The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear Friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have described how man must be regarded as composed of physical, etheric and astral bodies, and how we can acquire a deeper insight into this composition by exercising our cognitive powers—powers of mind, heart and will—in a certain way. This composition that we discern in man is also found in the external world. Only, we must be clear that there is a consider-able difference between what we find in the world outside and what we find in man.

When, to begin with, we study the physical world—and we can really only study its solid, ‘earthy’ manifestations—we come to distinguish various substances. I need not go into details. You know, of course, that the anatomist, investigating what remains of the living man after he has passed through the gate of death—the corpse—need not take account of any but earthly substances which he also finds outside man. At least, he believes he need not, and within certain limits his belief is justified. He investigates the elements or the salts, acids and other compounds found outside of man, and he investigates what the human organism contains. He does not find it necessary to enlarge his physical and chemical knowledge.

Indeed, the difference only becomes apparent when we study these things on a somewhat bigger scale, and notice what I have emphasised so strongly, namely: that the human organism as a whole cannot be maintained by external Nature, but is subject to destruction. Thus we can say that, in the solid, earthy, physical realm, we do not find, to begin with. very much difference between what is outside and what is inside man. We must recognise a greater difference however, in what is etheric.

I have drawn your attention to the way the etheric really looks down on us from the world beyond the earth. I pointed out that, from out of the etheric, everything, whether it be a large or small drop, is made spherical, and that this tendency to spherical formation, due to the complex of etheric forces, extends to the etheric body of man. We have really to fight continually to overcome this tendency in our etheric body.—Of course, all this takes place in the subconscious. In its present form the human etheric body is closely moulded to the physical body. It has not such sharp boundaries and is mobile in itself; nevertheless we can distinguish a head part, a trunk part and, indistinctly, limb parts where the etheric body becomes diffuse. Thus, when we move an arm the etheric body, which otherwise conforms to the human shape, only protrudes a little beyond the arm, whereas below it is widely extended. But it has from the cosmos the tendency to take on spherical form. The higher being of man—the astral man and the ego—must oppose this tendency and mould the spherical form to the human shape. So we may say: man, as an etheric being, lives in the general etheric world by building up his own form out of the etheric, whereas the formative tendency of the surrounding etheric is to give spherical form to what is fluid. In man what is fluid takes on human form, and this is due to his inner forces opposing the external, cosmic forces.

This opposition is still stronger in the astral man. As I indicated yesterday, the astral comes streaming in from the indefinite, so to speak. In the earthly realm outside man it streams in (arrows in green circle) in such a way that it develops the plant form out of the earth; and the plant form clearly shows this response to the astral. The plant has only an etheric body, but it is, indeed, the astral forces which draw the plant out of the earth. Now the human astral body is extraordinarily complicated and one really perceives it in the way I described yesterday, i.e. as an inner musical element, a whirling, weaving life, an inner activity and all one might describe as music inwardly sensed. But everything else that is astral is discovered streaming in centripetally; it is transformed into the human astral form, whereby complicated things appear.

Let us say, for example, that something astral is streaming in from this side. The human being moulds it to the most varied forms in order to make it serviceable and incorporate it. One might say, the human being wins his astral body by subduing the centripetal astral forces.

Now, when we turn our psycho-spiritually sharpened gaze to the cosmos, we do gain the conception of the etheric as described, but we also receive the impression that it is due to the etheric that we strive away from the earth. While we are held to the earth by gravity, we tend away from the earth because of the etheric. It is really the etheric that is active in this centrifugal tendency. In this connection you need only think of the following: The human brain weighs approximately 1,500 grammes. Now a mass with this weight, pressing on the delicate blood vessels at the base of the brain, would quite compress them. If our brain actually exerted its 1,500 grammes weight in the living man we could not have these blood-vessels. In the living man, however, the brain weighs twenty grammes at most. It is so much lighter because it floats in the cerebral fluid and loses in weight by the weight of fluid displaced. The brain really strives away from man; and in this tendency the etheric is active. Thus we may say that it is just in the brain that we can see most clearly how matters stand.

Here is the brain floating in its fluid, whereby its weight is reduced from 1,500 to about twenty grammes. This means that its activity shares, to a remarkably small degree, in our physical, bodily life. Here the etheric finds tremendous scope for acting upwards. The weight acts downwards but is reduced. In the cerebral fluid there is principally developed the sum of etheric forces that lifts us away from the earth. Indeed, if we had to carry our physical body with all its forces of weight, we would have a sack to drag about. Every blood corpuscle, however, swims and is reduced in weight.

This loss of weight in a fluid is an old piece of knowledge. You know, of course, that it has been ascribed to Archimedes. He was bathing one day and noticed, on lifting his leg out of the water, how much heavier it was than when in the water, and exclaimed: Eureka! I have found it. He had discovered that every body in a fluid loses in weight the weight of the fluid displaced. Thus, if you think of Archimedes in his bath, here his physical leg and here the same leg formed of water, then the physical leg is lighter in water by the amount that this water-leg weighs. It is lighter by just this amount. Likewise the weight of our brain in the cerebral fluid is reduced by the weight of a mass of cerebral fluid of the size of the physical brain. That is, it is reduced from 1,500 to 20 grammes. In physics this is called ‘upthrust’, and here the etheric acts. The astral, on the other hand, is stimulated—to begin with—by breathing, whereby the airy element enters the human organism and eventually reaches the head in an extremely attenuated state; in this distribution and organisation of the air the astral is active.

Thus we can really see in the solid earthy substance the physical; in the fluid, especially in the way it works in man, the etheric; in the airy, the astral.

It is the tragedy of materialism that it knows nothing of matter—how matter actually works in the several domains of life. The remarkable thing about materialism is just its ignorance of matter. It knows nothing at all about the way matter works, for one does not learn this until one is able to attend to the spiritual that is active in matter and is represented by the forces.

Now, when one progresses through meditation to the ‘imaginative’ knowledge of which I have already spoken, one finds the etheric at work in all the aqueous processes of the earth. In the face of real knowledge it is childish to believe that all that is at work here—in the sea, in the rivers, rising mists, falling drops and cloud formations—contains only what the physicist and chemist know about water. For in all that is out there in the mighty drop of the ‘water-earth’, in what constantly rises in the form of vapour, forms clouds and descends as mist, in all the other aqueous processes—water plays, indeed, an enormous part in shaping the face of the globe—in all this etheric currents are working. Here is weaving the ether revealed to one in ‘pictures’ when one has strengthened one's thinking in the way I have described. Everywhere behind this weaving water the cosmic ‘imagination’ is weaving, and the astral ‘music of the spheres’ plays everywhere into this cosmic imagination, coming—in a sense—from behind.

In man, however, all these conditions are found to be quite different from what they are outside him. If one looks, with vision sharpened in the way I have indicated, at what is outside man, one finds the world built up in the following way: To begin with, there is the physical, in direct contact with the earth; the etheric, which fills the whole cosmos; then the astral, which streams in as living beings. indeed, it is no merely general, abstract, astral weaving that we behold, but actual beings entering space, beings of a psycho-spiritual nature just as man, in his body, is also a psycho-spiritual being. This is what one beholds.

If we now look back to man, we find in him, too, an etheric body corresponding to the external etheric. But this etheric body is not perceived in such a way that you can say: there is the physical man, and here is his etheric body. Certainly, you can draw it so, but that would only be an arrested section. You never see merely the present etheric body; this section which you can draw is seen to be continuous with what has gone before. You always see the whole etheric body extending back to birth. Past and present form a whole. If you have a twenty-year-old person before you, you cannot see merely his twenty-year-old etheric body; you see all that has happened in his etheric body back to birth and a little beyond. Here time really becomes space. It is just as when you look down an avenue and see the trees drawing closer and closer together on account of perspective; you see the whole avenue in space. Likewise you look at the etheric body as it is at present but see its whole structure, which is a ‘time-structure’. The etheric body is a ‘time-organism’, the physical body a ‘space-organism’. The physical body is, of course, self-contained at any given moment; the etheric body is always there as a totality which comprises our life up to the given moment. This is a unity. Hence you could only draw or paint the etheric body if you could paint moving pictures; but you would have to be quicker than the pictures. The momentary configuration that you draw or paint is only a section and is related to the whole etheric body as the section of a tree-stem to the whole tree. When you draw a diagram of the etheric body, it is only a section, for the whole etheric body is a ‘time-process’. Indeed, on surveying this time-process one is led beyond birth, even beyond conception, to the point where one sees the human being descend from his pre-earthly life to his present life on earth, and, just before he was conceived by his parents, draw together etheric substance from the general cosmic ether to build his etheric body.

Thus you cannot speak of the etheric body without surveying man's life in time back to birth and beyond. What one regards as the etheric body at some definite moment is only an abstraction; the concrete reality is the time-process.

It is different again with the astral body. This is apprehended in the way I described yesterday. I can only draw it diagramatically, and in the diagram space must become time for you. Let us assume we are observing the astral body of a person on the 2nd February 1924. Let this be the person.¹ He does indeed make this impression upon us: Here is the physical body, here his etheric body. We can also observe his astral body and this makes upon us the impression I described in my book Theosophy. It is so. But when one comes to the really ‘inspired’ knowledge which appears before empty consciousness—I described such knowledge yesterday—one attains the following insight. One says to oneself: What I am observing as the astral body of this person is not really present today, i.e. on the 2nd February 1924. If the person is twenty years of age, you must go backwards in time—let us say, to January 1904. You perceive that this astral body is really back there, and extends still further back into the unlimited. It has remained there and has not accompanied him through life. Here we have only a kind of appearance—a beam. It is like looking down an avenue; there, in the distance, are the last trees, very close together. Behind them is a source of light. You can have the radiance of the light here, but the source is behind—it need not move forward that its light may shine here.

So, too, the astral body has remained behind, and only throws its beam into life. It has really remained in the spiritual world and has not come with us into the physical. In respect to our astral body we always remain before conception and birth, in the spiritual world. If we are twenty years old in 1924, it is as if we were still living spiritually before the year 1904 and, in respect to our astral body, had only stretched forth a feeler.

That, you will say, is a difficult conception. Well, so it is. But you know there was once a Spanish king who was shown how complicated the structure of the universe is. He thought he would have made it simpler. A man may think like this, but, as a matter of fact, the world is not simple, and we must exert ourselves somewhat to grasp what man is.

To look intently at the astral body is to look directly into the spiritual world. (Only in the world external to man have you around you what is astral.) When you look at human beings spiritually, you look into the spiritual world in respect to their astral bodies. You perceive directly what a man has undergone in the spiritual world before he descended to earth.

But, you will say, my astral body is active within me. Of course it is; that is self-understood. But imagine some being or other were here, and by means of cords mechanically connected, were to produce some effect at a considerable distance away. It is like that with respect to time. Your astral body has remained behind, but its activities extend through the whole of your life. Thus the activity that you notice in your astral body today has its origin in a time long past, when you were in the spiritual world before descending to earth. That time is still active—in other words, it is still there, as far as the spiritual is concerned. Anyone who believes that the past is no longer ‘present’ in the real time-process resembles a man in a railway train to whom one might say: That was a beautiful district through which we have just passed, and who would reply: Yes, a beautiful district. But it has vanished; it is no longer there. Such a man would believe that the district through which he had passed in an express train had disappeared. It is just as stupid to believe that the past is no longer there. As a matter of fact it is always there, working into man. The 3rd of January 1904, is still there in its spiritual constitution, just as what is spatial remains after you have travelled through it. It is there, influencing the present.

Thus, if you describe the astral body as I have done in my Theosophy, you must realise, in order to complete your insight, that what is active here is the ‘radiance’ of something far back in time. The human being is really like a comet stretching its tail far back into the past. It is not possible to obtain true insight into man's being unless we acquire these new concepts.

People who believe one can enter the spiritual world with the same concepts one has for the physical world should become spiritualists, not anthroposophists. Spiritualists endeavour to conjure the spiritual—only somewhat thinner than ordinary matter—into the ordinary space in which physical men walk about. But it is nothing spiritual—only fine exudations. Even the phantoms described by Schrenck-Notzing are only fine, physical exudations which retain in their shape traces of the etheric. They are mere phantoms, not something really spiritual.

If you study the world and man in the way I have described you will realise the presence of the higher worlds in external Nature. In the case of man, a study of the successive worlds will lead you at once to the ‘time-process’ within him. In his case, however, you can go further still and reach a domain which our philistine materialistic age will not recognise as accessible to knowledge.

I have referred to perception, by the senses, of the coarse, tangible physical objects around us as the first stage of cognition.

The second stage was that of ‘strengthened thinking’ in which we apprehend the living, moving images of the world. The third kind of cognition was ‘inspiration’ in which we perceive the beings that express themselves through these images—hear a kind of music of the spheres that sounds from beyond. In the case of man we are led, not merely out of the material world, but out of the present into his pre-earthly life—into his existence as a psycho-spiritual being before descending to earth. This ‘inspired’ knowledge is attained by emptying our consciousness after strengthened thinking.

The further stage in cognition is attained by making the power of love a cognitive force. Only, it must not be the shallow love of which alone, as a rule, our materialistic age speaks. It must he the love by which you can identify yourself with another being—a being with whom, in the physical world, you are not identical. You must really be able to feel what is passing in the other being just as you feel what is passing in yourself; you must be able to go out of yourself and live again in another. In ordinary human life such love does not attain the intensity necessary to make it a cognitive force. One must first have attained ‘empty consciousness’, and have had some experience with it. And then we undergo what many who are striving for higher knowledge do not seek: we suffer what may be called the pain of knowledge.

If you have a wound somewhere, it hurts you. Why? Because, owing to the wound, your spiritual being cannot permeate your physical body properly at the place concerned. All pain comes from not being able, from one cause or another, to permeate the physical body. And when something external hurts you, this is also because you are unable to ‘unite’ yourself with it—to accept it. Now, when one has attained the empty consciousness into which there flows an altogether different world from that to which one is accustomed, then, for such moments of inspired cognition, one is without one's whole physical man; this is then one large wound and hurts all over. One must first undergo this experience; one must endure the leaving of the physical body as actual pain and suffering in order to attain inspired knowledge. Of course, an understanding of such knowledge can be acquired without pain, and people should acquire this understanding apart from suffering the pain of initiation. But to acquire an immediate, spiritual perception—not a mere understanding—of what works into man from his life before birth, that is, of what he leaves behind in the spiritual world, one must cross the abyss of universal suffering and pain.

We can then experience the above identification with, and coming to life in, another being. Only then do we learn the highest degree of love which consists not in ‘forgetting oneself’ in a theoretical sense, but in being able to ignore oneself completely and enter into what is not oneself. And only when this love goes hand in hand with that higher—inspired—cognition are we really able to enter the spiritual with all the warmth of our nature, with all our inwardness of heart and mind; that is, with our soul forces. We must do this if we are to progress in knowledge. Love must become a cognitive force in this sense. When such love has attained a certain height and intensity, you pass through your pre-earthly life to your last life on earth; you slip over, through all you have undergone between your last death and your present life, into your former life on earth—into what we call previous incarnations.

Now, it was, of course, also in a physical body that you then trod the earth. But nothing remains of all that made up that physical body; it has been absorbed into the elements. Your innermost being of that time has become entirely spiritual and lives in you as spirit alone.

In truth, our ego, in passing through the gate of death and the spiritual world to a new life on earth, becomes wholly spiritual. It cannot be grasped with the ordinary powers of every-day consciousness; we must intensify the power of love in the way I have described. The man we were in a previous life is just as much outside us as another human being of today. Our ego has the same degree of externality. Of course, we then come to possess it—to experience it as ourself—but we must first learn to love without any trace of egotism. It would be a terrible thing indeed, if we were to become enamoured—in the ordinary sense—of our former incarnation. Love, in the highest sense, must be intensified so that we may be able to experience our former incarnation as something quite other than ourself. Then, when our cognitive power emerges through the empty consciousness, we acquire knowledge through love intensified in the highest degree, and reach the fourth member of man—the ego proper.

Man has his physical body through which he lives at each moment in the present physical earth. He has his etheric body through which he lives continually in a time-process extending back to a little before his birth, when he drew together this etheric body out of the general cosmic ether. He has his astral body through which his life extends over the whole period between his last death and his last descent to earth. And he has his ego through which he reaches back into his previous life on earth. Thus, when we speak of the various members of man's being we must speak, in each case, of his extension in time. We bear our former ego-consciousness within us today, but unconsciously. How? If you want to study how you must realise that man, here in the physical world, is not only a solid body, a fluid man and an airy man, but an organism of warmth as well. This is also the way to approach the ego. Everyone knows this, at least in a very partial way. If we measure a person's temperature we get different degrees of fever in different parts of the body. But there are different temperatures throughout man's whole organism. You have one temperature in your head, another in your big toe, another inside your liver, another within your lung. You are not only what you find drawn in definite outlines in an anatomical atlas. You have a fluid organism in constant motion. You have an organism of air which permeates you continually, like a mighty, symphonic organism of music. And, in addition, you have a surging organism of warmth, differentiated with respect to temperature. In this you yourself live. Indeed, you feel that this is so. After all, you are not very conscious of living in your shin-bone, or in any other bone, or in your liver, or in your vascular fluids. But you are very conscious of living in your warmth, though you do not distinguish between your ‘warmth-hand’, ‘warmth-leg’, ‘warmth-liver’, etc. Nevertheless this differentiation is there, and if the temperature differences proper to the human warmth-organism are absent or disturbed, we feel this as illness, as pain.

When, with developed consciousness, we attain the picture stage—‘imagination’—we perceive the etheric as weaving pictures. When we perceive the astral, we hear the music of the spheres which sounds towards us or, we might say, from out of ourselves. (For our own astral body leads us back to our pre-earthly life.) And when we advance farther to the form of cognition that attains the highest degree of love—when the power of love becomes a cognitive force—when, to begin with, we see our own existence flowing from a former life on earth into this present life, we feel this former life in the normal differentiation of the ‘warmth-organism’ in which we are living. This is real intuition. We live in this. And when some impulse arises in us to do this or that, it does not only work, as in the astral body, out of the spiritual world, but from still farther back—from our former life on earth. Our former life on earth works into the warmth of our organism, and kindles this or that impulse. Thus we see in the earthly, solid man the physical body, in the fluid man the etheric body, in the airy man the astral body, and in the warmth element the ego proper. (The ego of the present incarnation is never complete; it is always developing.) It is the ego of the former life on earth, working in subconscious depths, that is the ego proper. And when you perceive a man clairvoyantly you are led to say: lie is standing here and I see him, to begin with, with my external senses. But I also see what is etheric and what is astral; then, behind him, the man he was in his previous incarnation.

In fact, the more this consciousness is developed, the more clearly do we see, in a kind of perspective, the head of his last incarnation a little above the head of his present incarnation, and, some-what higher still, the head of his second last incarnation. In civilisations in which there was still a kind of instinctive consciousness of these things, you will find pictures which show, behind the clearly drawn countenance of the present incarnation, a second countenance less clearly painted; behind this a third that is still less clear. There are Egyptian pictures like this. You understand such pictures if you are able to perceive, behind the present man, the man he was in his last and second last incarnations. Not until one can extend man's life in time to include previous incarnations can one really speak of the ego as the fourth member of human nature.

All this acts in the ‘man of warmth’. ‘Inspiration’ approaches you from without or from within, you yourself are within the warmth; here is ‘intuition’, true intuition. We experience warmth within us quite differently from anything else.

Now, if you look at it in this way, you will get beyond what should be a great riddle to the man of today, if he gives attention to his soul in a really unprejudiced way. I have spoken of this riddle. I said, we feel ourselves morally determined by certain impulses given us in a purely spiritual way. We want to carry them out. But we cannot, to begin with, understand how that to which we feel ourselves morally bound shoots into our muscles. If, however, we know that we bear within us, from our last incarnation, our ego which has become entirely spiritual and now acts upon our warmth-man, we have the required connection. Our moral impulses act indirectly, through the ego of our last incarnation. Here the connection between the moral and the physical is first found. It cannot be found by merely studying the present world of Nature and man as a section of it.

You see, if you study the present world of Nature, you may say: Well, there outside is Nature; man takes in its substances and builds up his organism—one does actually picture it in this naive way. Thus man is a portion of Nature, being compounded of certain of its substances. Good! But you suddenly realise that there are moral impulses and you should act in accordance with them! How, I would ask, can a portion of Nature do that? A stone cannot do it, nor can calcium, or chlorine, or oxygen, or nitrogen. But man, who is compounded of these, is supposed to be able to do so! He experiences a moral impulse and is expected to act in accordance with it, although he is compounded of all these substance which cannot do so.

But in all that is thus welded together in man there arises—especially indirectly through sleep—something that passes through death, becomes more and more spiritual, and enters a body again. It is, of course, already in the present body, for it comes from the last incarnation. It became spiritual and now works into the present incarnation. What is compounded of earthly substances will work into the warmth-man of the next incarnation. Here the moral element flows from one earth life into another; here we can grasp the transition from physical to spiritual Nature and from spiritual to physical Nature again. We cannot understand this transition with one life alone, if we are honest with ourselves and do not close our eyes to the whole psycho-spiritual problem.

What we can regard as the earthly elements—the solid, liquid, gaseous and warmth elements—is permeated everywhere by what can be designated as the etheric, the astral and the ‘ego-like’, i.e. what is of like nature with the ego. In this way we see the connection between man's members and the universe, and gain an idea of the extent to which man is a ‘portion’ of time, not only of space. He is only a portion, or section, of space in regard to his physical, bodily nature. For spiritual perception the past is continually present; the present moment is, at the same time, a real eternity.

What I am explaining to you was once the content of instinctive forms of consciousness. If we really understand ancient records we find a consciousness of this fourfold composition of man and his connection with the cosmos. But this knowledge has been lost to man for many centuries; otherwise he could not have developed the intellect he has today. But we have now reached the point in human evolution when we must again advance from the physical to the really spiritual.

• 1. A sketch—not reproduced—was made.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today I intend a kind of introduction. In tomorrow's lecture we shall begin and try to give a more or less complete picture of the questions of social and political economy which man today must set before himself.

The subject of Economics, as we speak of it today, is in reality a very recent creation. It did not arise until the time when the economic life of modern peoples had become extraordinarily complicated in comparison with earlier conditions. As this Course is intended primarily for students of Political Economy, it is necessary by way of introduction to point out this peculiarity of the economic thinking of today.

After all, we need not go very far back in history to see how much economic life has changed, even during the nineteenth century. You need only consider this one fact: England, for example, already had, during the first half of the century, what was practically the modern form of economic life. There was comparatively little radical change in the economic structure of England in the course of the nineteenth century. The great social questions which arise out of economic questions in modern times were being asked in England as early as the first half of the nineteenth century: and those who wanted to think of social and economic questions in the modern sense could pursue their studies in England at a time when in Germany—for instance—such studies must have remained unfruitful. In England, above all, the conditions of trade and commerce on a large scale had already come into being by the first third of the nineteenth century. Through the great development of trade and commerce in the economic life in England, a foundation was already there in the shape of trade capital. In England there was no need to seek for any other starting-point for modern economic life. They simply had to apply the trade capital resulting from the consolidation of trade and commerce even as early as the first third of the nineteenth century. Starting from this time, everything took place in England with a certain logical consistency; only we must not forget that the whole of this English economic life was only possible on the basis originally given by England's relation to her colonies, especially to India. The whole of the English economic system is unthinkable without the relationship of England to India. In other words, English economic life, with all its facility for evolving large sums of capital, is founded on the fact that there lies in the background a country which is, as it were, virgin economic soil. We must not overlook this fact, especially when we pass from England to Germany.

If you consider the economic life of Germany you will see that in the first third of the nineteenth century it still essentially corresponded to economic customs which had arisen out of the Middle Ages. The economic customs and relationships within Germany in the first third of the nineteenth century were essentially old: consequently the whole tempo of economic life was different in Germany from what it was in England during the first third, or even the first half, of the nineteenth century. In England, during the first half of the century, there was already what we may call a reckoning with quickly changing habits of life. The main character of economic life remained essentially the same: but it was already adaptable to quickly changing habits. In Germany, on the other hand, habits of life were still conservative: economic development could afford to advance at a snail's pace, for it had only to adapt itself to technical conditions, which remained more or less the same over long periods, and to human needs, which were not rapidly changing.

But in this respect a great transformation took place in the second third of the nineteenth century. Then there rapidly took place an approximation to English conditions, a development of the industrial system. In the first half of the nineteenth century Germany had been in all essentials an agrarian country: now it was rapidly transformed into an industrial country, far more rapidly than any other region of the Earth.

But there is an important fact in this connection. We might describe it thus: In England the transition to an industrial condition of life took place instinctively: nobody knew exactly how it happened. It came like an event of Nature. In Germany, it is true, the medieval character still existed in the first third of the nineteenth century. Germany was an agrarian country. But while the outer economic conditions were taking their accustomed course in a way that might almost be called medieval, human thinking was undergoing a fundamental change. It came into the consciousness of men that something altogether different must now arise, that the existing conditions were no longer true to the time. Thus the transformation of economic conditions which arose in Germany in the second third of the nineteenth century took place far more consciously than in England. In Germany people were far more aware of how they entered into modern capitalism: in England people were not aware of it at all. If you read today all the writings and discussions in Germany during that period concerning the transition to industrialism, you will get a remarkable impression, a strange impression, of how the people in Germany were thinking. Why, they actually looked upon it as a real liberation of mankind: they called it Liberalism, Democracy. Nay, more, they regarded it as the very salvation of mankind to get right out of the old connections, the old binding links, the old kind of corporation, and pass over to the fully free position (for so they called it) of the individual within the economic life. Hence in England you will never meet with a theory of Economics such as was developed by the people who received their education in Germany in the height of the period which I have now characterised. Schmoller, Roscher and others derived their views from the heyday of this “Liberalism ” in Political Economy. What they built up was altogether in this sense, and they built it with full consciousness. An Englishman would have thought such theories of Economics stale and boring; he would have said: “One does not trouble to think about such things.” Look at the radical difference between the way in which people in England talked about these things (to mention even a man like Beaconsfield, who was theoretical enough in all conscience) from the way in which Richter or Lasker or even Brentano were speaking in Germany. In Germany, therefore, this second period was entered into with full consciousness.

