The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This is the 11th of 14 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Berlin, in late 1912 and early 1913. The title of this series of lectures is: Results of Spiritual Investigation. They were published in German as: Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung.

My Dear Friends,

The name of Leonardo is constantly being brought before the minds of innumerable people through the wide circulation of perhaps the best known of all pictures, the celebrated “Last Supper”. Who does not know Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper” and knowing it, does not admire the mighty idea expressed more particularly in this picture? There we see embodied pictorially a significant moment—one that by innumerable souls is considered the most significant of the world's events: the figure of the Christ in the center, and on either side of Him the twelve Disciples. We see these twelve Disciples with deeply expressive movements and bearing; we see the gestures and attitudes of each of the twelve figures so individualized, that we may well receive the impression that every form of the human soul and character binds expression in them. Every way in which a soul would relate itself according to its particular temperament and character, to what the picture expresses, is embodied in them. In his treatise on the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper”, Goethe expressed perhaps better than any writer the moment after Jesus Christ uttered the words, “One of you shall betray ME”. We see what is taking place in each of these twelve souls, so closely connected with the speaker and who look up to Him so devoutly, after the utterance of these words; we see all that wonderfully expressed by each of these souls in the numerous reproductions of this work which are disseminated through the world.

There have been representations of the “Last Supper” dating from earlier times. We can trace them without going still further back, from Giotto down to Leonardo da Vinci; and we find that Leonardo introduced into his “Last Supper”, what we might call the dramatic element, for it is a wonderfully dramatic moment that confronts us in his representation. The earlier representations appear to be peaceful, expressing, as it were, only the fact of being together. Leonardo's “Last Supper” seems the first to conjure up before us with full dramatic force an expression of very significant psychic conditions. If, however, the world-famed reproductions have given us an impression of the idea of the picture which enters into our hearts and souls, and we then go to Milan, to that old Dominican church, Santa Maria Delle Grazie, and there see on the wall what can only be described as blurred, indistinct, damp daubs of color—which are all that remains of the original picture, so famous the whole world over through the reproductions—we may perhaps then be led to investigate further. The impression that comes to us then, is that for some long time back, there has not been much visible on the walls of the old Dominican church of the picture, of which those who saw it after Leonardo painted it spoke in such enthusiastic, fervent and rapturous terms. What must once have spoken to the soul from these walls as a miracle of art, not only through the idea which had just been expressed with difficulty, but what must have spoken through Leonardo's marvel of color in such a way that in these colors was expressed the inmost depths of the soul—aye, the very heartbeat of the twelve Disciples—all that must have long ceased to be visible on the wall. What has this picture not had to suffer in the course of the ages!

Leonardo felt himself compelled to depart in technique from the method in which such frescoes had been painted by his predecessors; he found the sort of colors formerly used were not striking enough. He wanted to conjure on to this wall (as through magically) the finest emotions of the soul; and therefore he tried as had not been done before—he used oil colors. There then arose a multitude of obstacles. The position of the whole place was such that comparatively soon these colors must be affected. Damp came out of the very wall itself; the whole room which was used as a refectory by the Dominicans was often completely under water in the floors. Many other things intervened besides—the quartering of soldiers there in war time and so on. The picture had all this to undergo. At one time the monks of the monastery themselves did not behave with special piety towards this picture; they found that the door which led from the kitchen into the refectory of the monastery was too low, and one fine day they had the door heightened. This ruined a great part of the picture. Then at one time a coat of arms was placed right over the head of Christ. In short, the picture received the most barbarous treatment. Then there were “artistic charlatans”—as we must call them—who painted it over, so that scarcely anything of the original coloring is now to be seen. In spite of this, when one stands before the picture, an indescribable enchantment proceeds from it. All the barbarisms, the painting-over, and the soaking could not fundamentally destroy the charm which proceeds from the picture. Although it is today no more than a mere shadow stretching across the wall, yet a magic proceeds from this picture. That magic lies only partly in the painting; rather, it is the conception that works on the soul—it works powerfully.

Anyone who has acquainted himself with Leonardo's other works, and tried to study the reproductions of the works ascribed to Leonardo scattered through the different galleries of Europe, which have been preserved more or less as he painted them, anyone who has acquainted himself with Leonardo's activities and has made a study of what he has written in the course of time, and of his life as it flowed on from the year 1452 to 1519, will stand before this picture in the Dominican refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria Delle Grazie at Milan with very peculiar emotions. For in reality, as much of the magic creation which Leonardo once painted on this wall has been preserved to us, we feel that just so much does there still remain for the universal consciousness of man of the mighty greatness, of the power and content of the comprehensive personality of Leonardo himself. The extent of the influence of Leonardo's work on people today, stands practically in the same relation to what this comprehensive personality put into the evolution of the world as these faded and blurred colors do, to what Leonardo once conjured up on the wall. We stand sadly before this picture in Milan, and with the same sadness we confront the whole figure of Leonardo.

Goethe points out how, if we allow the lives written by earlier biographers to work upon us, we receive an impression that in Leonardo a personality appears to mankind, working everywhere with a fresh life force, contemplating life joyfully and working joyously on life, taking up everything with love, with a tremendous thirst for knowledge desiring to grasp everything fresh in soul, and fresh in body. Then perchance we turn to that portrait of his in Turin, supposed to be painted by himself, and look at this picture of Leonardo as an old man—this face with its expressive lines caused by suffering, with the embittered mouth, and the features which betray something of the opposition which Leonardo had to feel towards the world and towards all he had to experience. In a remarkable way this personality appears at the beginning of the new age. Then, if we once more turn back to the picture in Santa Maria Delle Grazie and endeavor to study this shadow on the wall of the refectory, trying to compare it with the oldest reproductions of this picture, and try, as it were, with “the eyes of the spirit” (to use Goethe's words) to call up the picture within us, the following feeling may perhaps arise: Did he who once painted this picture go forth satisfied when he put the last touch to it? Did he say to himself: “Thou hast here recorded what lived in thy soul”?

It appears to me, one may quite naturally arrive at this feeling. Why?

If we survey the whole of Leonardo's life, we must admit that the feeling just described is aroused. We begin by studying Leonardo from his birth. He was an illegitimate child, the son of a mediocre father—Ser Pietro of Vinci—and of a peasant woman who then entirely disappears from view, while the father marries respectably and puts his child out to nurse. We see the child growing up alone, having intercourse only with nature and his soul, and we see what an enormous amount of life force there must have been in this human being that enabled him to remain so fresh! For above all he did retain his youthful freshness. Then, as he already showed a talent for drawing, he entered the school of Verrochio. His father sent him there because he believed his talent for drawing could be made useful. Here Leonardo was employed to assist in painting the Master's pictures. An anecdote is related of this period—how Leonardo had once to paint in a figure which, when the Master saw, he resolved to paint no more, because he knew he was surpassed by his pupil. This seems to be more than a mere story, when one considers the whole being of Leonardo.

We then find him in Florence, his artistic talent always increasing: but we find something else besides. If we follow up his talent for painting we are impressed with the feeling that year after year he went about making the greatest artistic plans, constantly making new ones. He had also commissions from people who recognized his great gift and wanted to own something of his. First he would form an idea of what he wanted to create and then he began to study; but in what did this study consist? He entered in an extraordinarily characteristic way into every detail that came into consideration. For instance, if he had to paint a picture with three or four figures in it, he did not only study a single model but he went about the town observing hundreds and hundreds of people. He would often follow a person for a whole day if a feature interested him, and sometimes he would invite all sorts of people of different classes to come to him and would tell them all sorts of things to amuse or frighten them, so that he might study their features in the different soul experiences. Once, when a rioter was caught and hanged, Leonardo went to the place of execution, and the drawing is still preserved in which he tried to catch the facial expression, the whole bearing of the victim; in the lower corner is the drawing of another head so as to catch the whole expression. Caricatures have been preserved, incredible figures by Leonardo, from which we can see what he was trying to do. For instance, he would take a face and make the experiment of making the chin larger and larger. To study the significance of a single part of the human form, he would enlarge a single limb, to ascertain how in the natural size this limb was dovetailed into the whole human organism. Caricatured forms—in all sorts of contortions—we find in Leonardo. Drawings of his have been preserved (many the works of his pupils, but many by himself as well) in which he has drawn the same detail over and over again—drawings which he would then use.

If we consider this attentively, we get an impression that he worked in the following way: suppose he had an order for a picture and had to represent this or that. He studied the details in the way just described. His interest was then aroused in something special, and he no longer continued to study for the purpose of the picture, but to learn the peculiarities of some animal or man. If he had to paint a battle, he would go to the riding school to study detail or somewhere where horses were left to themselves, and in this way he lost sight of the original conception for which he had meant to use the study. In this way study after study accumulated, and in the end he had no interest in returning to the picture. Among the important pictures originating from his early Florentine time (although they had been painted over, and their original form is no longer recognizable) we have the “St. Hieronymus” and the “Adoration of the Magi” for which innumerable such studies exist as have just been described. Moreover, we have the feeling that this man lived in the fullness of the secrets of the universe; he sought to penetrate them, tried in an original way to reproduce the secrets of nature, but never really attained the creation of any work of which he could say it was in any way complete.

We must put ourselves in the place of this soul, who was too rich to bring anything to completion, a soul in whom the secrets of the universe so worked that no matter where he began, he had to pass on from secret to secret and could never come to an end. We must try to understand the soul of Leonardo, which was too great in itself ever to be able to reveal its full greatness.

Let us pursue our study of Leonardo. We see how he was given two commissions by Duke Ludovico, one of which was the “Last Supper” and the other an equestrian statue of the Duke's father. This brought him to Milan. Further investigation shows us that Leonardo worked from fifteen to sixteen years at these two works. To be sure, many other things were going on at the same time. In describing him as we have just done, we must, to understand him fully, add that the Duke had not summoned him as a painter only. The Duke sent for Leonardo because he was not only a distinguished musician, but perhaps one of the most distinguished musicians of his time. And it was due to his musical gifts that he was summoned to the Duke's court—not only on that account, however, but because he was one of the most important war engineers of his time—one of the most important hydraulic engineers and one of the most important mechanics of his time—and because he could promise the Duke to supply him with engines of war that were something quite new—engines utilizing steam power—and because he could construct suspension bridges which could easily be put up and taken down quickly. At the same time, he worked at the construction of a flying machine. To accomplish this he busied himself in observing the flight of birds, and what remains of Leonardo's writings concerning the manner in which birds fly, are among the most original existing in the world on this subject. At the same time it must always be remembered when we have Leonardo's writings in our hands today that these are only copies containing much that is inaccurate, and in this form they correspond to what we can now see of the “Last Supper”. Yet in all these things, we can clearly see what a great and comprehensive genius Leonardo was.

We can now see how Leonardo not only assisted the Court of Milan on every possible occasion—arranging this or that artistic or theatrical event, but we also see him working out all sorts of military and other schemes and assisting the builders of the Cathedral with advice and help. Besides this, we know that he trained innumerable pupils who then worked at the different works in Milan; so that one can hardly imagine today how much of Leonardo's work is incorporated into the whole town of Milan and its neighborhood.

