The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have now reached a point in our studies from which we must proceed with extreme caution, in order to see where there is a danger of allowing our thought to depart from reality and to see also when we are avoiding this danger, by keeping within the bounds of what is real.

Last time, we suggested the comparison of two facts: The appearance within the planetary system of the cometary phenomena, and, alas within the planetary system, though perhaps not bearing quite the same relationship to it, all that we observe in the phenomena of fertilization. In order, however, to come to ideas about this which are at all justified, we must first see whether it is indeed possible to find connections between two so widely separated things, with which we are confronted in the external world of facts. In scientific method, we shall not make real progress, unless we can refer from one realm of facts to another, manifesting something of a similar nature and thus leading us on.

We have seen how on the one hand we have to use the element of figure and form, the mathematical, and then how we are again and again impelled to come to terms in one way or another with the qualitative aspect, in some way to find a qualitative approach. And so today we will bring in something which arises in regard to man if one really studies this man, who is, after all, in some way an image of the heavenly phenomena,—as the many statements in these lectures may enable us to deduce. Yet we still have to establish in what way he is this image. If this is what he is, we must first of all gain a clear understanding of man himself. We must understand the picture from which we intend to take our start,—understand its inner perspective. Just as in looking at a painting one must know what a foreshortening means, and so on, in order to pass from the picture to the real spatial relationships and to relate the picture to what it represents in reality, so, if we would approach reality in the universe, interpreting it through man, we must first be clear about man. Now it is, extraordinarily difficult, as a human being, to come near to the human being with palpable ideas. Therefore, I should like today to bring before your souls what I might call “palpably impalpable” thought-pictures arising from quite simple foundations, ideas with which most of you are probably already well acquainted, but which we must nevertheless bring before our minds in a certain connection. These ideas, which seem in part to be quite easy to grasp and yet again, beyond certain limits, to elude our comprehension, will afford us a means of orientation in the striving to take hold of the outer world through ideas.

It may appear somewhat forced to keep emphasizing the necessity of referring back to man's life of pictorial imagination in order to understand the phenomena of the heavens. But after all it is obvious that however carefully we may describe the heavenly phenomena, we have, to begin with, nothing more than a form of optical picture, permeated with mathematical thoughts. What Astronomy gives us has fundamentally the character of a picture. To be on the right path, we must therefore concern ourselves with the arising of the picture in man, otherwise we shall gain no true relationship to what Astronomy can say to us. And so I should like today to proceed from some quite simple mathematics and to show you how, in a different domain from that to which we were led through the ratios of the periods of revolution of the planets, there appears within Mathematics itself this element of the incomprehensible, the impalpable. We meet with it when in a certain connection we study quite familiar curves. (As I said, many of you already know what I am about to describe, I only want to elucidate the subject today from a particular aspect.)

Consider the Ellipse, with its two foci \(A\) and \(B\), and you know that it is a definition of the ellipse that for any point \(M\) of the curve, the sum of its distances \((a + b)\) from the two foci remains constant. It is characteristic of the ellipse, that the sum of the distances of any one of its points from two fixed points, the two foci, remains constant (Fig. 1).

Then we have a second curve, the Hyperbola (Fig. 2). You know that it has two branches. It is defined in that the difference of the distances of any point of the curve from the two foci, \((b - a)\) is a constant magnitude. In the ellipse, then, we have the curve of the constant sum, in the hyperbola, the curve of constant difference, and we must now ask: What is the curve of constant product?

I have often drawn attention to this: The curve of constant product is the so-called Curve of Cassini (Fig. 3). We find it when, having two points, \(A\) and \(B\), we consider a point M in regard to its distances from \(A\) and \(B\), and establish the condition that the two distances \(AM\) and \(BM\) multiplied together should equal a constant magnitude. For the sake of simplicity in the calculation, I will call the constant magnitude \(b^2\) and the distance \(AB\), \(2a\). If we take the mid-point between \(a\) and \(b\) as the center of the axes of a co-ordinate system and calculate the ordinates for each point that fulfills these conditions,—take \(C\) as the center of the co-ordinate system and let the point whose ordinate we will call y move round so that for each point of the curve \(AM•BM = b^2\), we get the following equation. (I will only give you the result, for the simply reason that everyone can easily work out the calculation for himself; it is to be found in any mathematical text-book relating to the subject.) We find for \(y\) the value:

Taking here into account that we cannot use the negative sign because we should then have an imaginary y, and considering therefore taking only the positive sign, we have:

If we then draw the corresponding curve, we have a curve, rather like but not identical with an ellipse, called the curve of Cassini (Fig. 4). It is symmetrical to the left and right of the ordinate axis and about and below the abscissa axis.

But now, this curve has various forms, and for us at any rate this is the important thing about it. The curve has different forms, according to whether b, as I have taken it here, is greater than a, equal to a, or less than a. The curve I have just drawn arises when b ˃ a, and furthermore when another condition is fulfilled, namely, that b is also greater than or equal to a √2. Moreover, when b ˃ a√2, there is a distinct curvature above and below, If b = a√2, then at this point above and below, the line of the curve becomes straightened,m it flattens so much that it almost becomes a straight line (Fig. 4). If, however, b ˂ a√2, then the whole course of the curve is changed and it takes on this form (Fig. 5). And if b = a, the curve passes over into a quite special form, it changes into this form (Fig. 6). It runs back into itself, cuts through itself and comes out on the other side, and we obtain the special form of the Lemniscate. The lemniscate, then, is a special form of Curve of Cassini—these curves are so named after their discoverer. The particular form assumed by the curve is determined by the ratio between the constant magnitudes which appear in the equation characterizing the curve. In the equation, we have only these two constant magnitudes, b and a, and the form of the curve depends on the ratio between them.

Then the third case is possible, that b ˂ a. If b ˂ a, we can still find values for the curve. We can always solve the equation and obtain values for the curve, ordinates and abscissae, even when b is smaller than a, only the curve then undergoes yet another metamorphosis. For when b ˂ a, we find two branches of the curve, which look something like this (Fig. 7). We have a discontinuous curve. And here we come to the point where the mathematics itself confronts us with what I called the “palpably impalpable”, something that is difficult to grasp in space. For in the sense of the mathematical equation, this is not two curves, but one; it is a single curve in exactly the same way as all these are single curves (Figs. 3 through 5). In this one (the lemniscate) there is already a transition. The point which describes the curve takes this path, goes round underneath, cuts its previous path here and continues on here (Fig. 7). Here, we must picture the following: If we let the point M move along this line, it does not simply cross over from one side to the other,—it does not do this. It runs along the path just as in the other curves, describes a curve here, but then manages to turn up again here (Fig. 7) You see, that which carries the point along the line disappears here in the middle. If you want to understand the curve you can only imagine that it disappears in the middle. If you try to form a continuous mental picture of this curve, what must you do?

It is quite easy, is it not, to imagine curves such as thes. (I only say this in parenthesis for the ordinary philistine!) You can go on imagining points along the curve and you do not find that the picture breaks off. Here (in the lemniscate) admittedly, you have to modify the comfortable way of simply going round and round, but still it goes on continuously. You can keep hold of the mental picture. But now, when you come to this curve (Fig. 7), which is not so commonplace, and you want to image it, then, in order to keep the continuity of the idea you will have to say: Space no longer gives me a point of support. In crossing over to the other branch in my imagination, unless I break the continuity and regard the one branch as independent of the other, I must go out of space; I cannot remain in space. So you see, Mathematics itself provides us with facts which oblige us to go out of space, if we would preserve the continuity of the idea. The reality itself demands of us that in our ideas we go out of space. Even in Mathematics therefore we are confronted with something which shows us that in some way we must leave space behind, if the pure idea is to follow its right path. Having ourselves and going the idea is beginning to think the process through, we must go on thinking in such a way that space is no longer of any help to us. If this were not so, we should not be able to calculate all possibilities in the equation.

In pursuing similar line of thought, we meet with other instances of this kind. I will only draw your attention to the next step, which ensures if one things as follows. The ellipse is the locus of the constant sum,—it is defined by the fact that is is the curve of constant sum. The hyperbola is the curve of constant difference. The curve of Cassini in its various forms is the curve of constant product. There must then be a curve of constant quotient also, if we have here A, here B, here a point M, and then a constant quotient to be formed through the division of BM by AM. We must be able to find different points, M 1, M 2, etc., for which

etc. are equal to one another and always equal to a constant number. This curve is, in fact, the Circle. If we look for the points M1, M2 etc. we find a circle which has this particular relationship to thee points A and B (Fig. 8). So that we can say: Besides the usual, simple definition of a circle,—namely, that it is the locus of a point whose distance from a fixed point remains constant,—there is another definition. The circle is that curve, very point of which fulfills the condition that its distances from two fixed points maintain a constant quotient.

Now, in considering the circle in this way there is something else to be observed. For you see, if we express this

(it could of course be expressed in some other way), we always obtain corresponding values in the equation, and we can find the circle. In doing this we find different forms of the circle (that is, different proportions between the radius of the circle and the length of the straight line AB), according to the proportion of m to n. These different forms of the circle behave in such a way that their curvature becomes less and less. When \(n\) is much greater than m, we find a circle with a very strong curvature; when n is not so much greater, the curvature is less. The circle becomes larger and larger the smaller the difference between n and m. And if we follow this proportion of m to n still further, the circle gradually passes over into a straight line. You can follow this in the equation. It passes over into the ordinate axis itself. The circle becomes the ordinate axis when \(m=n\), that is, when the quotient \(m/n=1\). In this way the circle gradually changes into the ordinate axis, into a straight line.

You need not be particularly astonished at this. It is quite possible to imagine. But something very different happens it we wish to follow the process still further. The circle has flattened more and more, and through becoming flatter from within, as it were, it changes into a straight line. It does this because the constant ratio in the equation undergoes a change. Through this the circle becomes a straight line. But this constant ratio can of course grow beyond \(1\), so that the arcs of the circles appear here (on the left of the \(y\)-axis). What must we do, however, if we try to follow it in our imagination? We have to do something quite peculiar. We have, in fact, to think of a circle which is not curved towards the inside, but is curved towards the outside. Of course, I cannot draw this circle, but it is possible to think of a circle which is curved towards the outside.¹ In an ordinary circle the curvature is towards the inside, it is not? If we follow the line round it returns into itself. But defining the circle in this other way, if we use the necessary constant, we obtain a straight line. The curvature is still on this side (right of the \(y\)-axis). But it now makes things not nearly so comfortable for us as before! Previously, the curvature always turned towards the center of the circle, while now (in the case of the straight line), we are shown that the center is somewhere in the infinite distance, as one says. Following on from this, there arises for us the idea of a circle which is curved towards the outside. Its curvature is then no longer as it is here (Fig. 9a)—that would be the ordinary, commonplace, philistine circle,—but its curvature is here (Fig. 9b). Therefore, the inside of this circle is not here; this is the outside; the inside of this circle (Fig. 9c) is to the right.

Now compare what I have just put before you. I have described the curve of Cassini, with its various forms, the lemniscate and the form in which there are two branches. And now we have pictured the circle in such a way that at one time it is curved in the familiar way, with the inside here and the outside here; while in a second form of circle (in drawing it we are only indicating what is meant) we find that the curvature is this way round, with an inside here and an outside here. Comparing it with the Cassini curve, the first form of the circle would correspond to the closed forms, as far as the lemniscate. After this we have another kind of circle, which must be thought of in the other direction, being curved this way, with the inside here and the outside here. You see, when we are concerned with the constant product we find forms of the curve of Cassini where, it is true, we are thrown out of space, yet we can still draw the other branch on the other side. The other branch is once more in space, although in order to pass from the one to the other we are thrown out of space. Here, in the case of the circle, however, the matter becomes still more difficult. In the transition from circle to straight line we are, indeed, thrown out of space, and moreover, we can no longer draw a self-contained form at all. This we are unable to do. In passing over from the curve of constant product to the curve of constant quotient, we are only just able to indicate the thought spatially.

It is extraordinarily important that we concern ourselves with the creating of ideas which, as it were, will still slip into such curve-forms. I am convinced that most people who concern themselves with mathematics take note of such discontinuities, but then make the thought more comfortable by simply holding to the formula and not passing on to what should accompany the mathematical formula in true continuity of thought. I have also never seen that in the treatment of Mathematics as subject matter for education any great value is laid upon the forming of such thoughts in imagination.—I do not know,—I ask the mathematicians present, Herr Blümel, Herr Baravalle, if this is so; whether in modern University education any importance is attached to this? (Dr. Unger here mentioned the use of the cinema.) Yes, but that is a pretense. It is only possible to represent such things within empirical space by means of the cinema or in similar ways, it some sort of deception is introduced. It cannot be pictured fully in real space without the effect being achieved through some form of deception. The point is, whether there is anywhere in the sphere of reality something which obliges us to think realistically in terms of such curves. This is the question I am now asking. Before passing on, however, to describe what might perhaps correspond to these things in the realm of reality, I should like to add something which may perhaps make it easier for you to pass transition from these abstract ideas to the reality. It is the following.

You can set another problem in the sphere of theoretical Astronomy, theoretical Physics. You can say: Let us suppose that here as \(A\), is a source of light, and this source of light in a illumines a point \(M\) (Fig. 10). The strength of the light shining from \(M\) is observed from \(B\). That is, with the necessary optical instruments, observation is made from \(B\) of the strength of the light shining from the point \(M\), which is illumined from \(A\). And of course, the strength of the light would vary, according to the distance between \(B\) and \(M\). But there is a path which could be described by the point \(M\), such that, being illumined from A, it always shines back to \(B\) with the same intensity. There is such a path; and we can therefore ask: What must be the locus of a point, illumined from a fixed point \(A\), such that, seen from another fixed point \(B\), its light is always of the same intensity? This curve—the curve in which such a point would have to move—is the curve of Cassini! From this you see that something which takes on a qualitative nature is set into spatial connection, fitting into a complicated curve. The quality that we must see in the beam of light—for the intensity of light is a quality—depends in this case on the element of form in the spatial relationships.

I only wished to bring this forward for you to see that there is at least some way of leading over from what can be grasped in geometrical form to what is qualitative. This way is a long one, and what we will now discuss is something to which I want to draw your attention, although it would take months to present in all detail. You must be fully aware that I only intend to give you guiding lines; it is left to you to develop them further and to go into all the details which would testify to the truth of what is said. For you see, the connection which must be formed between spiritual science and empirical sciences of today demands very far-reaching and extensive work. But when lines of direction are once given, this work can to some extent be undertaken and carried forward. It is at all events possible. One must only be able in a quite definite way to penetrate into the empirical phenomena.

If we now tackle the problem from quite another angle,—we have sought to some degree to understand it from the mathematical aspect, then, to anyone who is studying the human organism, there is something which cannot escape unnoticed, something which has often been brought forward in our circle, especially in the talks which accompanied the course of lectures on Medicine in Dornach in the spring of 1920. It is not to be overlooked that certain relationships exist between the organisation of the head and the rest of the human organisation, for example the metabolism. There is indeed a connection, indefinable to begin with, between what takes place in the third system of the human being—in all the organs of metabolism—and what takes place in the head. The relationship is there, but it is hard to formulate. Clearly as it emerges in various phenomena,—for example, it is obvious that certain illnesses are connected with skull or head deformities and the like, and these things can easily be traced by one who tries to follow them with biological reasoning,—it nevertheless difficult to grasp this relationship in imagination. People do not usually get beyond the point of saying that there must be some sort of connection between what takes place in the head, for instance, and in the rest of the human organism. It is a picture which is difficult to form, just because it is so very hard for people to make the transition from the quantitative aspect to the qualitative. If we are not educated through spiritual-scientific methods to find this transition, quite independently of what outer experience offers,—to extend to what is qualitative the kind of thought we use for what is quantitative, if we do not methodically train ourselves to do this, then, my dear friends, there will always be an apparent limit to our understanding of the external phenomena.

Let me indicate but one way in which you can train yourselves methodologically to think the qualitative in a similar way as you think the quantitative. You are all acquainted with the phenomenon of the solar spectrum, the usual continuous spectrum. You know that we have there the transition of colour from red to violet. You know, too, that Goethe wrestled with the problem of how this spectrum is in a sense the reverse of what must arise if darkness be allowed to pass through the prism in the same way as is usually done with light. The result is a kind of inverted spectrum, and as you know Goethe arranged this experiment also. In the ordinary spectrum, the green passes over on the one side towards the violet and on the other towards the red; whereas in the spectrum obtained by Goethe in applying a strip of darkness to the prism there is peach-blossom in the middle and then again red on the one side and violet on the other (Fig. 11). The two colour bands are obtained, the centres of which are opposite to one another, qualitatively opposite, and both bands seem to stretch away as it were into infinity. But now, one can imagine that this axis, the longitudinal axis of the ordinary spectrum, is not simply a straight line, but a circle, as indeed every straight line is a circle. If this straight line is a circle, it returns into itself, and we can consider the point where the peach-blossom appears to be the same point as the one in which the violet, stretching to the right, meets the red, which stretches to the left. They meet in the infinite distance to the right and left. If we were to succeed—maybe you know that one of the first experiments to be made in our newly established physical laboratory is to be in this direction—if we were to succeed in bending the spectrum in a certain way into itself, then even those who are not willing to grasp the matter to begin with in pure thought will be able to see that we are here concerned with something real and of a qualitative nature.

We come to certain limiting ideas in Mathematics, where—as in Synthetic Geometry—we are obliged to regard the straight line as a circle in a quite real though inner sense; where we are obliged to admit of the infinitely distant point of a straight line as being only one point; or to understand as bounding a plane, not some line above and then again below, but a single straight line; or to think of the boundary of infinite space, not in the nature of something spherical, but as a plane. Such ideas, however, also become, in a way, limiting ideas for sense-perceptible empirical reality, and we are made to realise it if we insist on restricting ourselves to sense-perceptible reality.

This brings us to something which would otherwise always remain perpetually in the dark. I have already mentioned it. It invites us really to think-through the thought-pictures to which we come when we allow the lemniscate-form of the Cassini curve to pass over into the double-branched form,—the form with the two branches for which we must go out of space,—and them compare this with what confronts us in the empirical reality.

You are indeed already doing this, my dear friends, when you apply Mathematics in one way or another to the empirical reality. You call a triangle a triangle, because you have first constructed it mathematically. You apply to the outer form what has been evolved in an inner constructive way within you. The process I have just described is only more complicated, but it is the same process when you think of the two branches of that particular form of the Cassini curve as one. Apply this thought to the correspondence between the human head and the rest of the human organism and you will have to realise that in the head there is a connection with the remaining organism of precisely such a character as is expressed by the equation which requires, not a continuous curve, but a discontinuous one. This cannot be followed anatomically; you must go out beyond what the body comprises physically, if you would find the connection of what comes to expression in the head with what comes to expression in the metabolic system. It is essential to approach the human organism with thoughts which are quite unattainable if for every element of the thought you insist on an entire correspondence within the sense-perceptible empirical realm. We must reach out to something else, beyond the sense-perceptible empirical realm, if we are to find what this relationship really is within the human being.

Such a study, if one really gives oneself up to it and carried it out methodically, is extraordinarily rich in its results. The human organisation is of such a nature that it cannot be embraced by the anatomical approach alone. Just as we are driven out of space in the Cassini curve, so in the study of man we are driven out of the body, by the method of study itself. You see, it is quite possible to understand in the first place in thought, that in a study of the whole man we are driven out of the realm of what can be grasped in a physical-empirical sense. To put forward such things is no offence against scientific principles. Such ideas are far removed from the purely hypothetical fantasies which are often entertained in connection with natural phenomena, for they refer to the whole way in which man is membered into the universe. You are not looking for something which is otherwise non-existent, but rather for something which is exactly the same as what is expressed in the relationship between a man thinking mathematically and the empirical reality.

It is not a question of looking for hypotheses which in the end are unjustifiable; it is a question, since the reality is obviously complicated, of looking for other cognitive relations to the inner reality, in addition to the simple relation of mathematical man to empirical reality. When once you have accepted such thoughts, you will also be led to ask whether what takes place outside the human being in other domains besides the astronomical,—for example, in those phenomena which we call the chemical and physical,—whether those same phenomena, which we regard as chemical phenomena outside of man, take the same course within man, when he is alive, as they do outside him, or whether here, too, a transition is necessary which leads in some way out of space.

Now consider the important question arising out of this. Suppose we have here some kind of chemical phenomena and here the boundary leading over to the inside of the human being (Fig. 13). Supposing that this chemical phenomenon were able to call forth another, so that the human being reacted here (inside); then, if we remain in the field of the empirical, space would of course be the mediator. If, however, the continuance of this phenomenon within the human being comes about by virtue of the fact, say, that the human being is nourished by food, and the processes already taking place outside him continue inside him, then the question arises: Does the force which is at work in the chemical process remain in the same space when it taking place within man as when it is taking its course outside him? Or must we perhaps go out of space?

And there you have what is analogous to the circle which changes over into a straight line. If you look for its other form, where what is usually turned outward is now turned inward, you are entirely outside of space.

The question is, whether we do not need such ideas as these, thought-pictures which, while remaining continuous, go right out of space,—when we follow the course of what happens outwardly, outside of man, into the interior of the human being. The only thing to be said against such things, my dear friends, is that they certainly impose greater demands on the human capacity of understanding than the ideas with which he phenomena are approached today. They might therefore be rather awkward in University education. They are, no doubt, thoroughly awkward, for they imply that before approaching the phenomena we must awaken in ourselves what will enable us to understand them. Nothing like this exists in our educational system today; but it must come, it must certainly come, otherwise simply in speaking of a phenomenon we get into the greatest disparities, without in any way seeing the reality. Just think what happens when someone observes the circle as it curves to this side (Fig. 9a), and then sees how it curves to this side (Fig. 9b), but then remains a philistine and simple does not conceive that the circle now curves towards the other side. He says: This is impossible, the circle cannot curve this way; I must put the curvature this way round, I must simply place myself on the other side. What he is speaking about seems to be one and the same thing; but he has changed his point of view.

In this way today we make matters simple, in describing what is within the human being in comparison with what takes place in Nature outside him. We say: What is within man does not exist at all; I must simply place myself within man and say that the curvature is facing this way (Fig. 9c). I will then consider what is inside, without taking into account that I have reversed the curvature. I will make the interior of the human being into an outer Nature. I simply imagine outer Nature to continue through the skin into the interior. I turn myself round, because I am not willing to admit the other form of curvature, and then I theorise. That is the trick which is performed today, only in order to adhere to more comfortable motions. There is no desire to accent what is real; in order not to have to do so, we simply turn ourselves round, and—this is now a comparison—instead of looking at the human from in front, we look at Nature from behind and thus arrive in this way at all the various theories concerning man.

We will continue, then, tomorrow.

• 1. If it were drawn it would look like an ordinary circle, only one would have to bear in mind that “outside” and “inside” had changed places. (Editor's note.)

Dr. Steiner: I think that first I need to hear what has happened with the class schedule during the short period it has been implemented. I would like to know whether you see it as a possible solution.

A teacher: A father wrote a letter indicating things have gotten worse.

Dr. Steiner: We should include those opinions in a practical evaluation. We need to ask ourselves how it is that a boy in the fourth grade has class until ten minutes to 7:00 in the evening.

A teacher: We had to put one of the language classes into the afternoon, and then handwork follows it.

Another teacher: In general, the situation is not worse.

Dr. Steiner: That is the way it should be. We have not increased the number of hours, but actually reduced them, and the instruction is more concentrated.

A teacher says something about the free periods.

Dr. Steiner: If we had more teachers, such free periods would not occur. What do the students do during that time?

A teacher: They are put together in one room, and we keep an eye on them. The older children work alone.

Dr. Steiner: We should answer such a letter by pointing out the advantages. There must certainly be some advantages.

A teacher: In the eighth grade, there do not seem to be any advantages.

Dr. Steiner: We have to recognize that as unavoidable. Is it really so obvious? Certainly, the number of classroom hours has not increased.

A teacher: It is only a temporary disadvantage and will exist only as long as we have shop in the afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: This situation can last only for the darkest months of winter. Instruction begins relatively late, at 8:30 a.m. I always assumed that was for reasons of economy. We could also say that if the parents paid for the additional lighting, we would begin at 8:00. We could ask the parents whether they want it or not, and then decide according to the majority. We could begin a half hour earlier and use electric light.

We could survey the parents after we explain the basic issues of the class schedule. The main complaint of the person who wrote that letter is that he does not see his children. He is quite sorry his son does not arrive home until 7:30 in the evening. We need to take a survey. We could ask him whether he would be willing to pay more in order to have school begin a half hour earlier. The gymnastics teacher: The children have asked whether we could have gymnastics from 7:30 until 8:30 in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: The children would then come to main lesson tired. They would be just as tired as if they had a regular period before main lesson.

We need to speak with the students about their dissatisfaction, and we should send a questionnaire to the parents. For the students, our task is that they have the same perspective as you, the teachers. Where would we be if the students’ viewpoint was different from that of the teachers? It is absolutely necessary that the students support the teachers’ perspective. We should try to achieve better harmony between the students and teachers, so that the students would go through fire for the teachers. Each time that does not happen, it is painful for me.

A teacher: Things would improve if we could have shop in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: If that is possible, go ahead.

It is curious that the students criticize the class schedule. Why is that?

A teacher: The children criticize a great deal.

Dr. Steiner: That should not be. In general, you should not lose contact with the children. I think every class schedule would have advantages and disadvantages. If you had good contact with the students, the class schedule would not be a problem. I would like to hear from the teachers what you think the practical results have been. We could send out a questionnaire to the parents, but student criticism is unacceptable. What I said at the beginning referred to the perspective of the teachers.

A number of teachers report.

A handwork teacher: Can we allow the boys in the upper grades to have handwork as an elective? The girls have asked if we could leave out the boys. The boys who have grown with the classes like to participate, but the new ones do not.

Dr. Steiner: How could we do that? We have included those things in our curriculum that are appropriate in handwork; that leaves no room for variation. We cannot allow handwork to become an elective. How would you do that? Your guiding rule would then be that the children go only to what they want.

You can vary things within the class. There are a number of good possible variations. You can give the children many kinds of activities. Things to not need to be the same everywhere. As far as I am concerned, you can give the boys and girls different activities beginning in the eighth or ninth grade, but if it becomes an elective, we will destroy our plan.

A teacher: I would like stenography to be an elective. The children do no homework.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad. When does that class begin? Oh, in the tenth grade. I do not understand why they do not want to learn it.

We are so close to some things that we often forget that we have a different method and a different curriculum than in other schools. You see, now that I’ve been in the classes more often, I can say we are achieving results with what we might call the Waldorf School method; the results are apparent. A comparison with other schools, in fact, shows that, to the extent we are using the Waldorf School pedagogy, we are achieving results. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are unconsciously not using the Waldorf method where we have not achieved results.

I do not want to be too hard. Things do not always need to end in a storm about how the Waldorf School method is not being used everywhere. Sometimes you fall back into the usual school humdrum. You get results when you use the methods. Even though the results in foreign languages are uneven, there are, nevertheless, quite good results. We are also achieving good results in the lower grades with what is normally called penmanship. In arithmetic I have the feeling that the Waldorf School method is not often used.

