The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Mystics and the Time of Copernicus. Involution, Evolution and Creation out of Nothingness. The Number Four, the Sign of Creation.

Today we shall first occupy ourselves with a consideration of what is called the symbolism of numbers. When speaking of occult signs and symbols, it is necessary to mention the symbols that are expressed in numbers, even if only briefly. You may recall my elucidations of the day before yesterday in which I spoke of the numerical proportions in the universe, of the speed with which the single planets move and of the harmony of the spheres that comes about through these different speeds. Even from this you can see that numbers and numerical proportions have a certain meaning for the cosmos and the world. It is in numbers, we might say, that the harmony that wells through space is expressed. Now we shall turn our attention to a more intimate numerical symbolism, the meaning of which we can only touch upon, however. Were we really to immerse ourselves in it, many other things would have to be considered. Anyway, you will receive at least an idea of what is meant when it is said of the old occult Pythagorean School that it stressed the necessity of immersing oneself in the nature of numbers in order to gain an insight into the world.

To think about numbers may appear dry and dreary to many. To those who are affected by the materialistic culture of our times it will appear as mere playfulness if it is believed that, through a consideration of numbers, it is possible to gain knowledge of the nature of things. There was, however, a deep reason for the great Pythagoras to tell his pupils that knowledge concerning the nature of numbers would lead to the essence of things. But do not think it sufficient to reflect on the numbers 1, 3, or 7. Real occult teaching knows nothing of witchcraft and magic, nor of a superstitious meaning of some number. Its knowledge rests on deeper things, and from the short sketch I will give you, you will see that numbers can give you a clue to what is called meditation if you have the key to plunge deeply enough.

The number one must be our starting point. Later, in considering the other numbers, it will become clearer how far the number one symbolizes what I shall say. In all occultism the One has always designated the indivisible unity of God in the universe. God is indicated by the number one. We should not believe, however, that anything is to be gained by becoming engrossed in nothing but this number. You will see later how this absorption should rightfully come about, and it will be far more fruitful if we first consider the other numbers.

Two is called the number of revelation in occultism. This means that whatever appears to us in the world, whatever reveals itself, whatever is not in any way concealed, stands as a duality. Thereby we acquire ground under our feet, whereas with the number one we are groping in the unfathomable. Everywhere in nature you find that nothing reveals itself without being related to the number two. Light alone cannot reveal itself. There must also be shadow or darkness—that is, a duality. There could never be a world filled with manifest light were there not corresponding shadow. Thus it is with all things. It would never be possible for good to manifest if it did not have evil as shadow-picture. The duality of good and evil is a necessity in the manifest world. There are infinitely many dualities. They fit all life, but we must look for them at the right spots.

There is one important duality in life about which men might well reflect. Yesterday, we considered various conditions that a man experienced before he became an inhabitant of our present earth. We saw that on Saturn and on Sun he had a certain immortality in that he directed his body from outside, that he broke off pieces of this body and added new ones, so that he perceived nothing of fading and dying. Human consciousness at that time was not as it is today, but was dull. Men have wrestled through to a consciousness for the first time on our earth. It is here that a man first becomes a being who knew something of himself and could distinguish himself from objects. For this to occur, it was necessary not only that he direct his body from the outside, that he broke off pieces of this body and added new ones, so that he perceived nothing of fading and dying. Human consciousness at that time was not as it is today, but was dull. Men have wrestled through to a consciousness that is bound up with self-consciousness for the first time on our earth. It is here that a man first became a being who knew something of himself and could distinguish himself from objects. For this to occur, it was necessary not only that he direct himself from outside, but he also had to slip into this body, perceive himself therein, and say “I” to it. Only because a man finds himself completely in his body has he been able to achieve his full consciousness. Now, however, he also shares the destiny of his body. Earlier, when he still hovered over it, this was not the case. It was only when a man had achieved this degree of consciousness that he came into relation with death. At the moment when his body falls apart, he feels the suspension of his ego because he identifies himself with his body. Only gradually, through spiritual development, will he again achieve the old immortality. The body is here as the school through which to wrestle through to immortality with self-consciousness. Through death a man acquires immortality on a higher level. As long as he had not experienced death, so long was the world unrevealed to him because duality belongs to the revealed world—death and life.

Thus, we could point out dualities at every step in life. In physics you find positive and negative electricity, in magnetism, forces of attraction and repulsion. Everything appears in duality. Two, duality, is the number of appearance, of manifestation.

There is, however, no revelation save that the Divine holds sway behind the scenes. In this way, behind every duality a unity is hidden. Therefore, three is nothing but two and one, that is, the revelation and the existent divinity backing it.

Three is the number of the Divinity revealing itself. There is a statement in occultism that says that two can never be the number for the Divinity. One is a number for God, and also the three. The one who sees the world as a duality, sees it only in its revelation. Whoever claims that this duality is all is always in the wrong. Let us make this clear to ourselves with an example. Even in places where spiritual science is discussed, sinning often occurs against the statement of true occultism that two is the number of revelation but not the number of fullness or completeness. You will often hear it said in popular occultism by people who do not really know, that all development runs its course through involution and evolution, but we shall see the direction this really takes. First, however let's examine a plant, a fully developed plant with roots, leaves, stems, blossoms, fruit, etc. This is an evolution. But now observe the small seed from which the plant has arisen or can arise. In this tiny seed the entire plant is, in a sense, already contained. It is hidden within it, ensheathed, because the seed is taken from the whole plant, which has laid all its forces into the seed. Here we may therefore make a distinction between two processes—the one in which the seed's forces have unfurled themselves and unfolded into the plant, evolution, and the other in which the plant has folded itself up and, as it were, crept into the seed, involution.

The process that occurs when a being that has many organs so forms itself that nothing of these organs remains visible, so that they contract to a tiny part, is called an involution. The process of expansion and unfolding is an evolution. Everywhere in life this duality alternates but always only within the manifest. You can follow this up not only in the plant but also in higher realms of life. Let us trace in thought, for example, the development of European spiritual life from Augustine to Calvin, that is, roughly through the Middle Ages. You will find in Augustine a kind of mystical inwardness. No one can read the Confessions or his other writings without experiencing the deep inwardness of this man's feeling life. When we advance further, we come across wonderful characters such as Scotus Erigena, a monk from Scotland called the Scottish St. John, who later lived at the court of Charles the Bald. He did not get on well with the Church, and it is told that the brothers of his order tortured him to death with pins. Of course, this is not to be taken literally, but it is true that he was tortured to death. A splendid book was written by him, On the Divisions in Nature which reveals a great profundity of thought even though it is found wanting in many ways from the anthroposophical point of view.

Proceeding further, we find the German mystics in the region of the Rhine, through whom an inner warmth poured itself out over great numbers of people. Not only did the highest of the clergy experience it, but also those who worked on the land and in the smithies. They were all picked up by this current of the time. Further along the way we find Nicolaus Cusanus (1400–64), and so we can follow along in time until the end of the Middle Ages. Always we find that depth of feeling, that inwardness, that spreads itself over all strata of the population.

If we now compare this time with that following it, with the period that began in the sixteenth century and extends into our own, we notice a tremendous difference. At the outset, we find Copernicus who, through a comprehensive idea, effected a renewal of spiritual life, whose thought has become so incorporated into human thinking that whoever believes something else today is counted a fool. We see Galileo, who discovered the law of gravity by observing the swinging of a church lamp in Pisa. Step by step we follow the passage of time up to the present, and everywhere we find the opposite, the strict opposite, of the Middle Ages. Feeling steadily declines and inwardness disappears. The intellect comes steadily to the fore and men become more clever.

Spiritual science explains the difference between these two epochs and shows us that this change had to be. There is an occult statement that says that the period from Augustine to Calvin was one of mystical involution. What does this mean? From the time of Augustine to the sixteenth century there was an outward unfolding of mystical life; it was outside. But something else was also there—intellectual life hidden in germinal form. It was, as it were, like a sun buried in the spiritual earth that unfolded later after the sixteenth century. The intellect was involuted as the plant is in its seed. Nothing can come forth in the world that was not previously in such an involution. Since the sixteenth century, the intellect has been evolving, the mystical life withdrawing. Now the time has come when this mystical life must again appear, when through the Anthroposophical Movement it will be brought to unfolding, to evolution. In this way involution and evolution disclose themselves alternately everywhere in life.

Whoever stops here, however, is taking only the outer aspect into account. To reckon with the whole we must include a third aspect that stands behind these two. What is this third aspect? Imagine yourself facing a phenomenon in the outer world. You reflect over it. You are here, the outer world is there, and from within your thoughts arise. These thoughts were not there previously. When, for example, you form a thought about a rose, this thought first arises in the moment you make a connection with the rose. You were here, the rose there, and now the thought arises in you. When the image of the rose arises, something quite new has come about. This is also the case in other spheres of life. Imagine the artist, Michelangelo, arranging a group of models. Actually, he did this in the rarest of cases. Michelangelo is here, what he renders is there. Something new—the image—arises in his soul. This is a creation that has nothing to do with involution and evolution. It is something entirely new that arises from the intercourse between a being that can receive and a being that can give. Such new creations are always generated through intercourse of being with being, and such new creations are a beginning.

Recall what we considered yesterday, how thoughts are creative, how they can ennoble the soul, indeed, even work later on forming the body. Whatever a being once thinks, the thought creation, the concept creation, works and actively carries on further. It is a new creation, works and actively carries on further. It is a new creation and at the same time a beginning because it gives rise to consequences. If you have good thoughts today, they are fruitful into the remote future because your soul goes its own way in the spiritual world. Your body returns to the elements and decays. Even if everything through which the thought arose disintegrates, the effects of the thought remain.

Let us return to the example of Michelangelo. His glorious paintings have affected millions of people. These paintings, however, will one day fall into dust and there will be future generations who will never see his creations. But what lived in Michelangelo's soul before his paintings took outer form, what at first existed as new creations in his soul, lives on, remains, and will appear in future stages of development and be given form. Do you know why clouds and stars appear to us today? Because there were beings in preceding eras who had thoughts of clouds and stars. Everything arises out of thought creations.

There you have the number three! In revelation things alternate between involution and evolution. Behind this is a deeply hidden creation, a new creation born out of thought. Everything has arisen out of thought, and the greatest things in the world have gone forth from the thoughts of the Godhead. From what, then, do things arise since ideas are new creations? They arise out of nothing! Three different things are here connected: Creation out of nothingness, which always occurs when you have an idea; the manifestation of this creation; the course of its development in time through the two forms, involution and evolution. This is what is meant when certain religious systems speak of the world created out of nothingness. If today people deride this, it is only because they do not understand what is to be found in these documents.

In the world of manifestation, to sum it up once more, everything alternates between involution and evolution. At the root of this is a hidden creation out of nothingness that unites itself with the two (involution and evolution) to form a triad. This is a union of the Divine with the revealed.

So you can see how we can reflect on the number three. We should not take off and spin pedantic thoughts about it, but we must look for the duality and triad that is to be met at every turn. Then we consider the numerical symbols in the right way, in the Pythagorean sense, and can draw conclusions leading from one to the other. We could also say that light and shadow appear in the manifest world, and behind these lies a third, hidden element.

We come now to the number four. Four is the sign of the cosmos or of creation. As far as we can determine with our present organs, the present planetary condition of the earth is its fourth embodiment. Everything that is manifest to us on an earth such as ours presupposes that this creation is the fourth stage. This is but a special case for all creations that appear thus. They all stand under the sign of the four.

The occultist says that men today stand in the mineral kingdom. What does this mean? Because a man understands only the mineral kingdom, he can only control this kingdom. Using minerals, he can build a house, a clock, and other things because they are subject to mineral laws. For various other activities he does not have this capacity. He cannot, for example, form a plant from out of his own thinking. To be able to do this he would himself have to exist in the plant kingdom. Some time in the future this will be the case. Today men are creators in the mineral realm. Three other kingdoms, the elementary kingdoms, have preceded this; the mineral kingdom is the fourth. All told there are seven.

Men stand in the fourth kingdom. Only here do they reach their actual consciousness oriented to the outer world. On the Moon they were still operating in the third elementary kingdom, on the Sun in the second, and on Saturn in the first. In the future on Jupiter, they will be able to create plants as today they are able to construct a clock. Everything visible in creation stands in the sign of the four. There are many planets that are not to be seen with physical eyes, such as those in the first, second, and third elementary kingdoms. Only when such a planet within creation enters the mineral kingdom can it be seen. Four is, therefore, the number of the cosmos or of creation. With the entrance into the fourth condition a being becomes fully visible to eyes that can see external things.

Five is the number of evil. This will become clear to us if we again consider human beings. In their development men have become fourfold beings and thereby beings of the created world. Here on earth, however, the fifth member of their being, the spirit self, will be added. Were they to remain fourfold beings, they would be constantly directed by the gods—toward the good, of course—but they would never develop their independence. They have become free through the gift of their germinal fifth member, but it is also from this that they have received the ability to do evil. No being can do evil who has not arrived at “fivefoldness.” Wherever we meet with evil, such that it can actually adversely affect our own being, there a fivefoldness is at play. This is the case everywhere, including the outside world, but people are unaware of it, and our present materialistic world view has no conception of the fact that the world can be considered in this way. Actually, there is justification for speaking of evil only where fivefoldness appears. When, one day, medicine will make use of this, it will be able to influence beneficially the course of illness. Part of the treatment would be to study the illness in its development on the first and fifth days after its onset, on the separate days at the fifth hour past midnight, and again during the fifth week. Thus it is always the number five that determines when the physician can best intervene. Before that there is not much else he can do than to let nature take its course, but then he can intervene, helping or harming, because what can justifiably be called good or evil then flows into the world of reality. It is possible in many areas to show that the number five has meaning for outer events.

A man's life consists of periods of seven years—from birth until the change of teeth; puberty; seven or eight years later; toward thirty, followed by the seven year periods throughout the rest of his life. When, one day, he will take these periods into account and consider what had best come toward or stand aloof from him, he will come to know much about preparing a good old age for himself. He can thus bring about good or evil for the remainder of his life. In the early periods of life a great deal can be done by observing certain laws of education. Then, however, there comes an important turning point. This also may become a regression if he is turned loose in life with complete confidence too early. The accepted principle of today that sends young people out into life early is harmful; the fifth period should be passed before this happens. Such ancient occult principles are of great importance. This is why, in the past, at the direction of those who knew something of these things, the years of the apprentice and journeyman had to be completed before one could be called a master.

Seven is the number of perfection. Observation of man himself will make this clear. Today he is under the influence of the number five insofar as he can be good or evil. As a creature of the universe he lives in the number four. When he will have developed all that he holds at present as germ within him, he will become a seven-membered being, perfect in its kind. The number seven rules in the world of colour, in the rainbow; in the world of tone it is found in the scale. Everywhere, in all realms of life, the number seven can be observed as a kind of number of perfection. There is no superstition or magic in this.

Now let us look back again to the number one. Because we have considered other numbers, what is now to be said about one will appear in the right light. The essence of the number one is its indivisibility. Of course, it can be subdivided, for example, 1/3, 2/3, etc. but this can only be accomplished in thinking. In the world, especially in the spiritual world, when you take the two-thirds away, the one-third still remains a part of it. In the same sense it can be said that when some part of God is separated from Him and becomes manifest, the remainder exists as something that still belongs to it. In the Pythagorean sense we can say, “Divide the unity, but never otherwise than to have in your underlying thoughts the remainder connected with what has been separated.”

Take a thin golden plate of glass and look through it. The world will appear yellow because that is the colour that will be reflected. But in white light other colours are also contained. What happens to them? They are absorbed by the object. Hence, a red object appears red because it reflects the red rays and absorbs the rest. It is not possible to separate red from white light without leaving the other colours behind. With this we touch the edge of a world secret. You look at things in a certain way. You see, for instance, a red cloth spread out on the table and visualize at the same time that green is hidden in it. In this way you have accomplished what in the Pythagorean sense is called “The division of the One so that the rest is preserved.” If you carry this out meditatively, if you again and again unite separated parts into a unity, you have brought about a meaningful development through which you can attain spiritual heights.

Mathematicians have an expression for this that holds good in all occult schools:

1 = ( 2 + x ) - ( 1 + x )

This is an occult formula that expresses how Oneness can be divided and the parts so arranged that the One results. It indicates that, as occultists, we should not think of Oneness simply as One, but as parts that we add together again.

So, in this lecture we have examined what is called number symbolism and learned that when we meditate on the world from the standpoint of numbers, we can penetrate deep world secrets.

To complete these remarks let it be said once more that in the fifth week, on the fifth day, or in the fifth hour we can find important things that can be missed or made good. In the seventh week, on the seventh day, or in the seventh hour (or in a definite relationship, say, 3 1/2 because seven is also in this number), something can happen through the thing itself. On the seventh day of an illness, for instance, a fever will take on a definite character; this might also occur on the fourteenth day. These things are always based on number relationships that point to the structure of the world.

Those who steep themselves in the right way in what, in the Pythagorean sense, we may call the “study of numbers,” will learn to understand life and the world in this number symbolism. Of this the lecture today was meant to give you roughly sketched thoughts.

First of all I want to say a few words of greeting to express the feelings which your gathering have aroused in me. Your speaker described in a pleasing way the impulses that have brought you together here. Much of what I shall have to say in the coming days will inevitably be a kind of interpretation of what is present within you, more or less strongly as inner experiences which you wish to be brought to clarity of soul. I say clarity of soul rather than merely of an intellectual nature.

You have been brought together by that which lives in the depths of your souls. These depths are taken hold of by forces which, in the specific way in which they are working at the present time, are of recent date. These forces—in the way they are working in you—are scarcely older than this century. They are forces which even today reveal themselves very clearly to him who can see them, but in the near future they will become ever more apparent. In the next few days we shall describe these forces in their most intimate nature, as well as the opposite tendencies which preceded and had become “out of date” by the last third of the nineteenth century. But today, I shall speak about these forces in their more external aspect.

I think, my dear friends, that you feel you can no longer find yourselves in accord with what an older generation has to say to the world today. You see, as early as the seventies, eighties and nineties of the last century, people were stressing, both in art and in philosophy, the deep gulf between the older and younger generations. But all that was said then by poets and others about this gulf, this abyss, is pale in comparison with what has to be considered today. Today the younger and the older generation speak entirely different languages of the soul. This is so to a far greater extent than is realized. It attaches no blame to an older generation as regards the younger. To speak of blame would be to use a form of thought belonging to the older generation—one of their philistine forms of thought. We shall not speak of blame, neither shall we accuse. But we shall consider how fundamentally souls belonging to evolution in the West have changed since the last two to three decades. In our present time, many things clash.

A little while ago I gave a series of lectures in England, at Oxford. As a university town, Oxford occupies a unique position in the cultural life of the West. One feels that in Oxford—a town very closely connected with spiritual evolution in the West—a relic of the Middle Ages is surviving on into the present time. It is by no means an unpleasing relic, quite the contrary, and in many respects worthy of admiration. We were taken round by a friend who is a graduate of Oxford University, and it is the custom there, when in their capacity as graduates, always to wear cap and gown. After we had gone round with him, I met him again in the street. The next morning I could not help describing to the English audience the impression I had when this friend appeared in cap and gown. It seemed to me thoroughly symptomatic. This, together with other experiences, induced me to form a picture and to say why a new social structure, reaching to the depths of modern spiritual life, is necessary. When this friend met me in the street, I said to myself that if I had to write a letter now, under the immediate impression of this meeting, I should not know what date to put on the letter. I should have been tempted to date it about the twelfth or thirteenth century, in order to adhere to the style where such a thing was possible.

Something that is not of the present has been preserved there. We find nothing like it in Middle Europe. But what we find in Middle Europe, in influential centers of culture, is nevertheless an evolutionary product of what I have just described.

Here, in Middle Europe, the gown has practically been discarded, except on festive occasions, when Directors and other officials are expected to wear it, often to their great annoyance.

Our friend, who was also a barrister, said to me: “If I were taking you round the Law Courts in London, I should, as a barrister, have to put on a wig, not a cap.” There you see a survival of something that has become out of date, and yet was still alive in the last century. So there we have the Middle Ages in the present. In Middle Europe people have, after all, outgrown a custom which belonged to the former generation and had become old. First they discarded the costume; then, with a sudden jump, they adopted a kind of thinking, rather different in character, which headed straight into materialism. These contrasts between Western and Middle Europe are extraordinarily great. And now there is a very symptomatic phenomenon which I prefer to describe through facts rather than by abstract words.

In Middle Europe we have forgotten Goethe and accepted Darwin, although Goethe grasped at its roots the knowledge which Darwin only indicates superficially. Many similar things might be quoted. Perhaps you will say that Goethe has not been forgotten, for there exists a Goethe Society, for example. I don't believe you will say it, so I will not pursue it further. Goethe himself and what he brought to light—the Middle European spiritual impulse—were, in fact, forgotten in the second half of the nineteenth century. But these things are mere symptoms. The point is, that along the path taken by Middle Europe and its cultural life, the leading centers of culture emancipated themselves in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from the spirit which still remained in the West. Since that time, Middle Europe lost the spiritual, lost the element that storms and pulsates through the soul, from consciousness. That is why it was possible, too, for Goethe to be forgotten.

In the West this element has been preserved in traditions and in external life. In Middle Europe, especially in the German-speaking regions, it has been pushed down, as it were, into the depths of the life of soul, and consciousness has not been filled with it. This was particularly marked in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Close historical study will reveal something strange in the last third of the nineteenth century. If we study the literature and the writings which were read by those who played a part in shaping the cultural life, we find during the last third of the nineteenth century, up to the middle of the eighties and nineties, in German-speaking districts, quite a different style in the journals and even in the newspapers from the style that is current today. Thoughts were finely chiseled and elaborated; importance was attached to sequence in the thoughts, and to beauty as well. In comparison with the style current in the last third of the nineteenth century, our modern style is raw and crude. We need only pick up writings—no matter what they may be—of men in the sixties and seventies, not deeply learned or scholarly but possessing an average degree of culture, and we shall find this great difference. The forms of the thoughts have changed. But what is raw and crude today has proceeded from what, even in scholarly literature during the last third of the nineteenth century, was finely chiseled and full of spirituality. But those who lived through it, who, without necessarily growing old, have reached more advanced years in the present-day world of thought—we notice what has insinuated itself in a dreadful way into every domain of thought and spiritual life: symbolically, I will call it the “empty phrase,” the “cliché.”

With the vogue of the “cliché” there began to develop lack of thought, lack of sound sentiments, lack of will, which are now on the upgrade. These characteristics were the immediate outcome of the “empty phrase,” the “cliché.” The outstanding development of the “empty phrase” took place in the last third of the nineteenth century. You can follow this externally, my dear friends. Things that crop up in a certain epoch need not necessarily appeal to you. And although in one form or another they may definitely not appeal, you can still study them from the point of view of their significance for the whole of mankind.

Think of the rich tones of inner beauty which are to be found in the German romantic poets in the first third of the nineteenth century. Think of the words of a man like Jacob Grimm when he touches on things spiritual, how these words seem to be full of the fresh, health-giving air of the woods, and you will say: “In those days the ‘cliché’ did not yet dominate Middle Europe.” It did not make its way into Middle Europe until the last third of the nineteenth century. Those who are sensitive to such matters are aware of the gradual entrance of what inevitably accompanies the “empty phrase.” When the empty phrase begins to dominate, truth, as experienced inwardly by the soul, dies away. And something else goes hand in hand with the empty phrase: in social life man cannot really find his fellow-men any longer.

My dear friends, when words sound forth without soul from the mouth—as they do in the empty phrase, the cliché—then we pass by other human beings and cannot understand them. This too reached its culmination in the last third of the nineteenth century, not in the soul's depths but in the field of consciousness. Men became more and more alienated from one another. The louder the call for social reforms, the more is it a symptom of the fact that men have become unsocial. Because they no longer have any feeling for what is truly social, they cry out for social reform. A hungry animal does not howl for food because it has food in its stomach, but because it has none. Similarly, the soul that cries out for social life, cries, not because it is permeated with social feeling, but because this feeling is lacking. And so man was gradually turned into a being whose nature is not understood today, and yet it is clear enough that everywhere in the relations between man and man no need is felt to grow near, in soul, to other human beings. Everyone passes the other by. The individual's greatest interest is only in himself.

What then has come into the twentieth century from the last third of the nineteenth as the customary social feeling between man and man? Nowadays you continually hear: “That is my standpoint.” This is how people talk: “That is my standpoint.” Everyone has a standpoint.—as if the standpoint matters! The standpoint in spiritual life is just as fleeting as it is in the physical. Yesterday I stood in Dornach, today I am standing here. These are two different standpoints in physical life. What matters is that a man should have a sound will and a sound heart so that he can look at the world from every standpoint. But people today do not want what they can glean from different standpoints; the egoistic assertion of their own particular standpoint is more important to them. But thus a man shuts himself off in the most rigorous way from his fellow-men. If somebody says something, the other person does not really enter into it, for he has his own standpoint. But people do not get any nearer to each other by such means. We can only come nearer to each other when we know how to place our different standpoints in a world that is common to us all. But this world is simply not there today. Only in the spirit is there a world that is common to all—and the spirit is lacking. That is the second point.

And the third is this. In the course of the nineteenth century the humanity of Middle Europe has really become very weak-willed—weak-willed in the sense that thought no longer unfolds the power to steel the will in such a way as to make man, who is a thought-being, capable of shaping the world out of his thoughts.

And now, my dear friends, when it is said that thoughts have become “pale” this must not be twisted into the assertion that no thoughts are needed in order to live as men. Thoughts, however, must not be so feeble that they stick up there in the head. They must be so strong that they stream down through the heart and through the whole being of man, right down to the feet. For really it is better if, besides red and white blood corpuscles, thoughts, too, pulse through our blood. It is a good thing, certainly, when a man has a heart too, and not merely thoughts. Best of all is for thoughts to have a heart. And that has been lost altogether. We cannot cast off the thoughts that have followed in the wake of the last four or five centuries. But these thoughts must get a heart as well!

And now I will tell you, from an external point of view, what is living in your souls. You have grown up and have come to know the older generation. This older generation expressed itself in words; you could only hear clichés. An unsocial element presented itself to you in this older generation. Men passed each other by. And in this older generation there also presented itself the impotence of thought to pulse through the will and the heart.

You see, people could live with the “cliché,” with antisocial conventionality, with mere routine instead of warm community of life, so long as the heritage from earlier generations was still there. But this heritage was exhausted by the close of the nineteenth century. And so what presented itself could not speak to your own souls. And now, precisely in Middle Europe, you felt that in the depths below there is something that stands in the direst need of rediscovering what once lived beyond the empty phrase, beyond convention, beyond routine. You wanted again to have a living experience of truth, a living experience of human community, of stout-heartedness in cultural life. Where is it then?—so asks a voice within you.

And often, at the dawn of the twentieth century—even if not clearly expressed, it could be seen—on the one side there were the young, and on the other, the old. The old man said: “That is my standpoint.” Ah! as the nineteenth century drew to its close, everyone began to have his own particular standpoint. One was a materialist, the second an idealist, the third a realist, the fourth a sensualist, and so on. They all had their standpoints. But gradually under the domination of empty phrase, convention, and routine, the standpoint had become a crust of ice. The spiritual Ice-Age had dawned. The ice-crust was thin, but as men's “standpoints” had lost the sense of their own weight, they did not break through it. Besides, being cold in heart they did not thaw the ice. The younger people stood side by side with the old, the young with their warm hearts not articulate yet, but warm. This warmth broke through the ice-crust. The younger man did not feel: “That is my standpoint,” but he felt: “I am losing the ground from under my feet. The warmth of my heart is breaking this ice that has congealed out of empty phrase, convention, and routine.” Although not clearly expressed—for today nothing is clearly expressed—this state of thing[s] had existed for a long time and still exists at the present day.

It is hardest of all for those who with a scholarly education try to fit in with the times. They are confronted by thoughts that are void of heart-quality and are quite consciously striven for just because of this. Now in speaking out of the spirit it is often necessary to shape words differently from what is customary when telling people something highly logical, philosophical or scientific. This approach is quite out of place in face of the spiritual, and altogether out of place in face of the spiritual is the following, which we will take as an example.

People say today: He is not a true scientist who does not interpret observation and experiment quite logically; who does not pass from thought to thought in strict conformity with the correct methods that have been evolved. If he does not do this he is no genuine thinker. But, my dear friends, what if reality happens to be an artist and scorns our elaborate dialectical and experimental methods? What if Nature herself works according to artistic impulses? If it were so, human science, according to Nature, would have to become an artist, for otherwise there would be no possibility of understanding Nature. That, however, is certainly not the standpoint of the modern scientist. His standpoint is: Nature may be an artist or a dreamer; it makes no difference to us, for we decree how we propose to cultivate science. What does it matter to us if Nature is an artist? It matters not at all, for that is not our standpoint

At the outset I can only describe a few impressions to illustrate what was working together in chaotic interplay with the approach of the twentieth century—the century that has placed you before such hard trials of the soul. We have had to face outer events, including the grim and terrible world-war; these are only the outward expression of what is reigning in the innermost soul of the modern civilized world. It is simply so, and we must be conscious of it. Primarily we have to seek for something which the deepest soul of Germany is yearning for—as your speaker truly said—but which precisely within Germany was denied by men's consciousness the nearer the modern age approached. We lost not only Goethe but also a great deal of what was there in the Middle Ages and out of which Goethe grew, and we must find it again. And if it is asked today quite from the external aspect: Why have you come here today?—I shall answer: In order to find this. For you are really seeking for something that is there. Goethe answered the question: Which secret is of the highest value?—The revealed secret. (From the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.) But it has to be revealed through eyes being opened to perceive it. What concerns you are mainly longings of the inner life—if you understand yourselves aright. Whether one has to become a teacher or adopt some other profession—that is not the point. Everything which those who want again to become whole men are seeking today shall be found out of the common center of true manhood. That is why we find ourselves together here.

After all, it is quite a different matter if in earlier centuries—to take a radical example—people burnt a Giordano Bruno. In those times this was the customary way of refuting truths. But now—to compare this with the following symptom drawn from the realm of science—when the Swabian doctor Julius Robert Maier was making a voyage round the world, the peculiar constitution of the blood in Southern Asia brought him to the conception of what is known as the heat equivalent, the conservation of energy. In 1844 he wrote a treatise on this subject which was rejected as amateurish and unsuitable by the most famous scientific periodical of the time, the Poggendorf Annals. Julius Robert Maier was so enthusiastic about his discovery that whenever anyone met him in the street he began at once to talk about it, until finally contemporary experts decided that as he was always talking about the same thing, he was suffering from fixed ideas. As you know, he was declared insane and put into an asylum. Today you can go to Heilbronn and see the Robert Maier Memorial. It is said that the law of the conservation of energy is the most important law of physics that has been discovered in the modern age. Well, of course, such things happen! Mankind may, naturally, lapse into error, but the point I want to make is that this can be judged out of mere phrases, mere convention, mere routine.

Think of the way such a terrible tragedy, such a terrible mockery, was described in the nineteenth century, and compare it with the account given today of the same case. What has actually happened cannot be undone by abstract writings. Anyone who has a heart within him and reads the descriptions that are given of such a case, feels as if robbed of all inner support and a terrible turmoil is set going in his soul. Human beings must again be capable of feeling, not weakly, but strongly: beautiful—ugly, good—evil, true—false. They must be capable of feeling things not weakly but strongly, so that they live in them with their whole being, that their very heart's blood flows into their words. Then the empty phrase will dissipate and they will feel not only themselves but other men within their own being; convention will dissipate, and the heart's blood will pulse through what they have in their heads; then sheer routine will dissipate and life will become human once again.