Then came the third period, the period essentially of the State. It is true, is it not, that as the last third of the nineteenth century drew near, the German State was consolidated purely by means of external power. That which was consolidated was not what the idealists of '48 or even of the 1830's had desired: no, it was the “State” that was consolidated, and moreover by means of sheer force. And this State, by and by, requisitioned the economic life with full consciousness for its own purposes. Thus, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the structure of the economic life was permeated through and through by the very opposite principle to the previous one. In the second third of the century its evolution had been subject to the ideas of “Liberalism.” Now its evolution became altogether subject to the idea of the State. This was what gave the economic life in Germany, as a whole, its stamp. It is true that there were elements of consciousness in the whole process, and yet in another sense the whole thing was quite unconscious.

But the most important thing is this: Through all these developments a radical contrast, an antagonism of principle, was created, not only in thought but in the whole conduct of economic life itself between the English and the Mid-European economy. And, ladies and gentlemen, on this contrast the manner of their economic intercourse depended. The whole economy of the nineteenth century, as it evolved into the twentieth, would be unthinkable without this contrast between the West and Middle Europe. The way in which men sold, the way in which they found a market for their goods, the way in which they manufactured them, all this would be unthinkable without this contrast.

This was the course of development. First the economic and industrial life of England became possible on the basis of her possession of India: next it became possible for the whole economic activity to be extended on the basis of the contrast between the Western and the Mid-European economic life. In effect, the economic life is founded not on what one sees in one's immediate surroundings, but on the great reciprocal relationships in the world at large.

Now it was with this contrast that the world as a whole entered into the state of world-economy and—could not enter! For the world continued to depend on that instinctive element which had evolved from the past, and the existence of which I have just indicated in describing the antithesis between England and Mid-Europe. In the twentieth century, though the world was unaware of the fact, we stood face to face with this situation. The antithesis became more and more immediate, it became deeper and deeper: and we stood before this great question: The economic conditions had evolved out of these antitheses or contrasts and, having done so, they were carrying the contrasts themselves ever more intensely into the future. And yet, if the contrast were to go on for ever increasing, economic intercourse would become impossible. This was the great question of the twentieth century: The contrast had created the economic life; the economic life had in turn enhanced the contrast. The contrast was calling for a solution. The question was: How are these contrasts or antagonisms to be resolved? The further course of history was destined to prove that men were incapable of finding the answer.

It would have been practical to talk in words like these in 1914, in the days of peace. But, in place of a solution, there came the result of failure to find such a world-historic solution. Such was the disease which then set in, seen from the economic aspect.

You must recognise that the possibility of all evolution always depends on contrasts or antitheses in the last resort. I will only mention one example. Through the fact that the English economic life had been consolidated far earlier than the Mid-European, the English were unable to make certain goods at prices as cheap as were possible in Germany. Thus, there arose the great contrast or antagonism of competition, for “Made in Germany” was simply a question of competition. And when the war was over, this question could arise: Now that people have knocked each other's heads in, instead of seeking a solution of existing contrasts, how can we deal with the matter? At this time I could not but believe in the possibility of finding human beings who would understand the contrasts which must be brought forth in another domain. For life depends on contrasts, and can only exist if contrasts are there, interacting with one another. Thus in 1919 one could come to the point of saying: Let us now draw attention to the real contrasts or contra-positions towards which world-historic evolution is tending—those of the economic life, the political life of rights and the spiritual-cultural life—the contra-positions of the threefold social order.

What, after all, was the actual situation when we believed that we must bring the threefold idea into as many human heads as possible? I will only describe it externally today. The important thing would have been to bring the threefold idea into as many heads as possible before the economic consequences ensued which afterwards took place. You must remember when the “Threefold Commonwealth ” was first mentioned, we did not yet stand face to face with the monetary difficulties of today. On the contrary, if the Threefold Commonwealth had been understood at that time, these difficulties could never have occurred. Yet once again we were faced by the inability of human beings to understand such a thing as this in a really practical sense. When we tried to bring the Threefold Commonwealth home to them, people would come and say: “Yes, all that is excellent: we see it perfectly. But, after all, the first thing needful is to counteract the depreciation of the currency.” Ladies and gentlemen, all that one could answer was: “That is contained in the Threefold Order. Set to work with the Threefold Order. That is the only means of counteracting the depreciation of the currency.” People were asking how to do the very thing which the Threefold Commonwealth was meant to do. They did not understand it, however often they declared that they did.

And now the position is such that if we are to speak once more today to people such as you, we can no longer speak in the same forms as we did then. Today another language is necessary: and that is what I want to give you in these present lectures. I want to show you how one must think once more today about these questions, especially if, being young in years, one will still have an opportunity to play one's part in shaping the immediate future.

Thus, on the one hand, we can characterise a certain period—the nineteenth century—in terms of world-historic economic contrasts. But we might also go still farther back and include the time when men first began to think about Political Economy at all. If you take the history of Political Economy you will see that everything before that time took place instinctively. It was only in modern times that there arose that complexity of economic life, in the midst of which men felt it necessary to think about these things.

Now I am speaking, in effect, for students. I am trying to show how students of Economics should find their way into this subject. Let me, therefore, now relate the most essential thing on which it all depends.

You see, the time when men had to begin to think about Political Economy was just the time when they no longer had the thoughts to comprehend such a subject. They simply no longer had the requisite ideas. I will give you an example from Natural Science to indicate that this is so.

We as human beings have our physical bodies, which are heavy just like any other physical bodies. Your physical body will be heavier after a midday meal than before: we could even weigh the difference. That is to say, we partake in the general laws of gravity. But with this gravity, which is the property of all ponderable substances, we could do very little in our human body, we could at most go about the world as automata, certainly not as conscious beings. I have often explained what is essential to any valid concept of these matters. I have often said what man needs for his thinking. The human brain, if we weigh it alone, weighs about 1,400 grammes. If you let the weight of these 1,400 grammes press on the veins and arteries, which are situated at the base of the skull, it would destroy and kill them. You could not live for a single moment if the human brain were pressing downward with its full 1,400 grammes. It is indeed a fortunate thing for man that the principle of Archimedes holds good. I mean that every body loses so much of its weight in water as is the weight of that fluid which it displaces. If this is a heavy body, it loses as much of its weight in water as a body of water of equal size would weigh. The brain swims in the cerebro-spinal fluid, and thereby loses 1,380 grammes: for such is the weight of a body of cerebro-spinal fluid of the size of the human brain. The brain only presses downward on to the base of the skull with a weight of 20 grammes, and this weight it can bear. But if we now ask ourselves: What is the purpose of all this? then we must answer: With a brain which was a mere ponderable mass, we could not think. We do not think with the heavy substance: we think with the buoyancy. The substance must first lose its weight. Only then can we think. We think with that which flies away from the earth.

But we are also conscious in our whole body. How do we become thus conscious? In our whole body there are 25 billions of red blood corpuscles. These 25 billions of red corpuscles are very minute. Nevertheless they are heavy: they are heavy for they contain iron. Every one of these 25 billions of red corpuscles swims in the serum of the blood, and loses weight exactly in accordance with the fluid it displaces. Once again, therefore, in every single blood corpuscle an effect of buoyancy is created—25 billion times. Throughout our body we are conscious by virtue of this upward driving force. Thus we may say: Whatever foodstuffs we consume, they must first, to a very large extent, be divested of their weight: they must be transformed in order that they can serve us. Such is the demand of the living body.

Ladies and gentlemen, to think thus and to regard this way of thinking as essential, is the very thing men ceased to do just at the time when it became necessary to think in terms of Political Economy. Thenceforward they only reckoned with ponderable substances: they no longer thought of the transformation which a substance undergoes in a living organism—as to its weight, for example, through the effect of buoyancy.

And now another thing. If you call to mind your studies of Physics, you will remember the physicist speaks of the “spectrum.” This band of colours is created with the help of the prism: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. So far (from the red to the violet) the spectrum appears luminous. But, as you know, before the region which shows a luminous effect, what are called the infra-red rays are assumed to exist: and, beyond the violet, the ultra-violet rays. If, therefore, one speaks merely of light, one does not include the totality of the phenomenon: for we must go on to describe how the light is transformed in two opposite directions; we must explain how, beyond the red, light sinks into the element of warmth and, beyond the violet, into chemical effects. In both directions the light, as such, disappears. If, therefore, we give a theory of light alone, we are giving a mere extract. (The current theory of light is in any case not a true one. It is significant that in the very time when mankind had to begin to think consciously of Political Economy, human thinking upon Physics was in such a condition as to result, among other things, in an untrue theory of light).

I have, however, mentioned the matter here with some reason: for there is a valid analogy. Consider for a moment not the economy of peoples, but, let us say, the economy of sparrows or the economy of swallows. They too, after all, have a kind of economy. But this—the economy of the animal kingdom—does not reach far up into the human kingdom, Possibly in the case of the magpie we may indeed speak of a kind of animal capitalism. But what is the essence of animal economics? It is this: Nature provides the products, and the animal as a single creature takes them for him-self. Man does indeed reach down into this animal economy: but he has to emerge from it.

The true human economy may be compared to the part of the spectrum which is visible as light. That which reaches down into Nature would then be comparable with the part of the spectrum which extends into the infra-red. Here, for example, we come into the domain of agriculture, of economic geography and so forth. The science of Economics cannot be sharply defined in this direction: it reaches down into a region which must be grasped by very different methods. That on the one hand.

But on the other hand—just under the influence of the very complicated relations of today—it has gradually come to pass that our economic thinking fails us once more in another direction. Just as light ceases to appear as light, as we go on into the ultraviolet, so does human economic activity cease to be purely economic. I have often characterised how this came about. The phenomenon began only in the nineteenth century. Till then, the economic life was still more or less dependent on the capability and efficiency of the individual human being. A Bank prospered if some individual in it was a thoroughly capable man. Individuals were still of real importance. I have often related, as an amusing example, the story of the ambassador of the King of France who once came to Rothschild. He was trying to raise a loan. Rothschild happened to be in conversation with a leather merchant. When the ambassador of the King of France was announced, he said: “Ask him to wait a little.” The ambassador was terribly upset. Was he to wait, while a leather merchant was in there with Rothschild? When the attendant came out and told him, he simply would not believe his ears. “Go in again and tell Herr Rothschild that I am here as the ambassador of the King of France.” But the attendant brought the same answer again: “Will you kindly wait a little?” Thereupon he himself burst into the inner room: “I am the ambassador of the King of France!” Rothschild answered: “Please sit down: will you take a chair?” “Yes, but I am the ambassador of the King of France!” “Will you take two chairs!”

You see, what took place in the economic life in that time was placed consciously within the sphere of the human personality. But things have changed since then: and now, in the great affairs of economic life, very little indeed depends on the single personality. Human economic working has to a very large extent been drawn into what I am here comparing with the ultra-violet. I refer to the workings of Capital as such. Accumulations of Capital are active as such. Over and above the economic, there lies an ultra-economic life, which is essentially determined by the peculiar power inherent in the actual masses of Capital. If, therefore, we wish to understand the economic life of today, we must regard it thus: It lies in the midst between two regions, of which the one leads downward into Nature and the other upward into Capital. Between them lies the domain which we must comprehend as the economic life properly speaking.

Now from this you will see that men did not even possess the necessary concept to enable them to define the science of Economics and set it in its proper place within the whole domain of knowledge. For, as we shall presently see, it is a curious thing: but this region alone (which we have compared with the infra-red)—this region which does not yet reach up into the sphere of economics properly speaking—this alone is intelligible by the human intellect. We can consider, with ordinary thinking, how to grow oats or barley and so forth: or how best to obtain the raw products in mining. That is all that we can really think about with the intellect which we have grown accustomed to apply in the science of modern time.

This is a fact of immense significance. Think back for a moment to what I have just indicated as the concept which we need in science. We consume heavy substances as food. That they can be of use to us, depends upon the fact that they continually lose weight within us. That is to say, within the body they are totally transformed. But that is not all. They are changed in a different way in each organ: it is a different change in the liver from that in the brain or in the lung. The organism is differentiated and the conditions are different for each substance in each single organ. We have a perpetual change of quality along with the change from organ to organ.

Now, it is approximately the same when, within a given economic domain, we speak of the value of a commodity. It is nonsense to define some substance as carbon, for example, and then to ask: How does it behave inside the human body? The carbon, even as regards its weight, becomes something altogether different from what it is here or there in the outer world. Likewise, we cannot simply ask: What is the value of a commodity? The value is different according as the commodity is lying in a shop, or is transported to this place or that.

Thus, our ideas in Economics must be altogether mobile. We must rid ourselves of the habit of constructing concepts capable of definition once and for all. We must realise that we are dealing with a living process, and must transform our concepts with the process. But what the economists have tried to do is to grasp such things as Value, Price, Production, Consumption and so forth with ideas such as they had in ordinary science. And these were of no use.

Fundamentally speaking, therefore, we have not yet attained a true science of Economics. With the concepts to which we have grown accustomed hitherto, we cannot answer the question, for instance: What is Value? Or, what is Price? Whatever has Value must be considered as being in perpetual circulation: like-wise we must consider the Price, corresponding to a Value, as something in perpetual circulation. If you simply ask: What are the physical properties of carbon? you will still know absolutely nothing of what goes on in the lung, for example, although carbon is also present in the lung. For its whole configuration becomes quite different in the lung. In the same way, iron, when you find it in the mine, is something altogether different from what it is in the economic process. Economics is concerned with something quite different from the mere fact that it “is” iron. It is with these unstable, constantly changing factors that we must reckon.

Forty-five years ago, I came into a certain family. They showed me a picture. I think it had been lying up in a loft for about fifty years. So long as it lay there, and no one was there who knew any more about it than that it was the kind of thing one throws away in a corner of the loft, it had no value in the economic process. Once its value had been recognised, it was worth 30.000 gulden—quite a large sum of money in those days. What did the value depend on in this case? Purely and simply on the opinion men formed of the picture. The picture had not been removed from its place, only men had arrived at different thoughts about it. And so in no case does it depend on what a thing immediately “is.” The conceptions of Economics are the very ones which you can never evolve by reference to the mere external reality. No, you must always evolve them by reference to the economic process as a whole: and within this process each thing is perpetually changing. Therefore we must speak of the economic process of circulation before we can arrive at such things as Value, Price and so forth. In the economic theories of today, you will observe that they generally begin with definitions of Value and Price. That is quite wrong. The first thing needful is to describe the economic process. Only then do those things emerge with which the theorists of today begin.

Now, in the year 1919, when everything had been destroyed, one might have thought that people would realise the need to begin with something fresh. Alas, it was not the case. The small number of people who did believe that there must be a new beginning, very soon fell into the comfortable reflection: “After all, there is nothing to be done.” Meanwhile, the great calamity was taking place: the devaluation of money in the Eastern and Middle countries of Europe, and with it a complete revolution in the social strata; for it goes without saying that with each progressive devaluation of money, those who live by what I have here compared to the ultra-violet must be impoverished. And this is happening to-day, far more perhaps than people are yet aware. And it will happen, more and more completely. Here, above all, we are directed to the idea of the living, social organism. For it is evident that this devaluation of money is determined by the old State frontiers and limitations. The old State frontiers and limitations are interfering with the economic process. The latter must indeed be understood, but we must first gain an understanding of the social organism. Yet all the systems of Political Economy—from Adam Smith to the most modern—reckon, after all, with small isolated regions as if they were complete social organisms. They do not realise that, even if one is only using an analogy, the analogy must be correct. Have you ever seen an elaborate or full-grown organism, such as the human being, for instance, in this drawing—and immediately beside it a second one, and here a third, and so forth? (see Diagram 1) They would look quite pretty—these human organisms, sticking to one another in this way: and yet with elaborate and full-grown organisms there is no such thing. But with the separate States and Countries, this is the case. Living organisms require an empty space around them—empty space between them and other living organisms. You could at most compare the single States with the cells of the organism. It is only the whole Earth which, as a body economic, can truly be compared with a living organism. This ought surely to be taken into account. It is quite palpable, ever since we have had a world-economy, that the single States or Countries are at most to be compared with cells.

The whole Earth, considered as an economic organism, is the social organism.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Yet this is nowhere being taken into account. It is precisely owing to this error that the whole science of Political Economy has grown so remote from reality. People will seek to establish principles that are only to apply to certain individual cells. Hence, if you study French political economy, you will find it differently constituted from English or German or other political economies. But as economists, what we really need is an understanding of the social organism in its totality.

So much for today by way of introduction.

Dr. Steiner: Well, gentlemen, perhaps one of you has a question you would like to ask me today.

Question: I would like to know why people with blond hair are becoming increasingly scarce. Formerly, there were many fair-haired people in the region where I was born, but now there are far fewer. Why is this so?

Dr. Steiner: Your question fits quite well into our discussions, and I can consider it after I describe the human eye for you, as I promised to do earlier. We have already studied the ear; now we shall look at the eye. You may have noticed that blond hair is closely linked with blue eyes; as a rule, blonds have blue eyes. Your question relates to this matter, which you will understand fully when we examine the eye.

Eyes have great significance, indeed, for the human being. It might be assumed that people born blind do not benefit at all from the eyes; nevertheless, they are still part of them, and they have the function not only of seeing but also of influencing the entire nervous system, inasmuch as this originates in the brain. The eyes are still there in one who is born blind even though they cannot see. It is placed in the socket but something is wrong internally, especially with the optic nerve. In addition, the muscles that control eye movements exist also in a blind person, and actually continuously influence the nervous system. Thus, the eye is, indeed, one of the most important organs of our body.

The eye, which is really like a miniature world, is placed in a cavity formed by the skull bones. You might tell yourself that it is something like a tiny world. The optic nerve fills out the retina and terminates in the brain, which I shall outline here (sketching). So, if this is the eye seen in profile and sitting in the eye-socket, then here on the right is a canal through which the optic nerve passes. The eyeball lies buried in fatty tissue and is surrounded by bony walls. Attached to it are six ocular muscles that extend back into the bony walls of the socket. These bones are directly behind the upper jawbone.

In the anterior part of the eye is a completely transparent, clear tissue through which light passes. That the tissue looks black is an illusion; in reality, you see through the eye to its rear wall; you are looking through the transparent skin all the way to the back of the eye. The round blackness you see is the pupil, which looks black because the back of the eyeball is that colour. It is like looking through the window of a dark room; if you think the window itself is black, you are mistaken. The interior of the eye is completely transparent. This tissue is tough and opaque here and transparent in front. Within it and toward the rear is another layer of tissue possessing a network of fine, delicate blood vessels, which thicken here. Around the pupil is the iris, which in some people is blue and in others gray, green, brown or black.

Between the iris and the transparent tissue is a transparent fluid. Where you see the round blackness is the transparent skin, the cornea; behind that is the anterior chamber. It consists of living fluid and is shaped somewhat like a little glass lens. The actual lens of the eye is located here, where these delicate blood vessels come together and where the iris is formed. This structure, called the crystalline lens, also contains a living fluid. Its outer cover is transparent, permitting you to see the blackness behind it. Unlike a glass lens, it is mobile; it moves especially when you need to focus on something nearby. In that event, it is shaped like this (sketching), thick in the middle. When you need to look into the distance, it is bent like this, thin in the middle.

Next to the iris are delicate little muscles, which we tense to make the lens thicker when looking at something close up, or relax to make the lens thinner. A person's living habits also affect the lenses. If you often use your eyes for close work, like reading or writing, gradually the lenses become permanently thick in the middle, and you become near-sighted. If you are a hunter, however, frequently looking into the distance, then the lenses become thin in the middle and you will become far-sighted. Another thing to consider is that in youth the tiny muscles located in and around the iris are still strong and elastic, and we can accommodate to our field of vision. In old age they become slack. This explains why many people become far-sighted with age, but this problem can be corrected. If a person's lenses are too thick in the middle, glasses are prescribed with lenses that are concave. These will compensate for the thickness of the eye's lenses. Some people even have a twofold problem, needing one set of glasses for clear distance vision and another set for close up. If the lenses of the eyes are too thin, the glasses will have convex lenses. Their thickness is added to the lens of the eye and compensates for the defect. You could say that we are able to see because we can correct the defect of the lens. The lens in our eye is like that of our glasses: near- and far-sighted. But the lens in our glasses stays the same, while that in the eye is living and can adjust and accommodate itself.

Behind the lens is also something like a living fluid. It, too, is completely transparent, permitting light to pass through everywhere. This gelatinous and crystalline substance completely fills the interior of the eyeball. So here in front is something like transparent “hard water,” the aqueous humour; next comes the transparent lens, and then comes the vitreous humour, which is also transparent. The optic nerve enters the eye here, and reaches approximately to here.

This optic nerve is extremely complicated. I have drawn it as if the main nerve fibre simply divides here, but there's more to it than this. There are actually four layers of nerves surrounding the vitreous humour. This is the outer layer of the nerve (sketching), which acts like a strong mirror. When light enters the eye and hits the layers of the retina, it is reflected everywhere. It does not go into this (probably referring to the nerve canal) but stays in the eye. The outer layer acts like the wall of a mirror and reflects the light. A second layer of nerves intensifies this reflecting capacity. As we have said, the nerve that lines our eyeball consists of four layers. The outermost layer and the second outer layer reflect back all the light into the interior sphere. Thus, within the vitreous humour we have actually only reflected light. A third layer of nerves consists of the same substance that makes up the gray matter of our brain. The outer parts of our brain are gray matter, not white. Another “skin” constitutes the fourth layer. You see, the vitreous humour is placed within a complicated “sack.” This enables all the light that penetrates into the interior of the eyeball to be reflected within the vitreous humour and to live therein.

What we have in our eye is something that looks like a complicated physical apparatus. What is it for? Well, imagine that a man is standing somewhere. When you look at him, an inverted picture is produced in your eye because of the lens and vitreous humour. So, if a man stands there (sketching), you have a small image of him in the eye, but owing to this apparatus, it is an image that stands on its head. The eye is just like a camera in this respect; it is much like a photographic apparatus in which the object photographed appears in an image upside down. That also happens in the eye; since it is a mirroring device, when light enters, it is reflected. Thus, in the eye we have the image of a little man. Even with all our modern sophisticated machinery, something like the human eye can certainly not be manufactured. We must admit that it is altogether extraordinary and marvellous.

Now, picture to yourselves the starry heaven; form an image of the light-filled sphere around the earth, and then reduce this picture until it is quite small. What you then have is the interior of the human eye. The human eye is actually a world in miniature, and the reflections in the eye resemble myriad surrounding stars. You see, these outer walls do not reflect evenly. There are many tiny bodies, which, like miniature stars, radiate light toward the centre. If we were as small as the image of the human being in the eye and could examine it from inside, its interior would seem infinitely large. Our impression would be the same as when on earth we look up to the glittering stars at night. It is indeed so. It is interesting that the eye is like a miniature world and that the tiny human image produced in the eye by reflections would have the same feeling, if it were conscious, we have at night under a starry sky. It is really quite interesting!

Well, I said, “... if that image possessed consciousness.” But if we did not possess our eyes, we would not be able to view the starry night. We see the night sky and its brilliant stars only because we have eyes; if we close them, we do not see the stars. Nor could we see the starry firmament if the eye did not already contain within it a miniature world. We say to ourselves that this miniature universe really signifies a big world. This is something that must be clearly understood.

Imagine that a man shows you a small photograph of himself or another person. You will realize that even though it is small it was taken of a regular-sized man. You are not encountering the actual person in this picture and, likewise in the eye; in reality you have only this tiny miniature starry sky within you. You then say to yourself, “What I have here before me is the `photograph' of the immense starry sky.” You do this all the time. You have within you the little starry sky of the eye, and then you tell yourself, “This is the photograph of the great starry sky.” You actually always picture the real starry sky from the miniature firmament in your eye; you conceive of the universe by means of this picture within. What you really experience is the infinitesimal firmament in the eye.

Now you might say, “Yes, but this would be true only if we possessed just one eye like the cyclops, whereas we have two eyes.” Well, why do we have two? Try this: Look at something with only one eye. It will appear to be painted on a backdrop. We do not have two images of an object, which we see in proportion and in the right dimensions only because we possess two eyes. Seeing with both eyes is like grabbing your right hand with your left. We are conscious of ourselves because from childhood we have been used to saying “I” to ourselves. The little word, “I,” would not be in the language if our right side were not aware of our left. We would not be conscious of ourselves. We become so accustomed to the most important things that we take them as a matter of course. A hidebound philistine would say, “The question of why one says “I” to oneself does not interest me. It goes without saying that one says “I” to oneself!” Well, he is a narrow-minded and prosaic person. He does not realize that most subtle matters are based on the most complicated processes. He does not know that he became used to touching himself as a child, that is, touching his left hand with his right, and thus grew accustomed to saying “I” to himself.

This fact can be traced in human culture. If we go back to ancient times, to the days of the Old Testament, for instance, we find priests who—excuse me for voicing such a heretical opinion—often knew much more than the priests nowadays and who said, “We want to teach man self-awareness.” So they taught people to fold their hands. This is the origin of folding your hands. Man touched himself in order to find the strong ego within him and to develop his will. Things like this are not said today because they are not understood. Priests today simply tell members of the congregation to fold their hands in prayer; they do not give the meaning of this gesture because they themselves do not know it anymore.

When we see with our two eyes, we feel that what is there in the light is in fact spatial. If we had only one eye, everything would appear as if painted on the firmament. Our two eyes enable us to see things in three dimensions and to experience ourselves as standing within the centre of the world. In a good or bad sense, every man considers himself to be the centre of the world. Therefore, it is of great importance that we have two eyes.

Now, since it is so important for man to use his eyes for seeing, we overlook something else about them. We are not so ignorant in the case of the ear. I believe I have mentioned already that when we hear we also speak; that is, we ourselves produce what we hear. We can understand a spoken language only because of the Eustachian tube, which runs from the mouth into the ear. You surely know that children born deaf cannot speak either, and that people who are not taught to speak a language cannot understand it either. Special means must be used to gain an understanding of what has been heard.