I think we need to continually ask ourselves how we need to work in these different conditions. Of course, it is easier to flunk a third of the class at the end of the school year than to continue bringing them along. That would result in different conditions. If we continue to use the same guidelines and think in the same way, we will not move forward. We would then have to allow the students to fail. You cannot have one without the other.

On the other hand, we also need to consider that the work done at home needs to be done happily. The children must feel a need to do it. If you teach at one of the public schools with compulsory attendance, where you have no interest and can operate like a slave owner, you are in a different situation. If the children do not bring their homework, you simply punish them. The children would simply run away. If we were like other schools, they would simply run from us. We need to get the children to want to do their homework. But, their work is well done, isn’t it?

I work so hard to unburden the teachers because I must admit to feeling that you do not always have the necessary enthusiasm to really put something into your teaching. We need more fire, more enthusiasm in our teaching. So much depends upon that. If, for example, a boy does not want to participate in handwork, you need to give some thought to giving him something he finds interesting. I know stenography can be learned in nothing flat, without much homework. I have, unfortunately, not been able to see what you do there. How do you explain stenography to the children?

A teacher: I gave an introductory lecture on the history of stenography, then taught them the vowels.

Dr. Steiner: You can generate much more excitement if you also teach abbreviations when you teach them the vowels,. All that relates to what we must overcome. What is that supposed to mean, “The children don’t want to”?

A teacher: One girl told me she does not need stenography. She is interested only in art.

Dr. Steiner: One thing must support the other. The students do not need to consider the question, “Why do I need to learn this?” We must direct our education toward being able to say to the student, “Look here, if you want to be an artist, there are a number of things that you need. You should not imagine you can simply become an artist. There are all kinds of things you need to learn that are not directly connected with art. As an artist, you may well need stenography. There was once a poet, Hamerling, who once said he could not have become what he was without stenography.” We must learn to teach so that as soon as the teacher says something, the children become interested. That should simply happen. We begin teaching stenography in the tenth grade. By now, the children should be so far that they understand they should not question their need to learn what we teach.

A teacher: The children asked before we even began. Some of them had already learned the Stolze-Schrey method.

Dr. Steiner: That is a real problem. If there were enough children, it might lead to needing a special course for those who want to learn the Stolze-Schrey method.

A teacher asks about the visit of someone from England.

Dr. Steiner: Concerning this visitor, it is important that we develop a kind of “visitor attitude” so that we appear to be accustomed to having visitors. Don’t you agree that we do not really do that when we have German visitors? Englishmen will be terribly disappointed if you receive them the way you normally receive visitors in the Waldorf School. I do not want to suggest that you take up “Emily Post” in your free time, but there is something you might call a kind of “natural manners.” It is different when you have a visitor than when you speak in the faculty meeting. The main thing is that you are gracious to visitors. I mean that not only in connection with your external demeanor, but also inwardly. You need to want to allow the visitors to see what is special about our instruction. Otherwise, they will go away with no impression at all. The impression our visitors receive depends upon how we act with them. That is the first thing. The other thing is that we need to make the visit as efficient as possible. It will not do to have thirty visitors in a class on the same day, but only as many as we can handle. We should not allow them simply to watch us.

When the Theosophical Society had a conference in London some time ago, they had a “Smiling Committee.” When we had our meeting in 1907 in Munich, there was a great deal to see. There were the celebrities of the Theosophical Society. I thought it was really horrible that these famous people left with the opinion that people are right, Germans are impolite. I once suggested to someone that he should say a few words to a well-known person. He replied, “With them?” He thought it was a terrible imposition that I thought he should be polite. He thought he should simply ignore someone he did not like. These things happen. They should not happen here. Otherwise, we would have to not allow the visit, and that is something we cannot easily do.

A teacher: We thought we would serve tea in one of the classes. We’ve also prepared a display table.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly good, but I am referring more to your attitude. You could certainly say we should not allow these people to come, but that is not easily avoided. You need to show them what is special about our teaching methods, and you need an opportunity for doing that.

Sometimes when you say something, it feels like you are taking the morning dew from the flower. It is all so easy to say in a lecture, but with concrete questions, you seem so dry and barren. Then, it is like taking away the dew. Everything depends upon how you do it, whether it seems you want to help someone or not. What I want to say is—I can say this today because it will not seem as though I wanted to praise Dr. B.—when I come into his class he seems to think it is important and correct to point out certain things to me. The same is also true of Dr. S., but I also do not want to praise you. I do not think it would disturb your teaching if you were to point out what you are doing. Perhaps it is not so necessary with me, but I am convinced it is more important that you make sure visitors see what you are doing instead of simply having them stand there noticing nothing at all. Englishmen with their lack of concepts will understand nothing if you do not point out the basis of it. If you only give the class and let them watch, they won’t have the faintest idea of what happened. You need to forcefully point out what is special about the instruction.

An earlier visitor left without the faintest idea of what the Waldorf School is. He left and went home with only a proof that the methods he used in his English school are good. The only impression he had was that we are doing the same things he does. You shouldn’t believe people notice things by themselves. Many of you have not yet noticed it, so many things continue on in their normal trot, even with our own teachers. That is what I meant. Not much more can be done.

We should give a very impressive 5:00 o’clock tea at the branch office on Landhausstraße. Otherwise, the Englishmen will leave Stuttgart saying they have seen nothing of the Society, all we wanted was to lecture. In England, everybody introduces themselves, and they consider lectures as something to do on the side. They just put their hands in their pockets. Most of their lectures are simply long sentences. Germans say something in a lecture, something special about life, and they should notice that here. If you can show them that, they will slowly gain some respect. No Englishman can understand the German nature. They do not understand it, they have no concept why we see something in a lecture that we associate with conviction. For them, it is only a longer speech within a conversation, but they do have a good sense of ceremony for formal occasions. You can certainly see that in everything they do. We do not need to imitate English culture, we do not need to imitate English nature, but we do need to give these people the impression that we simply do not stand around, but are truly active. That is what we need to do. We do not need to do much more, and there is not much more we can do during a twoweek visit than to try to get people to respect our Waldorf School methods. Nevertheless, we do need to gain their respect. You need to remember that there is no way of expressing the word “philistine” in the English language. An Englishman cannot properly express the peculiarities of a philistine. People’s most prominent characteristics cannot be expressed in their own language. Nowadays, Germans have taken on so many characteristics of the English that they are almost incapable of saying the word “philistine” with the proper feeling. We should eliminate everything that is philistine from the Waldorf School.

A teacher: Should we tell the children about this now?

Dr. Steiner: I would not do that. What I have said should remain within our four walls. Outside our circle we will have to arrange things so that the children consider the visit as a matter of course. Don’t tell them. Don’t do things as though they were something outside our normal life. The visitors should not notice anything. They should not believe we made any special preparations. They should think their visit does not bother us at all. There can be no talk of taking their visit into account. Do that as little as possible.

A teacher: Won’t the children bring some resistance from home?

Dr. Steiner: I visited the school of a man who will be coming. I went through all of Mr. Gladstone’s classes. The children, of course, knew I was a German just as the children here will know that the visitors are from England, but it was natural that I was treated as a guest.

A teacher: I would always ask an English visitor to tell something.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer to tell it myself. You should understand that all other classes will be of interest, but the English class will interest them only a little. I would try to make them understand, in a polite way, of course, that it is unimportant to me if they find the class not well done. If they say something, you could reply that you would probably say the same thing in their German class. You are probably right. That is what is important. Don’t give the impression they are important for you, but treat them as guests. It is important that people feel they have been treated as guests. It is important that they believe the things that happen while they are here are what occurs normally, not that they believe we prepared something for them. They should not believe that. When we give a 5 o’clock tea at the branch house, they should think that that is the custom here. We are moving a little too strongly in the direction of becoming bureaucrats rather than people of the world, but we need to become people of the world, not bureaucrats. It is bad for the school if bureaucracy arises here. All German schools are bureaucracies, but that is something that should not happen at the Waldorf School. Basically, we do not need to show the people anything other than what happens here. Everything else lies in the way we do that.

I will be here on the eighth and ninth of January, perhaps also on the tenth, and then at the end of the visit. I was thinking it might be possible in that connection to give a short pedagogical course that would deal primarily with the aesthetics and pedagogy of music.

A teacher asks about Parzival in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: In teaching religion and history, what is important is how you present things. What is important is how things are treated in one case and then in another. In teaching religion, three stages need to be emphasized. In Parzival, for instance, you should first emphasize a certain kind of human guiltlessness when people live in a type of dullness. Then we have the second stage, that of doubt in the heart, “if the heart is doubting, then the soul must follow.” That is the second stage. The third stage is the inner certainty he finally achieves.

That is what we need to especially emphasize in teaching religion. The whole story needs to be directed toward that. You need to show that during the period in which Wolfram wrote Parzival, a certain segment of the population held a completely permeating, pious perspective, and that people at that time had these three stages in their own souls. You need to show that this was seen as the proper form, and that this was how people should think about the development of the human soul. You could speak about the parallels between the almost identical times of Wolfram’s and Dante’s existence, although Dante was something different. When you go into these things, you need to give each of the three stages a religious coloring.

In teaching literature and history, you need to draw the children’s attention to how one stage arises from an earlier one and then continues on to a later stage. You could show how it was proper that common people in the ninth and tenth centuries followed the priests in complete dullness. You can also show them how the Parzival problem arises because the common people then wanted to participate in what the priests gave them. In other words, show them that people existed in a state like Parzival’s and grew out of that state just as Parzival grew out of it. Show them how common people actually experienced the priests, just as Wolfram von Eschenbach did. He could not write, but he had an intense participation in the inner life of the soul.

Historically, Wolfram is an interesting person. He was part of the whole human transition in that he could not write and in that the whole structure of education was not yet accepted by common people. But it was accepted that all the experiences of the soul did exist. There is also some historical significance to the fact that it is a cleric who is the scribe, that is, who actually does the writing. The attitude in Faust, “I am more clever than all the fancy people, doctors, the judges, writers, and priests,” persists into the sixteenth century. Those who could write were from the clergy, who also controlled external education. That changed only through the ability to print books. In the culture of Parzival, we find the predecessor of the culture of printed books.

You could also attempt to go into the language. You should recall that it is quite apparent from Parzival that such expressions as “dullness,” “to live in the half-light of dullness,” were still quite visual at the time when people still perceived things that way. With Goethe, that was no longer the case. When Goethe speaks of a dog wagging its tail, he refers to it as a kind of doubting, whereas in Faust, it means nothing more than that the dog wags its tail. You see, this doubting is connected with dividing the dog into two parts: the dog’s tail goes to the left and the right and in that way divides the dog. This is something that is no longer felt later. The soul became completely abstract, whereas Goethe still felt it in a concrete way. This is also connected with the fact that Goethe once again takes up the Parzival problem in his unfinished Mysteries. That is exactly the same problem, and you can, in fact, use it to show how such things change. They return in an inner way.

Take, for example—well, why shouldn’t we speak about Goethe’s Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily? You have probably already done this, that would be just like you. Why should we not take into account that the story of the kings is pictorially the same in Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, where you also have pictures of the kings? If you go back to that, you will see the natural connection to the Arthurian tales and the Grail story. You would have the whole esoteric Grail story. You would inwardly comprehend the Arthurian tales and the particular cultural work as the Knights of the Round Table, who set themselves the task of destroying the lack of consciousness, the dull superstition of the common people, while the Grail Castle’s task is to comprehend external life in a more spiritual way. Here you have the possibility for an inner deepening of Parzival, but at the same time you can place him in his own time. I have mentioned this in some of my lecture cycles, as well as Poor Heinrich, which can also be treated historically as a theme of the willingness to sacrifice. A moral understanding of the world coincided with the physical understanding of the world, something that was lost in the next cultural period. Something like Poor Heinrich could not have been written in the fifteenth century.

I have also made a comparison between Parzival and von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius. In Christoffel von Grimmelshausen’s time, people were already so advanced that they could treat the Parzival problem only in a humorous manner. You can still find an echo of it in Simplizism. This is something you can do in literary history.

When you continue on to the present, things become very hidden, but you nevertheless should uncover them. It is also good to uncover much of what has been hidden. Take, for example, the training of Parzival by Gurnemanz. The question could arise whether a Gurnemanz existed in the nineteenth century. The answer is, yes, but you must understand the situation. It was Trast in Sudermann’s Honor. There you will find Trast and the inexperienced Robert. There you have a real Gurnemanz figure. You will find all the characteristics translated into silliness. But, you will again have an opportunity of showing that Robert is a kind of Faust, but made silly, and Trast a kind of Mephistopheles. Sudermann is a silly fellow and translated everything into silliness. Here you have an opportunity to show the tremendous superficiality that lies in the transition from the Middle Ages into the most modern times.

A teacher asks why there is talk of twelve religions in The Mysteries.

Dr. Steiner: For the same reason that I spoke about twelve world views in a lecture in Berlin. Goethe was not interested in discovering these twelve religions. He knew that the twelve religions were connected with the twelve pictures of the zodiac, and for that reason he spoke about twelve religions. It was not that he imagined a priori that there were twelve possible religions. I prefer to keep to Goethe’s attitude. As soon as you construct something of that sort, it becomes dry. The number is enough, and then you can give examples. Such things need not be particularly clear empirically.

There are also only twelve consonants, the others are variations. That is something that occurs in no other language except Finnish, where there are only twelve consonants. That is how you can treat such questions, and you need only fill in the holes.

A teacher: How should we handle the Klingsor problem? That is such a difficult theme for the children.

Dr. Steiner: Avoid it. But, there is one important thing you can mention. You could discuss Wagner’s Parsifal with the children, but avoid bringing up questionable things. The result of your teaching will be that these things will be taken in with a much greater amount of inner purity later than they are today.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to say something about methodology.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand your question. Isn’t that something that comes from the material itself? You have told the children a number of things, and the methodology lies in the things themselves. You have behaved in a way so that the children slowly came to behave in the same way. And the result is that the faculty could have sat on the school benches, and the children could have become the teachers. Everything is connected with that, with theory. You need to teach things much more naturally. There is no value in, for instance, saying that we need to ask the children if we want to know what it is that we should do. You should not repeat such things.

A teacher: When teaching the Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade, I had the feeling I was right on the edge because I do not understand the language.

Dr. Steiner: You see how difficult it is to speak in terms of general principles. The details are what is important. I think that if properly handled, the language is always interesting to the students. Things that can be learned from the inner structure of the language itself would always interest the students. I also think that the teachers working together would bring a great deal of good. For example, Mr. Boy presented a number of very interesting things, things that really interested the students in spite of the fact that a number of philologists would not consider them. Although they are rules, such things are interesting. Everything connected with language is interesting. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generalize. What I have had to say in that regard, I said in my language course, but I connected it with specific things. It is not possible to generalize. We could achieve a great deal if those who know certain things would tell the others who do not know them. This is a possibility for real collaboration. It is a shame that there is so much knowledge here and the others do not learn it. In the faculty, there could be a really great cooperation.

A teacher: I do not understand Middle High German.

Dr. Steiner: I’m not sure that is so important. I once knew a professor who lectured about Greek philosophy, but who could never read Aristotle without a translation. What is important is that you come into the feeling of the language. Who is there who really understands Middle High German well? There is much that the other teachers could tell you.

A teacher: I cannot pronounce it well. You read it then.

Dr. Steiner: Not everyone reads it the same. It is colored by various dialects. We all speak High German differently. In some cases, it is important that you don’t speak High German like an Austrian.

A teacher: Then you mean we should give only some examples from the original text.

Dr. Steiner: The original version of Parzival is really boring for students, and now one of them is translating it. One of you might write to Paris to order a book that you could get much more quickly if you simply ask Mr. B. to loan it to you.

A teacher: We could also make a connection with etymology.

Dr. Steiner: Regarding languages, my main desire is that the aesthetic or moral, the spiritual, and the content is emphasized more than the grammar. That is true for all languages and is what we should emphasize here. A word like “saelde” is really very interesting, “zwifel,” too. There is much that could be said about that, as well as about “saelde” that relates to the entire soul.

A teacher: Could you say something about the spiritual scientific perspective?

Dr. Steiner: All you have to do is look it up in How to Know Higher Worlds. Recently, there have been a number of lectures in Dornach about literary problems that Steffen found very interesting.

A teacher asks about periodicity in teaching art at various levels: I will be going to the ninth grade on Monday. I have already spoken about the themes in Albrecht Dürer’s black-and-white art.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that. Do you really believe that the many things in Melancholia are attributes of Dürer? I think the difference between Dürer and Rembrandt is that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark simply as a question of light and dark per se, whereas Dürer attempts to show light and dark through as many objects as possible. The many things contained in the Melancholia should not be seen as attributes, but more as his desire to place all possible objects into it. For me, the problem with Dürer is more how light behaves when reflected from all kinds of objects. With Rembrandt, the problem is more the interactions between light and dark. That is what I think. Rembrandt would not have seen the problem of Melancholia in the same way. He would have done it much more abstractly, where Dürer is more concrete. I think that is how you can draw a very fine line.

A teacher: I wanted to include the problem of north-south, and then that of east-west.

Dr. Steiner: You could contrast Rembrandt’s light and dark with the southern painting style. In that way, you can bring such things together. Of course, when you describe that, you can also mention that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark only qualitatively. Space is only an opportunity to solve the problem through painting. If you show how a sculpture is entirely a question of space, you can then go on into sculpture. Of course, it is probably best if you make a connection with French sculpture of the late classical period. In the rococo—of course, you need to leave out the good side of the rococo—you find in sculpture an extreme contrast to Rembrandt. You can show how the question of light and dark is treated in the rococo quite differently than by Rembrandt. You always need to mention the thought that the rococo, even though it is often not valued artistically as highly as the baroque, is actually a higher development in art.

A teacher: Should I then develop a kind of art-historical stages?

Dr. Steiner: I would show how these stages in their various forms are expressed in various regions. It is interesting how, during the time when Dürer was active, there existed in Holland something different from what Rembrandt was doing. Different times for different places.

I would arrange things so that I begin in the ninth grade only by concentrating upon the class and then develop the stages more strongly as I progress. Thus, by the eleventh grade, a review would awaken a strong picture of the various stages.

A teacher: Our proposal in teaching languages was to begin with the verb with the lowest beginners. From the fourth grade onward, we would develop grammar, and beginning with the ninth grade, we would do more of a review and literature.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly quite right to begin with the verb. Prepositions are very lively. It would be incorrect to begin with nouns. I would like to explain that further, but this is a question I want to discuss when everyone who gives a language class is here, and N. is not here today. He did something today that is directly connected with how the verb and noun should be treated in class. We also need to answer the question of what is removed from the verb when it becomes a noun. When a noun is formed from a verb, a vowel is removed, and it thus becomes more consonant, it becomes more external. In English, every sound can become a verb. I know a woman who makes a verb out of everything that she hears. For instance, if someone says “Ah” she then says that he “ahed.”

We want to turn our attention to this as soon as possible.

HERR DOLLINGER wishes to ask a question about the honeycomb. There are people who eat the wax as well as the honey, and in restaurants they used at times to serve honey in the comb. He would like to know if it was a bad thing to eat the comb.

As to the diseases of bees, he thinks these could not formerly have been as bad as they are today when the bees are over-exploited.

HERR MÜLLER said that eating comb-honey was an idiosyncrasy with some people. Naturally, these are the natural combs and not artificial ones. He does not think that bee diseases are the result of exploitation, but that formerly they were less considered. In those days there were not so many weak stocks and so one was not so much on the look out for them. A disease had appeared in Switzerland from England which had not been known in the past. Herr Erbsmehl thinks this may perhaps be owing to the use of artificial manures, even the flowers sicken as the result of this.

DR. STEINER:

With regard to these two points, one might say it is quite true that the eating of honey-comb is a fancy with some people; the real question is whether it is good for them, and this can, unfortunately only be answered medically. It is only possible to answer this question when one is really able to observe these people who eat the honey-comb, thus the wax, from the point of view of their state of health. I have seen various people who eat the comb, but they always spat it out when they had sucked out the honey. I have not so far come across people who eat any considerable quantity of wax. One should take into consideration that people digest in very different ways, not everyone in the same way. There may be people who would get some kind of gastric trouble simply by eating the wax, and such persons should be advised not to take it. But there can also be people who are able to digest the wax without any trouble and get rid of the residue by excretion. With regard to these people one could certainly say that because they eat the wax with the honey, (thus leaving the honey as long as possible still in connection with the wax which has entered the body), the honey is digested more in the intestines, whereas otherwise it is not digested till it has left the intestines and has passed into the lymphatic vessels. It is a question of the state of health of the person concerned. There are people who digest more in the intestines, and others more in the lymphatic vessels; one cannot say that one way is better than the other, for one is just as good as the other. It depends on the individual. One could only speak with certainty if one took a number of people who eat honey in the comb, and others who eat it without the comb, and then investigated how these two matters are related.

With regard to bee-diseases the question is, as is usual in disease, namely, that we must take into account what Herr Müller has just said. It is so even with human beings that certain things were not much noticed formerly, whereas today they are most carefully studied. But here something essentially different comes in question. The bee-keeper of the past had really many good instincts: he did many things without being able to say just why he did them. Today these instincts no longer exist. Today people always want to know the reason why. To determine this why it is, however, necessary to study the whole matter very fundamentally. Modern knowledge is not as a rule in a position to do this.

You see, the bee-keeper of old had very good instincts as how to treat the bees, I should like to say, in quite a personal manner. For instance, you should consider that there is already a considerable difference between giving the bees the old straw skeps as in former days, and giving them wooden hives as one does today. Box-hives are made of wood, and wood is an entirely different substance to the straw of which the old skeps were made. Straw attracts quite other substances from the air than does wood, so we have already a difference in the external handling. When I add to this all the bee-keeper did in former times, and above all, the strong instincts he had to do them even if he did not always know the reason why, he would, for example, place his bee-hives on some chosen spot, where the wind would blow more often from one quarter or another, and so on. Today one sets the bee-hives wherever there is room for them, from reasons of convenience. The climatic elements are still considered, but no longer to the same degree.

HERR MÜLLER stated that he pays great attention to this; he places his hives on a ridge where they are sheltered from the north wind and the east wind, and so on.

DR. STEINER:

In such matters wood is less sensitive than straw. I have no intention of agitating in favour of straw skeps; nevertheless differences do exist, and just such things as these certainly, very definitely, affect the bees with regard to their inner activities. A tremendous activity goes on in the body of the bee when it must first gather the nectar from the plants, and in absorbing it, transforms it. This is really an immense work. How does the bee accomplish it? It is accomplished through the quite special relationship between the two different fluids in the bee. One of these is the gastric juices and the other the blood-fluid. When you study the bee you find the whitish gastric juice and the reddish sap of the blood; these are the two main elements of which the bee is constituted, and all the other parts are arranged according to the workings of the gastric juice and the blood. The main point then is this definite proportion between these two fluids; they differ very considerably in themselves. The gastric juice is what one calls acid in chemistry, and the blood sap is chemically called alkaline, which means that it is not acid though it can be made so; in itself it is however, not acid. When the pepsin is insufficiently acid, something takes place within the bee which greatly disturbs its inner organism in the honey-producing process. The blood sap is only kept sufficiently strong when the necessary climatic conditions of light and warmth, etc., are present.

It will therefore be very important to take the right means of establishing the proper balance between the gastric fluid and the blood if one is to overcome the many diseases which have recently appeared among the bees. As bee-keeping can no longer be carried on as in past days, it is no longer possible to arrive at preventive methods through climatic conditions of warmth, etc., for these are no longer able to work so effectively upon the stocks of bees today; one will have to discover what will be able to work most favourably on the blood sap of the bee. It will be necessary in the future that bee-keepers take special care that the blood sap of the bee is rightly provided for. The following is important: you all know that there are years when the bees are obliged to get nectar almost exclusively from trees. In such seasons the composition of the blood sap is endangered, and the bees are much more liable to disease than at other times. It will be necessary in the future that the bee-keeper even contrives a small green-house—it need not be a large one—in which he can cultivate those plants which the bees not only like, but must have at certain times of the year. It will be necessary to have at least some small plot of flowers for the bees especially, for instance in the month of May. They will not fail to discover them for themselves whenever the plants they need have failed elsewhere. By this special cultivation of the necessary plants in the neighbourhood of the hives it will be possible to combat these diseases. These are methods I can recommend; I am giving only indications, but they will most certainly prove satisfactory for they are derived from a knowledge of bee-keeping, If they are put to the test you will find that one day they will bear very good fruit for the bee-keeper, for he will find that the diseases of bees can be prevented by these means. But if one is to proceed in a practical way all the connections mentioned above must be taken into account. I have no wish to make assertions; I only wish to say that these things arise out of the whole nature of the bees, and that it would be well to make experiments with especially cultivated plants in seasons when those most needed have failed, either partially or altogether. It should be possible in this way to considerably improve the health of the bees. I am myself quite convinced that these methods will prove successful when one is able to enter once again into these questions with a true understanding of nature. You see, it is not possible to go back to the old methods of bee-keeping. Just as little as there is any need to be reactionary in the realms of politics, or of life, is there any necessity to be a reactionary in any other domain. One must move with the times; but what really matters is that while we leave the old methods we are careful to balance this by something which will replace what we have lost. This is essential.

HERR MÜLLER stated that bee-keepers were already working in the direction of the special cultivation of certain plants. For example, the yellow crocus, which is grown in large quantities for the bees; other plants were cultivated also with similar small yellow blossoms. Indeed, more than this, for a large amount of American clover is now planted; a clover which grows six feet in height and flowers the whole year round. It is cut only in the autumn; till then the blossom is left for the bees. This might also be necessary perhaps?

DR. STEINER:

Certainly, such things are no doubt done, but as a rule the right connections are not known. What Herr Müller had mentioned at first, was excellent and should be continued, but with regard to the American clover that flowers all the year round, this will in future be avoided, for this plant cannot bring about any improvement at all in the blood-sap of the bees; it acts only as a stimulant, and for a very short time. It is very much the same as trying to cure a man with alcohol, the bees are stimulated to more activity for a certain time. The very greatest care should really be taken today not to grow plants for the bees that are totally foreign to them; bees in their whole organic nature are bound up with a particular country. This is very evident, for the bees from different parts of the world differ widely from one another. There is, for instance, the mid-European bee already referred to here, the common domestic bee. The Italian bee again is quite unlike the Spanish bee, and so on. Bees are most strongly bound by their habits to their native country, and one cannot help them in any real way by giving them the nectar or honey belonging to entirely different countries. They have then, so much work to do in their own bodies that there are great disturbances there; the bees are forced to try and adapt themselves, to make their organisation as much as possible like that of the bees over there, in those countries where the clover comes from. Hard facts will prove in time that though such methods may appear successful for a few years, disastrous results will follow. It is quite true as has been said, that so far there are no definite indications of this, but it will none the less occur, and then people must abandon all such methods, or continue them as was done in the case of the vines. You will remember that in the seventies or eighties, phyloxera appeared and is destroying the vineyards of Europe, over immense areas. At the time I was able to study this matter, as I had a very good friend who was a farmer, and who also edited an agricultural paper, and gave much attention to this whole problem. People began to wonder why the American vine appeared immune to this disease. But what did it all amount to? It amounted to this, that the remedies by which the disease could be got rid of with the American vine, could not be used with the same result on the European vine. The consequence was, that even when everyone began to cultivate the American vine, they could succeed in keeping it in health, whereas the European vines died out. The cultivation of the European vine had to be given up altogether; the whole cultivation of the vineyards was Americanised, and everything has been completely changed. This has happened in many places. To think in this mechanical manner is valueless; one must be quite clear that things through their whole nature may be bound up with definite localities, and this fact must be taken into account. Otherwise though some temporary success may follow, it cannot be permanent.