Young people in the twentieth century feel these things; they have been seeking but found only chaos. These things cannot be portrayed by writing up external history. At the end of the nineteenth century there was a crucial point in the inner development of mankind. Souls who were born shortly before or shortly after the turn of the century are of quite a different inner make-up from those who were born even during the last third of the nineteenth century. One can speak about this if, in spite of the years piling up, one has not allowed oneself to get old.

So we shall see tomorrow, my dear friends, how the new generation has not linked up with the old but is divided from it by an abyss. It is not a question of finding fault but only of trying to understand. I am not finding fault when I speak of the tragedy which befell Julius Robert Maier. The same kind of thing happened to many people. It is not a matter of finding fault, but of the need for understanding. For the most important thing is to understand what is experienced deeply and inwardly; an unclear seeking cannot be allowed to continue. A light must come that will flood this unclear seeking without making it dry or cold. We must find this light, while preserving the heart's blood.

I do not wish to impose upon you anything that savors of the mystical, but to point to the truth, the truth in the spirit. You know that among the many clichés which became current in the nineteenth century, it was said that the great pioneer of the nineteenth century closed his life by calling out to posterity: “More light!” As a matter of fact Goethe did not say “More light!” He lay on his couch breathing with difficulty and said: “Open the shutters!” That is the truth. The other is the cliché that has connected itself with it. The words Goethe really spoke are perhaps far more apt than the mere phrase “More light”. The state of things at the end of the nineteenth century does indeed arouse the feeling that our predecessors have closed the shutters. Then came the younger generation; they felt cramped; they felt that the shutters which the older generation had closed so tightly must be opened. Yes, my dear friends, I assure you that although I am old, I shall tell you more of how we can now attempt to open the shutters again.

The great transformation that I have characterized here from a variety of angles and that has taken place in the spiritual development of humanity over the course of the last centuries, not only has the intellectual, the theoretical character of knowledge changed, but what has changed also has an influence on the whole human soul life, and thus on the whole human life in general. In order to understand this, one can imagine the following. Of course, what is shown in individual symptoms, which emerge more or less clearly when one wants to understand the actual foundations of life, must be shown in characteristic forms of expression of life.

We have often referred to what were places of knowledge in ancient times of human development. They were the mystery centres. These mystery sites were, to a large extent, shrouded in human veneration. When speaking of mysteries and mystery beings, it was said that through what was practiced in the mysteries, something most important for humanity on earth was present. Everything meaningful in human life was thought to radiate from the mysteries. It was said, in a sense, that If there were no mysteries among people, people on earth would not be able to be what the gods wanted them to be!

So people looked at the mysteries with a feeling of the highest reverence and the most intimate respect, and at the same time they looked at them with a feeling of gratitude, knowing that they gave them what makes it possible to be on earth what the gods want to make of people. One need only compare this with the way in which people look at educational institutions today, and one will find nowhere that tremendous warm devotion. In many cases, one even finds a feeling that, once one has necessarily settled for what comes from the educational institutions, one is glad to be free of them. But in any case, even if one does not look at this extreme, one still knows that one does not actually get from the educational institutions what seems necessary to one inwardly as a human being for one's actual humanity, what makes one a human being. No matter how much theoretical reverence one may have for what is gained in chemical laboratories, biological institutes, legal educational institutions, and even philosophical schools, one will not have the feeling: You are aware of your humanity because there are chemical laboratories, biological institutes, legal educational institutions, and even philosophical seminars.

You cannot say that – even if these educational institutions are perhaps shrouded in a certain theoretical atmosphere – all the warm feelings of reverence of people in the widest sense gravitate towards these educational institutions.

In any case, it will not be all that often that a student, for example, who is preparing a paper for a university seminar and who then, in this way, gives of himself intellectually, feels that he is doing so imbued with his whole elementary humanity as a mystery schoolboy once felt when he had passed one of the stages of practice.

But on the other hand, man needs something that brings him into contact with something worthy of worship here on earth, from which he feels the divine emanating. But if we compare this nuance, which I would call more cultural-historical, with what actually underlies it, let us go back, say, to the times when, in the Near East, two or three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, mystery-like educational institutions existed: In these mystery-like educational institutions, the natural science of the time was studied, if one can call it that. They studied the starry sky, the nature of the stars, the movements of the stars, the appearance of the stars at certain times, and so on. Today one imagines that this study of the starry sky in those days may have been somewhat fantastic. It was not. It was done with at least the same, if not much greater, methodical care as mineralogy, geology or biology are done today.

But what did they say to each other when they studied the nature of the starry sky? They said to each other: If you know the nature of the starry sky, then you know something about the nature and destiny of man on earth. The study of the starry sky culminated in the fact that knowledge about the fate of man and entire peoples on earth could be gained from the constellations of the stars.

One did not look up at the starry sky with a merely theoretical intention, but rather one said to oneself: If you know the relationship of Saturn to the sun or the relationship of Saturn to a sign of the zodiac at the moment when a man is bidden or where he accomplishes an important deed in life, then you know how the heavens have placed man on earth, you know to what extent man is a creature, a son of the heavens. You study what you study about heaven in order to understand what guides you in your life on earth. Everything that was acquired as knowledge about the nature of heaven was aimed at man. All knowledge was actually permeated by something thoroughly human. And whatever man did on earth, he felt it in connection with what he could study in the heavens. We can take an example from, say, a human artistic activity. When people in ancient times took up poetry or music, they drew on the inspiration that came to them from the heavens.

I have mentioned it often: Homer does not say, to use a poetic phrase “Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of the Peleid Achilles,” but because he was aware that he was not speaking something that came to him from human arbitrariness, but he speaks something that the heavens whisper to him. And anyone who was in any way musically active on earth reproduced through the sound of earthly instruments what he believed he had heard in the spaces of heaven in the music of the spheres. Man felt quite distinctly in the way he was active on earth, in the way he cooperated with other people on earth, in the way he founded communities on earth, that he experienced the impulses of will that radiated from the vastness of the universe down to earth and which he explored according to his knowledge of the starry sky, that he acted as a human being here on earth according to these intentions of heaven.

One would like to say: everything that was science, art and religion in those ancient times flowed into human weaving and working. For religion, science and art were indeed a unity, a unity that ultimately radiated into man, so that man might feel himself on earth as the being the gods wanted him to be.

This mood lasted as long as man had a spiritual insight into the heavens, as long as he allowed a spiritual to be conveyed to him in the being, in the course of the stars and in the appearance of the stars, which, so to speak, flowed through the knowledge of the stars to him on earth so that he could realize it on earth.

Today, astrology is a word that does not have a good ring to it. However, if we imagine it in the old sense, it takes on a better sound. Man looked up at the stars, and from the stars the Logos revealed itself to him, which in turn worked through his thoughts, through his imagination, through his language here on earth. Man himself, when he set his speech organs in motion, practiced that which, in the formation of sounds, made the secrets of the heavens resound here on earth again. The Logos, which is the reason that prevails in the human race, appeared as the efflux of the starry world. Astrology: what happened here on earth appeared as an image of the archetype, which one experienced through astrology.

If we look at our insights today, we see how these insights are gained through sensory observation of the earthly. Even when studying astronomy today – I have already discussed this yesterday – it is only the reflection of earthly knowledge up into the heavens. Today's human being acquires sensory knowledge. He does indeed stand in the world differently than he used to. I have characterized this different standing in these lectures here recently. I said: Today's intellectual man, with his abstract concepts, but also with what his freedom is, which is only possible with the development of abstract-intellectual concepts that do not force man, that also give him moral imperatives that arise from his individuality, as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, only comes into the evolution of mankind at the time when that consciousness, which originated in astrology and presented man as a being executing the intentions of the gods on earth, had ceased to exist. This human being, with his intellect and his sense of freedom, is a creature cut off from the heavens. He has truly become the earth's hermit and acquires his knowledge here on earth. And the way in which he acquires his knowledge also explains the interest with which he clings to these insights.

In ancient times, it would have been inconceivable to see a duality between religion and scientific knowledge. When scientific knowledge was acquired, it was such that it gave one an immediate religious feeling, that it showed one the way to the gods, that one could not help but be a religious person in the right sense if one had acquired knowledge.

Today one can acquire the whole wide range of popular knowledge: one does not become a religious person from it. I would like to know who becomes a religious person today by becoming a botanist, a zoologist, a chemist! If he wants to become a religious person, he seeks the religious in addition to knowledge. Therefore, we seek places of worship in addition to knowledge, and are often even convinced that knowledge leads us away from religious paths, that we must seek other paths that in turn lead us to the religious. And yet, here too, we have repeatedly had to emphasize the importance of newer insights. We had to point out that these newer insights are absolutely necessary for modern man and for the further development of humanity. But when man today places himself in the world with his intellectualism, with his sense of freedom, he is already developing here on earth that which the older man, who, if I may express it in this way, had a sense of heaven , only developed after death.

When we describe the moments after death for today's man, we describe how the person in the picture looks back at first on his life by separating his etheric body from himself. We then describe how he reviews his life in a subsequent period. For older times, life after death had to be described in such a way that people were told: That which you can only attain here through a higher revelation, an intellectualistic view of the world, will appear to you after death. That which you are to achieve here on earth can only exist as an ideal; you will be a free human being after death. — That is what they told older people. The true human being comes when one has passed from this physical world into the spiritual world. That is what they said in ancient times. But what people experienced only after death in ancient times, looking back on earthly life, intellectualism and a sense of freedom, for which all earthly life was preparation, has already been introduced into the life between birth and death by the modern human being. Here on earth, he becomes an intellectual being, here on earth he becomes a being with a sense of freedom.

But for this, he must acquire something on earth in sensory knowledge and in the combination of his sensory knowledge that is initially far removed from his interests. No matter how long we explore through the telescope that which we today explore of the starry worlds: humanly we do not feel inwardly warmed and inwardly enlightened by it. Expeditions are being organized by astronomers and naturalists to prove Einstein's ideas. But no one expects the observations that are being made to be as close to directly elementary human nature as one would have expected from the astronomers of the ancient Babylonian or Assyrian cultures. The modern insights give us a tremendous difference: the lack of interest in values. It may be extremely interesting when this or that biological discovery is made today, but one does not say: By making this or that biological discovery, man comes closer to the divine-spiritual being that he carries in his soul. It is to this divine spiritual being, which he bears within his soul, that man wants to come closer through a separate religious interest.

Nevertheless, today we do not have the right concept of the way in which an older humanity has come to knowledge, even in later times. One need only think of the momentous experience of fate when a man like Archimedes, while bathing, discovered the Archimedean principle and exclaimed, “I have found it!” Just such a single insight was something that one felt as if one had looked through a window into the secrets of the universe.

This warm-heartedness towards knowledge was certainly not present when the X-rays were discovered, for example. One could say that today's relationship to what knowledge provides is more that of gaping open one's mouth than of inward soul rejoicing. That makes a human difference! And this human difference must be borne in mind for the development of humanity.

Something very remarkable emerges from all this. For centuries now, modern people have been experiencing in their lives what they used to have only after death: intellectual comprehension of the world and the consciousness of freedom. But they have not even really noticed it. That is the remarkable thing, that modern humanity has not even really noticed something that it has received from heaven into earthly life. The emotional world has not grasped it at all, the elemental in the human world. One would almost say that it has a bitter aftertaste for humanity. Humanity does not look at the pure thought the way I have tried to look at it in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, where one would rather sing hymns to it than dissect it. And the consciousness of freedom has led people to all sorts of tumultuous things, but not to the realization that something has descended from heaven to earth. Not even the fundamental power of modern human development has been felt purely humanly. Where does that come from?

If you answer this question, then you also answer one of the most important questions of human existence in general. In ancient times, man acquired his knowledge by looking up at the sky, seeking the Logos there, that which the gods spoke to man through the starry sky and the nature of the stars. All that man did here on earth was illuminated by the content of the Logos, and this content was in turn fetched from the stars. Human life would have been meaningless if it could not be given a purpose through knowledge of the stars.

Now, in a very similar sense, everything we acquire internally as knowledge is actually nothing. We acquire it by allowing ourselves to be constrained to botany, zoology, biology, physiology, etc., and at most we allow ourselves to be moved by ambition, by an insight into the necessity of being able to eke out our lives on earth, to all of this. Again, this is a radical statement, but in a sense it borders on reality. For those who attach great ideals to things today, there is still a certain illusionary element through which they reinterpret the matter into an ideal. At least, people who could associate a meaning with the word: I pray a chemical formula. Yes, one must indeed express an important cultural-historical fact, even if it is negative, in such a form!

It takes a Novalis, with his deep and at the same time youthfully enthusiastic knowledge, to feel something like: I pray in the dissolution of a differential equation. Our ordinary mathematicians do not feel very prayerful when they reveal the secret of a differential equation. That which is self-evident, that with knowledge the whole person is engaged at the same time, the whole person feels their indebtedness to the divine, this self-evident fact is not at all self-evident to today's humanity. It is much more natural for those who are rising to the highest achievements of knowledge to be glad when they have the exams behind them so that they do not have to go through these things again. The joy of going through the stages of the mysteries: you don't notice much of that in modern people who go through the exams. At least it is extremely rare for someone today to speak with the full ancient mystery seriousness of that intimate divine deed that this or that professor has done by giving him a dissertation topic and putting him in the position to now pass through the waters of holiness while working on this dissertation topic! But this would be the normal, the obvious!

If you just think about it, you have to say: Yes, down there is the earth with its many things (see drawing page 70, white and green). These many things have been seen by the old cognizers. But they only believed they had grasped them in the right sense by looking up at the stars and bringing down the rays from the stars, which illuminated everything for them in the right way (red).

These ancient cognizers sought the reflection of the starry world in earthly life (lower red), otherwise all that I have indicated below would have seemed worthless to them. Today we pay no attention to what is above, but study what is below. We study it in countless details. When we have surrendered to some kind of knowledge oriented here or there, we have many details in our heads. But the evaluation of these details becomes somewhat indifferent to life, and with it also a certain lack of interest in the high, elementary human. Especially in the actual spiritual realm, this becomes conspicuously apparent.

Vöscher, the Swabian, has already ridiculed how indifferent to a universal human consciousness that becomes, which is to be overcome today, if one wants to struggle up to knowledge, by saying that one of the most “significant” treatises on the subject of modern literary history would be one on the connection between the chilblains of Frau Christiane von Goethe and the symbolic-allegorical figures in the second part of Faust! Why could a dissertation not be written about this connection, as is done about many other things? The methodology that is applied, the human interest that is involved, is, after all, no different in quality from when someone writes a treatise – and this does happen – about the thought lines in Homer's poetry! Yes, we really do acquire knowledge about what people only considered worthy of knowledge after they were able to illuminate it from the knowledge of heaven.

We do not have the knowledge of heaven. We do not look at the copper by looking up at Venus, we do not look at the lead by looking up at Saturn, we do not look at the primeval man by looking up at the constellation of Aquarius, and we do not look at that which passes over into certain inner impulses of human nature in the animal nature of the lion by looking up at the constellation of Leo, and the like. We bring down from the heavens nothing that can explain the earthly to us, but we turn our gaze to the wide-ranging, scattered details of the earth alone.

We need something that brings us valences into the individual, that leads us to see again what someone saw when he saw some earthly object illuminated from the heavens. We have knowledge of many things, but we need a unified knowledge that can radiate into all the individual fields of knowledge and give the individual fields of knowledge value. That is what anthroposophy wants to be.

Just as people once looked to the heavens in astrology to explain the earth, anthroposophy wants to see in people what they have to say about themselves, so that from there everything we about minerals, animals, plants, about man, about everything that can be known in addition to what is scattered, will be illuminated by anthroposophy.

And just as man once looked up at the heavens to understand his life on earth , so the intellectually liberated human being must learn to know himself, so that he can look beyond the moment of death, when he steps out into a spiritual world, and where the gods will look down on what he brings them, what radiates from him. For he should already have become human on earth, whereas before he only became human after death.

How he has become human will be shown through the power he has gained from pure human consciousness. And this pure human consciousness is to be given to him through that which radiates from anthroposophy to everything else, which man on earth can know, but also what man on earth can accomplish.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” thus in the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. Man has brought down the Logos from the revelation of the gods in the heavens.

But the Word was made flesh, and not only dwelt among us, but continues to dwell among us. The Logos has become flesh. What was once sought in the heavens must now be sought in man. For the Logos was once rightly sought in the Father-God; in our time the Logos must be sought in the Son-God.

But man finds this Son-God in his elementary meaning when he makes Paul's word true: “Not I, but Christ in me,” when he comes to know himself. All anthroposophy aims to delve deep into the human being. When ancient times delved deep into the human being, what did they find? At the bottom of human nature, the luciferic powers. If modern man delves deep enough into himself, he will find the Christ. This is the other side of the turnaround from older to newer times. With intellectualism and the consciousness of freedom having descended from heaven to earth, and with the Christ having united with humanity on earth, man finds the Christ in the depths of his own being, if he descends deep enough; while older people have found the Luciferian spirituality precisely by going deep enough.

This was also the message that an older student body in the mysteries was to understand particularly clearly: delve down into the human being as it is on earth, and at the bottom of your own soul you will ultimately find that which you must recoil from in terror: the powers of Lucifer. Therefore, look up at the moment of death; only when you have passed through the gate of death do you become a true human being. There you will be saved from what you find at the bottom of your soul here on earth: the luciferic powers.

That was the experience of death in the ancient mysteries. That was why they had to look to the realization, to the depiction of the moment of death in the mysteries, these ancient mystery students.

The modern human being should take on that which has become his: intellectualism and the consciousness of freedom. If he accepts them worthily, so that he permeates all other earthly knowledge and all other deeds with what wells up out of pure human consciousness, as anthroposophy wills, then he finds the Christ-powers at the bottom of his soul. Then he says to himself: Once I looked up at the constellation of the stars to fathom human destiny on earth; now I look at the human being and thereby learn to recognize how this human being, having already on earth become imbued with the humanity of the Christ-substance , shines out to the universe, and how it shines up to the heavens as the star of humanity after passing through the portal of death.

This is spiritual humanistics, which can take the place of the old astrology. This is what instructs people to look in the same way at what the human being can also reveal in himself as Sophia - Anthroposophia - as the stars once revealed themselves as Logia. But this is also the consciousness with which one must imbue oneself. And there one then learns the world significance of the human being. From there one learns to recognize that world significance of the human being that first allows us to study the physical body, which then allows us to study the formative forces or etheric body. But I will mention just one example: If you study the human physical body in the right way, by looking at it from the point of view of anthroposophy, you learn how the human physical body can follow its own forces. When it follows its own forces, it is constantly striving to become ill. Yes, what exists down there in the human being as the physical body is actually in a constant effort to become ill. And if we look up from the physical body to the etheric body, we have in the etheric body the totality of those forces of the human being that are constantly in the effort to restore the sick person to health. The pendulum swing between the physical body and the etheric body is aimed at constantly maintaining the center between the pathological and the therapeutic. The etheric body is the cosmic therapist, and the physical body is the cosmic pathogen.

And we could speak just as well for other areas of human knowledge. And in speaking thus, we say to ourselves: When we are confronted with an illness, what must we do? We must somehow, through certain healing constellations, call upon the etheric body to heal. Ultimately, all medicine does this: somehow call upon the etheric body of the person to heal, because it is the healer. If we approach the ether body in the right way in a person who can be made healthy, if we seek what can come to him from the ether body in terms of healing powers according to his general human destiny, then we are on the way to healing him.

But I will talk about that tomorrow. I will speak about this latter chapter, which has been discussed in connection with today's discussion, tomorrow.

At the times when the great festivals of the year approach our souls, it is good ever and again to bring before our inner eye, out of spiritual cosmic connections, the meaning of the festival year. And I should like to do this by setting before you how, under the influence of spiritual insights and over long ages, the festival year has gradually evolved out of the whole constitution of the Earth. If we look at the Earth and its events from such an aspect, we must only make clear that we cannot conceive the Earth as a mere conglomeration of minerals and rocks, as is done by modern mineralogy and geology, but we must rather regard it as a living, ensouled organism, which brings forth the plants, the animals and the physical being of man out of its own inner forces. Then what I shall now set forth will be in agreement.

You know that the Earth, with all the beings belonging to it—consider only the plant covering of the Earth—completely changes its aspect in the course of the year, changes everything with which it looks out into cosmic space as with its physiognomy, so to speak. After a year the Earth has always arrived again at about the same point, as to its appearance, at which it stood a year before. You need only to think how almost everything related to weather conditions, to the budding of plants, to the appearance of animal creatures—how with regard to all this the Earth has arrived again in this March, 1923, at about the same point of development at which it stood in March of the year 1922.

Today we intend to consider this cycle of the Earth as a kind of mighty breathing which the Earth carries out in relation to the surrounding cosmos. We can consider still other processes which take place on the Earth and around it as breathing processes of a sort. We can even speak of a daily breathing of the Earth. But today we want to place before our inner eye the yearly cycle, in the large, as a mighty breathing process of the Earth, in which of course it is not air that is breathed in and out, but rather those forces which are at work for example in vegetation, those forces which push the plants out of the Earth in spring, and which withdraw again into the Earth in fall, letting the green plants fade and finally paralyzing plant growth.

To repeat, it is not a breathing of air of which we speak, but the in-and-out-breathing of forces, of which we can get a partial idea if we notice the plant-growth during the course of the year. We intend today to bring this annual breathing process of the Earth before our souls.

Let us first look at the Earth at the time of the winter solstice, in the last third of December, according to our present reckoning. At this time we may compare the Earth's breathing with the lung-breathing of a man when he has inhaled a breath of air and is working on it in himself, that is, when he is holding his breath within him. In the same way, the Earth has within it those forces which I spoke of as being inhaled and exhaled. At the end of December it is holding these forces. And what is happening then with the Earth I can sketch for you schematically in the following way:

Let us think of this (red) as representing the Earth. We can of course only consider one part of the Earth in connection with this breathing. We shall consider that part in which we ourselves dwell; the conditions are of course reversed on the opposite side of the Earth. We must picture (vorstellen) the breathing of the Earth in such a way that in one region there is out-breathing, and in the opposite region in-breathing; but this we need not consider today.

Let us picture in our minds the season of December. Let us imagine what I am drawing here in yellow to be the held breath in our region. At the end of December the Earth has fully in-breathed and is holding in herself the forces of which I just spoke. She has entirely sucked in her soul element, for the forces of which I have spoken are the soul element of the Earth. She has drawn it completely in, just as a man who has inhaled holds the air entirely in himself.

This is the time at which with good reason the birth of Jesus has been set, because Jesus is thus born out of an Earth force which contains the entire soul element of the Earth within it. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the initiates who were still worthy of the ancient initiation connected a deep meaning with the view which placed the birth of Jesus just at this point of the earthly in-breathing and holding of the breath.

These initiates said something like the following: “In the ancient days, when our places of initiation stood within the Chaldean and Egyptian cultures, when a wish arose to know what that Being who represents the lofty Sun-Being had to say to earthly humanity, an idea of his message was formed, not by looking at the sunlight directly in all its spirituality, but rather by observing the way in which the sunlight was rayed back from the Moon.” And when the gaze was turned toward the Moon, they saw—with the help of clairvoyant vision—along with the flooding moonlight the manifestation of the Spirit of the Universe. And the meaning of this manifestation was realized in a more external way when they regarded the constellation of the Moon in relation to the planets and fixed stars.

In this way the position of the stars, especially in relation to the down-streaming moonlight, was observed during the night hours in the Chaldean, and still more in the Egyptian mysteries. Just as a man now reads the meaning of letters on a sheet of paper, in those times meaning was read in the relation of Aries, or of Taurus, of Venus, or of the Sun itself, to the streaming moonlight. From the way in which the constellations and the stars stood in relation to one another, especially from the way they were oriented with the moonlight, there was read what the heavens had to say to the Earth. All this was put into words. And according to the meaning of what was thus put into words, the ancient initiates sought what that Being Who was later called the Christ had to say to earthly man. They sought to interpret what was conveyed by the stars in their relation to the Moon and apply it to the earthly life.

But now as the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, the whole nature of the Mysteries passed through what I might call a great soul-spiritual metamorphosis. Then the oldest of the initiates said to their pupils: “A time is at hand when the stellar constellations must no longer be related to the flooding moonlight. The universe will speak differently to earthly man in the future. The light of the Sun must be observed directly. The spiritual gaze of the knower must be turned away from the revelations of the Moon and toward the revelations of the Sun.”

The teachings given in the Mysteries made a profound impression upon those men who at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha still ranked as initiates of the old order. And it was from this point of view that these initiates formed their judgment of the Mystery of Golgotha. But at the same time they said, “Some Earth event must enter in, which can bring about this transition from a lunar to a solar orientation.”—It was in this way that the cosmic significance of the birth of Jesus dawned on them.

They saw the birth of Jesus as something which gave the impulse out of the very Earth itself, no longer to regard the Moon as the regent, so to speak, of celestial phenomena, but rather the Sun itself.—“The event that brings this about,” so they said to themselves, “must be of an extraordinary kind.” And the nature of this extraordinary event yielded its secret to them through the following: They began to understand the inner meaning of the Earth occurrence that took place in the last third of December, the occurrence which we now call Christmas. They said to themselves: “Everything must now be related to the Sun.”—But the Sun can exert its power on the Earth only when the Earth has exhaled its forces. At Christmas time it has breathed them in; its breath is being held. If Jesus is born at this time, He is born at a time when the Earth is in a certain way not speaking with the heavens, a time when the Earth with its being has entirely withdrawn into itself. Jesus is born, then, at a time when the Earth is rolling along through cosmic space quite alone, when it is not sending out its breath to be welled and woven through by the force of the Sun, by the light of the Sun. At this time the Earth has not offered its soul-being to the cosmos; it has withdrawn its soul being into itself, has sucked it in. Jesus is born on the Earth at a time when the Earth is alone with itself, is isolated as it were from the cosmos.

Try to feel for yourselves the cosmic perceiving-feeling (Empfinden) which lies at the basis of such a way of calculating!

Now let us follow the Earth further in its yearly course. Let us follow it up to the time in which we are just now, about the time of the spring equinox, the end of March. Then we shall have to picture the situation in this way:

The Earth (red) has just breathed out; the soul is still half within the Earth, but the Earth has breathed it out; the streaming soul-forces are pouring out into the cosmos. Whereas since December, the force of the Christ Impulse has been intimately bound up with the Earth, with the soul-element of the Earth, we find that now this Christ Impulse, together with the outward-streaming soul element, is beginning to radiate around the Earth (arrows). This which here as Christ-permeated Earth-soul is flowing out into spiritual cosmic space, must be met now by the force of the sunlight itself. And the mental picture arises: While in December the Christ withdrew the Earth-soul element into the interior of the Earth, in order to be insulated from cosmic influences, now with the out-breathing of the Earth, He begins to let His forces breathe out, to extend them to receive the forces of the Sun (das Sonnenhafte) which radiate toward Him. And our schematic drawing will be correct if we represent the Sun force (yellow) as uniting with the Christ force radiating from the Earth. The Christ begins to work together with the Sun forces at Easter time; hence Easter falls at the time of the out-breathing of the Earth. But what happens then must not be related to the light flowing back from the Moon; it must be related to the Sun.

This is the origin of fixing the time of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox. And anyone who is sensitive to such things would have to say to himself with regard to the Easter time: “If I have united myself with the Christ force, my soul also streams out into cosmic spaces along with the out-breathing force of the Earth-soul, and receives the Sun force, which the Christ now brings to human souls from the Earth, whereas before the Mystery of Golgotha He brought it to them from the cosmos.”

But here something else enters in. When festivals were established in those times in which whatever was important on Earth was referred to the flooding moonlight, it was done purely in accordance with what could be observed in space: how the Moon stood in relation to the stars. The intent of the Logos, which had been written into space by Him, was thus deciphered in order to determine the festivals. But if you consider the fixing of the Easter festival as we have it now, you will see that it has been established according to space only up to a certain point, that point at which we speak of the full moon after the beginning of spring. Thus far everything is spatial, but we depart from space when we refer to the Sunday after the spring full moon. This Sunday is determined, not spatially, but according to how it stands in the cycle of the year, how it stands in the cycle of the weekdays, where following Saturday come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and again Saturday, always in periodical succession. We step out of space here, when we cross over from the spatial setting of the Moon constellation to the purely temporal course in the yearly cycle of Sundays.

Thus it was possible still in the old mysteries to perceive in feeling that the fixing of the festivals had formerly been related to cosmic space but that with the Mystery of Golgotha there was a progression out of cosmic space into time, which itself was no longer related to cosmic space. What related to the spirit was as it were torn away from the purely spatial. This was a powerful “jolt” of mankind toward the spirit.

If we carry further our view of the Earth's breathing process during the course of the year, we find the Earth in yet a third condition in June. At this place which we are observing, the Earth has completely exhaled. The entire soul-element of the Earth has been poured forth into cosmic space; it is yielded up to cosmic space and is saturating itself with the forces of the Sun and the stars. The Christ, Who is joined with this soul-element of the Earth, now unites His force also with the forces of the stars and the Sun, surging there in the Earth-soul that is given over to the cosmic All. It is St. John's Day—Mid-summer. The Earth has fully out-breathed. In her outer physiognomy, with which she looks out into the universe, she reveals not her own inherent force, as she did at the time of the winter solstice; instead, the Earth reveals on her surface the reflected forces of the stars, of the Sun, of all that is in the cosmos outside her.

The old initiates, particularly those in the northern regions of Europe, felt most livingly the inner meaning and spirit of this time that is our June. At this time they felt their own souls, along with the Earth soul, given over to the cosmic expanses. They felt themselves to be living, not within the earthly realm, but rather in the cosmic distances. Indeed they said the following to themselves: “We live with our soul in the cosmic expanses. We live with the Sun, we live with the stars. And when we direct our gaze back upon the Earth, which has filled herself with springing and sprouting plants, which has brought forth animals of all kinds, then we see in the springing and sprouting plants, in the gleaming, unfolding colors of the flowers; we see in the insects flitting and creeping hither and yon, in the birds with their multicolored feathers traversing the air; we see gleam back from the Earth as though mirrored, what we take up into our souls just when we abandon the Earth and unite ourselves with the out-flowing breath of the Earth in order to live with the cosmos rather than with the Earth. What appears in world space springing and sprouting from the Earth in thousandfold colors—this is of the same nature. Only it is a reflection, a raying-back force, whereas we bear in our human souls the original force itself.”

This was the feeling of those men who were inspired out of the Mystery places, those men who especially understood the festival of the summer solstice; and so we see the St. John's festival placed at the time of the Earth's great out-breathing into the cosmos.

If we follow this breathing-process still further we come finally to the stage that makes its entry at the end of September. The out-breathed forces begin their return movement; the Earth begins once more to inhale. The soul of the Earth which was poured out into the cosmos now draws back into the interior of the Earth again. Human souls perceive this in-breathing of the Earth-soul element, either in their subconscious or in their clairvoyant impressions, as processes of their own souls. Those men who were inspired by initiation knowledge of these things could say to themselves at the end of September: “What the cosmos has given us and what has united itself with our soul force through the Christ Impulse—this we now allow to flow back into the earthly realm, into that earthly sphere which throughout the summer has served only as a reflection, as a kind of mirror in relation to the extraterrestrial cosmos.”

