what had been attained in the Mysteries. In them also the serpent had to be overcome. But this was no longer to take place in the same way. The one, the archetypal Mystery, the Christian Mystery, was to replace the many Mysteries of antiquity. Jesus, in whom the Logos became flesh, was to become the Initiator of the whole of humanity. And this humanity was to become his own community of mystics. Not a separation of the elect but a linking together of all is to occur. Each is to be able to become a mystic according to his maturity. The message sounds forth to all; he who has an ear, hastens to learn the secrets. The voice of the heart is to decide in each individual case. This or that person is not to be introduced individually into the Mystery temples, but the word is to be spoken to all; then some will be able to hear it more clearly than others. It will be left to the daemon, the angel within each human breast, to decide how far he can be initiated. The whole world is a Mystery temple. Blessing is not only to come to those who see the wonderful processes in the special temples for initiation, processes which give them a guarantee of the eternal, but “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe.” Even if at first they grope in the dark, nevertheless the light may come to them later. Nothing is to be withheld from anyone; the way is to be open to all. The latter part of the Apocalypse describes graphically the dangers threatening Christianity through Antichristian powers, and how the Christian powers must be victorious nevertheless. All other gods are united in the One Christian Divinity: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it: for the revelation of God lights it, and its light is the Lamb” (chapter 21, verse 23). The mystery of the “Revelation of Saint John” is that the Mysteries shall no longer be kept hidden. “And he said to me: Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the Godhead is near.”—The author of the Apocalypse has set forth what he believes to be the relationship of his church to the churches of antiquity. He wished to express what he thought about the Mysteries in the form of a spiritual Mystery. He wrote his Mystery on the island of Patmos. He is said to have received the “Revelation” in a grotto. These details indicate that the revelation was of the character of a Mystery. Thus Christianity emerged from the Mysteries. In the Apocalypse its wisdom is itself born as a Mystery, but as a Mystery which transcends the frame of the old Mystery world. The unique Mystery is to become the universal Mystery. It may appear contradictory to say that the secrets of the Mysteries became revealed through Christianity, and that nevertheless a Christian Mystery is to be seen again in the experience of the spiritual visions of the writer of the Apocalypse. The contradiction disappears at once when we reflect that the secrets of the ancient Mysteries were revealed through the events in Palestine. Through these events was laid bare what previously had been veiled in the Mysteries. A new Mystery has been introduced into the evolution of the world through the appearance of the Christ. The initiate of ancient times experienced, in the spiritual world, how evolution points the way to the as yet “hidden Christ;” the Christian initiate experiences the hidden effects of the “revealed Christ.”

• 68. Whenever Steiner quoted Martin Luther's translation of the Bible, the corresponding Authorized (King James) Version is given in this book. However, particularly in his quotations from the Apocalypse, Steiner's text sometimes coincides with neither the Greek original nor the Luther Version. In the first instance the present text as rendered in this book was translated directly from Steiner's German, and in the second, the Revised Standard Version proved to be nearer the German.
• c9. Regarding the significance of the number seven, enlightenment may be gained from my bookGeheimwissenschaft,Leipzig 1910. [26th edition, Stuttgart 1955.]
• 69. Philo, De specialibus legibus, The Special Laws, I, 47.
• c10. The meanings of the apocolyptic symbols can be only very briefly indicated here. Of course one could enter much more deeply into all these things. However, this does not lie within the scope of this book.