Are there any other questions you would like to ask? Or are all you gentlemen content to eat honey without so much discussion about it? Perhaps some question may occur to one or another of you.

Meanwhile, I should like to say something quite briefly about the nature of this honey-making process of the bees. It is something so really wonderful that there should be these tiny little creatures that are able to transform what they have gathered from the flowers or plants in general, into the honey which is so health-giving, and which should really play a far greater part in the nourishment of men and women today. It is not realised how important the consumption of honey actually is. For example, if it were possible to influence the social medicine of today, it would be discovered that if people about to be married would eat honey as a preparation for the future, they would not have rickety children. Honey when assimilated can affect the reproductive processes, and greatly influence the building up of the body of the child. The consumption of honey by the parents, and above all by the prospective mother, works especially into the bony structure of the child. Results such as this will appear when these questions are considered in their essential aspects. In the place of the trivialities put forward in scientific journals today, it will be asked, when once we have some real knowledge of these things: “What is it best to eat at this or that time of life?” “What is best at another time of life?” Indeed, gentlemen, this will be of immense value, for the general state of health will then essentially improve, and more especially will this affect a man's vitality. Today people attach very little value to such matters. Those whose children do not suffer from rickets are naturally very pleased, but they do not think very much about it, it is taken as a matter of course. Only those complain whose children are born with rickets. It is just in the case of such most valuable social and medical methods that people remain indifferent, for it is generally taken for granted that such measures are concerned merely with what they regard as a normal condition. They have first to be persuaded that this is not the case. It should, however, be recognised that extremely favourable results would appear in this direction, and I am sure that if it could in this way be realised that through spiritual science it is possible to arrive at such conclusions, people would begin to look towards the things of the spirit. They would do this to a far greater extent than at present, when they are only told to pray that this or that may happen. Truly, gentlemen, these things which can be learnt by the spirit, and which modern science ignores, are such that one is able to know that during the times of betrothal and pregnancy, honey can be of inestimable value.

I have just said that it is a most wonderful thing that the bee should be able to gather substances from the storehouse of nature and then transform them into this honey which is of so great value to human life. You will best understand on what the origin of honey actually rests if I describe to you the sane process in the quite different form in which it appears in those relatives of the bees, if I may call them so, the wasps.

The wasps do not provide man with honey, but they prepare a substance that can be made use of medicinally, though of a very different kind to that prepared for us by the bees. In the next lecture I will also speak about the ants, but first, will we consider a certain species of wasp. There are wasps that have the peculiarity that they do not deposit their eggs at random, but place them on plants or on the leaves or bark of trees, even into the blossoms of trees. [Drawing on the blackboard.] Here for example is the branch, here an oak-leaf, and the wasp with its ovipositor which is hollow, (the sting would be here) lays its egg in the oak-leaf, or in some other part of a plant. What then happens? Where the egg has been placed the whole surrounding tissue of the leaf is changed; the leaf would have been quite different if the egg had not been laid there. Very good, let us now see what has happened.

The whole growth of the plant has been affected, and protruding from the leaf, entirely surrounding the little wasp-egg, we find the so-called gall-nut or gall-apple, those little brownish coloured nuts or apples so often seen on trees. They are there because a wasp deposited an egg at this spot, and all round the egg there is this metamorphosed plant-substance which entirely envelops it. The wasp egg would perish if it were laid in any other place; it can only exist and develop because this protective substance encloses it which the gall-wasp steals from the plant. The wasp robs the plant of this substance. You see, the bee lays its egg in the cells of the comb; the larvae develop and emerge as bees, which in their turn steal the substance of the plant, and elaborate it within themselves. The wasp does this at an earlier stage, for in the depositing of the egg the wasp already takes from the plant the substance it needs. The bee, as it were, waits a little longer, the wasp does it earlier. In the case of the higher animals, and with man, the egg is already surrounded with a protecting sheath within the body of the mother. In this instance what the wasp has to take from the plant is provided by the mother. This gall-nut is simply built up from the substance of the plant, just as the chorion is formed as a sheath round the egg in the body of the mother, and is ejected later with the after-birth. You see how close is the relationship between the wasp and the plant. In districts especially rich in wasps one can find trees almost entirely covered with these galls. The wasp lives with the trees; it depends on them, for its eggs would never develop if it could not procure this protective covering from the different trees or plants. These galls have very many and various forms, there are some which do not look like small apples, but are interwoven and hairy, but everywhere the small germ of the wasp is in the centre. At times these galls look like shaggy little nuts. We see how close is the relationship between the wasps and the plants with which they share their existence.

When the wasp has matured, it eats its way with its sharp jaws out of the gall-nut, and emerges as a wasp, and after a period of living in the outer world lays its eggs on a leaf or the bark of a tree; the egg and larval stages are always passed through as a living together with the plants.

Well, gentlemen, you may perhaps say—what has all this to do with the production of honey? It has actually a great deal to do with it, for when such things are observed in the right way one learns to know how the honey was first prepared in nature, and we find once more an instance of how the instinctive knowledge of the people in older times took these things into account.

Perhaps some of you know that in the south, and more especially in Greece, the cultivation of fig trees is of much importance. These are the so-called wild figs which are certainly rather sweet, but there are people with a still sweeter tooth, who wish to have fig trees that bear still sweeter figs than those of the wild trees. What do these people do?

Now just imagine you have a wild fig tree; this wild fig tree is a special favourite with a certain kind of wasp which lays its eggs upon it. Let us picture this tree, and on its branches a wild fig into which the wasp inserts its egg. Now the grower of the figs is in his way a clever fellow; he lets the wasps lay their eggs in the wild figs which he cultivates just for this very purpose. Later this fellow gathers two of these figs, just at the moment when the wasp eggs are not quite fully developed, when the wasps are not yet ready to creep out, and he takes a reed and ties the two figs together so that they are held firmly. And now he goes to a fig tree that he wants to improve, and he hangs the two figs he has tied together, and within which are the eggs of the wasp not yet fully developed, and binds them on to the fig-tree which he wishes to sweeten. And now the following happens: the wasps within the figs feel that something has happened, for the figs which were gathered now begin to dry up, for they are no longer supplied with the sap of the tree, and get very dry. The immature wasp inside senses this, even the egg is aware of it, and the result is that the wasp is in a terrible hurry to come out of the fig. The grower always starts this process in the spring; he first lets the wasp lay its eggs, and in the month of May he quickly gathers the two figs and carries out his plan. The little creature inside thinks, now I must hurry up, now the time has come when the figs dry up. In a terrible hurry the wasp emerges much earlier than it would otherwise have done. If the fig had remained where it was before, it would only have crept out in the late summer; now it must creep out in the early summer with the result that there is a second brood. It lays eggs in the summer which would otherwise have been laid in the following spring. Now these late eggs which are deposited on the tree that is to be further cultivated, do not reach full maturity, they only develop to a certain stage. The result of this is, that those figs into which the second brood has been placed become twice as sweet as the wild figs. This is the method of improving the figs, of making them twice as sweet.

What has actually happened here? The wasps, which though they differ from the bees are yet related to them, the wasps take just that substance from the plant which is on the way to become honey. If in the clever way of the cultivator of the fig trees, the figs of the wild tree containing the eggs of the wasp are thrown up and tied so that they remain hanging up there, and if one then is clever enough to induce the wasps to weave again into the tree what they have taken from the other tree, then honey in the form of sweetness is, as it were, filtered into these grafted fig-trees; it enters into the figs in the form of sweetness because the wasps have prepared it in an extremely fine state of dilution; Nature itself has brought it about in an indirect way.

You see, gentlemen, nothing has been taken away from Nature, the essence of the honey remains within Nature. The wasp cannot prepare the honey in the way the bee does, for its organisation is not adapted to this. But when, by this by-path, it is compelled during the stages of its growth, to carry the sweetness of the honey from one fig-tree to another, the sweetness of the grafted figs can be increased; a kind of honey-substance is then within them.

You see, gentlemen, we arrive here at something very interesting. It seems that these wasps have a body which is unable to gather the nectar, the honey-substance from Nature, and transform it into honey within itself. But man can bring it about that from one fig-tree to another a kind of honey-making takes place. The bee is therefore a creature that develops a wasp-like body so much further that it is able to accomplish this quite apart from the trees; in the case of the wasp the process must be left within the tree itself. So we must say: the bee retains within itself more of that force which the wasp only possesses at a very young stage, as long, that is, as it is in the egg, or larval state. When the wasp develops further it loses the power of producing honey; the bee retains it and can make use of it as a fully matured creature.

Just think, gentlemen, what it signifies that one can in this way look into Nature's processes, and can say to oneself: within the plants there is concealed this honey, this substance that tends towards sugar-sweetness. It is there; it shows itself, if only one follows the right path; one has only to assist Nature by seeing that the wasp comes at the right moment to the tree that is to be improved.

Here, in our country such things cannot be done, it is no longer possible today. There was once a time in the evolution of the earth when from the wasps, which as long as 2,000 years ago, and indeed, still today, could be persuaded by some clever fellow to produce a second brood as I have described. These wasps crept out and were given the opportunity of laying their eggs in the figs, which were then again and again gathered. Thus, in the course of time, it was possible that bees could be developed from these wasps.

The bee is a creature which in very ancient times was developed from the wasp. Today one can still see that it is by means of an animal activity, namely that of the wasps, that honey is first prepared in the realms of nature.

So now, you can also understand how closely related to this is the fact that the bees place their honey in the cells of the honey-comb. This comb consists mainly of wax, and wax is not only necessary in order that the bees may deposit their honey there, for the bee can only produce honey when its whole organism is active in the right way. It must therefore secrete wax.

The second fig tree in which sweetness arises of itself, is also richer in wax than the wild tree. It differs especially from the wild tree in that it is richer in wax. Nature has herself increased the wax so that the cultivated figs, the sweetened figs, grow on a tree which in a certain way, Nature has made richer in wax.

You can already see here a model, as it were, for what appears in bee-keeping.

If you now go to work very carefully, and make a cross-section from the trunk of the cultivated fig tree, you will find, if you look carefully, patterns just like the wax cells of the comb. Within the tree-trunk you find certain growths similar to the honey cells, formed from the precipitated wax of the tree. The tree that is richer in wax uses it in a kind of honey-cell formation.

So we can say: when we study this special cultivation of the fig trees we discover a kind of honey production in Nature that has not yet appeared openly, for the honey remains within the figs. The bees, if I may so express it, bring out into the open what remains still within Nature in the sweetened figs. Thus, what would otherwise have remained within the tree-trunk, forming there these natural cells, which are only less definite, less substantial than the bee cells, and fade away again, this whole wax and honey-making process is driven up into the figs, so that Nature is herself a bee-keeper. The bees have drawn it forth from Nature and have these processes within themselves.

What does the bee then do? The bee deposits its eggs within the hive, and the egg matures there. It does not need to change the substance into a gall-apple, it takes the nectar directly from the plants, neither does the bee need to go to the tree that is richer in wax, for she accomplishes in herself what takes place in the tree-trunk, and deposits in the comb the juices of the plant which she transforms into honey, which in the case of the cultivated tree, remains in the juices of the fig. One can say that what in Nature lies concealed in the tree through the wasps, now happens outwardly, and it becomes clear what it really is that we have before us, when we look into the hive with its marvellously built comb of waxen cells. It is indeed, gentlemen, a wonderful sight, is it not Herr Müller? A wonderful sight is the artistic construction of these waxen cells with the honey within them.

You have only to look at it gentlemen, and you will say to yourselves—the bees with their waxen combs really show us a kind of artistically formed tree-trunk with its many branches. The bee does not need to go to the tree to lay her eggs there, but they build for themselves a kind of picture of a tree, and in the place of the figs growing there, she puts honey into the finished cells. We find, as it were, a copy of the artificially cultivated fig tree which the bees have made.

Truly, gentlemen, this is to look into the very heart of Nature, and realise what can be learnt from her. Men have yet to learn much from Nature, but for this they must first learn to recognise the spiritual in Nature. Without this recognition of the spirit in Nature, one merely stands and gapes, and should one journey to the south and see how those clever fellows there tie the figs together, the figs pierced by the wasps, and throw then up into the trees and bind and fix them there we shall gape as tourists do, even when they are scientific gentlemen, and not know what to make of it, They do not know that he saves the bees their labour, for Nature will put the honey into the figs for him.

In those countries where figs are plentiful, they are as health-giving as honey, for it is honey at an earlier stage of development that is already in the figs.

You see, these are things which we ought to know if we are to discuss a matter of such importance as bee-keeping. I believe that by such means we shall in time arrive at points of view of true value.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of a question?

Herr Dollinger: I would like to ask if Dr. Steiner would speak again about the creation of the world and man. There are many newcomers here who have not yet heard it.

Dr. Steiner: It is asked if I could speak again about the creation of the world and of humanity, since many new workers are here. I will do this by first describing the original conditions on the earth, which have led on the one hand to all that we see around us and on the other hand to man.

Now man is really a very, very complicated being. If people think they will be able to understand him by dissecting a human corpse, they are mistaken, for naturally they will not arrive at a real understanding. Just as little can they understand the world around us if all they do is collect stones and plants and look at the individual items. We must be able to realize that what we examine does not show at first sight what it actually is.

You see, if we look at a corpse, perhaps soon after the man has died—he still has the same form, if perhaps a little paler—we can see that death has seized him, but he still has the same form that he had when alive. But now think: how does this corpse look eventually if we do not cremate it but let it decay? It is destroyed; there is no longer anything at work in it that could build it up again; it is definitely destroyed.

The beginning of the Bible is very much smiled at, and indeed justifiably, when it is understood to say that once upon a time some god formed a man out of a clod of earth. People regard that as impossible and naturally they are right. No god can come along and make a human being out of a lump of earth; it would be no more a man than a statue is, however similar the form might be—no more than the mannequin children make can actually walk. So people smile rightly when some divinity is supposed to have made man out of a lump of earth.

That corpse that we were looking at is, in fact, after a certain time just such a clod of earth as it becomes in the grave somewhat decomposed, dissolved. So to believe that a human being can be made out of what we then have before us is really just as great a folly.

You see, on the one hand it is asserted today that it is incorrect to suppose that man could be formed from a lump of earth; on the other hand one is allowed to suppose that he consists of earth alone. If one wants to be logical, then the one is no better than the other. One must be clear that while the man lived there was something in him that gave him his shape and form, and when it is no longer in him he can no longer keep his form. Nature forces do not give him this form; nature forces merely break it apart, they do not make it grow. So we must go back to the soul and spirit of the man, which were really in control as long as he was living.

Now when we look at the lifeless stone outside, if we imagine that it has always been the same as it is today, that is just as if we would say of the corpse that it had always been like that even while the man was living. The stones that we see today in the world outside, the rocks, the mountains, are just the same as a corpse; in fact, they are a corpse! They were not always as they are today. Just as a human corpse was not always what it is now that the soul and spirit have gone, so what we see outside has not always been in its present condition. The fact that plants grow on the lifeless corpse, that is, on the rocks, need not surprise us; for when a human corpse decays, all sorts of tiny plants and tiny animals grow out of it.

Of course, what is outside in nature seems beautiful, and what we see on a corpse when all sorts of parasitic plants are growing out of it does not seem beautiful. But that is only because the one is gigantic in size and the other is small. If we were not human beings but were tiny beetles crawling about on a decaying corpse and could think like human beings, we would regard the bones of the corpse as rocks. We would consider what was decayed as rubble and stones; we would-since we were tiny beetles-see great forests in what was growing on the corpse; we would have a whole world to admire and not think it revolting as we do now.

Just as we must go back to what the man was before he died, so, in the case of the earth and our surroundings, we must go back to what once lived in all that today is lifeless, before indeed the earth as a whole died. Unless the earth as a whole had died there could be no human being. Human beings are parasites, as it were, on the present earth. The whole earth was once alive; it could think as you and I now think. But only when it became a corpse could it produce the human race. This is something really everyone can realize if he will just think. But people today do not want to think. Yet one must think if one would come to the truth.

We have, therefore, to imagine that what is today solid rock with plants growing, and so on, was originally entirely different. Originally there was a living, thinking, cosmic body-a living, thinking, cosmic body!

I have often said here: What do people today imagine? They imagine that originally there was a gigantic mist, that this primeval mist came into rotation, that the planets then split off, that the sun became the center. This is taught to children quite early, and a little experiment is made to show that everything really did start in that way. A few drops of oil are put in a glass of water; one lets the oil swim on the water. A piece of cardboard has a pin stuck through it; then with the pin one makes the cardboard revolve; little oil-drops split off, go on revolving, and a tiny planetary system actually forms with the sun in the center.¹

Well now, it is usually quite a virtue if one can forget oneself, but in this case the teacher should not! When he makes the experiment, he ought then to say to the children: Out there in the universe is a giant schoolteacher who did the rotating!

What it amounts to is thoughtlessness—not because the facts oblige one to be thoughtless, but because one wants to be. But in that way one doesn't arrive at the truth.

We must therefore imagine not that a gigantic schoolteacher was there who rotated the world mist, but that there was something in the world mist itself that was able to move and so on. But there we come back to the living. If we want to rotate, we don't need a pin stuck through us with which a teacher rotates us. That's not for us; we can rotate ourselves. This schoolroom variety of primeval mist would have to be rotated by a schoolteacher. But if it is living and can feel and think, then it needs no cosmic schoolteacher; it can cause the rotation itself.

So we must picture that what today is lifeless around us was once alive, was sensitive, was a cosmic being. If we look further, there was even a great number of cosmic beings animating the whole. The original conditions of the world are therefore due to the fact that there was Spirit within the substance.

Now what is it that underlies everything material? Imagine that I have a lump of lead in my hand, that is, solid matter, thoroughly solid matter. Now if I put this lead on red-hot iron or on anything red-hot, on fire, it turns to fluid. If I work on it still further with fire, the whole lead vanishes; it evaporates, and I see nothing more of it. It is the same with all substances. On what does it depend then that a substance is solid? It depends upon what warmth is in it. The appearance of a substance depends only upon how much warmth is in it.

You know, today one can make the air liquid, then one has liquid air. The air we have in our surroundings is only airy, gaseous, as long as it contains a definite amount of warmth. And water—water is fluid, but it can also become ice and therefore solid. If there were a certain cold temperature on our earth there would be no water, but only ice. Now let us go into our mountains: there we find the solid granite or other solid rock. But if it were immensely hot there, there would be no solid granite; it would be fluid and flow away like the water in our brooks.

What then is actually the original element that makes things solid or fluid or gaseous? It is heat! And unless heat is there in the first place, nothing at all can be solid or fluid. So we can say that heat or fire is what is underlying everything in the beginning.

That is also shown by the research of spiritual science or anthroposophy. Spiritual science shows that originally there was not a primeval mist, a lifeless mist, but that living warmth was there at the beginning, simple living warmth. Thus I will assume an original cosmic body that was living warmth. [See drawing – red.] In my Occult Science I have called this original warmth condition the “Saturn condition”; it has been called this from ancient times, and though one must have a name, it is not the name that matters. It has, in fact, something to do with the cosmic body Saturn, but we will not go into that now.

In this original condition there were as yet no solid bodies and no air, only warmth; but the warmth was living. When you freeze today, it's your ego that freezes; when you sweat today, it's your ego that sweats, that becomes thoroughly hot. You are always in warmth, sometimes heat, sometimes cold, but always in some kind of warmth. In fact, we can still see today that man lives in warmth. The human being lives absolutely in warmth.

When modern science says that originally there was great heat, in a certain sense it is right; but when it thinks that this great heat was dead, then it is wrong. There was a living cosmic being, a thoroughly living cosmic being.

Now the first thing to come about in connection with this warmth-being was a cooling down. Things cool down continually. And what happens when what has been nothing but warmth now cools down? Air arises, air, the gaseous state. For when we go on heating a solid object, gas is formed in the warmth; but when something not yet substance cools down from above downwards, air is formed at first. So we can say that the second condition to come about was gaseous, definitely airy. [See drawing-green.]

In what has been formed, in a certain sense, as a second cosmic body everything is air. There is as yet no water, nothing solid within it; it consists entirely of air.

So now we have the second condition that formed itself in the course of time. You see, in this second condition something else developed along with what was already there. I have called this second condition “Sun” in my Occult Science; it was not the present sun, but a kind of Sun condition, a warm air-mist. The present sun, as I have told you, is not that, nor is it what was originally this second cosmic body. Thus we get a second cosmic body formed out of the first; the first was pure warmth, the second was of an air-nature.

Now man can live in warmth as soul. Warmth gives the soul sensitive feeling and does not destroy it. It destroys the body, however; if I were thrown into the fire my body would be destroyed but not my soul. (We will speak of this more exactly later, for naturally the question needs to be considered in detail.) For this reason the human being could already live as soul during the first, the Saturn, condition. But although man could live then, the animal could not, for in the case of the animal when the body is destroyed the soul element is injured too. Fire has an influence on the soul element of the animal. In the first condition, therefore, we have man already present but not the animal.

When the transformation had taken place to the Sun condition [see drawing], both human being and animal were there. That is the important fact. It is not true that the animals were there originally and that man developed out of them. Man was there originally and afterwards the animals evolved out of what could not become man. Naturally the human being was not going about on two feet when there was only warmth—obviously not. He lived in the warmth and was a floating being; he had only a condition of warmth. Then as that was metamorphosed into an air-warmth-body, the animals were formed and appeared beside man. Thus the animals are indeed related to man, but they developed only later in the course of world evolution.

Now what more happened? The warmth decreased, and as it gradually decreased, not only was air formed but also water. Thus we have a third cosmic body. [See drawing—yellow.] I have called it “Moon” because it was slightly similar to our present moon, although it was not our present moon. It was a watery, a thoroughly watery body. Air and warmth naturally remained, but now water appeared which had not been present in the second condition. After the appearance of water there could be man, who was already there, animals, and, pushing up out of the water, plants. Plants originally grew in water, not in earth. So we have man, animal, plant.

You see, plants seem to grow out of the earth, but if the earth contained no water, no plants would grow; they need water for their growth. There are also as you know, aquatic plants, and you can think of the original plants as being similar to these; the original plants swam in the water. The animals too you must picture as swimming animals and in the former, second condition, even as flying animals.

Something still actually remains of all that was there originally. During the Sun condition, when only man and animal were in existence, everything had to fly, and since the air has remained and still exists, those flying creatures have their descendants. Our present birds are the descendants of the original animals that developed during the Sun condition. However, at that time they were not as they are today. Those animal creatures consisted purely of air; they were airy clouds. Here, later [Moon condition], they had water in them. Today—let us look at a bird. Usually a bird is observed very thoughtlessly. If we are to picture the animals as they existed during the Sun condition, we must say that they consisted only of air; they were hovering air-clouds. When we look at a bird today, we should realize that it has hollow bones filled with air. It is very interesting to see that in the present bird. There is air everywhere in this bird, in the bones, everywhere! Think away whatever is not air and you get an air-being—the bird. If it did not have this air, it could not fly at all. It has hollow bones; within, it is an air-bird, reminding us of former conditions. The rest of the body was built around it in later times. The birds are really the descendants of the Sun condition.

Look at modern man: He can live in the air, but he can't fly; he is too heavy to fly. He has not formed hollow bones for himself like the bird, or else he too could fly. Then he would not just have shoulder blades, but his shoulder blades would stretch out into wings. The human being still has the rudiments of wings up there in his shoulder blades; if these were to grow out, he would be able to fly.

Thus man lives in the air surrounding him. But this air must contain vapor. Man cannot live in purely dry air; he needs fluids.

There is a condition, however, in which the human being cannot live in the air: that is the very earliest human state, the embryo. One must look at these things rightly. During the embryonic time the human germ or embryo obtains air and all that it needs from the body of the mother. It must be in something living.

You see, it is like this: If the human embryo is removed by operation from the body of the mother, it cannot yet live in the air. During the embryonic condition the human being needs to have live surroundings. At the time when man, animal, and plant existed, but as yet no stones or minerals as we have them today, everything was alive and man lived surrounded by what was alive just as now he lives as embryo in the mother's body. Naturally he grew bigger. Think of this: If we did not have to be born and live in the air and breathe on our own, then our span of life would end with our birth. As embryo we could all live only ten moon-months. As a matter of fact, there are such creatures that live only ten months; these do not come to the outer air but get air from within a living environment. So it was with man a long time ago. He certainly grew older, but he never came out of the living element. He lived in that state all the time. He did not advance to birth; he lived as embryo. At that time there were as yet no minerals, no rocks.

If the body of a human being is dissected today, the same carbonate of lime will be found in his bones as you find here in the Jura Mountains. There is now a mineral substance inside the body that was not present in the earlier condition. In the embryo too, particularly in the first months, there is no deposit of mineral; everything is still fluid, only slightly thickened. And so it was during this earlier condition; man was not yet bony, having, at most, cartilage. Of such a human being we are reminded today only by the human embryo. Why cannot the human embryo come immediately out of the mother's body? Because the world today is a different world. As long as the Old Moon lasted—I will now call it the Old Moon, as it is not the present moon but the former state of the earth—as long as the Old Moon period lasted, the whole earth was a womb, inwardly alive, a real womb. There was nothing yet of stone or mineral. It was all a gigantic womb, and we can say that our present earth came forth from this gigantic womb.

Earlier this immense womb did not exist at all. What was it then? Well, in fact, earlier there was something else in existence. Let us just consider what came before. You see, if a human being is to develop in the mother's body, if he is to be an embryo, he must first be conceived. The conception takes place. But does nothing precede conception? What precedes conception is the monthly period in the woman; that is what precedes. A very special process takes place in the female organism that is connected with the expulsion of blood. But that is not the only thing; that is only the physical aspect. Every time the blood is expelled something of a spiritual-soul nature is born at the same time, and this remains. It does not become physical, because no conception has taken place. The spiritual-soul element remains without becoming a physical human body. What for a human being must be there before conception was also there during the cosmic Sun condition! The whole Sun was a cosmic being that from time to time expelled something spiritual. So man and animal lived in the air-like condition, thrust out, expelled by this whole body. Between one condition (Sun) and the other (Moon), it came about that the human being became a physical being in water. Formerly he was a physical being only in air. During this Moon condition we have something similar to conception, but not yet anything similar to birth. What was the nature of this conception during the ancient Moon condition?