But a mirror has the property of not permitting anything that is in front of it to pass through it. Because the Earth is a mirror of the cosmos in the summer, it is also opaque in its inner nature, impermeable by cosmic influences and therefore, during the summer time, impermeable by the Christ Impulse. (See drawing). At this time the Christ Impulse has to live in the exhaled breath. The Ahrimanic forces, however, establish themselves firmly in this Earth which has become impervious to the Christ Impulse. And when the human being returns once more with the forces which he has taken up into his own soul through the Earth's out-breathing—including the forces of the Christ—he plunges into an Earth which has been ahrimanized.

However, it is so, that in the present cycle of Earth evolution—since the last third of the nineteenth century—from spiritual heights there comes to the aid of the descending human soul the force of Michael, who, while the Earth's breath is flowing back into the Earth itself, contends with the Dragon, Ahriman.

This was already foreseen prophetically by those in the ancient Mysteries who understood the course of the year spiritually. They knew that for their time the Mystery had not yet approached which would reveal Michael coming to the help of descending human souls. But they knew that when the souls should have been reborn again and again, this Michael force would enter, would come to the aid of earthly human souls. This was the meaning they saw in the cycle of the year.

Hence it is out of ancient wisdom that you will find written in the calendar on September 29, a few days after the fall equinox—Michael's Day, Michaelmas. And Michaelmas is for simple country people an exceedingly important time. But because of its position in the cycle of the year, Michaelmas is an important time also for those who want to grasp the whole significance of our present earth epoch. If we want to take our place in the present time with the right consciousness, we need to understand that in the last third of the nineteenth century the Michael force took up the struggle with the Dragon, with the Ahrimanic powers, in just the way necessitated by our time. And we must insert ourselves into this intention of earthly and human evolution by taking part in the right way with our own consciousness in this cosmic-spiritual battle.¹

We may say that up until now Michaelmas has been a festival for peasants—you know the sense in which I use the word—a festival for simple folk. But once the significance of the yearly breathing process that takes place between the Earth and the cosmos is recognized, Michaelmas will be more and more called upon to form a very real supplement to Easter. For mankind, who will understand earthly life again also in a spiritual sense, will eventually have to think in this way.

While the summer out-breathing occurred, the Earth was ahrimanized. Woe if Jesus had been born into this ahrimanized Earth! Before the cycle is completed again and December approaches, which brings about the birth of the Christ Impulse in the ensouled Earth, the Earth must be purified by spiritual forces, from the Dragon, from the Ahrimanic forces. And the purifying force of Michael, which subdues the evil Ahrimanic forces, must unite itself, from September into December, with the in-flowing earth breath, so that the Christmas festival may approach in the right way, and the birth of the Christ Impulse take place in the right way, so that it will then mature up until the beginning of the out-breathing at Easter time.

We can therefore say: “At Christmas time the Earth has drawn its soul-element into itself, the Earth has taken its soul-being into itself in the great yearly respiration. In this Earth-soul element which has been drawn into the Earth, the Christ Impulse is born in the inwardness of the Earth. Toward spring it flows out into the cosmos with the out-breathing of the Earth. It views the star world and enters into reciprocal action with it, but in such a way that its relation to the stars is no longer spatial, but temporal, so that the temporal is withdrawn from the spatial.”

Easter is on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Within the full out-going breath man rises up with his soul-being into the cosmic world, permeates and saturates himself with the quality of the stars, takes in the breath of the cosmos with his earthly breath, thus permeating himself with the Easter spirit, and by St. John's Day he is most strongly imbued with that with which he began to permeate himself at Easter. He must then return to the Earth, with the Earth soul and his own soul-being, but he depends upon Michael's standing by him, so that he may penetrate the earthly world in the right way after the Ahrimanic element has been overcome through the Michael forces.

And ever more and more, with the strength of the indrawn breath, does the soul-element of the Earth retire into the Earth itself, up to Christmas time. And today we celebrate Christmas time in the right way if we say to ourselves: “Michael has purified the Earth, so that the birth of the Christ Impulse can occur at Christmas time in the right way.”

Then the out-flowing into the cosmos begins again. In this outflowing Christ takes Michael with Him, in order that Michael may again gather to him out of the cosmos those forces which he has used up in his struggle with the earthly Ahrimanic forces. At Easter time Michael begins again to immerse himself in the cosmic world, and is most strongly interwoven with the cosmos at St. John's time.

And a man in the present who comprehends in the right sense what unites him as man with the earthly, says to himself: “The age is beginning for us in which we see the Christ Impulse aright when we know that it is accompanied by the force of Michael in the course of the year; when we see the Christ flowing down into the earthly and rising up into the cosmos, accompanied by Michael, who at one time is contending within the earthly, at another gathering strength for the fight in the cosmic spaces.” (See lemniscate)

In the Easter thought we have an image of utmost grandeur which has been implanted into earth existence in order to bring enlightenment; namely, the image of Christ arising out of the grave in victory over Death. We can grasp this Easter thought in the right way in our time only if we understand that we must add to it today the Being of Michael, at the right hand of Christ Jesus. For while the force of the Earth's breath is becoming woven through with the force of Christ during the breathing process of the Earth in the course of the year's cycle, Michael accompanies Christ.

If we as Earth men would understand how to make the Christ thought alive in ourselves at each of the four great festivals of the year, including Easter, as indeed we must do, we need to be able to place this thought in the right way and in full consciousness into the present time. The hope that was focused on the coming of the Michael force in the service of the Christ force animated those who understand the Christ Impulse in the right way up to our time.

The obligation arises for us, especially in the modern age, to permeate ourselves with the Christ Impulse in the sense of the Michael thought. We do this in the right way when we know how to link the Resurrection thought with the active Michael thought which has been implanted into human evolution, in the way I have often explained.

• 1. This is the first occasion on which Rudolf Steiner spoke in a broader sense of the importance of celebrating Michaelmas today. His first allusion to the subject at all had been in a brief reference three months earlier. (The Spiritual Communion of Mankind, December 24, 1922)

My dear Friends,

I will begin by placing before you what we may call the “Ur-phenomenon”—primary phenomenon—of the Theory of Colour. By and by, you will find it confirmed and reinforced in the phenomena you can observe through the whole range of so-called optics or Theory of Colour. Of course the phenomena get complicated; the simple Ur-phenomenon is not always easy to recognize at once. But if you take the trouble you will find it everywhere. The simple phenomenon—expressed in Goethe's way, to begin with—is as follows: When I look through darkness at something lighter, the light object will appear modified by the darkness in the direction of the light colours, i.e. in the direction of the red and yellowish tones. If for example I look at anything luminous and, as we should call it, white—at any whitish-shining light through a thick enough plate which is in some way dim or cloudy, then what would seem to me more or less white if I were looking at directly, will appear yellowish or yellow-red (Figure IVa).

This is the one pole. Conversely, if you have here a simple black surface and look at it directly, you will see it black, but if you interpose a trough of water through which you send a stream of light so that the liquid is illumined, you will be looking at the dark through something light. Blue or violet (bluish-red) tones of colour will appear (Figure IVb). The other pole is thus revealed. This therefore is the Ur-phenomenon: Light through dark—yellow; dark through light—blue.

This simple phenomenon can be seen on every hand if we once accustom ourselves to think more realistically and not so abstractly as in modern science. Please now recall from this point of view the experiment which we have done. We sent a cylinder of light through a prism and so obtained a real scale of colours, from violet to red; we caught it on a screen. I made a drawing of the phenomenon (see Figure IIc and Figure IVc). You will remember; if this is the prism and this the cylinder of light, the light in some way goes through the prism and is diverted upward. Moreover, as we said before, it is not only diverted. It would be simply diverted if a transparent body with parallel faces were interposed. But we are putting a prism into the path of the light—that is, a body with convergent faces. In passing through the prism, the light gets darkened. The moment we send the light through the prism we therefore have to do with two things: first the simple light as it streams on, and then the dimness interposed in the path of the light. Moreover this dimness, as we said, puts itself into the path of the light in such a way that while the light is mainly diverted upward, the dimming that arises, raying upward as it does, shines also in the same direction into which the light itself is diverted. That is to say, darkness rays into the diverted light. Darkness is living, as it were, in the diverted light, and by this means the bluish and violet shades are here produced. But the darkness rays downward too, so, while the cylinder of light is diverted upward, the darkness here rays downward and works contrary to the diverted light but is no match for it. Here therefore we may say: the original bright light, diverted as it is, overwhelms and outdoes the darkness. We get the yellowish or yellow-red colours.

If we now take a sufficiently thin cylinder of light, we can also look in the direction of it through the prism. Instead of looking from outside on to a screen and seeing the picture projected there, we put our eye in the place of this picture, and, looking through the prism, we then see the aperture, through which the cylinder of light is produced, displaced (Figure IVc). Once again therefore adhering strictly to the facts, we have the following phenomenon: Looking along here, I see what would be coming directly towards me if the prism were not there, displaced in a downward direction by the prism. At the same time I see it coloured.

What then do you see in this case? Watch what you see, state it simply and then connect it with the fundamental fact we have just now been ascertaining. Then, what you actually see will emerge in all detail. Only you must hold to what is really seen. For if you are looking thus into the bright cylinder of light—which, once again, is coming now towards you—you see something light, namely the cylinder of light itself, but you are seeing it through dark. (That there is something darkened here, is clearly proved by the fact that blue arises in this region). Through something darkened—through the blue colour, in effect—you look at something light, namely at the cylinder-of-light coming towards you. Through what is dark you look at what is light; here therefore you should be seeing yellow or yellowish-red—in a word, yellow and red,—as in fact you do. Likewise the red colour below is proof that here is a region irradiated with light. For as I said just now, the light here over-whelms the dark. Thus as you look in this direction, however bright the cylinder of light itself may be, you still see it through an irradiation of light, in relation to which it is dark. Below, therefore, you are looking at dark through light and you will see blue or bluish-red. You need but express the primal phenomenon,—it tells you what you actually see. Your eye is here encountered by what you would be seeing in the other instance. Here for example is the blue and you are looking through it; therefore the light appears reddish. At the bottom edge you have a region that is lighted up. However light the cylinder of light may be, you see it through a space that is lit up. Thus you are seeing something darker through an illumined space and so you see it blue. It is the polarity that matters.

For the phenomenon we studied first—that on the screen—you may use the name “objective” colours if you wish to speak in learned terms. This other one—the one you see in looking through the prism—will then be called the “subjective” spectrum. The “subjective” spectrum appears as an inversion of the “objective”.

Concerning all these phenomena there has been much intellectual speculation, my dear Friends, in modern time. The phenomena have not merely been observed and stated purely as phenomena, as we have been endeavouring to do. There has been ever so much speculation about them; indeed, beginning with the famous Newton, Science has gone to the utter-most extremes in speculation. Newton, having first seen and been impressed by this colour-spectrum, began to speculate as to the nature of light. Here is the prism, said Newton; we let the white light in. The colours are already there in the white light; the prism conjures them forth and now they line up in formation. I have then dismembered the white light into its constituents. Newton now imagined that to every colour corresponds a kind of substance, so that seven colours altogether are contained as specific substances in the light. Passing the light through the prism is to Newton like a kind of chemical analysis, whereby the light is separated into seven distinct substances. He even tried to imagine which of the substances emit relatively larger corpuscles—tiny spheres or pellets—and which smaller. According to this conception the Sun sends us its light, we let it into the room through a circular opening and it goes through in a cylinder of light. This light however consists of ever so many corpuscles—tiny little bodies. Striking the surface of the prism they are diverted from their original course. Eventually they bombard the screen. There then these tiny cannon-balls impinge. The smaller ones fly farther up, the larger ones remain farther down. The smallest are the violet, the largest are the red. So then the large are separated from the small.

This idea that there is a substance or that there are a number of substances flying through space was seriously shaken before long by other physicists—Huyghens, Young and others,—until at last the physicists said to themselves: The theory of little corpuscular cannon-balls starting from somewhere, projected through a refracting medium or not as the case may be, arriving at the screen and there producing a picture, or again finding their way into the eye and giving rise in us to the phenomenon of red, etc.,—this will not do after all. They were eventually driven to this conclusion by an experiment of Fresnel's, towards which some preliminary work had however been done before, by the Jesuit Grimaldi among others.

Fresnel's experiment shook the corpuscular theory very considerably. His experiments are indeed most interesting, and we must try to get a clear idea of what is really happening when experiments are set up in the way he did. I beg you now, pay very careful attention to the pure facts; we want to study such a phenomenon quite exactly. Suppose I have two mirrors and a source of light—a flame for instance, shedding its light from here (Figure IVd). If I then put up a screen—say, here—I shall get pictures by means of the one mirror and also pictures by means of the other mirror. Such is the distribution you are to assume; I draw it in cross-section. Here are two looking-glasses—plane mirrors, set at a very small angle to one another,—here is a source of light, I will call it L, and here a screen. The light is reflected and falls on to the screen; so then I can illumine the screen with the reflected light. For if I let the light strike here, with the help of this mirror I can illumine this part of the screen, making it lighter here than in the surrounding region. Now I have here a second mirror, by which the light is reflected a little differently. Part of the cone of light, as reflected from here below (from the second mirror) on to the screen, still falls into the upper part. The inclination of the two mirrors is such that the screen is lighted up both by reflection from the upper mirror and by reflection from the lower. It will then be as though the screen were being illumined from two different places. Now suppose a physicist, witnessing this experiment, were thinking in Newton's way. He would argue: There is the source of light. It bombards the first mirror, hurling its little cannon-balls in this direction. After recoiling from the mirror they reach the screen and light it up. Meanwhile, the others are recoiling from the lower mirror, for many of them go in that direction also. It will be very much lighter on the screen when there are two mirrors than when there is only one. Therefore if I remove the second mirror the screen will surely be less illumined by reflected light than when the two mirrors are there. So would our physicist argue, although admittedly one rather devastating thought might occur to him, for surely while these little bodies are going on their way after reflection, the others are on their downward journey (see the figure). Why then the latter should not hit the former and drive them from their course, is difficult to see. Nay, altogether, in the textbooks you will find the prettiest accounts of what is happening according to the wave-theory, but while these things are calculated very neatly, one cannot but reflect that no one ever figures out, when one wave rushes criss-cross through the other, how can this simply pass unnoticed?

Now let us try to grasp what happens in reality in this experiment. Suppose that this is the one stream of light. It is thrown by reflection across here, but now the other stream of light arrives here and encounters it,—the phenomenon is undeniable. The two disturb each other. The one wants to rush on; the other gets in the way and, in consequence, extinguishes the light coming from the other side. In rushing through it extinguishes the light. Here therefore on the screen we do not get a lighting-up but in reality darkness is reflected across here. So we here get an element of darkness (Figure IVe). But now all this is not at rest,—it is in constant movement. What has here been disturbed, goes on. Here, so to speak, a hole has arisen in the light. The light rushed through; a hole was made, appearing dark. And as an outcome of this “hole”, the next body-of-light will go through all the more easily and alongside the darkness you will have a patch of light so much the lighter. The next thing to happen, one step further on, is that once more a little cylinder of light from above impinges on a light place, again extinguishes the latter, and so evokes another element of darkness. And as the darkness in its turn has thus moved on another step, here once again the light is able to get through more easily. We get the pattern of a lattice, moving on from step to step. Turn by turn, the light from above can get through and extinguishes the other, producing darkness, once again, and this moves on from step to step. Here then we must obtain an alternation of light and dark, because the upper light goes through the lower and in so doing makes a lattice work.

This is what I was asking you most thoroughly to think of; you should be able to follow in your thought, how such a lattice arises. You will have alternating patches of light and dark, inasmuch as light here rushes into light. When one light rushes into another the light is cancelled—turned to darkness. The fact that such a lattice arises is to be explained by the particular arrangement we have made with these two mirrors. The velocity of light—nay, altogether what arises here by way of differences in velocity of light,—is not of great significance. What I am trying to make clear is what here arises within the light itself by means of this apparatus, so that a lattice-work is reflected—light, dark, light, dark, and so on.

Now yonder physicist—Fresnel himself, in fact—argued as follows: If light is a streaming of tiny corpuscular bodies, it goes without saying that the more bodies are being hurled in a particular direction, the lighter it must grow there,—or else one would have to assume that the one corpuscle eats up the other! The simple theory of corpuscular emanation will not explain this phenomenon of alternating light and dark. We have just seen how it is really to be explained. But it did not occur to the physicists to take the pure phenomenon as such, which is what one should do. Instead, and by analogy with certain other phenomena, they set to work to explain it in a materialistic way. Bombarding little balls of matter would no longer do. Therefore they said: Let us assume, not that the light is in itself a stream of fine substances, but that it is a movement in a very fine substantial medium—the “ether”. It is a movement in the ether. And, to begin with, they imagined that light is propagated through the ether in the same way as sound is through air (Euler for instance thought of it thus). If I call forth a sound, the sound is propagated through the air in such a way that if this is the place where the sound is evoked, the air in the immediate neighbourhood is, to begin with, compressed. Compressed air arises here. Now the compressed air presses in its turn on the adjoining air. It expands, momentarily producing in this neighbourhood a layer of attenuated air. Through these successions of compression and expansion, known as waves, we imagine sound to spread. To begin with, they assumed that waves of this kind are also kindled in the ether. However, there were phenomena at variance with this idea; so then they said to themselves: Light is indeed an undulatory movement, but the waves are of a different kind from those of sound. In sound there is compression here, then comes attenuation, and all this moves on. Such waves are “longitudinal”. For light, this notion will not do. In light, the particles of ether must be moving at right angles to the direction in which the light is being propagated. When, therefore, what we call a “ray of light” is rushing through the air—with a velocity, you will recall, of 300,000 kilometres a second—the tiny particles will always be vibrating at right angles to the direction in which the light is rushing. When this vibration gets into our eye, we perceive it.

Apply this to Fresnel's experiment: we get the following idea. The movement of the light is, once again, a vibration at right angles to the direction in which the light is propagated. This ray, going towards the lower one of the two mirrors, is vibrating, say, in this way and impinges here. As I said before, the fact that wave-movements in many directions will be going criss-cross through each other, is disregarded. According to the physicists who think along these lines, they will in no way disturb each other. Here however, at the screen in this experiment, they do; or again, they reinforce each other. In effect, what will happen here? When the train of waves arrives here, it may well be that the one infinitesimal particle with its perpendicular vibrations happens to be vibrating downward at the very moment when the other is vibrating upward. Then they will cancel each other out and darkness will arise at this place. Or if the two are vibrating upward at the same moment, light will arise. Thus they explain, by the vibrations of infinitesimal particles, what we were explaining just now by the light itself. I was saying that we here get alternations of light patches and dark. The so-called wave-theory of light explains them on the assumption that light is a wave-movement in the other [ether?]. If the infinitesimal particles are vibrating so as to reinforce each other, a lighter patch will arise; if contrary to one another, we get a darker patch.

You must realize what a great difference there is between taking the phenomena purely as they are—setting them forth, following them with our understanding, remaining amid the phenomena themselves—and on the other hand adding to them our own inventions. This movement of the ether is after all a pure invention. Having once invented such a notion we can of course make calculations about it, but that affords no proof that it is really there. All that is purely kinematical or phoronomical in these conceptions are merely thought by us, and so is all the arithmetic. You see from this example: our fundamental way of thought requires us so to explain the phenomena that they themselves be the eventual explanation; they must contain their own explanation. Please set great store by this. Mere spun-out theories and theorizings are to be rejected. You can explain what you like by adding things out of the blue, of which man has no knowledge. Of course the waves might conceivably be there, and it might be that the one swings upward when the other downward so that they cancel each other out. But they have all been invented! What is there however without question is this lattice,—this we see fully reflected. It is to the light itself that we must look, if we desire a genuine and not a spurious, explanation.

Now I was saying just now: when the one light goes through the other, or enters into any kind of relation to it, it may well have a dimming or even extinguishing effect upon the other, just as the effect of the prism is to dim the light. This is again brought out in the following experiment, which we shall actually be doing, I will now make a drawing of it. We may have what I shewed you yesterday—a spectrum extending from violet to red—engendered directly by the Sun. But we can also generate the spectrum in another way. Instead of letting the Sun shine through an opening in the wall, we make a solid body glow with heat,—incandescent (Figure IVf). When we have by and by got it white-hot, it will also give us such a spectrum. It does not matter if we get the spectrum from the Sun or from an incandescent body.

Now we can also generate a spectrum in a somewhat different way (Figure IVg). Suppose this is a prism and this a sodium flame—a flame in which the metal sodium is volatilizing. The sodium is turned to gas; it burns and volatilizes. We make a spectrum of the sodium as it volatilizes. Then a peculiar thing happens. Making a spectrum, not from the Sun or from a glowing solid body but from a glowing gas, we find one place in the spectrum strongly developed. For sodium light it is in the yellow. Here will be red, orange, yellow, you will remember. It is the yellow that is most strongly developed in the spectrum of sodium. The rest of the spectrum is stunted—hardly there at all. All this—from violet to yellow and then again from yellow to red—is stunted. We seem to get a very narrow bright yellow strip, or as is generally said, a yellow line. Mark well, the yellow line also arises inasmuch as it is part of an entire spectrum, only the rest of the spectrum in this case is stunted, atrophied as it were.

From diverse bodies we can make spectra of this kind appearing not as a proper spectrum but in the form of bright, luminous lines. From this you see that vice-versa, if we do not know what is in a flame and we make a spectrum of it, we can conclude, if we get this yellow spectrum for example, that there is sodium in the flame. So we can recognize which of the metals is there.

But the remarkable thing comes about when we combine the two experiments. We generate this cylinder of light and the spectrum of it, while at the same time we interpose the sodium flame, so that the glowing sodium somehow unites with the cylinder of light (Figure IVh). What happens then is very like what I was shewing you in Fresnel's experiment. In the resulting spectrum you might expect the yellow to appear extra strong, since it is there to begin with and now the yellow of the sodium flame is added to it. But this is not what happens. On the contrary, the yellow of the sodium flame extinguishes the other

yellow and you get a dark place here. Precisely where you would expect a lighter part you get a darker. Why is it so? It simply depends on the intensity of force that is brought to bear. If the sodium light arising here were selfless enough to let the kindred yellow light arising here it would have to extinguish itself in so doing. This it does not do; it puts itself in the way at the very place where the yellow should be coming through. It is simply there, and though it is yellow itself, the effect of it is not to intensify but to extinguish. As a real active force, it puts itself in the way, even as an indifferent obstacle might do; it gets in the way. This yellow part of the spectrum is extinguished and a black strip is brought about instead. From this again you see, we need only bear in mind what is actually there. The flowing light itself gives us the explanation.

These are the things which I would have you note. A physicist explaining things in Newton's way would naturally argue: If I here have a piece of white—say, a luminous strip—and I look at it through the prism, it appears to me in such a way that I get a spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, dark blue, violet (Figure IVi). Goethe said: Well, at a pinch, that might do. If Nature really is like that—if she has made the light composite—we might well assume that with the help of the prism this light gets analyzed into its several parts. Good and well; but now the very same people who say the light consists of these seven colours—so that the seven colours are parts or constituents of the light—these same people allege that darkness is just nothing,—is the mere absence of light. Yet if I leave a strip black in the midst of white—if I have simple white paper with a black strip in the middle and look at this through a prism,—then too I find I get a rainbow, only the colours are now in a different order (Figure IVk),—mauve in the middle, and on the one side merging into greenish-blue. I get a band of colours in a different order. On the analysis-theory I ought now to say: then the black too is analyzable and I should thus be admitting that darkness is more than the mere absence of light. The darkness too would have to be analyzable and would consist of seven colours. This, that he saw the black band too in seven colours, only in a different order,—this was what put Goethe off. And this again shews us how needful it is simply to take the phenomena as we find them.

Introductory words from Roman Boos: Dear attendees, the appearance of a number of scientifically working personalities is of course not intended to present anything firm, final, or conclusively formulated and to submit it to public discussion. Rather, these lectures are intended to show the direction in which the individual subject areas can be developed what is represented here from the Goetheanum as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and what has been presented to the public for some time now in its artistic effects in numerous eurythmy performances and in the construction of the Goetheanum as an architectural work. In all modesty, however, we believe that our lectures, which are only intended as a beginning, can compete with what is represented today in the circles of the academies and universities.

For anyone who has studied in any faculty with a living soul must have become more and more aware in recent times of how the purely material, the purely quantitative, loads a person with a multitude of facts, so that one can no longer stand up to it, not only in a personal sense, but absolutely in a spiritual sense. This means that the human being, with his spiritual powers, is less and less able to really

21 enormous material is brought to him, really to cope with. And because in anthroposophy the view is directed to the human being, and not just to the human being himself, but to the human being as a point within the whole of reality, what lies within the realities themselves can express itself, but in such a way that these realities do not confront him only quantitatively, weighing on him and oppressing him, but so that, by expressing themselves in man himself, the union of man with the spiritual can also take place and thus also with objective reality.

The opportunity will be given here for a debate from within the circle of scientific workers. In the form of debates, questions and so on, the opportunity is offered to further develop one or other of the topics touched upon in the lectures. For anyone approaching scientific movements with the attitude from which the entire anthroposophical movement builds its works will see a major task in cleansing the field of science and social life from the polemical spirit, which in the field of science takes the form of and in the social life as throwing hand grenades and setting machine guns going; he will see the main task as being the necessity to further expand and deepen the problems, as is to be done here.

And we also hope that at the scientific lectures, Dr. Steiner will be able to add some more to what is given by the experts.

We would also like to ask you to initially only raise questions that are related to today's lecture topic, and to come back to special cases in the following scientific lectures.

The topics of the specialist lectures are:

on March 25, 1920: Dr. Carl Unger on “Anthroposophy and the Epistemological Foundations of Natural Science”

March 26, 1920: Dr. Friedrich Husemann on “Weltanschauung, Nervousness and Spiritual Science”

March 27, 1920: Dr. Rudolf Steiner on “The World Picture of Modern Science”

on March 29, 1920: Dr. Walter Johannes Stein on “Anthroposophy and Physiology”,

on March 30, 1920: Dr. Eugen Kolisko on “Anthroposophy and Chemistry”

on 31 March 1920: E.A.Karl Stockmeyer on “Anthroposophy and Physics”

on 1 April 1920: Dr. Oskar Schmiedel on “Anthroposophy and the Theory of Colors”

on April 6, 1920: Dr. Roman Boos on “Anthroposophy and Jurisprudence”

on April 7, 1920: Dr. Rudolf Steiner on “Hygiene as a Social Question”

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved attendees! This lecture today is intended to serve as a kind of introduction to the following eight lectures, which arise in large part from a circle of friends who have gathered here during this time with a very specific scientific goal. Lectures will be given on the most diverse scientific subjects, from the fields of epistemology and physiology; biological questions will be addressed; physics and chemistry will be discussed, and finally, I would like to point out the problem of hygiene as a sociological problem. Today, the outside world often judges, albeit superficially, that in all that is presented here through the spiritual current of which the Goetheanum is a representative, on the one hand it is a sect and on the other a scientific dilettantism. These lectures should at least partly draw attention to the fact that both are very much mistaken about what is presented here. There is neither scientific dilettantism nor religious sectarianism.

Proof of this is that a circle of serious-minded physicians has come together here in these weeks, and that they have been joined by a small circle of such personalities who are inclined to build bridges from medical science to other branches of life. This group has come together here out of the feeling that something like medical life today needs real new impetus; they have come together with the aim of receiving and giving impulses for this new impetus. What is being presented here, I do not want to say as a medical course, but as a course for doctors, that implies that it is about serious striving, about serious willpower in the face of the great tasks of our time. This course follows on from two courses that I have already held in connection with the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, about the necessary new foundation of the physical sciences. All this will be sufficient proof, even for those who, after superficial evaluation, express the opinion just mentioned, that here we are looking at the great, serious tasks of our time, and that we are seeking to determine what is necessary to impact the spiritual culture and thus the whole culture of the present and the near future, based on what these serious, great tasks dictate. If we look at the terrible events of recent years with the aim of ascertaining, through an unprejudiced judgment, how these terrible events are connected with aberrations of the human consciousness, then we will come away from much of what some, I might say light-heartedly, consider to be sufficient for a renewal of life.

For example, how often is the judgment pronounced today that, in the face of what is swirling in time, what is emerging as chaos in time, care must be taken to broaden knowledge, to broaden understanding. And in many circles it is emphasized on all possible occasions that something is missing in our time; on all possible occasions it is emphasized that knowledge must be spread, let us say through adult education centers or similar institutions. The spiritual scientific worldview movement, for which the Goetheanum is the representative here, cannot readily agree with these assessments, which are being made in this direction. For, my dear attendees, in the face of such judgments, the question arises: Do we actually already have a science that is effective in the future, a science that is capable of intervening in life? Do we have something to carry it into the widest circles in adult education centers?

Based on truly profound judgment, those who are the supporters of the spiritual science practiced here are convinced that, before anything else, a renewal of scientific life itself is needed, an infusion of new elements into scientific life, before we can think of spreading knowledge to the widest circles, for example through adult education centers or the like. We are not thinking here merely of a popularization of present-day science, but rather that an anthroposophically oriented worldview must think in terms of a real renewal of these present-day sciences, based on an understanding of the state of these sciences. Naturally, in this introductory lecture, I can only sketch out the task for these evenings. And so I would like to first point out the two main directions of current scientific endeavor, in order to show how these present sciences actually relate to life.

On the one hand, we have everything that can be characterized by saying that it is scientific in the natural scientific sense; we have to refer to everything that occurs in the field of natural science. In speaking about this field here, I must indeed emphasize again and again that I am not starting from a superficial polemic against the current direction of natural science, but that, on the contrary, because I fully recognize everything that natural science has achieved in the course of the 19th century and into our days, because I must admire the great progress of natural science in itself and of the most diverse branches of human technology, it is precisely out of this admiration that I come to think differently about the further course of natural science than it has developed into our days.

On the other hand, we have the historical sciences with all that belongs to them, which also includes, for example, jurisprudence. You know, my dear audience, that natural science has increasingly come to focus on observing external facts and following experiments. They know that there was a strong endeavor, especially in the 19th century, to connect the enormous wealth of facts that have emerged through observation and experimentation with each other through great ideas and to strive towards certain so-called laws of nature. But the one who can really understand this whole scientific life knows that today, in the most diverse fields – in the field of physics, chemistry, biology – we are faced with the most incisive facts and that, with what is commonly known as science, what the facts tell us, we are not in a position to penetrate in any way into the essence of that which obviously must be behind it, yes, that the facts, I would say, stun us, that we cannot keep up with the abundance of facts using scientific methods. The outward course of science actually confirms this.

Even if very few people still pay attention to this today, it must be said that the last twenty years have actually brought about the greatest conceivable revolution in the field of physics. Ideas that were still considered unshakable thirty years ago have now been thoroughly revolutionized. One need only mention the name Einstein or the name Lorentz, the Dutch physicist, and by mentioning these names one can point to a whole range of facts and discussions that have revolutionized and shaken physics as it was just thirty years ago. Of course, I cannot go into the details here. But the fact that physics has been revolutionized, which is well known in certain circles, must be pointed out. Now, however, one can say: While, for example, something as significant as the revolution of the old concept of mass and matter through the newer radiation theory of electricity is at hand, our scientific ways of thinking cannot cope with what has actually been presented to man through the abundance of experiments. From the observation of radiant matter in a glass vacuum, it could be seen that the same properties that were previously attributed to matter, for example a certain speed and acceleration, must now be attributed to radiant electricity; so, so to speak, the concept of matter has been lost. It became clear from the abundance of experiments that nothing could be put in the place of the old concept of matter; and from Einstein's theory of relativity, with its terribly cold abstractions, nothing can be gained that resembles a real conception of what one is actually dealing with in external nature.