In addition to all this Leonardo was engaged in making endless studies for the statue of the Duke's father, Francesco Sforza. One might say there was not a single limb of the horse that he did not study a hundred times, in a hundred different positions, and in the course of many years he completed the model of the horse. Then through an accident, when it was set up at a festival, it was destroyed—and he had to make it all over again. This second model was also destroyed when the French invaded Milan in 1499, for the soldiers used the model as a target and shot it to pieces. There is nothing left of the gigantic labors of a personality who, one may really say, tried to discover one world-secret after another, in order to construct a work in which dead matter should be a manifestation of life, as it reveals itself in the secrets of nature.

We know how Leonardo worked at the “Last Supper”. He often went and sat on the scaffolding and brooded for hours in front of the wall, then he would take a brush and make a few strokes and go away again. Sometimes he only went and stared at the picture and went away again. When he was painting the Christ Figure, his hand trembled. Indeed, if we put together all that we can find concerning this subject we must say that neither outwardly nor inwardly was Leonardo happy when painting this world-renowned picture. Now there were people at that time in Milan who were displeased with the slow progress of the picture, for instance a Prior of the monastery, who could not see why an artist could not paint such a picture quickly, and complained to the Duke. He too thought the affair had lasted too long. Leonardo answered: “The picture is to represent Jesus Christ and Judas, the two greatest contrasts; one cannot paint them in one year; there are no models for them in the world, neither for Judas nor for Christ”. After he had been working at the picture for years, he said he did not know whether he could finish it after all! Then he said that if finally he found no model for Judas he could always use the Prior himself! It was thus extraordinarily difficult to bring the picture to a conclusion but within himself Leonardo did not feel happy. For this picture showed the contrast between what lived in his soul and what he was able to represent on the canvas. Here it is necessary to bring forward a hypothesis of Spiritual Science, which may be reached by anyone who studies what can by degrees be learned about this picture.

The following hypothesis presented itself to me as I tried to find an answer to the above-mentioned question. If one follows up Leonardo's life in this way one says to oneself: in this man there lived an enormous amount that he could not reveal outwardly to mankind; the external means were much too feeble to express this. Was he able, as without doubt he intended in the “Last Supper”, to paint into this work a grandeur that would have satisfied him? This question arises quite naturally, when one realizes how again and again he tried to investigate secret after secret for his studies to bring something into existence, and did not succeed. After all, one is bound to ask such a question: and it almost answers itself. If Leonardo on the one hand only got as far with the equestrian statue which he had intended to make a miracle of plastic art, as making a model which was destroyed, so that he never even touched the statue itself, and if, after sixteen years of work, he finally said good-bye to this unexecuted statue—how did he leave the “Last Supper”? One has the feeling: he went away from this “Last Supper” dissatisfied! If all we can see of this picture today is a ruin of blurred, damp colors, and if for a long time past nothing more has been perceptible of what Leonardo once painted on the wall, we may perhaps maintain that what he painted there could not in the faintest degree have represented what lived in his soul.

To arrive at such a conclusion it is necessary to put together all the different impressions one receives from the picture itself, but there are also a few external aids. Among the writings of Leonardo still extant, there is a wonderful treatise on painting. In it painting in its essence as an art is set forth, how it must work in relation to perspective and coloring, how it must work according to principle. Oh! This work of Leonardo's on painting, although we have only a fragment of it, is a wonderful work, the like of which has never been accomplished in the world. The highest principles of the art of painting are here represented as only the greatest genius could represent them. It is wonderful to read, for instance, how Leonardo shows that in painting a battle, the horses had to be represented with the suitable foreshortening because it brought out the impression of bestiality and yet of grandeur that should be perceptible in a battle. In short, this work is a wonderful one. It shows us all Leonardo's greatness and, we may say, all his impotence. We shall refer to this again. Above all it betrays how he always tried in the representation of his art to study the reality as it presented itself to the human eye. How light and shade and coloring are to be turned to account in painting, all this is to be found wonderfully described in this work of Leonardo. If we find in Leonardo's soul the ardent longing of his conscience never even in the smallest particular to offend against the truth—which, as we shall see further on, he prized so highly—if that feeling animated his soul, we may say that this is apparent everywhere; that is, the resolution never to offend against the truth of the impression, always so to work that the impression is justified by the inner secrets of nature.

If we let his “Last Supper” work on us, we find two things of which we can say that they do not altogether agree with Leonardo's view of the principles of painting. One is the figure of Judas. From the reproductions and also to a certain extent from the shadowy painting in Milan, one gets the impression that Judas is quite covered in shadow—he is quite dark. Now when we study how the light falls from the different sides, and how with regard to the other eleven disciples the lighting conditions are represented in the most wonderful manner in accordance with reality, nothing really explains the darkness on the face of Judas. Art can give us no answer as to the wherefore of this darkness. This is fairly clear as regards the Judas figure. If we now turn to the Christ Figure, approaching it not according to Spiritual Science but according to the external view, it only produces, as it were, something like a suggestion. Just as little as the blackness, the darkness of the Judas figure seems justifiable, just as little does the “sunniness” of the Christ Figure, standing out as it does from the other figures, seem to be justified, in this sense. We can understand the lighting of all the other countenances but not that of Judas nor that of Christ Jesus. Then, as if of itself, the idea comes into one's mind: surely the painter has striven to make evident that in these two opposites, Jesus and Judas, light and darkness proceed not from outside but from within. He probably wished to make us realize that the light on the face of the Christ cannot be explained by the outer conditions of light, and yet we can believe that the Soul behind this Countenance is itself a light force, so that It can shine of Itself, in spite of the lighting conditions. In the same way the impression with respect to Judas, is, that this form itself conjures up a shadow which is not explained by the shadows around it.

This is, as already said, a hypothesis of Spiritual Science, but one that has developed in me in the course of many years and we may believe that the more we considered the problem the more we would find it substantiated. According to this hypothesis one can understand how Leonardo, who strove to be true to nature in all his work and study, worked with trembling brush to present a problem that could only be justified with respect to this one figure. We can then understand that he might well be bitterly disappointed, indubitably so, because it was impossible by means of the then existing art to bring this problem to expression with complete truthfulness and probability. Because he could not yet do what he wanted, he finally despaired of the possibility of its execution and had to leave a picture behind him which still did not satisfy him, and the question as to the feelings with which Leonardo left his picture can be answered in full accord with the whole figure and spiritual greatness of Leonardo. He left it with a feeling of bitterness, realizing that in his most important work he had set himself a task, the execution of which could never be satisfactory with the means available to man. If in the centuries to come no eye will see the picture Leonardo had conjured on to the wall at Milan—that, in any case, was certainly not what lived in his soul. If we picture him thus before his most important creation, we are indeed tempted to ask: What secret really lay behind this figure?

A fortnight ago we considered the personality of Raphael and tried to show what a different understanding we obtain of such a man as he, if we rest on the principles of Spiritual Science. For we know clearly that the human soul is something that repeatedly returns to many earth lives, that a soul born into a certain age does not live that one life alone, but in the whole plan and process of its evolution brings with it the predispositions acquired in earlier earth lives, and with these predispositions finds itself confronting what the spiritual environment now offers. If we so regard the soul, knowing that it enters into existence with an inner spiritual inheritance that had its origin in repeated earth lives—and admitting that the whole of evolution seems full of meaning and wisdom, we postulate that things do not happen accidentally in certain epochs, but in accordance with rule and law, as the blossom of the plant appears after the green leaf—if we accept the existence of a plan full of wisdom in the history of the evolution of man, according to which the human soul returns again and again from the spiritual regions—then only do the individual figures become comprehensible. What can be studied with regard to particular human lives is more clearly manifest if we observe those human souls which are exceptional, out of the ordinary. If we study Leonardo as we have tried to sketch him at particular moments of his life, we are led again to consider the background from which this soul stands out. This background is the time in which this soul was placed, from the year 1452 to 1519.

What manner of time was this? It was the time before the rise of modern natural science and the views which result from that. It was the time before the birth of Copernicus' conception of the world, before the influence of Giordano Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo. How do we view this age in the light of Spiritual Science? We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the further we go back in the course of human evolution, the greater is the difference in the whole of man's outlook and his connection with his surroundings. In the primeval ages of man's evolution we find in every soul a kind of clairvoyance, by means of which, in the transition stage between sleeping and waking, he looked into the spiritual world. This original clairvoyance was lost in the course of time; but until the Fifteenth Century, there still remained from earlier times a remnant of this clairvoyance; not clairvoyance itself—that was long before lost—but what remained was a feeling that the human soul was connected with the spiritual background of the world. What souls had once been able to see, they could still feel, and although this feeling had already become weak, still they felt that in the center of their being they were connected with the spiritual that lived and wove in the world, even as physical processes in the human body are connected with the physical events of the world. According to the laws of evolution, the old intercourse between man's soul and the spiritual world had to be lost for a time. Modern natural science could never have blossomed if the old clairvoyance had remained. The whole of this old way of looking at things had to be lost, so that the soul could turn to what the senses offered and what could be scientifically proved by the intellect belonging to the brain. The world outlook based on natural science, which has been built up from the time of Leonardo until today, was only made possible through the loss of the old spiritual perception of mankind and through man's inclining himself “objectively” to external sense perception and to what the intellect can grasp through that.

Today we again stand at a new turning point, at the turning point leading to a time in which it will again be possible for man, through modern Spiritual Science, to attain to a spiritual view of things. For the development of natural science has a double significance. First, it had to give to man the treasures of natural science. In the course of the centuries since the appearance of Copernicus, Kepler and others, natural science has passed on from triumph to triumph, and been adapted in a wonderful way to practical and theoretical life. That is one result that has been gained through natural science in the centuries since the time of Leonardo. The other is something that could not come at once but has only become possible in our own times. For not only have we to thank natural science for what we have learned through the Copernican system, through the observations and discoveries of Kepler and Galileo, and the experience of modern spectro-analysis, and so on, but we have also to thank science for a certain education of the human soul. The human soul first of all began to observe the sense world; in this way natural science was built up. Through natural science new ideas and new conceptions were formed, but where it has rendered the greatest service its greatness was not acquired through sense perception, but through something quite different.

This has already been referred to. In one particular sphere, in the time of Copernicus, people relied on sense perception. What was the result? People believed that the earth stood still in space and that the sun and the planets revolved around it. Then came Copernicus, who had the courage not to rely on sense perception. He had the courage to say that when one relied entirely on sense perception one did not make a single empirical discovery, but that empirical discoveries could be made if one combined in one's thinking all that had previously been observed. Then men followed in his footsteps and went further, but it is essentially a mistaken view of the state of affairs to believe that natural science reached its present height because mankind relied only on the senses. What has come to mankind through natural science has, however, impressed itself on the soul; the ideas of natural science live within us and have educated our souls. Natural science, besides the discoveries it has given us, has also been a means of education for the soul, and souls have today become mature because the ideals of natural science have really not only been thought but lived, so that souls of their own accord will be driven into Spiritual Science. Human souls had, however, first to become ripe for that, and for that centuries had to elapse since Leonardo's time.