The Moon was there, an entirely female being, and confronting it was not a male being, but all that was still outside its cosmic body at that time. Outside it were many other cosmic bodies that exerted an influence. Now comes the drawing which I have already made here.

So this cosmic body was there and around it the other cosmic bodies, exerting their influence in the most varied ways. Seeds came in from outside and fructified the whole Moon-Earth. And if you could have lived at that time and set foot on this primeval cosmic body, you would not have said when you saw all sorts of drops coming in “It is raining,” as one says today. At that time you would have said, “Earth is being fructified.” There were seasons when the fructifying seeds came in from all directions, and other seasons when they matured and no more came in. Thus at that time there was a cosmic fructification. But the human being was not born, only fructified; he was only called forth by conception. The human being came out of the entire Earth-body, or Moon-body, as it was then. In the same way fructification came from the whole cosmic surroundings for animal and plant.

Now later through further cooling there came about a hardening of all that lived then as man, animal, and plant. There, in the Moon condition we still have to do with water, at most, a hardening through the cooling. Here on the earth the solid, the mineral appears. So now we have a fourth condition [see drawing]: this is our earth as we have it today, and it contains man, animal, plant, mineral.

Let us just look at what the bird, for instance, has become on the earth. During this time (Sun condition) the bird was still a sort of air-sack, it consisted of nothing but air, a mass of air floating along. Then during this time (Moon condition) it became watery, a thickened watery thing, and it hovered as a kind of cloud—only not like our clouds but already containing a form. What for us are only formless water structures were at that time forms. There was a skeleton form, but it was fluid. But now came the mineral element, and this was incorporated into what was only water structure. Carbonate of lime, phosphatic lime and so on went the length of the skeleton, forming solid bones. So at first we have the air-bird, then the water-bird, and at last the solid earth-bird.

This could not be the same in the case of man. Man could not simply incorporate into himself what only arose as mineral during his embryonic period. The bird could do this—and why? You see, the bird acquired its air form here (Sun condition); it then lived through the water condition. It is essential for it not to let the mineral come too close to it during its germinal state. If the mineral came to it too soon, then it would just become a mineral and harden. The bird while it is developing is still somewhat watery and fluid; the mineral, however, wants to approach. What does the bird do? Well, it pushes it off, it makes something around itself, it makes the eggshell around itself! That is the mineral element. The eggshell remains as long as the bird must protect itself inwardly from the mineral; that is, as long as it must stay fluid. The reason for this is that the bird originated only during the second condition of the earth. If it had been there during the first condition, it would now be much more sensitive to warmth than it actually is. Since it was not there at that time, it can now form the hard eggshell around itself.

Man was already present during the first condition of the earth, the warmth condition, and therefore he cannot now hold off the mineral while he is in the embryonic stage. He can't build an eggshell; he must be organized differently. He must take up the mineral element from the womb, and so we have mineral formation already in the embryo at the end of its development. Man must absorb some mineral from the womb; therefore, the womb must first possess the mineral that is to be absorbed. So in the case of man the mineral element is incorporated quite differently. The bird has air-filled bones; we human beings have marrow-filled bones, very different from the bones of the bird. Through the fact of our having this marrow a human mother is able to provide mineral substance to the embryo within her. But once the mineral element is provided, the human being is no longer able to live in the womb environment and must gradually be born. He must first have acquired mineral constituents. With the bird it is not a matter of being born, but of creeping out of the eggshell; man is born without an eggshell. Why? Because man originated earlier and therefore everything can be done through warmth and not through air.

From this you can understand the differences that still exist and that can be observed today. The difference between an “egg-animal” and such a being as man, and also the higher mammals, lies in the fact that man is far older than, for instance, the bird species, far older than the minerals. Therefore, when he is quite young, during the embryonic stage in the womb, he must be protected from the mineral nature and may only be given the prepared mineral that comes from the mother. In fact, the mineral element prepared in the mother's body must even for a certain time after birth still be given to him in the mother's milk! While the bird can be fed at once with external substances, man and the higher animals can only be nourished by what the mother's body provides.

What the human being has today in our present Earth condition from the mother's body he had during the previous cosmic condition from the air, from the environment. What he had around him during his whole life was of a milk nature. Our air today contains oxygen and nitrogen but relatively little carbon and hydrogen and particularly very, very little sulphur. They have gone. During the Moon condition it was different; in the surrounding air there were not only oxygen and nitrogen but also hydrogen, carbon, sulphur. That made a sort of milky pap around the Moon, a quite thin milk-pap in which life existed. Today man still lives in a thin milk-pap before he is born! For it is only after his birth that the milk goes into the breast; before birth it is in those parts of the female body where the human embryo is lying. That is an amazing thing, that processes in the mother's organism that belong to the uterus before birth afterwards go to the breast. And so the Moon condition is still preserved in man before he is born, and the actual Earth condition only comes at the moment of birth with the Moon-nature still present in the breast milk.

This is how things connected with the origin of the earth and mankind must be explained. If people do not press forward to a spiritual science, they simply cannot solve the mystery of why a bird slips out of an egg and can at once be nourished with external substances, while a human being cannot slip out of an egg and must come out of the womb to be nourished by mother's milk. Why is it? It is because the bird originated later and is thus an external being. Man originated earlier, and when he was undergoing the Moon-condition, he was not yet as hardened as the bird. Hence today too he is not yet so hardened; he must still be more protected, for he has within him much more of the original conditions.

Since people today on the whole can no longer think properly, they misunderstand what exists on earth as plant, animal, and man. Thus materialistic Darwinism arose, which believed that the animals were there first and that man simply developed out of the animals. It is true that in his external form man is related to the animals, but he existed earlier, and the animals really developed later after the world had gone through a transformation. And so we can say that the animals we see now present a later stage of an earlier condition when they were indeed more closely related to man. But we must never allow ourselves to imagine that out of the present animals a human being could arise. That is a thoroughly false idea.

Now let us look not at the bird species but at the fishes. The bird species developed for the air, the fish species for the water. Not until what we call the Moon condition were certain earlier air-like bird-beings transformed in such a way as to become fishlike—because of the water. To the bird-like beings were added the fish. One could say that the fish are birds that have become watery, birds received by the water. You can gather from this that the fish appeared later than the birds; they appeared when the watery element was there, that is, during the Old Moon period.

And now you will no longer be astonished that everything swimming about in a watery state during the Old Moon time looked fish-like. The birds looked fish-like in spite of flying in the air and being lighter. Everything was fish-like. Now this is interesting: if we look today at a human embryo on about the 21st or 22nd day after conception, what is its appearance? There it swims in a fluid element in the mother's body, and it looks really like a tiny fish! The human being actually had this form during the ancient Moon period and he has it still in the third week of pregnancy; he has preserved it.

You can say, then, that man worked himself out of this Old Moon form, and we can still see by the fish form he has in the embryo how he has worked himself out. When we observe the present world, everywhere we can see how formerly it all had life, just as we know of a corpse that it had life earlier. So today I have described to you the earlier condition of what we now have on earth as mineral. We look at a corpse and say that he can no longer move his legs, his hands, no longer open his mouth or his eyes—everything has become immobile; yet that leads us back to a human state when everything could be moved—legs, arms, hands—when the eyes could be opened. In just the same way we look around us at the corpse of the earth, the remains of a living body, in which man and animal still wander about, and we look back to the time when the entire earth was once alive.

But there is something more. I said that with conception the potentiality of the physical human being is there, and gradually the embryo develops. I also described what happens earlier, the processes in the female organism, what is pushed out in the monthly periods, and how a spiritual element is pushed out too. Now in this process there is always something of the nature of fever, even in a perfectly normal, healthy woman. This is because there is a warmth condition; it is the warmth condition that has been preserved from the ancient first condition that I have in the drawing called Saturn. This fever condition still endures.

One can say that the whole of our evolution proceeded from a kind of fever condition of our earth, which the cooling down finally brought to an end. Most people today are no longer feverish but thoroughly dry and matter-of-fact. Yet even now, when there is something not caused by outside warmth but appearing inwardly as warmth, giving us something of an inward life, now too we have a condition of fever.

So it is, gentlemen: One sees everywhere in the conditions of present mankind how they can be traced back to conditions of the past. Today I have told you how man, animal, plant, and mineral gradually evolved as the entire cosmic body with which all are connected grew more and more solid.

We will speak further of all this—today is Monday—on Wednesday at nine o'clock.²

• 1. “The little Plateau experiment,” worked out by the physicist J.A.E Plateau, 1801 – 1883. Compare the description by Vincent Knauer in his lectures, “The Main Problem of Philosophy,” Vienna and Leipzig 1892: “One of the nicest experiments is the Plateau experiment. A mixture of water and alcohol is prepared, having the exact weight of pure olive oil. Into this is poured a rather large drop of oil. This does not float on top of the liquid but sinks to the middle of it, in the form of a ball. A small disc of cardboard is then perforated in the center by a long needle and lowered carefully into the middle of the ball of oil, so that the edge of the cardboard becomes the ‘equator’ of the ball. The disc is now set into motion, at first slowly, then faster and faster. Naturally the movement is imparted to the ball of oil, and as a result of the strength of the movement, parts of the oil drop away and continue the movement separately for some time, first in circles, then revolving as tiny balls. In this way there arises something surprisingly similar to our planetary system: in the center the largest globe, like our sun, and moving around it smaller balls and rings, like our planets with their moons.”
• 2. This lecture was postponed to Thursday, July 3rd.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

[ 1 ] Max Dessoir's book Beyond the Soul (Vom Jenseits der Seele) contains a brief section in which the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science advocated by me is portrayed as scientifically invalid. Now it might seem to many that a discussion with people who take Dessoir's point of view about science must prove altogether unfruitful to anyone advocating spiritual-scientific anthroposophy. For, such an advocate asserts the existence of a purely spiritual region of experience that a Dessoir fundamentally rejects and consigns to the realm of fantasy. Discussion of the findings of spiritual-scientific knowledge, therefore, might only seem possible with someone who already has reason to believe that such a spiritual-scientific region exists.

This view would be correct if the advocate of anthroposophy presented nothing more than his own inner personal experiences and simply placed them beside the results of the science based on sensory observation and the scientific processing of such observations. Then one could say: the adherent of natural science refuses in fact to regard the experiences of the spiritual researcher as realities; the researcher in the spiritual realm can only make an impression with his findings on those who have already adopted his own point of view.

[ 2 ] This opinion, however, rests upon a misunderstanding of what I mean by anthroposophy. It is true that this anthroposophy is founded upon soul experiences that are attained independently of sense impressions and independently of scientific judgments based only upon sense impressions. Therefore the two kinds of experiences, sensory and extrasensory, seem at first to be separated by an unbridgeable chasm.

But this is not so. There is a common ground where both approaches must meet, and where discussion is possible. This common ground can be described in the following way.

[ 3 ] Out of experiences that are not just personal to him, the advocate of anthroposophy believes himself justified in stating that human activity in knowledge can be developed further from the point at which those researchers stop who want to base themselves only upon sensory observation and intellectual judgment of such observation.

To avoid continuous, long-winded paraphrases, I would like to use the word “anthropology” from now on to designate that approach in science which bases itself on sensory observation and the intellectual processing of such observation, asking the reader to permit me this uncommon usage. In what follows, "anthropology" means only what I have just described. In this sense, anthroposophy believes itself able to begin its research where anthropology leaves off.¹

[ 4 ] The advocate of anthropology limits himself to relating his intellectual concepts—experienced in the soul—to his sense perceptions. The advocate of anthroposophy observes that these concepts—apart from the fact that we relate them to sense impressions—are able in addition to unfold a life of their own within the soul. And that, by unfolding this life within the soul, these concepts effect a development of the soul itself. The advocate of anthroposophy sees how the soul, if it is sufficiently attentive to this development, discovers spiritual organs within its own being. (In using this expression "spiritual organs," I am adopting and extending the linguistic usage of Goethe when he speaks in his world view of “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears.”) ² Such spiritual organs, therefore, are for the soul what sense organs are for the body. These spiritual organs must of course be understood as being entirely of a soul nature. Any attempt to connect them with one or another bodily configuration must be strictly rejected by anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must not picture these spiritual organs as extending in any way beyond the soul realm or encroaching upon the structure of the body. It would regard any such encroachment as a pathological configuration, to be strictly excluded from its domain. The way anthroposophy portrays the development of our spiritual organs should be strong enough proof—to anyone who really informs himself about it—that the researcher in the real spiritual realm arrives at the same conclusions as anthropologists about abnormal soul experiences like illusions, visions, and hallucinations. ³ Any confusion of anthroposophical findings with abnormal, so-called soul experiences rests entirely upon misunderstanding or insufficient knowledge of what anthroposophy actually maintains. And anyone who studies and understands anthroposophy's description of the path to development of our spiritual organs will certainly not fall prey to the notion that this path could lead to pathological configurations or states. The insightful person, in fact, will recognize that every stage of soul experience that a human being passes through on the anthroposophical path to spiritual perception lies in a realm that is entirely of a soul nature; alongside this realm, our sensory experience and normal intellectual activity will continue, unaltered, as they were before this soul realm opened up for us. The great number of misunderstandings holding sway in precisely this area of anthroposophical knowledge stems from the fact that it is difficult for many to bring something of a purely soul nature into the sphere of their attention. The power to picture mentally ⁴ fails such people the moment this ability is not supported by the sight of something sense-perceptible. Their power to picture mentally is then dampened down, even below the level of dreams, into dreamless sleep, where it is no longer conscious. One could say that such people, in their consciousness, are filled with the aftereffects or the direct effects of sense impressions, and that, alongside this fullness, a sleep is occurring that blocks out what would be recognized as being of a soul nature if it could be grasped. One could even say that the essential nature of soul phenomena is subject to such profound misunderstanding by many people just because they cannot wake up to the soul element as they can to the sense-perceptible content of consciousness.

The fact that there are people in this situation whose degree of attention is only at the level produced by ordinary external life need not surprise anyone who can grasp the point, for example, of a reproach which Franz Brentano made to William James on this subject.

Brentano writes that one must “differentiate between our activity of perceiving and its object, i.e., between perceiving and what is perceived” (“and these two differ from each other as certainly as my present memory differs from the past event I am remembering; or, to make an even more drastic comparison: they differ as much as my hatred of an enemy differs from the object of this hatred”), and Brentano adds that one sees this error cropping up here and there. He continues:

William James, among others, embraced this error and went to some length to validate it at the International Congress on Psychology (Rome, 1905). Because, according to James, when I look out into a room, my vision appears along with the room; and, furthermore, because my mental images of sense-perceptible objects differ only in strength from the visual images directly stimulated by these objects; and, finally, because we call some objects beautiful, yet the difference between beautiful and ugly is connected to differences in emotions: therefore, soul and physical phenomena should no longer be regarded as two different classes of phenomena!

I find it hard to understand how the speaker himself could not feel the weakness of these arguments. To appear at the same time does not mean to appear as the same thing; just as existing at the same time does not mean existing as the same thing. Descartes could therefore recommend without self-contradiction that one deny—at least initially—the existence of the room I see, and regard as indubitable only the existence of my vision of the room. But if James' first argument is invalid, then obviously the second is also; for, what does it matter whether imagining differs from seeing only in degree of intensity, since, according to James, even if the degree of intensity were the same in both, the total congruency of imagining with seeing would still only represent congruency with a soul phenomenon? In his third argument, James speaks of beauty.... It is certainly a strange logic that could conclude—from the fact that pleasure in the beautiful is of a soul nature— that the object with whose appearance the pleasure is connected must also be of a soul nature. If that were so, then every dislike would be identical with what one dislikes, and one would have to be careful not to regret a past mistake, since, along with this remorse, the mistake, being identical with the remorse, would repeat itself.

With arguments like these, however, we need not fear that his authority—to which, among German psychologists, there is unfortunately added that of Mach—will cause many to fail to recognize the most obvious differences.⁵

Actually, this “failure to recognize the most obvious differences” is no rare occurrence. It is based on the fact that our power of mental picturing can unfold the necessary attentiveness only for sense impressions, whereas the actual soul activity that is also occurring is present to consciousness as little as what is experienced in a state of sleep. We are dealing here with two streams of experience; one of these is apprehended in a waking state; the other—the soul stream—is grasped simultaneously, but only with an attentiveness as weak as the mental perception we have in sleep, i.e., it is hardly grasped at all. We must by no means ignore the fact that during our ordinary waking state, the soul disposition of sleep does not simply cease, but continues to exist alongside our waking experience, and that the actual soul element enters the realm of perception only when the human being awakens not only to the sense world—as this occurs in ordinary consciousness—but awakens also to a soul existence, as is the case in seeing consciousness. It hardly matters now whether this soul element is denied—in a crudely materialistic sense—by the condition of sleep (to the soul element) that accompanies our waking state, or whether, because unseen, the soul element is confused with the physical, as in James' case; the results are nearly the same: both lead to fatal nearsightedness. But it is not surprising that the soul element so often remains unperceivable, if even a philosopher like William James is unable to differentiate it correctly from the physical.⁶

[ 5 ] With people as little able as William James to distinguish between the actual soul element and the content of what the soul experiences through the senses, it is difficult to discuss that region of our soul's being in which the development of spiritual organs is to be observed. For, this development occurs precisely where his attention is unable to direct itself. This development leads from an intellectual knowing to a knowing that sees.⁷

[ 6 ] But now, through the ability to perceive the actual soul element, we have as yet fulfilled only the very first precondition, which makes it possible to direct our spiritual gaze to where anthroposophy seeks the development of soul organs. For, what meets this gaze at first compares to anthroposophy's description of a soul-being equipped with spiritual organs the way an undifferentiated living cell compares to an organism endowed with sense organs. The soul becomes conscious of possessing the individual spiritual organs themselves, however, only to the extent that it is able to use these organs. For, these organs are not something at rest; they are in continuous movement. And when they are not in use, one also cannot be conscious of their presence. For them, therefore, perceiving and being used are synonymous. In my anthroposophical writings, I describe how the development—and along with it the perceptibility—of these organs comes to light. I will indicate here only a little of what can be said in this regard.

[ 7 ] Anyone who devotes himself to reflection on the experiences caused by sense-perceptible phenomena encounters questions everywhere that this reflection seems unable to answer at first. The pursuit of such reflections leads the adherents of anthropology to set certain limits to knowledge. One need only remember how Du Bois-Reymond, in his discourse on the limits of natural science, states that one cannot know the essential nature of matter or of the simplest phenomenon of consciousness. Now one can stop short at such points in one's reflections and surrender to the opinion: there human knowledge is in fact confronted by insurmountable barriers. And one can resign oneself to the fact that knowledge is attainable only on this side of the barrier, and that beyond this only inklings, feelings, hopes, and wishes are possible, with which “science” could have nothing to do.

Or else one can start at such points to form hypotheses about a region transcending the sense-perceptible world. In this case one employs the intellect, believing that it is justified in extending its judgments out over a region of which the senses perceive nothing. In such an undertaking, one runs the risk that nonbelievers will declare that the intellect has no right to judge a reality for which it lacks the foundations of sense perceptions. For only sense perceptions could provide a content for the intellect's judgment. Without such content, its concepts must remain empty.

[ 8 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not relate to “limits of knowledge” in either of these two ways. It does not form hypotheses about the supersensible world because it must agree with those who feel that any basis for reflection is lost if mental pictures are left in the same form as when taken from sense perceptions, and yet are to be applied in a realm transcending the sense world.

Anthroposophy does not relate to “limits of knowledge” in the first way either, because it realizes that in our encounter with these so-called limits of knowledge, something can be experienced by the soul that has nothing to do with the content of mental pictures gained from sense perception. If the soul focuses only upon this latter content, then, if its self-examination is honest, it must admit that this content can reveal nothing directly to our activity of knowing except a copy of what we experience through the senses. The situation changes if the soul goes further and asks itself: What can be experienced within the soul itself when it fills itself with those mental pictures to which it is led when confronted by our usual limits of knowledge? After sufficient self-examination, the soul can then say to itself: Through such mental pictures I cannot, in the ordinary sense of the word, know anything; but in the event that I really make this powerlessness of my knowing activity inwardly visible to myself, then I become aware how these mental pictures work within my own self. As ordinary cognitive pictures, these mental pictures remain mute; but the more their muteness communicates itself to our consciousness, the more these mental pictures take on an inner life of their own that unites with the life of the soul. And the soul then notices how, with this experience, it is in a situation comparable to that of a blind being who has also not experienced much development of its sense of touch. Such a being would at first keep bumping into things. It would feel the resistance of outer reality. And from this generalized sensation, it could develop an inner life for itself, filled with a primitive consciousness that no longer has merely the general sensation of bumping into things, but that differentiates this sensation and distinguishes between hardness and softness, smoothness and roughness, etc.

[ 9 ] In the same way, the soul can hold and differentiate its experience of the mental pictures it forms in its encounter with the limits of knowledge. The soul learns to experience that these limits represent nothing more than what arises when the soul is touched by the spiritual world in a soul way. The dawning awareness of such limits becomes an experience for the soul that can be compared with the experience of touch in the sense world.⁸ What the soul formerly regarded as limits to knowledge it now sees as a soul-spiritual touching by a spiritual world. And out of the soul's attentiveness to its experiences with the various pictures it makes for itself at this borderland, the general sensing of a spiritual world differentiates for the soul into diverse perceptions of a spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual world's lowest form of perceptibility, so to speak, becomes an experience. This characterizes merely the very first opening of the soul to the spiritual world. But it also shows that the spiritual experiences striven for in what I mean by anthroposophy do not point in the direction of general, nebulous, emotional experiences that the soul has of itself, but rather in the direction of something that can be developed in a lawful way into a true inner experience. This is not the place to show how this first primitive spiritual perception can be intensified by further soul practices in such a way that one can speak of other, in a certain way, higher kinds of perception besides this soul-spiritual blind groping. For a description of such soul practices I must refer the reader to my anthroposophical books and essays. Here only the basic principle of spiritual perception was to be indicated of which anthroposophy speaks.

[ 10 ] I would like, through a comparison, to clarify still further how the whole attitude of soul in anthroposophical spiritual investigation differs from that of anthropology. Picture to yourself a number of wheat kernels. These can be used as food. But one can also plant them in the earth so that other wheat plants can grow from them. Likewise, one can hold mental pictures—gained through sense impressions—within one's consciousness in such a way as to experience them as copies of sense-perceptible reality. Or, one can experience these mental pictures in such a way as to let work in the soul the power these pictures exercise through what they are, irrespective of the fact that they reproduce sense perceptions. The first way that mental pictures were described as working in the soul can be compared with what becomes of wheat kernels when they are taken up as food by a living being; the second way, with the production of a new wheat plant from each kernel.

This comparison, to be sure, is only meant to focus on the fact that from the seed there arises a plant similar to its progenitors; and that from a mental picture working in the soul there arises within the soul a power that is effective in developing spiritual organs. And one must also consider the fact that our first awareness of such inner powers can only be kindled by mental pictures that work as forcefully as those mental pictures we described as occurring at the borderland of knowledge; once awakened, however, this awareness of such powers can find other mental pictures that can also be effective—to a lesser degree, it is true—in helping one progress upon this path.

[ 11 ] At the same time, this comparison points to a result of anthroposophical investigation into the essential nature of our life in mental pictures. Just as a seed, when it is processed into food, is lifted out of the course of development that lies within its own primal being and that leads to the formation of a new plant, so a mental picture too is diverted from its own essential course of development when it is used by the picturing soul to reproduce a sense perception. The development particular to a mental picture through its own essential nature is to work as a power in the development of the soul. Just as little as one discovers the plant's laws of development when one investigates the nutritive value of its seeds, can one discover the essential nature of mental pictures when one investigates the way mental picturing brings forth a cognitive reproduction of the sense-perceptible reality it communicates. This does not mean to say that such an investigation cannot be undertaken. This is just as possible as investigating the nutritive value of seeds. But just as a study of the nutritive value of seeds addresses something different than the developmental laws of plant growth, so an epistemology that investigates how the cognitive power of mental pictures reproduces reality informs us about something different than the essential nature of our life of mental picturing. Just as little as it lies prefigured in the essential nature of a seed to become food, does it lie in the essential nature of mental picturing to provide cognitive reproductions of reality. Yes, we can even say that it is as completely external to the seed's own nature to use it as food as it is to the actual nature of mental pictures to use them to reproduce reality in cognition. The truth is that in its mental pictures the soul grasps its own evolving being. And only through the soul's own activity does it occur that mental pictures become the mediators of any knowledge of reality.⁹

[ 12 ] Now, as to how mental pictures become mediators of such knowledge, anthroposophical observation, which employs spiritual organs, arrives at different conclusions than those epistemologists do who reject this observation. Anthroposophical observation reveals the following.

[ 13 ] Mental pictures, as they are in their own primal nature, do in fact form a part of the life of the soul; but they cannot become conscious in the soul as long as the soul does not consciously employ its spiritual organs. As long as these mental pictures are active in a way corresponding to their own essential nature, they remain unconscious in the soul. The soul lives by virtue of them, but can know nothing of them. These mental pictures must dampen down their own life in order to become conscious soul experiences for ordinary consciousness. This dampening down occurs with every sense perception. Thus, when the soul receives a sense impression, there occurs a laming of our life in mental pictures; and the soul experiences this lamed mental picturing consciously as the mediator of our knowledge of external reality.¹⁰ All mental pictures that the soul relates to an outer sense-perceptible reality are inner spiritual experiences whose life has been dampened down. Everything that one thinks regarding the outer sense world consists of deadened mental pictures. Now it is not as though the life of mental pictures were lost, however; it leads its existence, separated from the realm of consciousness, in the unconscious spheres of the soul. And there it is to be found again by our spiritual organs. Now, just as the deadened mental pictures can be related by the soul to the sense world, so the living mental pictures grasped by our spiritual organs can be related to the spiritual world.

The mental pictures described above as occurring to us at the borderland of knowledge are those that, by their very nature, do not let themselves be lamed; therefore, they resist any relation to sense-perceptible reality. Precisely through this fact, they become the points of departure for spiritual perception.

[ 14 ] In my anthroposophical books, I have called the mental pictures that are grasped as living ones by the soul “Imaginative mental pictures.” One misunderstands what is meant here by “Imaginative,” if one confuses it with the pictorial form of expression that must be used to point to such mental pictures in a suitable way. What is actually meant by "Imaginative" can be clarified in the following way. When someone has a sense perception, while the outer object is making an impression on him, the perception has a certain inner strength for him. When he turns away from the object, he can then only represent it to himself in an inner picture. But this mental picture has little inner strength. It is shadowy, so to speak, when compared with the mental picture that occurs while the outer object is present. If a person wants to enliven the mental pictures that are present in his soul in the shadowy form characteristic of ordinary consciousness, he saturates them with the aftereffects of sense perception. He makes the mental picture into an image he can observe [inwardly]. Such images are certainly nothing other than the results of interaction between mental picturing and sense perception. The “Imaginative” mental pictures of anthroposophy do not arise at all in this way. In order to bring them forth, the soul must know this inner process of uniting the life of mental pictures with sense impressions so exactly that it can prevent any sense impressions—or their aftereffects, as the case may be—from flowing into its life of mental picturing. One can achieve this exclusion of perception's aftereffects only if one has learned to know how mental picturing is gripped by these aftereffects. Only then is one in a position to unite the spiritual organs in a living way with the essential being of mental picturing and thereby receive impressions from spiritual reality. Through this, the life of mental pictures is permeated from an entirely different quarter than in sense perception. One's experiences are essentially different from those to be had from sense perceptions. And yet it is possible to describe these experiences. This can be done in the following way.