All this is said only to point out how the works have come into a flow that has developed in such a way that there is a wealth of observed and experimental material that cannot be mastered by our modes of representation. I would like to say that the development of science has shown that, although we can look at nature on the surface in the modes of perception that have been preserved from the past, we are not able to interpret what nature presents to us today in countless phenomena in the form of rays. A peculiar method has crept into physics in recent times. It is called the statistical method. Whereas in the past it was believed that precisely formulated natural laws could be arrived at by means of exact measurement, observation or experimentation, today we work very much with what is really similar to that statistical method, which resorts to probability calculation, which we find applied when we set up insurance companies, for example. There we also make assumptions, for example, that of the kind that so many of a certain number of people of a certain age have inevitably died after a certain number of years. With these statistical methods – which are based on probability theory and are similar to the methods of modern physics – one can get along quite well if, for example, one has to arrange something like life insurance; everything is correct and one can rely on this method. But the essential defect of the method is that it says nothing about the nature of that for which the method is used – which is clear from the fact that no one will believe that they must really die in the year that was calculated as their year of death using probability calculations and statistical methods. Such methods serve to summarize the facts, and for a certain action based on statistics, but they say nothing for penetrating into any essence. Thus, in the external, scientific field, we are, as it were, condemned to remain on the surface of things.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is most evident when this scientific method is to be applied in the practical treatment of the sick person, when it is to be applied in medicine. And it is precisely because of the dissatisfaction that arises today from the scientific basis of medicine that an arrangement such as the course for doctors that is taking place here in these weeks has been created. When approaching the sick person, one cannot subject him to treatment without really recognizing his nature. The physical and scientific methods must also be put to the test when approaching the human being. And all that can be deplored about medicine and its effects today is connected with the inadequate scientific foundation of our present-day sciences. This is one of the tasks of anthroposophy in relation to the present-day sciences. It has the task of finding real scientific methods through which the abundance of facts that are available to us today can really be seen through in such a way that we can penetrate through these facts into the essence of what surrounds us in the world.

Something very similar is the case with historical science. While at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century we still have attempts to observe human life in such a way that both the natural course of events in the development of the human race and that which comes from within the human being in a soul-spiritual way are taken as a basis – while At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, we have studies such as Herder's “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. During the 19th century, what historical science is becomes more and more abstract and abstract, more and more intellectual and intellectual. We see how those who cannot profess a certain materialism in history speak of ideas that are supposed to work in history. As if abstract ideas could be any kind of real agent that carries historical development! As if ideas were not initially something merely passive! Because our modes of thought are incapable of penetrating through observation or the facts provided by experimentation to the basis of nature, we remain, I would say, merely on the surface of what takes place in human life with our modes of thought. We are unable to connect what we grasp through our thoughts of the people acting in history or of the events occurring in history with the great forces that carry history.

We see, and this is particularly interesting, how in the 19th century, for example, such minds as Herman Grimm's appear. He is really very characteristic of the historical method of the 19th century. There is perhaps nothing that speaks about historical phenomena in such a wonderfully, deeply satisfying way as Herman Grimm does in his treatises, for example on Goethe's “Tasso” or on Goethe's “Iphigenia”. There is something there that is already in the realm of human spiritual creation. In this case Herman Grimm can set about something that can be grasped by thought because it has already been raised to the level of thought. But when Herman Grimm wants to go further, when he wants to go into reality, when he does not just want to look at something like Goethe's works “Tasso” or “Iphigenia”, but when he wants to present Goethe himself as a real human personality Herman Grimm also wrote a book about Goethe. One sees that the whole Goethe whom he describes is actually a kind of shadow figure and nowhere is there the possibility of penetrating the full intensity of the real. What Herder still attempted, namely to grasp thoughts that are historical and at the same time embrace nature, was no longer possible with the historical method of the 19th century. These thoughts are too thin to penetrate reality from a historical point of view. And so we have a historical science that cannot get out of thought, remains in thought, and cannot penetrate from thought into reality.

Here again, for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, there is the necessity not only to grasp what the soul experiences in abstract thoughts, but to grasp it in such a way that the forces that really underlie the external reality are seen in these soul experiences. On the one hand, we must try to understand nature in such a way that we can apply our understanding to the human being – so that we can understand the human being, as we do in the art of medicine or in the art of education, and on the other hand, we must try not to get stuck in the abstract not to get stuck in abstract thoughts and ideas of history, but to penetrate to such a living inner soul life that we can truly grasp what has happened historically – an understanding so saturated with reality that it in turn is close to natural occurrence, to natural becoming.

Just as the inadequacy of the natural-scientific basis has become apparent in medicine, so too has the inadequacy of the historical method in social life. What has caused so-called historical materialism, the Marxist view, to begin to be put into practice in our time, to the misery of humanity in this much-tried Europe? What has caused people to arise who declare everything spiritual, everything legal, everything moral, and so on, to be an ideology, and see reality solely and exclusively in the economic production process? What has caused this? It has caused the historical methods of the 19th century to be incapable of grasping this reality. The historians or those who wanted to be historians in any field have remained with abstractions that have nothing to do with reality. And social democracy, meanwhile, has developed for itself what was not offered to it by the leading circles, and it did so according to what it alone knew something about: the economic process. The fact that we have a materialistic foundation of history and today a policy of economic science that is ruining Europe is the original sin of non-existent historical thinking. The facts are serious today, and only those who refuse to see their gravity can deny that it is necessary to strive for greater depth in both the natural and historical sciences and to work towards a new foundation.

This is what should be seen through within the spiritual current, for which this building, the Goetheanum, is the representative, so that - this should be explained here in all modesty - so that a science can arise that can really step out into our elementary schools, that can really flow into life. And one would like that not only the intellectual impulses of people of the present would be seized by these efforts, one would like that above all the hearts of people of the present could be there and feel how deeply connected all the social misery of our time, all the decline, the chaos of our time is with the aberrations present in the striving for knowledge and in the scientific striving of our time, which must be healed.

What I have just characterized should be contrasted with what can be gained from the spiritual scientific method for the natural scientific direction and for the historical direction. And I do not want to speak in abstractions, but I would like to point out two facts, which should only serve as examples of what is being sought here. The first example is taken from the field of natural science. It is intended to show the point where the scientific foundation of our scientific endeavor becomes insufficient when confronted with the concepts of the human being. Today, if you look around you at the scientific endeavor of the present, you can repeatedly find an insight into the human heart. This view of the human heart has been developed directly from the natural scientific basis of life. Just as mechanics, physics, chemistry and biology are today, so is our view of the human heart, because we have a very specific chemistry, physics, biology and so on, because we have a specific natural scientific basis. What is this view of the human heart? Well, you find it characterized everywhere as follows: the human heart is a pump that pumps blood through the human organism in such a way that this blood washes away certain useless substances, exchanging them for others that it carries to certain places in the human organism. If today, even the slightest doubt is expressed to certain people that this human heart could be a very ordinary pump, that the human heart works in the middle and pumps blood out to the various parts of the body, then the people who have adopted scientific views today – I have experienced it – they become downright wild. And yet, my dear audience, here is the point where a recovery of the scientific foundation can bring about a complete reversal.

Here the spiritual scientific world view will have to show that the heart is not a pump, but that the heart in its activity is only the result of the self-regulating currents and interactions that occur in the human organism. Man is a dual being. Everything that, to put it schematically, lies below the heart and everything that lies above it is organized in fundamentally different ways. What drives the development of carbon is fundamentally different from what happens when carbon combines with oxygen to form carbonic acid. But the actual agent, the actual driving force, lies in the forces that interact from the lower human being and from the upper human being - from the upper and the lower. Just as positive and negative electricity want each other when there is an electrical charge, and just as an apparatus that would be connected to this charge of positive and negative electricity would carry out certain activities, so the human heart carries out activities as a result of the currents that are in the human organism. The human heart is not the pump of the human organism. Everything that the human heart does is purely the result of the inner life, of a certain current in the human organism. The opposite of popular belief is the case.

But with that, my dear audience, one points at the same time to a complete reversal of the science of the nature of man. For only by considering this great contrast between the upper and lower human being, in which the activity of the heart is harnessed and, as it were, expressed as mediation, only by considering this, are we able to bring the human being into the right contrast to the whole of the environment, to understand how the lower human being stands in a certain relationship to the outer world of solid, liquid and gaseous bodies, and also to the outer world of thermal phenomena, while everything in the upper human being that contrasts to some extent with the workings of the lower human being must be paralleled with light and with other etheric processes in the earthly and extra-terrestrial realm.

We will only learn to place the human being in the right way in the whole universe when we stop believing that the heart is the pump that pumps blood through the organism. In reality, the blood has an inner life, and in the congestion that occurs between the lower human being and the upper human being, the heart is so involved that the result of this congestion becomes apparent in the movement of the heart. In the movement of the heart, we basically have nothing other than where the upper human being and the lower human being touch and where, in certain unconscious regions, the activity of the lower human being is perceived by the upper human being. The heart is, so to speak, a sense organ within the human being. Just as the sense organs that lie outside are organs for mediating the outer experiences of the human being, so the heart is the organ that mediates the experiences of one's own being, albeit in the subconscious. With these things, I only want to suggest that something as essential as the heart teaching, which is suitable for reforming all medical thought, needs a thorough reform today. But that is only one example – it is an example of how cause and effect are almost confused today, I would say in all areas of nature observation.

My dear attendees! Spiritualists claim that they have photographed spirits. Photographing is an external process, and I do not want to dwell here on whether or not one can photograph spirits. But with no more right than the spiritualists claim that they have photographed ghosts, certain physicists today claim that they have photographed the configuration of atoms. Certainly, one can throw X-rays at crystals, one can make these X-rays reflect, the reflected rays interfere, and then photograph them, and one can claim to photograph the configuration of the atoms. The essential question is only: Are we really photographing the atomistic agents here, or are we photographing certain effects that come from the macrocosm and show up only at the points where we believe the atoms are present? It is essential everywhere to find ways of thinking and imagining that are able to go from appearances to the essence of things in the right way. Because scientific methods are so inadequate, they cannot suffice for application to the human being, whether in the field of medicine or in the social realm.

Thus we see that people who believe they have been trained in natural science are now setting about solving social problems, like Lenin and Trotsky. But the fact is that only a few individuals have studied what natural science establishes from its facts, but this is insufficient as conclusions, as results. As a rule, such people do not allow themselves to be drawn into discovering what one believes to know about things and what one believes to have discovered as laws, and then to actually test them against the individual facts. When someone tells you that he has photographed the configuration of atoms, such people do not think about the value of such a photograph. Of course, it is terribly impressive when one announces to the world in popular presentations: Atoms exist; they have even been photographed. - The layman naturally says: Well, how can anyone who is not a layman deny that atoms exist, which are the agents in all natural effects, when these atoms have even been photographed.

But the point is to have an insight into how something like this comes about. We suffer tremendously in the present from the fact that things are asserted as popular worldviews, monistic or otherwise, that consist in nothing more than in abstract summaries of all kinds of results, without going back to their real foundations. What do people present at monistic gatherings other than what they have read about in books or heard in lectures? Where is the opportunity to actually go into the reality of the things from which such results are actually drawn? Therefore, there is no possibility of a real overview of the implications of the results in this field. We are experiencing in today's science - when it develops into a world view and thereby believes itself to be very exact - that the processes that we experience in history are then used to calculate the processes that are supposed to have taken place on our earth over millions of years or that are supposed to have taken place millions of years ago. These calculations are always correct; for if, for example, one calculates how much debris the Niagara Falls deposited in a certain number of years, then one can, of course, calculate a great deal from such layer formations. But what is the actual method of calculation? The method of calculation is as follows: we observe the processes in the human stomach, say for five years, and then we calculate what these processes were like 10, 20 years ago, 150, 200, 300 years ago. We will get exact results – except that the person with this stomach and its processes obviously did not even exist as a physical human being 300 years ago! In this way, one can also calculate the changes in the human stomach and then the nature of the whole person in 10, 20, 30, 100, 200, 300 years – only then the person has long since died, and the whole calculation – which is completely correct as a calculation – has not the slightest value. The same value attaches to calculations that relate to the state of the earth millions of years ago or millions of years in the future, because they do not take into account whether the earth existed at that time or will still exist then. What use is it to know that after so many millions of years, when we, let us say, paint egg white on the wall and this will glow due to the changes in the earth, when the earth will no longer be there! Today, people still do not understand that some calculation or similar result can be absolutely correct, but that it cannot be applied to reality.

Two things are necessary today if one is to make a judgment: first, that the judgment is built on the basis of a correct logical method – the method of calculation is also a logical method – and second, that the judgment is also built on an appropriate insight into reality. A judgment must be both realistic and logical. The former is usually forgotten today, which is why the only logically correct judgments play such a large role in our ordinary scientific life, but under certain circumstances they have no application to reality. This is the concern of the spiritual current of which this Goetheanum is the representative: not only to have logically correct views, which can then also lead to errors, but to have realistic views, ones that really build a bridge between what lives in man as a world view and what develops outside as reality, for only such realistic views can be used for life. Only such realistic views can help our present life, which is drifting so much into chaos, to recover.

So I have shown you by one example – I could only show the one example today, but it could easily be multiplied – by the example of heart science, how necessary it is to strive for a science that is in line with reality, and how the spiritual current that is cultivated here in particular sets itself the serious task of working towards such a necessary reform of this science. I would also like to give an example of how to work towards the historical sciences. Using this example, I would like to show how a rudimentary scientific method, I would say a stunted scientific method, has simply been applied to the historical being, and how this has led to disastrous errors.

In the field of natural science, I would like to point out the so-called biogenetic law. I do not want to talk about the more or less limited validity of this law, but I want to treat it as a kind of hypothetical natural law. What does this biogenetic law state? It states that every higher animal creature, including man, during embryonic development, that is, during the development from conception to birth, briefly undergoes the forms that have been experienced in the development of the species. For example, the human embryo shows a fish-like form during one particular period, then other forms. These forms, the metamorphoses through which the embryo passes, are reminiscent of what has taken place in the developmental series in the history of the species, so that it has been able to come up to the human being through various forms. - This so-called biogenetic law has a certain limited significance. There is no doubt that ontogeny is a brief repetition of phylogeny, that individual development is a brief repetition of tribal development. But now attempts have been made to apply what has been found in the natural field to the historical field. It was believed that what lives in a later culture must, in a brief repetition, also show what lived in an earlier culture. So when a new people emerges somewhere, in its initial stages it must, as it were, pass through the stages of human development as they have been experienced so far, and then add a new one on top, just as the human being adds the mature life to the embryonic repetition of the tribal history. Not much has come of it if one wanted to apply this law, which was initially formulated purely abstractly for historical development and was modeled on a series of scientific observations, to life. I would like to say that life experiences do not actually confirm this law in the historical field in such a way that one can do anything with it in the face of reality.

On the other hand, the following emerges for the spiritual scientist's sharpened sense of observation. The essential thing is that the inner work that the spiritual scientist has to do in order to arrive at his modes of conception, and then to penetrate into nature in the way I have shown, sharpens his view of reality, his sense of observation for reality. This is how it turns out for this sharpened sense of observation: in the early stages of its development, the human being undergoes certain metamorphoses. One must only have an unbiased sense of what is going on in the early stages of human development. We have an important stage of life in human life: from birth to the change of teeth around the age of seven. The soul life of the human being manifests itself in a very specific way during this period, and with the change of teeth it undergoes a transformation. Until the change of teeth, the human being is in the epoch of his life where he is an imitative being who wants to imitate everything that is done in his environment, down to the movements, down to the formation of speech sounds, and who wants to imitate these things through inner forces. Up to the age of seven, he adapts so well to the human environment that he then, up to the next important stage in life, which is linked to the onset of sexual maturity, has the need to accept, on the basis of authority, that which he is supposed to believe. Then the whole organization of the human being changes again, and so does his soul life. And anyone with enough sense of observation will be able to notice how the human being changes even in his early twenties, or perhaps in his late twenties. Later on, what corresponds to this youthful transformation of the human being can only be observed by the keen sense of observation of the spiritual researcher. When a person has really undergone spiritual training, it becomes apparent that towards old age certain, I would say shadowy, transformations of the soul life occur. They only appear in hints, but one notices quite clearly: in the forties, at the end of the forties, one becomes a different person and at the end of the fifties one becomes yet another person. These metamorphoses occur in a shadowy, rudimentary way, as only hinted changes within, but anyone who can observe them can compare them with the hints that occur in embryonic life and that are repetitions of earlier physical forms that have been passed through in tribal development.

But one cannot simply transfer the scientific biogenetic law to history; instead of looking at the beginning of life, as the natural scientist must do, the historian is compelled to look at the end of life, at these shadowy, rudimentary transformations of the soul life. And just as for the natural man the beginning of life presents itself as a repetition of tribal history, so these rudimentary hints at the end of life turn out to be repetitions of what the human race has gone through on earth as a whole. We learn to understand that what is only rudimentarily present in our aging today was present in a pronounced sense in prehistoric man; we learn to understand that we can go back to a humanity that has undergone such transformations of the organic-mental life into old age as we do during the change of teeth and sexual maturation. And in our aging, we experience a rudimentary repetition of what humanity has gone through in its historical development. This is where it will become clear what the correlate of the biogenetic law is for historical science.

Those who think abstractly are always satisfied when they have found something, they then expand it and build an entire system of worldviews from it; they want to expand the biogenetic law to the historical becoming of humanity. To the real observer – and this is the observable reality for the spiritual researcher – something quite different presents itself. It shows that we are able to see in our own ageing and its rudimentary changes a repetition of what we find in earlier historical stages of human development. We look back to ancient Indian and Persian times and know that even in old age people remained so capable of development that a metamorphosis could be seen in their organism even in the forties and fifties of human life, as can only be observed today during the change of teeth and sexual maturation. You see, here we have the difference between true observation of reality and the abstract desire to transfer, which has arisen precisely through materialism. And we then understand how, in primeval times, the human being lived as a child and young person alongside the old person and said to himself: One experiences something in old age that brings something completely new into life. Let us consider how deeply this true law allows us to see into the inner process of human development, how we can see into a state of humanity in which we understand patriarchal life because young people anticipated old age in such a way that they said to themselves: this old age offers me something completely new. And so we do not look at prehistoric humanity in the same way as today's materialistic anthropologist does. We look at this primitive humanity and understand it, I would say intimately human, and we can also recognize that in its entire element something quite different was present for this primitive humanity than for present-day humanity. But we must take an interest because we are approaching something directly human, for this metamorphosis from primitive man to our present time. And if we have to admit that the human organism has changed, we will also be able to point out other changes in the human organism in the right form.

I will point out just one thing, my dear audience, which is revealed by spiritual science, but which, because it is relatively close to us and can even be proven externally by philological-historical research, is that the Greeks had their culture, which has such a profound effect on us, because they viewed their environment differently than we do today. Spiritual science shows us that what was in the Greeks was still capable of organic development to a much greater age than it is in us. We reach the end of an ascending organic capacity for development at the end of the twenties; the Greeks continued it well into their thirties. This necessitated greater activity in the Greeks, and that meant that the Greeks invested even more activity in their sense organs than we are able to invest. Therefore the

the Greeks were not yet a reflective race. Mankind has only become reflective since the middle of the 15th century. The Greek race was one that still transferred all its inner activity into the world of the senses, still saw the whole world, I might say, more brilliantly, more warmly than we do. We have to imagine that the Greeks had no interest in dark colors, that they had the keenest interest and the greatest sensitivity for bright, warm colors. And we find external confirmation when we discover that the Greeks have a single word for both dark hair color and lapis lazuli, the blue stone used for painting. People have never had blue hair; so if dark hair and lapis lazuli are both referred to by the same word, it is clear that the blue is seen as dark. And the other peculiar thing is that the Greeks had one word for green = chloros, and at the same time they used this word for what we call yellow, honey. And so I could cite many more examples that would prove to us that the Greeks' vision was similar to blue-blind vision. Roman historians tell us that the Greeks painted only in four colors: black, white, red, and yellow.

From this we can see that when we look into history, we do not have to look at the great so-called war events, at the great so-called formations and fallings of states, but we have to look at the intimate, we have to see how the individual human being has developed. In this way we again meet the needs of our present time. The conquests of Alexander the Great interested only those generations who were first oriented towards this interest through school. Today, the broad masses are called upon for education and intellectual life, and they want to be interested in something other than the conquests of Xerxes or Alexander the Great, of Caesar or even later ones; they want to be interested in what emerges in every human being as the truly human. But a science of history arises for our soul's eye that describes how man was different five, six, seven millennia ago, how he was different in Greek times than he is now. A history arises that approaches everything individually human directly, that allows the Greek to arise before our soul's eye, so that the person of the present can compare the Greek with himself spiritually and mentally. What concerns every human being will be of interest to those who, as the broad masses, strive for education today; what concerns not only Alexander the Great or Alcibiades and Caesar, but what concerns every human being, what, so to speak, is in every human being because he himself is a descendant of those who saw the world so completely differently.

Again, it is a serious question, especially in view of the social needs of the present, to strive for a historical science that is closely related to the human being; and such a science, because it touches the innermost part of the human being, will also be able to release the moral and legal impulses in the human being. In the externalized life of the state, we have gradually come to something that is nothing more than a legislative convention. But what lives in our state laws does not reach into the depths of the human soul where the moral impulses arise. How do today's legal measures live in the individual human being? They do not live. The lawyer himself often does not live them until he has looked them up in the law books, because he usually does not know much about them before he has looked up the relevant paragraph. But what has gradually become a mere historical abstraction does not live in people. If we establish another historical science, it will be one that can trigger impulses in life. Such a historical science alone will be able to grasp people and lead them to reasonable social desires – in contrast to the historical materialism that Lenin and Trotsky cultivated. Because people have been offered nothing but abstract, insubstantial ideas, Lenin and Trotsky were able to confront them with what people alone understand: the results of economic life.

Today, the great, serious demands of life raise the question: in what way can natural science and historical science be revitalized? If we want to take life seriously today, we have to think about such a revitalization of the sciences. I can well imagine that those people who today receive their education through everything that such an education achieves today will be shocked by what I am saying here and probably find it radical – while we, after all, must find it absolutely necessary simply because of the seriousness of life. But is it not our time itself that points to the seriousness of life in every moment?

Dear attendees, it can be hypothesized that this hall would be very full today if it were not for the delayed celebration of Carnival – if you can call it a celebration. But it is entirely to my liking that this evening is being held here today, to show that there are still places where people feel that serious matters must be discussed in a time of need, in a time like the one we are living in today. In such a time, there is still much that cannot be reconciled with the seriousness of life that is necessary to think of something like what has been suggested in today's introductory lecture.

But when one expresses something like this, my dear audience, one feels reminded of the saying of someone who, in his time, also felt compelled to speak of the great impulses in contrast to the little interest of human beings: Johann Gottlieb Fichte once spoke about the destiny of the scholar and gave lectures on the subject. When these lectures were published, he introduced them with just a few words. He said, addressing himself to all those who so well proved from their life practice that ideals cannot be realized after all - he actually did not address these, because they are not teachable, but he spoke with reference to these - he said: That ideals cannot be realized in direct life, we others know that just as well as these so-called life practitioners. But that life must be directly oriented towards them, we must say with all seriousness. And Johann Gottlieb Fichte added that there are people who are unable to see how necessary it is, in the serious hours of world history, to also begin something correspondingly serious, which only proves that these people simply cannot be counted on in the world plan. And so, said Fichte, may they be given by the spirit that guides this world plan “in due time rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment, and undisturbed circulation of the juices” and - if it is possible - also “wise thoughts”; but otherwise one cannot count on them when talking about the impulses that lie in the great world plan.

But one would like, especially in today's serious world situation, to find a sufficiently large number of people who can feel this seriousness and, out of it, can feel the necessity that not small things, but great things must happen in impulses, and that they must happen precisely in the realm of human consciousness itself, so that we can move forward. It is out of such impulses that I have tried to speak to you today, using individual examples to illustrate the relationship between anthroposophy and contemporary science. I have only been able to sketch what I wanted to say, but if, through this sketch, I could evoke such impulses in a sufficiently large number of people, which could then have a stimulating effect on what must happen - a renewal of our entire scientific life - then I would consider what can actually happen through such impulses to have been fulfilled, at least for the time being.

In our time, science is very proud when it says that it wants pure knowledge. In Greek times, when imagination was closer to life, the word “catharsis” was used for the most important moment in a tragedy, when the hero's fate was decided. In this way, something was introduced into aesthetics that was taken from medicine. For in Greek life, “catharsis” was regarded as a kind of crisis, whereby certain pathological processes in the organism are counterbalanced or paralyzed by other processes. In this healthy Greek age, ideas were transferred from what takes place in nature to the artistic field. Today, we need a science that does not allow a rift to develop between theory and practice; we need a science that is viable and full of life, we need a science that can build up life.

However, only those people who really understand and feel the seriousness of contemporary life will long for such a powerful science. And as for the rest, let me say this at the end, we must, in accordance with the old saying of Fichte, leave them today to a kind cosmic plan, which provides them with food and drink at the right time, which gives them sunshine and rain at the right time, which gives them postponed carnival fun and - if possible - also wise thoughts. It will be difficult!

But what is needed today lies in another area and can be described as follows: spirit-estranged research must find its way back to the spirit. And it is this path back to the spirit that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to find, and to this end it calls on humanity. That is the truth, despite all the prejudices and defamations that are otherwise leveled against this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in the world.

[Lively applause.

Roman Boos: In thanking Dr. Steiner for his lecture, I would like to express the hope that the lectures that will now follow will have the effect in our circle and in the outside world that was indicated in Dr. Steiner's lecture. I would now like to ask that after a short break, those who may still have questions about today's lecture come forward. I would particularly like to ask all our scientifically working friends to take this opportunity, since Dr. Steiner is prepared to add something supplementary in this or that respect.

Eugen Kolisko: In what Dr. Steiner said about research into the reverse biogenetic law, how can it actually be established that we are dealing here with a time that lies so far back that it corresponds to a particular period? How can we determine from the processes observed in the phenomena of old age how far back this lies in earlier times?

Friedrich Husemann: Is the blue blindness of the Greeks something that has only to do with the individual development of this people, or is it perhaps something that occurs in the general course of development of a race or a people, which would therefore correspond to a certain age of this race? What about the Chinese, for example, who have been depicted in blue colors since very early times? Are there other factors at work here?

Walter Johannes Stein: How are changes in sensory perception related to changes in thinking among the Greeks, who, according to the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', still had a much more pictorial perception?

Roman Boos asks Dr. Steiner to give the closing remarks.

Rudolf Steiner: In the sense of a closing word, I would like to address the questions that have been asked. The first question, ladies and gentlemen, is of course one that would require a very comprehensive explanation in order to answer it.

First of all, I have to mention that a real exploration of these things is only possible by applying the spiritual scientific method, that is, the method that actually teaches us to look at what we are otherwise accustomed to looking at from the outside, now to look at from the inside. You can get an idea of what actually comes into consideration in the following way. When you look at the physical organism, you have to take the present moment as your basis. You have to stick to the configuration and outer activity that the physical organism has in the present moment. If you then move on to observing the soul life, you will not find in this soul life the necessity for restriction to the present moment, but you will find in the soul life - initially in the individual soul life - the expansion back into the sixth, fifth, fourth year of life. The experiences are incorporated into memory, so that when you move from observing the physical person to observing the soul, you move from the present to an individual past. To acquire spiritual scientific methods means to develop certain abilities that go beyond the ordinary soul life. These abilities, which go beyond the ordinary soul life, then also expand that which, during the transition from the physical into the soul, extends over a certain period of time, up to the period of childhood. These spiritual scientific methods expand the observation beyond the individual human being, and what enters is the inner observation of the world process. It is certainly a long path, which you will find described in my books, but it is a path that can certainly become a reality for human development.

Just as the inner experiences are immanent in time in a certain way in the memory-based review of the individual life path, one will - but only through comparative treatment of what one has in one's memory - arrive at the design of the time scheme for what presents itself to inner vision, if one only really knows how to work methodically. In this way one arrives at a truly methodical approach. The person who acquires the observant sense for what I have called the rudimentary soul metamorphoses of old age – but which are also matched by rudimentary bodily metamorphoses – will find that there are certain periods of time in which such metamorphoses take place. There is such a period at the end of the forties, again at the end of the fifties, and in the middle of the fifties, so that one does indeed get certain periods of inner experience for this rudimentary soul metamorphosis. Now, if one really applies inner methodology in the expansion of inner vision to the extra-individual realm and thereby arrives at certain time determinations, one can either rely on them directly, which is entirely the case with a developed spiritual-scientific method, or one can try to corroborate what presents itself in this way by verification from outside. For example, you can say to yourself that today, when you have already sharpened your sense of observation, let's say around the age of 35, you experience a certain life metamorphosis. Now you look for this in what is presented to you in the outer historical life, and you thereby fix a certain historical point in time. One then tries to find another life metamorphosis, for example that which presents itself at the end of the 1920s – one arrives at a later point in time. This provides us with individual epochs for what happens historically and what corresponds to an inner metamorphosis of life. In this way, one can relate these individual, unique life epochs to the past historical development of humanity. Is this indicative of the path? Of course, I can only sketch out this path. If you follow the idea, it will become clear to you that this path is an exact one.

As for the so-called blue blindness of the Greeks, I would ask you to please bear in mind that I really only want to speak of a so-called blue blindness. It is more a sensitivity of the Greeks for the bright, warm colors and a lesser interest in the dark, blue, cold colors. One must be clear about the fact that the process itself that is taking place is much more spiritual for the Greek people than it is for today's partially blue-blind people. It is only an analogy, but it is precisely this mental blue blindness that is so strongly present in the Greeks that we can still prove it in the Greek language. But you have probably already been able to deduce from the lecture that we should not regard this as an individual characteristic of the Greek people, but as something that occurs in a particular period of a people's development. Of course, it must be borne in mind that the relative epochs of the peoples living side by side on earth do not coincide absolutely. It must be realized that the Chinese people, for example, had long since emerged from the period of blue blindness when they entered history. So, to a certain extent, one must perceive the periods of time as layered next to each other, then one will see what I have said in the right light. I have tried to describe the thought process as it manifested itself in the Greeks in my “Riddles of Philosophy”; this thought process of the Greeks was also somewhat different from our present-day thought process. Our thought process is that we are aware of a certain activity of thought with which we accompany external facts. We ascribe the formation of thoughts to this activity of thoughts, of which we are aware, and ascribe only the sensory impression to the objective. The Greeks were different. In the Greeks - you can easily prove this by looking at the Greek philosophers with an unbiased judgment - there was a clear awareness that they saw thoughts in things just as they saw colors in things, that they therefore perceived thoughts. The Greeks experienced the thought as something perceived, not as something actively formed. And that is why the Greeks were not really a reflective people in the sense that we are. People have only really become reflective since the middle of the 15th century. The thinking process has become internalized. It has become internalized at the same time as the course of the sensory process. I would say that the Greeks saw more of the active part of the spectrum, the red, warm side of the spectrum; they only sensed the cold, blue side of the spectrum indistinctly. And today we certainly have a very different perception of the red and warm side of the spectrum; we see it much more shifted towards the green than the Greeks, who were still sensitive to it beyond our outermost red. The Greek spectrum was shifted entirely towards the red side. The Greeks therefore saw the rainbow differently than we do. And by having our sensitivity more on the other side of the spectrum, we are turning our attention to the dark side, and that is something like entering a kind of twilight. It makes you think. If I describe it more figuratively now, don't be offended; it is based on a very real process of human development. With the shift of sensitivity from the warm part of the spectrum to the dark part of the spectrum, something similar occurs in the development of humanity as a whole, as it does in a person when they experience twilight from full brightness, where they begin to rely more on themselves, to follow the inner path of thought, and where they become pensive. I would say that in the twilight, in the dark, thinking is more active than when the sensitivity is directed towards the lively, warm colors, where one lives more in the outer world, experiences more of what is in the outer world. The Greek was more absorbed in the outer world with all his thinking. He therefore also saw his thoughts in the outer world. Modern man, who has shifted the whole spectrum of vision more towards the dark side, cannot see his thoughts in the outer world. Just as one will not claim that what the soul experiences is outwardly visible at night when it is dark all around, but knows that it takes place in the soul, so what what man experiences since the shift of the spectrum view, happens more on the dark side in the soul, and one can say that a shift in thinking has occurred since Greek times.