Now let us consider Leonardo. He enters his age with a soul that, in an earlier existence, belonged to those initiates who had raised themselves in the old way to the secrets of world conception. This experience could not be continued in the age into which he was born, the Fifteenth Century. For in earlier incarnations insofar as these earlier earth lives made it possible, one may have experienced the cosmic mysteries in a great and mighty way; but how they can be brought through into one's consciousness in a new life, depends on the external physical body. A fifteenth-century body could not bring to expression the inner thought, inner feeling, and inner power of execution which Leonardo had taken up into himself in earlier stages of existence. What he brought from earlier lives worked only as a force; but he was condemned to be confined in a body living in the age directly before the rise of natural science, and he felt himself limited in every direction. The time was then coming, the dawn was already there, when man would only perceive the world of sense existence with the senses, and would only think with the intellect that is connected with the instrument of the brain. Leonardo was always driven to seek for the spirit; he brought that with him from previous lives. The impulse to seek for the spirit worked in a glorious and grand way in him.

Let us now consider him as ARTIST. Art had become very different in Leonardo's time from what it was in the Greek period. Let us try, for instance, to realize the creation of a plastic statue by a Greek artist. What kind of feeling do we get when we contemplate the statue of Marcus Aurelius, for example? Never would they who executed such a work have molded the form from an external model or made studies in detail as did Michaelangelo or Leonardo. The wonderful horse of Marcus Aurelius' statue was certainly never studied as Leonardo studied his for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza; and yet how alive are these old statues! What is the reason? It is because in Greek times human souls felt themselves to be really the creators of their bodies, they identified themselves with all the soul forces of the universe. In the age of Greek art one felt in an arm, for instance, all the forces that formed that arm. Man felt himself within the independent inner being of his own form. He did not look at the form from outside but created “consciously” from within, for he was still conscious of the formative creative force. We can still prove that externally even today. Look at the Greek statues of women; they were all experienced directly. Therefore they are all represented at the age in which expanding growth is present. We feel in these that the artist imitated nature because he was within the spirit of nature, because he felt himself connected in his soul with the spirit of nature. This feeling of being one with the spirit which weaved and lived in things had to be lost in Leonardo's time; it had to be lost for otherwise the new age could not have come. This is not a criticism of the age, but a statement of the meaning of the facts.

Let us now see how Leonardo went to work when he studied the movements of the hand, or of the separate parts of an animal, or the human countenance! He shows by his methods that he had in his soul an inner knowledge, an inner realization, but this did not, however, rise into his consciousness. There was something that worked in a living way on those figures, but Leonardo could not grasp it inwardly. He felt himself separated from this “inner comprehension” and so nothing satisfied him. There he stands, in expectation of this new natural-scientific world outlook, which he cannot himself possess because it is not yet in existence. Take his writings—on every page problems spring up which mankind could only solve in the course of the three following centuries, some of them indeed have not yet been solved. Leonardo had most wonderful ideas, of which, in many cases, he could make no use at all. We find them in his works and also in his artistic creations. Thus we find in him that powerlessness, to which a soul must be subject in an age that sees the end of an old world outlook, and in which the new has not yet arisen. This new world outlook certainly led to the splitting up of man's comprehensive outlook into a study of detail; we see the beginning of specialization of individual branches of work. In Leonardo everything is still united. He is at one and the same time an all-embracing artist, musician, philosopher, and mechanician. He united all these in himself because his soul came over from olden times possessing great capacities, but now in this new age, he can just touch things from the outside but cannot penetrate them. So from the human point of view Leonardo appears as a tragic figure, but seen from a higher one, his was a figure of tremendous significance—at the dawn of a new age.

We can see that for ourselves if we examine what Leonardo created further. He brought the most important things only to a certain point, when his pupils had to work on them. Even with regard to such work as his “John” or “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris, we see how the technical treatment was such that they must soon lose their brilliancy. We see in everything, how Leonardo could never do enough to satisfy himself. It is not possible without having the pictures before us to speak in detail of his paintings. If we absorb ourselves in them we can see how Leonardo as artist always touched limits beyond which he could not go; and how what lived in his soul never once reached the point of flowing up from soul experience into consciousness; how for a moment it flared up from that state of soul experience in such a way that one might rejoice aloud and then sink back in sorrow, because it did not come into full consciousness. It never once did so to Leonardo.

We really follow Leonardo's fate with very sad feelings when we see how in the end he was taken to France by Francis I, and spent the last three years of his life in a dwelling place assigned to him by Francis, in spiritual contemplation of the mysteries of existence. We find him there as a lonely man, who could really no longer have anything in common with the world around him, and who must have felt an enormous contrast between what he realized as the primeval foundations of existence, which might take form in art, and the fragment of it which was all he had been able to give to the world.

If we consider the matter in this light we look back to Leonardo saying: “Here is a soul in which a great deal, an infinite amount takes place”. The impression made on the observer is very distressing if he represents to himself what his soul contributed to human activities. Even at the time of Leonardo's death how insignificant was the external manifestation of this soul's contribution to human activities, in comparison with what lived within it! We are confronted with an economy of existence if we adopt the theory that human life exhausts itself in what comes into existence externally. How senseless and aimless seems the life of a soul such as Leonardo's when we see what went on within it, and what it had to suffer and endure on account of this, compared with what it might have given to the world! What a contrast there would be if we were to say that this soul was only to be regarded according to its manifestation in external life! No! We must not regard it thus! We must look at it from another standpoint and say: No matter what this soul may have given to the world or experienced, what it went through in its inmost being belongs to another world, a world that compared with our own is a super-sensible one. Such men are above all a proof that man's soul belongs to a super-sensible existence and that such souls as Leonardo's have something to do with super-sensible existence, and what they can give to the external world is only a by-product of what they have to go through altogether.

We can only get the right impression if we add to the current of external human events another, a super-sensible, current and say: Something runs, as it were, parallel with the sense current, and such souls as these are embedded in the super-sensible; they must live in it to form the connecting links between the sensible and the super-sensible. The life of such souls only appears to have a meaning if we admit a super-sensible existence in which they are embedded. We see very little of Leonardo by looking at his external creations; we get the idea that this soul has still to carry out something in a super-sensible existence and we say to ourselves: Oh! We understand! In order that this soul, in the whole course of its collective existence, which runs through many earth lives, could always reveal something to mankind, it had in its Leonardo existence to pass through a life in which it was only able to bring to expression the very smallest part of what lived within it. Such souls as Leonardo are world riddles and life riddles—world riddles incarnate.

What I wanted to bring out today was not to be presented in sharply defined concepts, but it should only point the way in which such souls can be approached. For Spiritual Science must indeed not present theories! Spiritual Science should, in all that it undertakes, grasp the whole of man's life of feeling and experience, and must itself become an elixir of life, so that through it we gain a new relation to the whole of life; and such spirits as Leonardo are peculiarly fitted to lead one to this new relation to the world and to life, so that through Spiritual Science we may understand the world. If we contemplate spirits such as Leonardo we can say: They enter life as enigmas, because they have to work out in their lives something greater than their age can give them. Because they bring the results of previous incarnations, souls such as Leonardo not only enter life in a humble position, but even as Leonardo entered it. Born of mediocre father and of a mother who soon disappeared from view after bearing an illegitimate child, he was brought up among middle class people. Thus we see him thrown on his own resources, and giving expression to what he had brought over from previous lives. When we consider the unfavorable conditions of his birth, we recognize that these did not hinder the manifestation of his great soul capacities. We see Leonardo's soul so sane, so comprehensive, that we can echo what Goethe says out of his own soul: “Symmetrically and beautifully formed, there he stood, as a pattern for humanity, even as the power of comprehension and clarity of the eyes really belongs to the mind, so clarity and perfection were possessed by this artist in the highest degree”. If we apply these words to Leonardo—to whom they are applicable—we must apply them to the youthful Leonardo, who appears before us fresh in body and mind, accomplished, full of the joy of creation, joy in the world, and longing for the world; a perfect man, a pattern man, born to be a conqueror, and full of humor, as he shows on various occasions in life.

Then we turn our gaze to the drawing which is considered to be, and justly so, his own portrait drawn by himself—the drawing of an old man—in whose face many experiences, many hard and painful experiences, have ploughed deep furrows, the expression of the mouth indicating the whole disharmony in which we see the lonely man at the end. Far from his fatherland, under the protection of the King of France, still struggling with the world and life, but lonely, forsaken, misunderstood, although still loved by the friends who had not neglected to accompany him.

In Leonardo's case we see especially the greatness of spirit which endures much suffering, as it accommodates itself to the body, first having fashioned it perfectly and then leaving it embittered. When we look into this countenance we feel the genius of humanity itself looking out at us. Yes, we begin to understand this age, the time of sunset in which Leonardo lived—the time which heralded a new dawn, in which Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno, Galileo lived—and we see all the limitations and restrictions which Leonardo's great spirit had to undergo. We understand the age and we understand the great artist who transcends all human means and yet can, after all, only work with human means. After we have studied the subject attentively from the point of view of Spiritual Science, we must bring the whole of our human intellect to bear on it, and gazing into Leonardo's face we shall see the entire spirit of that age looking out at us. Yes, from these embittered features there looks a human spirit, at first inclining downwards. We must know it thus, to understand the full greatness of the force which had to be there to admit of the rise of a Copernicus, a Kepler, a Giordano Bruno. In truth, we only obtain a proper reverence for the whole course and evolution of the human spirit, if we know how the tragedy of Giordano Bruno's death at the stake is even greater than studied in the light of Leonardo's soul—conscious of its own weakness before the passing, the downfalling of its age. Leonardo's greatness only becomes evident to us when we get an inkling of what he could NOT accomplish. That is connected with a matter with which we will sum up today's considerations. It is connected with the fact that the human soul can be satisfied—aye, even made happy—at the sight of imperfection (although more satisfied, it is true, by great than by little imperfection); at the sight of that creative activity, which, due to its greatness, fails of execution; for in these dying forces we guess at and finally see the forces being prepared for the future, and from the sunset there arises for us the promise and the hope of the dawn. The relation of our souls to human evolution must always be such that we say to ourselves: All progress takes this course: wherever what has been created falls into ruin, we know that out of that ruin new life will always blossom forth.

As a result of the distribution of what is perhaps the most widely known picture of all, the famous “Last Supper,” Leonardo's name is continually brought to the attention of countless human souls. Who does not know it, this Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci? And who, knowing it, has not marvelled at the tremendous idea that comes to expression in this picture! Vividly personified, we see a significant moment, a moment felt by many people as being one of the most significant in world history: The Christ figure in the middle, the twelve apostles of Christ Jesus arranged on either side. We see these twelve apostles with profoundly expressive movements and gestures. With each of the twelve figures their gestures and bearing are so individualized that we have the impression: every possible human soul characteristic comes to expression in these figures, every manner in which an individual of whatever temperament or character might respond to what the picture represents.

In his discourse on “Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper,” Goethe refers strikingly to the moment in which Christ Jesus spoke the words, “There is one among you who will betray me!”

After these words have been uttered we see what goes on in each of the twelve—so intimately associated with the speaker, who look up to Him so reverently—we see all this in the numerous reproductions of this work distributed throughout the world.