When the human being perceives the color yellow he does not merely have a visual experience in his soul; a nuance of feeling accompanies what the soul experiences. This feeling may vary in strength from person to person, but it will never be totally absent. In the beautiful chapter of his Color Theory on the sensory-ethical effects of colors, Goethe describes in a quite vivid manner the participation of our feeling in red, yellow, green, etc. Now when the soul perceives something in a particular region of the spirit, it can happen that this spiritual perception is accompanied in the soul by the same nuance of feeling as occurs in the sense perception of yellow. One knows then that one is having a particular spiritual experience. In this mental picture, of course, one does not confront what one confronts in a sense perception of a yellow color. Yet, as a nuance of feeling, one has the same inner experience as when the eye is confronted by a yellow color. One says then: I perceive the spiritual experience as “yellow.” In order to express oneself even more exactly, one could perhaps say: I perceive something that is like “yellow” for my soul. But this description is unnecessary for anyone who has learned from anthroposophical literature how the process leading to spiritual perception occurs. This literature points clearly enough to the fact that the reality accessible to spiritual perception does not confront the spiritual organs like a rarefied sense-perceptible object or process, or in such a way that it could be reproduced through mental pictures that are perceptible in the ordinary way.¹¹

[ 15 ] Just as the soul, through its spiritual organs, learns to know the spiritual world lying outside of the human being, so it also learns to know the spiritual being of man himself. Anthroposophy regards this spiritual being as a member of the spiritual world. Anthroposophy proceeds from observation of one part of the spiritual world to mental pictures about the human being of what reveals itself in the human body as a spiritual human being. Working from the opposite direction, anthropology also arrives at mental pictures about the human being. When anthroposophy develops the kinds of observations described in this essay, it arrives at views about the spiritual being of man that manifests in the sense world through its body. The flower of this manifestation is human consciousness, which allows sense impressions to live on in the form of mental pictures. By proceeding from experiences of the spiritual world outside man to man himself, anthroposophy ultimately finds the human being living in a sense-perceptible body and, in this body, elaborating his consciousness of sense-perceptible reality. The last thing anthroposophy, on its path, discovers about the human being is the soul's living activity in mental pictures, which anthroposophy is able to express in coherent imaginative pictures. Then, at the end of its path of spiritual investigation, so to speak, anthroposophy can employ its vision further and see how the real life of mental pictures is lamed by the perceiving senses. With the light it sheds from the spiritual quarter, anthroposophy shows this lamed life of mental pictures to be characteristic of man's life in the sense world, insofar as he forms mental pictures. In this way, as one of the last results of its investigations, anthroposophy arrives at a philosophy of the human being. What lies on its path down to this point is to be found purely in a spiritual realm. With the results of what it has found on its spiritual path, anthroposophy arrives at a characterization of the human being who lives in the sense world.

[ 16 ] Anthropology investigates the realms of the sense world. Proceeding on its way, it also arrives at the human being. He presents himself to anthropology as drawing together the facts of the sense world in his bodily organization in such a way that from this drawing together a consciousness arises through which outer reality is presented in mental pictures. The anthropologist sees mental pictures arising from the human organism. In observing this, he must come to a halt in a certain sense. With mere anthropology, he cannot apprehend the inner, lawful connectedness of mental pictures. Just as anthroposophy, at the end of its path through spiritual experiences, still looks at the spiritual being of man—insofar as this manifests through the perceptions of the senses—so anthropology, at the end of its path through the sense world, must look at the way the sense perceptible human being is active in mental picturing in its encounter with sense perceptions. And when it observes this, anthropology finds that this activity is not sustained by the organic laws of the body, but by the thought-laws of logic. But logic is not a region that can be entered in the same way as the other regions of anthropology. In thinking that is governed by logic, laws hold sway that can no longer be regarded as those of the bodily organization. As the human being works with these laws, the same logical activity reveals itself in him that anthroposophy encounters at the end of its path. It is just that the anthropologist sees this logical activity in the light shed from the sense-perceptible realm. He sees the lamed mental pictures and, by acknowledging the existence of logic, he also concedes that in these mental pictures laws are operative from a world that is indeed united with the sense world, but does not coincide with it. In man's life of mental pictures, which is carried by a logical activity, there manifests to the anthropologist the sense-perceptible human being who extends into the spiritual world. In this way, as the final results of its investigations, anthropology arrives at a philosophy about the human being. What lies on its path up to this point lies purely in the sense world.¹²

[ 17 ] If these two paths—the anthroposophical and the anthropological—are followed in the right way, they meet at the same point. Anthroposophy brings with it to this meeting a picture of the living spiritual human being and shows how he develops, in sense-perceptible existence, the consciousness that is present between birth and death while the life of supersensible consciousness is lamed. Anthropology, at this meeting point, shows a picture of the sense-perceptible human being who apprehends himself in consciousness, but who extends up into spiritual existence and lives in that essential beingness which reaches beyond birth and death. At this meeting point, a really fruitful understanding is possible between anthroposophy and anthropology. This understanding will occur if both progress to a philosophy of the human being. The philosophy of the human being that emerges from anthroposophy will in fact produce a picture of him painted in an entirely different medium than that provided by an anthropological philosophy of the human being; but those who look at both pictures will be able to find a harmony between their mental pictures similar to that between the negative of a photograph and the corresponding positive print.

[ 18 ] This essay, I hope, has shown how the question raised at the beginning—about the possibility of a fruitful discussion between anthropology and anthroposophy—can be answered in the affirmative, especially from the anthroposophical point of view.

• 1. Although the anthroposophy advocated by me stands on a completely different ground, with its results, than the presentations of Robert Zimmermann in his book Anthroposophy (1881), still I believe myself justified in using the concept by which he characterized the difference between anthroposophy and anthropology. As the content of his anthroposophy, however, Zimmermann only draws together into an abstract schema the concepts provided by anthropology. For him, the knowing vision that is the basis for what I mean by anthroposophy lies outside the domain of scientific procedure. His anthroposophy differs from anthropology only through the fact that the former first submits the concepts it receives from the latter to a process like that of Herbart's philosophy, before making these concepts into the content of its purely intellectual schema of ideas.
• 2. A more detailed presentation and justification of this notion of “spiritual organs” can be found in my book The Riddle of Man, Mercury Press, 1990, page 125ff. and in my books on Goethe's world view.
• 3. The inner experiences that the soul must undergo in gaining the use of its spiritual organs are described in a number of my books, but especially in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment and in the second part of Occult Science, an Outline.
• 4. Sich Vorstellen means to visualize, to picture to oneself mentally. The ability to “place something before oneself inwardly is a crucial factor in spiritual development and as such is referred to constantly in this essay. How do we hold something up before our inner eye? What is the attention we focus upon it? Who does this? What is the nature of mental pictures (Vorstellungen) themselves? Such questions are among the many painful riddles that ordinary consciousness cannot solve, and that bring us up against an invisible world. Translator.
• 5. See F. Brentano, Research into a Psychology of the Senses, Leipzig, 1907, p. 96f.
• 6. The awakening of those soul faculties which, in ordinary consciousness, are unawakened is described in more detail in my book The Riddle of Man, page 132ff.
• 7. For a more extensive validation of what is stated here, please see addendum 1: The Philosophical Validation of Anthroposophy.
• 8. Limits to knowledge like those discussed above do not merely present themselves in the small number of which most people are aware; they occur in great number along the paths that intelligent reflection, according to its own inner nature, must take in order to gain a relation to true reality. Please see addendum 2: The Appearance of Limits to Knowledge.
• 9. A more detailed case is made for these views in the last chapter of my book The Riddles of Philosophy: “Sketch of a Perspective of an Anthroposophy.”
• 10. Please see addendum 3: The Abstractness of Our Concepts.
• 11. For further clarification of what has just been expressed, please see addendum 4: An Important Characteristic of Spiritual Perception.
• 12. Like the thoughts before footnote 7, what has been indicated here can be clarified further in a certain direction by addendum 1: The Philosophical Validation of Anthroposophy.

DR. STEINER: I should like to speak of various matters to-day which can show you once more how the earth is connected with the whole universe—in which, as you know, it exists as a spherical body. From this aspect, then, let us consider the rivers and oceans.

You are aware that only a part of the earth's surface is solid land; for the most part the earth is a water-sphere, an ocean. And of the rivers it may be said that they have their source—they rise, as one says—somewhere on the earth and then make their way to the sea.

Let us take the Danube, for instance. You know that the Danube rises in the Black Forest. Or take the Rhine which rises in the Southern Alps. The Danube flows through various valleys into the Black Sea; the Rhine flows through various valleys into the North Sea. Now when we think of rivers and seas we generally only consider their course and where they flow out into the sea. Rivers give us a good deal of pleasure but we do not reflect on the great significance that rivers and oceans really have for the whole life of the earth.

We have as a rule more knowledge about the fluids in the human body. Man, as I have told you, consists for the most part of a volume of fluid, with the blood as a special kind of fluidity running through its veins. We also know that this flowing blood is of the greatest significance for life; it forms life, it maintains life. As physical men we are entirely dependent on the blood flowing rightly through the body and, moreover, taking a definite course. Were it to deviate from this course we should not be able to live. The fact that the arrangement of rivers and seas has just as great a significance for the earth is generally not considered at all. It is not usually realised that water actually forms the blood circulation of the earth. Why is this not realised as a rule?

Well, you see, the blood makes a more striking impression. It is red, it contains all sorts of substances and people say to themselves that blood is in fact a peculiar substance. As to water, one simply thinks—Oh, well, it's just water! It makes less impression and the substances which it contains in addition to hydrogen and oxygen, are not present to the same extent as, for instance, the iron in the blood. So people don't consider the matter again. Nevertheless it is true that the entire water-circulation is of immense importance for the life of the earth. Just as little as the human organism could live without a circulation of blood, could the earth exist if it had no circulation of water.

The water-circulation has a distinct character—namely, it takes its start from something that is quite different from that into which it enters when it finds its outlet in the ocean. If you follow up the rivers you find that they contain no salt: the water in the rivers is fresh water. The sea contains salt and all that the sea brings to maturity is founded on this salt-content. That is of extraordinary importance: water begins to circulate on the earth in a fresh, salt-free condition and ends in the ocean in a salty condition.

The subject is generally dismissed by the statement that such a river as the Rhine rises somewhere or other, takes this course (a sketch was made) and then flows into the sea. That in fact is just what is seen externally. But what is not considered is that whereas the river, the Rhine, for example, flows externally like this from the Southern Alps to the North Sea, there is a kind of stream of force under the earth, returning from the mouth of the river to its source. And what happens there (above the earth) is that the river is fresh water, contains no salt; what returns there (under the earth) is all the time carrying salt into the earth in the direction of the river. The earth acquires salts which actually come out of the sea. It would have no salt if the stream of salt did not return under the earth from the river's mouth to its source. The so-called geology which investigates the interior of the earth should always bear in mind that wherever there are river-beds, somewhat deeper in the ground there are deposits of salt.

Now, if there were no salt-deposits in the earth, no plant-roots would grow. For plant-roots only grow in the soil by obtaining the salt for nourishment. The plant is most salty in the root, above it gets less and less salty and the blossom has little salt. And if one asks whence it comes that the ground can bring forth plants, it must be replied: because it has a water-circulation. Just as in us the blood arteries go out from the heart and the veins return, bringing back the blue blood, so in the earth the arteries of rivers and streams branch out on the one hand, while below the earth the veins of salt return. Thus there is a genuine circulation.

Is there then some special reason for the fact that the earth consists on the one hand of a fluid salt-body, on the other hand of dry land, and that salt is continuously brought in from the sea while there is none in the fresh water rivers that course through the land?

Yes, you see, if one really investigates sea-water, one discovers that this salty sea-water stands in but slight connection with the universe. Just as with us, for example, the stomach is but slightly connected with the outer world—in fact, merely through what it receives—so there is very little connection between the interior of the sea and the heavens. Land, on the contrary, has a strong connection with the heavens—land through which the rivers flow, where plants are brought forth through the salty deposits, particularly, however, where there are flowing waters.

If we view the matter in this way then we approach the mountain springs in quite a different spirit! We delight in the rippling of the springs, in their beautiful flow, their wonderfully clear waters and so on. Yes, but that is not the only thing! Springs are in fact the eyes of the earth! The earth does not see out into the universe through the sea, because the sea is salt and that gives it an interior character like our stomach. The springs with their fresh water are open to the universe, just as our eyes look freely out into space. We can say therefore that in countries where there are springs, the earth looks far out into the universe; the springs are the earth's sense organs, whereas in the salt ocean we have more the earth's lower body, its bowels. It is naturally not the same as in the human body; there are not such enclosed organs, organs that can be delineated. It would be possible to sketch them, but they are not so evident. However, the earth has its bowels in the sea and its sense organs in the land. And everything through which the earth stands in connection with the cosmos comes from fresh water, everything through which the earth has its intestinal character comes from salt water.

Now I will furnish you with a proof that this is so. I once told you that the reproductive process in man and animal also stands in connection with the heavens. I said that it is not merely a development of the egg in the maternal body, but that forces from the universe work in upon it and bring about its roundness. We see the movement of the universe outside us as round, and thus this little egg is an image of the universe, because the forces work in upon it from all sides. And so where the reproductive process is at work, the heavenly is actually working into the earthly. You see the same thing in the eye, it is a sphere. I described the eye recently and how it is formed from the universe inwards. Sense organs and the eye are built in from the universe. If you observe the spleen you see that it is not spherical, it is formed more by terrestrial forces, the intestinal forces of the earth. That is just the difference.

If one only pays real attention to things then they give one proofs. I will presently give you a proof taken from sea and land, but first I will interpolate something else. I have told you that recently we have been making researches in our biological laboratory on the importance of the spleen. When we cannot eat regularly—we all eat more or less irregularly—the spleen is there to balance it all out: it is the regulator. We have produced the proof of this in our laboratory and there is a little booklet by Frau Kolisko (Not published in English.) which describes it all. While this experiment was being made we were obliged by the requirements of modern science to produce a palpable and evident proof. (This will no longer be necessary when science accepts super-sensible proofs, but it is still necessary to-day.) So we took a rabbit and removed the spleen and let the rabbit go on living without its being harmed in any way. This operation can be done with all care, and it was a complete success. Later the rabbit died from an accidental chill in no way connected with the operation. Then we dissected the body and were anxious to see the effect of the removal of the spleen. The interesting thing is ... now, what must be said by Spiritual Science? What remains when one has cut out the physical spleen? Well, now, if the spleen is here (a sketch was made) and one cuts it out, removes it, on this spot there still remains the etheric body of the spleen and its astral body. The spleen is given its form by the earth which has developed it. If one removes the physical spleen, leaving the etheric spleen, as was the case with the rabbit, what must happen? The following should happen. Whereas the physical spleen is dependent on the earth, inclines to the earth, the etheric spleen, which has now become free and is no longer hampered by the physical spleen, must come again under the influence of the heavens. And lo and behold, when we dissected the rabbit there was a small, round body, formed of fine white tissue! Thus there was complete confirmation. Something appeared which according to the expectation of Spiritual Science ought to appear. In a relatively short time a small webbed body about the size of a nut had arisen. Therefore you see that one only has to go to work in the right way and one finds proofs everywhere for the statements of Spiritual Science. You can gather from this that pronouncements made out of spiritual knowledge can enter quite concretely into the physical realm, if right methods are pursued.

Now just as the white body was formed here through the surrounding influences, so are the rudiments of man and animal formed spherically in the ovum through the influence of the heavens.

This knowledge makes us realise that fish are in a special situation, for they never actually come on to the land. They can at most gasp a little on land, but they cannot live on land, they must live in the sea. Hence fish are organised in a particular way; they do not come where the earth is open to the universe. It is therefore with great difficulty that fish develop sense organs and in particular the organs of reproduction, for the formation of these is dependent on the influence of the cosmos. Fish must make careful use of whatever light and warmth falls into the sea from without in order that they may breed and develop sense organs. But nature, as we know, attends to many things. You see it with the so-called goldfish: they use their whole skin for receiving the influence of the light and hence they become so golden. Fish take every opportunity of snapping up what falls into the water from the universe. They must lay their eggs wherever some light can enter, so that they may be hatched from outside. Thus fish are organised, as it were, to live under the water; they do not come out of the water.

What I am saying does not apply so very much to freshwater fish—fresh water can be penetrated from the universe—but it applies very much to sea fish. And these show that they are organised to make use of all that enters the salt water from the universe in order to be able to breed.

The salmon, however, forms a quite remarkable exception. It has in fact an extraordinary organisation. It must live in the sea in order to develop proper muscles and to give its muscles right nourishment it needs the earth-forces found primarily in the salt of the sea. But when the salmon lives in the sea it cannot breed. Its organism shuts it off completely from the universe and salmon would have long ago died out if they had had to breed in the sea. The salmon is an exception; whereas it becomes strong in the sea and develops its muscles, it is practically blind and it cannot reproduce its species there. The reproductive organs and sense organs get weak and stunted; on the other hand, salmon in the sea get fat. Now in order not to die out—we can see this by the salmon here in the North Sea—they make a journey every year up into the Rhine, and so get the name of “Rhine salmon.” But the Rhine makes the salmon thin, it loses its muscles again; the fat it gained in the salt ocean it loses in the Rhine. Yet in the Rhine the salmon can breed, for while it gets slender, the sense organs and in particular the reproductive organs, in both male and female, become well developed. Thus every year the salmon must journey from the salt ocean to the freshwater Rhine in order to breed. Then while the old are still alive and the young ones are there, they all make the journey back again to the sea in order to get rid of their slimness and regain their fat.

You see how this is all in full accord. Where the earth is salty the earth forces are at work upon the organs that are developed by the earth. Our own muscles are developed by the earth when we move with the forces of gravity. Gravity is the earth-force and works upon everything muscular, everything bony. The earth shares its salt with us and we get strong bones and muscles. With this salt excretion of the earth, however, we could do nothing for our senses and the reproductive organs; they would wither away. These must always come under the influence of extraterrestrial forces, the forces coming from the heavens. And the salmon shows what a distinction it makes between fresh and salt water. It goes into salt water to take up earth forces and get fat.

Thus the earth can be said to have a kind of circulation with respect to animal-life as well, as for instance, in the case of salmon.

This circulation drives the salmon alternately into the sea and into the river. They go to and fro, to and fro. The whole salmon community goes to and fro. One can see so clearly from the salmon how everything alive on the earth is in movement.

If we have learnt this from the salmon, it gives us the picture of something else, something that is always before our eyes and is such a wonderful spectacle: the birds of passage. They travel to and fro in the air, the salmon travels to and fro in the water. Salmon migration in the water is the same as bird migration in the air, except that salmon go to and fro between salt water and fresh water and the birds between the colder and warmer regions that they need. In order to come into the right earth-forces of warmth, birds must go to the south and there they develop their muscles. In order to have the forces of the heavens they must come into the purer air of the north; there they mature the reproductive organs. Such creatures need the whole earth. Only the higher animals, the mammals, and man, have become more independent of the earth, have emancipated themselves and reached a greater independence in their own organisation.

This, however, is only apparently the case. In reality we human beings are at the same time actually two people. We are still more—I have told you: physical man, etheric man, etc. But even in the physical man we are really two people, a right man and a left man. The right half of the body is vastly different from the left. I think the minority of you sitting here would be able to write with the left hand; we write with the right hand. But the part of the nervous system connected with speech is situated in the left half of the brain. There are strongly marked convolutions there but none in the corresponding place at the right side. In a left-handed person this is reversed; those who are left-handed have the speech-organisation on the right—not the external organisation, but the internal, which arouses speech. In this respect man is extremely different on left and right. But this is so elsewhere too; the heart is situated more to the left, the stomach is on the left, the liver on the right. But even organs ostensibly symmetrical are not wholly so. Our lungs have (here) on the left two lobes, on the right, three. So the right side of man differs very much from the left side. What is the reason of this? Let us start from something very simple. We do not, as a rule, learn to write with the left hand but with the right hand. This is an activity which depends more on the etheric body. The physical body is heavier and is more developed on the left, the etheric body more on the right. The left forms two lobes; the right, being more active, brings more life into the lungs and forms three lobes. On the left, man is more physical, on the right, more etheric. [See Dr. Steiner's lectures entitled: Anthroposophy, Psychosophy, Pneumatosophy, found in Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit ] And so too with speech. For right-handed people more nourishment is required by the left part of the brain than the right. And so every possible arrangement is made for man to contain the earth-forces on the left, and more the etheric forces of the heavens on the right.

As our modern science is only willing to recognise matter, it is just material things about which it does not know very much. In the education of children it has introduced the harmful practice of making children learn everything with the left and right hand equally. Well, but man is not in the least organised for that! If that practice is carried to excess, education will make people half insane, for the human body is organised to be more physical on the left and more etheric on the right. But what does modern science care about physical, etheric? Both are the same to the scientists—left man, right man. We must be able to penetrate these things through spiritual science if we are to know anything about them. So on the left, man is more earthly, and on the right if the word is not misunderstood—more heavenly, more cosmic.

Man has however already largely emancipated himself, as I have said. He develops this left-earthly element, this right-heavenly element in such a way as to be able to carry it about as physical man. It is no longer remarked that on the left he has a tendency to the earth and on the right to the heavens. But there are people who have a greater tendency to the earth and they generally lie on their left side for sleep. People lie on the right side either when they are tired of the left or when they occupy themselves with forces inclining more to the heavens. Such matters are naturally difficult to observe since all sorts of other things come into consideration. When a person lies on the right side it may only be because that is the dark part of the room—that too could be a reason. And although one is not by any means bound to find it so, yet on the whole people tend to sleep on their left side, since that is the earth-side. But man has really emancipated himself from the earth and is independent in what he does. It can be observed however in the animal; one sees the secrets of the world everywhere revealed in a very remarkable way.

Imagine that the surface of the sea is here (drawing on blackboard); underneath is the salt sea-water with all sorts of substances in it. Now there are certain fish which are quite remarkably organised. They are organised with a very strong inclination to earth-forces, while other fish snatch eagerly at all the light and air that come into the water. They cannot breathe in the air as they have no lungs; they collapse and die in the air, but with their gills they snap at all the air and light coming into the water. But there is a fish called halibut in the larger variety and sole or plaice in the smaller variety which is very good for food. It has great nutritive value, more perhaps than any other fish, and this shows that it inclines to the earth, since foodstuffs come from the earth. The halibut sides with the earth, so to speak. So what may one expect from these fish? We may expect them to show by their habits that they side with the earth. And so they do; they lie down on one side and this becomes pale and white. And so thoroughly do they lie on the one side that the head is twisted round and the eyes are both placed on the other side. A sole looks like this from below (sketch); there it is quite flat and white, and on the other side, above, both the eyes are set and the head is turned round, because the sole always lies on the left side. The left side produces the nourishment and is pale and white. The other side takes on colour from the heavens, etc., becomes bluish, brownish and the eyes and head are turned away from the food side. So the sole is quite lop-sided, it has all the organs on the one side while the other is flat and pale. The halibut really produces a great deal of nutritive substance because it inclines to the earth. Some become over 600 lb. in weight. Halibut therefore give a clear demonstration: they always lie on one side since it is the earth that attracts them. If a man could lie just as forcibly every night on his left side, his head would twist round and he too would always peer out from one side. But it does not get as far as this with man; he has emancipated himself, as I have said, and maintains his independence.

Still, even man can be affected. One may find, for example, a person with a remarkable complaint: he sees with the right eye, or at any rate sees with one eye somewhat better than with the other. If this is not inborn, one can generally discover by questioning that he lies on the other side for sleeping. The earth-forces are working on the side upon which one very frequently lies and the eye becomes somewhat weak-sighted. It is not affected so strongly as in the case of the halibut, but still slightly. The eye that is turned away from the earth becomes somewhat stronger. You see how remarkable these connections are. I have said that nature somewhere or other shows us with what forces she is working. When one sees a sole—the smaller ones are to be seen in any fish market, the larger ones are in the ocean—one realises that the nutritive part can only be formed just where it is, it must be separate. If these fish need anything from the heavens they must always take on that direction and the reproductive organs can be developed. These fish go about it differently from the salmon; salmon migrate, they go from the North Sea to the Rhine in order to be able to breed. Soles always lie on the one side, so that the heavens work from the other side and in this way they can develop their senses and reproductive organs.

And the earth itself, what does the earth do Well, if there were only the salt sea, the earth would long ago have perished; it cannot exist by itself alone. There are not only the salt seas but the freshwater rivers and streams, and the freshwater receives from universal spaces the reproductive forces for the earth. The salt ocean can bring in nothing from the wide universe which will give the earth continuous refreshment. When you go to a spring and the wonderfully pure water is bubbling out, you will notice how green everything is near the spring, what a wonderful scent there is. All is so fresh. Yes, and what is so fresh there by the spring refreshes the whole living earth as well. The earth opens itself there as if through the eyes and sense organs to cosmic space. And one can observe how living creatures like the salmon and the sole make their way to where they can find this. They have a kind of instinct to attach themselves to the earth. The salmon seeks the fresh waters direct, the sole turns to the light by so arranging its body. It cannot come to the springs, but the springs are where the earth turns to the light. The sole, the fish, must turn direct to the light with its own body.

These things are immensely instructive, because they show us what is still present in man, but cannot be so well observed since he has broken away from the earth. And if one is not observant of such things one has really no understanding of the whole life of the earth. Indeed, if we look at the ocean and observe the sole, we can realise: Yes, by means of the sole the ocean opens itself everywhere to the heavens! Soles are a proof that the sea is thirsty for the heavens, since its salty content turns away from the universe. One can say that soles express the thirst of the sea for light and air. And if we look at our own circulation, we too, in fact, have fine sense organs, the organs of touch, at the places where we are saltier, where the muscles are situated. Here too man makes himself open to the outer world, though not directly, as through the eyes. These places correspond as it were to the places where soles are to be found in the sea. Soles make themselves open to the heavens and this gives them an extraordinary acuteness. Just as we become skilful when we are able to make good use of our external organs of touch, so the sole becomes skilful through the sea, because it makes itself open to the heavens. Look at what is underneath in the sea—it is heavy and clumsy. Soles, oh! they get terribly cunning, they become sly creatures just by turning away from the sea on one side. Although they turn to the earth-forces as well, they feel: the earth-forces are just for themselves. They accumulate nutritive material—up to about 600 lb. as I said—but soles have these fine sense organs through which they open themselves to the heavens. They eat other fish—smaller ones. But if a sole approached, the other fish would flee away from it on all sides as if from a spectre. For other fish consider it necessary to have eyes at the sides—a sole affects them exactly as if a human being were approaching. The fish would rapidly get away and soles would have nothing to eat if they were not cleverer than the others. But the other fish, those which have an eye at either side, are in fact not so clever as they do not turn so definitely to the heavens. A sole seeks out places where the sea has a sort of little shore in the shallower parts, and there it lies down. It bores into the ground with its flat body, uses its jaws to cover itself a little with sand and then whirls up sand, but so fine that a fish can swim through. Then come the fishes and crabs, do not notice the sole, and instantly when they have passed over, it snatches and snaps at them! The sole does it very cleverly indeed! But of course only a creature could do it which is linked in a close connection with the forces of the universe.