These are the kinds of things that arise from research in spiritual science. I can only sketch them out here; I hope that some of what has been suggested today can be developed further here in the next few days, and I wish my subsequent speakers good luck in dealing with the most interesting questions possible in the next few days.

Tomorrow I shall begin my discussion of the problems related to the connection of the spiritual scientific impulses with various unclarified tasks of the present time, and the influence that spiritual science must exert on individual, especially scientific, problems. Then I should like to refer to what I may call, in the sense of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the karma of human vocation.

Today I shall take as my point of departure something that seemingly has little to do with that theme, but it will afford an opportunity to connect various related matters. I shall endeavor to point out the element in Goethe's life that characterizes him especially as a personality of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and much to which I have recently referred will, of course, be echoed in my remarks. I should like to bring before your souls the very facts pertaining to this personality that will enable anyone to distinguish important phenomena of the advancing post-Atlantean cultural epoch. In relation to the spiritual interests of humanity, the life and personality of Goethe are comprehensive and decisive to an extent that can hardly be ascribed to any other individual. Still, it may also be said that, in spite of much that has occurred, his life and personality have had the least possible effect on our lives. This, however, must be attributed to the very nature of our modern culture. It may be asked how it can possibly be said that the life of Goethe has remained without effect. Are not his works known? Has not an edition of his works, consisting of hundreds of volumes, been published recently? Did not his published letters number six or seven thousand by the turn of the century, and today number almost ten thousand? Is there not a wealth of literature concerning Goethe, one might almost say in every civilized language? Do not his works continue to be produced on stage? Is not his major work, Faust, brought again and again before the minds of men?

Now, I have often referred recently to the strange error of an illustrious contemporary scholar, which is really far more symptomatic of the character of our time than one might assume. A dominant scientist, this scholar speaks of the significance of the scientific world conception in such a way that he presents it as being the most brilliant, not only of our age, but of all ages in human history. He concludes that although it is hard to prove that we live in the best of all worlds, it is certain to the scientist, at least, that today we humans live in the best of all epochs, and we might exclaim in the words of Goethe:

‘Tis delightful to transport
Oneself into the spirit of the past,
To see in times before us how a wise man thought,
And what a glorious height we have achieved at last.’¹

This noted scientist² is gravely in error; he presents this as his own innermost sentiment and believes that he is thereby associating himself with Goethe, who is renowned for his knowledge of the world and of man. But he is really associating himself with Wagner, whom Goethe sets up as a foil to the Faust figure. Yet such a blunder contains at least a good bit of the honesty of our age because this person speaks more genuinely than the numerous people who, in quoting Goethe, have Faust on their tongues, but really have an undisguised Wagner attitude of mind. As a basis for subsequent reflections, let us, then, bring up before our mind's eye the life of Goethe as a spiritual phenomenon.

If we wish to study human life in connection with the important question of destiny, if we study the questions of karma, we should remember that Goethe was born in a city and under conditions clearly of much meaning for his life. The family of Goethe's father had come to Frankfurt in the seventeenth century, whereas his mother's family, the Textors, was old, established, and highly respected, so much so that from it the mayors of Frankfurt were chosen. This fact alone signifies the respect enjoyed by the family at that time. Goethe's father was a man with an extraordinarily strong sense of duty, but for a man of his time, he also possessed a broad range of interests. He had traveled in Italy and representations of important Roman creations, about which he liked to talk, hung on all the walls of his Patrician Frankfurt home. What was dominant in the French culture of his time completely permeated the life of Frankfurt and most intimately influenced Goethe's home. The important world events were part of the life in his home, and his father took a deep interest in them. Goethe's mother, moreover, was a woman of the most spontaneous human sentiment, sharing directly in everything that connects human nature with the legendary, the fabulous, everything that lifts man aloft above the commonplace as if on the wings of poetic fantasy.

In Goethe's boyhood days it was much more possible to grow up unconfused by those disturbing influences that affect children today because they are dragged into school at a relatively early age. This did not happen to young Goethe; he developed extraordinarily freely in his parents' home under the austere but never harsh influence of his father and his poetically endowed mother. In later years he could recall with inner happiness these years of his boyhood and childhood that led to a ripe humanness. Many things that we read today in Goethe's story of his life, Poetry and Truth, though decked out in a somewhat pedantic humor, have more meaning than may be supposed. In telling how he practiced the piano,³ there is a profoundly human significance; the fingers of his hands, as if playing mythological roles, become soul-endowed, independent figures. They become Thumbling, Pointerling—I say this without sentimentality—and acquire certain mystical relations to the tones. This indicates how Goethe was to be guided into life as a complete human being. Not only a piece of this man, the head, should be guided, as so often happens, one-sidedly into life to be followed by the support of the rest of the body, developed through all sorts of athletics and sports; but, on the contrary, the body permeated by spirit to its very fingertips should be related with the outer world.

We must take into account from the very first the marked individuality of the innate endowments and nature of Goethe. From his earliest youth, everything pointed to a definite orientation of his life. As he grows in childhood, he is just as strongly inclined to follow with complete absorption the charming and stirring fairy tales and other narratives of his mother, thus even as a boy bringing his fantasy into living activity, as he is also inclined to escape from her and especially from his austere father. Slipping away into the narrow alleys, he would observe all sorts of things and also become entangled in varied situations through which he experienced in vital sentiments and emotions much that is stored up in human karma. His stern father guides the boy in a certain matter-of-fact way to what people in those days thought could provide support and direction in life. The father is a jurist who has grown up among, and is permeated with, Roman points of view; the son's soul, too, absorbs these views. In this process, however, through viewing the works and treasures of Roman art that represented what is essentially Roman, there was kindled in the boyish soul a certain aspiration for what had been created in the culture of Rome.

Everything tended to situate Goethe in a quite definite way within the life of his time. In this way, he became, between the third and fourth centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean period, a personality bearing within him all the impulses of that period. Early on, he becomes a self-sustained personality, living out of his own nature, free of everything that binds a man in a fixed, pedantic way to those certain forms of one or another group of social ties. He learns to know social relationships in such a way that they affect him, but he is not united with them. He always keeps a certain isolated pedestal upon which he stands and from which he can establish connections with everything. From the very beginning, however, unlike so many others, he does not excessively identify himself with anything or with the environing circumstances. To be sure, all this results from a peculiarly favorable karma in which, when considered objectively, we shall find a solution for profound questions and problems regarding karma in general.

After Goethe had been introduced by his father to the field of jurisprudence, he was sent to the University of Leipzig, which he entered in 1765 at a relatively early age. We must not forget that when he joined this university life he was not tormented and exhausted by those strenuous exercises that must be suffered for an even longer period of time by young people in our day who are trying to pass the battery of final examinations at the conclusion of high school, the Abitur. After having passed their examinations, these young people are anxious to wipe the most recent learning experiences from their minds and enter a university in order to enjoy life. No, young Goethe had not entered the University of Leipzig simply to idle away his time but, nevertheless, he was not above skipping lectures and using the time saved for something else, as was done by many students. However, as he enlisted in the lofty and famous scientific life of the university, he came into circles that had never failed to awaken a longing in him whenever he had heard about them. Indeed, he knew above all that the famous Gottsched⁴ worked at the university, Gottsched whose head held all the learning of the time and who expressed it in writing and orally to those associated with the contemporary culture of Leipzig. To be sure, Lessing's⁵ great impulse was still to be felt in Leipzig, but it was natural for Goethe to think that the lofty Gottsched would introduce him to the entire scope of contemporary wisdom, enabling him to study conjointly jurisprudence and philosophy and whatever else a man of the world might derive from theology and learning regarding supernatural things.

Goethe, however, who possessed without doubt a certain sense for aesthetics, was slightly disillusioned when he first called on Gottsched. He appeared at Gottsched's door. I do not know whether or not the servant sensed something of Goethe's nature, but he admitted him directly into the presence of Gottsched without taking the time to announce him in the proper manner. So Goethe came upon the great man without his wig, standing there quite baldheaded. To a learned man in the year 1765 this was something quite dreadful. Goethe, who was sensitive to such things, had to witness how Gottsched seized his wig with a graceful turn and jammed it on his head, and how with his other hand he slapped his servant on the face. Goethe's enthusiasm was a little chilled. But he was still more chilled by the fact that Gottsched's entire demeanor corresponded little with that for which he longed.

Nor did Gellert's⁶ moralistic lectures speak to him of the comprehensive intellectual horizons he desired. Therefore, he soon turned his attention more to the medical and scientific lectures, which were in a way continued in the home of Professor Ludwig, where he took his lunch and where much of a similar nature was discussed. It cannot really be said that Goethe “studied thoroughly jurisprudence, medicine, philosophy and, unfortunately, also theology”⁷ in Leipzig, but he got a view of them and, most important, it was in Leipzig that he absorbed many a scientific concept of his time. After having busied himself with the sciences, having experienced various aspects of life, and having been involved in various affairs, he then became so ill that he stood face to face with death. Such things must be taken fully into account by one who considers the human being in a spiritual scientific way. We must realize how much passed through his soul as he actually faced death because of extremely severe and recurring hemorrhaging. He was weakened, had to return home, and could not resume his university studies for some time.

When Goethe did continue his studies in Strassburg, he joined the circle of an important personality who became of exceptional significance to him. In order to judge with what feelings he met this personality, we must recall that, when he returned to Frankfurt under the influence of those inner experiences through which he had passed in Leipzig when he was face to face with death, he had already begun to enter more deeply, through association with various persons, into a mystical experience and a mystical conception of the world. He had immersed himself in mystic, occult writings and sought in a youthful way to elaborate a systematic world conception that took its point of departure in mystical—one might say, mystic-cabalistic—points of view. Even then he endeavored to learn “what secret force/ dwells in the world and rules its course”⁸ and to open himself to the influence of “every working force and seed.”⁹ He was unwilling merely “to trade in words,” as he had seen this done in Leipzig.

Then he came to Strassburg where he could again attend lectures on science, and this is what he did at first. Jurisprudence, which was so dear to his father but less so to him, would be taken care of somehow, no doubt, but his most urgent impulse was to investigate how various laws of nature conform to one another. As he was once ascending a flight of stairs, he met a personality who immediately made a tremendous impression on him, not only through his external appearance, but also through an inner light that radiated through a highly intelligent countenance. Externally, a man approached him who had, indeed, somewhat the appearance of a priest, but who wore his long overcoat in such a curious way that the train was stuffed into his hind pockets. The man who made such a grand impression on¹⁰

Goethe now entered vitally into all that then stirred tempestuously in Herder, and that was indeed a good deal. One might say that Herder bore within him an entirely new world conception. Basically, what had never before been undertaken, Herder bore it brilliantly within himself; that is, the endeavor to trace the phenomena of the world from the simplest entity, the simplest lifeless thing, through the plant world to the animal kingdom, on to man, to history, and even to the divine governance of the world in history. At that time, Herder's mind already harbored a vast, comprehensive view of the world, and he spoke with enthusiasm about his new ideas; but he also on occasion spoke with indignation against all pedantic, traditional ideas. Many of these conversations with Herder animated Goethe. That everything in the world is in process of evolution and that a spiritual plan of the universe sustains all evolution was a connection Herder perceived as no one ever had before. But this was still growing in him, and he had not yet expressed it on paper. Goethe received it in this state of being born and shared in Herder's aspiration, contemplation, and struggle. We may say that Herder wished to trace the evolution of the world from a grain of dust through all the kingdoms of nature up to God. He then did this in a splendid comprehensive fashion, as far as was necessary at that time, in his incomparable work, Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History. Here we can really see that Herder's mind grasped everything that was then known of the facts of nature and of the human realm, but all this knowledge was condensed into a world conception permeated with spirit.

Beside this, Goethe received through Herder an idea of Spinoza's contribution to the evolution of a new concept of the world, and this worked on him. The leaning that Goethe showed throughout his life toward Spinoza¹¹ was planted in him at that time in Strassburg by Herder.¹²

Herder was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare,¹³ which was something unheard of at that time. Just think how this peculiar polarity of souls must have worked between Herder and Goethe when Goethe, yearning to perceive these things that contemporary culture could not give him, found in Herder a revolutionary spirit of the first rank storming the culture of his day. Up to that time Goethe had learned to revere that art of form that is found in Corneille and Racine,¹⁴ and had taken all this in as one takes in things that are said to be the most important in the world. But he had absorbed all this with a certain inner indignation. When Herder introduced him to Shakespeare, it worked on his mind like a breath of fresh air. Here was a poet free from everything formal—who created characters directly from human individualities; who possessed nothing of all the unity of time, place, and action that Goethe had learned to value so highly, but who presented human beings in his plays. We may say that a revolutionary cultural mood came to life in Goethe, now baptized in the name of Shakespeare, which we may express thus: I want to comprehend what constitutes the human being himself, not how he is put into the interrelationships of the world by formal rules and laws, or by the network of unities of situation, time, place, and action.

In this regard, he was able to become acquainted with men then in Strassburg who sought to look into the deeper and more intimate aspects of the life of the soul. One of them was the remarkable Jung-Stilling,¹⁵ for example, who was studying the occult aspects of the life of the soul and knew how to describe them thoroughly. His life history, his description of what he calls the “gray man” who rules in the subterranean sphere of the earth, belongs among the finest descriptions of occult relationships. It may be said that Goethe was introduced by Herder to all that belongs to the life of nature and history, the aesthetic in life, and by Jung-Stilling to the occult aspects of human life, with which he had already familiarized himself in Frankfurt through an exhaustive study of Swedenborg.¹⁶

Such ideas fermented in Goethe's mind in connection with what had been passed on to him as the laws of nature while he was attending lectures on the sciences in Strassburg. Then he began to see the great problems and questions of human life. He looked deeply into what can be cognized and what can be willed by man, and into the relation between human nature and universal nature. Earlier in Frankfurt he had become acquainted with the work of Paracelsus¹⁷ in connection with all this. And thus, a profound longing to perceive “every working force and seed” took a hold of him, especially in Strassburg along with all that he otherwise experienced there.

It must not be imagined that, in Strassburg, Goethe simply trifled away his time during his frequent visits to the pastor's home in Sesenheim,¹⁸ although I certainly do not want to deprecate the importance of these visits. He was always capable of uniting life in the depths of man's will and cognition with life in association with the immediately human and ordinary, and with every human destiny.

After he had defended his dissertation, he became a sort of Doctor of Jurisprudence—Licentiate¹⁹ and Doctor of Jurisprudence. He thereby satisfied his father and could return home. The practice of law began, but there was a notable disharmony in the soul of this man who had to study legal documents at the Supreme Court in Wetzlar that were often literally hundreds of years old. There “law and rights like an endless illness” dragged along their weary way. Even in later times much of this sort of thing could still be experienced elsewhere. In a place where I grew up—permit me to interject this—I was able to experience the following. In the 1870s when I was a boy, we once heard that a man was to be imprisoned—in the seventies! He was a much respected man who had a rather large business for such a place. He was imprisoned for a year and a half, I think, because in 1848 he had thrown stones at an inn during the revolution! The lawsuit had actually continued from 1848 when, as a young boy, this person had thrown stones at an inn, until his present age. In 1873 he was imprisoned for a year and a half. It was, perhaps, not so bad then as when Goethe studied the documents at the Supreme Court, but it was still bad enough.

Goethe's work gave his father immense pleasure, and he shared with counsel and help the problems Goethe had to solve with the dusty documents. This is not to say, however, that Goethe was lacking in skill as a lawyer. That was by no means the case. He made his contribution as an attorney and his work at that time belies the recurring belief that a great spirit, living in the world of ideals, must be deficient in practical life. He was not at all lacking as an attorney. When lawyers these days point to their busy schedules and call attention to the fact that they have no time to read Goethe's works, one should point out to them that Goethe was unquestionably just as good a lawyer as they. That can be documented, as can many things related to his work. But in addition to being just as practical as only a practical man can be, Goethe at this time also carried within him the idea for his book, Götz von Berlichingen.²⁰ Indeed, he bore within him the idea for his Faust, too, which had already emerged in Frankfurt from his scientific studies and later from his acquaintance with Herder and Jung-Stilling.

Götz von Berlichingen—Gottfried von Berlichingen—evidences at once, as Goethe forms it into a work of art, what his own nature really was. Goethe's way of being introduces a new element into the intellectual activity of humanity. As artist or poet, he cannot be compared with Dante, Homer, or Shakespeare. He stands in a different relationship to poetic creation, and this is bound up, in turn, with the way his mode of being relates to the age in which he lives. This age, as it was expressed in his immediate, and also in his more comprehensive, environment, did not permit such a spirit as his to blend wholly with the period. The life of the state that we today take for granted did not exist around him. After all, he lived in a region where certain territories had, to a high degree, taken on individual forms. How this came about is not important, but he did not live in a large state. No great all-encompassing conformity spread over the area where he lived and grew up. The life about him was not narrowly organized and thus he could experience it everywhere in its individual manifestations and simultaneously expose himself to its universal meaning. And this is what distinguishes Goethe from other poets.

One day a book came into his hands that is, indeed, badly written but that interested him immensely. It was Autobiography of the Iron-handed Gottfried of Berlichingen, which dealt with that strange individual who participated in so many events of the sixteenth century, but whose part in them was of such a peculiar nature. When we read this autobiography, we see how, under the Emperor Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, he came into contact with every possible kind of person and took part in every possible kind of quarrel and battle during the first half of the century.

His activities, however, always come about in such a way that he takes part in one event, is wholly involved in it and expresses himself completely therein. Then he becomes involved in another event in an entirely different role; he is drawn into that, fights for the most varied issues, and is later captured. After he has bound himself by an oath not to take any further part in quarrels and is thereby left at peace in his castle in middle South Germany, he becomes involved in the peasant uprising. All this, however, occurs in such a way that we see he is never forced by the events; but what holds these disparate episodes together is really his personality, the character of Gottfried himself. When one reads the autobiography of this man, I will not say that the events in which he is involved bore one to death, but we are not really interested in his quarrels and battles. Yet, in spite of all the boredom of the single events, we are always interested in his personality, so strong in character and so rich in content.

These traits, however, are just what attracted Goethe to Gottfried of Berlichingen. Thus, he could see the substance, the life, and the struggle of the sixteenth century concentrated in one personality as he could never otherwise have seen it. This was what he needed. To him, this meant taking up history and becoming acquainted with it. The way in which one or another historian, after having searched through attics and wastebaskets, telescopes together in a few “pragmatic maxims”²¹ individual historical periods would certainly not have suited Goethe. But to see a man standing alive in the midst of it, to see reflected in a human soul what is otherwise not of special interest, this had some meaning for him. He took this tedious, badly written autobiography of Gottfried of Berlichingen, read it, and really changed its content remarkably little. For this reason, he called the first version of this drama, if we choose so to designate it, The History of Gottfried of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Dramatized. He did not use the term drama, but dramatized. He had really only dramatized the history of Gottfried of Berlichingen, but in such a way that the whole period became alive through this man. Bear in mind, it was the sixteenth century, the time of the dawn of the post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe perceived this time through the character of Gottfried of Berlichingen, the man who grew up in middle South Germany.

At that time a fragment of life had already passed through Goethe's mind that is historical but seen really within actual life, not in what is “historic.” It would not have been possible for him then, with all those problems of humanity in his mind to which I have alluded, to take just any individual and dramatize his life according to history. However, to dramatize the stammering autobiography of a being who worked upon him with complete humanness in such a way that it would reflect the dramatic art as revealed to him through the reading of Shakespeare, that was something he could do. So he became known in certain circles that were interested in this sort of thing since he had lifted a fragment of the past, which was a book sealed with seven seals, into his own present world. Of course, just as little was then known about what Goethe disclosed by means of the badly written history of Gottfried of the Sixteenth Century as is known today by many a pastor about the super-sensible life.

Goethe had taken hold of human life. He had to, since his life style was one that made him blend with life as it revealed itself directly to him. To be sure, he continued to stand on an isolated pedestal, but as life touched him, he became one with it.

Goethe was to be brought into union with life in still another way. There is little conception today of something that constituted a profound trait of the soul life in the so-called cultured world surrounding Goethe. People had become bound, as it were, to what had come about since the sixteenth century. In public life, the laws and statutes had been handed down like an inherited disease,²² but the souls of men were, nevertheless, touched in a certain way by what we recognize as the impulse of souls of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The result was that, for the most deeply endowed natures, a profound disharmony ensued between what they sensed within the soul and what took place in the external world. This, to be sure, led to a marked sentimentality in experience.

To sense as strongly as possible how wide the gulf was between the actual world and what a true and warm human soul could feel, to express this contrast with all possible emphasis, was felt by many to be a profound necessity. The eye was directed toward the life of the world in which various ranks of society and the people with their various interests lived. But they often had little soul contact with each other in this public life. Yet, when these human beings were alone, they sought for a special life of the soul existing apart from external life, and for them to be able to say to themselves that this external life was wholly unlike all that the soul would strive after and hope for was felt to be a great relief. To get into such a sentimental mood was a characteristic of the age. Life, as it was publicly manifest, was felt to be bad and defective. People strove to search for life where it had not been besmirched by indifferent public existence, and where they could really enter in a vital way into the silent working and weaving of the world of nature, the peaceful life of animals and plants.

From this a mood gradually arose that affected many cultured spirits. To be able to weep over the disharmonies of the world afforded a tremendous satisfaction. Those writers were especially honored whose works tended to induce a flood of tears to fall upon the pages that were being read. To be unhappy constituted for many the very happiness for which they longed. Someone takes a walk in the forest; he then returns and, sitting quite still in his room, reflects: “How many, many little flowers and tiny worms that I did not notice and trod under foot have sacrificed their lives to this walk of mine!” Then he weeps hot tears into his handkerchief over the discord between nature and human life. Letters written to beloved friends who were as sentimental as the writer begin with such expressions as “Dearly beloved Friend,” and this, too, is moistened by a tear that falls on the paper and hastens away with the letter as a precious testimony to the friend.

This life still permeated a large part of the cultured world in the second half of the eighteenth century. It also surrounded Goethe, and he had much understanding of it, for there was much truth in this feeling of the disharmony between the frequently unconscious or vague feelings of the soul and what was afforded by the outer world, and Goethe could feel the truth in it. In those days, the silent plan of life between souls was not at all similar to what took place in the world as a whole. He had to go through this because he could be, and needed to be, touched by everything. But, in his contact with these things, he had to draw health-giving forces from his inner self repeatedly.

And thus in his youthful novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, he wrote himself free of this whole temper of the age, which we call Siegwart,²³ or Werther, fever, and which had taken possession of a large part of educated society. In the figure of Werther he concealed to such a degree as to come near to suicide what he had shared of this sentimental mood and the disharmonies of the world. It is for this reason that he has Werther end his life through suicide. It is well to consider that, on the one hand, it was possible for Goethe to be bound up with everything in the souls of those about him, even though he was so firmly rooted in his own individuality. On the other hand, what he was writing about cleansed his soul and at the same time became a work of art. After he had finished Werther, he was completely cured of him, whereas in many cases other persons were only then possessed because through the influence of the Werther, Werther fever raged in the most widespread circles. Goethe, however, was cured.

In estimating such things, we must not overlook the fact that Goethe possessed a broad inner horizon so that he could, in a sense, live within himself in polaric contrasts. He went through the Werther sickness and wrote himself free of it through The Sorrows of Young Werther. Yet, there is truth in what he wrote to a friend at that time. He sketched a picture of his loftily sentimental mood, but also said there was a Goethe other than the suicidal Goethe who harbored thoughts of hanging himself and who entertained thoughts for which he ought to be hanged. There was also a carnival Goethe,²⁴ who could put on all sorts of masks and disguises, and this Goethe also really lived artistically. We need only allow the more or less fragmentary dramatic creations of that time, Satyros and Pater Brey, to work upon us, and we shall be able to sense the scope of his inner life: on the one hand, the sentimentality of Werther, on the other, the humor of the Satyros and Pater Brey.

Satyros, the deified forest devil who develops a veritable pantheism and does not enjoy the fruits of culture, wants to return to nature in genuine Rousseau fashion. Raw chestnuts—what a royal repast! Such is the ideal of Satyros. But he is really a philosopher of nature who is quite familiar with its secrets, and—if you will excuse me—he wins his followers especially among women, is deified, but finally behaves quite badly. Here all false yearning after authoritarian belief is ridiculed with immense humor. Then in Pater Brey we see the cult of false prophets play a part and, under the mask of holiness, do all kinds of things. This, indeed, is not ridiculed but objectively presented with much humor. Here Goethe is a humorist in the most vital sense—a blunt humorist, expressing it all from the same constitution of soul that created Werther. He was able to do this not because he was superficial but because he was profound enough to grasp the polarities of human life.

Especially the Werther book gained Goethe a far-reaching reputation. It became well-known rather early,²⁵ and it was really this work that led the Archduke of Weimar to take an interest in him. The Gottfried of Berlichingen made a decided impression, but not among those who then considered themselves capable of understanding culture, art, and poetry. “An abominable imitation of bad English works; a disgusting platitude,” said an eminent man of the time about this book.²⁶

It was in 1775 that Goethe was able to transfer his activities to a different field of operation, to Weimar. The Duke of Weimar²⁷ became acquainted with Goethe and called him there, where he became the minister of state.

Nowadays, after the event, people have the feeling that Goethe had already written the Gottfried of Berlichingen, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and even carried with him to Weimar a large part of his Faust; they see in all this his most important accomplishment. He himself did not consider them to be of first importance at that time, but they were only the scrapings of his life. The Duke, likewise, did not appoint him court poet, but minister of state, which caused the pedants in Weimar to be beside themselves with anger. The Duke had to address a sort of epistolary decree to his people in which he justified himself by saying that Goethe was in his eyes simply a greater man than the pedants. The fact that he was made minister of state without having been previously—what shall I say?—under-councillor and upper-councillor, required at least some justification from the Duke, and that is what he produced.

Goethe was by no means a bad statesman and performed his ministerial duties not as part time work, but as matters of first importance. He was a far better statesman than many a minister who was not a Goethe in our sense. Anyone who personally convinces himself—as I may say with all modesty that I have done—of the way in which he performed his ministerial obligations will know that he was an excellent minister for the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar and was completely devoted to his duties. Being a minister was his chief occupation, and he achieved a good deal during his ten years in this capacity.

He had brought with him a part of his Faust, which is listed in the collected works under the delectable title, The Primordial Faust (Ur-Faust). All that we might call the upward vision of Faust was already alive in this version. How directly had Faust been taken from the life that touches every human soul!

In Weimar it was evident again that Goethe could not be completely captured by his environment. We often become acquainted with persons who are, in greater or lesser degree, merely the exponents of their files. Goethe, however, was not merely the exponent of the numerous documents he drew up as a Weimar functionary. In addition, he acclimated himself to the conditions in Weimar and, even though he remained on his isolated pedestal, he was nevertheless touched by everything human. The immediately human took form with him as art. Thus we see how the character of a woman, Frau von Stein,²⁸ with whom he formed a friendship, became a life problem for him. It was fundamentally his immediate view of her character that was the cause of his dramatizing the figure of Iphigenia. He wished to put into artistic form what worked on him in the character of Frau von Stein, and the legend of Iphigenia was only the means for solving this life problem. The relationships at the Weimar court, his life with Duke Karl August, whose character was so strangely endowed, his view of the fate of the Duchess, and other connected circumstances, all became problems to him. Life became a question. He again needed a subject in order to master these relationships in an artistic way, and to do so he took that of Tasso. It was, however, really the Weimar situation that he artistically mastered.

It is, of course, impossible to enter here into the many details of Goethe's mental life, yet I wish to place these facts before you in order that we may form a spiritual scientific contact with them as examples. Even in the most early period of his stay in Weimar, through the various circumstances into which he was brought, the possibility arose of deepening his studies in natural science by independent work. He continued his plant studies and began anatomical studies at the University of Jena. He endeavored in everything to confirm in detail the ideas of the universal interrelationships he had received from Herder. He wished to study the connections within the plant kingdom and what was spiritually alive in plants. He wished to hold the kinship among the animals before his mind and to find the path upward from them to man. He wished to study the idea of evolution in direct connection with actual natural objects. You see, Goethe had taken up Herder's great idea to study the evolutionary phrases of all entities, a unitary spiritual process of becoming. In this thought he and Herder then stood practically alone because those who dominated the intellectual life of the time thought quite otherwise; everything was pigeonholed.

All intellectual activity can be found to work in two polaric directions: toward separation and toward union. It was important for Goethe and Herder to bring unity into diversity and multiplicity; others were simply content with neat classifications and clever division. For these people, the problem was to show, for example, how man is distinguished from the animal. Man, it was said, has no intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw in which the incisors are rooted, but only a unitary jawbone; only the animals have an intermaxillary bone. Goethe was certainly not materialistically inclined, and he had no desire to establish materialism. The thought, however, that the inner harmony of nature could not be confirmed because of such a detail offended his intelligence. He therefore undertook to prove, in opposition to all scientific authorities, that man also has an intermaxillary bone, and he succeeded. He thus arrived at his first important scientific treatise entitled, An Intermaxillary Bone Is to Be Ascribed to Man as Well as to the Animal.²⁹ He had thereby introduced a single detail into the evolution of thought with which he opposed the entire scientific world, and which is now an obvious, undisputed truth.

Goethe appears, not as the poet of Werther, of Gottfried, and of Faust, or as the poet in whose head Iphigenia and Tasso came into being, but as one possessing a profound insight into the interrelationships of nature, so that he now studies and labors as a genuine research scientist. We have here, not a one-sided scientist, poet, or minister; he is a complete human being aspiring in all directions.

Goethe lived in Weimar for about ten years and then could no longer suppress his yearning to go to Italy. So in the late eighties he undertook a journey to Italy as if it were an escape. We must not forget that he then, for the first time, entered into situations that he had longed for and cherished from his earliest youth. This was his first introduction to the world at large; you must remember that he had never before seen any other large city except Frankfurt. We must also not forget that Rome was the first city through which he viewed the theater of world history. This must be included in his life and also that he felt the whole stream of life pulsating in Rome as it had risen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe united what then worked upon him as world history with the comprehensive world conception germinating in his mind. He traced the idea throughout the multiplicity of forms of plants, stones, and animals he had compared, and now followed them over the Apennine peninsula. He endeavored to confirm the idea of the "archetypal plant" over the broadest area and was able to do so. Every stone and plant interested him. How the multifold comes into form as the unit, this he allowed to work upon him.