There are depictions of the Last Supper event deriving from an earlier time. Going no further back than the period from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, we find that, in depicting the Last Supper, Leonardo introduced what can be called the dramatic element. Indeed, a wonderfully dramatic moment presents itself in his picture. Earlier, calmer representations seem to express as it were no more than the coming together of the apostles. With dramatic power, in his “Last Supper” Leonardo graphically conjures before us for the first time an expression of the most significant soul configuration. However, having received this impression of the underlying idea of the picture in heart and mind from the world-famous reproductions, arriving in Milan, in that old Dominican church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, one sees on the wall—it cannot be described otherwise—only more or less indistinct damp patches of colour merging into each other. This is all that remains of the original painting that has become world famous through reproductions. Looking further back, one has the impression that for quite some time already it has not been possible to see much of what people witnessed after the picture had been painted by Leonardo and once spoke of in such enthusiastic, exhilarating and captivating words. What must indeed at one time have spoken to human beings from this wall as something of an artistic miracle, not only in terms of the idea that has just been haltingly enunciated, but also by virtue of Leonardo's expressive colour! In these colours the inherent nature of each soul, indeed the very heartbeat of the twelve figures must have come to expression. Yet, for a considerable time this has no longer been evident on the wall.—What has this picture not suffered in the course of time! [It should be noted that from 1978 to 1999, financed by the Olivetti Company, modern techniques of restoration have made it possible to reveal what Leonardo certifiably painted onto the wall, in so far as this remains.—And to extraordinary effect!]

Leonardo felt compelled to turn aside from the kind of technique previously employed in painting such walls. He found the painting method made use of earlier [fresco] insufficiently expressive. He wanted to conjure the subtlest emotions onto the wall. He therefore attempted to use oil-based colours, something that had not been done before in painting murals. A series of hindrances came to light. The location of the wall as well as the entire space itself was such that comparatively soon these oil colours were undermined by dampness, the moisture coming out of the wall itself. The whole room, a refectory of the Dominicans, was completely under water on one occasion as the result of flooding. Many other factors contributed to the overall problem: the billeting of troops in wartime and so forth. All these things took their toll on the picture.

There was a time in which the monks of the cloister also did not exactly conduct themselves with special piety in regard to the picture. They found the door too low that led underneath the dining hall of the cloister and one day had it made higher. In this way part of the picture was devastated. [The feet of the Saviour were eliminated.]

Then again, a heraldic shield was once placed immediately over the head of Christ: in short, the picture was treated in the most barbaric manner. And then there were charlatans—they have to be called such—who painted over the picture so that hardly anything is to be seen of the original colour it once had. Even so, standing in front of this wall painting, an indescribable magic emanates from it. In spite of all barbarity, all over-painting, all soddenness, the magic that radiates from the picture could not be entirely destroyed. Today it is only a shadow of what it once was, and yet a magical quality still proceeds from it. One can say, it is only partly the painting as such; it is also the idea that exerts an effect on the soul, yet this works powerfully.

We can acquaint ourselves with other works of Leonardo, by means of reproductions, or by means of the works attributed to him in various European galleries—still preserved much as he painted them. In thus getting to know Leonardo's creations, what he wrote, as well as the course of his life from 1452 to 1519, we nonetheless stand before the mural in the dining hall of the Dominicans in Milan with quite particular feelings. For, just as little remains to us of this magical creation once painted by Leonardo, little remains also for the general consciousness of humanity of the colossal stature, the power and significance of Leonardo's comprehensive personality. What can be experienced of Leonardo today barely relates otherwise to what he placed into the world than these patches of colour that merge into each other in comparison to what he once conjured onto the wall. One stands with a certain wistful melancholy before this picture in Milan; and so it is in contemplating the figure of Leonardo himself.

Goethe points out with reference to earlier biographies that one has the impression, in Leonardo a personality appeared working with fresh life forces, viewing life with joyful expectation and enthusiasm, with an enormous urge for knowledge—fresh in mind and body. Turning to the picture that counts as a self-portrait in Turin, we see a portrait of the old Leonardo, the countenance with expressive furrows—expressive of pain and suffering, with the embittered mouth and features that betray much of what Leonardo must have felt in his conflicted relation to the world, in all he experienced. Strangely indeed does this personality of Leonardo stand before us at the turn of modern times.

Directing our attention once again to the picture in the Santa Maria delle Grazie we may attempt as it were with the “eye of the spirit,” to use Goethe's expression, to look at this “shadow” on the wall of the refectory, comparing it with the oldest engravings, the oldest reproductions. Letting the picture re-arise for us in this way, a question can emerge for us: Did the one who once painted this picture, in making the final brush-stroke, depart from it satisfied? Did he say to himself: You have achieved what lived in your soul?

It seems to me, one arrives at this question, as a matter of course. Such a question arises of its own accord in contemplating the life of Leonardo as a whole. We see him born a natural child, the son of an average individual, Ser Pietro, in Vinci and a peasant woman who disappears from view, while the father then marries in a civil wedding and has the son fostered out. Seeing the child grow up in isolation, communing only with nature and itself, one says to oneself: a tremendous sum total of life forces must have belonged to this human being for him to remain fresh and in good health, as he did in the first place. Since he showed talent in drawing early on, he was accepted into the school of Verrocchio (1435-1488). His father had brought him there, believing his talent in drawing could be exploited. The young Leonardo was now made use of in collaborating on the master's pictures. An anecdote is told from this period, that Leonardo was to paint a figure on one occasion, and that the master decided on seeing it to cease painting altogether, since he saw himself outdone by his pupil. This counts as more than an anecdote, in considering Leonardo as a complete individual.

We see him growing up in Florence, his talent in painting increasing by leaps and bounds. But we find something else. In following his painting ability, one has the feeling: Year by year he went about with the greatest artistic intentions, with continual new plans. He had commissions from people who recognized his great gifts and wanted something from him. Leonardo would first of all let the idea arise of whatever he wanted to create and then begin making studies. But how was it with these studies?

These studies proceeded from going into every conceivable detail that came into consideration—in a decidedly characteristic fashion. If he had, for example, to paint a picture in which three or four figures were to appear, he went to work in such a way that he did not merely study a single model but went about the city observing hundreds of people. He frequently followed a person for a whole day when a particular feature interested him. He would invite all kinds of people of the most varied standing to his abode, telling them all manner of things that amused or alarmed them. For, he wanted to study their features in connection with the most diverse emotional states. Once, when a rabble-rouser had been taken into custody and was to be hanged, Leonardo betook himself to the place of execution.—The drawing still exists in which he attempted to capture the facial expression and the whole gesture of the one hanged. In a lower corner of the page a head is drawn, recording the exact impression.

There are caricatures by Leonardo, incredible figures from which we can see what he actually intended. He would, for example, draw a countenance and see what would result in making the chin larger and larger. To find out what significance single parts of the human figure have, he enlarged a single member so as to discover how this fits into the whole human organism in its natural size. Grotesque figures with the most varied distortions—we find all this with Leonardo. Drawings by him exist in which he sketched a particular feature again and again—drawings he then wanted to use for corresponding works. Even if some of these derive from his students, there are still a great number from his own hand.

Letting all this work on us, we get the impression that things proceeded in such a way that he would have some commission or other for a picture; he was to depict this or that. He studied the details as described. Then something in particular began to interest him—and he then no longer studied with the aim of completing the picture, but rather to get to know specific features of an animal or of the human being. If a battle scene was to be painted, he went to the riding school to make studies—or to where the horses are left to themselves. In this way he digressed from the actual purpose for which he had intended to use the study. Studies thus pile one upon the other, till it is no longer a question of his returning to the commissioned work at all.

Among the more significant pictures in his first Florentine period—though today these have all been over-painted, their original state no longer fully recognizable—we have the “Saint Jerome” and the “Adoration of the Magi.” There are studies for these as well, of the kind already indicated. One has the sense moreover that here a human being lived within the abundance of cosmic secrets. He sought to penetrate world secrets and to reproduce these secrets of Nature in an original manner by means of drawing—though never actually arriving at the kind of creating of which he could say, it had in some way been brought to realization. One has to transpose oneself into such a soul, too richly endowed to be able to fully conclude what it undertook—a soul upon which the cosmic secrets work in such a way that, in beginning somewhere, it necessarily went from secret to secret and never finished. One has to understand this Leonardo soul, too great in itself ever to be able to manifest its own greatness.

Pursuing Leonardo further in Milan, we see two tasks entrusted to him by Duke Lodovici il Moro, who takes him into his court. One task is the “Last Supper” and the other the creation of an equestrian statue of the duke's father. We see Leonardo at work on these projects for a period of fifteen to sixteen years. Yet much else transpired besides. To further characterize Leonardo and to comprehend him completely, it should be mentioned that the duke had not only appointed him as a painter. Leonardo was also an excellent musician, in fact perhaps one of the most distinguished musicians of his time. The duke was especially fond of his musical ability. But the duke also retained Leonardo because he was one of the most important war-engineers, a distinguished canal engineer and one of the most significant mechanics of his time, and because he was able to promise the duke entirely new war-machines, machines utilizing water power, also bridges that could easily be built and taken down again. At the same time, he worked on constructing a flying machine. In developing it, he occupied himself in observing how bird flight comes about. The studies of bird flight that have been preserved count among the most original in this field. With the writings of Leonardo, it has to be borne in mind that it is partly a matter of copies containing much that is inexact. These therefore correspond in nature to what is still to be seen today of the “Last Supper.” But, shining through everywhere is the comprehensive spirit of Leonardo himself.

We see Leonardo supporting the court in Milan in every conceivable way with this or that painting project or theatrical event, but also working out all manner of war plans and other plans, as also assisting in the building of the cathedral with advice and practical help. In addition, he is known to have trained numerous pupils who then worked on the various projects in Milan. Today, people hardly have any notion of all that Leonardo contributed to the city of Milan and its surroundings.

There are Leonardo's endless studies for the equestrian statue of the duke's father, Francesco Sforza. He studied every part of the animal hundreds of times in hundreds of positions, and over a period of many years he completed the model for the horse. It was destroyed when the French invaded Milan in the year 1499; soldiers shot at the model as though for target practice. Nothing of it remains—nothing is preserved of the enormous amount of work of a personality who, it may be said, sought to investigate world secrets in creating a work in which dead matter gives expression to life—just as life manifests itself with its secrets in Nature.

It is known how Leonardo worked on the “Last Supper.” He often went there, sat on the scaffold and brooded for hours in front of the wall. Then he took the brush, made a few brushstrokes and went away again. When he wanted to paint on the Christ figure, his hand trembled. And, considering all that is known, it has to be said: both outwardly and inwardly Leonardo was not pleased as a result of painting this world-famous picture. There were people at the time in Milan who did not much like the slow pace with which the picture was painted. There was for instance the prior of the cloister who could not see why a painter should not be able to paint such a picture onto the wall quite quickly. He complained to the duke. For the duke, the whole matter also went on rather too long, and he took the artist to task. Leonardo replied that Christ Jesus and Judas were to be represented in the picture: two of the greatest imaginable contrasts. These could not be painted in just one year, there being no model for either in the whole world, not for Judas, nor for Christ Jesus. He also did not know, he said, having painted on the picture for many years already, whether he would be able to finish it at all. And then he added: In the end, if no model were found for Judas, he could always take the prior! Thus, it was extraordinarily difficult to bring the picture to a conclusion. But Leonardo was also not pleased in the end with the outcome. For, with this picture the full discrepancy became apparent between what lived in his soul and what he was able to bring onto the wall.