Such a creature then has developed its physical body on one side and on the other side it develops especially powerfully the invisible etheric body. We can see just by such things that the forces of intelligence in us are not derived from earthly forces. Earthly forces makes us muscular, give us salts; forces from the heavens give us forces which are at the same time those of reproduction and of intelligence.

You see, a man in a certain way is actually a small earth-sphere. Man too consists, as I have often said, of about 90 per cent of water. Man too is a fish, for the solid part which is only 10 per cent, swims there in the water. We are really all of us fish, swimming in our own water. It is even admitted by science that in essentials we are a small ocean. And as the sea sends out rivers, so does our sea, our fluid body send out salt-free juices. We too have our freshwater streams. They lie outside the muscles and bones. On the other hand, within the muscles and bones we have the same salt deposits as the sea has. Our nourishment is actually in the bones and muscles. We are therefore, in this respect too, a small earth-sphere: we have our salt sea in us.

If the fluidity, the freshwater streams become too strong—which can easily occur in children if the milk is not rich enough in salts—then the child becomes rickety, gets the so-called “English sickness.” When a person gets too much salt he becomes too much a sea, his bones become brittle and the muscles unwieldy and clumsy. There must always be a balance between our salt consumption and what is contained in other foods.

Now what is it that lies in other foodstuffs? Look at a plant: you know now that plants grow because there are salt streams under the earth, returning from the river-mouth, which spread out and make the plants grow. So the plant finds its salt within the earth, but when it emerges from the earth it goes on growing towards the blossoms. The blossom becomes beautifully coloured because it takes up the light. There in the blossom the plant absorbs the light, in the root it absorbs the salt. There outside it becomes a light-bearer, there beneath it becomes a salt-bearer. Down below it is like the sea-part of the earth, up above it is like the heavens. The root is rich in salt, the blossom rich in light. In earlier times this was much better known and what is in the blossom was called “Phosphor.” To-day when everything is materialistic, phosphor is only a solid body. Phos = light, phor = bearer, phosphor = light-bearer; phosphor was actually that in the blossom which carried the light. The mineral “phosphorus” has received its name because of the way it gives out light when it is ignited. But the real light-bearer is the plant- blossom. The plant-blossom is phosphorus. Therefore for those organs in our human body, which as it were contain the freshwater currents, we need light; for the muscles, the bones, for that in us which ought to become salty we need precisely salt and solid ingredients in our food. Between them there must be the right balance—each must be consumed in the right quantity.

And so it is too with the earth. However far you may have travelled you will not have seen—nor has the globe-trotter, nor the genuine world traveller anywhere seen that the earth has prepared itself a meal! But nevertheless it does nourish itself, substances are continuously being exchanged, the earthly element is ascending all the time through mist and fog. And you know that the rain-water which falls is distilled; it is pure water and contains nothing else. But the sea is nourished through the salt in rarefied condition from cosmic space. There is no need to keep to meal-times! It is only we men, who have broken away from the earth, who must procure our food from it. The earth is nourished by the fine substances to be found everywhere in the universe. It is fed continuously, but one does not notice it because it is such a fine and delicate process. You see, if you look at a man quite superficially, you do not notice that he is continually absorbing oxygen. So too with the earth, one does not notice that all the time it is receiving nourishment from cosmic space.

Now we human beings keep to our meal-times. There we take our nourishment, through the stomach into the lower body. This is quite obvious, extremely obvious. But in breathing it is less obvious. It is in respect of the obvious that social questions arise. One man is better off, another worse off. Men all want to be well off—social questions arise in respect of the obvious. But social questions are not so clear in respect of the air which we all inhale. There it is not so easy to say that one man deprives another—there is a little truth in it, but not very much. In the case of our lower body we differ entirely from the earth. In the matter of breathing we are more like the earth, our breathing is performed almost unnoticed. But in fact we are all the time absorbing iron through our hearing—not only do we hear—we are absorbing iron in a very fine state. Through the eyes we absorb light and other substances too. This can be discovered from those people who are lacking in these substances. Through the nose in particular we take in an immense amount of substance without noticing it! With our lower body we have broken away from the earth and made ourselves free. So there we can only absorb foodstuffs created by the earth, baked and made more solid. We can take in the air because it is in the cosmos, and with our head and the senses we do what the earth does. There we receive nourishment out of the universe in the same way as the earth itself. The head is not formed spherically without reason; it deals with the universe just as the earth does. Only down below gravity enters, there the human body is developed according to the earth; physical hands—this gravity draws downwards. Gravity has not such an influence on the head; that remains spherical. So there we must pass from the visible to the invisible. One must say: The soles would die in spite of feeding on fish and crabs—for they only eat these for the sake of the pale, flat under-body—if they were not to take in what comes from the universe through having made themselves one-sided. These are the fine, the delicate connections through which one looks into the laws and secrets of the cosmos.

This is what Spiritual Science must call attention to again and again, namely, that one must learn to know the true laws, not through crude superficial observation but through fine and delicate perception.

American readers have known the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche in English for somewhat less than fifty years. The first translations of Nietzsche's works began appearing in this country shortly after the turn of the century. Since then, almost without interruption American publishers' lists have included collections of his writings, selections from his letters, extracts from his journals, commentaries on his works, and, above all, numerous descriptions of his tragic life story; and American interest in Nietzsche continues today.

In view of this it seems particularly fitting that the present book, with its profound insight into Nietzsche's creative activity, brilliant analysis of his character, and clear evaluation of his significance should be published for the first time in English translation as the second volume of the Centennial Edition of the Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner.

In Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, Rudolf Steiner presents an unforgettable portrait of the man whose writings continue to exercise an important influence in shaping the world in which we live today, and which our children will inherit tomorrow.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in the little village of Röcken near Leipzig on October 15, 1844. As he wrote later, “I was born on the battlefield of Lützen, and the first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus.” The Protestant element was in his very blood, for Lutheran clergymen were among his forebearers on both his paternal and maternal sides, while his father was the pastor of Röcken. A tradition that his ancestors were Polish noblemen of the Niëzky family was recorded by Nietzsche himself, as was the statement that his grandmother belonged to the Goethe-Schiller circle of Weimar.

The parsonage life during Nietzsche's early childhood was typical of most of the country clergy-houses of the time. The atmosphere was that of “plain living and high thinking,” and the family combined honor and piety with a social life of happiness and cheer, in which a love of music, books and friendships played a role. When the boy was nearly five, in the summer of 1849, Pastor Nietzsche sustained a severe fall, in consequence of which he died. The widow took her children to Naumberg some months later, and they made their home with the paternal grandparents.

At first Friedrich was enrolled in the municipal school in Naumberg, but shortly afterward he was transferred to a private school in the same town. In October 1858, in response to the offer of a scholarship, the boy was enrolled in the Landes-Schule at Pforta. This famous institution had been founded as a Cistercian Abbey in the middle of the twelfth century; at the time of the Reformation it became a secular school. Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel and Ranke are among the names of those who studied there. In the nineteenth century the Landes-Schule at Pforta was frequently referred to as “the German Eton” because of its excellence in classical studies and as a preparatory school.

Friedrich Nietzsche found a second home in the Landes-Schule; he thoroughly enjoyed his studies—languages, literature and history in particular. In the summer of 1860 he conceived the idea of organizing a literary-artistic club among the students, and this met with a ready response from his schoolmates. Soon the Germania Club, as it came to be called, was organized, and Nietzsche contributed a number of essays on literary and historical themes to the club paper. Many happy hours were spent with his friends at the Germania Club in active discussions about Greek and Latin classics, the works of current German and English authors, and similar subjects. Nietzsche's favorite writers at this time included Emerson, Shakespeare, Tacitus, Aristophanes, Plato and Aeschylus. About Tristram Shandy he wrote his sister Elizabeth, “I read it over and over again.”

While Friedrich Nietzsche was a student at the Landes-Schule, Rudolf Steiner was born on February 27, 1861 in the little town of Kraljevec on the frontier between Hungary and Croatia. His father was a station master in the service of the South Austrian Railway, and the boy's earliest recollections were connected with the activities of the railroad. From his second through his eighth year his impressions were those of the quiet country village of Pottsach, situated in a beautiful green valley at the foot of the magnificent Styrian Alps. The infrequent arrival and departure of the train, the daily activities of the village people, the services at the little church, the colorful peasants and foresters, the life at the local mill, and always and ever the mysterious wonder and beauty of the surrounding nature: all this was a part of the child's world. He attended school in the village for a time; afterward his father undertook to teach him the rudiments of elementary education.

But side by side with this world, the child knew another world, a spiritual world, which was just as real and tangible to him as were the forests, fields and mountains surrounding him. This spiritual world was filled with objects and beings, just as the world about him contained stones and plants and animals and people. Even before he was eight, the child could distinguish between these two worlds, and the one was as clear and immediate to him as the other.

Many children have experiences similar to this of Rudolf Steiner. However, generally speaking, with the passing of the years of childhood, these experiences also vanish little by little, until in the retrospect of later years they seem like “the gentle fabric of a dream.” But in the instance of Rudolf Steiner, the reality and immediacy of the spiritual world did not fade away; it broadened and deepened into a clear, conscious perception of beings and events of that world.

In the wondering eyes of this quiet boy there were many questions. He knew, however, that these were questions he could ask of no one around him. More than this, he could speak with no one about the “other” world which was as close and as real to him as were the houses and fields of Pottsach. So he remained silent, and the questions remained alive within him. And, although he shared the daily activities of the children around him, and entered fully into the life of his family, he was unhappy. More than this, he was lonely ...

In September 1864, Nietzsche left the Landes-Schule with excellent marks, particularly in languages and literature. He entered the University of Bonn a short time later, enrolled as a student of theology and philology. However, he had not been long in the university when his friendship with his professor of philology, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschel, caused him to drop his theological studies in favor of philology. This action caused great grief to his mother and the other members of his family, who had looked to him to continue the clerical tradition of his father.

A year after he had entered the University of Bonn, Nietzsche withdrew in order to accompany Ritschel, who had been transferred to the faculty of the University of Leipzig. Here he continued his philological studies, and here also two very important events of his life took place. He met Richard Wagner in the home of Professor Brockhaus at Leipzig for the first time; his other meeting happened in a somewhat unusual way.

One day while he was browsing in Rohm's second-hand bookstore in Leipzig, “as if by accident” Nietzsche picked up a copy of Schopenhauer's Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea. Without stopping to so much as open the book, he paid for it, and rushed to his lodgings. There he threw himself down on his bed and began to read avidly. As he relates in his journal, “I don't know what daemon told me to take the book home with me. ... From every line I read I heard a cry of renunciation, denial, resignation. In the book I saw a mirror of the world; life and my own soul were reflected with dreadful faithfulness. The dull, disinterested eye of art looked at me. I saw illness and healing, banishment and restoration, hell and heaven.”

Thus, at the age of twenty-one, his reading of Schopenhauer's book—the first part of which had been sold as waste paper shortly after publication because there was no sale for it—changed Nietzsche's outlook upon life. In Shopenhauer he felt he had found his teacher in the fullest, most ideal sense.

After a brief interval spent in military service, during which he sustained a serious chest injury as the result of a fall from a horse, Nietzsche returned to Leipzig to continue his studies in the autumn of 1868. Meanwhile, a series of articles he had contributed to the periodical, the Rheinisches Museum, had been read by the authorities of the University of Basel, where a position as professor of classical philology was vacant. A letter was addressed to Ritschel, asking details about Nietzsche, and indicating that the chair at the university might be offered to the young student. Ritschel's reply was unequivocal: “Nietzsche is a genius, and can do whatever he puts his mind to.”

This sweeping endorsement must have impressed the authorities at Basel, for they appointed Nietzsche to the post, despite the fact that he had not yet obtained his doctor's degree. One member of the board, however, was slightly dubious of the appointment, for he said, “If the candidate proposed is actually such a genius, perhaps we had better not appoint him, for he would be certain to remain only a short while at such a little university as ours!”

When word of the appointment reached Leipzig, the authorities of the university at once conferred a doctorate upon Nietzsche, without requiring him to undergo further examination. Accordingly, on May 28, 1869, Nietzsche delivered his Inaugural Address at the University of Basel on Homer and Classical Philology. He remained in the position for the next ten years, his final retirement being due solely to reasons of health. The foreboding of the official who felt he might “remain only a short while” proved to be ill-founded.

His residence at Basel gave Nietzsche opportunity to follow up his friendship with Richard and Cosima Wagner, and he was often a guest at their Triebschen estate on the Lake of Lucerne, under the shadow of Mount Pilatus. At the same time, he made friends with Jacob Burckhardt, “the hermit-like, secluded thinker,” as Nietzsche described him. Burckhardt had recently completed his well-known Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, History of the Renaissance in Italy, 1867, and was famous as the author of a series of critical historical writings on Italian painting, sculpture, and architecture. In addition he occupied the chair of professor of history at the University of Basel.

1869 was a year of importance in the life of Rudolf Steiner, now a boy of eight years. Surrounded by the beauties and wonders of nature, puzzling over the intricacies of such mechanical contrivances as the telegraph equipment in the railway station and the machinery in the local mill, the boy's questions moved to a still broader plane. How could he reconcile his direct experience of the spiritual world with the world of sense which surrounded him? Was there a connection between the two? How could one find a bridge between the experiences of the outer and the inner?

The answer came in a most unexpected way.

Among the books of his school teacher in the little Hungarian village of Neudörfl where he now lived with his family, the boy found a textbook on geometry. This volume opened a new world for Rudolf Steiner. In the study of geometry he found answers to his questions. Perhaps even more important, he says, “I learned to know happiness for the first time.” His satisfaction was complete, for he had discovered that “one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself.” He had found that an inner joy came to him as he learned through his study of geometry to “lay hold upon something in the spirit alone ... ”

In the vicinity of his home in Neudörfl was a monastery of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. As the boy often met the silent monks on his walks, they aroused solemn feelings in him and he very much wished that they would speak with him. But they never did.

In October 1870, Rudolf Steiner, now eleven, entered the Realschule at Wiener-Neustadt in Austria, traveling backward and forward daily from his home in Neudörfl, which was over the border in Hungary. Along with his intimate contacts with nature which were still an important part of his daily life, the boy now began to find interest in such scientific matters as space and time, attraction and repulsion, atoms and their relation to natural phenomena, and many other subjects. With intense interest his mind turned to science and mathematics, and his teachers in the Realschule were of great help to him in these studies.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 found Nietzsche active as an ambulance attendant in the medical corps, because his health would not permit him to take part in more active combat. However, even these duties proved too much for his strength, and he contracted diphtheria as a result. He returned to his work at the University of Basel, and in 1872, when he was twenty-eight, Nietzsche published his first major work, the result of his friendship with Wagner and Burkhardt, and the feelings they had evoked in him. This was his Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. The aesthetic passages attracted musicians to the book, but Nietzsche's colleagues in the philological field greeted it with a bitter attack which was led by Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. The result was that despite efforts on the part of Ritschel and Burckhardt to defend him, Nietzsche had no pupils at all in his philology classes in the winter term of 1872–3.

The aftermath of the German victory in the War of 1870 was the eruption of a nationalistic spirit which had been gathering since the previous successes of 1864 and 1866. Nietzsche felt that this was the time to issue a fiery call to the intellectuals of Germany to abandon what he considered a highly dangerous and unworthy chauvinistic spirit, and to return to their work in the service of true German culture. Richard Wagner joined him in this effort to arouse the German youth to a recognition of the responsibilities their victorious destiny had placed upon them.

Nietzsche devoted parts of his lectures in the university to this subject, and finally, in 1873 he issued the first of a series of pamphlets under the general title, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Thoughts Out of Season, which he called David Strauss, dealing with the Philistinism of the period. The second, which was published in the following year, was Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, The Use and Abuse of History in Life, a sharp attack on the exaggerations of the current “popular historians” of Germany. The third pamphlet was titled, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, and appeared in the same year as the second. The last in the series was Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, and was published in 1876 when Nietzsche was thirty-two years of age.

Late in August, the first complete performance of Richard Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Niebelungen took place in the newly constructed Bayreuth Festival Theatre under the direction of Hans Richter. People flocked to Bayreuth from many countries to attend this cultural event of the first magnitude. Among the spectators was Friedrich Nietzsche who, however, did not share the general enthusiasm for what he saw depicted on the stage.

The well-known French author and critic, Edouard Schuré was also present at the Bayreuth Festival and wrote an account of his meeting with Nietzsche, including a keen appraisal of the latter's character. Schuré's article appeared some years later in the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes (1895):

“I met Nietzsche in 1876 when the Ring of the Niebelungs had its premiere in Bayreuth. As I spoke with him I was impressed by the high caliber of his mind and by his strange countenance. His forehead was large, his short hair combed well back, and his prominent cheekbones were those of a Slav. His thick mustache and courageous bearing gave him the look of a cavalry officer, at first glance. However, this was tempered by a certain mixture of arrogance and nervousness difficult to describe.

“The music of his voice and the slowness of his speech expressed his artistic feelings. His circumspect, thoughtful bearing pointed to the philosopher in him. But nothing could have been more misleading than the seeming tranquility of his expression. The fixed gaze revealed the unhappy task of the thinker; his look combined sharp perception with fanaticism. This double quality made his eye appear uneasy, particularly since it always seemed to be fastened upon a single point. When he spoke for any period of time his face took on the appearance of poetic gentleness, but it was not long before it resumed its antagonistic character.

“When we left (the theatre) together, he spoke no word of censure or disapproval; his face expressed only the sorrowful resignation of a defeated man. ...”

The year ended badly for Nietzsche. As the months progressed, his health began to fail steadily, and toward the end of the year his symptoms of eye disease were augmented by those of a still graver sort. He withdrew from his university teaching, and was given sick leave.

He passed the winter in Sorrento in company with his friends, Baroness Meysenberg and Dr. Paul Rée, with whom he was to travel considerably in the next years. Despite his illness, he somehow found strength to begin another of his important writings, which would occupy him periodically over the next four years. This was his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human.

The three years that followed were a time of increasing illness and loneliness. Finally, Nietzsche resigned his position at the University of Basel in 1879 and was given a retirement pension on which he lived for the rest of his life.

The physical and mental suffering he experienced in the year 1879 alone, is described by him: “I have had two hundred days of anguish in this year. ... My pulse is as slow as that of Napoleon I. ...”

The years between 1873 and 1879 were most important in the development of Rudolf Steiner. He then passed his twelfth through eighteenth years. As Nietzsche had discovered Schopenhauer's book in Leipzig, Steiner now saw Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason, in a bookstore window, and eventually came into possession of the volume. From the eager study of this book, to which he devoted every spare moment he could find, often reading single pages “more than twenty times in succession,” he hoped to find that which would enable him to understand his own thinking. Yet what he read in Kant was sharply opposed to his own inner conclusion, which he was to describe with the words, “Thinking can be developed to a faculty which really grasps the objects and events of the world.”

In this period Steiner deepened his knowledge of mathematics and German literature, in addition to the prescribed courses of study in the Realschule. From his fifteenth year onward he spent considerable time tutoring other pupils, thus inaugurating an educational activity that was to accompany him through the coming years. He found that a knowledge of practical psychology was indispensable for this task, and from his experience as a tutor he learned many valuable things about the problems involved in the training of the human mind.

Early in the summer of 1879 Steiner completed his studies at the Realschule, and was entered as a student at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna for the term to begin in the fall. He spent the summer entirely in the study of philosophy, working his way with utmost care and diligence through the writings of Kant and the principal works of Fichte. He was enrolled for the study of mathematics, natural history, and chemistry.

The years from 1879 to 1889 are generally regarded as Nietzsche's time of mature productivity. When one takes into account the suffering he experienced, the restless traveling, his constant loneliness, one is astonished at the amount of creative work he was able to produce during this period. In Italy, the French Riviera, the Swiss Engadine, the urge to write drove him relentlessly.

In July 1881, his Morgenröte, Dawn, was published. Although it received a cold reception, it is of importance, for it marks a turning point in Nietzesche's creative development. His previous writings had been largely negative and critical in tone. This book marks the appearance of a positive, constructive tendency, which increased in the works which followed.

Although his letters and journals give the impression that the autumn of this year was one of the happiest times of his life, he described the winter as a time “of unbelievable suffering.”

The next summer while Nietzsche was at Tautenberg in Thuringia, Dr. Rée and Baroness Meysenberg introduced him to Miss Andreas Salomé. Out of this and subsequent meetings with Nietzsche, Miss Andreas Salomé later wrote what has been described as “the most unreliable book about Nietzsche which has ever appeared in print.”

In July the first performances of Richard Wagner's music drama, Parsifal, were given at Bayreuth under the composer's direction. Nietzsche chose this occasion to send Wagner a presentation copy of his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human. Curiously enough, at exactly the same time, Wagner sent Nietzsche an inscribed copy of his Parsifal. The two packages crossed in the mail. No word of acknowledgment from either recipient was ever forthcoming; the break between Nietzsche and Wagner was complete, although the public was not to become aware of it until six more years had passed. In the meanwhile, Wagner had died suddenly in Venice early in 1883.

The high point in Nietzsche's creative life came in May 1883 with the birth of his Also Sprach Zarathustra, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the work which he and many others considered to be his masterpiece. The first part in twenty-three chapters took just ten days to write, as did each of the other parts with the exception of the fourth and last which was completed in 1885. In a letter he said of the writing of his Zarathustra, “All of it was conceived in the course of rapid walks ... absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted at one. While writing this book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power ...”

In addition to his studies at the Technische Hochschule, Rudolf Steiner attended lectures at the University of Vienna. He particularly appreciated the courses given by the celebrated Karl Julius Schröer on German literature, especially on Schiller and Goethe. As a result, Steiner read Goethe's Faust for the first time at the age of nineteen. Later, he enjoyed a personal friendship with Schröer, under whose guidance he came to a deep awareness of the importance of Goethe's contribution to natural science as well as to literature.

Out of his interest in philosophical studies, Steiner attended lectures by the philosophers Robert Zimmerman and Franz Brentano. He studied writings by Ernst Haeckel on morphology, and by Friedrich Theodor Vischer on aesthetics. The writings of Eduard von Hartmann, “the philosopher of the unconscious,” interested him deeply, and the day was to come when he would meet this man face to face in Berlin; eventually Steiner would dedicate his book, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, to him “in warm admiration.”

Among the lectures in his scientific courses, those of Edmund Reitlinger on the mechanical theory of heat and on the history of physics made a deep impression on Rudolf Steiner.

At this time Steiner was engaged as tutor in a family where there were four boys, the youngest of whom was a retarded child. The three older boys were no particular problem for him, and their studies went forward without difficulty under his direction. However, the retarded child was a great challenge. That Steiner met this challenge is clear from the fact that in two years the child was able to complete his work in the elementary school and enter the Gymnasium. Eventually he entered the School of Medicine and finally graduated as a physician. The experience with this child was reflected in methods for the treatment and care of retarded children which Rudolf Steiner gave some forty years later, thus laying the foundation for a system of Curative Education which is successfully practiced in both Europe and America today.

In 1884 Professor Schröer recommended Steiner to the position of editor and commentator on Goethe's natural scientific writings which the publisher, Joseph Kürschner, wished to include in his series of volumes on German literature. In recalling the nature of this task years later, Steiner wrote, “I saw in Goethe a personality who, because of the particular spiritual relation in which he placed man in regard to the world, could also fit the science of nature into the entire realm of human creative activity in the right manner ... To me, Goethe was the founder of a science of organics ... applicable to what is alive.”

From this time onward, Steiner was occupied with Goethe's investigations in such areas of natural science as metamorphosis, the archetypal plant, the world of animals and minerals, and so on. And out of this study in the light of Goethe's investigations and comments, Steiner came to recognize that if one wishes to understand Goethe as a natural scientist this can be done only on the basis of learning how one must perceive in order to enter into the phenomena of life.

Finally he realized that no theory of knowledge then extant explained Goethe's particular form of knowledge. Therefore, as a part of his preparatory work before setting about to edit and write commentry on Goethe's natural scientific writings for Kürschner, Steiner drafted a short study of Goethe's theory of knowledge. This was completed in 1886, when Steiner was twenty-five, and is clear proof of his comprehensive grasp of Goethe's way of thinking. The book is titled, >Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's Conception of the World, and is one of the most basic of Rudolf Steiner's major writings.

In 1886 Nietzsche, now in his forty-second year, wrote his Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, a large part of which was composed during his residence in Italy. This was his first attempt to deal with the subject of the origin of morals. The reaction to the book was generally unfavorable, although Jacob Burckhardt in Basel and Hyppolyte Taine in Paris wrote appreciatively of it.

On July 8th Nietzsche wrote his sister, “My health is actually quite normal, but my soul is very sensitive and is filled with longing for good friends of my own kind. Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me, and I shall be cured. ...” No words could better express the poignancy of the pathetic struggle for health and the longing for human beings who “understand.”

In 1887 came his Zur Genealogie der Moral, The Genealogy of Morals, a further development of the subject which had occupied his mind for some time.

Finally, in 1888 came the publicizing of his break with Richard Wagner upon the appearance of Neitzsche's book, Der Fall Wagner, The Case of Wagner. The volume produced a sensation. It was the first of Nietzsche's works to be reviewed by the public press, and for the first time Nietzsche attracted widespread attention as an author.

Not long before this, Nietzsche had written, “I am the author of fifteen books, and never yet have I seen an honest German review of any of them.” Even though this may have been the case, nevertheless Nietzsche had had devoted and entirely capable readers during all his productive years. Among these were Jacob Burckhardt, the Swiss historian, and Hyppolite Taine, the French critic, as we have seen, and also August Strindberg, the Swedish dramatist, and Georg Brandes, the Danish literary historian. It was Brandes who wrote his famous essay about Nietzsche in 1888, thus making his name known in leading intellectual circles throughout Europe. Nietzsche's books began to sell widely. Fame had come at last. ...

But Nietzsche was fast wearing out; day by day he was fighting against fearful odds. In a pitiful letter to Brandes late in the year, he said, “I have resigned my professorship at the University; I am three parts blind. ...”

Somehow he managed to complete his Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, before the year came to a close.

With the dawn of New Year's Day, 1889, the battle Nietzsche had waged so long was nearly over. For four days he struggled against the gathering shadows, but finally the light of his consciousness flickered out.