It does indeed appear that seeing is the only purpose of the eye, but a child learns not only to see with its eyes but also to speak with them, even if we don't pay much attention to it. The language of the eyes is not as suitable for everyday use as is the language directed to the ears, but with it you can discover whether a person is telling a lie or the truth. If you are the least bit sensitive, you can discover in the way he looks at you whether or not he is telling you the truth. The eyes do speak, and the child learns to speak with them just as it does with its mouth.

In the language of the ear the larynx, with its function of uttering sounds is separated from it, and thus there are here two separate aspects. In the case of the language of the eye, there are muscles right within the organ and also around it. It is the muscles that make the eye into a kind of visible organ of speech. Whether we look somebody straight in the eye, or have a shifty look, depends on the muscles that surround the eyeball. In the case of the ear, it is as if it were contained within the larynx, as in fishes. In man the ear is separated from the larynx, but in fishes they are joined to form one organ. The act of speaking is separated from hearing, but with the eye it is as if the larynx with its muscles surrounded the ear. The eye is situated within its speech organ as if the ear were placed within the larynx. In humans it is like this (sketching). Here we have the larynx, the voice box, which goes down through the windpipe into the lungs and up into the palate. It enables us to speak. From the mouth we have a connection with the ear.

Now imagine that the larynx is not like it is in humans but that it spreads out much wider. Then we would have the broad larynx that Lucifer possesses in my wooden statue. The larynx is so large that the head fits in between, and it reaches up on both sides to surround the ear. With this organ we would both speak and hear. With the eye we do just that; we speak through the muscles that surround the eyeball, and through the eye we simultaneously see. So in some respects the eye is conceived like the ear, but in other respects it is, of course, quite different. This, then, is the purpose of the muscles I have drawn here.

We can say that we speak of what we know, and we consider those who say things of which they know nothing to be more or less fools. We say of such people that they are talking to themselves, shooting off their mouths. As a rule, however, sensible and rational people express what they know. We do not speak consciously with the eye, however, for we would have to be shrewd fellows, indeed, if we could consciously speak the language of the eyes. This process is unconscious and accompanies our other behaviour. The people in Southern Italy, for example, still speak of an “evil eye.” They still know that a person who has a certain look about him is false. They talk of an evil eye because they sense that the eye expresses the whole nature of a man without his being aware of it. This superstition in Southern Italy goes so far that some hang little charms or religious medals around their necks as protection from it.

So you see how marvellously the eye is formed. A person who studies the eye in this way simply cannot say that there is nothing of the soul in it. It is simply stupid and philistine to say that the eye has no element of the soul. People say that light penetrates through the pupil into the eye, passes through the lens into the vitreous humour, produces an image here on the retina, and then is transmitted into the brain. Modern science stops right there, or it might state further that the light in the brain is used to produce thoughts. This description gives rise to all sorts of nonsensical statements that lead to nothing.

In reality, the light does not reach the brain. I have explained how it is reflected in the eyeball as in a mirror. The light remains in the eye, and it is important to know that it stays there. The interior of the eyeball is like the illuminated starry expanse. The light remains within the eye and does not penetrate directly into the brain. If the light did enter the brain, we would not be able to see anything at all. We can see because it does not do so. Just imagine, gentlemen, that you are standing here in this room all by yourselves; there are no chairs, nothing but the walls. The room is completely illuminated within, but you see nothing. You know only that it is illuminated, but you can see no objects of any kind. If the brain were only filled with light, we would see nothing because it is not solely on account of light that we see. Everywhere the light is kept in the eye and illumines its interior. What does this mean? Well, imagine that we have a little box. I stand with my back to it; I have not seen it before. I must reach behind myself to be able to know that it is there. Likewise, when the eye is illuminated from within, I must first feel the light to know that it is there. I must first feel the light, and this is done with the soul. In other words, the apparatus of the eye produces something we can feel. The soul passes through the muscles and feels or senses the little man I have mentioned within the eye.

Every organ within the human being shows us that here we must say that the soul observes, feels or senses what is within. If we examine everything carefully, we discover the soul and the spirit everywhere, especially in the eye. After a while, we can get the feeling that we are sitting in front of a peephole here (referring to his eye). When I look at you, you appear within, but I form the conception that the image within is the person outside. This is how the eye works. Just imagine that it is a little peephole through which the soul forms the idea that what it observes is the vast world. We simply must recognize the soul's existence when we actually examine the matter.

Now, I said that here is the choroid (referring to his sketch of the eyeball). It contains tiny blood vessels and lies under the optic nerve and its network. The optic nerve does not reach all the way to the front of the eyeball but the choroid, with its muscles, does. It extends to the lens and actually holds it in place. Here, as I have mentioned, is the iris surrounding the black pupil, which is nothing but an aperture. The iris is quite complicated. I will draw it a little larger, as seen from the side. So here is the iris, attached to the ciliary muscle. The choroid and lens sit within, held in place by the iris. Seen from the front, the iris has a front wall and a back wall. On the back wall are little coloured granules, which are microscopically small sacks. In everyone they are filled with a blue substance, and this is what one sees in blue-eyed people. In their case, the front layer is transparent, so you see the back layer of the iris, which is filled with this blue substance. In a blue-eyed person you are really seeing the back wall of the iris; the front part is transparent. Brown-eyed people have the same blue substance in the back layer of their iris, but they possess also brown granules in front of it. These cover up the blue ones so that all you see are the brown. A black-eyed person has black granules. You see not the blue but the little black sacks. It is the iris that causes a person's eyes to be blue, brown or black. The iris is always blue in back, and in blue-eyed persons it possesses no coloured substance at all in front; in brown-eyed and black-eyed people, it contains coloured granules in front that obscure the blue granules in back. Why is that? Well, you see, these tiny little sacks are constantly being filled with blood and then emptied. The blood penetrates the tiny granules in minute amounts. In a blue-eyed person, they are constantly being filled with and emptied of a little blood. The same thing happens with brown- and black-eyed persons. The blood enters, deposits blue or black coloured substance, then leaves again and takes the coloured substance with it. This is a continual process.

Now, some people have a strong force in their blood that drives the substances from food all the way into the eyes. This gives them brown or black granules. Those with black granules are people whose organisms can drive the blood most strongly into the eyes; the substances from nourishment easily reach into the eyes. This is less the case with brown-eyed people. Their eyes are not so well-nourished, and a blue-eyed person's organism does not drive the nourishing substances far enough into the eyes to fill the front part of the iris with them. It remains transparent and all we can see is the back part. Thus, a person is blue-eyed because of the way all the substances circulate through his organism. If you observe such a blue-eyed person, you can say that he has less driving force in his circulation than one who is black-eyed.

Consider the Scandinavians. Much of the nourishment must be utilized in fighting off the surrounding cold. A Nordic man does not have enough energy left to drive the nourishment all the way into the eyes; his energy is needed to ward off the cold. Hence, he is blue-eyed. A man who is born in a warm, tropical climate has in his blood the driving force to push the nourishing substances into his eyes. In the temperate zones it is an individual matter whether a man possesses more or less inner energy.

This also affects the colour of hair. A person with strong forces drives food substances all the way into his hair, making it brown or black. A person with less driving force does not push these substances all the way into the hair, and thus it remains light. So we see that blue eyes and blond hair are related. The one who drives the food substances forcefully through his body gets dark hair and eyes; the one who does it less vigorously gets light hair and eyes. This can be understood from what I have told you.

When you take into consideration the most important aspects, you can find meaning for everything. The earth on which we live was young when it brought forth those giant megatheria and ichthyosauria that I have described for you. The earth was once young. Now it is past its prime; it is growing older and some day will perish from old age, though not in the way described by the materialists. We are already faced with some of the signs of the earth's old age. Therefore, the entire human race has been weakened in regard to the driving force that moves the food substances through the body. So what part of the population is going to be the first to disappear from the earth? Dark people can last longer, for they possess greater driving force; blonds have less and become extinct sooner. The earth is indeed already into its old age. The gentleman who asked the question pointed out that there are fewer blonds around than in his youth. Because the earth has less vitality, only the black and brown peoples attain sufficient driving force; blonds and blue-eyed people are already marked for extinction because they can no longer drive nourishment with the necessary force through their bodies.

We can say that fair people were actually always weaker physically and that they were only mentally stronger. In former times many people were blond, but they were strong in spirit and knew much of what many today can no longer know. This is why I called your attention to how much people knew in olden days. Look at ancient India, five thousand years before the birth of Christ. The original inhabitants were black; they were quite dark. Then people with blond hair migrated from the north to the south. The Brahmans descended from those who were especially revered, the fair Brahmans. In time, however, blondness will disappear because the human race is becoming weaker. In the end, only brown- and black-haired people will be able to survive if nothing is done to keep them from being bound to matter. The stronger the body's forces, the weaker the soul's. When fair people become extinct, the human race will face the danger of becoming dense if a spiritual science like anthroposophy is not accepted. Anthroposophy does not have to take the body into consideration but can bring forth intelligence from spiritual investigation itself.

You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. In the case of fair people, less nourishment is driven into the eyes and hair; it remains instead in the brain and endows it with intelligence. Brown- and dark-haired people drive the substances into their eyes and hair that the fair people retain in their brains. They then become materialistic and observe only what can immediately be seen. Spiritual science must compensate for this; we must have a spiritual science to the same degree that humanity loses its intelligence along with its fair people. We have not built the Goetheanum as a joke, for no reason at all; we have built it because we anticipated what would happen to the human race if there were not spiritual compensation for what will disappear from the natural world. The matter is so serious that we can say that mankind on this earth must once again attain something fruitful, though in a different form from what was produced in ancient times. It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish. Human beings are becoming denser, and they can regain a new wisdom only if they do not have to depend on their bodies, but possess, instead, a true spiritual science. It is really so, and if people today want to laugh about it, let them. But then they have always laughed about things that have brought about some great change.

In the age when those giant beasts existed that I have described—the ichthyosauria, plesiosauria and megatheria—cows certainly did not yet exist, cows from whom milk is taken for human consumption. Of course, neither did human beings exist then who would have required such milk. But just yesterday I read a statement by somebody who is really afraid of progress. He thinks people who express ideas today that should be formulated only after many centuries have passed ought to be persecuted, because the time is not ripe for their utterances. Gentlemen, it seems to me that if this had been the case in the period when cows were supposed to come into existence, no creature would have had the courage to become a cow! It is like saying, “What is taught today as anthroposophy should emerge only after many centuries.” Well, then it wouldn't appear at all, just as no cows would have come into being. In effect, it is like saying, “I would rather remain an old primeval hog than transform myself into a cow!”

The situation on earth is such that we must have the courage to change and to ascend from those periods when mankind knew things instinctively, to one in which everything is known consciously. This is why I present everything to you here in such a way that you can comprehend fully what is really going on and know in what direction the wind is blowing. When you read a book nowadays, or when you hear about what goes on in the great wide world, you cannot actually get to the bottom of what makes everything tick. But people don't know that. You can understand a phenomenon like the gradual extinction of blonds if you comprehend how nourishing substances penetrate into both the eyes and hair, the colouring of which is closely related.

If you go to Milan, you will find that the head of the lion there is depicted in such a way that its mane, that is, the largest accumulation of hair the lion possesses, looks like rays of light. This rendering is based on an ancient wisdom in which it was known that both the eyes and hair are related to light and its rays.

Hair is indeed like plants, which are placed in the ground and whose growth is subject to light. If light is unable to draw the nourishing substances all the way into the hair, it remains blond. If a person is more closely tied to matter, the food substances penetrate the hair completely and counteract the light; then he gets black hair. Sages of old were still aware of this, just as were men even a few centuries ago. Thus, they did not depict the lion's mane as being curly but instead they gave it a radiating, straight form, as if the sun had placed its beams right into the lion's head. It is most interesting to observe such things.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! Are there any questions?

Written question: Mars is near the earth. What effect does that have upon the earth? What is known about Mars?

Dr. Steiner: There has been a great deal of talk recently about the nearness of Mars to the earth, and the newspapers have made utterly futile statements without even a rudimentary understanding of what this means. We must not attach prime importance to these external circumstances in the planetary constellations due to the relative positions of earth and sun, because the influences arising from them do not really amount to very much. It is interesting that there has been all this talk about the proximity of Mars, because every planet, including the moon, is constantly coming nearer to the earth, and the planets are undergoing a process that will finally end in all of them uniting again with the earth, forming a single body.

Of course, if it is imagined, as most people imagine today, that the planets are solid bodies just like the earth, the expectation could well be that if they were to unite with the earth, this would mean the end of all life on our globe! But no such thing will happen, because the degrees of density of the various planets are not the same as that of the earth. If Mars, for instance, were actually to come down and unite with the earth, it would not be able to lay waste the land but only to inundate it. For as far as investigation is possible—it can never be done with physical instruments but only through spiritual science, spiritual vision—Mars consists primarily of a more or less fluid mass, not as fluid as our water but, shall we say, more like the consistency of jelly, or something of that kind. There are also dense components, but they are not as densely solid as those of our earth. Their consistency would be more comparable to that of the antlers or horns of our animals, which form out of the general mass and dissolve back into it again. So we must realize that the constitution of Mars is entirely different from that of our earth.

Now a great deal is said about “canals” existing on Mars. But why “canals”? There is nothing to be seen except lines, and these are called canals.¹⁸ In one sense that is correct, but in another, incorrect. As Mars is not solid to the degree that the earth is solid, one cannot, of course, speak of canals as we know them on the earth. But it can be said that on Mars there is something rather similar to our trade winds. You know that the warm air from the Torrid Zone of the earth, from Africa, streams toward the cold North Pole, and the air from the cold North Pole streams back toward the central region of the earth. So that if looked at from outside, such lines would indeed be seen, but they are the lines of the trade winds, of the air currents in the trade winds. There is something rather similar on Mars. Only everything on Mars is much more full of life than on the earth. The earth is a dead planet in a far stronger sense than Mars, on which everything is still more or less living.

I want to mention something that can help you to understand the character of Mars' relation to the earth. We know that the sun, to us the most important of all the heavenly bodies, is the sustainer of a very great deal on the earth. Think of the sun as we know it from day to day. At night you see the plants drawing in their blossoms because the sun is not shining on them. By day they open again to be irradiated by the sun. Very many things depend upon the spread of sunlight over one part of the earth and the spread of darkness over another part when the sun is not there. But if you think of a whole year, you could not conceive of the plants growing in the spring if the sun's power did not return. Again, when the sun loses power in the autumn, the plants fade away, all life dies and snow falls.

Quite obviously, life on the earth is connected with the sun. Indeed, we humans would be unable to breathe the air around us if the sun were not there, if the rays of the sun did not make the air suitable for us to breathe. The sun is undeniably the most important heavenly body for us. Just think what a different story it would be if the sun were not-as it appears-to go around the earth every twenty-four hours but instead took twice that time! All life would be slower. So all life on earth depends upon the revolution of the sun around the earth. In reality, of course, the sun does not revolve around the earth, but that is how it appears.

The influence of the moon is of less significance for man, but nevertheless it is there. When you remember that the tides ebb and flow according to the moon, that they have the same rhythm as the moon's revolution, you will realize with what kind of power the moon works upon the earth. And then it will also be clear that the time of the moon's rotation around the earth has a definite significance. If you were to investigate how the plants develop when the sun has shone upon them, you would also find evidence of the influence of the moon. Thus the sun and the moon have a tremendous influence upon the earth. We can recognize the lunar influence from the time of the rotation, that is, from the time it takes for the moon to become full moon, new moon, and so on. We can recognize the influence of the sun from its rising and setting, or from the fact that it acquires its power in the spring and loses it in the autumn.

And now let me tell you something. You all know of the existence of the grubs of cockchafers. These little worm-like creatures are particularly harmful when they eat up our potatoes. There are years when the potatoes are unharmed by these troublesome little maggots, and then there are years when simply nothing can be done because the grubs are everywhere at work. Well now, suppose there has been a year when the grubs have eaten nearly all the potatoes—if you wait now for four years, the cockchafers will be there in great numbers, because it takes them four years to develop from the grubs. There is a period of approximately four years between the appearance of the grubs—which, like all insects, first have a maggot form before becoming a chrysalis—and the fully developed insect. The grub needs four years to develop into the cockchafer. Naturally, there are always cockchafers, but if there are only a few grubs some year, four years after that there will only be a few cockchafers. The number of cockchafers depends upon the number of grubs that were present four years earlier.

We can see quite clearly that this period of time is connected with the rotation of Mars. The course of propagation of certain insects shows us the kind of influence that Mars exercises upon the life of the earth. But the influence is rather hidden. The influence of the sun is quite obvious, that of the moon not obvious to the same extent, and the influence of Mars is hidden. Everything for which intervals of years are needed on the earth—as in the case of grubs and cockchafers—is dependent upon Mars. So there you see a significant effect of Mars.

Of course someone may say that he doesn't believe this. Well, gentlemen, we ourselves can't possibly make all the experiments, but anyone who doesn't believe what I've said should do the following: he should take the grubs he has collected in a year when they are very numerous and force their development artificially in some container. Within the same year he will find that the majority of them do not develop into cockchafers. Such experiments are never made because these things are not believed.

However, we come now to the essential point. The sun has the most powerful influence of all. But it exerts its greatest influence upon everything on the earth that is dead, that must be called to new life every year—while the moon influences only what is living. Mars exerts its influence only upon what exists in a more delicate form of life, in the sentient realm. The other planets have their influence upon what is of the nature of soul and spirit. The sun, then, is the heavenly body that works the most strongly; it works into the very minerals of the earth. In the minerals the moon can do nothing—nor Mars. If the moon were not there, no animal creature could live and move about on the earth; there could only be plants on the earth, no animals. Again, there are many animal creatures that could not have intervals of years between the larva-stage and the insect if Mars were not there. You see how closely all things are connected.

For instance, we might ask ourselves: When do we human beings become fully grown? When do we stop in the process of our development? Obviously very early, at the age of about twenty or twenty-one. And yet even then something continues to be added. Most people do not actually grow any more, but something is added inwardly. Until about our thirtieth year we do really “increase”; but then, for the first time, we begin to “decrease”. If we compare this with happenings in the universe, we get the time of the rotation of Saturn.

So the planets exercise their influence upon the more delicate conditions of growth and of life. Hence we can say: When, like all the planets, Mars comes near the earth, we must not attach primary importance to this outer nearness.

What is of far greater importance is how things in the universe are connected with the finer, more delicate states and conditions of life.

You must remember that the constitution of Mars is quite different from that of the earth. As I said, Mars is not densely solid in the sense in which today the earth is solid, But I described to you quite recently how the earth too was once in a condition when mineral, solid matter took shape for the first time, how there were then gigantic animals which, however, had as yet no solid bones. Mars today is in a condition similar to that of the earth in that earlier epoch and therefore also has upon it those living beings, those animal beings which the earth had upon it at that time. And “human beings” on Mars are as they were on the earth at that time—still without bones. I described this to you when I was speaking of an earlier period of the earth. These things can be known. They cannot become known by the means employed in modern science for acquiring knowledge; nevertheless it is possible to know these things. If, then, you want to have an idea of what Mars is like today, picture to yourselves what the earth was like in a much earlier age: then you will have a picture of Mars.

You know that on the earth today, the trade winds blow from the south to the north, from the north to the south. These streamings were once much denser than the air; they were currents of fluid, watery air: so it is on Mars today. The air currents on Mars are much more full of life, much more watery.

Jupiter consists almost entirely of air, but again somewhat denser than the air of the earth. Jupiter today represents a condition toward which the earth is now striving, which it will attain only in the future.

And so in the planetary system we find certain states or conditions through which the earth also passes. When we understand the planets in this sense, we understand them rightly.

Has anyone something else to ask about this subject? Perhaps Herr Burle himself?

Herr Burle: I am quite satisfied, thank you!

Question: In one of your last lectures you said that the scents of flowers are related to the planets. Does this also apply to the colors of flowers and colors of stones?

Dr. Steiner: I will repeat very briefly what I said. It was also in answer to a question that had been asked. I said that flowers, and also other substances of the earth, have scent—something in them that exercises a corresponding influence upon man's organ of smell. I said that this is connected with the planets, that the plants and, similarly, certain substances, are “big noses,” noses that perceive the effects coming from the planets. The planets have an influence upon life in its finer, more delicate forms-here, once again, we must think of the finer forms of life. And it can be said that the plants really do come into being out of the scent of the universe, but this scent is so rarefied, so delicate, that we human beings with our coarse noses do not smell it.

But I reminded you that there can be a sense of smell quite different from that possessed by man. You need think only of police dogs. A thief has stolen something and the police dog is taken to the spot where the theft has been committed; it is conveyed to him in some way that a thief has been there and he picks up the scent; then he leads the police on the trail and the thief is often found. Police dogs are used in this way. All kinds of interesting things would come to light if one were to study how scents that are quite imperceptible to a human being are perceptible to a dog.

People have not always realized that dogs have such keen noses. If they had, dogs would have been used earlier to assist the police. It is only rather recently that this has been discovered. Likewise, people today still have no conception of what indescribably delicate noses are possessed by the plants. As a matter of fact, the entire plant is a nose; it takes in the scent of the universe, and if its structure is such that it gives back this cosmic aroma in the way that an echo gives back a sound, it becomes a fragrant plant. So we can say: The scents of flowers, of plants in general, and also other scents on the earth, do indeed relate to the planetary system.

It has been asked whether this also applies to the colors of plants and flowers. As I said, the plant takes shape out of the aroma of the universe and throughout the year it is exposed to the sun. While the form of the plant is shaped by the planets out of the cosmic fragrance, its color is due to the sun and also to some extent to the moon. The scent and the color of plants do not, therefore, come from the same source; the scent comes from the planets, the color from the sun and moon. Things don't always have to come from the same source; just as one has a father and a mother, so the plant has its scent from the planets and its colors from the sun and moon.

You can see from the following that the colors of plants are connected with the sun and moon. If you take plants that have beautiful green leaves and put them in the cellar, they become white, they lose every trace of color because the sun has not been shining on them. They retain their structure, their form, because the cosmic fragrance penetrates everywhere, but they don't keep their color because no sunlight is reaching them. The colors of the plants, therefore, undeniably come from the sun and, as I have said, also from the moon, only this is more difficult to determine. Experiments would have to be made and could be made, by exposing plants in various ways to moonlight; then one would certainly discover it.

Does anyone else want to say something?

Herr Burle: I would like to expand the question by asking about the colors of stones.

Dr. Steiner: With stones and minerals it is like this. If you picture to yourself that the sun has a definite influence upon the plants every day, and also during the course of a year, then you find that the yearly effects of the sun are different from its daily effects. The daily effects of the sun do not bring about much change in the color of the plants; but its yearly influence does affect their color.

However, the sun has not only daily and yearly effects; it has other, quite different effects as well. I spoke to you about this some time ago, but I will mention it again.

Imagine the earth here. The sun rises at a certain point in the heavens, let us say in the spring, on the twenty-first of March. If in the present epoch we look at the point in the heavens where the sun rises on the twenty-first of March, we find behind the sun the constellation of the Fishes (Pisces). The sun has been rising in this particular constellation for hundreds of years, but always at a different point. The point at which the sun rises on the twenty-first of March is different every year. A year ago the sun rose at a point a little farther back, and still farther back the year before that. Going back through a few centuries we find that the point at which the sun rose in spring was still in the same constellation, but if we go back as far as the year 1200 AD. we find that the sun rose in the constellation of the Ram (Aries). Again for a long time it rose in spring in the constellation of the Ram. Still earlier, however, let us say in the epoch of ancient Egypt, the sun rose in the constellation of the Bull (Taurus); and earlier than that in the constellation of the Twins (Gemini), and so on. So we can say that the point at which the sun rises in spring is changing all the time.

This indicates, as you can see, that the sun itself moves its position in the universe; I say it moves its position—but only apparently so, for in reality it is the earth that moves its position. That, however, does not concern us at the moment. In a period of 25,915 years, the point at which the sun rises in spring moves the whole way around the zodiac. In the present year—1924—the sun rises at a certain point in the heavens. 25,915 years ago, that is to say, 23,991 years before the birth of Christ (25,915 minus 1924) the sun rose at the same point! Since then it has made one complete circuit. The sun has a daily circuit, a yearly circuit, and a circuit that takes it 25,915 years to complete. Thus we have a sun-day, a sun-year and a great cosmic year consisting of 25,915 years.

That is very interesting, is it not? And the number 25,915 is itself very interesting! If you think of the breath and remember that a man draws approximately 18 breaths a minute, you can reckon how many breaths he draws in a day. Eighteen breaths a minute, 60 x 18 in an hour = 1,080 breaths. How many breaths, then, does he draw in a day, that is to say, in 24 hours? Twenty-four times 1,080 = 25,920, which is approximately the same as this number 25,915! In a day, man breathes as many times as the sun needs years to make its circuit of the universe. These correspondences are very remarkable.

Now why am I telling you all this? You see, to give color to a plant, the sun needs a year; to give color to a stone, the sun needs 25,915 years. The stone is a much harder fellow. To bestow color on a plant the sun makes a circuit lasting one year. But there is also a circuit which the sun needs 25,915 years to complete. And not until this great circuit has been completed is the sun able to give color to the stones. But at any rate it is always the sun that gives the color. You will realize from this how widely removed the mineral kingdom is from the plant kingdom. If the sun did not move around yearly in the way it does, if it only made daily circuits as well as the great circuit of 25,915 years, then there would be no plants, and instead of cabbage you would be obliged to eat silica—and the human stomach would have to adjust itself accordingly!

Question: Do the herbs that grow on mountains have greater healing properties than those that grow in valleys? If so, what is the explanation?

Dr. Steiner: It is an actual fact that mountain-plants are more valuable as remedies than those that grow in valleys, particularly than those we plant in our ordinary gardens or in a field. It is a good thing that this is the case, for if the plants growing in the valleys were just like those on the mountains, every foodstuff would at the same time be a medicine, and that would not do at all! The plants that have the greatest therapeutic value are indeed those that grow on the mountains. Why is this? All you need to do is to compare the kind of soil in which mountain-plants grow with that in which valley-plants grow.