Here I am obliged to put forward a kind of spiritual-scientific hypothesis to which anyone can come on familiarizing themselves gradually with all that can be known about the picture. This hypothesis resulted for me in attempting to answer the question previously raised. In following the life of Leonardo, one says to oneself: Such an enormous amount lived in this man that he was unable to reveal outwardly to humanity—for which the external means were wholly inadequate. Should he in fact have been able, without further ado, to paint to his satisfaction the greatest conceivable work he undoubtedly intended with the “Last Supper?” One comes to such a question as a matter of course, seeing how he strove again and again by means of studies, to investigate one secret after another—attempting to bring something to realization that did not finally come about. And the answer then results almost of itself. For, if Leonardo had wanted on the one hand to make an equestrian statue, a miraculous work of sculpture, bringing it no further than the model that was lost, never reaching the point of casting it after sixteen years' work—having to forsake it completely without achieving anything—how must he have taken leave of the “Last Supper?” One has the sense that he went away from it dissatisfied! And today we have only a ruin of the picture before us; only damp patches of colour merging into each other, while for a long time hardly anything is left of what Leonardo once painted onto the wall. Thus, it is perhaps permissible to assert that what he painted onto the wall did not remotely represent what lived in his soul.

To arrive at such an impression, however, one has to bear in mind various things in regard to the picture. There are further reasons. Among the various writings of Leonardo that have survived there is a wonderful Treatise on Painting. [See Dover Publications edition, 2005.] Here the essential nature of painting as an art is set forth—how perspective and colour composition are to be approached. It is shown that one needs to proceed from a certain viewpoint. Despite the fact that we have it only in a truncated form, this book by Leonardo on painting is a wonderful work, like nothing else that has been written on painting otherwise. The principles of the art of painting are presented as only the greatest genius could have presented them. It is marvellous, for instance, to read how Leonardo describes in what manner horses are to be depicted in a battle scene, how altogether brutal, but also grandiose impressions are to come to light in rendering a battle scene. In short, this work shows Leonardo in his greatness and, it may be said, also in a certain powerlessness, which we shall refer to later. But above all, it betrays how he was careful everywhere in his own painting to study how reality presents itself to the human eye; how light-and-dark and colouration are to be utilized—all this is set forth in genial fashion in this work of Leonardo on painting. And it confirms the yearning for conscience in Leonard's soul, the desire, never even in the slightest detail, to go against what, as we shall see, he valued so highly: the search for truth. The extent to which this lived in his soul becomes apparent everywhere in the Treatise on Painting; in that one should never violate the truth of the impression with respect to the inner secrets of Nature.

Letting his “Last Supper” work on us, there are two things we cannot reconcile immediately with Leonardo's requirements with regard to painting. One concerns the figure of Judas. In the reproductions and to an extant in the shadowy picture in Milan, one has the impression, Judas is completely covered in shadow and is quite dark. Looking at how the light falls from various sides, with the eleven other disciples we see the relationships of light everywhere represented in the most wonderful way in conformity with the truth. Nothing properly explains the darkness on the countenance of Judas! On the basis of the external relationships of light we do not have a satisfying answer as to the “why” of this darkness. And in coming to the Christ-Jesus figure, if one does not proceed on the basis of spiritual science, only something like a premonition can actually result for external perception. For just as little as the blackness, the darkness, is outwardly justified, as little does the sun-like quality of the Christ figure, its emergence from the other figures, seem justified in the sense indicated. All the other countenances can be understood on the basis of the existing lighting, but not the Judas and not the Christ-Jesus countenance. Proceeding in accordance with spiritual science, however, the thought arises as though of itself: here the painter strove to make evident, in the contrast of “Jesus” and “Judas,” how light and darkness are to be accounted for inwardly. He wanted to make clear that this Christ countenance stands before us, such that we find it unaccounted for in regard to the external light, but that we are able to believe: the soul behind this countenance grants it luminosity of itself, so that it becomes permissible for it to shine in contradiction to the prevailing light conditions. And in the same way, one has the impression with regard to Judas, this figure conjures a shadow onto itself justified by nothing in the surroundings.

As already stated, this is a spiritual-scientific hypothesis, but one that has emerged for me over many years, a hypothesis of which one can believe that it will confirm itself still further, the more one goes into the whole matter. On the basis of this hypothesis, one understands that in striving everywhere in his work for the truth of Nature, Leonardo worked with a brush that trembled in his hand in attempting to present what could have its justification only in the Christ figure. It becomes comprehensible that Leonardo would unquestionably have been bitterly disappointed, since it was impossible, with the art of representation as it was at the time, to bring this to expression in all truthfulness. Thus, he could not do what he intended, and finally despaired of the possibility of carrying it out, having to bequeath a picture which did not ultimately satisfy him.

Thus, in conformity with the entire spiritual stature of Leonardo, we arrive at an answer to the above question. Leonardo must have gone from this picture with the bitter feeling that with his most significant work, he had set himself a task the execution of which could not bring him satisfaction, given the means available. Though in later centuries no human eye was in fact to see what Leonardo had actually conjured onto the wall in Milan, even in his own time the picture did not correspond with what had lived in his soul. Hence, considering him in relation to his most important creation, we are inclined to ask: what really is the underlying secret of this figure of Leonardo?

In contemplating the personality of Raphael fourteen days ago, the attempt was made to show that, based on a spiritual-scientific view, such a unique individual can be understood quite differently than otherwise. We can make clear to ourselves that the human soul returns again and again in the course of many earth-lives. Born into a particular age, a soul does not live this one life only, but, with its whole disposition, brings qualities over from earlier earth-lives. With what it carries over into the present from earlier lives, the soul interacts with what the spiritual environment has to offer. Viewing the human soul in this way, we recognize that it enters into existence with an inner spiritual estate deriving from repeated earth-lives. The whole of evolution appears meaningful and imbued with wisdom in presupposing that things arise in particular epochs, not by chance, but according to law-imbued principles—just as the blossom of the plant follows after the green leaves. Great individualities become explicable only if we assume wise guidance in the historical development of humanity and see the human soul returning again and again from spiritual regions. But what can be studied in the context of a single human life unveils itself quite especially in considering human souls that rise above mediocrity. Contemplating Leonardo in the way we attempted in tentatively summarizing his life, we are inevitably led again and again to the background from which he emerges. This is the age into which he is placed, from the year 1452 to the year 1519.

What sort of age is this? It is the age that precedes the flowering of the natural-scientific worldview—before the arrival of the worldview of Copernicus and before Giordano Bruno, Kepler and Galileo. How is this age to be viewed from a spiritual-scientific standpoint?

We have often drawn attention to the fact that the further we go back in evolution, the more the whole manner in which human beings relate to the world changes. In primeval times we find everywhere a kind of clairvoyance. In certain states between sleeping and waking, human beings looked into the spiritual world. This original clairvoyance was lost as time went on, but even in the fifteenth century a remnant of this clairvoyance remained from older times. It was not then a matter of the actual clairvoyance itself, which had long since been lost. What remained was a feeling of the soul's connection with the spiritual background of the world. What souls had once seen, they continued to feel. Though this feeling had become weak, they nonetheless felt united in the centre of their being with the spiritual element with which the world was permeated and interwoven—much as physical processes in the human body are connected with physical occurrences in the world.

It belongs to the inherent laws of evolution that the old connection of the human soul with the spiritual world had to be lost for a while. Never would modern natural science have been able to blossom, had the old clairvoyance remained. This older way of seeing had to be lost, in order for human beings to orient themselves to what is presented to the senses, to reason bound up with the brain—to what can be ascertained scientifically. Only by virtue of the loss of the old spiritual perception was the natural scientific world conception possible that has evolved from the time of Leonardo up to our own day. In this way human beings turned “objectively,” as it is said, to the external sense world and to what human reason is able to comprehend by means of sense perception.

Today we stand once more at a new turning point, at the turning point of a time in which it is again possible, by means of modern natural science, for human beings to come to a spiritual view of things. For, the development of natural science has a dual significance. On the one hand, it is to bequeath to humanity a certain wealth of natural-scientific knowledge. In the course of the centuries since the appearance of Copernicus, Kepler and so on, natural science has gone from triumph to triumph, influencing in a remarkable way all practical and theoretical life. That is one field that has been conquered by natural science in the centuries since Leonardo's time. The other is something that could not come about all at once and has become possible only in our time. Not only do we owe to natural science what has been learned as a result of the Copernican worldview, by means of the observations and investigations of Kepler and Galileo, as also what has been discovered by means of modern spectral analysis and so forth. We are indebted to it also for a certain education of the human soul.

Human beings directed their attention first of all to the sense world. Natural science evolved in this way. But new ideas, new concepts were formed by means of natural science. And where natural science achieved the most significant advances, it did not do so by means of sense perception, but by virtue of something quite different. This has already been pointed out. In a particular field prior to Copernicus, reliance was placed on sense perception. What was the result? It was believed, the earth stood still in cosmic space and the sun and other planets circled around it. Then came Copernicus, who had the courage not to rely on sense observation. He had the courage to say that no empirical discoveries are made in relying on sense perception alone, but that empirical discoveries are arrived at in combining in a strict manner in one's thinking all that has previously been observed. People then followed in his footsteps; and it misconstrues the actual facts altogether to believe that natural science attained its present height in that humanity placed reliance only on the senses.

But what humanity acquired by means of natural science also imprinted itself on souls. The ideas of natural science live in our souls, exerting an educational effect. Quite apart from their content, the natural sciences have been an educational medium. And today, in that natural scientific ideas are actually not only thought but also lived, human beings have become ready of themselves to feel drawn to spiritual science. Humanity had first to become mature for this. The centuries since the time of Leonardo had to pass for this to come about.

Now let us consider Leonardo. He enters an age having, in an earlier existence, belonged among those initiates who had elevated themselves in the ancient manner to apprehending the secrets of the universe. Born into the fifteenth century, he could not bring this to realization. Though someone may have entered intensely into the cosmic secrets in earlier incarnations, as made possible in those earlier earth-lives, how this is to be brought to consciousness in a new existence depends upon the external corporeality. A physical body of the fifteenth century could not bring to expression what Leonardo had assimilated in an earlier existence of inner thoughts, inner feelings and creative power. What he had brought with him from earlier times took effect only in the form of a certain strength. In the age preceding the flowering of the natural sciences, he felt constrained by a body that placed limits upon him. The times were approaching—the dawn of which had already arrived—when people wanted only to look into the world of sense and to think only by means of reason bound to the instrument of the brain. Leonardo felt drawn everywhere to the spirit, having brought this with him as an impulse from earlier lives. In a grandiose manner, he was impelled to the spirit.