On the fourth of January Nietzsche wrote his last letter in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a child's notebook. It was addressed to Georg Brandes from Turin: “To the friend Georg: When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me; the difficulty now is to get rid of me.” The letter was signed, “The Crucified One.”

Nietzsche was forty-five years of age; the long night of spiritual darkness began. ...

While at work on Goethe's natural scientific writings, Steiner was active in the literary and artistic circles of Vienna in the last two years of the eighties. He had many friends among writers, poets, musicians, architects, journalists, scientists and the clergy. Before the Goethe Society of Vienna in 1888 he gave a lecture which reflected his keen interest in the question of artistic beauty. This lecture was subsequently published under the title, Goethe als Vater einer neuen Ästhetik, Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics.

This year was marked by Steiner's first journey into Germany. This was in response to a letter from the administration of the Goethe-Schiller Archives at Weimar inviting him to act as a collaborator on the famous Weimar Edition of Goethe's works then in preparation under commission from the Archduchess Sophie of Saxony. Steiner was well received at Weimar, and from there went to Berlin where he made the acquaintance of Eduard von Hartmann, as we have already seen.

The reading of Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, in 1889 was Steiner's first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings. He said, “I was fascinated ... yet repelled at the same time. I found it difficult to discover a right attitude toward Nietzsche. I loved his style, I loved his daring, but I did not love the way he spoke of most significant matters without entering into them in ... full consciousness. But then I saw that he said many things to which I was very closely related by my own spiritual experience. I felt myself near to his struggle. To me Nietzsche seemed to be one of the most tragic figures of the time.”

“I felt that Nietzsche photographed the world from the point to which a deeply significant personality was forced if he had to subsist on the spiritual substance of that time alone, that is, if the vision of the spiritual world did not penetrate into his consciousness ...

“This was the picture of Nietzsche that appeared in my thought. It revealed to me the personality who did not see the spirit, but in whom unconsciously the spirit fought against the unspiritual views of the age ...”

Steiner's move from Vienna to Weimar was the beginning of a new phase of his life. As a free collaborator in the Goethe-Schiller Archives he could observe events from the vantage point of one of the centers of the cultural life of his time. He came to know many of the leading personalities of the day. He had conversation with men like Hermann Grimm, the art historian and Goethe scholar, Ernst Haeckel, the scientist and German interpreter of Darwin, Ludwig Laistner, author and literary advisor to the internationally-known Cotta publishing firm, and many others. Laistner invited Steiner to edit editions of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul Richter, which were published by Cotta in their Library of World Literature. Steiner fulfilled this task, including writing introductions to the writings of both authors.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte. In somewhat enlarged form this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit und Wissenchaft, Truth and Science, as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, 1894.

And now events occurred which finally brought Rudolf Steiner into the company of those around Nietzsche, who was being cared for at the home of his mother in Naumberg.

In his autobiography Steiner describes a significant meeting: “One day Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, visited the Goethe-Schiller Archives. She was about to take the first step toward forming the Nietzsche Archives, and wanted to know how the Goethe-Schiller Archives were managed. A short time afterward the publisher of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel, also appeared in Weimar, and I came to know him. ...

“I am thankful to Frau Foerster-Nietzsche that during the first of my many visits (to Nietzsche's home), she led me into the room of Friedrich Nietzsche. There on a couch he lay in spirit-night, with his marvelously beautiful brow, that of artist and thinker in one. It was early in the afternoon. Those eyes, which even in thir dimness gave the effect of soul penetration, still took in a picture of the surrounding, but this had no entrance into the soul. One stood there and Nietzsche was unaware of it. And yet one could have believed that this spiritually illuminated countenance expressed a soul which had formed thoughts within itself all morning, and now wished to rest for a while. A deep inner shudder which siezed my soul ... transformed itself into an understanding for the genius whose look was directed toward me, but which did not meet mine ...

“And before my soul stood the soul of Nietzsche, as if floating above his head, already boundless in its spirit light, freely surrendered to the spirit world, for which it had longed before this darkened condition, but did not find. ...

“Previously I had read the Nietzsche who had written; now I saw the Nietzsche who, from far distant spirit fields carried within his body ideas which still shimmered in beauty, despite the fact that on the way they had lost their original power of light. I saw a soul which had brought rich gold of enlightenment from earlier earth lives, but which it could not bring to full radiance in this life. I had admired what Nietzsche had written, but now behind my admiration I glimpsed a radiant picture.

“In my thoughts I could only stammer about what I had seen, and that stammering is the content of my book. ... It was the picture of Nietzsche which had inspired it.

“Frau Foerster-Nietzsche had asked that I arrange the Nietzsche library. Thus I was permitted to spend several weeks in the Nietzsche Archives in Naumberg. It was a beautiful task that brought before me books that Nietzsche had read. His spirit lived in the impressions these volumes made. ... A book by Emerson, covered with marginal notes, bore traces of the most devoted, intense study. ...

“My relationship with the Nietzsche Archives was a very stimulating episode in my life in Weimar. ...”

In 1897 Nietzsche's mother died, and his sister took him into her home, where he passed his last years. In this same year Rudolf Steiner wrote his Goethes Weltanschauung, Goethe's Conception of the World, a rich harvest from his work in Vienna and Weimar in close study of Goethe's contribution to the knowledge of man and nature. This book marked the end of Steiner's residence in Weimar, for he now moved to Berlin to assume the editorship of Das Magazin für Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by Joseph Lehmann in 1832.

On the twenty-fifth of August, 1900, Friedrich Nietzsche died. He was buried in the graveyard at Röcken near the church where his father had preached, and the parsonage where he had been born fifty-six years before.

In Berlin, two weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche's death, Rudolf Steiner gave a Memorial Address in his honor, the text of which is included in the present volume.

In his Fors Clavigera, John Ruskin wrote, “Youth is properly a forming time—that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is to be. Then comes the time of labor, when, having become the best he can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, which, in happy lives, is very short; but always a time. The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death.”

For the Fighter for Freedom, the end of death had come at last.

PAUL MARSHALL ALLEN

Englewood, New Jersey
February, 1960

Yesterday I endeavored to show how what is to be presented here about Goethe's innermost and most intimate opinion and view of the development of the human soul can be gained and that nothing in his works and especially in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is arbitrary, that nothing has been arbitrarily secreted into it. I have tried to show how the whole basis for the explanation of the “fairytale” and Goethe's world view can be gained from an historical consideration of Goethe's life, from the historical pursuit of Goethe's most important ideas and impulses. An attempt has been made to substantiate what is to be given on the subject today in a more freely formulated way.

If we allow the fairy tale we discussed yesterday to come to mind, it does indeed seem to us to be completely immersed in mystery, and one might say: either we have to assume that Goethe wanted to incorporate many, many secrets into this fairy tale, as in Faust, according to his own words, or that we could regard this fairy tale as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking and being, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is the same thought that is characteristic of Goethe's entire life, which also lies in his conversations with German emigrants, and from what immediately precedes it, we can once again take the theme for this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, which look back in the most diverse ways on their sad experiences. The whole story is focused on showing what people who have been uprooted from their environment can go through as a result of this uprooting, in terms of the loneliness of the soul; what people in this situation can gain by reflecting on their psychological experiences, by observing themselves. We can only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe wanted to focus everything on revealing how the soul that wants to observe itself, that asks: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I blocked the paths to development? First of all, we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her destiny to us because in this destiny a human soul appears before us that must cling to the surface of the world view, which, although it follows what is going on around it attentively because it is forced to do so by is forced by the processes of life to do so, but is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what may be called chance and the spiritual necessity of things, a soul that does not know how the phenomena of life must be connected, if we assume the spirit in the environment. She has behaved towards a man in such a way that he has become seriously ill as a result of her repulsive manner and is dying because of her behavior. She is summoned to his deathbed, but she refuses to come. He dies without having seen her. After his death, all kinds of things happen that give the soul just described food for thought. 'How should I behave towards this?' she wonders. After the man's death, something very strange happens. She hears very strange things in the room, the furniture dances, she is slapped in the face by an invisible hand, and she is always forced to ask herself: Is the dead man somehow there, wanting to assert himself because I refused him? The top of a cupboard bursts, and at the same moment a cupboard in her own apartment in France, made by the same carpenter, goes up in flames. Goethe did not want to express that there was anything in such events that could give rise to the assumption of hidden spirits or the coming of the dead, but he only wanted to say that there could be such spirits that interpret all kinds of events in such a way that they are not sufficiently superstitious to say that the dead are certainly rumbling; they only come into an indefinite feeling and cannot get over it. What happens to the souls in the outside world according to their level of development is what Goethe wants to draw attention to. He then shows how one comes to the position of healing a lady from sensuality and passion; he takes the path of asceticism. This is again an indication of what the soul can go through in order to experience development. Goethe then leads upwards in stages. First a soul digging in the dark, then a more real thing in the lady just described, because many come to a cleansing of their soul through fasting. We are already entering more into a reality. And through the third of the things mentioned by Goethe, we enter completely into reality. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, he is in a subordinate soul development and says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. He commits theft. Then conscience awakens, the soul rises, and precisely through the unrighteous deed he becomes a kind of moral center for all the people around him. He shows a soul development that signifies an ascent from a subordinate level to a higher level of knowledge and world view.

We are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces that is to be purified into harmony, into a symphony of soul forces in the deeds that the persons perform. At first we are confronted with will-o'-the-wisps that are ferried across the river by a ferryman. These will-o'-the-wisps are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because everything would end in wild tumult. He much prefers to have fruits of the earth: three cabbages, three artichokes and three large onions. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to create a golden haze around themselves. They meet the snake, the aunt of the horizontal direction. For her, the gold is fertile and beneficial. She becomes inwardly radiant through the gold pieces. She can now illuminate what she could not see before.

When I tried more than twenty years ago to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a rewarding thought in the tangle of questions of the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all one had to follow the gold. Gold plays a role in different ways. The will-o'-the-wisps scatter it around. There it is not something blessed in a certain respect. In the snake, it becomes beneficial. Then we encounter gold again in the golden king, on the walls of the hut of the old man with the lamp; the will-o'-the-wisps lick it down, making themselves thicker. Once we are pointed to the human soul quality that gold has something to do with when we are pointed out that the golden king represents the giver, the bringer of wisdom. Goethe himself tells us: the golden king, in comparison to the others, represents the giver of wisdom. So gold must have something to do with wisdom. Gold is what makes the king wise, what enables him to endow the youth with wisdom:

Recognize the Most High!

Gold is something that the giver of wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the wisp must therefore represent the powers of the soul that are capable of receiving wisdom and that can also shake wisdom off. It must be shown how the gold can be stored; it is stored for a long, long time in the walls of the hut. We will have no choice but to see soul forces in individual persons, because we know how well it is founded. We can describe the will-o'-the-wisps as the abstract mind, the abstract thinking, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom. Now we also understand why knowledge in the pure power of reason plays such a role in will-o'-the-wisps. Those who absorb what science is with their bare minds absorb it in order to have something personal about it, in order to be able to use it personally.

Goethe often congratulates himself on not officially representing science as a teacher. He congratulated himself on being able to give of his wisdom to the world only when he was inwardly compelled to do so, rather than being forced to cast it aside, as is necessary when one is destined to be a teacher or mere abstract dispenser of wisdom. Goethe presents such people in the will-o'-the-wisps, who have abstract knowledge. The abstract intelligence can absorb a vast amount of knowledge, but it leads to vanity. It is also spoken in Goethe's sense: However cleverly we think, however many abstract concepts we have, as long as we have ideas that are not drawn from the depths of life, they are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into the secrets of the eternal riddle of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to the heart of the eternal ideas of existence, we need something other than abstract concepts. When we come to the boundary of the physical world and the realm of spirituality, we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, all these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making us understand, so to speak, what is closest to us. How far removed the abstraction is from even the most mundane things that surround us. It is incapable of giving anything to the stream through which we must pass if we want to enter the supersensible world. And if we want to approach the very source of life, it rears up when we come up with mere intelligence. The will-o'-the-wisps are from the vertical line, while the snake is from the horizontal line. This indicates that man, with abstract ideas, removes himself from the ground, from the ground of everyday life. We see how vividly the will-o'-the-wisps are formed. But are ideas and concepts, philosophical expositions, under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, it is not that; for if man has the ability to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things, that he does not rise up into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but moves quietly in things, such a spirit becomes, as Faust is one when he says:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
The power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost
You only allow coldly amazed visitors,
Allow me to look into their deep chests,
As into the bosom of a friend,
You lead the line of the living
Before me and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into communion with nature, the same concepts that alienate him from the world when he deals with abstractions serve him to penetrate ever deeper into existence. We must not simply turn around and say: because the abstractionist distances himself from reality, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. If there is a soul-power in them, which lives in and with things, then they become full of light at the same time. This is why gold becomes such a blessing for the snake, which lives in crevices and has a horizontal direction, and does not become alienated. When man loves things, when he mystically immerses himself in things, then ideas are the light that can help him through. Therefore, it can be experienced that sometimes scholastically presented philosophy seems frosty and sober. But when we encounter the same ideas in lonely nature lovers, in herb and root gatherers, and so on, we see how, in fact, in the serpents, in those who make contact with things, the ideas become full of light, which are sober in the abstractions. The snake thus points to the power of the soul, which has the mystical urge to submerge itself mystically in things everywhere. This is represented when the snake moves through the crevices. Man, who does not move in abstract things, comes close, like the snake, to the underground temple. If a person has a sense for the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, he comes to the heart of nature; he can experience something of what lives outside in nature in things, even if he does not have the ideas. The snake shows us the people who can live without ideas in an emergency, but who, by lovingly immersing themselves in things, come to grasp the riddles of the world. But when a balance is created, in that ideas and concepts are immersed in these mystical soul forces, then it comes about that the person who is lovingly inclined towards things can also illuminate with his own light what was previously only sensed from the sources of existence. Goethe says meaningfully:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If not the divine power of God lives in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

He immediately points out how we must respond to the light of nature's secrets if these secrets of nature are to shine back again. Man must have the inner sense, the open heart, he must have cultivated the recognition of the spiritual. Only then can he also see the spiritual in his environment. Then the snake enters the underground temple. Such underground places exist for the life of the soul. These things can only be characterized if they go into the strange workings of the human soul in development in a little more detail. Can it be felt that before the soul is able to perceive the spirit in the outer world, it has the inner certainty: Yes, there is a primary source from which everything flows? It can have this certainty and still not be able to see the spirit everywhere. Oh, it is a great goal to see the spirit everywhere. [Feeling: I myself have emerged from the spiritual. To do this, man must awaken.] Man must first develop the highest soul powers within himself. He must first evoke in himself the supersensible that sleeps in ordinary, normal consciousness. First he must ascend to higher levels of development.

First, the human being must have an inkling that something like this exists. Then he comes to another realization: I can only achieve my ultimate goal if I see how my whole existence is permeated by the spirit. I have been crystallized, born out of the spiritual, out of the supersensible, without my being involved in this birth out of the supersensible, which I can ultimately achieve through knowledge. In a mysterious way I am born out of the land that I can only reach again in the end. This characterizes the land of the beautiful lily, from which man also comes. The ferryman brings him over. Man is brought over by secret powers. The ferryman who brings to this shore must never bring anyone back again. The same real way by which we are brought over from the supersensible through birth cannot be the way by which we consciously return. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask the snake how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul force can ascend to the highest. Two means are indicated: firstly, when the snake crosses the river at noon. But the will-o'-the-wisps do not like to travel there. It is quite beyond the scope of the Abstract Being, who wants to live entirely in ideas and inferences, to cross over in the way represented by the snake, through devotion to things, through mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be achieved. A great mystic of the Alexandrian school confesses that he has only achieved a few moments in which the spirit of the infinite has entered the soul, where the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at midday when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced. For the Abstractlings, who say to themselves: Once you have the right thinking, it must lead to the highest, such midday hours of life, which one must await as a grace of life, are not hours in which they can travel; for them, what they are looking for must be achievable at any time. Then the snake points out to them that the shadow of the giant, who is powerless by himself, will fall across the river, and that is when they can cross over. If we want to understand the giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of the powers of the soul that lie below the threshold of consciousness, which in the normal person only emerge in dreams, but which belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers. These are powers that are not acquired through the development of the soul, but that occur particularly in primitive souls in intuitions, second sight, in all that is connected with less advanced souls, from which a primitive clairvoyance emerges.

Through such clairvoyant powers, man arrives at some notions of supersensible worlds. Many people today still prefer to come to the supersensible world through such intuitions or through spiritualistic shadow images than through the actual development of the soul. Everything that belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by clear understanding, by the light of insight, of self-control, everything that expresses itself like dream-like knowledge, is represented by the giant. In truth, one can recognize nothing through this consciousness, for it is very weak compared to real knowledge. It is something that one cannot control. It is best personified by a person who cannot carry weight, because through this realization nothing can be recognized that has weight for a worldview. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in life. Only one word needs to be said to characterize this shadow: superstition. If countless people did not have superstition, the shadowy image of the subconscious that operates in the twilight of knowledge, they would have no idea of the supersensible world. For countless people today, superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious that leads into the supersensible. I need only emphasize how people can say that Theosophy, spiritual science, is something that only those people can grasp who put a lot of effort into raising the soul to a higher level. That is an uncomfortable thing. If the spirits want to be there for us, they should descend to us. This is where all the abundant superstitions in the field of modern superstition come from, which even today scholars pay homage to, who absolutely do not want to admit that the soul can become part of the spiritual through development. They are readily available to a medium who can give them some gift from the spiritual world. This is not to say that these things cannot be based on truth, but the distinction between error and truth is extremely difficult here and only possible for the initiated.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this realm in the human soul, but not like a polemicist, which Goethe never was. Goethe is clear that every power of the soul has its significance at its level; he even finds it useful here to have the snake give advice to the will-o'-the-wisp. But superstition plays a major role in drawing attention to and directing the human mind to the supersensible world. Goethe, who wanted to depict the entire spectrum of the soul's powers in their symphonic harmony, shows how this superstition has its good basis in the soul, in the powers that do not always come up with sober, clear concepts, but say to themselves, the things are rich, we just want to sense secrets for now, not frame them in sharp contours. This intuitive sense is something tremendously important that is to play a role in the overall consciousness and life of our soul development.

What was so clearly expressed in external nature for Goethe plays into the development at a higher level.

Goethe saw a certain law in all natural activity like a leitmotif. It is a law of balance that nature has a certain measure for all things and can give rise to all possible beings from unity. Goethe sought the law in all of nature in order to see in harmony everything that is embodied one-sidedly in the external world. When Goethe uttered this sentence, he was seen as just a poet, an amateur. The sentence only caused a stir when Cuvier, in his dispute with Geoffroy St. Hilaire, also drew attention to this law. Goethe, who lived in an understanding of nature that saw one-sidedness everywhere and wanted to grasp the whole by harmonizing the one-sided, also saw something in the soul that he wanted to combine by harmonizing. There are people who represent one-sided soul forces. The false prophets, who want to apply their wisdom everywhere, are the will-o'-the-wisps; then there are serpents and so on. He wanted to show that man can reach higher levels by representing the type of human being within himself. Thus, the sense that senses the supersensible in the sensible must be connected with abstract intelligence. One must not let the sober intelligence be subjugated by the sense, but nor should one emphasize the abstract concepts one-sidedly and refuse to understand how full of content is that which lives and moves in things. Goethe wanted to show how man can become one-sided, but how he must strive for the beautiful lily, for the inner, balancing human soul.

After the snake has received the inner glow, it enters the temple. The powers that must inspire the human soul give the strengths that man must have within him if he wants to ascend to higher existence. Goethe shows that there are certain powers of the soul that the soul must have if it is to ascend to higher levels. But if a person wants to attain the higher levels without having found the right path at the right time through inspiration, through the world powers, then this world view is something that can kill him, confuse him in his soul, paralyze him. Therefore, the youth who is not mature will be paralyzed at first, or even killed by complete exposure. So, what wants to free the mind without giving us control over ourselves, that has a killing effect, says Goethe. All our striving must be directed towards making us mature, towards shaping us so that the soul receives the highest in the right mood, in the right state. So the youth is killed at first. He is to be prepared by the endowment of soul powers by the kings. We have already seen from the golden king that he is the spiritual power that can be kindled in the soul and that gives wisdom in the right way when it harmonizes with the other soul powers. The silver king represents piety. For Goethe, beauty and the cult of art are closely related to piety. Beauty is that which makes us inwardly pious. The power of the soul that draws us through our feelings to the spiritual world is represented by the second king. The power of the soul of will [to do good] is represented by the brazen king.

But these soul powers must enter into the soul in such a way that we can distinguish them, that they enter into us in the right way, that we can master them, separate them; the life of feeling from the life of wisdom, and likewise the life of will from the life of feeling and the life of wisdom. These powers, which thus appear separately, condition the higher life of wisdom. The lower life is represented by the mixed king. Every human being has these three soul powers within them, but mixed. A higher age in the development of humanity will only begin when this chaotic mixing of soul forces ceases, when they are no longer mixed in such a chaotic way as in the fourth king, but are clearly separated from each other, with the area of soul power permeated with wisdom, and that permeated with beauty, and that permeated with the will to do good. Then the time comes when man may say to himself: “It is time.” Something else must precede this. A soul that has been led unprepared through wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything special.

Another soul force must guide us, which is represented by the man with the lamp. The lamp can only shine where there is already light. It is the light of faith that radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is what is brought as faith to things. It is a light that can only shine where there is already another light: religion can only generate faith where it is adapted to what people feel in a particular climate, in a particular cultural epoch, and so on. There the serpent, which wants to penetrate to wisdom, beauty and strength through the mere inner soul power, must encounter the light of faith that prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows that the right time must approach, that first the soul must be guided by the light of faith, and that we can then come up to a direct grasp of the soul forces in being separate and in direct interaction. On this side of the river, then, man must prepare himself. On the other side it is shown how man, if he connects with the soul forces unprepared, damages his soul.

A strange figure is the old man's wife with the lamp, who is described as human, all too human, vain and so on, who is chosen to pay the ferryman with the fruits of the earth. This is primitive human nature, which has the power to be connected to the light of faith. We are shown: that the light shining from the lamp of the old man transforms stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. The pug is transformed into a precious stone. This shows the power of faith, this very wonderful power of faith, oh, how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really show us their divine in a certain way, show us what is in them. Dead stones turn to gold, showing themselves to be endowed with wisdom. Faith already senses this in things, how all things are not what they appear to us through the senses. This is shown by the transformation through the lamp. Man, when he remains in his healthy nature, when he cannot attain to science, has something within him that leads much more to the boundary of the supersensible. The scientist becomes a doubter, a skeptic, and one tries to see how certain some original nature, represented by the old woman, is able to give facts to the flow as the will-o'-the-wisps cannot. Such natures have an original feeling that connects them to the supersensible, which weaves and lives in everything; and one can see in such people how a compassionate smile appears when scientists talk, saying, we know something that you cannot know, that brings us together with what we are created from. This is shown by the fact that the woman can pay.

The temple must be transported from below the earth up into the upper realm, it must rise above the river. And it is conceivable that a soul has gone up the steps in such a way that it can experience, feel the midday moments of life; so that it is achieved through a higher soul development, that not only special spirits can cross the river. That is what is achieved in the new culture through spiritual science. And Goethe behaves like a prophet in the new culture by pointing out that not only special minds can find the transcendental realm, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo; so that everyone can walk over and across when what is the actual secret has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The obvious one,” replied the old man.

The expression “the revealed secret” often occurs in Goethe because, like all true mystics, he believed that the connection between the material and the spiritual is evident everywhere; therefore, it is not so important for man to seek the spiritual in all sorts of detours, but to really connect with things as the snake connects with them. The revealed secret of all three is that which can be found everywhere, and which requires only a certain maturity of soul. The three secrets are simply these: wisdom, piety and virtue. A fourth is still needed for this, the snake whispers into the old man's ear; the old man cannot know that. But he can know that it is now time. What does the snake say now? That she is willing to sacrifice herself to be a bridge over the river. There you have the whole secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces. You can find this sacrifice further in Goethe's words:

And so long as you do not have this,
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

First, a person must go through all that has led him through life. But what he has gained, what he has experienced through the lower soul life, he must be able to sacrifice in order to ascend.

Jakob Böhme, whom Goethe knew very well, expressed this secret beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world before he has died for the lower self would not yet be able in this embodiment to see correctly the spiritual after death.

He who does not die before he dies, will perish if he dies.

The soul protects itself from ruin in the lower self, says Goethe, when it becomes like the snake that sacrifices itself, that is, there is a soul force in us that can connect with the forces of nature and that must be sacrificed: that which, as lower selfishness, is necessary to achieve human freedom. Therefore, that which has led us becomes the way into the beyond. We enter the supersensible world through that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are now able to unlock the door of the temple. Science has the key to the realm of the supersensible, but it cannot lead into the real secrets, because it only leads to the gate of the temple, just as Mephisto has only the key to the realm of the mothers, but cannot penetrate it himself. So we see how the will-o'-the-wisps actually fulfill their role to the end and how Goethe captures the meaning of soul development in each individual case.

What remains of religious belief? The tradition in our cultural processes. Go to the libraries, look up how much of the gold is stored there, and see how the abstractions lick the gold down and make new ones out of the old books, as a librarian once said. Goethe shows that the will-o'-the-wisps can feed on that. How many scholars walk around full of what comes straight from these sources. The pug dog dies from it, it makes him feel worse. But he can be revived by the lily, as he has passed through death. Whoever wants to endure contact with the lily must first have passed through the lower death. The youth is only ready to unite with the beautiful lily when he has suffered the last misfortune, is completely dead, has fully felt the effect of what happens when one unites with the supersensible while still immature. The snake sacrifices itself, which has an immediate effect on the details of natural existence. When all this has happened, the youth can then be led into the temple. Then the soul is led upwards to the realization that everything is permeated and animated by the spirit. Then the temple is led upwards, the soul endowed with that which leads to the supersensible. Wisdom gives him that which is characterized by:

Recognize the Highest

and by the oak wreath; the golden king gives that. The silver king says:

Feed the sheep,

in memory of the pious shepherd,

Feed my lambs;

is an expression of piety. The iron king gives him a sword and a shield and says:

The sword on the left, the right free!

Stand strong and firm on your feet when it comes to defending human dignity and human dignity, but do not be aggressive. Now the young man is allowed to connect with the lily. The powers of the soul may be illuminated with truth and love, which the soul only finds when it connects with the spirit. The young man feels the love, of which it is said last: wisdom, beauty, piety and virtue, they promote the development of the soul, love forms the soul, harmonizes everything. When man ascends into the temple in which knowledge can be experienced, he comes, in holy awe, to see, like a small temple in the great temple, the highest, the secret of man himself, who passes from the spiritual world into the world of this world. The ferryman's hut is placed as a small world in the great temple; when the soul advances to higher knowledge, then it attains what Goethe felt as Spinozian love of God, it comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world. But as the highest of the mysteries, as that which he in turn sees like a small temple in the great one, that is the mystery of the existence of man himself in connection with the divine being.