Goethe also exposed himself to the influence of the great works of art, which revealed to him ancient Hellenism in its last feeble outgrowth. As he directed his objective glance over the multiplicity of nature, so also could he feel in the depths of his soul all the intimacies of the great art of the Renaissance. One need only read the words he spoke upon viewing Raphael's Saint Cecilia in Bologna, how, as he looked at it, he experienced in a wonderfully profound and intense manner all those feelings that lead man out of the sensory world into the super-sensible. One need only read in his Journey to Italy how, as he gradually deepened his ideas of nature, he sensed in the presence of works of art that man really creates such works only when art works creatively from the depths of life. Greek art, he said, now became clear to him: “I have an intimation that they proceed according to the same laws by which nature proceeds and which I am tracing,”³⁰ and “These lofty works of art, being also the highest works of nature, have been created by man according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary, all mere fancy, falls away; there³¹ So he wrote to his Weimar friends.

Goethe took into himself something stupendous, and what he had previously felt and surmised now took form. Scenes of great importance in his Faust were composed at this time in Rome. Iphigenia and Tasso had already been sketched and partly completed in Weimar. Now he rewrote them in verse. As he exposed himself constantly to classic works of art, he was now able to find the classic style that he wished to pour into these works. This was a regeneration, an actual rebirth of the soul, that he experienced in Italy. Thus, something peculiar now took form in his soul. He sensed a profound contrast between the aspirations of his age in what he had observed in his environment and what he had learned to feel as the loftiest expression of the purely human.

Goethe returned to Weimar to the world where works had been produced that entranced everybody. Schiller's The Robbers,³² Heinse's Ardinghello, and other such literary reproductions seemed to him barbaric stuff; they contradicted everything that was now rooted and living in his soul. He felt within like an utterly lonely person and had, indeed, been almost completely forgotten when a path was opened for the friendship with Schiller.³³ The approach was difficult because nothing was more repugnant to him when he first returned than Schiller's youthful works. But the two men discovered one another, and in such a way as to establish a bond of friendship almost without counterpart in history. They stimulated one another, and Hermann Grimm rightly remarks that in their relationship we have, not only Goethe plus Schiller, but Schiller plus Goethe as well.³⁴ Each became something different through the other; each enriched the other.

Profound, all-embracing human problems arose in the soul of Goethe and Schiller. What had to be resolved by the world in a political way—the vast problem of human freedom—was present before their minds as a spiritually human problem. Others gave much thought to the question of how an external institution that would guarantee man freedom in his life could be established in the world, but to Schiller the problem was: how does man find freedom within his own soul? He devoted himself to this problem in developing his unique work, Letters Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity. For Schiller the question was how man guides his soul above himself, from the ordinary status of life to a higher status. Man stands, on the one hand, within sensory nature, said Schiller; on the other, he stands face to face with the realm of logic. In neither is he free. He becomes free when he enjoys and creates aesthetically, when his thoughts develop in such a way that they are under compulsion, not of logic, but of taste and inclination, and at the same time, free of the sensible. Schiller demanded a middle position.

These Letters Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity of Schiller belong among mankind's most cultivated writings. But it was a question, a human riddle, that he and Goethe had faced in thought. Goethe could not penetrate this problem philosophically in abstract thoughts as Schiller had done. He had to attack it in a living way, and he resolved it comprehensively in his own way in the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. When Schiller undertook to show philosophically how man ascends from ordinary life to a higher life, Goethe undertook to show in his fairy tale, through the interplay of spiritual forces in the human soul, how man evolves spiritually from an everyday soul life to a higher one. What Schiller brought to light in a philosophic, abstract way, Goethe presented it in a magnificent visible form in this fairy tale. This he attached to a description of external life in his novel-like piece Conversations of German Emigrants. There really came to life in the inspired friendship between Goethe and Schiller all that man proposes to himself in riddling questions about life, and that is related to Faust's explanation of why he turned to a magic interpretation of the world:

[That I might]
Her vital powers, her embryo seeds, survey,
And fling the trade in empty words away.³⁵

Whoever penetrates the intellectual exchanges between Goethe and Schiller and sees what at that time came to life in the spirit of these two men receives through it as yet unrecognized and unrealized spiritual treasure—a treasure which manifests the aspirations of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in an extraordinary manner. The innermost concern of the two was manifested through the way in which Schiller undertook to solve the riddle of man philosophically in his Aesthetic Letters, the way Goethe addressed himself to the realm of color in order to oppose Newton, and the ways he depicts the evolution of the human soul in the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. All this comprises comprehensive questions that were destined, it would seem, to be of vital concern to but a few people.

Even though we have wished thus far to touch only upon such facts as bear upon the life of Goethe, it must also be remarked that, although many people nowadays believe they are capable of speaking about him, for many this Goethe period belongs to the past and is a book sealed with seven seals. In a certain sense, we may really feel pleased when someone is quite honest about this. It was, of course, narrow-minded of the famous scientist Dubois-Reymond³⁶ to deliver his discourse Goethe and No End. The same man, a rector of a university, who had previously described the limitations of a knowledge of nature and had made so many remarkable physiological discoveries, delivered his discourse on Goethe and No End! His remarks were narrow-minded because they arose from the opinion: “Yes, so many people talk about one who, after all, was only a dilettante; Goethe, the universal dilettante, is forever the subject of discussion. But how much have we since acquired about which he was, of course, totally ignorant—the cell theory, for example, the theory of electricity and advances in physiology!” All that was present in Dubois-Reymond's mind. “What was Goethe in comparison? People talk about his Faust as if he had given us an ideal of humanity.”

Dubois-Reymond cannot see that Goethe really did set before us an ideal for humanity. He asks: “Would it not have been better to make Faust greater than Goethe made him and more useful for humanity? Goethe places before us a wretched fellow”—Dubois-Reymond did not use this expression but what he says is approximately the same—“a wretched fellow who cannot even master his own inner problems. Then, if Faust had been a virtuous fellow, he would have married Gretchen instead of seducing her; he would have invented the electric generator and the air pump and have become a famous professor.” He says quite literally that if Faust had been a decent man, he would have married Gretchen and not seduced her. He would have invented the generator and air pump and would have performed other services for humanity and not have become such a debauched genius who got involved in all sorts of spiritistic nonsense.

Such a rectoral address, heard at the close of the nineteenth century, was certainly narrow-minded. Yet at least it is honest. We could wish that such honesty might appear more often; it is delightful because it corresponds with the truth. Thrice mendacious, however, is much of the laudation for Goethe and Faust that is brought forth by people who are happy “only when they find earthworms.” The quotations from Goethe that we often hear are really only spiritual earthworms even though they are Goethe's own words.

Precisely through the relationship of our time with such a spirit as Goethe's is it possible to study the deep untruth of the present age. Many people do nothing more than “trade in words,”³⁷ even trade in the very words of Goethe, whereas his world conception contains an element of everything that leads to and must come to birth in the future evolution of mankind. As we have already suggested, this element not only unites with spiritual science, but is by its very nature already tied to spiritual science.

• 1. These words are spoken by Faust's student Wagner in Faust, Part I, lines 570–573. The German text reads as follows:
  
  Verzeiht: Es ist ein gross Ergotzen
  Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen
  zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
  und wie wir's dann so herrlich weit gebracht.
  
  
  The German word "Ergötzen" connotes a passive and fleeting delight and is a contrast to the activating joy (“Erquickung“) Faust experienced in line 568. Wagner's conclusion in line 573 symbolizes the shallow optimism of the materialistic Enlightenment. Wagner himself is incapable of true spiritual perception.
  
  Except when noted otherwise, quotations of Goethe's works are from translations by Ann Swanwick.
• 2. Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927), Swedish physicist, chemist, and astronomer, was the author of Die Vorstellungen vom Weltgebdude im Wandel der Zeiten [Conceptions of the Structure of the World in the Changing Course of the Ages] (Leipzig, 1908). The foreword of this book contains the quote from Faust.
• 3. See Goethe's Poetry and Truth, IV.
• 4. Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) was a writer and a Professor of Literature in Leipzig. He is best known for his efforts to reform the German theater and for having established rules for drama that conformed to French models.
• 5. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was the foremost poet and critic of the German Enlightenment.
• 6. Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert (1715–1769) was a Prussian poet of the German Enlightenment.
• 7. Faust, Part I, lines 1-3. Faust reviews his past education and questions his knowledge.
• 8. The translation is from Walter Kaufmann, Goethe's Faust (Anchor Books: 1963), p. 95. This pronouncement in the third scene of Part I, lines 382–383, reveals Faust's search for a cohesive spiritual force that holds the universe together. Later in the poem he admits that he has been seeking this knowledge through alchemy.
• 9. Lines 384–385 in Faust, Part I; cf. footnotes 8 and 35. The German word “Samen“ [seed] refers to a term used in alchemy, but it is not certain that the word “Wirkungskraft“ [working force] does. Some scholars think Goethe invented the word.
• 10. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was a famous German theologian and cultural philosopher.
• 11. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) was a Dutch philosopher, a rationalist, and a monist. His Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, exerted a profound influence on Goethe.
• 12. In the introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings I (1883), pp. LV-LVIII, Rudolf Steiner depicts Goethe's relationship to Spinoza. Fritz Jacobi helped to deepen Goethe's knowledge of Spinoza's philosophy in the summer of 1774. After Goethe and Herder had renewed their friendship in Weimar, the two men and Frau von Stein studied Spinoza together. Goethe the Scientist (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1950).
• 13. William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
• 14. Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) established a theory of French tragedy. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699) was a famous writer of French classical tragedy.
• 15. Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817) was a German physician and writer.
• 16. Emanuel von Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish natural scientist and theosopher.
• 17. Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541) was a Swiss physician, natural scientist and alchemist.
• 18. The reference is to Goethe's relationship with the pastor's daughter, Friederike Brion (1752–1813).
• 19. Goethe received the degree of “Licentiate of Law,“ a title which in Germany was regarded as being equal to the doctorate. From then on, Goethe used the title, “Doctor juris.“
• 20. Götz von Berlichingen (1480–1562) came from an old Swabian family. He became the leader of the peasant uprising in 1525, fought against the Turks in 1542, and against France in 1544. His autobiography was published in 1731.
• 21. The reference is to Faust, Part I, line 584: “mit trefflichen Maximen.“ Faust, in lines 575–585, replies to Wagner's remarks (cf. footnote 1):
  
  My friend, the times that antecede
  Our own are books safely protected
  by seven seals. What spirit of the time you call
  Is but the scholar's spirit, after all,
  In which times past are now reflected.
  In truth, it is often pathetic,
  And when one sees it, one would run away:
  A garbage pail, perhaps a storage attic
  At best a pompous moralistic play
  With wonderfully edifying quips,
  Most suitable to come from puppets' lips.
  
  
  The translation of these lines is by Walter Kaufman (cf. footnote 8); he renders “pragmatic maxims“ with “edifying quips.“
• 22. Faust, Part I, lines 1972–1975, trans. by Walter Kaufmann. Mephisto says to the freshman student:
  
  The laws and statutes of a nation
  Are an inherited disease,
  From generation unto generation
  And place to place they drag on by degrees.
• 23. Siegwart, a sentimental novel by Johann Martin Miller, was published 1776, two years after Goethe's Werther, and immediately became a best seller.
• 24. The reference is to Goethe's letter from Frankfurt to Countess Auguste von Stollberg-Stollberg, dated February 13, 1775.
• 25. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was published in 1774. One year later, Goethe received Duke Kark August's invitation to Weimar and arrived there on November 7, 1775.
• 26. Frederick the Great in De la litterature alemande (1780).
• 27. Karl August, Duke of Weimar (1757–1828), son of Duchess Anna Amalia.
• 28. Charlotte Freifrau von Stein (1742–1827).
• 29. This treatise was written in 1784 and was published in Jena in 1786.
• 30. Goethe's letter from Rome, dated January 28, 1787.
• 31. Goethe's letter from Rome, dated September 6, 1787.
• 32. The Robbers had been published in 1781. In his Glückliches Ereignis [Happy Event] (1817), Goethe writes: “After my return from Italy, where I had endeavored to educate myself to a more definite and pure understanding of all branches of the arts and where I did not care what in those days was going on in Germany, I discovered that some recent, as well as some older, poetic works were in high repute and had widespread appeal. Unfortunately, they included some works that I found extremely disgusting such as Heinse's Ardinghello and Schiller's The Robbers.“
• 33. Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a dramatist, poet and historian and is regarded as one of the greatest German literary figures.
• 34. Hermann Grimm in the 21st “Goethe“ lecture: “When two superbly gifted men combine in common endeavors, their strength is not doubled but multiplied fourfold. Each one has the other invisibly next to himself. The formula would not read G + S, but (G + S) + (S + G). The strength of one accrues to the strength of the other.“
• 35 Faust, Part I, lines 384–385. The German text reads as follows:
  
  
  Schau alle Wirkungskraft und Samen
  Und to nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
  
  
  The Kaufman translation (cf. footnote 9) of this passage, although preferable as a whole, leaves “Wirkungskraft und Samen“ [vital power and embryo seed] untranslated and renders the two lines as follows:
  
  
  Envisage the creative blazes
  Instead of rummaging in phrases.
  
  
  To do justice to Steiner's remarks, I have here used Ann Swanwick's translation of these two lines. (P.M.)
• 36. Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818–96) was a physiologist in Berlin.
• 37. Cf. footnote 35.

When, after repeated requests, I decided to speak about some aspects of most recent history leading up to the present, I expressly stated that my concern was the understanding of the facts and that there was no question of entering into politics or anything to do with politics. I frequently repeated this statement. Despite this, it seems to me that a definite carelessness—not to use a stronger word—is gaining ground amongst us in this respect. People do not consider that when someone is speaking the truth with the intensity that has been the case, he has a right to claim that attention is also paid to the manner of its expression. It appears that here and there people have been speaking about these lectures as if they were political lectures. Lack of consideration has for a long time been the order of the day among some of our members—only a few, of course; I refer only to those who are meant. Everything I have said and repeated over and over again out of anxiety for our concerns has fallen on deaf ears in some quarters. It is perfectly apparent that again and again the matters we speak about here are reported to outsiders in the strangest manner.

As such, I have nothing against reports if they remain within the obvious bounds. But it is clear from various recent publications—among them a most scandalous compilation from the Vollrath camp—that matters are not reported in a manner befitting the way they are discussed here, but in a manner—perhaps from want of a better understanding—that enables the most horrible distortions to be fabricated. I know very well that the source of this is to be found in our midst, and if again and again I hold my peace and refrain from taking steps against those so-called members who behave in this way, it is out of love for our whole Movement and our whole Society. It is surely not possible to hold a constant succession of hearings. It would, however, be possible for members who understand what is going on, to approach in a suitable manner those of whom it is known that their attitude to the spiritual content given here is not what it ought to be. I do not even want to maintain—though sometimes it is indeed the case—that there is a direct lack of morality in people's behaviour, but there is certainly a lack of insight into the way one might behave. If someone wants to speak about what he has heard, it is incumbent upon him to ask himself with honest—let me say—self-knowledge, whether he has really understood it in a way which enables him to pass it on.

It is necessary, unfortunately, to draw attention to this from time to time. I assure you that I am not doing so without good reason. If things go on as they are, it will become necessary to remain silent about certain matters, and it is easy to see what would then become of our Movement. And a share in bringing this about would lie with those members who again and again fail to prevent themselves from using the most awful expressions which can then lead to frightful distortions. Surely it is not necessary to speak about these things in places where they can be overheard by people who do not belong amongst us, and to use expressions which might come easily to the tongue, but which in no way correspond to the whole purpose on which these lectures are founded!

I must admit that having decided after repeated requests to give these lectures, I can only view as entirely personal attacks the instances in which they have been described as ‘political lectures’.

Now that we have discussed the many considerations contained in the lectures of the past few weeks, it will today be possible to draw some of them together in order to throw light on aspects which can help us to understand what is happening today. I shall first endeavour to recount quite baldly, in the most external fashion, the historical sequence of events as they occurred, and then, on the basis of the insights gained over the past weeks, I will point out some of the deeper-lying causes. I want to state expressly that, particularly today, I shall attempt to weigh carefully every single expression so that each one provides an exact delineation within which the view it expresses can come to light. Let me start, then, by describing quite externally and briefly certain events, viewpoints and impulses.

As you of course all know, the present painful events have come about in connection with the murder in June 1914 of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. This assassination was followed in the whole of Europe by a newspaper campaign which showed, in what might be called surging waves, the degree to which passions had been aroused in every quarter. All this led to the well-known ultimatum from the monarchy of Austria-Hungary to Serbia which, in the main, was rejected by Serbia; then on to the Austro-Serbian conflict which was intended by the leading Austrian statesmen to consist of a military entry into Serbia, without any annexation of Serbian territory, for the purpose of exerting military pressure in order to force an acceptance of the ultimatum. The purpose of the ultimatum was to prevent Serbia from inciting unrest against the stability of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy via Austria's southern Slav population.

As you know, Austria comprises quite a number of nations—there are thirteen recognized languages and many more than thirteen distinct peoples. In the southern region the population is Slav; more to the West are the Slovenian Slavs; to the East, adjacent to them, the Dalmatian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Serbo-Croat population; then also the various groups who live in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were annexed by Austria in 1908, though occupied by her long before that. Serbia borders on the territories populated by these southern Slavs. Austria believed it could be proved—and evidence of this proof can be found all over the place by anyone who cares to seek it—that Serbia was inciting unrest with the aim of founding a Southern Slav kingdom under the sovereignty of Serbia and entailing the detachment of the southern Slav population of Austria.

At all costs the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had to be linked with these things, for the following reason: From 1867 onwards, the monarchy of Austria-Hungary was a dual state comprising, in accordance with a not very concise description ‘the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat’, and secondly ‘the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen’. Among the lands represented in the Reichsrat were Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Istria, Dalmatia, Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Bukovina. To the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen belong first and foremost the Magyar regions to which was annexed what had formerly been Transylvania, which is inhabited by a number of peoples; further, Croatia and Slavonia, the latter enjoying a kind of limited self-government within the Hungarian state. A dual monarchy, in other words.

Now it was known that Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, wanted to overcome the drawbacks of the dualism of Austria-Hungary and replace this dualism with a ‘triadic’ reorganization. This triadic structure was to come about by making the southern Slav territories belonging to Austria self-governing, in the way the lands and kingdoms represented in the Reichsrat and also the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen were self-governing. This would have put a triadic structure in place of the existing dualism. You can see how, had it been realized, this would have led to an individualization of the separate southern Slav peoples within a kind of southern Slav community in the Austro-Slav regions. It would have meant a step closer to the aim of assimilating the western Slavs with western culture, thus working against what I have called Russianism in these lectures. This could quite well have worked out, for the structure of the Austrian state is entirely federalistic, not centralistic, and before the war it tended anyway increasingly to grant federal status to the different peoples. From 1867 to 1879 centralism was the aim; from 1879 onwards the efforts to centralize had to be seen as a failure, and from then on federalism was the aim.

In opposition to this were the efforts on the part of Serbia to found a confederation of southern Slavs under the hegemony of Serbia. This did not arise from within the Serbian people, but I have described to you how peoples are, in a way, led simply by means of suggestion. For this to happen, the southern Slav territories would, of course, have to be wrested from Austria-Hungary.

This concludes my brief summary of what lies behind the Austro-Serbian conflict. What I have just been telling you is all to do with the Austro-Serbian conflict. It is thinkable that this conflict could have been ‘localized’—I have used this expression once before. Had this come about—I am speaking hypothetically—the European world war would have been avoided. What would have happened if the strictly circumscribed intentions of the Austrian statesmen had been realized? Part of the Austro-Hungarian army would have marched into Serbia and stayed there until Serbia agreed to accept the ultimatum which would have quashed the possibility of a southern Slav conferation under Serbian hegemony, and, of course, Russian supremacy. If no other European power had interfered in this matter, if they had all done nothing more than stand to attention, as it were, then nothing would have taken place except the acceptance of this ultimatum. For Austria had guaranteed that she had no intention of annexing any parts of Serbian territory in any way. As a result, such assassinations as took place many times—that of Franz Ferdinand was only the last in a whole sequence incited by Serbian agitators—such assassinations would not have taken place, and without such agitation the establishment of a southern Slav confederation under the supremacy of Russia is, or rather would, of course, have been impossible. If events had taken this course—I speak hypothetically again—this war need never have broken out.

So what is the connection between this Austro-Serbian conflict and the World War? To comprehend this connection it is necessary to pass beyond an understanding of the external situation and, if I may say so, enter the deeper secrets of European politics. It is not politics we want to enter; we want to understand in our soul what it was that lived in these politics. I want to answer the question: How did a European conflict arise out of the Austro-Serbian conflict? What is the link between the Austro-Serbian question and the European question?

We must turn our attention to what I have just said about the southern Slav confederation. It was the British Empire, the more it took on a conscious form, that was interested in a southern Slav confederation, independent of Austria, but under the supremacy of Russia. In the societies I have mentioned it was the establishment of what was termed the Danube confederation—by which was meant this southern Slav confederation, which was to comprise the southern Slav peoples together with Romania and include the southern Slavs of Austria—that was expressly discussed. In the nineties of the nineteenth century we find everywhere in the occult schools of the West, under the direct influence of British occultists, indications that such a Danube confederation would have to come into being. Attempts were also made to manipulate the whole of European politics towards the creation of this Danube confederation, which would entail the relinquishing of the Austro-Slav territories.

Why was the British Empire interested in this Danube confederation, a project which was anti-Austrian and pro-Russian? The powers which have been in opposition to one another most strongly in recent times as a consequence of the imperialism which has broken out across the world, those powers which actually coexist with the greatest hostility, are the British Empire and the Russian Empire. Such hidden hostilities can indeed manifest outwardly as friendships and alliances. When there is such bitter hostility between countries outwardly coexisting peacefully, a certain consequence results from the fact that our earth has a specific characteristic: namely, that it is spherical in shape. If our earth were a flat plain stretching in all directions, such conflicts could not come about. But since our earth is round, not only do we eventually arrive back at our starting point if we walk long enough in a straight line, but something else also happens: Expanding empires come up against each other at a certain point, and when they collide they have to follow through with their opposing interests. This occurred between the British and the Russian Empires. Among many other situations, it became most obviously apparent when they collided with great force in Persia. The question was: Should Russia succeed in moving down against India and there gradually hem in the British Empire, or would the British Empire erect defences?

When your aim is to gain sovereignty, you can pursue it by means of war, or by other means, depending on which seems the most favourable. For the British Empire it seemed for the moment—in the case of states, only limited periods of time are reckoned with—more favourable to prevent Russia from proceeding against India by providing a different channel, by diverting her attention in another direction in which she could achieve the satisfaction of her natural ambition. Empires are always ambitious. This was to be brought about by conceding to Russia the sovereignty over the so-called Danube confederation. Thus the British Empire was indirectly interested in making the Danube confederation as extensive as possible, for the Slavs in the South wanted to belong together, and this feeling of belonging was stirred up in the way I have described to you. Thus the confederation of southern Slavs was to be played into Russia's hand so that she might withdraw her attention from other directions. This was why the confederation of southern Slavs, to be set up under Russian sovereignty, was in the British interest. It was a long story, prepared well beforehand.

Here we see one of the threads linking the Austro-Serbian question to the question of sovereignty on a world scale. This is how the whole relationship between the British and the Russian Empires was drawn into the matter. It was not a matter of Austria and Serbia, for the whole Austro-Serbian question necessarily became the question: Should Austria take the step towards a triadic structure, thus diverting the confederation of southern Slavs from its path, or should steps be taken towards a Russian-dominated southern Slav confederation? In this way the Austro-Serbian question became coupled with the European question.

When such situations exist—for what I have just described lived in human beings as absolutely real impulses—it is like an electric charge which will at some point have to be discharged. This, then, was one of the threads.

It is still, however, highly questionable whether the Austro-Serbian conflict would have led to the World War, if there had not been further aspects in addition to those we have just discussed. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that it would have done, if there had been no other causes. But there were plenty of other impulses, all of which reinforced the situation. First and foremost among these was the Franco-Russian alliance within the general European situation. This Franco-Russian alliance had existed since the nineties of the nineteenth century and, looking at the situation objectively, it could not have been more unnatural. No one will doubt that France had entered into this alliance with a view to winning back Alsace-Lorraine, for there is no other imaginable reason for this alliance. All other reasons would only have spoken against such an alliance. In the end, though, those other reasons carry little weight in comparison with the driving forces, for the fact is that an alliance such as this exists; through its very existence it represents a real force. It is there. Much more important than the actual aim of this alliance is the fact that here are a western and an eastern state who in combination constitute a monstrous military power. And between them lies Germany who could not but feel permanently threatened militarily by the scale of this combined French and Russian military might. It was this encirclement of Germany to West and East by the Franco-Russian alliance which became one of the driving forces in European affairs.

To discover further influences which played a part we must look at the following: In recent decades, imperialism has led to a general desire for expansion. You need only look, for instance, at the monstrous growth of the British Empire. Or think of France, whose territorial expansion over the last few decades has been incomparably greater than at any earlier time, when France, as she herself said, marched at the head of European civilization.

The events of recent decades have been like a chain reaction: In every case what came next could not have taken place without what had gone before. The most recent point of departure—of course we could go back further—lies in the British Empire's seizure of sovereignty over Egypt. For today's way of thinking it is perfectly reasonable to justify such an action by claiming the necessity of rounding off and securing one's assets. The expansion of British sovereignty over Egypt was justified by saying that a bridge to India was needed. The hope was that Arabia could be gained too, thus creating a direct link with India.

The expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt provided, to some extent, a protective barrier against any awkward expansion of the Russian Empire westwards; any such expansion westwards need not have harmed the British Empire to any great extent if Egypt had been able to provide the necessary link with India.

Now since the earth is spherical, there is insufficient territory for unlimited expansion outwards by empires because eventually they will clash. In consequence the expansion of one empire generates in the other an equal lust for expansion. Thus the expansion by France to include Morocco, in two stages in 1905 and 1911, was nothing other than a consequence of the expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt. The mutual recognition of these expansions—France's recognition of British dominion over Egypt and British recognition of France's dominion over Morocco—provided the threads with which an Entente Cordiale between the French and the British Empires could be spun. But because Germany was in the middle, efforts were made, as you know, to establish the Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria, Italy.

However, the distribution of Morocco and Egypt, and what followed this, meant that, at the Algeciras Conference, and particularly with the help of an elderly Italian politician who was well versed in these things, Italy was even then successfully drawn into the sphere of influence of the western entente between France and England. After the Algeciras Conference sensible people in Central Europe no longer believed that Italy would be able to remain faithful to the Triple Alliance. Because of the way she had behaved there had to be consequences for her, resulting from the seizure of Morocco by France. And the consequence was that Italy was permitted to establish herself in Tripoli. In effect this meant that Italy had been given permission by the West to wage war on Turkey. So Egypt led to Morocco, and Morocco to Tripoli. Then, because Tripoli meant a new weakening of the Turkish position, Tripoli led to the Balkan War. These events took place like a chain reaction, Egypt-Morocco-Tripoli-Balkan War; each is unthinkable without its predecessor.

Turkey having been weakened by the Italo-Turkish, or Tripoli War, the southern Slav peoples, with the others in their wake, and also the Greek peoples, believed themselves strong enough to win the Balkan peninsula for themselves. As a result of this, the trend towards a southern Slav confederation became linked with the national aspirations of the Balkan countries. The linking of these two chains gave the Balkan War an outcome in which Serbia was the strongest winner. Serbia has grown very powerful, incomparably more so than she was before. In consequence there came a revival of the ideal of founding the southern Slav confederation under the hegemony of Serbia and the overall sovereignty of Russia. This led to the agitations which culminated in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which in turn led to the Austro-Serbian War. Now we have brought the two links together: The Austro-Serbian question was linked with the European question as a consequence of the whole historical process.

Those who followed these events with understanding were able to see under these circumstances many years ahead to the coming war, hanging like a sword of Damocles over European culture and civilization. Wherever these things were discussed you could hear how people realized that Russia's pretensions would lead to a conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. This conflict was inevitable. No one who studies the realities of history will say that this conflict between Central and Eastern Europe was not based on what may be called a spiritual necessity. Just as in ancient times conflict arose between the Roman and the Germanic peoples, so in modern times there had to be conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. There were manifold forms it could have taken, but conflict there had to be. Everything else, in so far as it had to do with the East, was included in this conflict.

It was the pretensions of Russianism that led to the expectation that somewhere or other these pretensions would lead to an attempt by Russia to impose sovereignty on the Balkan league. This was expected. The geographical situation made it inevitable that there would be a clash between Russia and Austria. And when this clash occurred—so said all those who had been contemplating these things over the years—everything else would automatically follow.

How, it was asked, would the situation be shaped by the existing structure of alliances at the moment of Russia's attack on Austria? Obviously no one expected Austria to attack Russia of her own accord. This was unthinkable; Austria could not possibly find herself in a position to launch an attack on Russia. It had to be supposed, therefore, that matters would arrange themselves in a way that would enable Russia to attack Austria. Well and good! Because of the alliance between Austria and Germany, Germany could be expected to stand by Austria and attack Russia in her turn. And as a result of Germany's attack on Russia—I am telling you what was presumed—the Franco-Russian alliance would come into action. France would be obliged to take Russia's side and attack Germany. And because of the relationship between France and England—whether laid down in a treaty or not—England would have to join in the attack on the side of Russia and France. These things were foreseen. The structure of treaties and alliances would automatically lead to a sequence of events.

In the end, the sequence was not quite what had been expected by those who concerned themselves day in, day out, with the future of Europe. What form did it take? Let us see. I have already described to you the history of the ultimatum, the rejection of the ultimatum, the resulting insistence by Austria on acceptance of the ultimatum. But the European powers did not remain indifferent to all this, for Russia immediately made ready to enter the fray as Serbia's protector. This made the localization of the Austro-Serbian question unthinkable. From the British quarter came all sorts of meaningless suggestions of the kind made by those who either want to take a hand in affairs without thinking things through properly, or who want to build up for themselves from the start a world-wide reputation of having endeavoured to settle the matter by peaceful means. This is not actually the aim, but it has to be possible later on to say that it was.

So the meaningless suggestion was made to call a conference made up, of all things, of England, Germany, France and Italy, to decide about the questions pending. Just imagine what would have been the outcome of such a conference! A majority verdict would have been required on whether Austria's demands to Serbia were justified or not. On the basis of the real situation, imagine, please, how the voting would have gone! Italy had inwardly deserted the Triple Alliance, France was on Russia's side, Russia was obviously only satisfied if Austria was refused the right to insist on acceptance of the ultimatum, England was in favour of the Danube confederation. Leaving aside Austria, the majority would have gone to Italy, France and England. Germany would obviously have been out-voted at all costs. This conference could not possibly have led to anything other than a refusal for what Austria, from her position, was compelled to demand. That means that if this conference had been held it would have been nothing but a farce, for Austria would either have been forced to give up her pretensions, or, regardless of the outcome of the conference, she would have continued to demand acceptance of the ultimatum. In other words, the conference would have been nothing but a bluff, as they say. A thorough study of the documentation reveals, however, that from the start Russia's pretension was to interfere in the Serbo-Austrian question. So it is really irrelevant whether the World War came about as the result of an automatic sequence of events or of deliberate scene-setting leading inevitably to the War.

It was the scene-setting that took place for, in addition to the various impulses, you must also take into account a quite particular mood. Maybe no other world event, no other historical event but this, has ever been quite so dependent on a certain mood. The mood of soul of those participating in the outbreak of the War at the end of July 1914 was certainly one of the most important causes. Of course there were also agitations at the outbreak of earlier wars, but they did not sweep in with such stormy, such hurricane force, as did the events between 24 July and 1 August 1914. Within a few days a monstrous agitation had gathered over the participants, an agitation in which was concentrated all the accumulated anxiety of the many years during which this coming event had been foreseen. This mood must definitely be taken into account. Those who do not do so can only speak in empty phrases.