Let us now look at him as an artist in the first place. Art had become quite different in the age in which Leonardo lived from what it was for instance in Greek times. We may attempt to transpose ourselves, for example, into how a Greek artist created a sculptural figure. What kind of feeling do we have in looking even at the statue of Marcus Aurelius [175 A.D.] in Rome? Never would those who created something like this have proceeded in the manner of Michelangelo or Leonardo, making detailed studies from an external model. The wonderful horse of the Marcus Aurelius statue was quite certainly not studied in the way Leonardo went about studying his horse for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza. How alive are these ancient statues even so! Why is this? It derives from the fact that in Greek times human beings felt themselves the immediate creators of their own bodies, feeling themselves at one with the soul forces of the cosmos. In the times when Greek art arose, one sensed, for example with an arm, all the forces that formed it. One felt one's way into the inner, self-sufficient nature of one's own human form. Things were not viewed from outside, but created from within, while being aware of the actual formative forces. This can even be established quite externally. Taking a look at Greek female figures, we find they are all directly felt. Hence, they are shown at an age when growth is ascendant. Here we sense that the artist created as Nature does, in standing within the spirit of Nature, feeling himself inwardly connected with the spirit of Nature.

This feeling of union with the spirit that lives and weaves through things had been lost in the age of Leonardo. It had to be so, since it would not have been possible otherwise for modern times to arise. This is said not as a critique of the times, but to indicate the underlying facts.

Let us look at how Leonardo went to work in studying say, the movements of the hand, the parts of an animal, or the human physiognomy. He proceeds in having a notion, an inner experience that does not, however, rise to consciousness. This is something that is brought to bear in a living manner in creating these figures, but Leonardo cannot apprehend it from within. He feels as though detached from it, from apprehending it inwardly. And now nothing is sufficient for him. The new natural scientific worldview does not yet exist. He stands there in expectation of this natural scientific worldview, without as yet having it for himself. With his writings, things jump out on every page that are only discovered over the next three hundred years, and in some cases have still not been found even today. Leonardo had the most wonderful ideas that frequently had no effect at all in his own time. We find these ideas both in his written works and in his artistic creations.

Thus, with him we sense the helplessness with which a soul had to appear in an age in which the old way of conceiving things came to an end, and for whom the new world conception had not yet arisen. But this new world conception brought with it that the whole outlook of human beings became splintered, in focussing on details. We see a specialization of the different branches of work. With Leonardo everything still appears unified. He is at the same time fully a painter, fully a musician, fully a philosopher, fully a technician. He united these within himself, having come over from ancient times with great capacities. In the new age he is able everywhere to touch on things, but not to enter into them. And so, in human terms, Leonardo appears as a tragic figure. But, seen from a higher point of view, he is enormously significant, appearing at the turning point of a new age.

One sees this in looking at Leonardo's further achievements. The most significant things were brought by him only up to a certain point; then his students worked on them. And even in the case of such works as the “Saint John” or the “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris, we see that, in consequence of the technical means by which they were produced, they soon lost their lustre. We also see how Leonardo could never be satisfied. Without having the pictures to hand, it is not possible to speak about Leonardo's paintings in detail. Immersing oneself in them, it becomes evident that as an artist Leonardo continually came up against boundaries that he could not surmount. We see how what lived in his soul could not reach the point where from the state of soul experience, it lit up in his consciousness. In lighting up at a certain moment from the level of soul experience in this way, one could shout for joy, but sinks back in pain, since it does not reach clear consciousness. Even for Leonardo himself, this did not come about.

We actually follow Leonardo with rather bitter feelings in seeing how he is sent for by Francis I [king of France from 1515-1547] and, for the last three years of his life, in the residence Francis I had assigned him, spends these years in spiritual contemplation, immersed in the secrets of existence. We encounter him there as a lonely individual who cannot actually any longer have had anything much in common with the world that surrounded him; who had to sense a tremendous contrast between what he felt to be the primal foundation of existence, capable of taking on form by means of art, and what he had been able to bequeath to the world after all only in fragmentary form.

Recognizing this with regard to Leonardo one says to oneself: This is an individual in whom much takes place; an infinite amount goes on in his soul. The impression made on the observer is shattering—considering what is given over to humanity, what is revealed to humanity externally at Leonardo's death and how slight this is, compared to what lived within him! How does it stand with the economy of existence, if we subscribe to the view that human life exhausts itself in what comes into existence externally? How meaningless and pointless does the soul-life of such an individual as Leonardo appear when we see all that went on within him in relation to what he was able to bequeath to the world? What contradiction would result in asserting: this individual may be viewed only in accordance with how he manifested himself in outer life! No, we cannot view such a soul in this way! We must adopt a different standpoint and say: Whatever Leonardo may have given to the world, what he experienced, what he went through inwardly—all that belongs to another world, a supersensible world as compared to our world. And such human beings are above all evidence that, with his soul, the human being stands within supersensible existence. We can say, such souls achieve something of significance with regard to supersensible existence, while what they leave to the world is only a “by-product” of what they undergo otherwise.

We only arrive at a true impression in adding to the stream of external human events, another, a supersensible stream, saying: Something takes place parallel to the sense-perceptible stream, and souls are in fact embedded in the supersensible realm. They live within this realm so as to be the connecting link between the sensible and the supersensible. The existence of such souls as Leonardo's appears meaningful only when we are able to accept the existence of a supersensible realm in which they are embedded. Thus, we apprehend little of Leonardo in looking only at what results from his creative activity. We arrive at the view that this soul still has something to sort out in supersensible existence. We can then say to ourselves: We understand!—In order to be able to reveal various things to humanity over the course of many earth-lives, this soul had to undergo, in that “Leonardo existence,” the circumstance that only the least of what lived within it could come to outer expression. Thus, individuals such as Leonardo are themselves real life-enigmas, embodying cosmic riddles.

What I wanted to put forward today should not be presented in sharply defined concepts. The intention has been rather to provide indications as to how such souls may be approached. Truly, the task of spiritual science is not to provide theories! In all it is capable of, spiritual science should take hold of the entire feeling life of human beings and become an elixir of life—enabling us to gain a new relationship to the world and to life. Spirits such as Leonardo are quite especially suited to make this possibility clear to us. Contemplating spirits like Leonardo, we can say: They enter existence mysteriously, having something of greater importance to express than their age is capable of supporting. Bringing over treasures from earlier times, individuals such as Leonardo enter life in unprepossessing circumstances. Born of an average father and a mother who soon disappears from one's field of vision altogether, having given birth to a natural child, Leonardo was subsequently brought up by average people. Thus, we see him left to himself, yet bringing to expression what he had carried over from earlier lives. In looking at the unfavourable circumstances of his birth, we recognize that they did not prevent the greatest imaginable content of soul from manifesting itself.

We see Leonardo in good health, so complete in himself that it becomes understandable when Goethe states: “Of regular features, well-formed, he stood before humanity as an exemplary human being. And just as the eye's clarity and power of comprehension belong in reality to reason, to the power of judgement, so clarity and comprehension were integral to this artist.” In making use of these words with reference to Leonardo, and they are applicable to him, we can apply them to the youthful Leonardo. We encounter him, fresh in mind and body, full of creative enthusiasm, of a kind of cosmic yearning—a complete human being, an exemplary human being. He is as though born a conqueror, yet likewise born with humour, which he showed on the most diverse occasions. Turning once again to the drawing that rightly counts as a self-portrait, to the old man in whose countenance so much is engraved of painful experience, leaving deep furrows, we see the features around the mouth indicating disharmony. He is ultimately a lonely man, far from his fatherland, living in asylum, at the behest of the king of France—still struggling with questions of cosmic existence—but alone, forsaken, not understood, though appreciated by loyal friends who accompanied him.

Hence the greatness of this spirit presents itself to us as having undergone much suffering, initially entering into life fully, and then departing from it embittered. We look into this countenance and sense the genius of humanity itself looking out from this human countenance. We begin to understand the age, the evening glow in which Leonardo lived, as also the age in which Copernicus, Kepler, Giordano Bruno and Galileo lived—in which a new dawn breaks. We take note of all the limitations and restrictions Leonardo's great soul had to endure. In comprehending the age, we understand this great artist who could ultimately only work with the means available. Looking into Leonardo's countenance with our full powers of understanding, while immersing ourselves in spiritual scientific viewpoints, it is as though the whole character of the age looks out from this countenance. These embittered facial features express indeed in the first place something of the downward inclination of the human spirit. We need to acquaint ourselves with this aspect of Leonardo in order to become aware of the magnitude of the power that had to be there for a Copernicus, a Kepler, a Galileo, a Giordano Bruno to arise.

Actually, we only acquire the proper reverence with respect to the development of the human spirit in feeling the tragedy of Giordano Bruno's being burned at the stake; and also, in learning to deepen this in viewing the powerlessness felt by Leonardo in the preceding, declining age. Leonardo's greatness only becomes clear to us in having a sense for what he was not able to accomplish. And this is connected with something with which we wish to summarize and conclude today's considerations. It is connected with the fact that the human soul can be satisfied after all, even animated, in viewing imperfections—if not so much in viewing small imperfections, nonetheless in viewing the large imperfections where creative activity, on account of its greatness, “dies” in the execution. For, in such “dying” forces we surmise and finally recognize forces that prepare the future. And in the evening glow there arises for us the premonition and the hope of the coming dawn.

In regard to the evolution of humanity we must at all times feel able to say to ourselves, all development takes its course in such a way that wherever what has been created becomes a ruin, we know that out of the ruins new life will always blossom forth.

Someone who takes a popular or scientific book to search some instructions about the relation of the human mind and soul to the outer body can mostly find a sort of the following simile. The sensory impressions that the human being receives from the outside are as it were telegraphic news that is led to the central station of the nervous system, to the brain, via the nerves like wires and is sent out from there again into the organism to evoke the will impulses and so on. Even if for some people such a simile seems to be very likeable, one can say that such a simile should only hide the helplessness compared with the big riddle of mind and soul which one can enclose in the words which should characterise the object of the today's consideration: mind, soul and body of the human being.

Now I have already indicated in the preceding talks that the today's considerations in this area suffer from a basic lack. Just if you position yourself with such a consideration on the ground of the so successful scientific approach in other areas, you cannot get over the prejudice that throws together the soul life with the effectiveness of the real spiritual life in the human being. Today soul and mind or spirit are confused almost everywhere in scientific, in philosophical, and in popular approaches.

That is why the investigations often remain infertile today—apart from the fact that they are infertile of many other reasons—because one does not want to renounce from the prejudice that the human being can be considered without envisaging his structure of three members: body, soul and mind. I have also already indicated in a former talk that spiritual science has to build a bridge from the soul to the mind, as natural sciences have to build a bridge from the soul life to the body. It is soul experience, in the broader sense, undoubtedly—even if the soul experience is based in this case also on the body—if the human being feels hunger, thirst, saturation, respiratory need and the like.

However, even if you develop these sensations ever so much if you try ever so much to increase or decrease the hunger to observe it internally emotionally, or if you compare the sensation of hunger to the saturation and the like, it is impossible to find out for yourself by this mere inner observation of the soul, which bodily bases are the conditions of this soul experience. One has to build the bridge by the known scientific methods in such a way that one goes over from the mere soul experience to that which happens meanwhile in the bodily organisation.