The giant comes last and becomes something like an hour hand that indicates the time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, shedding all that is external consciousness as we ascend; all forces that work mechanically, that are a remnant of the subconscious. All this may remain only in one, when we look up at what is the most external for our inner being. Thus, the merely mechanical, which has not yet been elevated to higher knowledge, has a right to exist. Goethe could have had in mind all the superstitions that have been practiced with the art of numbers and all the prevailing beliefs from old worldviews. But one thing remains behind, to form a kind of chronometer for what knowledge gives it. Thus everything is transformed into a plastic image, right down to the last detail, which Goethe felt was the law of human education.

Today I was only able to explain the main features, but if you read the “fairy tale” with this in mind, you will find that every page, indeed every half-sentence, can be proof of its correctness. One can only hint at this symbolically, in richly symbolic images. We must be aware that what is contained in Goethe's “Fairytale” is infinitely richer than what could be said, and that everything said today is only a suggestion of how to search and feel about a symbolic fairy tale. It is not possible to give more than a hint. But perhaps you have gained a sense of the great and immeasurable productive power with which Goethe created, how right he was when he said that only beauty and art can be an expression of truth. This is also what lived as a conviction in Goethe and led him from stage to stage in restless pursuit. But this is also what led us so to Goethe. Goethe is one of those minds that work in a way that only the greatest minds can. You read a work by Goethe and think you have understood it. Each time you read it again later, you believe that you have finally understood it correctly. Finally, you say to yourself: I still don't understand it, I have to wait until I become more and more mature. This is only the case with the most exquisite minds. This assures us that in Goethe we have one who belongs to the leaders of mankind. Thus, in summarizing what is to be characterized here, one may say of Goethe's spirit:

They shine like stars
in the heaven of eternal being
The spirits sent by God.
May all human souls succeed
in the realm of earthly becoming
To see their flames of light.

Malsch, April 6, 1909

Today we are gathered for the dedication ceremony of our anthroposophical branch in Maisch. Although this “Section” of our Society has been fully at work for a while, we are able only today to officially celebrate its opening.

Many of our anthroposophical friends have come to this celebration from the most diverse regions to which our anthroposophical endeavors have spread. By coming here, they have demonstrated that they wish to unite their anthroposophical feelings and thoughts with those of serious and hardworking people in this group. One might say this group of people in Maisch has been thrown into these remote mountains, but surrounded by all the beautiful, great, and noble forces of nature, they will successfully unfold anthroposophical life. Those of you who were able to look around in the vicinity of this hospitable house in Malsch will have noticed that much has been done for its external appearance, as if the people responsible wished to say externally that the spiritual life by which all of us are inspired shall find special expression in this beautiful spot.

Let us look back at the modest beginnings of our anthroposophical life at the founding of our German Section, into which the Section in Malsch is now being incorporated. At that time we began with but a small group of people of spiritual scientific enthusiasts. Then, as we look at events such as this one today and observe the large number of souls who unite with us in spiritual scientific feelings and sentiments, we can be satisfied with the last few years of our endeavors.

The Stockmeyer family has spared no efforts to help with the unfolding of spiritual life on this beautiful piece of land although the spirits of nature have clearly aided their efforts. Also, this family must find great satisfaction in seeing how many genuine and true friends have hurried to this hospitable place, and I am sure all anthroposophical friends may be justly called genuine and true friends. This is so because anthroposophy must above all be truth in our hearts, and truth is sincerity. Anthroposophy, therefore, must be sincere; and anthroposophical friendship is expressed by your participation in such a dedication festival. Everything must be imbued with sincerity because honesty in friendship unites us with those who have worked so industriously so that here, too, there would arise a working sphere of anthroposophic activity. The hearts of those who have come here will be filled with gratitude for the efforts of the Stockmeyer family, who can be assured of our truly sincere anthroposophical appreciation.

On the other hand, the very success of such a dedication festival with so many souls present shows that Spiritual Science in our time is a powerful magnet for human striving, and on this occasion it may also be fitting to say that we can certainly look beyond the rooms that, surrounded by the spirits of beautiful nature, enclose us today and look at the rest of the world. It is possible to say that life and the endeavors of Spiritual Science today appear as phenomena whose existence results from an inner necessity. Really, it is as if many a page in the book about the life of old cultures, which sustained European and Western humanity for millennia and gave security and strength for life to it, were now beginning to wither and appear cold and lifeless to human hearts. That is why we see today a longing for spiritual scientific truths in so many areas of life. I, for one, having been permitted to speak to you here, sense something like a future force at work because of what has been taking place around me in the last few days.

We are here surrounded by green trees, the budding life of nature, and also by the magnificent sunlight that shines on us benevolently at this dedication since it animates everything and is imbued with spirit. This, then, is a perfect place to relate to you the words of our great harbingers of the new wisdom, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings.

A few days have passed since I was permitted to speak in the same spirit in a lecture cycle in Rome, and this event symbolized to me what a magnet spiritual striving is. I was to speak to those who harbor a spiritual scientific longing in their hearts, but their longing is still fairly undefined at times. Yet the place where I was to speak looked differently, and it was on ground that actually had been entered only by cardinals in pursuit of spiritual endeavors or by others who work out of the convictions of the most positive and orthodox Catholicism. And so the air of the rooms where normally nothing but the official message from the orthodox center of Rome was proclaimed resounded with the free pronouncements of the spiritual scientific world view.

This shows us that although the free contemporary spirits of these Northern lands feel more attracted to anthroposophy, they can nevertheless look with a certain satisfaction to the souls who long to escape from an old, iron-clad orthodox tradition. It is certainly a good indication of the spirit of the times that it was possible to speak as freely and frankly about anthroposophic truths on territory heretofore reserved for cardinals, and as freely as this would be possible in the North. For what has been said before holds true everywhere: anthroposophy is sincerity; and where souls are in need of it and a call is issued, anthroposophy will follow it. But at no time will anthroposophy deviate in the least from the overall precepts that inspire its pronouncements, just because the consideration for the territory on which these pronouncements are made may make this expedient.

Wherever anthroposophical truth is proclaimed and where the spiritual element that pulsates through us is cultivated, there our message must be delivered in the light of sincerity, even when it is still surrounded by the thoughts of those who hate anthroposophy. However, in the midst of those who hate anthroposophy there are souls who, more or less consciously, long for the light of anthroposophy. And especially a strong contrast such as the one I have experienced during the past fourteen days can show us what a strong magnet anthroposophical life is.

The observation of our immediate present teaches us that this anthroposophical force is now strong enough to justify our joyful and satisfying hope that the small seedling planted today will in the future grow into a mighty tree. As theosophists, we are today in the same position humanity was in during the ancient Atlantean time. And just as life has become different since that time, so it will change again in the future, up to a time following a catastrophe. The wide perspective will now be made to appear before our souls.

Let us call to memory a similar movement in the last third of the Atlantean epoch that started small just like ours. The Atlantean soul life, which in many ways was still clairvoyant, had reached a high point during that time, but it did not yet have the consciousness of self, the strong feeling of the “I.” Instead, Atlanteans had a certain ability of clairvoyance and also certain magical powers, and this enabled them to look into the spiritual world. Those who had progressed to be leaders of this civilization were the ones best able to gaze into the spiritual world in the old ways and to bring forth the most knowledge from the astral realms. This clairvoyance disappeared little by little; in fact, mankind had to lose it completely in order to conquer for itself the consciousness of self in the physical world. But it is certain that clairvoyant knowledge in the last third of the Atlantean era had reached a special climax.

You will remember the technological achievement of the Atlanteans. They flew over the earth in small space vehicles—close to the earth because the atmosphere was saturated with thick fog formations. They propelled their small vehicles through this sea of air and water with energy derived from sprouting plants. The leading creators of this technology can be compared to today's industrial wizards who construct ingenious machines from lifeless forces. And those Atlanteans who could relate the most from the spiritual world can be compared to today's leading scholars and natural scientists.

However, within this Atlantean humanity a segment of people began to evolve who had only minor clairvoyant faculties, but possessed the ability to regard the external world with affection. The first rudimentary beginnings of arithmetic and counting could be observed in these people, but their participation in the great advances of the Atlantean industry—the construction of ever mightier vehicles for this sea of water and air—was very limited. And thus a small, insignificant group of people had developed in this last third of the Atlantean period who, in a certain sense, were despised for their comparative lack of clairvoyant power and their inability to participate in this great industry. However, this group of people prepared the way for seeing and knowing that is prevalent today, the way of seeing and knowing of which the external world today is so proud since it developed it in such a one-sided way.

Those leaders of the Atlantean civilization who had mastered everything that could be known from the vantage point of the Atlantean consciousness, including technology, conceived of a technical idea toward the end of the Atlantean era that has become fully productive in modern times. We can compare it to another measure of progress in our time that will carry over into the next catastrophe. During their golden age, the Atlanteans had vehicles that moved through air that was heavily mixed with water. Later, however, when their culture was already in a state of decline, it also became necessary to navigate the water, and this led the last cultural races of the Atlantean era first to embracing and then to realizing the idea of navigation and the conquest of the seas. This momentous idea in the Atlantean era not only of traversing the air but also of navigating the ocean water was quite a sensational idea that was put into reality by the last Atlantean races. After long experiments to navigate the waters, success came during the time when Atlantean culture was already in its decline.

Those responsible for this tremendous progress were not the ones who could be recruited for the task of transmitting the legacy of the actual spiritual life from the Atlantean era to our time. Rather, this task was reserved for the plain and simple people because they had been the first ones to be endowed with the ability to relate to the physical world. They were the ones whose clairvoyant faculties, though deteriorated the most among the several groups of people, were still adequate for those who were messengers from the spiritual world. These people, despised by the great scholars and inventors, were gathered by an eminent initiate whom we call The Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. This small group was comprised of people who had least preserved their technical abilities and who were disdained by the leaders and by the great scholars and inventors. Yet it was precisely they whom the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle led from the West to the East, through Europe and into Asia. And it is also this small group of people that made the foundation of the post-Atlantean cultures possible.

The best of what was subsequently developed by the various cultures, the mighty tree of post-Atlantean knowledge and wisdom, emanated from the descendants of the despised simple people from the Atlantean era. Above all, something else emanated from the midst of the descendants of this group of modest people. Let us place the external events side by side with the internal events of our evolution. Let us look at the great sensation of the Atlantean era when the secondary racial group, whose descendants were the Phoenicians, invented navigation. What was accomplished by this invention?

We need only to remember the great events from the beginning of modern times, such as the great voyages of discovery by Columbus and other seafarers, which would have been impossible without navigation and the invention of ships, and we shall see how this sensational invention led to the gradual conquest of the physical plane on earth. PostAtlantean peoples were confined to a small radius of activities, but through the invention of ships the circle defining the earth became rounded out so that we now have a completed configuration of the physical plane. And thus, the sensational invention of the Atlantean world reaches into our time and promotes further progress on the physical plane.

However, the greatest conquest in the Atlantean era emanated from the descendants of that group of plain people gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. And when those descendants, through their own development, had prepared the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, GraecoLatin, and our cultures, the earth became capable of yielding the material into which the Christ could be born. Therefore, the greatest spiritual event and deed of the post-Atlantean era had its beginning in the people who belonged to the most despised human beings in the eyes of the leaders of the Atlantean civilization, and this event gave rise to the immense spiritual progress that supports and maintains all spiritual life in our time—weaves through it and makes it productive.

The events in Atlantis are paralleled by those of our time. Seeing that the germinal beginnings of man's ability to do arithmetic and to count were present in Atlantis, we can recognize how these capabilities are today furthered in a marvelous conquest of the physical plane and how they brought about all kinds of technical progress. We also see how the great inventors and discoverers today have reached the culmination, in a sense, in applying those forces that first began to germinate with the small group of despised people in the Atlantean time. And what was then clairvoyant knowledge is today knowledge of nature and of the physical world. There is also a similarity between the spiritual leaders of the Atlantean civilization and today's natural scientists and scholars. On the other hand, a class of plain people exists everywhere—irrespective of positions its members might hold in the world, whose hearts are filled with the mighty magnet that attracts us to spiritual life, just as people in Atlantis were attracted to a life in which the external faculties for the physical plane could be developed.

Despite these similarities, there is also a certain difference between the modern and the ancient situation. In the old days referred to, the last remnants of clairvoyance were still present in people so that they were able to behold the Great Initiate. In a certain way, things today are more difficult for human beings when a call from the spiritual world issues to an equally small group of people, something we designate as the call of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. But since people today are placed on the physical plane, these Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings are at first unknown to this small nucleus of human beings that has crystallized itself out of the mass of people. As we can deduce from the facts of the present time, this small group feels in its hearts that there is such a thing as a new spiritual message that is meant to have an effect on the future just as the message in former ages has had an effect on the present. These human beings who today come from all walks of life and whom we can find everywhere are the true theosophists because they carry in their hearts a longing for a spiritual life that is meant to lay the foundation for future cultures. The true theosophists in our time are emerging—just as we now encounter a sensational discovery similar to the one in the Atlantean era.

In ancient times water was conquered through the highest technological progress; the same is true today in the case of air. This conquest will, of course, extend into a later epoch. But just as ships in our times have brought about mastery of the physical plane only, so the air ship that will lead human beings into the atmosphere and beyond will empower the pilots to find only matter—material things. Granted, new realms of the physical plane will be conquered, and this will be beneficial for the external world. However, the inner spiritual life is borne in the hearts of those who feel spiritually fulfilled by the promise of being able in the future to look into the spiritual world while being conscious of self.

Look into life and you will find out there our leaders of civilization, the pillars of external culture, active as inventors and discoverers, as scholars and natural scientists. They look with scorn and contempt on a small group such as the one assembled here today that constitutes itself as a new bearer of culture and that unites its members with others in spiritual scientific associations. The events of the ancient Atlantean era repeat themselves.

However, when the spiritual life touches your hearts with such force that you can compare yourselves with dignity to those who were gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle, then you will be the bearers of spiritual life in later ages. In addition to offering humanity the external, material, and corporeal realities, such a life would also make possible a renewed immersion in the spiritual world. Although the Great Initiate gathered human beings around Himself in ancient times, today the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings fulfill a similar function and issue their call to you. If you feel your mission from a sense of history, then your hearts will become strong enough to withstand all the ridicule and disdain that the so-called pillars of civilization heap on Spiritual Science from the outside. And if you understand your mission in this spirit, then your thoughts will be strong and any doubt that may reverberate into your souls from the outside will be unable to shake you in your conviction. Your thoughts will be spiritually refined by the very force that can issue from such a knowledge of our mission. Even if we have to review thousands of years and establish far-reaching ideals, it is worth the effort because where such ideals are established, life is transmuted, and where they are absent, life is dead. Ideals transform themselves into the force of a moment even if they have been taken from vast periods of time and may seem to make the person subscribing to them appear somewhat petty and despondent. You will be strong for the most insignificant task if you are capable of extracting your ideal from the loftiest heights. This will make you stand fast when those who govern the world with their erudition talk with disdain and contempt about the little spiritual scientific associations where those people sit who “do not want to go along with contemporary culture.” Oh yes, they do want to go along, and they also know to appreciate the accomplishments of the external, physical world, but they also know that just as a body cannot be without a soul, no external culture can exist without spiritual life.

Just as the despised human beings characterized above gathered around the Great Initiate and after generations made the existence of Christ on earth possible, so the anthroposophical movement must facilitate a comprehensive understanding of Christ. Christ descended to earth in the fourth major era, and those who wish to understand Him completely will be able to do so from the anthroposophical vantage point.

Why do people who have heretofore been nourished by the positive, orthodox religions, come to Spiritual Science as if responding to an undefined longing in their consciousness? Why do they listen to the anthroposphical message when before they listened only to the Vatican? Why? Is it still permissible today to say anthroposophy exists only for those who regard the greatest spiritual fact of our age—the Christ Impulse—with indifference? What do the people coming to us need from us? They want us to tell them who Christ was and what He accomplished! They are coming to us because those who consider themselves to be the privileged bearers of the Christ-name today cannot tell them who Christ was, whereas anthroposophy can. Today's cultural leaders use the denial of Christ to oppose the external tradition emanating from various religions, but they cannot effectively challenge the moribund positive religious movements. Those who do not know what the Great Christ is, those who deny His spirituality will be no match even for the old religious movements. But only the spiritual movements that place themselves in the midst of those who claim an exclusive right to the Christ-name, the movements who know how to express the true essence of the Christ even to those who wish to hear the opposite, only those spiritual movements will attract human beings to their cause who carry the future in their hearts. The ancient religious trends will prove to be stronger than all religious nihilism.

We do not conceive of anthroposophical life in a petty, dogmatic sense, nor do we want to comprehend it with the help of individual tenets or maxims, but rather by recognizing and understanding the mission and the task of our time. We want to embrace anthroposophical life in such a way that the true spirit of our time speaks to us and that the most significant event of our post-Atlantean era can be expressed through the words of anthroposophy. If these words are not just recited but rather put into practice as an expression of the spirit of our time, they will become a dynamic force of life in our souls, and this will make people understand what anthroposophical life is.

When we truly feel this, we will increasingly grow stronger, and the newly gained strength will help us to embrace our ideal firmly. Then we will know how this ideal can be justified, regardless of whether this happens in an environment where an old culture yearns for a new content, or in this environment here, where nature and the magnificent, spirit-endowed sunrays glittering around us encircle what the daily efforts of anthroposophy achieve. We will again learn to recognize the spirit within these sunrays and know that when the sun has set, the spirit indwelling in it will look into our hearts. We will also learn what it means to behold the sun and its spirit at midnight, and in understanding what this spirit is, we will see how it has descended and how it is now united with the highest impulses of our age. It is necessary that humanity understand the Christ-Impulse and that we can say who the Christ was. Such an understanding is now only in the beginning stages, but in direct proportion to its increasing spiritual insights, mankind will gradually understand how the Christ-Impulse has penetrated this worldly edifice.

To feel this way at the dedication of a branch of our movement is especially appropriate when, as is the case here, the members were united in wanting to express a heartfelt desire and name this branch after Francis of Assisi, whose life is enveloped by a deep spiritual mystery.

When Christ descended to the earth, He enveloped Himself with the threefold physical, etheric, and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth and lived three years in this sheath as Christ, the Sun-Spirit. With the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ descended to the earth; but aside from what is known to all of you, something else special happened by virtue of the fact that Christ indwelled the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, particularly the astral and etheric bodies. After Christ cast off the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, they were still present as spiritual substance in the spiritual world, but multiplied in a great many copies. They did not perish in the world ether or in the astral world, but continued to live as identical images. Just as the seed of a plant, once buried in the ground, reappears in many copies according to the mystery of number, so the copies of Jesus of Nazareth's etheric and astral bodies were present in the spiritual world. And for what purpose were they present, considering the large framework of spiritual economy? They were there to be preserved and to serve the overall progress of the human race.

One of the first individuals to benefit from the blessed fact of these countless copies of Jesus's etheric body being present in the spiritual world was St. Augustine. When he again descended to earth after an earlier incarnation, not just any etheric body was woven into his own, but rather the copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. Augustine had his own astral body and ego, but his etheric body was interwoven with the image of the etheric body of Jesus. He had to work through the culture of his ego and astral body, but when he had made his way to the etheric body, he realized the great truths that we find in his mystical writings.

Many other human beings from the sixth to the ninth centuries had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus woven into their own etheric bodies. Many of these individuals conceived the Christian images that later were to be glorified in the arts in the form of the Madonna or the Christ on the cross. They were the creators of religious images who experienced in themselves what the people living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha had experienced.

In the period spanning the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries the time had come when a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into the astral bodies of certain reincarnated souls. From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries many human beings, for example Francis of Assisi and Elisabeth of Thüringen, had the imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into them while their own astral bodies—the source of their knowledge—were formed during reincarnation. This enabled these individuals to proclaim the great truths of Christianity in the form of judgments, logical constructs, and scientific wisdom. But, in addition, they were also able to experience the feeling of carrying the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth within themselves.

Your eyes will be opened if you allow yourselves to experience vicariously all the humility, the devotion, and the Christian love that was part of Francis of Assisi. You will then know how to look at him as a person prone to make mistakes—because he possessed his own ego—and as a great individual because he carried a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth within his own astral body. All the humble feelings, the profound mysticism, and the spiritual soul life of Francis of Assisi become comprehensible if we know this one secret of his life.

Having such knowledge, we can see with our inner eye that the future of this new branch augurs well as it climbs upward under the guiding light of this great individual, for those who, like Francis of Assisi, received the grace and the calling to guide Christian humanity in the West will at all times let their spiritual light radiate into the areas of spiritual activity. And especially if this Francis of Assisi Section works in a genuinely spiritual sense, the unison of thoughts and feelings of this branch will be the reflection of the harmonizing light of Francis of Assisi, which he received as a gift of grace, as we mentioned before, by an infusion of his own astral body with a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Something of this light will radiate into this very branch.

In letting such perspectives roll by our inner eye, we who are assembled today in this modest branch for the purpose of dedicating the new branch will leave the proper feelings behind us when we depart. Let us look up to the light of Francis of Assisi; let us take along with us what can be ignited in us in this moment, and let us remember this branch in the future. In doing so, our feelings and thoughts will hover invisibly over this Francis of Assisi Branch, so that the impulses struggling upward from below may prove to be worthy of the light that shines into our souls from the outside. In such a moment we become conscious of the fact that we are here to work for the true and real measures of progress in our post-Atlantean era. Surely, when the founders of this branch felt the need to name it after Francis of Assisi, their souls must have sensed something of the great progress.

What was the most decisive turning point of our entire evolution? It was the time when the Christ descended to earth. Let us look back six hundred years from that event and then compare the earth to what it was six hundred years after Christ, a period spanning some twelve hundred years. First, let us look at Buddha, who lived six hundred years before Christ. In him we see an individuality of such greatness that words of admiration should be superfluous. Specifically, let us look at the moment where he is led out into life, but not into the life he wanted to live. Consider how he first meets a helpless child and how from this experience he forms the perception that there is suffering in the journey that human beings begin with their birth. And upon seeing a sick person, he says to himself, “Not only is there suffering in this world, but human beings on this plane are also subjected to illness.” He sees an old person who no longer is able to move his limbs and says to himself, “Aging involves suffering.” And when he sees a corpse, the sight of it conjures up in him the perception that death is suffering. Another perception is that to be separated from a loved one creates suffering, as is the case when one is united with someone whom one doesn't love. Finally, not to obtain what one desires is suffering too.

This, then, is the teaching that spread as the teaching of Buddha, some six hundred years before Christ. Let us fix in our minds the moment where Buddha steps out into the world, sees a corpse, and stands face to face with death. It was six hundred years after the event of Golgotha when for the first time one particular image came into being: the image of the cross with the corpse of the Savior hanging on it. Thousands of people were there to look at it. Now when Buddha looked at a corpse, it was to him a personification of all suffering on earth. The believers of the Christian community six hundred years after Christ would look at the corpse and see it as the victory of all spiritual life over death, the claim to bliss. And here we see how a faithful community looked at a dead body six hundred years before Christ, and then six hundred years after the event of Golgotha.

What can the Christ-Event tell us about the other pronouncements of suffering? Is birth suffering, as Buddha expressed it? Looking at Christ on the cross, the part of humanity that really understands Him will say, “Through birth we step into this existence—an existence that was found worthy of harboring the Christ. We are born into a life in which we can unite with Christ.” Likewise, sickness is not suffering if one understands Christ. People will have to learn to understand through the Christ-Impulse what, from a spiritual point of view, creates health. Illnesses will be healed in a spiritual way through the innermost, Christianized life. By dying to the outer world, we become assured that the treasure acquired in connection with the Christ-Impulse is carried into every other life. Through Christ's victory, death appears to us as a bridge that leads to the spiritual world, and we learn to understand the meaning of death for this spiritual world through this Christ-Impulse.

Also, it is no longer possible to say that the separation from the object of one's love creates suffering because the power of Christ will unite us, as one soul to another, with everything we want to love. Moreoever, the power of Christ will tie those together who love each other. The suffering that could arise through the separation of those loving each other is overcome through Christ.

Let us learn to love all people, lest our interpretation of the world be that to be united with what one does not love means suffering. Rather, let us learn to love every creature in its own right, and when our spiritual wells start to flow, our desires will be purified in such a way that we can partake in everything our souls are destined to receive, once the hurdles of the physical world are eliminated. And those spiritual fountainheads can begin to flow through the Christ- Impulse. People who will be content to obtain through the Christ-Spirit what they want will have their desires purified.

The new spiritual life has placed itself next to the old spiritual life through the Christ-Impulse. That is how deep progress in spiritual life ran before and after the Christ-Impulse had surfaced. This is keenly felt by someone who turns to one of the most ardent and joyful admirers and messengers of the Christ-Impulse—Francis of Assisi; his name, therefore, may well be bestowed on an association in which spiritual life is to be cultivated. May this name be a good augury, and may the work in this branch proceed in the true spirit of our time, properly understood, because this is necessary for the programs we have envisioned in our souls.

Let us consecrate this branch of our movement in the spirit expressed by the preceding words and by calling down the benediction we used yesterday when we broke ground for the outer temple. Let us conjure up the same spirit one more time so that it may hold sway and weave in this Francis of Assisi Branch.

May the feelings of those who have come to this dedication ceremony unite with this spirit and also unite in a brotherly way with those who are at work here in serious, anthroposophical endeavors so that spiritual life may germinate in the midst of the trees, forests, and sprouting plants of this sunny piece of nature. It matters little whether the bright sunrays outside indicate what is beautiful or magnificent in nature, whether snow be piled up outside, or whether a thick cloud cover be out there to obscure the external, physical sunlight. In times when nature renews itself or when she wears her somber garb, may the spirit of a higher life always imbue those who will be engaged in spiritual activities, and let us now conjure up this spirit to aid all the human beings in this branch.

With this, let us dedicate, from the bottom of our hearts, the Francis of Assisi Branch and hope that it will continue its work in the spirit in which it began—through the spiritual force of the Masters of Truth and of the Harmony of Feelings that streams into every branch. May it also continue its work through the good spirit with which it has endowed itself by naming itself after the splendid bearer of Christ.

May this branch continue as it began. Good spirits will guide its course as it becomes one of the centers where the kind of life is cultivated of which our time is clearly in need and where the seeds for the requirements of a far-distant future are sown. Let us hope the people who will soon have to work in solitude here emerge strengthened from today's festivities, where so many sincere friends united their feelings with them! Then the spiritual life cultivated in this place will flow back to all people involved and coalesce with the great harmony of anthroposophical life. Thoughts that originate in this place will encounter our thoughts, just as our thoughts will flow here from distant places. This harmony is something like an external garment of spirituality, and spirituality must pass through human evolution like a spiritual breath of air if beneficial forces are to reign over humanity.

May this branch be dedicated in the fullest sense of the word; may it become a field of activity into which we can always place our hopes with the same love and inner satisfaction as is the case in today's dedication ceremony.