It is a very different thing if plants grow wild, in uncultivated soil, or are artificially cultivated in a garden. Think of strawberries! Wild strawberries from the woods are tiny but very aromatic; garden strawberries have less scent, are less sharp in taste, but they can grow to an enormous size—why, there are cultivated strawberries as large as eggs! How is this to be accounted for? It is because the soil in the low-lying ground of valleys is not so full of stones that have crumbled away from the rock of the mountains. It is on mountains that really hard stone is to be found—the real mineral. Down in the valleys you find soil that has already been saturated and carried down by the rivers and is therefore completely pulverized. On the mountains there is also, of course, pulverized soil, but it is invariably permeated with tiny granules, especially, shall we say, of quartz, feldspar, and so on. Everywhere there are substances which can be used for healing. Very, very much can be achieved if, for example, we grind down quartz (silica) and make a remedy of it. We are then using these minerals directly as remedies.

The soil in low-lying valleys no longer contains these little stones. But on the mountains the stones are all the time crumbling from the rocks, and the plants draw into their sap the tiny particles of these stones, and that makes them into remedial plants.

Now the following is interesting. The so-called homeopaths—they're not right about everything, but they're right about a good many things—these homeopaths take substances and by grinding them finer and finer, obtain medical remedies. If the substance were used in its crude state it would not be a remedy. But you see, the plants themselves are the most precious homeopaths of all, for they absorb tiny, minute particles from all these stones, which otherwise would have to be refined and pulverized when a medicine is being prepared. So because nature does this far better than we could, we can take the plants themselves and use them directly for healing purposes. And it is a fact that the plants and herbs growing on mountains have far greater healing properties than those in the valleys.

You know, too, how the whole appearance of a plant changes. I spoke about the strawberry: the wild strawberry absorbs a large quantity of a certain mineral. Where does the wild strawberry thrive best? Where there are minerals that contain a little iron. This iron penetrates the soil and from that the strawberry gets its fragrant smell. Certain people whose blood is very sensitive get a rash when they eat strawberries. This is due to the fact that their blood in its ordinary state has sufficient iron and it is getting too much when they eat strawberries. If, then, some people with normal blood get a rash from eating strawberries, one can certainly advise someone whose blood is poor, to eat them! In this way their remedial value is gradually discovered. As a rule, the soil in gardens where the giant strawberries are growing contains no iron; there the strawberries propagate themselves without any impetus from iron. But people are rather short-sighted in this connection and don't follow things up for a sufficiently long time. It is a fact that by growing strawberries in soil that doesn't contain much iron, one can get huge berries, for the reason that the plants do not become fully solid. For think of it—if the strawberry has to get hold of every tiny bit of iron there may be in the soil, then it must have plenty of leeway! But that is a characteristic of the strawberry.

Suppose you look at soil. It contains very minute traces of iron. The strawberry growing in the soil draws these traces of iron to itself from a long way off, for its root has a strong force and attracts the iron from some distance away. Now take a wild strawberry from the woods. It contains a very strong force. Put this strawberry into a garden: there is no iron in the soil, but the strawberry has acquired this tremendous force already, it has it within itself. It draws to itself everything it possibly can, in the garden cultivation too, from a long way away, and nourishes itself exceedingly well. In a garden it does not get iron, but it draws everything else to itself because it is well able to do so. And so it becomes very large.

However, as I have said, people are very short-sighted; they do not observe things thoroughly. So they do not notice that although with garden cultivation they can produce huge strawberries for a number of years, this will only last for a certain time. The fertility then dies away, and they must bring in new strawberry plants from the woods. Fertility cannot be promoted entirely by artificial means; there must be knowledge of things that are directly connected with Nature herself

The rose is the best illustration of this. If you go out into the countryside you will see the wild rose, the dog rose, as it is called, Rosa canina. You know it, I'm sure. This wild rose has five rather pale petals. Why is it that it has this form, produces only five petals, remains so small and at once produces this tiny fruit? These reddish rose hips—you know them—develop from the wild rose. Well, this is due to the fact that the soil where the rose grows wild contains a certain kind of oil—just as the soil of the earth in general contains different oils in its minerals. We get oils out of the earth or out of the plants which have themselves absorbed them from the earth. Now the rose, when it is growing wild out there in the country, must work far and wide with its roots in order to collect from the minerals the tiny amount of oil it needs in order to become a rose. Why is it that the rose must stretch out so far, must extend the drawing power contained in its root to such a distance? The reason is that there is very little humus in the country soil where the rose grows wild. Humus is more oily than the soil of the countryside. Now the rose has a tremendous power for drawing oil to itself.

When the rose is near soil which contains humus, this is fortunate for it; it draws a great deal of oil to itself and develops not only five petals but a whole mass of petals, becoming the luxuriantly-petalled garden rose. But it no longer develops real rosehips because that would need what is contained in the stony soil out in the country. So we can make the wild rose into the ornamental garden rose when we transplant it into soil that is richer in humus, where it can easily get the oils from which to produce its many petals. This is the opposite of what happens with the strawberry: it is difficult for the strawberry to find in the garden what it finds out in the woods. The rose finds a great deal in the garden that is scarce along the roads and so it develops luxuriant petals; but then in fruit formation it remains behind.

So when we know what a particular soil contains, we know what will grow on it. Naturally, this is tremendously important for plant cultivation, especially for the plants needed in agriculture. For there, through manure and the substances added as fertilizers, the soil must be restored so that it will produce what is required. Knowledge of the soil is of enormous importance to the farmer. These things have been more or less forgotten. Simple country farmers used to apply the proper manure by instinct. But nowadays in large-scale agriculture not much attention is paid to the matter. The consequence is that in the course of the last decades nearly all our foodstuffs have greatly deteriorated in quality from what they were when those of us who are now elderly were children.

Earlier this year there was an interesting agricultural conference at which farmers expressed their deep concern for what will become of the plants, of the foodstuffs, if this tendency continues. And indeed, gentlemen, it will continue! In the coming century foodstuffs will become quite unusable if a certain knowledge of the soil is not regained.

We have made a beginning with agriculture in the domain of anthroposophical spiritual science. Recently I gave a course of lectures on agriculture near Breslau,¹⁹ and an association has been formed that will take up this work. And we too have done something here to help the situation. We are only at the very beginning but the problem is being tackled. Thus anthroposophy will gradually penetrate into practical life.

There are still some sessions to make up, so let us meet again next Friday.²⁰

• 18. See Rudolf Steiner, Occult History, Lecture V: “... so-called canals on Mars. There it is a matter of certain streams of force which correspond to an earlier stage of the earth ...”
• 19. At Koberwitz, June 7–16, 1924. See Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture.
• 20. This lecture was postponed to Saturday, Sept. 13

My dear friends! We turn first again to the protecting spirits of those who are standing outside as a result of current events:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,

may your wings bring
the love of our souls
to the earthly people who trust in your protection;
so that, united with your power,
our request may shine helpfully
on the souls that it seeks with love.

And turning to the protecting spirits of those who have already passed through the portals of death:

Spirits of their souls, watchers ever-active,

Your wings may bear
Our souls' imploring love
To the Sphere-men you guard.
That, united with your power,
our request may shine forth helpingly
to the souls it seeks in love.

And the Spirit whom we seek to approach through our spiritual science, the Spirit who has gone to earth's salvation and to human freedom and progress through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your difficult duties.

My dear friends, it would not be in the spirit of the spiritual science movement if the thoughts of the spiritual scientist in our difficult times did not turn again and again to that which goes through the world in our time as a test for humanity, as a difficult fate for humanity. And in the sense of our spiritual science, it must be so, above all, to turn our thoughts inquiringly to many a riddle that already exists in the broader context of what we call the present. For as soon as we ask about the causes that could bring such a difficult fate upon humanity, we are confronted, so to speak, with one mystery after another. And we may now try, from our point of view and with our impulses, to penetrate a little deeper into that which is at work in the present in the wider world. Since I am here so rarely, my task today may be not to speak in the external sense of current events. But it can certainly be my task to point out some things that, deepened by your own reflection, by your own recurring reflection, can solve many a question that today every feeling human heart, every feeling human soul, will want to solve. Things are indeed deeper than those who are unable to sharpen their vision through spiritual-scientific contemplation are often able to recognize. One can see, as one might say, in the most individual events what is actually happening in our time, something that is deeply, deeply incisive. It is just that this deeply incisive is not always seen, not always felt in the appropriate way. One would be a poor spiritual scientist if one believed that one could deepen one's own thinking and feeling and knowing by turning one's gaze away from that which so deeply affects people today and preferring to focus on all manner of more remote matters, at least in thought. As for the most isolated events, I said, today one can feel at every turn what time we actually live in within our immediate present.

Many of you will remember that I have often mentioned the name Herman Grimm among other contemporary figures in the broader sense in the course of the lectures, which have been given for over fifteen years now. Herman Grimm certainly did not stand on the standpoint of spiritual science; but he stood within a world-conception that he had won for himself and that was truly from the source of the spiritual development of the nineteenth century. And it was always interesting to hear, in particular, but also to read when Herman Grimm expressed himself on this or that question, which he then always considered in the sense of a person from the end of the nineteenth century.

I must say that when I mentioned the name Herman Grimm in this or that context within our spiritual-scientific considerations during the course of the twentieth century up to 1914, it was as if he were standing beside me. One always had the need, when considering such personalities who seemed particularly valuable for the development of the spiritual life of the present, to quietly ask oneself the question: How would such a personality have reacted to this or that event that has occurred since his death? Herman Grimm died at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of course, such a question is hypothetical. If we turn our gaze up to the souls of such people who have passed through the portal of death, something different comes out than if we ask ourselves the hypothetical question: How would a person, if still embodied in the body, express themselves about this or that that is going on in the world? Anyone who is interested in world events will, I believe, naturally want to feel the same way about their contemporaries; and if they have been personally close to these contemporaries, they will try to feel with them even beyond death. I said: It seemed to me as if Herman Grimm were standing beside me when I spoke of him up until 1914. That has changed since the difficult events befell us. Since then, it has seemed almost absurd to me to ask the question the way I used to. One would be tempted to say that such a personality, with whom one has still lived and who basically lived with one, even after he had departed from the physical plane, such a personality seems to one today, despite the fact that only three years have passed since 1914, like a mythical personality; like a personality who belongs to a distant history. Almost as if one were studying a personality from the Middle Ages, whom one could not ask, in the sense that I just indicated, how he would speak about the events of the present if he were still embodied in the body. It is really as if we had experienced a relatively short period of time being stretched out long.

It is almost as if one can hardly grasp it when one says: In this short time, we have lived through something like centuries, really like centuries. And what came before that has stormily entered the realm of history, even if we have also experienced it. And we can talk about the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century as if we were talking about events from centuries ago. Much of what we have lived with has become mythical, so deeply incisive were the events of the last three years. And now, however, we find that in many respects what I have said is true, that we can fully accept the complete truth of what has just been said; but on the other hand, we find that not many people, really not many people today, have fully realized what has certainly taken place in their subconscious, what they have experienced in their subconscious. And there is hardly anything better suited than our immediate present to make clear – excuse the harsh expression, but it has to be used – to make clear how much people actually oversleep, really oversleep, what is going on around them, happening. Just as we, when we sleep in some room, have no capacity to absorb what is otherwise going on in the room while we sleep, so many people show a certain drowsiness towards what is going on around them. And this is particularly evident when something so powerful, so great, so incisive is taking place.

The words have been spoken: there has never been such an event in the course of human development. But there is another thing, to feel this in all its depth and strength, not to oversleep it. On such an occasion, we must feel, my dear friends, what I have often said before you and what I would always like to emphasize again: the living nature of spiritual science. This spiritual science would be worth nothing if it were limited to making it quite clear to us, let us say, that the human being consists of four limbs, that there is karma, that there are incarnations, and so on, and we were to absorb these things into our minds as we absorb other things into our minds. Of course we need these things, they are fundamentals. But anyone who grasps them in the same way as other insights into the external world has not grasped the living source of spiritual science, which wants to become a living source of direct life at the same time; which should give us the opportunity to understand and grasp life around us in a fully alert state, to snatch us from sleepiness.

If you want to grasp spiritual science in a way that is full of life, my dear friends, the first thing you need to do is to realize the problematic, the doubtful nature of what is often called self-knowledge. For many people, self-knowledge is often nothing more than a kind of self-incubation, a kind of looking into their inner selves, through which they feel a certain mental voluptuousness, and also serve a certain mental voluptuousness when, in this so-called self-knowledge, they reproach themselves for this or that.

Self-knowledge in the sense in which spiritual science imparts it and in which it is already necessary today and will become ever more necessary in a rapidly maturing future: above all, self-knowledge must be clear to itself that the human being is organized in such a way that, precisely when it comes to recognizing himself, he is almost always inclined to confuse cause and effect. However simple it may appear, what I am about to say is something of immense importance and of far-reaching significance for life.

Let us take a simple case. We begin to treat a person whom we have perhaps been indifferent to, or who may even have been a friend, in a hostile and unfriendly manner, and do all kinds of things against him. What do we usually do when we are dealing with something that involves us to some extent? Well, what we usually do – just ask yourself – is say: Yes, I have to do this or that against this person because he is like this or that. He has done this or that, and it is simply the right thing to do this or that. Of course, such talk may be right in many cases, but in most cases it is not right at all for someone who knows life in its roots. Rather, in most cases it is the case that the person who begins to hate another has has gone through a certain development; not an esoteric development, but he has lived, has lived something out; and what he has lived through has brought it to the point that at a certain moment he felt an inner, subconscious necessity that discharges itself into an impulse of hatred. He must hate, it is as necessary for him as it is to eat when he is hungry. In the course of the development of the soul, it comes about that this soul only feels well when it hates; that it would become ill if it did not hate, and so on. This hatred is the real reason why we are hostile towards others. Of course it is not always so, but in a great many cases it is so; and one does not know life if one does not consider such cases. One wants to be self-sufficient when acting out this hatred, and one seeks out the object of hatred. The object will be found, because after all, something can be found in every person that makes it possible to hate them, to be hostile towards them.

But then we mask this hatred by surrounding it with the veil of justification. We deceive ourselves because we cannot admit to ourselves: You are lying now, you just have to hate. Isn't it, it's not easy to admit that. Because brooding over everything does not want to go so far as to say to oneself: I now have to hate for a while to not burst; so I live out this hatred.

Of course, it can be the same with love. Because love can also occur at a certain moment in life, and then, of course, one finds a lovable object to which one attributes all good qualities – perhaps it also has these qualities. But one must realize that especially in these matters, cause and effect are often confused in an outstanding way, and that what a person consciously says to himself actually consists only of him taking a kind of emotional opiate to numb himself to what actually lives in his soul.

It is remarkable what people can achieve in this area. I met a gentleman who wanted to do a certain job, but always explained that he did not want to do the job at all, that he only felt it was his mission to do the job. He would much rather do the opposite job. That is what he talked himself into believing. In reality, it was quite different. He felt totally incapable of doing the opposite work. He only believed that he could achieve something in this field. But, no, that was not a noble motivation. Especially when you want to talk to people about a mission, you will find them much more willing to make sacrifices if you say: I hate the work, but I feel that it is my mission. These are all soul opiates to disguise the impulses present in the soul – not only from others, but also from oneself.

Yes, the human soul is complicated, and above all, deep. And you can descend into deep, deep shafts, and you will still only partially understand it. From this you will understand, my dear friends, that so-called self-poreering can only be a very one-sided path to what can be called self-knowledge. In reality, self-knowledge can only be gained if one is able to measure one's own self against the great development of humanity, to enter into a relationship with the great development of humanity.

Now let us take such a building block for self-knowledge for a person of the present day, taken from a somewhat larger context. We have often spoken from the most diverse points of view about the post-Atlantic period, in the fifth epoch of which we are placed. Today we want to supplement what has been discussed from a different point of view, because it is precisely through such an addition, through such a consideration, that some foundations can be provided on which to build those thoughts that at least to some extent convey an understanding of the present, the present that is immediately around us. However, when one looks at the development of humanity, one makes a serious mistake almost without exception today. Today, people have certain ideas about what goes on in the human soul when the human soul thinks, feels and wills and so on. Man has the tacit assumption that what takes place in this human soul in thinking, feeling and willing has always taken place in the times that can be remembered and established through spiritual science, beyond the historical. But it is not so. Even in the soul of the Middle Ages, it looks quite different than in the soul of the Greek age. Our time is particularly suited to pointing out such things, because a waking soul today looks quite different than it did in 1913. But a soul of the Middle Ages was not created like a present-day soul, or even a Roman or Greek soul, or going back even further. Well, today we go no further back than the time of the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe.

You know, the first period, which begins after the catastrophe is over, is the time of the primeval Indian period; that time, of which no historical documents report. Everything that is reported belongs to a much later time. But we have often characterized this primeval Indian time. If we direct our research-oriented, spiritual scientific gaze to this time, we find that the whole of life, and in particular the life in which the human being lives with his soul in the social environment, was quite different during this primeval Indian time than what we can actually imagine today. Today, when we think about human development, we think the way we have to think when we look at a person around us. We see that a person develops in a particular way during childhood, that development stops at a certain age, and then a certain stationary state occurs. We all know that in childhood, the human being is very dependent on the physical in terms of soul and spirit. The various stages of physical development are also expressed in the soul and spirit. And vice versa: the soul and spirit are connected to the physical, to structural changes in the nervous system, to changes in the muscular system, in the metabolic system, and so on. But then there comes a certain age when we say to ourselves, in today's world: now we are adult human beings; so adult human beings, in fact, that no one can dispute our right to have a say in parliaments, to have as much say as the elderly. This is also evident in other areas, that in our time people have truly come to realize: they have become adults. It is not the case for everyone, the present are always excluded; but for many people today, if you expect them to read this or that at a certain age, they say: Oh, that belongs to school age; you read that at school; you have it inside you now.

All this is based on the fact that from a certain point in time, the spiritual-soul becomes independent of the physical-bodily. At this point, the physical-bodily comes to a certain conclusion. The soul-spiritual continues, and for most people it continues in such a way that they remain stationary, that they most decidedly reject further development.

This was different in the period we have to call the primeval Indian. In terms of their soul and spiritual life, people remained dependent on the physical and bodily well into their fifties. Just think what such a person went through. He went through the whole ascending life of childhood and youth, where one grows, thrives and blossoms and experiences the spiritual and soul life in this sense. Then he went through the middle of life in his thirties until the age of 35. Then one begins to develop in reverse. One begins to mineralize, to sclerotize. But today we no longer go along with this in our soul and spirit. Everything that today the child only feels as instinctive dependence of the soul-spiritual on the physical-bodily, thus only feels as a human being in the ascending, blossoming, thriving, growing , but also at the point of culmination; and then he felt again how the body sinks into itself, how the physical body recedes. He felt that the physical body recedes, something we do not sense today: the physical body no longer provides the foundation for the soul and spirit, it collapses into itself. But as the physical body declined, he perceived the spiritual life, especially in a dreamy or sleeping state. Just as the ascending and flourishing life connects one to matter, so the declining life frees one from matter. The soul feels more and more akin to the spiritual life. And that reached its peak between the ages of 48 and 56. In the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe, human beings were thus capable of development up to the age of 56. Then up to the ages of 55, 54, 53, and so on. And when the first cultural epoch, the primeval Indian one, had passed, human beings were still capable of development up to the age of 48. Therefore, the whole social life was different. It was the case that people in those days looked up to those who had reached their fifties; they knew that they had a special connection with the spiritual world.

The fact that the elderly were in contact with the spiritual world was simply a result of evolution. And the whole of social feeling, the whole of social life, was influenced by this. However, this was also connected with the fact that, in those days, the environment of the human being, the earthly environment of the human being, was different, so to speak. This earthly environment of man was such in those days that the spirits of the three nearest hierarchies - the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai - worked through the immediate elements. And the best, the noblest spirits of these three higher hierarchies worked through the elements, water, air, warmth, which man absorbed. It is particularly important to note that what we call the spirit of the age, that is, the essence of the hierarchy of the archai, worked directly through the elements in those days. One can say: in air and warmth, with the climate, man inhaled spirituality. And he inhaled this spirituality purely as spirituality in the most perfect way between the 48th and 56th year of life in the epoch referred to.

And then came the time that we call the proto-Persian period. During this time, people only remained capable of development in the manner indicated initially until the 48th year, then until the 47th, until the 46th and so on until the 42nd year, when the proto-Persian period had expired. So by that time, people had already come so far in their development that by the 48th year they no longer got anything for their development from the 48th year. If someone wanted to remain capable of development, he had to shape the soul in a way that was capable of development, independently of what the environment had to offer. But at least during this original Persian period, one remained capable of development until the 42nd year. And this was connected with the fact that although the archai, the spirits of time, had withdrawn more from the immediate elemental forces of the earth, the spirits of the people, the archangeloi, as they are called, still worked strongly through the elements, and these were the best spiritual beings of the spiritual hierarchies. Therefore, in a certain sense, what was the national context over the earth in the ancient Persian period was regulated according to spiritual laws. For that which regulated the relationships between the individual nations depended on spiritual laws. It may be more or less comprehensible to us, but that is not the point; in a certain sense, they were divine spiritual laws.

The spirits of the higher hierarchies withdrew even further during the third post-Atlantic period. And we find in this time that actually the human being, who at the beginning remained capable of development until the age of 42, now at the end of the third post-Atlantic period remains capable of development only until the age of 35. We find that during this time people still had a living relationship with the being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi that belonged to them. The individual people still knew very well: they have a spirit being with them, they are in contact with the spirit being. To speak of the fact that there is no spiritual world would have been nonsense for the time, because every single person knew that he was related to a being from the hierarchy of the angeloi. This is therefore the epoch in which people are capable of development until the end of the thirties.

Now the fourth post-Atlantean period began. During this time, the general age of humanity declined again. We know that the third period begins with the year 747 BC, before the Mystery of Golgotha, and ends with the year 1413 AD, after the Mystery of Golgotha. It was the time when the spirits of the higher hierarchies, who had worked directly through the elements and their forces in the earth, had withdrawn from direct human observation and human experience. The Greeks and Romans remained capable of development only into their thirties, into the middle of life. This is certainly connected with the whole view of life of the Greeks and Romans, which I have already touched on. On the one hand, we are entering an age in which every human being is still so close to those ancient times when people had a connection to the spiritual world because they were able to develop into old age. This is why the Greeks — and this must be know today if you want to judge the Greeks - the Greeks felt that when they moved their hands, when they grew, when they thought, when they ate and drank, they were glowing with a soul; that there is soul in everything that is in them. To doubt that there is something spiritual in everything that is physically lived out would have been inconceivable to the Greeks. But if a Greek or a Roman wanted to know more about the spiritual world, they had to seek this knowledge through the mysteries. There, indeed, one could still acquire the ability to see into the spiritual world, but it is quite interesting to consider those Greeks who rose to the heights of spiritual development but were not initiated into the mysteries, such as Aristotle. He was one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He was a thinker of this Greek period. He was able to think what only a Greek could think, but he did so in the sharpest way. That is to say, it was clear to him that the human being as a physical being had to be connected to a soul and spirit. But now Aristotle said to himself: If I take away one arm of a human being, he is no longer a whole human being. If I take away two arms, even less. But if I take away the whole body, as happens at death, then he is certainly no longer a whole human being. Therefore, for Aristotle, the human soul, when it has passed through the gate of death, is no longer “a whole human being”. For Aristotle, a whole human being is, of course, made up of body and soul. In a sense, the soul is only an incomplete human being when it has passed through the gate of death. Aristotle defended the immortality of the soul philosophically, but for him it is only what it was for Homer, who said: “Better a beggar in the underworld than a king in the realm of shadows.” A king in the realm of shadows is a soul among incomplete human souls.

So it had come about, on the one hand, that human ideas, powers of perception, unfertilized powers of perception, as a result of humanity having regressed in its age to the 28th year, could no longer comprehend or could only comprehend that everything physical is filled with soul, but that the soul is not complete when it is separated from the body. But anyone who makes an effort to understand Aristotle will find that this is the correct interpretation, which could easily be proved philosophically. On the other hand, however, we see that in those days, real full humanity, what man actually is in his deepest being, can only be known through initiation into the mysteries.

While the Greeks underwent a development – which is very interesting, as Aristotle showed up to the Stoics – in which they sought to know what human knowledge can know, Roman development went other ways. With the establishment of the Imperium Romanum, after the Roman Republic, the Roman emperors wanted to be full human beings. Through the power of the physical plan, they were able to force themselves to undergo initiation. And so we have the peculiar phenomenon that on the one hand we have Aristotle, who only made it to such a concept of immortality as I have described, and on the other hand we have the peculiar phenomenon that, without sufficient preparation, purely because they had the power, the Roman emperors were able to force the initiation upon themselves. Thus not only was Augustus an initiate who knew from the mysteries what a secret there is about man; but we also have to count Caligula among the initiates. For it is a truth and not a fairy tale that Caligula, through his initiation into the mysteries, was able to realize that which is expressed figuratively, but is correctly and truly expressed by what history relates – that he was able to commune with the spirits of the moon at night and from there draw inspiration. It is true that Caligula did not merely engage in dramatic posturing, but because he knew the significance of things, he sometimes had himself worshiped as Jupiter, as Bacchus, as Apollo, or as some other god, because he believed in the identity of man with the god.

Commodus, who was not only an initiate, but also an initiator, killed [gap in the transcript]

We finally have the initiate Nero. And, as incredible as it may sound, it must be said today what actually prevailed in the Imperium romanum – in this Imperium romanum, which has transmitted its developmental impulses through a thousand and one channels through the Middle Ages and into our time. Even today, when we think legally, we are still thinking in the sense of this Imperium Romanum, and we think in many other areas in the sense of this Imperium Romanum. On the one hand, these Caesars had certainly come to a view from which they could say how man is connected to the spiritual world. On the other hand, however, they had come to despise what was the world of the physical plane. What Nero did was largely based on misanthropy. Caligula already had this misanthropy. When, for example, an innocent man had been condemned at a court hearing, he said: What does it matter; he will be as guilty as the guilty man; and the judge will be no less guilty than the condemned man. And Nero was convinced – and this is important to know – that there can be nothing good about man, about the physical man here on earth; that everything that lives in the physical man is unchaste; that everything is permeated by physical drives.