However, it is also impossible to get to any fertile view of the human being as a spiritual being if one only wants to stop with that what the human being experiences internally-emotionally in his thinking, feeling and willing. Mental pictures, feelings, will impulses are the contents of the soul. They surge up and down in the everyday wake day life. One tries to deepen them now and again by going over to a kind of mystic contemplation. However, as far as one is able to go with such a mystic contemplation, one cannot get to any knowledge of the spirit by such mysticism. However, you have to build the bridge from the mere soul experience to the spiritual one if you strive for the knowledge of the spirit, as in the area of the natural sciences the bridge is built from the soul experience to the bodily processes which form the basis of the sensations of hunger, saturation, of the respiratory need and the like. However, you cannot consider the spiritual life of the human being in same way as one goes over from the soul life to the consideration of the bodily organisation. Other methods are necessary there. I have pointed to these methods already in a fundamental way. You find the details in my books How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, Occult Science. An Outline, The Riddle of Man, and in The Riddles of the Soul, et cetera. However, I would like to bring some noteworthy qualities of those methods forward introductorily which can build the bridge from the usual soul life to the spiritual nature of the human being.

There it concerns above all that just many psychologists of the present believe that certain things are simply impossible which spiritual science must absolutely intend. How often psychologists say today that the real soul life cannot be observed. One points to the fact that, for example, you cannot observe tender feelings because they escape from you if you want to observe them. One points out rightly that we feel disturbed, for example, if we have memorised something, recite it, and want to observe ourselves. This is shown in such a way, as if it were a special peculiarity of the soul life. However, just this is necessary to understand that that which is shown there like an impossibility must be intended as spiritual-scientific method. What the biologist what the physiologist does for the body, the spiritual researcher does for the mind, while he is anxious to ascend from the mere everyday introspection and from the mere mystic introspection to that true soul observation whose impossibility should be asserted with the mentioned tip that we cannot observe ourselves while reciting a poem because we are bothered about it. It is not necessary that you get in such exterior things, as reciting a memorised material, to a possibility of introspection, although for someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher it is also necessary.

However, it is inevitable that the spiritual researcher and psychologist attains real introspection while he faces the course of mental pictures and thoughts, also the course of will impulses, of feelings really so that he is present like his own spectator and learns to observe himself really, so that the observer and the observed completely disintegrate. Some people consider this possibility often as something very easy and believe, while natural sciences use strict methods, spiritual science is something that one can easily attain. However, to real spiritual research methodically strict, patient, vigorous progress is necessary in a way, not only as it happens in the outer scientific area, but in such a way that someone who knows both must say that compared with the often many years' pursuit which is necessary to get to serious spiritual-scientific results one can appropriate the methods of natural sciences easier.

For this true introspection, one creates a basis while one tries quite methodically to lead the will into the mental pictures. Thereby you come to meditation in the true sense of the word, not in a dark, mystic sense. In our usual consciousness we are not accustomed to such a meditative life at all, there the thoughts completely follow the course of the outer world with its impressions. Based on his experience of life or also of his worldly wisdom he regulates his inner life, his train of thought, so that he gets around to arranging his thoughts from the inside. However, all that can be at most a preparation of that which I mean here. This you have to attain in slow, patient, vigorous work. You attain it while you bring such regularity and still such arbitrariness into your thoughts that you are sure: in that, which one practices in such a way nothing works of memory, nothing of that can ascend from some more or less forgotten mental pictures, experiences of life and the like. Hence, it is necessary that someone who wants to get to spiritual research settles in such a pursuit of mental pictures which he arranges to himself in clear way, or receives from there or there in clear way so that he can really say at the moment in which he dedicates himself to this course of mental pictures, I survey how I string the one mental picture and the other how I influence the course of mental pictures by my will.

All that is nothing but a preparation of that which should happen, actually, for the mental and spiritual life. Since, indeed, this must be prepared carefully, but it appears in a certain point of development as something objective, as a reality coming from the spiritual outer world.

Only someone who dedicates himself carefully to such inner exercises for a while brings about gradually if he has led arbitrariness into the course of mental pictures and has overcome it again to discover something internally which strings one mental picture, one thought and the other together from the spiritual area, and causes a soul life, controlled by spiritual reality. As the outer observation regulates the mental pictures and thereby brings in necessity, so that they become mediators of the outer reality, the imagining life gradually becomes a mediator of a spiritual reality. You have to regard only just that which I mean here in the same sense as something seriously scientific as natural sciences are. You must not give yourself up to the prejudice that you get thereby into any speculative fiction because you get, indeed, in inner arbitrariness and realise that you can grasp something spiritually real that approaches your imagination from the other side than the side is which corresponds to the outer physical reality. It is for someone who has not dealt much with such things at first hard to imagine what I mean with these things, actually. Only these things that should form the basis of spiritual science are, like the scientific performances in the laboratory et cetera, nothing but subtler developed activities occurring in the outside world. These inner activities of the spiritual researcher are nothing but the continuation of that what also, otherwise, the soul life accomplishes to produce the relationship between the soul life and the spiritual life which is there always but which becomes conscious by these exercises.

I would like to take the starting point from something that can be more comprehensible to characterise what I mean, actually. Someone who deals with human or other living conditions is able to find differences between the representations of the one writer and the other if he gradually appropriates a sensation for it. He will find with the one author that he can be right with that what he says, that he can rather strictly use his method that he is, however, far away from the nature of the things by the way how he says the things. Against it, one can often say with another author, he is simply by how he speaks about the things a person who is close to the inner nature of the things. It provides something that brings you surely to the things. An example of it:

You can have a lot against such an art appreciation as the author Herman Grimm (18128-1901, art historian) practised it, but you have to admit if you have a sensation of it, even if you often do not agree with his explanations even if you find him dilettantish: in his explanations is something by which you are acquainted with the pieces of art, with the artists, even with their personal characters.

This atmosphere in his writings immediately leads to the being of that about which he speaks. You can put the question to yourself: how does such an author get around to differing just in such typical way from others? For someone who is not used to talking about such things in the abstract just the following can arise. You find some sentences, for example, at a place where he speaks in a very nice article about Raphael, which may probably sound irritating to pedantic, sober scholars. There he says what you would feel according to his opinion if you met Raphael today, and how you would feel quite different if you met Michelangelo today.—Speaking such stuff in a scientific treatise is for some people daydreaming from the start, isn't that so? Of course, one can absolutely understand such a judgement. You find such weird remarks with Herman Grimm at numerous places. One would like to say, he dedicates himself to certain connections of mental pictures from the start about which he knows of course that they cannot become immediate reality, and wants to say nothing special about the outer reality with such remarks. However, someone who has dedicated himself repeatedly to such lines of thought would realise—indeed, now not in this area, because in this area such lines of thought lead to nothing at all—probably in other areas that his soul forces were set in motion so that he can behold deeper into the things and can express them more accurately than others do who despise to do such “unnecessary” lines of thought.

That matters, and I would like to emphasise it. If you do lines of thought in your inside to produce these lines of thought only, to put your thinking in motion, so that it has a possible relationship with reality, and if you refrain from wanting something else with these lines of thought than to bring your thinking in a certain current of development, then your thinking, your soul faculties become nimbler at first. Then the fruit of it appears in quite different areas of consideration. You have to separate both strictly. Someone who is not able to do this gets to pipe dreams, to all kinds of hypotheses. However, to someone who has the self-control to know exactly that such activation of the thinking has only subjective meaning at first who puts the power from such activity of the thinking in motion in the soul, the fruits of it appear at another time. Taking this as starting point Herman Grimm could make historical remarks in his treatises about Macaulay (Thomas Babington M., 1800-1859, British historian, poet and politician), Frederick the Great (1712-1786, Prussian king since 1740) and others which remind of that what spiritual science has to say about the life of the soul and the mind. I do not want to say with it that Herman Grimm was already a spiritual researcher; he just rejects this. I also do not want to say with it that that what I have characterised with him is more than something that can already take place in the usual consciousness. While you develop such a thing and practise it on and on, you lead the will into the imagining and you grasp the spiritual necessity in the imagining.

However, one has to add something else. I have already pointed to the fact that it is important in the development of the spiritual researcher that he can dedicate himself to the so-called limiting points of cognition. Du Bois-Reymond (Emil D. B.-R., 1818-1896, German physician and physiologist) speaks of seven world riddles as limiting points beyond which the human cognition cannot get. Two points form just the starting point of spiritual-scientific investigations. The one is that you feel in the inner life at first what is said with such a border issue, actually. I like to point with pleasure to persons on such occasion who really strive for knowledge. As an example, I cite Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887, German aesthetician). When this treated the important subject of human dream fantasies, he came to such a border issue. He said to himself, if I look at the relation of the soul life to the body life, it is most certain that the soul cannot be in the body, but it is as certain that the soul cannot be somewhere beyond the body. Someone who develops such a thinking which does not strive for knowledge according to common methods, but according to inner necessary currents of the soul life, has often to say to himself, you are at a point where all mental pictures which are due to the sensory observations, to the whole conscious life do not get you anywhere. Now you can stop at such limiting points and say, well, there is just a border, beyond which the human being cannot come. You are mistaken, while you say this. However, about that I do not want to speak.

The point is that you try just in such limiting points to penetrate with your complete soul life that you try to settle in a real contradiction that shows the spiritual-mental reality as an outer inconsistent reality appears if a plant once shows a green leaf, some other time a yellow petal. In reality, the contradictions also come into being. If you experience them instead of approaching them with your usual logical thinking if you approach them with the full living inner soul being if you let a contradiction live out in the soul and do not approach it with the prejudice of life and want to dissolve it, you notice how it increases, how something really appears there that you can compare to the following, as I have done in my book The Riddles of the Soul.

If a lower living being has no sense of touch at first, but only an inner surging life, and gradually stumbles against the outside world, that what was before only inner surging life changes into the sense of touch. That is a usual scientific idea. Then the sense of touch differentiates again, so that as it were by the collision of the inner life with the outside world the latter becomes inner experience. You can apply this picture of the sense of touch to that mental-spiritual experience which the spiritual researcher has to go through. He lets such limiting points of cognition live out in his soul. Then it is in such a way, as if the inner life is not confronted with a physical outside world, but with a spiritual world and a spiritual sense of touch, which then differentiates further and wants to become what one can call spiritual eyes, spiritual ears figuratively. However, it is far from any preoccupation with such border issues of cognition up to that what I have called beholding consciousness in my book The Riddle of Man. However, one can develop this beholding consciousness.

One has to consider this one thing. The other is that you find out just with such an inner spiritual-mental activity that you cannot penetrate into the spiritual world with the faculty of judgement that you have gained in the sensory world, not even in the negative sense that one says that the human cognition cannot get beyond itself at this point. You have rather to refrain from penetrating into the spiritual world, before you have prepared yourself by these and similar exercises to penetrate really into the spiritual world. For a certain resignation, a certain renunciation belongs to it. While as a rule the human being is used to putting up hypotheses and all kinds of logical conclusions about that what could be or not be beyond the physical experience, the spiritual researcher has not only to get to an inner conviction, but to an inner intellectual virtue not to use for the characteristic of the spiritual world what comes only from the physical-sensory reality. You have to appropriate this renunciation first; it must become a habitual soul quality. Then you bring yourself to the knowledge that the soul has to make itself ripe for it first to penetrate into the spiritual world. This virtue also supports the introduction of the will into the imagining life as I have described it. This brings you to the point where you can practise that introspection of which I have spoken just now, with which you can really be your own spectator, while the thoughts, feelings, and will impulses are proceeding.