All kinds of points could be brought in to characterize this mood, but I shall draw your attention to only one. An event had taken place which was indirectly, though in fact very strongly, connected with the outbreak of the War. If it is to be evaluated properly it will, and must, be seen in its proper place amongst the other events in Europe. This was the German defence bill, laid before Parliament after the Balkan War, which budgeted for an enlargement of the German army by means of a single large defence payment. This enlargement of the German army, which, by the way, was not anywhere near completion by the time the War broke out, can be studied by anyone in connection with the results of the Balkan War. These results showed that for an uncertain time in the future the clash between Russia and Austria was being manipulated. It was only because of certain situations, which I do not want to go into here, that Russia was prevented as early as 1913 from attacking Austria in order to gain sovereignty and dominion over the Balkan confederation. The enlargement of the German army was undertaken for no other reason—as I said, I am choosing my expressions very precisely today—than the threatened dispute with the East. Yet the French reaction followed promptly: If Germany is enlarging her army, then we must do something about strengthening ours. What this means is that the destiny, the inevitable necessity for Central Europe to take precautions with regard to the East, always produced reinforcements in the West, which naturally produced further reactions in their turn.

In this way matters progressed. In particular, everything connected with the defence bill after the Balkan War generated terrible anxiety in Central Europe because the whole of the European periphery was seen to have turned against Central Europe. Opinions differed only in the matter of Italy: Some still thought she would somehow throw in her lot with Central Europe, while others no longer held this to be possible.

Let us still assume—hypothetically—that the World War did not break out. There was only one precondition that could have prevented it. Russia would have had to refrain from immediate war threats—in other words mobilization, which under the prevailing circumstances could only be regarded as a war threat. Central Europe could not for one moment have thought that France would not go along with Russia, so an assault on two fronts had to be reckoned with. The only course of action open to those in positions of responsibility was to paralyse this assault in some way. No one in a responsible position could have thought: Let us spend the next fortnight at a conference! Not only could this conference have led absolutely nowhere, as I said, but it would have meant certain defeat. But no one can be expected to accept certain defeat from the outset. So the only possibility was to match the monstrous military superiority of West and East by means of speed.

For this the only possible course of action, as I showed earlier, was to violate international law and march through Belgium. Any other solution could only have led to the involvement of most of the German army in a long war of defence in the West while leaving the way open to invasion from the East. This was one of those historical moments at which—whether you can express it aptly or not—a state is forced to enter into a breach of the law in self-preservation. There is no other course of action open to those responsible for that state. In Central Europe it was—and I am choosing my words very carefully today in order to make my meaning quite clear—for some of those in responsible positions utterly monstrous to attempt war on two fronts at once.

So the attempt was made to restrict the matter to a single front. Careful, carefully intentioned, attempts were made to keep France neutral, and it was believed that France could be induced to remain neutral. No one in Central Europe had any intention of harming France. With a feeling of total responsibility it is possible to say that absolutely no one in Central Europe, no one in Germany, had any intention of harming France. What was done was done only with a view to tying matters up as quickly as possible in the West in order to prevent the threatened invasion from the East. It therefore never ceases to be astonishing that so much talk persists in the world about all the atrocities Germany has committed towards the West. None of the atrocities would have occurred if only France had declared her neutrality.

France was perfectly capable of protecting herself and Belgium against any attack. That France was forced to keep her agreement with Russia is her own affair and should not be trotted out in the same breath as the atrocities committed by Germany, for the allegiance of one state to another is no business of her enemies.

Since it proved impossible to keep France neutral by direct means, the attempt was then made via England—here, too, without success. I have touched a number of times on how England could have saved Belgium and, equally well, France. These things must be viewed absolutely objectively. Please accept as totally objective the statement that, once the war between Austria and Serbia could no longer be localized because Russia would not allow this, every effort was made at least to prevent it from spreading to the West. Truly, no one in Central Europe was seized with the madness of wanting to make war on two fronts, let alone subsequently on three.

That all the other universal untruths followed on from this is really not surprising now, when every day astonishes us with new lies, spoken, written and printed. Before coming here today I found someone had put on my desk a pamphlet by one of the participants engaged in the neutrality debate with Georg Brandes. Here, on the English side, you have William Archer, in whose pamphlet you find juxtaposed the black infamy of Germany and the pure innocence of the allies. Ten points illustrate the black infamy, and the angelic, utter innocence of the allies; we need consider only one of these, the second. The second point states that in Germany there exists a notable faction which is openly agitating for further territorial expansion, either in or outside Europe. In contrast it is said of the allies—in English, mark you: The allies have no desire for any territorial expansion, least of all at Germany's expense; even France's feelings for Alsace-Lorraine are exclusively peaceful.

My dear friends, much can be both printed and spoken these days! The other nine points are in similar vein. Just think of the expansion undertaken by England and France over recent decades; and then read that these countries have no desire for territorial expansion. It is quite possible nowadays to say and print the exact opposite of the truth, just as it is possible for countless people to believe it. People do indeed believe these things.

Here, then, you have the historical view of these events. Now we must link this external historical process with what we can discover through our knowledge of the impulses from the West which have been at work for a long time. Not all the impulses that make use to a greater or lesser degree of occult forces—such as we have discussed—are included in what might be called the outer ramifications: namely, Freemasonry, though as we have seen, a great deal is indeed brought about by western Freemasonry. Many strings are pulled by those involved there. And as I said, account is taken of long stretches of time.

Now add to the points I have been making the fact that modern Freemasonry undergoes a process of consolidation in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, on foundations, of course, which are older. Within Britain, not the Empire, but the United Kingdom, Freemasonry remains—let me use the correct expression—essentially respectable in the interests it pursues. But everywere else, outside Britain, chiefly—or indeed exclusively—political interests are pursued by Freemasonry.

Such political interests, to the most marked degree, are pursued for instance by the French Grand Orient, and also by other Grand Lodges. You could ask: What business is it of the English if political trends in other countries are pursued by certain orders of Freemasonry which possess an occult background? In reply you might remind yourself that the first Grand Lodge in Paris was founded under the jurisdiction of England, not France! Englishmen, not Frenchmen, founded it; and then they let the French in. Then also remind yourself that after the founding of this Grand Lodge in Paris in 1725, this Grand Orient in turn sanctioned the founding of a lodge under its own jurisdiction in Paris in 1729. There were, under the jurisdiction of England, foundations in Gibraltar in 1729, Madrid in 1728, Lisbon in 1736, Florence in 1735, Moscow in 1731, Stockholm in 1726, Geneva in 1735, Lausanne in 1739 and Hamburg in 1737. I could carry on for a long time with this list. I could show you how a network was founded of these lodges, which were to act as the external tools for certain occult, political impulses. They differed in character from those in the United Kingdom itself. In addition to the breathtaking sequence of changes as we see them in history, such as the Jacobins and the furore they created, the Carbonari and their political activities, the Cortes in Spain and others, they also have a strong influence on the culture of their time and send out shoots which even show in the works of the greatest spirits of their time. We need only think of Rousseau's natural philosophy, or the critical philosophy of Voltaire, which became ever more cynical though its aim was to enlighten, or the efforts of the Illuminati, who wanted to overcome the prevailing cynicism, and similar circles. These progressive circles were crushed by reactionary streams, but continued to work in manifold ways underground.

So here you have the source of much that I have been describing. And you must attach a degree of importance to the following: The English Freemasons can maintain today that their lodges are entirely respectable and that any others are none of their business; yet if you look beyond the historical connections and the interplay of opposing currents, you are sure to find high-level British politics hiding in the background.

To understand the deeper meaning of these politics it is necessary to draw a little on recent history. Preparations having been under way from the sixteenth century onwards, there has been a tendency ever since the seventeenth century towards the democratization of society—in some countries more quickly, in others more slowly—by taking power away from the few and giving it to the broad masses. I am not here involved in politics and I shall not therefore express myself in favour of either democracy or anything else. I simply wish to state facts. The impulse towards democracy is having its effect in modern times at varying speeds, and so different streams are coming into being. It is a mistake, where several streams are apparent, to follow the course of only one. The way streams flow in the world is such that one always forms a complement to the others. Let us say a green and a red stream are flowing along side by side. Nothing occult is meant by these colours—it is simply to illustrate that there are two streams flowing side by side. Usually people are, let me say, hypnotized into looking at only one of the streams, while they fail to see the other flowing beside it during the same period in history. As you know, if you push a hen's beak into the ground and then draw a line leading away, the hen will always walk along this line. In the same way people today, especially university historians, see only the one side, and can therefore never really understand the historical process.

Parallel with the democratic stream there came into being the use of occult motives in the various secret societies—in isolated cases, also Masonic orders. In their purposes and aims these are not, of course, spiritual, but there developed, let us call it, a spiritual aristocracy parallel to that democratic stream which was at work in the French Revolution; the aristocracy of the lodges developed. To see clearly as a human being today, to be open to the world and to understand the world, it is necessary not to be dazzled by democratic logic—which has a place only in its own sphere—by empty phrases about democratic progress and so on; it is necessary also to point to that other stream which asserted itself with the intent of gaining power for the few by means that lie hidden within the womb of the lodge—the ritual and its suggestive influence. It is necessary to point to this also.

This has been forgotten during the age of materialism, but before the fifties of the last century people did point these things out. Study the philosophical historians prior to 1850 and you will see that they pointed to the connection between the lodges and the French Revolution with all that followed it. During the period that can be seen as preparatory for today, western historical development, the western world, never emancipated itself from the lodges. The influence of the lodges was always strongly at work. The lodges knew how to find channels through which to impress certain directions on people's thoughts. Once a web like this has been spun—of which I have shown you merely a few strands—the button need only be pressed for things to be set in motion.

Emancipation from all these situations, and the impartial embracing of humanity as such, only really came about under the influence of such great spirituality as developed in German philosophy beginning with Lessing, and developing through Herder and Goethe. Here you have a spiritual stream which took account of all that lives in the lodges, but in such a way that the mystery was brought out of the obscurity of the lodges and transformed into a purely human matter. You need only glance at Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, at Wilhelm Meister and other of Goethe's writings. This was material with which the step to emancipation could be taken and which still today makes emancipation possible. So you may view that whole part of German cultural history portrayed in my book Vom Menschenrätsel as a forgotten reverberation which is entirely independent of all the intrigues of the lodges.

In western culture over the last few centuries preceding our own day you will easily find many ways of demonstrating how the character of ideas in the exoteric world stemmed from the esoteric thinking of the lodges. Obviously this does not apply to the time before Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare but it is certainly true of what came later. But the spiritual culture linked with Lessing, Herder and Goethe has no such connections. You might ask: What about German Freemasonry—in Austria it is proscribed, so there is none there—or Magyar Freemasonry? Well, the others did not allow them to join in. They are quite an innocuous crowd. Though they might appear as thick as thieves with regard to their secrets, this is nothing but show.

The real, mighty impulses emanating from the quarters I have described to you are truly not found in German Freemasonry, which I have no wish to offend. So you can easily understand how it was possible for some rather strange occurrences to take place. Suppose, for instance, someone were to make known in Germany the things I have told you about societies, their secret connections and their external branches—the lodges of Freemasonry. It could be rather useful to make these things known there, but what would be the consequence? Experts would be asked to corroborate these things, and in this case the experts are the Freemasons themselves. But it would never occur to any Freemason in Germany to say anything other than that the English lodges do not concern themselves with politics, that they are concerned only with entirely respectable matters. This is all he knows, for he is ignorant of anything else. You can even be told—and this has actually happened—if you ask about specific names, that they are not on the list of members. They have the list but are unaware that perhaps the most important of all are not included in the list. In short, German Freemasonry is a quite innocuous society.

This does not alter the fact, though—and this may truly be said without any kind of arrogance or nationalistic affectation—that the spiritual life cultivated by certain western secret brotherhoods actually stems from Central Europe. Look at this historically. Robert Fludd: pupil of Paracelsus; Saint-Martin in France: pupil of Jakob Böhme. The origin of the movement itself is to be found in Central Europe. From the West comes the organization, the establishment in degrees—some western lodges have ninety-two degrees; just imagine how elevated you can become if you rise to the ninety-second degree—the use of knowledge for political aims, and the introduction of certain external elements.

We have just had an example which is quite typical, one to which I drew your attention. I am only describing these things in order to make you aware of their objective nature, just as the facts of natural history can be described; not from any nationalistic affectation. I drew your attention to the recent appearance of a book by Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he reports on communications he has received through various mediums from his son who was killed in action. A book like this, written by such a distinguished scientist, is sure to cause quite a sensation. Now that I have read the book there is no need for me to retract anything I said to you a little while ago. I said at the time that I would return to this subject. The strongest proof offered by Sir Oliver Lodge is the following: Seances with various mediums result in the manifestation of the soul of Raymond Lodge, who died in action. These seances tell us nothing people do not know already and would be unlikely to make any strong impression on anyone. But one thing did make a strong impression on the eminent scientist Sir Oliver Lodge and his whole family, who up to that point had been very sceptical about such things. At one of the seances a group photograph was mentioned, showing Oliver Lodge's son together with other people. This photograph, one of several, was described as showing the same people at the same place, but in varying arrangements; the same people are seen, but with differing gestures. Raymond Lodge described this photograph through the medium at that seance in England. But Sir Oliver Lodge and his family knew nothing about this picture, for it had been taken at the Franco-Belgian front at the end of Raymond Lodge's life and sent by him to his family, though it had not yet arrived. So this medium described a group photograph which existed but was unknown to the family: the participants in the seance. They only saw it after it had been described by the medium.

For those who dabble in the occult, this is naturally tremendously convincing. What should you make of the fact that a group photograph is described at a seance, the participants of which know nothing about it? The family, the participants in the seance, know nothing of it and nor do the mediums, because it has not yet arrived in England. It is still on the way. It only arrived later. Yet an exact description is given of where Raymond Lodge is sitting in relation to the others and even of the way he has laid his hand on a friend's shoulder. What could be more convincing than this?

However, Sir Oliver Lodge's interpretation can only have been reached by someone who merely dabbles in the occult. If he had known nothing much but had investigated the literature—for instance Schubert or similar people who still wrote about such things in Germany around the first half of the nineteenth century—he would have found countless examples of something that every genuine occultist knows: When consciousness is damped down even slightly, future events can be seen. The most simple case of seeing a future event is when someone experiencing a moment of lowered consciousness sees a funeral procession which will not take place for several days. A person has not even died, yet someone sees his funeral. Something in the future is seen. This is quite normal when consciousness is lowered. So this is what took place: A photograph has been taken in Flanders and is on its way to England. The time will come when the family will focus their eyes and their understanding on it, when they will bear it in their thoughts. The medium foresees it as an image of the future. Whether you foresee a funeral procession, or whether you foresee how a family receives such and such a photograph of their son in a few days' time—it is the same phenomenon: that of seeing a future event in advance. This is just a phenomenon.

If he had known something about real occult facts, he would not have interpreted the event as he did. Such an interpretation arises because occult values, occult laws, are seen from a materialistic standpoint. It comes about because people avoid undertaking that form of development which would enable them to comprehend the spiritual world in an inward process. Instead they want to see the spiritual realm by laboratory means, purely materialistically. The spirit is made materialistic, whether by Sir Oliver Lodge or anybody else. But this is only one example of what happens to everything that is spiritual. These things can be observed, just as you can observe the progression from Paracelsus to Fludd, from Jakob Böhme to Saint-Martin; everywhere the spirit is made more materialistic.

As the Anthroposophical Society we only succeeded in saving ourselves from becoming materialistic by emancipating ourselves from the Theosophical Society. For impulses emanating from the kind of society I have described penetrate deeply into the social fabric. Naturally, here again I must beg you not to misunderstand me. I am not saying that this is a natural characteristic of the western nations. But it exists and has succeeded in influencing the course of history and is not even without influence on the untruthfulness which is now playing such a devastating part.

It is particularly to this untruthfulness that I am obliged to draw you attention, for this untruthfulness always takes the form of accusation, of blaming others. That dismal New Year's Eve note is really nothing but an accusation based on a distortion of the facts, just as is the article by Mr Archer which I read to you here. But you see such things are beginning to be believed, they are beginning to play their role. In a few weeks' time people will have long forgotten that an opportunity to achieve peace was present in a form that could not be overlooked by the world, and that this opportunity was thwarted by the powers of the periphery. People in Europe will once again begin to believe that the offer of peace was refused by the powers of the Entente on purely humanitarian grounds, on the basis of the extraordinary reasoning that if one wants peace one must prevent it from coming about. Even such grotesque untruths as this are believed nowadays. That they can be believed at all derives from preparations made by the kind of occultism I have been describing to you. It is indeed a sign of an arrant corruption of the soul when it becomes possible to write down side by side the two sentences I mentioned about the black and the white raven. And this corruption of the soul comes about as a consequence of an atmosphere tampered with by organizations such as I have described.

In this connection, too—I can say this quite objectively—there has been a tendency for Central Europe to emancipate itself. In all the Central European spiritual life thrown open by Lessing, Herder, Goethe, such as we have spoken about during the course of our anthroposophical life, you have seen clearly enough how the direction was towards a gradual evolution into the spiritual world. What it is not inclined to do, is enter into any kind of permanent compromise with what lives in the western streams such as those I have described to you. This is impossible. That is why things appear in a different way.

Let us look back for a moment to Fichte, so disparaged in the West today; let us turn to his Reden an die deutsche Nation. What is Fichte aiming at? That the German nation should educate itself! What he says in Reden an die deutsche Nation is not aimed at other nations; he is endeavouring to inspire Germans to improve themselves. But others seem to have what we might call a real ‘genius’ for misunderstanding whatever comes into being in Germany. That harmless national anthem Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, which, if you take the trouble to read the next few lines, speaks of nothing more than loving one's fatherland above all others—for only the different parts of the fatherland are named—is made into something utterly grotesque. In the same way, if one wants to, one can misunderstand Fichte, since he begins Reden an die deutsche Nation with the words ‘I speak for Germans as such, and about Germans as such’. Why does he say this? Because Germany is divided into a whole number of small individual states, and he does not want to address the Prussians, or the Swabians or the Saxons, or the people of Oldenburg, Mecklenburg or Austria and so on, but Germans as such. He wanted to unite all the individuals. So he is talking to Germans and only to Germans. I do not want to praise the Germans, but such things may justifiably be included in a description of them.

I have brought up this matter today because there is definitely a tendency to sound a note in the centre, a note differing from that of the periphery. And if our anthroposophical work can contribute to this other note, there is no reason why we should not say so amongst ourselves. Just today I received a pamphlet by our friend Ludwig von Polzer, who as you know worked here: Thoughts during Wartime. Whether you agree in detail with what he says or not, it is interesting to note that he is not particularly concerned with attacking and insulting others but rather with reading the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. It is to them he speaks. Obviously he has come to be an Austrian as a result of his karma, but he nevertheless reads the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. He does not say: We are blameless, we never did this or that, we are pure white angels and all the others are black devils. No, he says:

‘Why does mankind hate itself and tear itself to pieces? Are external political differences of opinion really the cause of so much suffering? Every party to the fray claims to know what it is about, but in reality none of them know.
A declining, decadent culture is fighting its deathly struggle. The Central Powers, who are fighting for the first germination of a new culture, have not recognized it as yet; they fight for something they do not know, for something unknown to them; and they are themselves still filled with the convictions against which their own soldiers are bleeding in battle.
The old degenerate ways must be, as it were, vomited forth and that is why in their final fling they are running so wild.
Do we not come up against it amongst ourselves wherever we turn, this attitude of the Entente which bears the old, decadent culture? Has it not infected us as well? We see it on the streets in the latest fashions, it is embodied in modern architecture, it grins down at us from the hoardings, in commerce it runs to orgies, it inflates itself in bureaucratic madness, in its self-important untruthful humanism it lies to itself, our press seeks to outbid its colleagues of the Entente in devotion to the truth, and so on.
The Entente is here among us, fuming and raging, claiming to work for our honest soldiers and compatriots, almost all of whom have meanwhile died a sacrificial death.
All these things running so horrifyingly wild in our own country—let it be hoped for the last time before the end—are not deutsch.’

So all those things worthy of censure in his own country he calls ‘not deutsch’. His main aim is to appeal to the conscience of his own compatriots. There are further, similar passages in this booklet. It is good that such a thing is said for once in connection with our own endeavours. There is no need for us to be in total harmony with every sentence that is written amongst us. The most wonderful achievement will be to work on all these things independently, preserving our individuality and taking nothing as dogma or as the word of a higher authority. Those things which are meant to come to the fore are quite able to do so without the help of any authority. But to give our Society meaning we need to stand together in unanimity. In part this means, of course, that we should be alert to what goes on amongst us and should recognize those who work alongside us and who endeavour to place before the world what goes on within our Anthroposophical Society in such a way that it really reflects the intentions of our Society. The main thing we can do to help our age is to work with understanding through the impulses of this age from our viewpoint. We need not lose heart, for however unfavourable conditions become in time, we may recall Lessing's words: Is not the whole of eternity mine? This is a thought that concerns every single human being.

We should be particularly careful to develop good practices with regard to the proper evaluation and estimation of all that comes to the fore amongst ourselves. In this connection I hope you will not mind my mentioning something, without wishing to say anything unpleasant to anyone. The periodical Das Reich, produced by Alexander von Bernus, makes every endeavour to move within our stream. So what does it matter if we agree or disagree with one or another of the articles it publishes? It is quite possible to disagree with a good deal. But many mistakes have been made on the part of our members with regard to this periodical. Seeing how it has been berated from all sides, I have to say that it is really not right to throw obstacles in the path of efforts which genuinely endeavour to work in harmony with our Movement. Of course everybody is entitled to his own opinion about the verses which Alexander von Bernus composed in connection with certain historical occult teachings which may be found amongst us. But I do consider things have been taken too far when floods of blatently rude letters start to arrive from our members. Where will it lead if we ill-treat those who are on our side while taking very little notice of those who insult us, just letting them go on doing so?

I wanted to bring up the matter of this periodical Das Reich, which strives to promote our endeavours, because I want to reply to the question that could be asked: What can we do? The very reason why these lectures have been given is to find a reply to this question: What can we do? What we can do is maintain an understanding attitude, in accordance with our anthroposophical spiritual science, towards everything going on at present! For what would be the significance of this spiritual science for us if we could really not transcend the attitude prevalent all over Europe today of people who speak of national aspirations and the like, and shape events in accordance with these national aspirations. Within the Society which serves anthroposophical spiritual science no one need become a faithless son of his nation, or deny anything he ought not to deny because he is firmly united with a particular nation as a result of his karma. But no one can be a true anthroposophist if he turns a blind eye towards the enormity of what is going on just now and allows himself to be deafened by all those means which some of those in power use today to stun us in order to avoid having to state what they are really playing at. So let me point out those things that are easily believed when they come towards us in a sentimental form, whereas what has always been hidden by the screens behind which occult events take place still has to remain hidden away behind these screens.

It must become clear to us that a time could come again—I am choosing my words very warily today, so I say could come again—in which the battle grows extremely terrible because peace is definitely not wanted. It could grow even more terrible than it has hitherto been if something is not introduced from one side or the other which can prevent this terror. Then there will once again be an opportunity to speak about the atrocities of Central Europe; then under the rubble and ashes will be buried the fact that these atrocities could have been prevented if people had not roared like a bull against moves towards peace. It was within the power of countries of the periphery to bring about peace. Yet the time will come—it is by no means unlikely that the time will come—when it will be said once again: The Germans are doing this or that and flouting every international law.

Indeed, my dear friends, it is once again fashionable for the encircling powers, having failed to bring about what could have held such actions in check, to accuse those who are encircled of protecting themselves on all sides. We must come to see this clearly in all its enormity. Beside all that may very well have happened, for instance in Belgium, must be placed the fact that the British Empire could have prevented all that has happened in Belgium.

Harsh though it might sound, it has to be said that it is untruthful to speak about the atrocities in Belgium without taking into account how easily they could have been prevented by the English. And it goes without saying that we feel the tragic destiny of France. Yet France was truly in a position which could have enabled her not to participate in the war.

The Central Powers were not in a position to avoid waging a defensive war once it became obvious that France would take part in any case. It is all very well to say the two could have faced each other, frontier to frontier. This is the very thing that was not possible, because Franco-Russian militarism so greatly outweighs what is called Prussian militarism.

However strongly we feel we belong to one group or another, we can surely resolve to look at these things squarely—I say ‘can’, not ‘must’. Then, when we work through this and make it a part of our lives, each in his own way will be able to do whatever he wants to do, in answer to the question: What can the individual do? Unless ever more and more people come to nurture the idea of making a united European stand against the belligerence of powers now at work invisibly, the collapse of European culture will indeed be inevitable. Even now a belligerent wave from the East is threatening to engulf us—from Japan, where a form of imperialism is in preparation which might turn out to be far mightier than any imperialism the world has so far known. The will to conquer is expressed in the cry of the new national anthem which, reminiscent of the English hymn, ‘Rule Britannia’, now resounds in ‘Rule Nippon’. To show you that the powers of Europe would have good reason not to mock the word ‘peace’, not to mock the content of the peace idea, let me read to you this hymn, now quoted in Japanese newspapers:

When Nippon, at the Lord's command,
Rose from the sea at dawn,
There sounded throughout all the world
A call from heaven's blue dome:
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule the world.
Torn by hate and blinding rage
Europe drowns in her own blood,
But you, devoid of blame or fault,
Shall be the guardian of the earth.
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule my world.

This is what is now booming across the world from the East. This is the Orient's answer to Europe, bathed in blood. Yet despite this, there are people in Europe who want to scorn the call for peace! This is a fact to which we cannot give too much thought.

Causes Of Infantile Paralysis

(Dr. Steiner asks if anyone has a question.)

Questioner: Dr. Steiner has spoken about epidemics and how they are to be fought. At the present time an epidemic has broken out—Infantile Paralysis—which attacks adults as well as children. Could Dr. Steiner say something about this?

Second Question: Is it harmful for people to keep plants in their bedrooms?

DR. STEINER: As for the question about plants in bedrooms, it is like this. In a general way it is quite correct that the plants give off oxygen which men then breathe in and that man himself breathes out carbonic acid gas. Thus man breathes out what the plant needs, and the plant what man needs. Now, if plants are kept in a room, the following must be remembered:

When one has plants in a room by day, things happen roughly as I have said; during the night the plant does indeed need rather more oxygen. During the night things are rather different. The plant does not need as much oxygen as man, but it needs oxygen. Thus in the darkness it makes demands on that which otherwise it gives to man. Naturally, man is not deprived altogether of oxygen, but he gets too little and that is harmful. Things balance themselves out in nature: every being has something that others need. So it is with plants, if one observes carefully. If the plants are put outside the bedroom when one sleeps, then there is no unhealthy effect. So much for this question.

* * *

Now as to Infantile Paralysis which just recently has become so prevalent in Switzerland too. It is still rather difficult to speak about this illness, since it has only assumed its present form quite recently, and one must wait till it has taken on more definite symptoms. Still, from the picture one can form at present—we have had a serious case of Infantile Paralysis in the Stuttgart Clinic and one can only judge by the cases which have occurred so far—one can say now that Infantile Paralysis, like its origin, Influenza, which leads to so many other diseases, is an extraordinarily complicated thing and can only be fought if one deals with the whole body. Just recently there has been discussion in medical circles as to how Infantile Paralysis should be treated. There is great interest in this now, because every week there are fresh cases of the disease. It is called Infantile Paralysis because it is mostly children who are attacked. Yet just recently there was a case of a young doctor who certainly is no longer a child, who was, I believe, perfectly healthy on Saturday, on Sunday was taken with Infantile Paralysis and was dead on Monday. This Infantile Paralysis strikes sometimes in an extraordinarily sudden way and we may well be anxious lest it grow into a very serious epidemic.

Now Infantile Paralysis is certainly connected, like Influenza itself, with the serious conditions of our time. Since we in our Biological Institute in Stuttgart succeeded in proving the effects of the minutest quantities of substance, one must speak about these things, even in public, in a quite different way than formerly. We have in Stuttgart simply shown that when one has any substance, dissolves it, dilutes it greatly, one has a tiny amount in a glass of water. One obtains, say, a 1 per cent solution. A drop of this is taken, diluted to a hundredth of its strength. It is now one ten-thousandth of its original strength. Again diluting this to one-hundredth of its strength, we have a solution one-millionth of the original strength. In Stuttgart we have succeeded in obtaining dilutions of one in a million, one in a billion—that is, with twelve zeros. You can imagine that there is now no more than a trace of the original substance left, and that it is a question, not of how much of the original substance is left, but of how the solution works: for it works quite differently from the original. These dilutions were made in Stuttgart and they are not so easily imitated. (Perhaps the German Exchange can do it, but nobody else!) This has been done with all sorts of substances. We then took a kind of flower pot, and poured into it in succession the various dilutions. First, ordinary water, then the 1 per cent dilution, then the .1 per cent, the .01 per cent and so on, up to one part in a trillion. Then we put a wheat seed in. This grows, and it grows better in the diluted liquid than in the non-diluted! And the higher the dilution the quicker the growth: one, two, three four, five dilutions—up to twelve. At the twelfth, the growth becomes slower again, then increases again, then decreases again. In this way one finds the effects of minute quantities of substances. It is very remarkable. The effect is rhythmic! If one dilutes, one comes to a certain dilution where the growth is greatest, then it gets less, then again greater—rhythmically. One sees, when the plant grows out of the ground, something works on it together with its substances, something which works rhythmically in its surroundings. The soil environment works into it. That is clearly to be seen.

Now when we are clear that very minute quantities of substance have an effect, we shall have no hesitation in recognising that in such times as the present, when so many men take incorrect nourishment and then rot as corpses in the ground, this works differently. Of course, for the earth as a whole, the effect is very diluted, but still it is different from what happens when men live healthily. And here again, the food which grows out of the earth is a factor.

Naturally, people with grossly materialistic scientific views do not understand this, because they say: What importance can the human corpse have for the whole earth? This effect is very diluted, naturally, but it works.

It will be well if we speak about the whole plant. The health of men is completely dependent on the growth of plants and therefore we must know what really is involved.

I have been greatly occupied with this point in connection with Infantile Paralysis, and it has turned out that one must really concern oneself with the whole man. Indications have appeared for all sorts of remedies for Infantile Paralysis. The subject is of great importance, since Infantile Paralysis may play a very grievous role in the future. It is naturally a question which occupies one greatly, and I have in fact given it a great deal of attention. There will probably have to be found a treatment made up of soda baths, iron arsenite (Fe As₂ O₃) and of yet another substance which will be obtained from the cerebellum, from the back part of the brain of animals. It will have to be a very complicated remedy. You see, the disease of Infantile Paralysis arises from very complicated and obscure causes and so requires a complicated remedy. These things have become of urgent importance to-day, and it is well that you should understand the whole question of the growth of plants.

The plant grows out of the ground—I will represent it to-day with reference to the question which has been put. (Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard.) The root grows out of the seed. Let us first take a tree; we can then pass to the ordinary plants. We take a tree: the stem grows up. This growth is very remarkable. This stem which grows there, is really only formed because it lets sap mount from the earth, and this sap in mounting carries up with it all kinds of salts and particles of earth; and so the stem becomes hard. When you look at the wood from the stem of a tree, you have a mounting sap, and this sap carries with it fine particles of earth, and all sorts of salts too, for instance, carbonate of soda, iron, etc., into the plants and this makes hard wood. The essential thing is that the sap mounts.

What happens, in reality? The earthy, the solid, becomes fluid! And we have an earthy-fluid substance mounting there. Then the fluid evaporates and the solid remains behind: that is the wood.