If you want to fully understand the soul configuration of Nero, then you have to say: Nero is actually the first psychoanalyst, but - a psychoanalyst of greatness; compared to him, the “Freuderl” is actually just a - well, a “Neroerl”. But there is a relationship. Such relationships run through history without people seeing them, they are very much asleep. And this relationship can have an effect.

Now, 747 BC marks the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantic age. At that time, humanity lived to be 35 years old. A little later, it only lived to be 34 years old, and even later, 33 years old. This means that humanity reached this level of development at the moment when our era begins.

We can therefore say that in the post-Atlantean period, people began with an age of 56 years; up to the 56th year, the human being remained capable of development. Then, in the course of the second, third and fourth periods, the age of human development went down to 33 years. And what happened when the age of human development had gone down to 33 years? What happened? In the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ developed up to the age of 33. That is to say, He grew contrary to the age of humanity.

Consider, my dear friends, what this means! We can follow how people in ancient times had their development up to old age. And when the decline had occurred by the age of 33, the Christ Jesus being developed among them, so to speak, ran counter to the development of humanity, up to the age of 33. When one comes to this matter in a spiritually scientific way, something happens to the human soul. Then the moment arrives when one is confronted with the miracle, the mystery of humanity, in the greatest emotion: the sacrifice of Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha coincides with the descent of the age of humanity. This is as powerful as anything that can confront you today among the mysteries of humanity. It is something great and powerful that is revealed here from the history of humanity. And truly, spiritual science is, as you can see from this, not intended to somehow suppress those feelings and perceptions that a person can have in the face of the greatness and violence and miraculous effectiveness of the world. Because the further we progress in spiritual science, the better we understand the divine-spiritual forces that prevail in human development. We feel that we are only at the beginning of our understanding of Christ; that times will come when this understanding of Christ will reveal itself quite differently than it can be the case today. But it must develop quite differently. After all, we now live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, and the human being remains capable of development only up to the age of 27. After 1413, when the fifth post-Atlantic period began, people were capable of development until the 28th year. Today, until the 27th year. This means that, through what nature itself provides, we no longer remain capable of development even into the middle of our lives.

From this, however, you can see, my dear friends, how spiritual science truly does not arise from an arbitrary idea, from an arbitrary impulse for agitation. If natural science does not provide what makes human beings capable of development, then human beings must seek in their souls the development that is no longer given to them by nature. He must seek ways into the spiritual world by the soul turning to itself. And however strange and grotesque it may sound, it is true: if you do not seek to stimulate the innermost soul impulse that nature no longer gives us, then you will not live longer than 27 years, even if you live to be a hundred. We are now at that stage in human development where we cannot grow older than 27 years. This winter, in which I have come to a preliminary conclusion on many of the research questions that have occupied me for more than thirty years, has really kept me very much alive to what is actually connected with this realization, which comes from a completely different angle. Many phenomena of the present have made me wonder: yes, where does it all come from? Why is it that in our time we are experiencing precisely what could be called such a terrible unreality of thought and ideals?

This is what should be particularly noticeable to those people who are not asleep, that people are unable to immerse themselves in reality with their ideas and ideals. Of course, they have beautiful ideas, have beautiful ideals, but these ideas and ideals cannot be immersed in reality. They are not strong enough to grasp reality. Therefore they remain beautiful ideas and ideals, which people lick their lips over when they express them, but which have no driving force because they do not submerge into reality. We can see this most in everyday life. What is it when it is said today: “The most capable man must stand in the right place in the future.” We hear that today from all rooftops. It is a beautiful idea; certainly. But what is this beautiful idea worth when it is precisely the “nephew” who is the “most capable.” It is truly not a matter of having beautiful ideas, but of applying these beautiful ideas in reality; of developing a state of mind that is capable of immersing itself in life.

However, if everything that is unable to be realized in life were to be eliminated, then the whole science of states and nations could be eliminated. For all these things are abstract ideas, are unreal ideas. That is why some personalities are so enigmatic.

My dear friends, I am not saying what I am about to say out of chauvinistic sentiment. It has been hard enough for me to arrive at such realizations. I say it because I believe I possess the knowledge. If I look for a typical person – in order to avoid being offended by close personalities, let us take a somewhat more distant one – there is a personality in whom one can clearly see from everything it says world, that, however old he is, he is in reality no older than 27 years, and therefore expresses ideas that go beyond the whole earth today, but which are unrealistic. And this personality, who is so truly a type of our time that she cannot get older than 27 years because she rejects the idea of developing forces from within that nature itself provides, is the President of the United States of North America, Woodrow Wilson. I need only point out that I characterized Woodrow Wilson in the Helsingfors cycle before the war, so that one need not have the impression that I am doing so now under the impression of the present circumstances. But only because of this do the outbursts of Woodrow Wilson's ideas appear so unreal, so mere words, to those who know reality, because it is as I have discussed it. That is why it could happen that this man, who holds one of the most powerful positions of the present day, could publish a peace manifesto and thereby not achieve peace, but only war in his own country; because his ideas are not only unrealistic, but in many respects even opposed to reality.

But he is the representative of our time. That is what our time is like. And our time is fundamentally incapable of understanding reality. Anyone who expresses realistic ideas is understood in the same way as those who express abstract, unrealistic ideas. A spiritual-scientific education must first be created to create an understanding of reality.

As you can see, there is a way to get to know our time. But you have to start from a broad point of view. For someone who has a sense of reality, it is the most incredible thing that people today achieve in terms of ideas and ideals. These ideas are beautiful, wonderful, and Eucken's ideas are even more beautiful. They satisfy people very much. But Eucken is a philosopher who, although he is an old man, is no older than 27 years old, hence this peculiar jumble of beautiful ideas that seem beautiful to people. You see, you have to see through the periods that follow one another in history, in their true form, in their immediate reality. The Greeks still knew: the soul pervades the body. In the fifth epoch, this is known less and less, unless it is acquired through the soul, through a spiritual impulse that one seeks within oneself from within, because the body no longer gives this impulse to the soul by itself.

Now there is a beautiful search, my dear friends, a beautiful search for the human being who has become, as it were, dispirited, but now consciously, not unconsciously, as it was with the Persian, with the Egyptian - there was beautiful endeavor to lead the dead man in his soul back up into the spiritual world; now consciously, because the body no longer connects to the spiritual, now to connect with the soul to the spiritual. The path has been started and it leads directly into spiritual science. But it must be walked. This path is still little understood today. It is a sign, a deeply significant sign, how it was begun through Lessing, Herder, through Schiller and Goethe and those who were with them, to reconnect the dispirited human being to the spiritual world. And Schiller is greater as the writer of the Aesthetic Letters than as a poet. For in these Aesthetic Letters, Schiller seeks the way back for the human soul to the spiritual. He seeks it in a modern way, as modern man must seek it. Thus, through his “Letters on Aesthetic Education,” Schiller is one of the greatest educators of modern times, but he is also the least appreciated in this field of all – and so is Herder; [and also] Lessing, who is the first to point out the “education of the human race” in broad lines. Then Goethe, in his Imaginationen, linking all this in his “Fairytale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily. It is therefore not a coincidence but an inner necessity that our Mystery Plays should take up the first Mystery Drama from this fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. This is where what is in store for humanity in the near future begins: that it will have to seek to re-establish contact with the spiritual world through inner impulses, but now consciously through the free, independent soul. But these things are difficult to understand today. It is difficult to create an understanding for them.

Oh, if you could go back to how our Anthroposophical Society and the Anthroposophical movement developed, you would see in several places: it should be pointed out. You will find a small booklet that contains lectures of mine from that time about Schiller's philosophical significance. And, as I said, you will find the link to Goethe's fairy tales in the Mystery Dramas. These things are more in touch with the times in which we live than the rehashing of intellectual achievements of earlier times that are no longer suitable for our time. And it was not a process of progress but of degeneration when, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Theosophical Society emerged and wanted to transplant oriental-Indian essence into Europe without realizing that with what arose in Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, and what must develop on their soil, something much more significant and greater has been created for modern humanity than can ever come from any earlier source.

I myself have to think back to some personally strange things. When the president of the Theosophical Society in Germany, about whom she now writes so “kindly”, made her first appearance in Hamburg, I asked her whether it was not actually the task of the newer times to tie in with the spiritual life that had been achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Herder and so on. At the time, she replied, based on the process of degeneration of the Theosophical Society: “These are all people whose ideas were more distant from actual spiritual life. You have to penetrate much more deeply.” And so, through that reality, that materialistic construct, which the Theosophical Society as a theosophical doctrine contains, was placed in the place of the truly spiritual, which, basically, as from the very beginning, we wanted and needed. Because, whether you imagine the etheric body as a more or less dense or thin haze, you imagine it as a certain haze and so on. And even with the astral body, and with everything else, one still speaks of atoms and the like.

So the first steps, but only the first steps, had to be linked to the world view that finds expression in the “Letters on Aesthetic Education” and in the “Fairytale”. Just feel the necessities of a spiritual movement.

We will come to the sixth cultural period. We can then expect that humanity will remain capable of development into the 21st, 20th, 19th, and so on down to the 14th year. So humanity will remain infantile if it does not undergo an inner development, which can only come through spiritual knowledge.

But there are still quite different phenomena connected with what has been said. The estrangement from reality to which I have drawn attention is connected with this twenty-seven year-old age. Men must consciously find their way back into reality, for full reality also contains spiritual reality. He who does not recognize the spiritual world thereby becomes a man hostile to reality. That is why our political economy, our political science, is an insubstantial abstraction that can never create anything, because it treats reality like someone who sees nothing in a horseshoe magnet except a thing with which to shoe a horse's hoof. He does not know that the iron contains magnetic forces. Today, humanity must consciously regain what it once had instinctively, what has been lost to it. And here we are at a very important point. Much that people once had instinctively must now be consciously acquired, and this includes a sense of truth.

The world is taking giant strides towards people losing their instinctive sense of truth and having to acquire a new, conscious sense of truth. Therefore, we encounter things at every turn that we can only understand if we are able to see the world through the prism of the preconditions we have described today. Sometimes people are well-meaning, not ill-intentioned. But then they cannot help but harbor unrealistic ideas; they are incapable of responding to ideas that are rooted in reality. I can give you a good example of this that appeared recently in an article in the magazine 'Die Furche'. There you can read a relatively benevolent article about the relationship between spiritual science and religion. All sorts of strange things are said. And at the end, something is said about which one would have to scratch one's head to find any way of justifying that such a thing could be said about a person who is not malevolent:

[Rudolf Steiner has deeply recognized the power of self-love, with which one also loves what one should feel as ugly; but he says nothing against the most anti-divine power of this self-love, with which it only wants to ascribe the redemption of its own self to itself again and again, instead of only out of Christ Jesus, who wants to bring about his redemption in us.

So think about that. Think about this sentence in the light of what I have been saying for years about the Christ impulse in relation to human development. It is possible for something like this to be put forward by a source that is not malevolent.

[Rudolf Steiner deeply understood the power of self-love, with which one also loves what one should perceive as ugly; but he says nothing against the most anti-divine force of this self-love, with which it only wants to ascribe the redemption of one's own self to itself again and again, instead of solely from Christ Jesus, who wants to bring about his redemption in us.

While [but precisely] spiritual science is the only thing today that, in the face of the materialistic world view and also in the face of Christianity, which has become anti-Christian, restores the Mystery of Golgotha in its full depth. But people today do not read such things, and they do not think to test these things for their truth content. Today, people do not have enthusiasm for the truth. Therefore, they do not admit that such things are completely equivalent to lies, because it is a lie. People do not want to call things by their right name. There is an estrangement from reality. And it is necessary, because it is a very widespread evil, that someone who does not want to face the world while asleep but rather wide-awake should confront such a phenomenon with the impulses of spiritual science and in full consciousness.

A magazine called “The Invisible Temple” appears. In it, under the direction of a certain Horneffer, it is preached that a higher moralization of humanity should take place. Now, I am convinced that many people turn to such things with emotion - but emotion is rarely true today - in good faith. Now, there is a sentence in the magazine that

[However different the monists and the theosophists are, and however eagerly they fight and despise each other, they are strangely similar in one respect: they monopolize the word “science” for themselves. What they themselves do is true, pure science; what other people do is sham and pseudo-science. This can be read in Haeckel and Rudolf Steiner.

Now I ask you if I have ever written anything like this: what I write and say is science; what others write is pseudo-science.

What is this if not a lie! The people who put something like this together, even those who know that it is a lie, do not approach things with the feeling that they are dealing with dishonesty.

But today we need a new sense of truth. We must call a spade a spade. Such a magazine lies, and it is not ashamed to lie. And it writes about human ennoblement and human moralization by people who can be shown to be lying.

Keen observation, a real attention to the actual truth, that is what belongs above all to the duties of those who want to understand the anthroposophical world view, as a world view, as a view of life; not an easy acceptance of the facts of the world, whether on the spiritual or physical plane. Today, a tremendous magnitude and strength of earnest must permeate the world where a true world view is concerned; an earnestness that cannot be compared to any earnestness of earlier times. But for this to happen, people must become aware of how lightly humanity treats the truth today.

I will give you only a few examples that may be close to us. Under such circumstances, it is truly no wonder that this spiritual science, just at the time when it seems to be opening up from one side, is having some impressions and influences on the currents of our time – that this spiritual science, on the other hand, is experiencing attack after attack, and indeed such attacks that really arise from the nature of our time.

I truly did not consider it worthwhile to go into the matter for as long as the Freimarke and others were scolding the things. But the time has come when opponents are being recruited from within the Anthroposophical Society itself, and not opponents who fight honestly, but opponents who spread untruth after untruth in order to drive spiritual science into a scandal. The slander and vilification that have come our way during this time cannot be described. Allow me, however, to draw attention to some of them here as well.

I know that there are members among us, members of the Anthroposophical Society, who say with a haughty air: one does not get involved in these things, one only gets into personal squabbling. But one should turn to those who are the cause of this personal squabbling, not to those who have to defend themselves. We have gone through bitter enough times in which we had to defend ourselves.

I do not want to be misunderstood, my dear friends. Opposition to spiritual science may occur as much in the world as is always possible. It only depends on how this opposition occurs. I still count some of the opposition as justified, even if this opposition is often strange in expression. I would just like to remind you that a man who has done an enormous amount for our cause in recent years, Ludwig Deinhard, only slowly came around and became a sincere friend, and that at the beginning, when I had to appear in Germany, he could not approve of it and was quite in agreement with those who publicly attacked me at the time. I did not respond to such attacks, although at the time, when I gave a lecture in Munich, the sentence was said: “The Berlin traveler for Theosophy has appeared again.” I still consider such things to be justified. One can have opinions, no matter how trivially they are expressed. Therefore, I do not want to be misunderstood. If an opponent appears honestly, or even dishonestly, but in a literary form, that is not what I mean today. What I want to talk about today is opposition, not out of the matter itself, but out of objective untruth. And in this respect, there have been some terrible developments in recent times. It must be said that it has never happened before that such things have been thrown at a matter as the one I have to represent.

Anyone who speaks to esoteric impulses knows that he must naturally create opponents for himself. Because that which must be spoken by the real spiritual science, that just causes opposition. And it is perhaps not too much to say that if you speak to 120 people, in all seriousness about the deepest things, among these 120 there are probably 70 possible opponents; 70 possible enemies. That is the case. You must not be under any illusions about that.

And it is not a question of whether such opponents arise or not, but of whether they are decent or not. And certainly much in this area emerges from what I have characterized today. But we are experiencing the strangest things. And so please allow me to make a few brief remarks about this, because I simply have to take action against these attacks that are coming from within society, from members of society – who have now left, admittedly. I have to say a few words to you about this.

All in all, it has to be said: today is the time to raise the question: Can the Anthroposophical Society continue in this way if I am to give lectures in it – or not? The Anthroposophical Society is truly something other than anthroposophy or spiritual science. Spiritual science would not have the opposition that it currently has, which is currently coming from the fact that, firstly, people are relying on dishonesty and because other people, who are outside, are using this dishonesty. It is too inconvenient for these latter people to study spiritual science in order to attack it. It is much easier to drive spiritual science into a scandal. To attack it, one would first have to study it. It is easier this way, but what do we experience?

Above all, a positive, active judgment must develop in the Anthroposophical Society if it is to continue to exist as such. After all, spiritual science could very well continue without the Society. You could have three or four friends in every city who could arrange everything needed for lectures; you don't need an Anthroposophical Society for that. So we must not confuse anthroposophy with the Anthroposophical Society. I said that a more active judgment is needed. We have to recognize that things are possible in our Society that are actually only possible within it. We first had to found the Society for these things to become possible. I want to recall an older matter. But a new one is not out of place in telling this story.

A certain Mr. Grasshoff joined our society. He attended lectures in all cities for a while, was present everywhere. You may, of course, ask why the man was accepted. Yes, you see, there is no way to reject people under certain conditions when they are brought in; you would have to anticipate the future. Do you think that a Grasshoff would come in and I would say: We cannot accept you. – Yes, why not? – Well, because in the future you will be a swine against society!

You can't say that if something is only going to happen in the future but has not yet happened. So you have to let such people into society, that goes without saying.

This Mr. Grasshoff listened to all the lectures he could possibly hear; he borrowed all the notes taken by the members. He copied everything down. After a while he went back to America, where he had come from, and wrote a nice book. In this book, he put together everything he had heard in the various lectures, what he had found in the books, and what he had written from the unpublished lectures. But he did not say that. He wrote a preface to the book. There he says: I heard this and that from Dr. Steiner, but then I was not finished. But I was then given the task of going to a master, of course a master in the Transylvanian Alps, and there this master told me the deeper things that I still lacked. So this “deeper” and this “higher” all comes from this “master”. As I said, everything in this book is copied from my lectures and from books and notes of other members.

Now, the book was published in America. But what happened? The book, titled “Rosicrucian World Conception,” was published in America.

One could still say: Well, that's American, you couldn't expect much different over there. But then a book publisher was found here in Germany, run by a certain Dr. Hugo Vollrath. He was inclined to translate this book into German and to publish it in individual lesson letters. And a preface was written to the effect that some of the content had already come to light in Germany, but that it first had to be cleansed in the pure air of California, in America. Such a disgraceful piece is actually not possible in literary life outside. I even told this story in public lectures. It is a disgrace that should have become known everywhere if it had been understood with the necessary power of judgment. I would like to go and collect how many people know about it. But that is why things can always repeat themselves.

That is why it could happen that a member, a long-standing member, who of course could not be expelled for the same reason that Mr. Grasshoff - who appeared under the name A. M. Heindel - could not be expelled, could write a book called “Who Was Christ?” In this book, he did not go to the same lengths as Mr. Grasshoff, but he did compile all kinds of cycles under the motto that knowledge should not be kept secret but belongs to the times. The person from whom he copied this motto took it very badly because the person who wrote it meant it quite differently. But then he hinted: Dr. Steiner did indeed point out some of these things, but it is necessary to elaborate on all of them. — You can imagine, my dear friends, that this book had to be rejected by the Anthroposophical-Philosophical Publishing House in Berlin. Thereupon the man became an opponent.

So, a long-standing member, a member who has even done a lot for the Anthroposophical Society, a member who for a long time has appeared to be a quiet member, becomes an opponent because a brochure is rejected by the publisher. That is the real reason for the antagonism. That is the reason. Of course, one sometimes says, it is not quite true, post hoc, but one does not go far wrong with such things if one uses the expression. In any case, Seiling has not only become an opponent, but an enemy, after his brochure had to be rejected by the publisher. He did, however, admit to someone that he had suffered a great deal from me in recent years and therefore had to write some things from his soul. Yes, but I also had some strange experiences with this gentleman. You know that the gentleman speaks a very Berlin dialect and had no idea about recitation. He took a few lessons and was also very useful because he could use the dialect as a Berliner. But then the story got into his head. Then he appeared in Dornach: Now I, an old fellow, want to show you what reciting is. I even showed my nephew, I want to show you what I achieve before the world as a reciter. It is understandable that someone like this, who has a great deal of vanity, suffers when one cannot say 'yes' to such things as a matter of course. But with all the ridiculous contradictions that he has put together, this man could not have lured a dog out of the oven, because anyone can check them. That is not the point, but the point is that these contradictions had to be covered up with a lot of untrue stuff. And this untrue stuff, he concocts it out of “conversations”. He is one of those people who have been coming for years with requests for private conversations, for interviews. He now distorts what happened in these conversations, and what he cites is all objectively untrue. Objectively untrue! For example, that I had told someone – which he cites – that I had not agreed to the publishing house accepting another brochure that had appeared before. But Dr. Steiner had wanted this brochure from him in her publishing house, so I had given in. Now he talks about private conversations like that. If these private conversations can be misused like that, then it is a fatal thing.

The gentleman presents himself in a very strange light. He knows very well how things are in Dornach. He knows that the others caused a scandal there, but now he writes in the “Psychical Studies” that our marriage has led to scandals. — [But:] We were quite innocent of the scandal, the others caused it. This is a clever way of deliberately dragging things into scandal if that is what you want. You just have to look at things in the right way. And what do we experience next?

A man in a city in central Germany wrote to the present Dr. Steiner years ago, saying that he had reached a turning point in his soul and did not know what to do. Should he get involved in a business or should he help his soul in some other way? Dr. Steiner wrote to him that we could not deal with such things. Then he reappeared as a member of the Theosophical Society in Berlin. There he had initially surprised the members, despite having no idea of recitation, by pouring out Schiller's “Kassandra” over the eardrums [of those present] in a – well, let's say in a “surprising” way. The man did not aspire to become an artist, as he claimed, but: to be an artist. I was later told by a reliable source that he was now pursuing the strategy of marrying his way into our society, but he did not succeed. Then he turned to Munich. There, everything that could be done for him was done. He imagined that he had to paint. He couldn't paint, nor did he have any talent for it. But, you know, some talent, at least the small talents, only show up after some time. They got him a teacher, but you can't turn him into a genius in the blink of an eye. If he had wanted to become something, they would have accommodated that. But he wanted to be a painter, to be a genius, not just become one. That's a terrible crime, isn't it? In short, the man also became an enemy one day, and for some time now he has been engaged in some strange writing. His name is Erich Bamler.

Yes, it is extremely difficult to take this writing seriously. For example, one of the points mentioned is that I advised the man to do a deep occult exercise. The exercise: He should see everything in his environment as good and necessary. You only have to look it up in Schopenhauer's works to find this sentence. There you will find that Schopenhauer considers this behavior to be very beneficial for mental and spiritual health. Yes, as a result of this sentence, the man now claims to have developed blue bumps on his legs and other things that have given him a bad occult development. Things are so stupid, so terribly stupid, that you can only make something of them if you use defamatory things to smear the other person and use them as clothing. And today, of course, there are enough people who do this. It is even possible that university professors do not content themselves with a factual reply, but also dress it up in real madness. But today there are editors who do not go into spiritual science. They have no idea about it. But they do go into the things that are reported to them. And what is reported?

A few days ago I received a letter. A gentleman wrote to me saying that he had been to one of my lectures in a town in North Germany and that at this lecture he had, as he assured me, heard with his own ears that I had pointed out that the Christ would repeatedly appear on Earth and that I had made it clear that I myself was laying claim to this incarnation. Imagine that, my dear friends! And the man not only says that he himself has heard this, but he can also produce witnesses who have also heard it. Such things are happening today. Can it be incomprehensible that there are editors like those who come into question here in this case, who let themselves be told these things, especially when they are brought by members who have surrendered to the cultivated lack of judgment in society. But this is only the beginning, it will continue. Spiritual science truly has no fear of refutations, so I never think that there should be no opposition.

It has been said that a commission should be set up to examine the matter and put it right. I see this as foolishness. Hundreds and thousands of opposing writings may appear; there can be no opposition, if it is honest, that spiritual science has to fear. Spiritual science can stand up to scientific scrutiny. But that is not what this is about. Instead, it is about driving people into meanness, about defamation, about throwing dirt at them, as has never been seen before. It could reach such heights that a long-standing member writes fabricated things, fabricated follies from beginning to end, things that are completely untrue. These are accepted by the editorial team. This can happen today.

So a member writes to the editorial team: I have had to deal with anthroposophical matters, and I have come to the view that something similar should happen to me as the Lazarus miracle that Christ performed and that Dr. Steiner described. Dr. Steiner sent me chocolate, and I have to assume that this chocolate was sent to me to perform the Lazarus miracle on me.

Now, this madness can be said and also printed today, and the editor writes as a note under these follies: “Where such occult exercises are done, even healthy people can go insane.” Yes, such things happen. I do not care about the real side issues. Whether such people are to be regarded as mentally ill is not an issue here. That is important, of course, but here it is a matter of dealing with pure inventions, with inventions of the most disgraceful kind. These are the things with which one is supposed to present spiritual science today. And do not think that it is based on a superficial judgment when I say: It is necessary that the judgment in the Anthroposophical Society be strengthened. The silliness that is now appearing again, with this article about chocolate and the miracle of Lazarus, that the reincarnation of Christ has been spoken of and that I myself am being pointed to – do not believe that it is without connection to these follies, that I actually had to emphasize very early on, again and again: There is only one incarnation of Christ. Such things have already been done in abundance in society.

So it has become necessary, my dear friends, for me to take two measures. They certainly hurt me as much as they may hurt some of you. But they are absolutely necessary. As things stand now, there is no other way.

From now on, all private conversations that have been held so far must stop, because the worst objective distortions arise from a number of these private conversations. I have indeed been quietly pointing this out for years. So perhaps a fact will come to light. It is not so much about this measure itself, but rather that by taking this measure, our members are being made aware that it is necessary to take these things seriously. You see, these things are all carried out. What members carry out of the Society is the most outrageous. And outside, everyone tells you: Yes, this is a society in which everything is based on authority. In blind faith, everyone follows this Dr. Steiner! And in reality it is like this: there is perhaps no other society in which a person like me, who is active in it, finds that everything happens differently than they think it should. Because in this society, in reality, everything that happens is always against my will; in the details, and also in some big questions. How countless things develop under the type: someone wants to go to a lecture cycle; it is necessary to excuse it to someone; what does he say? Dr. Steiner sent me. - What is the point of all this sending? Well, the person in question comes and says: Should I travel to the cycle? - That is of course none of my business, because it can only be voluntary. So I say: That's none of my business, it's up to you. - Then the person asks: Do you have any objections? — Of course I have no objections, because such things are done of one's own free will. - But if my answer is passed on to a second or third person, then it is: I should travel, Dr. Steiner said so.

I am far from any kind of mischief of sectarianism. But there is a lot of sectarianism in the Anthroposophical Society. Of course, this is less prominent here, but the Society must be treated as a unit. Therefore, these things must also be said here.

I made a trip to [Stettin]. As I arrived, a strange group marched in through one of the station doors. They were all ladies, but they looked like cardinals. Of course, they were all wearing stoles, as we call them. Then they had these strange caps on. Well, in Munich something like that might be acceptable; there you just say: they are crazy; you are used to it there. In Berlin it is less so. But when the ladies arrived in [Helsingfors], all hell broke loose. The [Helsingfors] ladies had to sit separately so that it would not be noticed that they belonged together. You see, such outward appearances are only a symbol of inward sectarianism.

In short, it is therefore necessary that the first measure to be taken is to stop all private conversations from now on. Those who have an esoteric matter to bring forward must pass on a little time; I will try to create a substitute for these conversations. Everyone will find satisfaction in what they can receive esoterically, but the private conversations will have to be stopped. For it is precisely from these discussions that most of what is now coming to the world in such an enormous way originates. Therefore, the innocent must now suffer with the guilty. For this reason, let us turn to those who are to blame. For years I have been pointing out that this will come.

But one will not say the complete thing if one does not say a second measure. That is that I give everyone, as far as I am concerned, an absolute permission to tell the truth about everything that has ever been said or done in a private conversation, insofar as he himself wants it. Only in this way will it be possible to silence the incredible distortions and untruths, denigrations, and slanders that have now been spread throughout the world, if this second measure is taken. The one who will tell the one measure without the other will tell an untruth. The two belong together. They must be thought together and said together.

Therefore, firstly: All private conversations must be recorded. Secondly: I authorize everyone to pass on everything that has ever been said or done in private conversations, provided that they themselves want it.

My dear friends, spiritual science will simply have to be brought into the full light of the public, because our time cannot tolerate what is very often confused with esotericism, but which does not need to be confused at all. Esotericism can also be practiced when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is brought into the full light of the public. It can do so because this spiritual science has nothing to fear. But it is not always to everyone's taste to be besmirched and to have to take a public stand against it, especially when the mud is being slung from places and by personalities one would prefer not to take a stand.

Please forgive me, my dear friends, for having to attach these remarks to our deliberations; I had to attach them to what I wanted to give you today as a striking characteristic of our time, which I believe will be of use to you if you want to observe with an alert eye of the soul what is going on around us and has been going on around us in the last three years.

What has happened in the last three years is truly so that what happened before seems to us to lie in a mythical past. But it is precisely when one observes the times and takes spiritual science in the fullest sense seriously that one does not consider 'personal bickering' and 'personal matters' to be what I have been forced to link to these arguments before.

Today I will have to say a few things about more recent historical developments from the point of view of the spiritual science which we are considering in these lectures. It will be necessary to take as read some of the things I said in the earlier lectures. Essentially this will be the only precondition. Something else which I will not be able to repeat, time being limited, in so far as it applies today is that along the lines I tried to give in the first lecture, this science of the spirit can confirm that human beings, striving with their powers of soul, must come to recognize a supersensible world, and that a specific training of these powers of soul—I have characterized this at least in principle—will enable human beings to gain insight into the facts pertaining to this supersensible world.

It is now a matter of applying these fundamental truths of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science to one of the most significant fields in human life, the field of history. I will, of course, have to limit myself to what is of most immediate concern to us, the historical evolution of humanity in more recent times. People who do not look far into the development of human civilization take history to be a very old field of study. The truth is, however, that history really only came to life just before the second half of the 18th century, arising from beginnings that could not yet be called history. And in the sense in which we are accustomed to think of history, having learned this at school, namely that history serves to study the laws that govern the evolution of the human race in the course of time—in this sense history is really only a child of the 19th century.

The study of history arose from the interest that people have always shown in other people and their destinies, in so far as those other people and their destinies had a connection with one’s own life, being on the periphery of one’s personal life experience. We might say it is a straight line from the family records that people use to inform themselves on their own nation and native land, and ultimately the efforts made to gain insight into the laws that govern the evolution of humanity as a whole. It is significant that the study of history, which before was always within the above-mentioned narrow confines, thus came to be extended to the whole of humanity. It has only been in the recent times which we intend to consider here that a wholly general, human interest in the evolution of humanity as a whole arose from the more or less narrowly defined interest shown by people.

This alone will show anyone who is prepared to see that human beings showing pure interest in other human beings as such is essentially of recent origin. Now the situation is such that exactly because history arises from people’s interest in people, an obstacle arises when history is supposed to rise to a higher level where insight is gained into the laws that govern human evolution. For here history is very easily taken into an abyss that at some time or other has threatened every kind of scientific study. The natural-scientific approach has almost completely overcome this in more recent times, but it will often and quite unconsciously influence the way people look at history. We may call it the anthropomorphic view. It arises because something found in the human being himself is taken out into the world and the phenomena which present themselves in the world. The most obvious, happily overcome in natural science, is that a person finds that when he achieves something he has been following a purpose, an aim. People are therefore inclined to look at anything that happens in the natural world, and also at historical developments, by looking for purposive actions in the same sense as one finds them in the inner human being, that is, in oneself.

Natural science has grown great in the more recent sense exactly because efforts are made not to take an anthropomorphic view, though this is in many respects unconscious. Goethe was justified in saying that people do not know how anthropomorphic they are.¹¹¹ In the case of history, however, there is the special temptation to see the things which we find in ourselves also in historical developments outside, for we are trying to consider something that is human. We overcome the obstacle—which existed to a greater or lesser degree for the most hardworking thinkers of recent times when they wanted to establish a kind of philosophy of history—basically only by going beyond the narrow limits set to human nature even as we consider the human being himself. Those limits are set because human beings act according to something that is immediately subjective, according to such aims as are possible in their inner life between birth and death.

If you overcome an inner nature that relies on the senses, with the life of the soul bound to it between birth and death, by rising higher and going beyond the senses, you can take the discoveries made in supersensible study of the human being out into historical evolution. For human beings go beyond themselves when they rise to their supersensible nature, and they can then no longer be anthropomorphic in the study of history, for they are no longer so in the way they look at their own essential nature. By just making efforts to overcome a particular obstacle to seeing the world clearly, we are thus taken beyond ourselves into the supersensible sphere.

If we are thus equipped to approach historical evolution with the powers that take us into the supersensible world, the facts of historical life appear in a completely new light, purely because one sees them in the light of the supersensible sphere. In this new light you ask yourself: What is the real situation? Have certain facts that have been recorded so that we find them in our usual history books truly had such a close connection with the human being as they are often said to have, with the view expressed that the human being, as he stands before us, is a product of historical development, a product of the past? However, if we ask these questions only in the light of supersensible insight, we soon discover, on turning our attention to historical events, how little people are able to say with the impulses of the lives in which they find themselves at the present time, for example: This or that is connected with this or that historical event in the past. Just as natural science, if pursued consistently, takes us beyond itself, so does the study of history take us to the point where we have to say: In a sense, the historical events are falling apart. We cannot just speak of cause and effect in the usual sense, considering the present as though it were due to the influence of the past, certainly where this contains whatever may be found in the world perceptible through the senses. We can only see history truly if we connect the human being with the supersensible and do not look in historical facts for anything they appear to be on the surface but for something that initially is only given as revelation—a supersensible process in world events, with human beings involved in it.

Then history becomes something other than a study of consecutive events. It becomes a symptomatology, as I’d like to call it. We then consider individual events not just the way they present in the life perceived through the senses but as symptoms that allow us to penetrate into a supersensible process behind them that goes beyond history itself. It will then also no longer be possible to seek absolute completeness in the usual way—anyone who has been working with historical material in some area or other will know that such completeness can never be achieved. Instead you will try to take the facts that can be discovered, regarding them as symptoms, and penetrate into the great spiritual scheme of things that lies behind them.

Taking this road you will soon find yourself compelled to abandon the old distinctions we know from our schooldays, where the study of recent history begins with all kinds of reflections on the journeys of discovery and the importance of discovering America, or on inventions and the like. Instead you feel compelled to say: Where can a point be found—if we start from the present time and go back in historical evolution—where a major change came in the course of human evolution, with new ways of life and new conditions for life?

People who like to take the easy way in looking at the world often tend to say that one thing simply arises from another that went before, and that there are no significant changes or turning points. They will even quote the soothing words: Nature does not take leaps.¹¹² But just look at the natural world and the leaps that are made! A plant will first develop green leaves and later transform them into petals of different colours—a leap. And such leaps exist everywhere in the natural world, refuting common prejudice that people find comfortable.

Even a superficial look will in fact show that in the European world, the 15th century brought a major change in all ways of life. A change came in the characteristic state of soul humanity had had until then, and in the way humanity made this inner state of soul into external historical actions. With regard to symptomatology, we can point to something of a landmark at an earlier time, an important turning point in the historical life of more recent humanity. This was when the French forced the Pope to move his residence from Rome to Avignon in 1303.¹¹³ Almost at the same time the order of the Templars, a very special community that had a strange relationship to the Church, was destroyed by the French government, its properties being confiscated.¹¹⁴

Those events were turning points in more recent historical evolution because they showed that people were going against something that for centuries had been characteristic of the whole civilized world. This characteristic was reflected in the strange hostilities between central European imperialism and the Popes, as well as the mutually supportive alliances that resulted from them. All those hostilities were in the light of a quite specific fact. The peoples throughout the civilized world of that time were not divided into groups such as national and other groups the way they came to be in later times, for beyond any such division reigned something that people had in common; we can only say that a universal idea reigned in the human race, influencing people’s actions, and on the one side this came from the Roman papacy, which felt itself to be something that brought people together. Medieval imperialism was equally universal, except that it was often fighting that universal community.

The element that came with the turning point of which I spoke goes against this way of holding people together. The kind of cohesion which existed through the Middle Ages, with people feeling themselves to be part of a great whole, was for centuries based on certain unconscious impulses that dwelt in human beings. The leaders knew them and used them in bringing people together. They addressed a particular sum total of unconscious powers of soul in bringing people together from the above-mentioned points of view in the civilized world of that time. The event at Avignon created breaches, perceptible breaches in that cohesion. We can sense that a new element thus had to come into the constitution, into the state of soul, of occidental humanity.

We also see that the forces at work in the European West had for a long time been affected by an event that had come from the East like a force of nature. I only need to mention everything that started with the Mongolian hordes, and the migrations from East to West, from Asia to Europe, that followed. Both were turning points, and at the dawn of the 15th century they gave Europe and its people the structure of community life. Despite all attempts to preserve the past, this structure was different from the earlier one, when it depended on unconscious impulses. Humanity found it increasingly necessary to be consciously aware also in areas where they were previously given cohesion on the basis of unconscious impulses.

Something highly significant happened with these changes in the West of Europe, especially in areas where people had until then be used, more or less so but significantly, to find cohesion through that universal idea, universal impulse, which I have been characterizing. We see something completely new arise in those areas. The national element came to take over from the old, more spiritual element of the Catholic Church in providing cohesion. We see England and France become a new kind of nation-states, setting a pattern, as it were.

Let us try and consider the way in which the new element was taken particularly into those areas of Western Europe. Initially the two countries were united until the movement arose in the 15th century which we may also call a turning point, in 1428, when in a certain direction a dividing wall came between England and France. This came to expression in the events that happened around Joan of Arc.¹¹⁵ The seed was then sown for the mutual independence of France and England; before that there had been a degree of connection between them. This is a tremendously significant phenomenon. For we shall see many things grow from this differentiation, which only came at that time, in the 15th century, things that will again prove symptomatic in the further evolution of history.

Another change came when a kind of national feeling, at the time preparing the way for an independent feeling of being Italian, developed in Italy from the very element which had led to the papacy being so powerful in that country, overshadowing all such national and similar groupings. Letting the eye roam across Europe we also see ourselves—I can only refer to these things briefly here—coming closer to the time when a major struggle arose between central and more or less eastern parts of Europe, the Germanic and Slavonic cultures. We see how the power of the Hapsburgs arose from the struggles in those regions, with the Slavs attacking, and Slav and Germanic cultures mingling. We also see highly individual structures, which before that had not emerged in such a way from the universal impulses, now with individual views and individual purpose. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, city states flourished throughout the occidental civilization of that time.

Again, once national aspirations had become differentiated and France and England were separate, we see long periods of civil war in England leading to the parliamentary system, as the world was to know it, being the goal of a social structure that arose from mutual understanding among individual people.

These, then, are not all, but some of the symptoms from more recent history. I merely have to add that as the groups formed from those impulses everywhere in Europe, there slowly arose in the East, still only in its early beginnings, from struggles that had to lead to its emergence, what later was to be the Russian structure. A strange structure. Seen from Europe it evolved in such a way that to our feeling it will always be a riddle. The most important impulses living within that structure were not really sentiently perceived but welded together, I would say, from something that had survived through all kinds of migrations—passing through Byzantium, arising from a certain metamorphosis of Roman Catholic life; something had come together that arose from what had sprouted forth as the blood of the Slavonic and Norman cultures. In ways that are familiar enough to you, it took in much of the Asiatic inner attitude of soul, a state of soul—I am now referring to the best parts of it—that through millennia had turned away from anything immediately coming through the senses and towards great mystic approaches, hoping to penetrate into a supersensible world with which the sensual life of human beings is connected.

If we take these and perhaps also many other symptoms of more recent historical development and truly consider them from the point of view of the issues considered earlier, a characteristic emerges clearly from these symptoms. We come to perceive it if we ask ourselves: How does the element that comes to expression in these symptoms inwardly differ from anything which in earlier centuries and millennia showed itself in a similar way in a historical evolution of humanity that was more at an unconscious level? We need to consider these things without any sympathy or antipathy, in a wholly objective way. It is only then that we will discover the characteristic element in the phenomena we are considering.

It is strange, when we ask ourselves: What do all these symptoms—for instance those I have given as examples today—have in common if we compare them with earlier impulses that came into historical evolution? I won’t speak of the fruitful way, for example, in which Christianity came into the world in a positive way, creating something new for the soul. I won’t speak of this, but only of the kind of impulses that were, for example, often given in ancient Greek life, when a new impulse would simply be given as though produced from inmost human nature. This would then come into its own in a completely new configuration of reality; or the way it was given, let us say, to Roman civilization in the days of Augustus. None of the impulses that come now are of that kind. The most evident impulse we see, for example, is the national one, based not on national cohesion—as one often sees it identified today and considered to be a state cohesion—but on the national element in so far as it bases on natural principles deep down in human nature. We see it as an impulse that people take up without having produced it inside. A person is French or English on account of his nature. And when in establishing the historical configuration he refers to his nationality he is not referring to something produced in his mind and spirit, but something he has simply accepted from outside.

If we compare the national principle as it has come up in history with those earlier impulses, we discover that all the impulses which we have seen coming to humanity in Greek and in Roman Latin times were infinitely much closer to the productive side in human nature. What came there was retained and preserved. When one takes up something new in more recent history, this is something one is not producing oneself, something which comes to the human being from outside.

Having attempted to gain our orientation more from the outer progress of more recent European history, we’ll now attempt to penetrate to the inner aspects. Within the soul’s inner state, we see a very similar onrush in the inner state of soul against the universal impulse that had counted on the unconscious, an impulse given through the ages. We see the onrush of Huss in the 15th century, Wiclif even before him, and then Luther and later Calvin. We see something human beings want to give, to put into history much more than anything that went before, when it was thought of in more universal ways; this is something individual, welling up from human nature itself. Strangely, however, we also see how in discussion, everything is always related to what went before. What is new is that the human being was referred to his own nature. Decide for yourself what the nature of the eucharist is. Decide for yourself on your attitude to your priest, do not let it be forced on you through a universal impulse coming from outside.

Yet when we consider the subject of the discussion, the dogma of the eucharist that had earlier been produced into humanity, had existed for centuries in history, or in human life altogether. Nothing new was being produced from the soul and given over to historical life, but the old was produced and preserved, everything that was there without human beings contributing anything. All that happened then was that the human being entered into a new relationship to it.

In following this inner process in European development we see infinitely much of the old torn apart, changed, metamorphosed in the onrush against the universal impulse that had reigned before. We can see it exactly from the way knighthood scattered and vanished. The whole of its inner state of soul—you only have to study the crusades—was connected with the universal impulse. Again we can refer to a turning point that will provide the orientation for everything else that happened. This was the battle of Murton in 1476, towards the end of the 15th century, fought against knighthood connected with the universal impulse. We may see it as representative of a struggle that happened in many places.¹¹⁶

We also find a change in the ecclesiastical authority in connection with all this. This ecclesiastical authority had assumed a strange form, and you can find this characterized in any work on history. During this time and because of the onrush, a need was felt for inner regeneration and improvement. The onrush against it really made the Church itself change many things internally. Yet we see everywhere how the element that had raised the Church up in the course of human evolution, having spread it in form of a universal impulse, was to be given a new relationship to each individual human being. We see this happening all over Europe. We see how the English Church made itself independent. We see how in central Europe growing independence joined forces with political powers. We see how everywhere the individual and personal rose against the universal, in other words how something that the human mind was to make its own raged against an earlier inner human nature that had been more unconscious or subconscious, and we see what followed from this in historical terms.

Counter forces did, of course, also arise, like the counter reformation against the reformation. But if we study the symptomatology, the struggles this caused immediately show something of the greatest importance with regard to more recent history. We see the Thirty Years’ War arise from everything that happened in connection with the symptoms I have characterized. Studying the Thirty Years’ War,¹¹⁷ we discover something strange. It arose from opposition arising among the confessions in Europe. It began with all the impulses connected with religious struggles, and it ended as a purely political phenomenon. It turned into something completely different as it progressed. If we now ask ourselves how its evolution looks to us with regard to the confessions which then existed in Europe, we find that in 1648 people were exactly where they had been in 1618. The whole 30 years really changed nothing of any significance as regards the relationship between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and so on. All this remained as before. However, in the course of that war quite different powers intervened, and this gave the European national structures a completely different configuration.

If you study the Thirty Years’ War in this way you will be truly convinced that we cannot see history as something that follows as an effect connected with what went before and call the latter the cause. Nothing that came from the Thirty Years’ War was genuinely connected as effect with anything we can call cause in the true sense. Studying the evolution we see how events happening on the outside can only be a symptom for something that happens deeper down. This is particularly evident in the case of the Thirty Years’ War. But what did happen? It was the western countries and above all France which advanced as a result of the events that came in the course of that war, and not its causes. The consequences of the Thirty Years’ War later led to the whole regal glory of France. We see how the royal power of France shone out over Europe in the time that followed.

Then again, something arose in the womb of what was evolving there, taking the old national impulse forward in a most eminent sense. This new element went far beyond anything merely national; it broke the national idea apart, as it were. Individual, personal nature arose, later to come into its own in the French Revolution. The human individual, standing by himself, wanted to emancipate from the compulsion of a community that had not arisen from some productive impulse but been taken up into the human state of soul from nature, from the world surrounding humanity. Again, in looking at the symptomatology, we see how Napoleon then arose, quite inorganically we might say, without any evident motivation. He was the executor, as it were, of the French Revolution’s will and testament. At the same time we also see a strange, a great and tremendous turning point arise. This significant turning point in more recent history came on 21 October 1805, when the battle of Trafalgar prevented Napoleon from extending his tentacles across to England. Something which earlier had only been potential, the separation between England and the Continent, was then made complete.

We can now let things that are generally known pass quickly before the inner eye. We find that parliamentary life going in the direction of liberalism evolved further in an independent England. We see a more tumultuous evolution in France during the 19th century. Then, however, we see emerge in a new form, symptomatic and shining out over what is really happening at the foundations of European history, how the European west and centre needed to come to grips in the 1850s with something that was like a dark riddle in the European east, with the Russian configuration that had arisen. This was like a question posed with regard to European development. We then see certain ideas gaining strength in the 19th century, other ideas going against them, and how ideas of the one kind or the other became impulses in historical development. We see how everything was building up in the 19th century towards the storm which then broke in 1848.¹¹⁸ And we see evolve from all this the social movement that was later to be so comprehensive and today has a profound influence on human evolution. We see how one especially noteworthy event came among everything that evolved in the 19th century, something the people of Europe were able to observe quite profoundly. Out of the glory that had arisen with France becoming a national state, a kind of demand or claim arose and continued to spread.

Let us not put values on things here. We do not follow them with sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively. We see how out of the relationship between developments in west and east something arose that was considered an insoluble problem—insoluble for Europe at least for the time being—by people who had the necessary insight at the time, irrespective of the attitude they took to it, to whether it should happen or not. We can even completely leave aside the question as to whether Alsace was occupied by the French originally or later by the Germans, but the Alsatian question, as it is known today, evolved out of European life.

If you study history, and especially things said by people with insight at the time in question, you will know that even then they foresaw conflicts arising from this, conflicts that were really insoluble in either direction because they had to do with all the difficult questions concerning the European east. Those questions arose because the European west—the Crimean War¹¹⁹ was symptomatic of this—was forced to come to grips with the European east, which was behind all the phenomena like an enigma. We should really consider and feel it to be extraordinarily significant, especially in these days, that something which appears insoluble is given in the way in which central Europe must face up to western Europe because of a question which under specific historical conditions may be asked to be solved in one way or another, a question that has arisen from the national impulse emerging in France but cannot be solved in national terms.

I could give you many more symptoms apparent in recent history, but I only want to mention just one thing which enters deeply into the whole of human evolution in recent times. Although the connections cannot always be clearly seen, I want to refer to the emergence of the more recent scientific way of thinking. I have characterized its significance from other points of view in my earlier lectures here. The scientific way of thinking is evolving. What does it do? It makes the human being stand on his own. It is exactly this thinking which separates the individual out from the community. It is in many respects also the driving impulse in all the other things I have mentioned. This modern scientific way of thinking has something in it which strangely does betray the significance which it has in more recent history.

Two kinds of problems arise. Let me show you the one by referring to a fact. This is that in 1830 a friend found Goethe in a state of sheer excitement. Asked what was the matter, Goethe said: The news coming from France are overwhelming; the world is in flames; something new is beginning to emerge. Soret, the friend to whom Goethe said these words, did of course think he was speaking of the 1830 revolutions. ‘No,’ said Goethe, ‘I am not talking about that but about the revolution which is taking place between the two scientists Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire.’¹²⁰ Cuvier held the view that all life forms in the natural world exist side by side and each had to be taken on its own. Saint- Hilaire was looking for a common type in the organic forms, he set the whole of organic life in motion, so that one could only get an overview in this state of flux if one looked at nature itself in an immediately productive spirit, experiencing the spirit to be as much in flux as nature itself. Goethe sensed something in Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire that ultimately, when taken from seed to fruit, will be the supersensible concepts of natural phenomena which I characterized here the day before yesterday.

Initially, however, the world was overshadowed by everything that came with the other way of looking at nature, where the human being is taken out of any living, immediate relationship to the phenomena of nature. This approach, which has not been taken hold of by the impulse of which Goethe spoke, gives insight into the part of nature that is nonliving, into the dying element, where nature dissolves, and this is connected with the element that is mortal in us, as I characterized it the day before yesterday.

The study of nature from which Goethe turned away is such that it can only work with the gradual process of decay in nature. Efforts are then made to rise to something that cannot be shown by these means but only by supersensible vision, and those are the symptoms of ascent, of growth, of being born and thriving. But, though this does again sound paradoxical, this approach to nature, which really focuses on whatever is dead within living nature, cast its deep shadows on the whole of modern social life. Essentially it created a new universal impulse for humanity in more recent times, but this is a universal impulse against which the human being himself as an individual must rebel all the time, for it takes him out of nature, so that he must look for the real whole over and over again. The knowledge gained puts him outside. He needs to look for the real whole again in something other than the area in which he seeks such knowledge. The result is dualism in the way the human being relates to his environment and hence also in life. This natural science flows into modern industrial life which supports the whole of modern civilization; its influence is highly significant.

With the impulses we considered earlier, for instance the national impulse, we saw that old tradition was preserved and no new productive element introduced into life. With the riddle of the European east we see how a nation remarkably stimulated to be productive in the spirit ties itself up so that it truly cannot be productive, although it has the potential to be highly productive, truly tying itself up in the most extreme bonds of the old Byzantine Church community. Old things are thus preserved. We see how with the views from natural science that are poured out over modern humanity something universal is created, something universal which also does not consider anything the human being produces out of himself, but exactly the knowledge that is gained in cutting things off from himself, knowledge concerning decay in natural phenomena. This can also only be brought into civilization in the sphere of industry, with the natural element killed off.

Initially by not being productive in the old sense, humanity has been gaining the full conscious awareness which began to develop in the 15th century. Earlier, they maintained their connection with nature and the world at a subconscious level rather than in full conscious awareness. In addition to preservation of old things we see a process of educating the human race in more recent times which is given out of something new but nevertheless is along the lines of the old. The principles developed for industry only seem to arise from productive ideas. For those productive ideas do not arise as independent green plants in the human soul—the supersensible, if it is to be sought, must arise as an independent plant in the human soul—but from calm contemplation of objective natural phenomena.

We see how an event that has had a significant influence on more recent developments is particularly connected with this modern industry, for it is now becoming apparent that modern industry develops progressively in our times and that colonization also gains significance; for colonial and colonizing life is closely bound up with the element that enters into industry through natural science.