You see, this sap which mounts up in the tree—let us call it wood-sap—is not created there but is already contained everywhere in the earth, so that the earth in this respect is really a great living Being. This sap which mounts in the tree, is really present in the whole earth: only in the earth it is something special. It becomes in the tree what we see there. In the earth it is in fact the sap which actually gives it life. For the earth is really a living Being; and that which mounts in the tree is in the whole earth and through it the earth lives. In the tree it loses its life-giving quality; it becomes merely a chemical; it has only chemical qualities.

So when you look at a tree, you must say to yourself: the earthy-fluidic in the tree—that has become chemical; underneath in the earth it was still alive. So the wood-sap has partly died, as it mounted up in the tree. Were this all, never would a plant come into existence, but only stumps, dying at the top, in which chemical processes are at work. But the stem, formed from this sap, rises into the air, and the air always contains moisture. It comes into the moist air, it comes with the sap which has created it, from the earthy-fluidic into the fluidic-airy and life springs up in it anew so that around it green leaves appear and finally flowers. ... Again there is life. You see, in the foliage, in the leaf, in the bud, in the blossom, there is once more the sap of life; the wood-sap is dead life-sap. In the stem, life is always dying; in the leaf it is always being resurrected. So that we must say: We have wood-sap, which mounts; then we have life-sap. And what does this do! It travels all round and brings forth the leaves everywhere: so that you can see the spirals in which the leaves are arranged. The living sap really circles round. It arises from the fluid-airy element into which the plant comes when it has grown out of the earthy-fluidic element.

The stem, the woody stem, is dead and only that which sprouts forth around the plant is alive. This you can easily prove in the following very simple way. Go to a tree: you have the stem, then the bark, and in the bark the leaves grow. Now cut the bark away at that point; the leaves come away too. At this point leave the leaves with the bark. The result is that there the tree remains fresh and living, and here it begins to die. The wood alone with its sap cannot keep the tree alive; what comes with the leaves must come from outside and that again contains life. We see in this way that the earth can certainly put forth the tree, but she would have to let it die if it did not get life from the damp air: for in the tree the sap is only a chemical, no giver of life. The living sap that circulates, that gives it life. And one can really say: When the sap rises in the spring, the tree is created anew; when the living sap again circulates in the spring, every year the tree's life is renewed. The earth produces the sap from the earthy-fluidic; the fluidic-airy produces the living sap.

But that is not all. While this is happening, between the bark, still full of living sap, and the woody stem, there is formed a new layer. Now I cannot say that a sap is formed. I have already spoken of wood-sap, living sap, but I cannot again say that a sap is formed: for what is formed is quite solid: it is called cambium. It is formed between the bark which still belongs to the leaves, and the wood. When I cut here (see sketch) no cambium is formed. But the plant needs cambium too, in a certain way. You see, the wood sap is formed in the earthy-fluidic, the life sap in the fluidic-airy, and the cambium in the warm air, in the warm damp, or the airy-warmth. The plant develops warmth while it takes up life from outside. This warmth goes inward and develops the cambium inside. Or if the cambium does not yet develop—the plant needs cambium and you will shortly hear why—before the cambium forms, there is first of all developed a thicker substance: the plant gum. Plants form this plant gum in their inner warmth, and this, under certain conditions, is a powerful means of healing. Thus the sap carries the plant upwards, the leaves give the plant life, then the leaves by their warmth produce the gum which reacts on the warmth. And in old plants, this gum, running down to the ground, has become transparent. When the earth was less dense and damper, the gum became transparent and turned to Amber. You see, then, when you take up a piece of Amber, what from prehistoric plants ran down to the ground as resin and pitch. This the plant gives back to the earth: Pitch, Resin, Amber. And if the plant retains it, it becomes cambium. Through the sap the plant is connected with the earth; the life-sap brings the plant into connection with what circulates round the earth—with the airy-moist circumference of the earth. But the cambium brings the plant into connection with the stars, with what is above, and in such a way that within this cambium the form of the next plant develops. [See: Man as Symphony of the Creative Word, Twelve lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach, 19th October to 11th November, 1923, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company.] This passes over to the seeds and in this way the next plant is born, so that the stars indirectly through the cambium create the next plant! So that the plant is not merely created from the seed—that is to say, naturally it is created from the seed, but the seed must first be worked on by the cambium, that is: by the whole heavens.

It is really wonderful—a seed, a humble, modest little seed could only come into existence because the cambium—now not in liquid but in solid form—imitates the whole plant; and this form which arises there in the cambium—a new plant form—this carries the power to the seed to develop through the forces of the earth into a new plant.

Through mere speculation, when one simply puts the seed under a microscope, nothing is gained. We must be clear what parts the sap, the life sap, the cambium, play in the whole matter. The wood sap is a relatively thin sap: it is peculiarly fitted to allow chemical changes to take place in it. The life sap is certainly much thicker, it separates off its gum. If you make the gum rather thick, you can make wonderful figures with it. Thus the life sap, more pliable than the wood sap, clings more to the plant-form. And then it gives this up entirely to the cambium. That is still thicker, indeed quite sticky, but still fluid enough to take the forms which are given it by the stars.

So it is with trees, and so, too, with the ordinary plants. When the rootlet is in the earth, the sprout shoots upward. But it does not separate off the solid matter, does not make wood; it remains like a cabbage stalk. The leaves come out directly on the circumference, in spirals, the cambium is formed directly in the interior, and the cambium takes everything back to the earth with it. So that in the annual plants the whole process occurs much more quickly. In the tree, only the hard parts are separated out, and not everything is destroyed.

The same process occurs in ordinary plants too, but is not carried so far as in trees. In the tree it is a fairly complicated matter. When you look at the tree from above, you have first the pith inside: this gives the direction. Then layers of wood form round the pith. Towards the autumn the gum appears from the other side, and fastens the layers together. So we have the gummy wood of one year. In the next year this is repeated. Wood forms somewhere else, is again gummed together in the autumn, and so the yearly rings are formed. So you see everything clearly if only you understand that there are three things: wood sap, life sap, and cambium. The wood sap is the most fluid, it is really a chemical; the life sap is the giver of life; it is really, if I may so express myself, a living thing. And as for the cambium, there the whole plant is sketched out from the stars. It is really so. The wood sap rises and dies, then life again arises; and now comes the influence of the stars, so that from the thick, sticky cambium the new plant is sketched out. In the cambium one has a sketch, a sculptural activity. The stars model in it from the whole universe the complete plant form. So you see, we come from Life into the Spirit. What is modelled there is modelled from out of the World-Spirit. The earth first gives up her life to the plant, the plant dies, the air environment along with its light once more gives it life, and the World Spirit implants the new plant form. This is preserved in the seed and grows again in the same way. So that one sees in the growing plant how the plant world rises out of the earth, through death, to the living Spirit.

Now other investigations have been made in Stuttgart. These things are extraordinarily instructive. For instance, one can do the following, instead of merely investigating growth—which is very important, especially when one is dealing with the higher potencies, say of one in a trillion—one can do the following. We take metals or metallic compounds highly diluted in the manner previously described, for example, a copper compound solution, and put it into a flowerpot with some earth in it: we put it in as a kind of manure. In another similar flowerpot we put only earth, the same earth without the manure. Now we take two plants, as similar as possible, put one in the pot with the copper manured earth, and the other in the pot without the copper manure. And the remarkable thing is: if the copper is highly diluted, the leaves develop wrinkles on the edges—the others get no wrinkles, if they are smooth and had previously none. One must take the same earth, because many specimens previously contain copper. One dilutes it with copper; the same kind of plants must be taken so that comparisons can be made.

Now we take a third plant, put it into a third pot with earth, but instead of copper, we add lead. The leaves do not wrinkle but they become hard at the top and wither when lead is added. You have now a remarkable sight. These experiments were made in Stuttgart, and you plainly see, when you look at the pots in turn, how the substances of the earth work on plants.

You will no longer be surprised when you see plants with wrinkled leaves somewhere. If you dig in the earth there, you will find traces of copper. Or if you have leaves which are dry and withered at the edge, and dig in the earth, you will find traces of lead. Look at a common plant, say mare's tail, with which people clean pots; it grows just where the ground contains silicon; hence the little thorns. In this way you can understand the form of plants from the nature of the ground.

Now you can see of what importance it is when quite tiny amounts of any substance are mixed in the earth. Naturally, there is a churchyard somewhere outside, but the earth is everywhere permeated with wood sap, and the tiny quantities penetrate everywhere into the ground. And having investigated how these tiny quantities work, of which I have told you, we say: That which disappeared into the earth, we eat it again in our food. It is so strong that it lives in the plant form. And what happens then? Imagine I had thus a plant form from a lead-containing soil. To-day it is said that lead does not arise in soil. But lead does arise in soil, if one puts decaying living matter in it. It simply does arise in soil. A plant grows out of it: one may say, a lead-plant. Well, this lead plant when we eat it, has a quite different effect from a lead-less plant. Actually, when we eat a lead plant, our cerebellum, which lies at the back of the head, becomes drier than usual. It becomes drier.

Now you have the connection between the earth and the cerebellum. There are plants which simply through the constitution of the earth, through what men put into the earth and what then spreads everywhere, can dry up the cerebellum. As soon as our cerebellum is not in full working order, we become clumsy. When something happens to the cerebellum we become awkward and cannot properly control our feet and arms; and when the effect is much stronger, we become paralysed.

Thus, you see, is the connection between the soil and paralysis. A man eats a plant. If it has something dying at the edge of the leaves, as I have described to you, his cerebellum will be dried up somewhat. In ordinary life this is not noticed, but the man cannot any longer rightly direct his movements. If the effect is much stronger, paralysis sets in. When this drying up of the cerebellum happens in the head, so that man cannot control his muscles, at first this affects all those muscles which are dependent on a little gland in the head, the so-called pineal gland. If that happens, a man gets influenza. If the evil goes further, influenza changes to a complete paralysis. So that in every paralysis there is something that is inwardly connected with the soil. And so you see knowledge must be brought together from many sides if one is to do anything useful for men. It is useless to make a lot of statements—one must do so and so! For if one does not know how a man has taken into his organism something dying, one may have ever such good apparatus and the man will not recover. For everything that works in the plant and passes over from the plant to the man, is of great importance.

Wood sap develops in man as the ordinary colourless mucus. Wood sap in plants is, in man, mucus. The life sap of the plant which circulates from the leaves, corresponds to the human blood. And the cambium of the plant corresponds to the milk and the chyle in the human being. When a woman begins to nurse, certain glands in the breast cause a greater flow of milk. Here you have again something in human beings which is most strongly influenced by the stars, namely, milk. Milk is absolutely necessary for the development of the brain—the brain, one might almost say, is solidified milk. Decaying leaves create no proper cambium because they no longer have the power to work back into the proper warmth. They let the warmth escape outwards from the dying edges instead of sending it inwards. We eat these plants with an improperly developed cambium: they do not develop a proper milk; the women do not produce proper milk; the children get milk on which the stars cannot work strongly, and therefore they cannot develop properly.

Hence this Infantile Paralysis appears specially among children—but adults can also suffer from it, because men are all their lives influenced by the stars.

In these things Science and Medicine must work together: they must everywhere work together. But one should not isolate oneself in a single science. To-day there are men who specialise in animals—the zoologists; in men—the anthropologists; or in parts of men, with sick senses, or sick livers, or sick hearts—specialists of the inner organs. Then again there are the botanists, who study only plants; and the mineralogists, who study only stones; and the geologists who study the whole earth. Certainly this is very convenient. One has less to learn when one is merely a geologist or when one has only to learn about stones. Yes, but such knowledge is useless when one wants to do something for a man. When he is ill, one must understand the whole of Nature. It is useless merely to understand geology or botany or chemistry. One must understand chemistry and be able to follow its working right into the sap. It is really so. Students have a saying—there are in universities, as you perhaps know, both ordinary and extraordinary professors—and the students have a saying: the ordinary professors know nothing extraordinary, and the extraordinary professors know nothing ordinary! But one can go still further to-day. The geologist knows nothing of plants or animals or men; the anthropologist knows nothing of animals, or plants, or the earth. Neither knows really how the things upon which he works are connected. Just as man has specialised in work, he has specialised in knowledge. And that is much more dangerous. It is shocking when there are only geologists, botanists, etc., so that all knowledge is split up. This has been for men's convenience. People say to-day: a man can't know everything. Well, if one doesn't wish to take in all knowledge, one can despair of any really useful knowledge.

We live at a time when things have assumed a frightful aspect. It is as if a man who has to do with clocks wants to learn only how to file metals, another how to weld them. And there would be another, who knows how to put the clock together, but doesn't know how to work the single metals. Now one can get a certain distance in this way with machinery, although at the same time a certain amount of compulsion is necessary. But in Medicine nothing can be achieved if one does not take into account all branches of knowledge, even the knowledge of the earth. For in the tree trunk lives something which is carried up from the earth (which is the subject of geology) to the sap. There it dies. One must also know meteorology, the science of air, because from the surrounding air something is brought to the leaves which calls forth life in them again. And one must also know astrology, the science of the stars, if one wishes to understand the formation of cambium. And one must also know what enters with the cambium in the food. ... So that when one eats unsound cambium as a child, one gets an unsound brain. In this way diseases are caused by what is in the earth. This is what can be said about the causes of such apparently inexplicable diseases: the causes are in the soil.

In these talks I have repeatedly pointed to the fact that the theosophical world view does not lead the human beings away from the work in the sensuous field that it does not lead to fantastic, illusory fields as the adversaries of this world view suggest so often. I have rejected this repeatedly. Today I have to emphasise this in particular before we enter the world which the human being transmigrates between death and a new birth. For the adversaries of the theosophical world view are inclined only too easily to explain everything that I describe in this field as something imaginary, as something completely fantastic. Nevertheless, someone who is able to look deeper in the nature of things recognises these super-sensible worlds that are beyond the sensuous world as the real nature of all beings. As well as nobody is able to construct a vapour machine unless he knows the being of vapour, nobody is able to understand and to explain what takes place before our sense-organs unless he knows the being of the psychic and spiritual. The causes of the physical are in the super-sensible, in the supra-physical. As true it is that we climb up to the higher fields, it is true that we try to understand this super-sensible being only to be able to work here in this world. We have to know the nature of the super-sensible to bring it into the sensuous world. That is why this must be emphasised because we enter fields that escape completely from the sensory eye. To the sensory observation the human being is dead at the moment when the psycho-spiritual has separated from the physical. No eye and no ear can give information of the human destiny in that time when the human being progresses to a new embodiment after death.

We want to consider this destiny between death and rebirth. For this purpose we want to become engrossed in two fields of our existence which belong to our life which belong also to our life like the sun and the moon and like all things which are on our earth. The human being only equipped with the physical senses knows nothing about these higher worlds. He lives in them; however, living in a world and knowing about it are two completely different matters. The German philosopher Lotze (Hermann L., 1817–1881, German philosopher) and also the poet and philosopher Hamerling (Robert K., 1830–1889, Austrian poet) expressed very well again and again that if the human being were without eyes and ears the whole world around us would be dark and silent. Only because we have these sense-organs the world gleams in colours and sounds. We must say of this world that we only know as much of it as it is accessible to us by our sense-organs.

Just an interesting book has appeared which tells of the soul-life of a lady—Helen Keller (1880–1968, American author, The Story of My Life, (1903)—who became deaf-mute and blind at the age of one and a half years and has still developed a wide-ranging and virtually ingenious soul-life. Imagine clearly once how the world, which gleams and sounds to the other human beings, must appear to such a human being, and we imagine how to a blind-born whose eyes are operated the world, which had no colours before and was without light, gleams and is enriched with new qualities; then we have an idea of the human being who awakes from the sensory view, who comes from the darkness to light like after an operation. About the everyday world lies a soul-world which is real for that whose spiritual eyes are opened. Theosophy also calls this soul-world the astral world. One has argued a lot against the term astral world because one believed to find a medieval prejudice. But not without reason this world has been called astral by those who are able to behold in the soul-world. For just as colours and sounds appear to the physical senses, all those facts appear as true realities in this astral world which we subsume with the terms: desires, instincts, passions, impulses, wishes and feelings.

Just as the human being digests as he sees and hears, he wishes, has passions and feelings. He lives in the world of passions, impulses, desires, feelings and wishes, as well as he lives in the physical world. And like the physical eye if it faces another human being sees his physical qualities, the opened spiritual eye sees what we subsume as soul qualities. Just as the physical senses can distinguish electricity from light or light from heat, the opened soul-eye can make a distinction between an impulse, a desire, which exist in the soul of the fellow man, and the feeling of love, devotion, and piety. As heat and light are different, love and piety are different in the soul-world. Because these qualities gleam to the opened soul-eye like colour phenomena, which are full of sounds like the astral, they were called astral.

Here I have to insert some occult ideas. We understand them as those ideas which refer to the super-sensible which can only be obtained by such whose spiritual and psychic senses are opened. Nothing is absolutely hidden. Wishes, desires and passion are hidden only for that whose soul-organs are not opened. We can recognise with our soul-organs which qualities of the soul-world the human being has in him. As he faces us with a particular countenance, every human being faces us with a particular countenance of his soul. As he has a physical body, he also has a body gleaming in the soul-light which is bigger than his physical body in which he is wrapped up like in a light cloud which gleams in the most different colours.

I mention both intentionally, because both exist. One sees some of the qualities that refer to thoughts and ideas shining, other only gleaming. One calls this light cloud that is invisible for the usual eye however, visible to the seer the human aura. It contains everything that I have called soul qualities. We can make a distinction just between those qualities which the soul has because it inclines towards the sensuous because it clings to the sensuous, to the desires which come into being because the human being desires the sensuous and those which concern unselfish devotion, feelings of love or piety. If the aura is irradiated with feelings that come from the lower instincts that are connected with the material life, various figures, lightning-shaped or other figures of blood-red or reddish-orange or reddish-yellow colours flow through the soul, while everything that is connected with nobler feelings, with nobler passions, like with enthusiasm, with devoutness, with love, appears in the human aura in marvellous greenish, greenish-blue, blue-violet and violet-reddish colours.

Thus the human being has his soul on one side pointing to the material, longing for the material, clinging to it, and on the other side this soul is equipped with the opposite pole with which it rises to the noble and is glowed through and flowed through with the noble again and again. Between these both qualities the soul-life is split. Those who live in the green, blue, violet colours go through many reincarnations to acquire these nobler qualities to themselves. The soul is equipped with the lower qualities at first, with impulses, desires, passions, instincts. It must have these, for the soul would not have what we call the desire for the sensuous in the occult philosophy, the soul would not get round to acting in the sensuous world. The fact that the human being is active in the sensuous world that he acquires property, forms tools with the materials of the sensuous world for his life results from the human desires for the sensuous life. This desire is the only driving force for the still undeveloped soul in the times in which it goes through its first reincarnations.

The youthful soul is induced to act only that way. If the soul walks then through the reincarnations, it brings itself to work more and more not only out of the desires, but out of knowledge, out of devotion and love. Thus the soul progresses on its pilgrimage through the world from desire to love. This is the way of the soul: from desire to love. The desiring soul sticks to the physical-sensuous. However, the loving one can be penetrated by the spirit, obeys the spirit, and fulfils the commandment of the spirit. This is the difference of the age of the souls. The young souls are the longing ones, the ripe souls are those which love, which make the spirit work in them. In the soul-world or in the astral world we see this soul body of the human being gleaming in its different qualities, and we can thereby distinguish the degree of maturity of a human soul. All qualities which we can observe in this soul body come from the devotion to the sensuous or from the devotion to the spiritual.

Now we also understand what death means, actually. We want to try to understand the concept, the idea of death once with this idea just won. What happens at first when the human being dies? That which has followed not only the physical principles in his physical body up to now, but what has also complied with the soul principles: the hand which has moved in accordance with the feelings which have surged through the soul, the look which has looked out into the world because it has been carried by the spiritual qualities in the soul, the countenance which has changed its expression depending on the soul , everything that has obeyed the soul in life goes its own ways after the death of the body.

The human body, in so far as it is a connection of physical and chemical forces, does no longer follow the impulses of the soul but the physical forces of the world which has now completely claimed it for itself. It belongs to the external physical world from now on, and nobody who has only occupied himself with those who have ignored this can decide about the fact that the psycho-spiritual, which has controlled the body, has disappeared, because now the psycho-spiritual is merely accessible to the open eye of a clairvoyant person. We will hear in the last hours, which deal with the theosophical basic concepts, how the human being already gets opened his eye for the higher life in this life and becomes aware of that which I have told. But you see from the start that the post-mortal destiny of the spirit can only be understood from the point of view of the super-sensible. Somebody who occupies himself only with natural sciences does not have a vocation to recognise anything of the spiritual. The human being was equipped with physiological-chemical forces. He does no longer control them after death; then his “body” is only a soul body.

What had lived in him as wishes, desires, passions, love, enthusiasm and piety was not engaged in the physical-chemical principles, and it has drawn them rather in its influence. The soul is there after death as it was there before, only not intermingled with the physical body. If the human being consists of mind, soul and body during his physical life, as we have seen, he consists of mind and soul after death. And as the human life takes place in the physical world, it also takes place in the higher world, in the soul-world or in the spiritual world. These are the places of residence which the human being has to go through, the soul-land and the spirit-land.

Let us look at these closer. One can look at them, the astral world or mental world, as at our physical world. As there are the most manifold natural forces in our physical world, like heat, electricity, magnetism, there also are the most manifold forces. These can be divided into particular groups which we must get to know because we can thereby gain an insight of the destinies of the soul after death only. There we have the lowest class of soul qualities, the real world of desires which the occultist calls the region of desires. It is that world which is generated in our soul by its lowest propensities to the physical body. All those emotions of our soul express themselves in the world of desires which come from the desires of the soul for the physical. This is the lowest form of the soul life, the region of burning desires which one has called the burning fire of desires in mysticism.

Let us now look ahead at the nature of the consideration; this explains to you which difference exists between the life in the body and the life without body if you look at this soul quality which is connected with the burning desires. What is desire for the soul living in the body? The soul desires a physical object, a physical satisfaction. The colour of the burning desire, which streams out of the soul as electric current streams out of a point of a needle, changes only if the desire is satisfied.

The current changes immediately if the desire is satisfied. Then the fire stops burning. This is a significant moment for the soul researcher if a desire finds its satisfaction. It looks for the soul observer as if a fire is extinguished with water. The fact that this fire can be extinguished with giving satisfaction results from the fact that the human being has a body. The sensual desire can be satisfied only sensually. There is the palate which desires something tasty. At the moment, however, when no palate is there, it is impossible to satisfy the desire. The soul clings to the feeling, to the sensuous world. The desire can be satisfied as long as the soul is connected with the body. At the moment when it is no longer connected with the body it cannot satisfy the desire, and that is why the soul suffers inexpressibly. This is one of the conditions which the soul has to go through in kamaloka. It has to get to know that condition which allows the desire to exist but shows the impossibility of satisfaction. Then the soul learns gradually to take off the desire. This is an idea which the human being has to attain if he wants to get a concept of that which happens between death and a new birth. We get to know the further processes only after we have cast a precise look at the soul-world and the spirit-land.

Before I describe the destinies between death and a new birth, I want to describe this group of soul qualities and processes exactly which we find in the super-sensible world. The desire was the first. The second is the psychic stimulus, that which is not directly a desire. However, what surrounds us if we speak of the human sensuousness is connected with the sensuous. It is the stimulus which expresses itself in nobler colours which signifies the joy of devotion to the immediate sensuousness. It provokes the sensations of colours and forms round us, of smells approaching us. We call this susceptibility to the sensuous, this weaving and living with the sensuous organs in the environment the force of the emotional stimulus.

Another region of the soul-life is the region of wishes. The wishes refer to the fact that the soul feels sympathy for that which lives in its environment, and, hence, turns its emotions to this object of the environment just in the form of a wish. It does no longer live only with the senses in the sensuous environment, but it fulfils itself with the feeling of love for this environment. However, it is still completely fulfilled with selfishness, with egoism. The theosophists call that soul love which is still fulfilled with egoism the real quality of the soul wishes, the region of wishes. With it we have got to know the third group of soul experience, the region of wishes.

The fourth group is that where the soul no longer tends to anything in the surroundings, but to that which lives in the own body; where the feeling tends to that which occurs in the own body as weal and woe, as pleasurable sensations and as reluctances. We call these internal waves of the feelings in the own existence, this self-desire, this desire for existence with every being the fourth group of soul forces. And the fifth group leads us from the region of desires to the region where the soul pours out in sympathy.

Everything that we have got to know up to now was connected with desire, with the fact that the soul has referred the matters to itself. Now we get to know the matters where the soul spreads out its being, where it sympathises with other beings of its surroundings. There are two types. First we deal with love of nature and then with the love for our fellow men. We call this fifth group of soul facts soul-light. Just as the sun gives off its physical light, the soul gives off its light if it sympathises with the world, if it wraps it, if it illuminates it with the light of its love. This appears to that person, who only has organs for the physical, as something illusory. However, it is much more real for somebody who has spiritual eyes and ears than the table and the walls round us, much more real as the light of the physical flame.

The sixth group of soul facts is that which the occultist calls the real soul-force, what fulfils the soul with enthusiasm for its task in the world, the affectionate devotion to the duty which shines in marvellous violet and blue-violet colours. This forms the spiritual light which gets the driving forces and impulses for the human activity from the soul. This is developed in particular with philanthropical human beings. These feelings accompany the big devoted actions of the human soul in the physical world. These are the experiences of the sixth group.

The experiences of the seventh and highest group are the forces of the most real spiritual life. It is there where the soul no longer refers to the only sensuous with its emotions, but where it makes the light of the spirit shine in itself where the soul addresses itself to higher tasks than it can get in the sensory world where its love goes out to that spiritual love, which Spinoza (Baruch S., 1630–1647, Jewish-Dutch philosopher) describes at the end of his famous Ethics where he speaks of the fact that the highest pours into the soul and that it reappears as God's light.

We have observed and pursued the aspects of the human soul from the selfish desire up to the spiritual all-love. These seven levels of spiritual facts meet someone everywhere in the world whose eye is opened. The world shines not only in colours and sounds not only in acoustic phenomena, but shines also in the world of wishes, desires and passions, shines also in the world of love effects. All that is reality. And if the soul is taken away from this scene, it is on another scene which differs from the external sensory scene in this respect that this external sensory scene only offers what eyes and ears and the other senses can perceive at first. The sensuous just covers the soul because the soul expresses itself in the sensuous. Thus the soul comes to the fore only by the sensuous. The soul hears by the sounds of the language, feels by touching et etcetera.

The spiritual eye sees beyond that, it sees the sheer nature, the nakedness of the soul facts. If the soul is taken away from the scene of the senses, it lives in the soul-world. These are the experiences of the soul in the soul-world which it goes through immediately after death. There it lives in a world free of all physical and chemical forces, in a world of suffering, of desires and impulses. At first it has to develop everything that can be developed there. Uncovered, that is without physical cover, it is given to that which flows to it and through it. It purifies itself gradually by these qualities flowing through it, while it gets to know the desires without being able to satisfy them. There the soul learns to live without the physical body. There it learns to be a self without physical desire and without physical pain, without physical feeling of well-being and without physical discontent. There it does no longer feel as a self at first.

The incarnated soul feels as a self because it is in the body. The soul in the body says to its body “I”. However, if it wants to say “I” after death, it gets to know the feeling of the body without being able to live it. If it stopped this, it learns to regard itself as a soul. The human being learns to regard itself as a soul in the fourth region, and the more often the human being has gone through this region, the longer his pilgrimage has lasted, the stronger his sense of self is developed, the more he knows also when he is re-embodied to say “I” not only to his body, but also to his soul, the more he feels as a soul-being. This is the difference between a human being, who has gone through many, and a human being, who has gone through few incarnations. The advanced human being feels as a soul-being.

Then the human being also gets to know this higher region which we have called soul-light, soul-force and the spirit soul. There the human being settles and works. One is used to calling these highest regions of the astral world the summer land in the theosophical literature. This is that region in which the soul moves on the spheres of sympathy, on the spheres where it learns to live in pure love for the environment and in pure love for the colours. Only if the human soul has gone through these different regions after death, his mind, his third part, the highest part of the human being, is enabled to leave behind everything astral that is filled with wishes, desires and passions and which still clings to the sensuous. And only what of the soul belongs to the spirit, what has developed spirit in the soul lives on, after the human being has cast off the tendency, the desire for the sensuous.

The soul now enters that region where it has to do nothing more with the forces which go downward. Because the spirit penetrates it completely, it enters the devachan, the real spirit-land. The spirit-land which the soul experiences takes up the longest time of the life after death. The time of purification in the kamaloka is relatively short. Afterwards, in the devachan, the soul acts out the experiences which it has obtained in the earthly, physical world freely and uncheckedly, so that it can work in love in this physical sensuous world. The spirit cannot come completely to expression in the physical-sensuous world. We acquire experiences between birth and death perpetually. But these are got hemmed like a plant is got hemmed in a rock crevice. In the spirit-land the soul strengthens and invigorates itself. The next lecture deals with this stay of the soul in the spirit-land.

It shows which destiny the soul has to go through in the time longest by far between death and a new birth. The astral world still appears as something depressing destined to take off a lot. The spirit-land is a realm which one not needs to fear. Nothing connects the spirit flowing through a soul with that which tends to the only sensuous-material. We will have to describe the destiny which the human being experiences there and which should reveal the true nature of the human being to us on account of the experiences in the devachan. Let me only mention one matter. It could seem easily that the single regions of the astral world lie on top of each other like single layers. This is not the case. They are to be understood more like different states of consciousness. Not the place changes in which the human being is, but the state of consciousness changes. The soul land, the spirit-land is everywhere around us. Everywhere a soul-world and a spiritual world is around us, which like colour and light light up if the soul becomes able to use the spiritual eyes, the spiritual ears. This makes the whole physical world disappear to the soul. Just as you could see a veil and if the veil sinks you can see behind the veil, the soul experiences what takes place in the world of desires if it removes the veil of the sensory touching, seeing, and hearing. Then another world comes to the fore round it, a world which was there also round it before, but was not experienced, which is experienced now. It is another state of experience which the soul undergoes. It is a metamorphosis of the human life not a change of place or region. The human being advances step by step on his pilgrimage of life.

This teaches us that we have to seek for the reasons of the sensuous. We want to look at the super-sensible in order to go back strengthened that way into the real world with the full consciousness that we are not only sensuous beings, but that we are beings with soul and mind. With this full consciousness we work in the world hard, full of courage and more confidently, as if we only thought that we are only sensuous beings. It is that which the theosophical world view brings immediately. It has to make the human being not more inefficient, but stronger, more courageous, more audacious. This is not the right theosophy which draws the human being off from life. We want to provide the knowledge of the super-sensible because in the super-sensible the origin and the nature of the sensuous are to be sought. All true recognisers and occultists have said this at all times, and this is also to be found in the inspired writings of nations of all times. And it sounds to us from our own mystics, particularly from the marvellous, artistically perfect literature of the East. We find there a passage in the Upanishads with which I would like to close this consideration today which speaks of the interrelation of the sensuous-limited and the super-sensible, the eternal. It shows how the sensuous-limited comes from the eternal, how the single spark comes from the flame. The flame remains a whole, something permanent, even if the sensuous spark dies away. The single sensuous phenomenon separates from the eternal and returns to the eternal again. The Upanishads say: “As well as the sparks issue a thousand and one times from the well burning flame and are of equal nature, the manifold beings issue form the imperishable and return to it again.”