Let us now take a general view of what all these symptoms are more or less telling us. We see that anything which has come up as something new since the 15th century has not come from productive human nature. Looking at these things we find it necessary to take a wider view of historical evolution and to acknowledge—supersensible insight makes us acknowledge this—that there is not only ascent in this human life, not only what in abstract terms is usually called progress, but that ascending, sprouting and shooting life goes hand in hand with a descending life. Life is bound up with a principle that is all the time leading to death.

When we consider an individual human life, birth, growth and development are presented separately from dying and decay. But it only seems like that. When we consider life in the outside world, developments that have come particularly in more recent history show that dying, descending and ascending development are immediately next to one another and influence one another. We see that descending evolution, which is the evolution that takes historical death into itself, had great significance actually for the beginning of this more recent period in history which began in the 15th century, doing so initially for several centuries and right into our own time. The life of decay, of death, has greater significance than ascending, sprouting and shooting life. We see how the mind of modern man as it evolves is connected with the element in him which is mortal, and how he is able to sense that the element which drives him towards death is also the element that helps him to advance in knowledge. Whilst sprouting, shooting life lulls him as if in dreams, we can see that the spiritual soul is evolving from the more unconscious state of soul which humanity developed from the 8th century BC until the 15th century AD, and that it has influenced the history of more recent times. We see that there is need, for a first education towards developing this spiritual soul, that symptoms of decay, of dying life take effect particularly also in human civilization. We cannot understand more recent historical life unless we are able to develop the thought—in spite of all admiration, in spit of all the good will and recognition that has to be given for the great, tremendous achievement of modern industry, of modern national impulses—that descending life moving towards the death of historical evolution must be present in it all, and that an ascending, sprouting and shooting life must be born into this descending life.

This has caused people of more recent times who have insight to develop something we might call a pessimistic view of civilization. Thus Schopenhauer¹²¹ looked at more recent historical developments. In spite of all the achievements they seemed rather trivial to him. The only thing Schopenhauer appreciated was anything that could be achieved in the minds of single individuals. Pessimists are themselves mere symptoms in recent historical development, but they have a feeling that the greatest and most significant element in that development which we are used to seeing as a characteristic of more recent historical evolution has been the death impulse entering into it.

What has been the consequence? Something we may call tragedy coming into the historical life of more recent times. Promotion of the impulses that we may consider to have been partly traditional and partly coming from natural scientific views is a matter of course. All this is such that we have to say to ourselves: We must encourage it, we must take it up, it is a necessity of our more recent history; human beings absolutely must make it part of developments in world history, but it must of necessity also lead to its own decline and death in everything that arises, that is achieved in this field. The tragedy is that something has to be encouraged and considered an achievement of which one knows that in creating it one is creating something that must at the same time also decay. We actually start the decay as we create it.

Anyone who thinks that the events arising in more recent historical development from the impulses I mentioned can stand on their own, is like someone who thinks a woman can give birth without conception, without the one principle being connected with the other. The element arising from those impulses presents as something one-sided that needs something to come from another side if it is to survive. Within itself there is only the power to die. Let us take everything that has come with modern industry and social relationships in more recent times, be they commercial or other kinds of connections. Let us take all this—on its own, seen in accord with its own impulse, it is infertile and always leads to its own death, I would say in rhythms. We have to realize that we need to look at it in such a way that we say: For the sake of something else, this dying element has to enter into our modern world as an achievement.

What is this something else? Well, we have seen that the strange thing I hinted at shows itself as we follow more recent history with its sequence of what we consider to be different symptoms. On the one hand we see the spiritual soul come into flower from the 15th century onwards, and this happens exactly because of the unproductive principle. On the other hand we have seen this spiritual soul grow great in that initially the stimulus for the productive element was withdrawn from its environs, so that it took its guidance from the principle that was all the time leading to a dying process in civilization. This has made the human being independent. The outside world does not stimulate something in us that has productive life but all the time something that bears the seed of the dying process in the insights gained. The human being grows up in his individual and conscious natural development in a way where the outside world does not raise him for life, nor to something that will take him higher, but is all the time preventing anything intended to take him higher. As a result, the human being stands by himself.

Looking at the situation purely in the light of supersensible insight, we see that this inner life of the human being, with the movement towards the spiritual soul from the 15th century onwards, also has something that corresponds to it on the outside. This could not emerge in the early centuries but shows itself immediately if without bias we consider the human heart and mind in the present time when it has once again gained an inclination towards a supersensible life. Many are, of course, still unconscious of this, but this inclination towards a supersensible life now exists for very many people. Someone working with the science of the spirit with an anthroposophical orientation knows that the principle of dying which developed in the outer material civilization of recent times was only of a passing nature and that we are at a great turning point in time which will bring a new revelation of the supersensible to human beings from outside, this time not through nature but stimulated in the way I have shown when I spoke on anthroposophically orientated spiritual science.

We see it approaching everywhere, this new revelation of the supersensible. It will now be gained in a different way from earlier times when human beings were connected with nature unconsciously, through their instincts, finding in nature itself the principles that also held true for the soul and which they could also introduce into social and historical life. A productive, supersensible life will develop that goes beyond anything which this study of nature and the old impulses in more recent historical developments are able to give. It will be revealed from the world of the spirit. And if we look particularly at the terrible catastrophe that has arisen in our time—what is it, seen in the genuine light of truth, but something in which elements that are dying crowd together?

Much will die within this catastrophic life. Anything that has the principle of dying within it in the way I have characterized will die more quickly. No reason for pessimism, even if there is reason for pain with all the things that can come to us from watching and being involved in this catastrophe. There is no reason to be pessimistic about civilization if we consider life in the light of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. For it is apparent now in one point in recent historical evolution around the globe that the dying process which otherwise is distributed across material life comes powerfully together. This gives more recent events their tragic note. At the same time it shows us that everything that comes into the world in the way I have characterized earlier must be fruitless and needs to be made fruitful with what we receive out of the supersensible.

Anyone who considers the principle which makes the development of the spiritual soul complete and the new revelations from the supersensible with an open mind will raise his head, however much it may be bowed down in pain over the things that are happening now, and say to himself: It is the first flush of dawn for something that must come and will trigger the impulse in humanity to turn towards the supersensible. All the suffering and pain over the present collapse would be in vain, and so would be all the feelings, the justifiable pain felt by those who see this collapse, if these feelings could not take us forward to the realization that as with everything in nature that is destined to die, so with this dying, too, something new is arising. However, the new development will only be possible if humanity has the will to take up the principle that will make things fruitful, a principle revealed to us from the supersensible world.

The spiritual soul has evolved. Nature must now no longer give us unconsciously the things we introduce into the world of social and historical development. Humanity of our time must now also consciously receive, willingly receive, the new kind of supersensible revelation that comes to the spiritual soul if this spiritual soul wills it. It is exactly when we consider the tragedy of modern life without prejudice that the redeeming impulse reveals itself on the other side. It reveals itself in that we feel the need to acknowledge the revelation of a new supersensible element which now also has to be there for the spiritual soul.

We thus see through the symptoms and perceive what humanity is going to be and what is to be revealed to humanity out of the universe. In Graeco-Latin times, which began in the 8th century before the Christian era and came to an end in the 15th century, the inner life was still bound up with outward physical life. This led to the great achievements of Greek and Roman times that were passed on to the Middle Ages. In the 15th century evolution took a great leap as the powers of conscious awareness began to evolve what we may call the spiritual soul. We are now in this stage of evolution. We see that for a true science of history human beings must take up the principles that are revealed behind the symptoms. We must have the courage to admit, however, that death is all around us as much as life, and that death is necessary so that new life may come. It has also been necessary for death to be overwhelming for a time, so that human beings might all the more develop the powers of the spiritual soul. When no more is given to us from outside, we feel the need to look inside for the spirit, the supersensible principle.

Some may of course object and say: Well, where are those people, how many of them are there? Not many have developed their powers of soul so that they are able to point to the supersensible world. We certainly have to admit that there are only few of them today. Their numbers will grow apace; but it is not a matter of how many find their way to the supersensible sphere which is needed to make the sensual fruitful. What matters is that one does not have to take the road to supersensible insight oneself, for, quite apart from how and for what you estimate the individual who provides the fruits of the supersensible, once they have been uttered, once they have been cast into human culture, they can be understood with the understanding that is perfectly common in the age of the spiritual soul. People can largely understand everything brought to them from the sphere of the supersensible, unless they create obstacles for themselves with prejudices which they then find insurmountable.

There is, however, one thing which is needed. Just consider that with the view of history I have outlined one finds it necessary to admit to oneself, in insight, as it were, and in full awareness, that what has to be done—what is a necessity of the age and will be a necessity more and more—is at the same time something that is all the time also dying. It does take some courage to acknowledge that one has to be active so that that active principle may perish and be the soil for the Father principle of the spiritual, supersensible sphere. It does need such courage for all supersensible insight. Fear of supersensible insight prevents many people from entering into it. There is one field at least where in more recent times we face the immediate necessity to develop such courage if we want to be at all considered for human development. This is the field of history. Those who know something of supersensible insight always speak of crossing the threshold, and of a guardian of the threshold.¹²² They speak of crossing the threshold because one has to abandon many things that seemed to be absolutely solid ground before one crossed the threshold in finding one’s way into the supersensible world. Unconsciously people feel it is a relief not to have to cross the threshold. Yet something that had to be done at a particular time for historical development is becoming more and more of a necessity. And this is again part of the inner progress of historical development from the 15th century onwards. It is becoming more and more of a necessity to say to oneself: You are actively involved in the creation of processes of dying, processes of decay. You need to devote yourself to these processes of decay, and this will bring your inner power to life; it is exactly because of this that you will be able to come close to the supersensible. You must abandon what you used to consider a foundation in mind and spirit before, cross the threshold to the supersensible world, losing the ground under your feet, as it were. And in its place you must find within you the firm focal point where you can maintain yourself even in the face of what in sensual terms has no ground.

The human being needs to find a new focus for the whole of his inner life. Historical necessity will make us look for this focus more and more in future. The fact that we thus gain insight will not change things. We are, as it were, facing the process of dying—in the sense I mean here. The fact that we admit it is a dying process will not change it. But it is exactly by this that one must feel driven to try and fructify the living principle that is the counter force. For the situation is like this: Inscribed above the search for supersensible insights there has always been the great, tremendous demand: ‘Know yourself.’¹²³ And it is still the demand made on human beings who are seekers. Seeking to gain this insight today people can only do so by rising to worlds that can take them beyond finite existence. Above all, impelled by the necessities of human evolution, they will have to admit to themselves with regard to historical life in more recent times, that the spiritual soul is a goal that has been implanted with regard to more recent history, to know themselves more and more. In coming to know themselves, they are facing the necessity of going beyond themselves. In going beyond themselves, perceiving his supersensible nature within their sensual nature, they also come to the supersensible that is active in history, with external facts merely symbols for it. We will only have a history that is fruitful for life if we look for the supersensible behind the symptoms, just as we do behind the phenomena of nature.

The look we have taken at history has shown that more recent developments impose trials on human beings, the trial where they must consider descending as well as ascending life, involution as well as evolution. With supersensible insight into history people will find this gaining of insight to be a great trial for the soul for they must cross the threshold and find a new focus in the inner life of the soul, so that in having gone through the trial they will have the strength to go through the other trials that life will present more and more out of historical events as they move towards the future. We may say, however, that human beings only grow strong and robust and truly fit for life by going through trials. Fear of insight should not prevent people from entering into the trials. Instead, courage to gain insight should make them prepared to accept these trials. They will develop those trials on the road to insight into powers that will also guide them to be active human beings who are involved in evolution and fruitful in the course of history.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 17 October 1918

The suggestion has been made that 1 should briefly say something about one particular phenomenon in more recent history that is particularly relevant to human life, and that is the evolution of speech and language. This could, of course, be another whole lecture if I were to treat the subject exhaustively. I would, however, like to take up the suggestion, apart from anything else because I would indeed like to draw your attention to the fact that anthroposophically orientated spiritual science in the sense of which I have been speaking truly is such that it does not owe its existence to a sudden idea that came like a shot, nor is it made up of sudden flashes of insight. No, if you study the literature you’ll find that this anthroposophically orientated spiritual science gathers what it has to say from the whole breadth of observation, the whole range of phenomena in the world.

Of course, when one has to cover vast areas in an hour—and I am sorry that it always takes longer than this anyhow—the impression inevitably arises that one is moving in abstract regions; on the other hand the intention is not to convince anyone, but merely to encourage them to take this further, for then people will see that this science of the spirit is based on careful, conscientious and methodical investigation, serious research, more so than in any other kind of scientific endeavour.

It is interesting to consider the principles which I have been characterizing in general terms today in a single phenomenon such as the development of human speech and language. When we say anything today, we do not usually consider the fact that talking is actually at every moment forcing us to be inaccurate. Fritz Mauthner has written three volumes as well as a dictionary of philosophy to show that everything we produce in philosophy and science is based on language and that the language is imprecise. Because of this, he says, we can really never have a body of true knowledge.¹²⁴

Well, when it comes to the science of the spirit this is, of course, a foolish thing to say, even in three volumes. It is, however, significant to consider the partial phenomenon that lies behind this. Going back in the development of language we find—unlike the superficial anthropological linguistics where the means are inadequate—that the further back we go, human beings were progressively more closely connected with anything their speech expressed, inwardly so, and again instinctively and unconsciously. Human beings are gradually also separating from the things that lie in their own inherent nature, just as they are from the outside world of nature.

Thus they also cease to be so closely connected with their speech. Speech thus becomes something external. A marked dualism arises between the thoughts that live in us—and some do not even have them any more, because they remain in the sphere of language—and the words that are spoken. If we do not give ourselves to illusion at the point in human evolution where we are today, in the age of the spiritual soul, we need to take a real look at the way language has already separated from the human being. It is really only proper names relating to a single individual that are truly appropriate to that individual. As soon as we use general terms, be they adjectives, nouns, or whatever, they are imprecise about what they are meant to tell us. They are abstract, they are like generalities. We will only understand the relationship between language and human life rightly if we take it really as gesture; if we know: just as I point to something in a direct, living way when I point to it with my finger, so I also point in a kind of gesture at the entity to which the sounds of speech refer when I produce sounds, using my larynx. To take speech as gesture, this is what matters. In earlier times, people had a vague feeling, I would say it was instinctive and lay in the subconscious, as to how their inner life was connected with sound in a kind of gesture. They did not confuse their experiences in inner life with the things brought to expression in speech.

We ourselves have tried to develop endeavours in this direction in a field of spiritual science, using the element of gesture to make speech visible. This is in the art we call eurythmy. Efforts are made to get the whole human being moving, and express in gesture—in the movements of the limbs, movements of the human form in space, the movements in groups and relationships between individuals—what is otherwise expressed in gesture, though not perceived as gesture, through the human larynx and its neighbouring organs. We call this art of movement, something new which has to come to humanity, eurythmy. We had intended to follow this lecture here in Zurich with a eurythmy performance. This had to be put off for another time, for we were given permission to give these lectures, in what is now a difficult time,¹²⁵ but not to give a eurythmy performance. The intention was to show how the whole human being becomes a larynx, as it were. In becoming aware of what speech is, we come to something that is particularly important, fundamentally important, for life in the present and future.

Nothing happens more frequently in human life today but that someone makes a statement of some kind, as I am doing with regard to the science of the spirit, for instance, and then someone else will come along and say: ‘I have read this before,’ showing you something which at least in parts has exactly the same wording. I could give you striking examples of this, but will give just one which I found illustrated the situation perfectly.

One thing I truly endeavour to do is to apply all the things that demand consideration in spiritual science to life and thus enter into the true impulses in life. For a long time I have thus been reflecting on the whole way of thinking, the whole attitude of thought, shown by Woodrow Wilson.¹²⁶ I found it interesting to study especially his essays on historical method, the study of history and American historical life. He plays such a major role in present-day life that one has to get to know him—this is what someone would say who does not want to sleep through current events but observe them with his senses wide awake. I have come to admire the magnificent way, truly apt in an American way, in which Woodrow Wilson presents the evolution of the American nation, this advance from the American east to the American west, with American life emerging in a quite specific way, that came only once people had advanced from east to west. Woodrow Wilson characteristically speaks of everything that went before as mere appendage to European life. This uprooting and overcoming of nature, overcoming the native population of the American west, this specific way of making history, which shows some similarity to what has happened in human life generally yet also differs in quite specific ways—this is magnificently presented. It is therefore also interesting to see how Woodrow Wilson develops his method of history.

I looked at the descriptions he gave of his own method of history and found something quite peculiar. Sentences come from this man, who is wholly and entirely American, that seemed to me to almost word for word in agreement with sentences written by a completely different person, someone who truly arose from an entirely different approach to life and way of thinking. Statements Woodrow Wilson made in his essay on the methodology for history that bore such excellent fruit for him, could be transposed word for word into essays by Herman Grimm, who is entirely within the Goethean development of our time, and out of this development presents as a truly Central European mind. We might say that you need only take sentences from Herman Grimm’s essays and transpose them, or include sentences by Woodrow Wilson in Herman Grimm’s essays, and you would not see any great difference in the wording.

What we learn from such things—to put it in ordinary words, though I want to say something highly significant in this way—is that when two people say the same thing, even using the same words, it is not the same. We have to learn from this that it is necessary to enter not only into the wording, which comes from speech, but the into whole person. This will reveal the specific differences between Herman Grimm and Woodrow Wilson. You will find that with Herman Grimm, every single sentence is worked out with the spiritual soul wholly present. The progression one finds in Herman Grimm’s spirited essay where he writes about historical method and the contemplation of history is truly such that one sees him progress from sentence to sentence through an inner struggle in his soul, so that nothing remains unconscious and everything is brought to conscious awareness. All the time one sees this inner progression in the soul.¹²⁷

Looking across at what we see in the case of Woodrow Wilson, we see how the statements arise from subconscious depths of the soul, as though out of the human being as such rather than inner activity. I don’t mean anything bad by this, but I would like to say, if I may be paradoxical about it, that with Herman Grimm I always feel that in the region of wholly conscious inner life, all the life of the soul proceeds as statement follows statement; with Woodrow Wilson I feel he is as if possessed by something that lies within himself and lets his own truths shine up in his own inner life. As I said, I do not mean anything sympathetic or antipathetic by this, merely something I want to characterize. It is given to him from the depths of his own soul. So we find, and it is truly evident, that even if the wording is the same, two people are saying the same thing yet it is not the same. We only discover what lies behind it if we learn to go not by the wording but by what arises from the whole way the person presents himself in life.

You see, modern humanity must learn to overcome the general habit of judging anything that is presented only on its content. We will have to learn that the content is not really what matters. When I speak about the science of the spirit, I do not focus on the way I formulate my sentences, on the content, but what matters is that something which has truly been projected from the supersensible world flows into what I say. Considering the How more important than the What, so that one can sense, or feel, that these things are said out of the supersensible world. This is what matters.

This is how we must altogether learn in a way in the present time in contrast to ordinary life. A paper, or a journal, may say the nicest things—people can say the most beautiful things today, for ‘beautiful ideas’ and ‘nice things’ are commonplace today—but it is not the words which matter but the inner attitude from which they arise, so that we look through the statements and the words to symptoms, to the human being. We need to penetrate language and wording as if they were a veil and thus come closer to the human being himself again. We are made aware of this in more recent developments in language, for here the human being’s inmost nature, his spiritual soul, has become separate from speech and language. Out of ourselves, therefore, the necessity arises to consider not just the words, but see through them to the human soul, doing so in every possible direction and way.

It will, however, be necessary to overcome something else if one wants to go on in this direction. People are still used to abstract notions today, to going by the immediate content in what I might call an uninspired, middle-class way. When someone speaks of an ideal, however beautifully formulated, we need to be aware that this is something that is a hundred a penny today, for the ideas have been given form. You can put all kinds of ideas to people and nations today, and they will be formed. It will depend on where they come from, where they truly arise in the inmost soul, in the soul region. Life will be tremendously enriched if we are in a position to see it like this.

Perhaps I may also be permitted to say something personal. You see I am often presented with people’s poetical productions. All kinds of people produce them nowadays. Among them are some that are perfect in form, beautifully expressing something or other, and others that seem awkwardly phrased, bumpy or indeed primitive, having problems with the language. Someone taking a point of view that is not yet modern will of course delight in the beauty of the language, especially if the forms are perfect. He will not—not yet today—feel that Emanuel Geibel¹²⁸ was right in saying that his verses would have a public for as long as there were young girls. They are beautiful, polished, and will have a public even among those who believe Wildenbnich¹²⁹ or similar people to be poets—and there are many of these as well.

Today, however, a different view is taken. This is also the case with other arts, but I am here talking about language. There are poets today whose verses make us stumble; you may have problems with the awkward words, but there is a new impulse in them. This is something we must feel! We must be able to see through the veil of the language and see the inner superficiality reflected in polished verse. For polished poems, beautiful poems, much more beautiful than Goethe’s poems, are a hundred a penny today; there it is the language itself which is producing the poetry. But a new inner life springing directly from the source of all life—this is something one must look for. It sometimes comes to expression exactly by having to battle with the language, so that we might say it has only got as far as being a stammer. Such ‘stammers’ may, however, be preferable for us to something that is perfect in itself but only reflects superficiality of soul. There was an occasion where I was given some verses. We needed verses, because we had to make a translation from another language. Very beautiful verses. I grew angry about them and wrote bad verse myself. I am aware that as poetry they are much poorer in quality. I knew, however, that in that case it was a necessity to express what needed to be expressed in a language that may perhaps seem rough and bumpy if one was drawing on the source spring of life that had to be sought in that case. I certainly do not overestimate what I undertook to do; but I also do not overestimate the polished verse I was given at the time.

The human being seeking through speech and language in the age of the spiritual soul—this is something which becomes life practice when we truly consider the life of language. Today I have therefore also tried to speak in a way where I did not deal with spiritual science in every sentence, always wanting to prove the supersensible, and instead tried to put this into the How of looking at history. And I think this is also the important thing, that one does not only call someone a true spiritual scientist whose every fifth word is ‘spirit’ and ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual world’, believing in the suggestive effect of this, but someone who shows in the way he looks at the world, even in completely outer terms, by the way in which he presents things, that the inner guide, who takes us from thought to thought, from view to view, from impulse to impulse—that this guide is the spirit. If it is the spirit we need not keep on chirping the word all the time.

Here you can see how one can substantiate in speech and language something which I might also present in an extensive lecture.

• 111. Sprüche in Prosa. See note 10.
• 112. Nature non facit saltus. First in Fournier, Varietés historiques et litteraires, 1613, IX, 247, then in Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur I’entendement humain, 1756, preface and IV ch. 16, and in Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, 1751, No. 77.
• 113. At the request of Philipp IV, Pope Boniface VIII was taken prisoner at Anagni on 7 September 1303. He died soon after. The French pope Clement V did not go to Italy but resided in Avignon from 1309. The Papal Court had its seat there from 1309 until 1377.
• 114. The Order of the Templars, established in 1119 for the protection of the Sacred Tomb in Jerusalem and the pilgrims who visited it, was accused of heresy by French Kind Philip IV who wanted them suppressed and their property appropriated. The Papacy, then wholly under the French influence in Avignon, acceded to this. Following inquisition and torture, the Order was suppressed in 1312. The remaining Templars who had been arrested in 1307 were burned.
• 115. In the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Orleans was under siege by the English in 1428. It was relieved in April 1429 by a small army led by Joan of Arc.
• 116. The attack by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was successfully beaten off by the Swiss at Grandson and Murten. Charles was killed in the decisive battle of Nancy in 1477.
• 117. 1618-1648, power struggle between kings of France and Habsburg rulers of Holy Roman Empire and Spain, with added overtones of conflict between Calvinism and post-Tridentine Catholicism. Other powers that became involved included German principalities, Sweden, Denmark and Transylvania. [Tr.]
• 118. Revolution broke out in many European countries in 1848—France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany and other areas. In England this was reflected in a final outburst of Chartist agitation [Tr.].
• 119. Britain and France fought Russia in 1854-6, originally because the Russians had successfully fought the Turks in the Black Sea region. European peace was under threat.
• 120. The talk between Goethe and Frédéric Jean Soret took place on 2 August 1830. Conflict between Etienne Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire and Georges Cuvier had started in February that year at the Paris Academy. Goethe had above all studied Saint-Hilaire’s writings, publishing a review entitled ‘Principes de Philosophic zoologique’ in 1830/32. In Goethe’s scientific writings. See note 10.
• 121. See note 33.
• 122. See also Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10); tr. G. Metaxa; Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1993; chapter on the guardian of the threshold.
• 123. Words of Solon or Chilon on the Apollo Temple at Delphi.
• 124. Mauthner, F. Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 3 Bde, Stuttgart 1901-1903. Wörterbuch der Philosophy, see note 27.
• 125. An influenza epidemic had led to a partial ban on gatherings.
• 126. See note 88.
• 127. It has not been possible to establish exactly which essay this was. See notes 44 and 46, however.
• 128. Geibel, Emanuel (1815–1884), German poet and dramatist.
• 129. Wildenbruch, Ernst von (1845–1909), German writer and dramatist, wrote patriotic poems during the Hohenzollem empire.

The Christmas festival which we are about to celebrate is given deep significance again and a new life in the spirit with the anthroposophical view of the world. Spiritually, the Christmas festival is a sun festival, and it is as a sun festival that we shall meet it today. To begin with, let us hear the most wonderful apostrophe⁸¹ addressed to the sun, words Goethe wrote for his Faust:

The throb of life returns, with pulses beating Soft to ethereal dawn. O steadfast earth,
True through the night, you waited for my greeting,
Breathing beneath my feet in glad new birth,
And, clothing me afresh in joy of living,
In high resolve that banishes misgiving,
You stir my soul to prove life’s utmost worth.—

In gold of dawn the quickened world lies gleaming,
The forest is alive with myriad voices,
Through dell and vale the misty shapes are teeming,
But nature’s deepest heart in light rejoices;
Now burgeon, freshly quivering, frond and bough,
Sprung from the fragrant depth where they lay dreaming;
On flower and blade hang trembling pearls, and now Each colour stands out clear, in glad device,
And all the region is my Paradise.

Look up on high!—The giant peaks that stand In joy of light above the mountain-brow,
Are heralds of the solemn hour at hand,
That brings the blessing down upon our land.
Already, down the soft eternal stair,
The shine has reached the lower Alpine sward,
Where clarity and brilliance are restored,
As downward, step by step, the light is poured—
The dazzling sun strides forth, and fills the air.
I turn, from greater power than eyes can bear.

And thus it is, when hope with earnest striving Has toiled in aims as high as man may dare,
Fulfilment’s open gates give promise fair,
But from those everlasting depths comes driving,
A fiery blast that takes us unaware:
We thought to light life’s torch, but now, depriving Our highest hope, a sea of fire surrounds us.
Such fire! Of love? Or the fierce glow of hate?
The blend of joy and sorrow that confounds us Sends us to earth: to veil our troubled state,
For benefice of Spring we supplicate.

And so I turn, the sun upon my shoulders,
To watch the waterfall, with heart elate,
The cataract pouring, crashing from the boulders,
Split and rejoined a thousand times in spate;
The thunderous water seethes in fleecy spume,
Lifted on high in many a flying plume,
Above the spray-drenched air. And then how splendid To see the rainbow rising from this rage,
Now clear, now dimmed, in cool sweet vapour blended.
So strive the figures on our mortal stage.
This ponder well, the mystery closer seeing;
In mirrored hues we have our life and being.⁸²

These are the tremendous words Goethe lets his representative of humanity utter as the sun rises in the morning. It is not this sun, however, awakening anew every morning, which we are considering in connection with the festival of which we want to speak today. We want to let the true nature of the sun influence us in a much deeper sense. And the reality of that sun shall be our lodestar today.

We shall now hear the words that reflect the most profound meaning of the Christmas mystery. These words sounded as the pupils listened in deep devotion in the mysteries of all ages, hearing them before they were permitted to enter into the mysteries themselves.

Behold the sun
At the midnight hour!
In the lifeless ground
Build thy rocky tower!

So, when in depths thou mourn,
Find thou in death’s dark night
Creation’s pulse new-born With living morning light.

The powers on high make known
The eternal word divine;
The deeps must guard their own—
Peace, in their sacred shrine.

In gloom thou livest—
Create anew a sun!
In matter weaves—
Know spirit-bliss begun!⁸³

Many people who today know only the Christmas tree with its candles believe it to be an institution that has a long tradition. This is not the case, however. The Christmas tree is in fact a fairly recent European institution. Even the earliest Christmas tree was only just over a hundred years ago. But young as the tree may be, the Christmas festival is old indeed.

The Christmas festival was known and celebrated in all the mysteries of earliest times everywhere. It is not a mere sun feast but one that takes humanity to true perception or at least an idea of the wellsprings of existence. It was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the mysteries at the time when the sun sent the least energy to the earth, gave the least warmth. It was also celebrated by those who could not yet take part in the whole of it, but knew only an outer reflection of the most sublime mysteries, a reflection in the form of images. And these secrets from the mysteries have survived through the ages and assumed a different garb among different peoples, depending on their beliefs. Christmas is the name given to the solemn night, this holy night celebrated in the great mysteries. These were occasions when the initiator would let the higher human being be resurrected in those who had been adequately prepared, or, to put it in present-day terms, when the living Christ was born in the inner human being.

People who do not know that spiritual principles are at work as well as chemical and physical principles, and that like chemical and physical principles these have their particular seasons in the cosmos, people like this are the only ones able to believe that it does not matter when the higher self is awakened. The essence of the great mysteries was that human beings lived through an event in which they were allowed to see the creative powers in the glory of colour, in bright light; were permitted to see the world around them filled with spiritual qualities, with many spirits; were permitted to see the world of spirits around them, and had the greatest experience a human being can have. One day this moment will come for all and everyone. All will know it, though perhaps only after many incarnations—but the time will come for all and everyone when the Christ will rise within them and new seeing, new hearing will awaken in them.

Mystery pupils who were being prepared for the awakening would first be taught what this awakening meant in the great universe. After this the final acts would come to bring awakening, and these acts were performed at the time when the darkness was greatest, when the sun was at its lowest in the outside world—at Christmas, for those who knew the true facts in the spirit knew that powers moved through cosmic space at this time that were helpful for such an awakening. During the preparation the pupils would be told that those who truly wished to know must know not only what had been happening on this globe through millennia but must also learn to have an overview of the whole of human evolution. They also had to know that the great festivals had been made part of the year and its seasons by leading spirits and that they must devote themselves to looking up to the great eternal truths.

The eye was guided to roam over millions of years. Look to the time, the pupils would be told, when our earth was not yet the way it is now, when there was no sun as yet, no moon, but the two were still one with the earth; when the earth was still one body with the sun and the moon. Human beings were there at that time, but they did not yet have a body. They were spiritual entities, and no light of the sun fell on those human souls and spirits from outside. The light of the sun was in the earth itself. It was not like the sunlight of today, which falls on creatures and objects from the outside. It was a light that had power of spirit in it, and shone forth at the same time in the inner life of every human being. Then came the time when the sun moved away from the earth. It separated from the earth and its light then fell on the earth from outside. The sun had withdrawn from the earth. Darkness had come to the inner human being.

This was where the human race began to evolve towards the future point in time when they would find the inner light shining again within them. Humanity had to gain knowledge of the things of this earth, using the outer senses. Human evolution tended towards the time when the higher human being, the spirit human being, would once again be aglow and alight within. From the light through the darkness to the light—that is the course of human evolution.

When the pupils had been prepared they would be guided towards awakening at the moment in time when as a chosen group they were to have an inner experience of something which the rest of humanity is only to experience in the distant future. Then they would see the light of the spirit with eyes that had been opened in the spirit. This solemn moment was to come when outer light was weakest, on the day when the sun shone least in the outside world. Then, on that day, the pupils of the mysteries would be brought together, and the inner light would open up for them.

Others who were not yet able to take part in this celebration were to have at least an outer image that would tell them: ‘You, too, shall one day know this great moment. Today you see an image. Later you shall experience the event you now see in the image.’

Those were the lesser mysteries. They would show a reflection of what the initiate would experience at a later time. Today we’ll share in the experience of what happened in the lesser mysteries around the midnight hour. It was the same everywhere—in the Egyptian mysteries, the Eleusinian mysteries, the mysteries of Asia Minor, in the Babylonian and Chaldean mysteries and also in those of Persian Mithra worship and the Indian Brahma mysteries. Everywhere the pupils of those mystery centres would have the same experience around the midnight hour of that solemn night.

They would gather in good time on the eve of the event. In quiet thought they had to gain insight into the significance of this, the most important event. They would sit in absolute silence, having gathered in the dark. When midnight approached they would have been sitting in the dark room for hours. Thoughts of eternity went through their inmost minds. Then, towards midnight, mysterious sounds would arise, flooding the room, growing louder and then softer again. Hearing these sounds the pupils would know it to be the music of the spheres. Profound, solemn devotion filled their hearts. Then a faint light would come from a dimly lit disk. Those who saw it would know that this disk represented the earth. The luminous disk would then grow darker and darker until finally it would be quite black. At the same time the room around them would grow progressively lighter. Those who saw it knew that the black disk was the earth. The sun, which otherwise shone through the earth had been obscured. The earth could no longer see the sun. Then halo upon halo would develop around the earth’s disk, in rainbow colours, going outwards. Those who saw this would know that it was the iris.⁸⁴ And around midnight, a luminous reddish violet halo would arise in place of the black earth disk; a word was written on this. The word would be a different one, depending on the nations whose members were allowed to experience the mystery. In our present-day language it would be Christos.⁸⁵ Those who saw it would know it to be the sun. It appeared to them in that midnight hour when the world all around was lying in profound darkness. The pupils would be told that they had now experienced something in images which in the mysteries was called ‘to see the sun around midnight’.

A true initiate truly learned to see the sun around the midnight hour, for the material principle in him had been extinguished. The sun of the spirit alone lived in him, its light shining out over all the darkness of matter.

This was the most blessed moment in human evolution when the human being found himself released from darkness and living in the light of eternity. It was shown as an image in the mysteries, year after year, around the midnight hour of that solemn night. The image showed that there is a sun of the spirit as well as the physical sun, and like the physical sun this must be born from deep darkness. To make it even clearer to them, the pupils were taken to a cave after their experience of the rising sun, the Christos. The cave appeared to contain nothing but rock—dead, lifeless matter. They would then see ears of corn arise from the stones, a sign of life, a symbolic picture of life arising from apparent death, life being born in dead mineral. They would then be told that just as the power of the sun will wax again from this day onward, the day when it appeared to have died, so new life was forever rising from life that was dying.

The same event is referred to in the words ‘He must wax but I must wane’ in the New Testament.⁸⁶ John, herald of the coming Christ, of the light of the spirit when it is at its greatest height in the course of the year at midsummer, this John must wane, and as he wanes the power of the light that is coming waxes, growing more and more powerful as John wanes. Thus the new, the coming life is preparing in the seed which must perish and die so that the new plant may arise.

The inner feeling pupils were meant to develop was that life lies dormant in death, that new, magnificent flowers and fruit arose from death and putrefaction, that the earth was filled with the power to give birth. They had to come to believe that something happens in the inner earth at this time—the overcoming of death through life. When they were shown the conquering light they were shown the life that was present in death. They experienced this inwardly, they lived through this when they saw light arise and shine out in the darkness. They now saw sprouting life in the rock cave, life arising in glorious abundance from something that was seemingly dead.

That is how the pupils were trained to develop this belief in life, and belief in what may be called the greatest human ideal was made to grow in their hearts and minds. They learned to look up to this, the greatest human ideal, to the time when earth will have completed its evolution, when light will be radiant in the whole of humanity. The earth itself will then fall to dust, but its spiritual essence will remain, with all the human beings who have grown inwardly luminous through the light of the spirit. And earth and humanity shall awaken to a higher form of existence, a new stage of existence.

When Christianity arose in the course of evolution, this was its ideal in the highest possible sense. It was inwardly felt that the Christos, being the immortal spirit of the earth, was to appear as the foundation not only of all material, sprouting life, but also of spiritual rebirth, the great ideal of all humanity; that he was born around Christmas time, the time of greatest darkness, as a sign that a higher human being can be born out of the darkness of matter in the human soul. Before people came to speak of a Christos, they would speak of a sun hero in the earlier mysteries; he was seen to be connected with the same ideal as the Christos of Christianity. The individual connected with the ideal was called the sun hero. Just as the sun completes its cycle in the course of the year, as its light increases and decreases, just as its heat seems to be withdrawn from the earth and then radiates again, just as its death holds life, letting it stream forth once again, so the sun hero has become lord over death and night and darkness because of the power of his life in the spirit.

Seven degrees of initiation were known in the Persian Mithras mysteries. The first was the ‘raven’, someone able only to go as far as the portal of the temple of initiation. The ravens became mediators between the material life of the outside world and the spiritual life of the inner world; no longer belonging to the material world they were not yet part of the spiritual world. We find these ravens come up again and again, always playing the same role as messengers going to and fro between the two worlds and conveying knowledge between them. We also have them in our Norse and German myths and legends—Odin’s ravens and the ravens flying around the Kyffhäuser mountain. The second degree, that of the ‘occult person’, took the disciple from the portal into the inner initiation temple. There he matured until he reached the third degree, the ‘protagonist’ who would go out and make known to the world the occult truths he had experienced in the temple. The fourth degree, that of the ‘lion’, was gained when his consciousness was no longer limited to the individual but to a whole tribe. Hence the Christ was known as the ‘lion of Judah’. Someone whose consciousness extended even further, embracing a whole nation, would have reached the fifth degree. He would no longer have a name of his own but would bear the name of the nation. Thus people spoke of a ‘Persian’, or an ‘Israelite’. We can see why Nathanael⁸⁷ was called a ‘true Israelite’; it was because he had reached the fifth degree of initiation. The sixth degree was the ‘sun hero’, and we need to understand what this means. We shall then come to see that pupils in the mysteries would feel a shudder of veneration if they knew something about a sun hero and were able to share in the festival to celebrate the birth of a sun hero at Christmas.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course. All the stars follow a great rhythm, as does the sun. If the sun were to abandon this rhythm for even a movement, if it were to leave its orbit for just a moment, this would cause a revolution of unheard-of importance in the whole of the universe. Rhythm governs the whole of nature, from lifeless nature all the way to the human being. We see it in the plant world—a violet, a lily flowering at the same season. Animals are on heat at given times in the year. This changes only in humans. Rhythm, active in powers of growth, reproduction and so on all the way up to the animal world, comes to a halt in human beings.

Humanity is meant to be embedded in freedom, and the more civilized people are the more is this rhythm on the decrease. Just as the light vanishes at Christmas time, so has rhythm apparently completely disappeared from human lives, and chaos prevails. But human beings are meant to bring this rhythm to birth from within and do so on their own initiative. They are meant to shape their lives of their own free will so that they run within rhythmic boundaries. Life’s events are meant to follow one another as firmly and securely as the sun’s orbit. And just as it is unthinkable that the sun’s orbit should ever change, so it should be unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life could be broken.

The sun hero was the embodiment of such a life rhythm. With the strength of the higher human being who had been born in him he gained the strength to govern the rhythm of his own biography. This sun hero was also the Christ Jesus for the first two centuries, and this is why the celebration of his birth was moved to the time when the birthday feast of the sun hero had been celebrated from time immemorial. Hence also everything connected with the life story of Christ Jesus, hence also the midnight mass, celebrated in caves by the early Christians in memory of the sun festival. At this mass, a sea of light shone out in the darkness of midnight in memory of the spirit sun that rose in the mysteries. Hence the story goes that Jesus was born in a stable, in memory of the rock cave out of which life was born in those ears of corn that were the symbol for life.

Just as life on earth was born out of dead rock, so was the highest—Christ Jesus—born out of the lowest. The legend of three priestly sages, the three kings from the east, was connected with his birth. They brought gold, the symbol of external power full of wisdom, myrrh, the symbol of life vanquishing death, and incense, symbol of the cosmic ether in which the spirit lives.

In the deeper meaning of the Christmas festival we can therefore sense echoes from man’s earliest times. And this has come down to us in the particular quality which Christianity has. Its symbols reflect the earliest symbols known to humanity. The tree with its candles is such a symbol. It is an image of the tree of paradise for us.⁸⁸ That tree represents the life-giving principle and the gaining of knowledge in paradise. Paradise itself is the whole, complete sphere of material nature. Spiritual nature is represented by the tree in the midst of it, the tree that encompasses knowledge and the tree of life. Knowledge can only be gained at the cost of life.

A story tells us the significance of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Seth stood before the gates of paradise and asked to come in. The cherub guarding the entrance let him enter. This is to indicate that Seth became an initiate. When Seth was in paradise he found that the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were firmly intertwined. The archangel Michael, he who stands before god, allowed him to take three seeds from the intertwined tree.

This tree prophesies the future of humanity. When the whole of humanity has gained insight and has been initiated, it will bear within it not only the tree of knowledge but also the other tree, that of life. Death will then be no more. For the time being, however, the initiate was only allowed to take three seeds, the three seeds that signify the higher principles of the human being.

When Adam died, Seth placed the three seeds in his mouth and a flaming tree grew on Adam’s grave. This had the property that new shoots and leaves would grow from any wood cut from it. In the bush’s circle of flame were written the words ehjeh asher ehjeh, meaning ‘I am the one who was, who is and who shall be’. This signifies the principle that goes through all incarnations, the power of man to renew himself, come into existence again and again, descending from the light into the darkness and ascending from the darkness into the light.

The rod Moses used to perform his miracles was cut from the wood of this bush. The gate of Solomon’s temple was made of it. Wood was taken from the bush and put into the pond at Bethesda and gave it the power of which the story tells. And the cross of Christ Jesus was made of this wood, the cross which shows life dying away, life perishing in death which nevertheless has the power in it to bring forth new life. Here we have before us the great symbol for the world—life that overcomes death. The wood of the cross had grown from the three seeds that came from paradise.

The same symbol—of the lower principle dying and the resurrection of the higher principle sprouting forth from it—is also shown in the Rose Cross, and the red roses. Goethe put it in these words:

For as long as you do not have
this word ‘die and become’,
you are but a troubled guest
in the darkness of this earth. ⁸⁹

This is a wonderful connection between the tree of paradise and the wood of the cross! The cross may be a symbol for Easter, but it also deepens the Christmas mood for us. We can feel the new life welling forth in the Christ idea as we contemplate it in the night when Christ Jesus was born. We see the idea reflected in the living roses decorating our tree here. They tell us that the tree of holy night has not yet become the wood of the cross but the power to be this wood is beginning to arise within it. The roses growing among the green are a symbol of the eternal conquering the temporal.

The square of Pythagoras (Fig. 12) is a symbol for the fourfold nature of man—physical body, ether body, astral body and I.

Above it is the tao (Fig. 16), the sign reminding us of the image our earliest ancestors had of God. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were cultivated land, those ancestors lived on Atlantis, which has gone down beneath the waves. Norse mythology still holds memories of Atlantis in the legends of Niflheim, home of mists. For Atlantis did not have clear air. Vast, mighty masses of mist rolled and boiled above the soil, similar to the experience we may have today walking in the clouds and mists at high altitudes. Sun and moon were not clearly visible in the sky. On Atlantis they appeared surrounded by rainbow haloes the sacred iris. People were then still much more able to understand the language of nature. The lapping waves, the sound of the wind in the trees, the whispering leaves, the rumble of thunder still speak to us today, but we no longer understand them. The ancient Atlanteans did. They felt that a divine element was speaking to them in all these things. In the midst of all those speaking clouds and water and leaves and winds a sound reached the ears of the Atlanteans: tao—it is I. The essence of the whole natural world lived in that sound. Atlantis heard it. The tao later became the letter T. The circle at the top is the sign for the all-encompassing nature of God the Father.

Finally the principle which is present in the whole of the universe and exists as the human being is shown in the symbol of the pentagram (Fig. 17) which we see at the top of the tree. It is not permissible to speak of the deepest sense of the pentagram here and now. It does show us the star of evolving humanity. It is the star, the symbol of the human being which is followed by all who have wisdom, as the priestly wise men did in the distant past. It is the meaning of the earth, the great sun hero who is born in holy night because the most sublime light shines out in the deepest darkness.

Humanity will live on into a future when the light will be born in them; when words pregnant with meaning will give way to others and it will no longer be said that the darkness cannot comprehend the light. Truth will sound out in cosmic space, and the darkness will comprehend the light that shines out for us in the star of humanity. Darkness shall yield and comprehend the light, that is, will be taken hold of by it. And this is meant to sound out for us from our inmost being in the Christmas festival. Only then will we be celebrating Christmas in the right way, for it will then tell us that one day the light of the spirit will shine out from the inmost human being into the whole world. And we’ll then be able to celebrate Christmas as the feast of the most sublime ideal for humanity. It will then have real meaning again, be alive again in our souls, and the Christmas tree, too, will once more have its true meaning as a symbol of the paradise tree, truer than the meanings it is given today, however thoughtful. In our hearts, celebration of holy night will lead to joyful hope and to understanding that yes, I too shall experience within me what we must call the birth of the higher human being; in me, too, the birth of the saviour, of the Christos, will come.

• 81. In rhetoric, a passage where the speaker specifically turns away from the main discourse and addresses a present or absent person or thing.
• 82. Goethe, J. W. Faust 2, Pleasing landscape. Faust speaking. Translated by Philip Wayne. London: Penguin Classics, Penguin Books Ltd 1959.
• 83. Version as found in a notebook entry Rudolf Steiner made in 1906. Different versions appeared in later years. English version given here taken from Steiner R. Verses and Meditations. Translated by F. Melland. London; Rudolf Steiner Press 1979.
• 84. In Greek mythology, Iris was the messenger of the gods. In another set of notes it says: 'an image of St Iris'.
• 85. The Greek ὁ Χριστός means ‘the anointed’, corresponding to the Hebrew ‘the Messias’. The ‘χρηστος’, Chrestos, used by Gnostics and Manicheans means 'the good one'; according to Marcion (early Christian Gnostic, c. 100–165 AD), the most sublime good god as distinct from the demiurgos, the creator god who was merely just. 'Chrestos' was introduced in the 3rd edition of the special German booklet Zeichen und Symbole des Weihnachtsfestes, for Rudolf Steiner used it in the lecture he gave on 14 December 1905 (in GA 54; English in Christmas). The context was a different one, however, and a further review of the original records shows that 'Chrestos' does not appear in any of the sets of notes available to us (Literary Estate Administration in Dornach).
• 86. John 3: 30.
• 87. John 1:47.
• 88. See 'Der Baum des Lebens und der Erkenntnis des Guten und des Bosen. Die Geheimnisse der Kunst' in GA 162.
• 89. In ‘Selige Sehnsucht’, Westöstlicher Diwan.
• 90. Lully (or Lull), Raymond (c. 1232–1315). See Steiner R. World History in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 233), lectured dated 5 January 1924. Tr. G. & M. Adams. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977.

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

This is the most important thing: that the human soul should become more or less accustomed to the fact that the way of looking at and recognizing things that for the sense world is the correct and healthy one is not the only way.

Here I shall give the name elemental world to the first world that the soul of a human being enters on becoming clairvoyant and crossing the threshold. Only a person who wants to carry the habits of the sense world into the higher super-sensible worlds can demand a uniform choice of names for all the points of view the higher worlds can offer. (At the close of this course of lectures and also in my small book coming out in a day or two, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I shall point out the connection between the terms chosen here—for example, elemental world and those in my books Theosophy and Occult Science, soul world, spirit world, and so on—in order that people do not look for contradictions in a superficial way where they do not exist.)

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

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

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

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

Let us suppose that a person's clairvoyant consciousness, when returning over the threshold, were to take back into the sense world the faculty of transformation it has to have in order to be at all aware of the spiritual world. The faculty of transformation I've been speaking about is a peculiarity of the human etheric body, which lives by preference in the elemental world. Now suppose that a person were to go back into the physical world keeping his etheric body as capable of transformation as it has to be in the elemental world. What would happen? Each of the worlds has it's own special laws.

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

Now let us suppose that a soul, becoming clairvoyant, were to carry over into the physical world this desire of its etheric body for transformation. Then with its tendency towards movement, it will fit rather loosely into the physical body, and thus the soul can come into contradiction with the physical world that wants to shape it into a definite personality. The etheric body, which always wants to move freely, can come back over the threshold in the wrong way, every moment wishing to be something or someone else, someone that may be quite the opposite of the firmly imprinted form of the physical body. To put it even more concretely: a person could be, say, a Scandinavian bank executive, thanks to his physical body, but because his etheric brings over into the physical world the impulse to free itself from physical constraints, he may imagine himself to be the emperor of China. (Or, to use another example, a person may be—let us say—the president of the Theosophical Society, and if her etheric body has been loosened, she may imagine that she has been in the presence of the Director of the Universe.)⁹

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

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

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

We would be mistaken if we imagined that the alternation of transformation with strengthened ego feeling were regulated in the elemental world just as naturally as waking and sleeping are in the physical world. According to clairvoyant consciousness—and to this alone it is perceptible—it takes place at will, not passing so easily as waking here passes into sleep. After one has lived for a time in the element of metamorphosis, one feels the need within oneself to engage and use the other swing of the pendulum of elemental life. In a much more arbitrary way than with our waking and sleeping, the element of transforming oneself alternates with living within with its heightened feeling of self. Yes, our consciousness can even bring it about through its elasticity that in certain circumstances both conditions can be present at the same time: on the one hand, one transforms oneself to some degree and yet can hold together certain parts of the soul and rest within oneself. In the elemental world we can wake and sleep at the same time, something we should not try to do in the physical world if we have any concern for our soul life.

We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself. You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you don't find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop—you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.

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

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

The other point to note is this: Our usual natural attitude to sympathy and antipathy cannot be carried over into the elemental world. Here in this world we feel drawn to some people, repelled by others; we associate by choice with those who are sympathetic and wish to stay near them; we turn away from the things and people who are abhorrent and refuse to have anything to do with them. This cannot be the case in the elemental world, for there—if I may express it rather oddly—we will not find the sympathies sympathetic nor the antipathies antipathetic. This would resemble someone in the physical world saying, “I can stand only the blues and greens, not the red or yellow colors. I simply have to run away from red and yellow!” If a being of the elemental world is antipathetic, it means that it has a distinct characteristic of that world, which must be described as antipathetic, and we have to deal with it just as we deal in the sense world with the colors blue and red, not permitting one to be more sympathetic to us than the other. Here we meet all the colors with a certain calmness because they convey what the things are; only when a person is a bit neurotic does he run away from certain colors, or when he is a bull and cannot bear the sight of red. Most of us accept all the colors with equanimity and in the same way we should be able to observe with the utmost calmness the qualities of sympathy and antipathy that belong to the elemental world. For this we must necessarily change the attitude of soul usual in the physical world, where it is attracted by sympathy and repelled by antipathy; it must become completely changed. There the inner mood or disposition corresponding to the feelings of sympathy and antipathy must be replaced with what we can call soul-quiet, spirit-peacefulness.¹⁰ With an inwardly resolute soul life filled with spirit calm, we must immerse ourselves in the entities and transform ourselves into them; then we will feel the qualities of these beings rising within our soul depths as sympathies and antipathies. Only when we can do this, with such an attitude toward sympathy and antipathy, will the soul, in its experiences, be capable of letting the sympathetic and antipathetic perception appear before it as images that are right and true. That is, only then are we capable not merely of feeling what the perception of sympathies and antipathies is but of really experiencing our own particular self, transformed into another being, suddenly rising up as one or another color-picture or as one or another tone-picture of the elemental world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 9. Leadbeater wrote that he had “stood with Mrs. Besant in the presence of the Director of the Universe.” Mrs. Besant was at that time the President of the Theosophical Society.
• 10. See The Souls' Awakening, Scene 4. The Guardian of the Threshold says:
  You see myself, too in delusion's form
  while vain desires are joined to inner sight
  and spirit peacefulness as sheath of soul
  has not yet taken hold of your whole being.