Only by such true introspection, the human being develops a spiritual activity about which he knows by experience that it is performed not with the help of the body because the human being with his true ego is now beyond the body. This mental picture is quite unusual admittedly. Since everything of the other worldviews tends to deny the possibility that the human being can develop a soul life which is independent of the body. If in this way the results of the introspection are stated, one criticises them with that which one has gained in the outer. One cannot cope with it. One creates misunderstandings about misunderstandings simply because any spiritual research is based on something opposite that forms the basis of the scientific way of thinking. There the thinking and the methodical development of thinking is so organised in experiments et cetera that the human being applies the scientific methods that are developed with the faculty of judgement and the reason to learn nature's secrets. This is quite natural on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. One uses the same power of thinking and imagining to develop all kinds of scientific methods in spiritual science to prepare the soul first, so that it can observe the results of spiritual science.

This serves to prepare the soul, so that it can observe the phenomena of the soul life in a way that is free from the body. The human being can thereby advance from the soul to the spirit as he advances from the soul to the body with scientific methods. So that you can say, already the whole way of the proving and judging thinking must become different in spiritual science. It must not be absent, but what one reaches with it is the ability of observing because one has applied the methods of the outer science to the development of the soul first.

Thus in the beginning the spiritual researcher prepares himself with the same means with which science gets, otherwise, to its results, to be able to observe spiritually. Thereby that originates what I reluctantly call clairvoyant beholding of the spiritual world, reluctantly because even today one points often to older unusual soul conditions and confuses the strict serious method of spiritual science intentionally or accidentally with all kinds of pathological and dilettantish methods if one speaks of the clairvoyant beholding of the outer world. About such things, I will speak in detail in the talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious.

Now one can observe the soul life in such a way that the observation does not stop only at the soul experience, but points to the spirit. I would like to mention two quintessential points at first. While the human being gets to true introspection which is carried out beyond the body and thereby faces the spirit, he attains a view not only of the relationship of the usual wake state to the usual sleep as an immediate result of observation but above all of that what the phenomena of awakening and falling asleep are. It is still the destiny of spiritual science today that it speaks not only of unknown things, but that it has to speak in quite different way about that what is involved in the consciousness of every human being.

One has to add to this that spiritual science must use words that are coined for the usual life. This causes some difficulties because spiritual science must use the same words now and again already in another direction. It has to go back to known phenomena of life to be able to illuminate the spiritual realm starting from them. The human being knows the alternating conditions of sleeping and waking if one speaks from the point of consciousness at first, on one side as the time in which the consciousness exists from awakening up to falling asleep, and on the other side the time in which the consciousness has disappeared in darkness, in the sleeping consciousness. The spiritual researcher knows that it is so weak that one normally speaks of the absence of the consciousness in sleep. Now, these both alternating conditions are suitable to move some way into the riddle of the human being already by a realistic consideration. From the start, it must strike everybody that the real human being cannot begin with falling asleep and awakening anew. The mental-spiritual being of the human being which lives, otherwise, while awake as a consciousness must also exist in sleep. However, for the usual consciousness the thing is in such a way that the human being cannot consider himself in sleep that he cannot compare, hence, the waking state to the sleeping state internally spiritually. Externally scientifically, it is another matter. Now it concerns that one gets closer to these things if one really ascends from the usual sensory observation to the spiritual observation in such a way that one envisages thinking, feeling, and willing.

We turn our attention upon the imagining and thinking at first. The human being considers it as a rule in such a way that he knows: I am awake from awakening to falling asleep. My thoughts position themselves in my usual awake life. The usual consciousness cannot get to another judgement. It is different if the soul life has prepared itself with such exercises to a spiritual observation. Then one can observe this inner expansion world, the awake consciousness generally from awakening to falling asleep. It is strange, that here serious naturalists meet with that what spiritual science brings to light from another side. However, natural sciences can only build a bridge to the soul life going out from the investigation of the body. They refuse even today to speak about that about which I speak here. Hence, the naturalists speak another language than the spiritual researcher does. However, the things are to be found. Thus interesting investigations have appeared, for example, recently in scientific area by the researcher Julius Pikler (1864-1952, Hungarian physician, politician) who envisages the awake consciousness quite unlike one was used in biology up to now. Of course, he does not examine such a thing spiritual-scientifically. Hence, he takes something as basis that is not more than a word. Pikler speaks of a “drive of waking” which keeps the human being alert up to falling asleep, which is there, even if no special thoughts and mental pictures are there which is said to appear as such in particular in boredom. I wanted to point to it only to show that also from the other side one works on it.

Spiritual science cannot simply take any term or any hypothetical force as basis where a phenomenon exists but has to observe it. Indeed, it observes what the human soul experiences while awake. It observes the steady flow of the conscious day life from awakening up to falling asleep. It finds the way in particular if it observes the intrusion of thoughts and mental pictures in this simple waking state with its methods of observation. There arises for the spiritual researcher that the usual waking state is interrupted by a partial falling asleep in the experience of thoughts. We wake in such a way that we perpetually lower the waking state to partial sleeping, while we move the mental pictures into the waking state. We get to know the relation of the soul to the imagining life only because we can observe how the usually intensive waking state is not diminished as strongly as in the dreamless sleep and the thought which may be evoked by a perception falls into this decrease every time. We do not experience the usual waking state in a steady intensity, but it is diminished perpetually if we grasp thoughts. What exists, otherwise, more or less dulled in sleep continues into the awake life. Thereby you become able to differentiate what you usually have as a coloured succession of mental pictures while awake. What one knows, otherwise, as waking and sleeping of equal intensity, you have to learn to imagine with different degrees of intensity. You must be able to observe the complete waking state, the weakened waking state, the complete sleeping state, the weakened sleeping state and so on.

Thus, you get to know gradually what one does not consider, otherwise, in the consciousness. Thereby one can also envisage the waking state independently by observation to which the spiritual eye must be created first. Then you need no proofs of what you see, but you just behold it. There you become able to regard a view as right, as given by experience about which the present psychology speaks exceptionally seldom. However, once a psychologist spoke very nicely, whom one appreciates too little.

Here you are at one of those points, which are so interesting for the development of spiritual research. This is not something new, but something that should be built up only in a systematic roundup for which the beginnings have already appeared with those who struggled with knowledge. Fortlage (Karl F., 1806-1881, German philosopher) speaks about it once, and Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906, philosopher) reproves him, that, actually, the usual consciousness is dying perpetually. It is a weird, courageous assertion, which is to be confirmed scientifically, although natural sciences interpret the concerning facts wrongly; read, for example, the investigations of Kassowitz (Max K., 1842-1913, Austrian paediatrician).

Fortlage realises that that by which consciousness originates is not only based on the growing life, but that just if the conscious life appears in the soul this life must die in the human organism, so that we carry death through our whole conscious life partially in ourselves. While we form mental pictures, something is destroyed in our nervous system that, however, immediately regenerates again. Development follows destruction again. The conscious soul life is based on destructive processes. Fortlage says, if the partial death that always appears in a part of the body, in the brain, while forming the consciousness, seized the whole body each time as the physical death does it, the human being would have to die perpetually. As to Fortlage the physical death only expresses itself as a whole once what the consciousness is perpetually based on.

Hence, Fortlage can hypothetically conclude because he does not yet have the spiritual beholding that we deal with a partial death each time, if our usual consciousness appears, that the general death is the merging of a consciousness into other conditions, which the human being develops for the spiritual world after death. There appears like a silver lining in no uncertain manner what spiritual science develops more and more exactly. Science shows that the whole nature of the human being that is considered rightly from the viewpoint of evolution today must not only considered from this viewpoint. Now I do not expand this consideration beyond the human being; we shall thoroughly speak later about nature where we can enter into such questions.

If one stops at the human being, one has to consider him in such a way that one knows that a development of growing life takes place, but perpetually also a destructive process, a retrograde development. The organs of this destructive process are mainly in the nervous system. The mental consciousness intervenes in the human being while it lets the processes of growing alternate with destructive processes. The whole awake life from the awakening up to falling asleep is based on the fact that with the awakening the mental-spiritual that has separated with falling asleep from the body immerses in the body and that what is progressive development from falling asleep up to awakening changes into retrograde development in the nervous system.

While the human being is thinking, he has to destroy, he must cause death processes in his nerves to make way for the work of the spiritual-mental. Natural sciences will confirm this more and more from the other side. The spiritual researcher advances from the spiritual-mental to the bodily and shows that, while with the awakening the spiritual-mental flows into the bodily, destruction takes place, until the destruction has advanced so far that the progressive development must appear with the beginning of sleep again. The evenly progressive waking state is based on the fact that by the mental-spiritual in the human body repeatedly a proper, a legitimate destructive process takes place, contrary to that current which lives in the usual waking which is active in the forces which let us as children grow and thrive. If we put the imagining, the thinking in the usual waking state, we work the other way again.

There we bring parts of development, partial states of sleep into the destructive process from the bodily development, so that we can say: it is weakened by processes which represent quite weakly what exists in the growth, that state which extends about the usual awake life because it is destroyed. The spiritual researcher realises now that this destruction, this continuously progressing process from the awakening up to falling asleep is the effect of the spirit in the human being. Spirit destroys, and within this destruction, those activities of imagining and thinking assert themselves in which the soul uses the constructive processes to put them in the spiritual destructive processes. Here we see mind, soul, and body intertwining. The spiritual researcher does not want to speak about the spiritual-mental in a dilettantish way and to disregard that what happens in the body, just because he himself observes that the spirit does not work in such a way that it expresses the processes of growth, of development, which are wholly physical processes, but these contrary processes. While the spiritual researcher gets to know that what the mind accomplishes on the body, he also gets to know again how the soul uses the bodily processes to diminish the spiritual processes, while it moves the mental pictures into the destructive process that the mind performs.

As well as the spiritual researcher on one side recognises in the mental pictures which are involved in the usual waking state a partial falling asleep, he learns to recognise on the other side that every time a will impulse positions itself in the soul life, this appears like an increase of the waking state. Thinking, imagining is like a reduction of the waking state, the will impulse is like an awakening of that state which prevails from the awakening up to falling asleep in relation to the will life that is so vague that one can call it a sleeping life even if one is waking. What does the human being know, while he carries out any will impulse, what proceeds in his arm? It is like an awakening every time a will impulse emerges.

With it, I have indicated how the real observer who has ascended to the true introspection can understand the work of the human soul forces and mental powers in the spiritual. While he advances with his methods further, he can get to know that ego that he experiences in this introspection with which he just does the introspection. This ego does not reveal itself to philosophical speculations; one can only experience it. If it is experienced, one gets to know by immediate view what I have now characterised sketchily. The human being with his usual consciousness cannot help believing, envisaging the forces of growing only, that gradually from the bodily developmental processes that develops which is expressed in the mental as ego. Someone who gets to know the ego by true introspection realises that this is a fallacy—but it is a necessary fallacy for the usual consciousness.

There you learn to recognise that that what happens in the body in the ongoing developmental processes relates to the true ego as the lung to the air. As little the lung produces the air, as little the human body creates the ego anyhow. Only as long as one does not know the real spiritual-mental, one commits the necessary fallacy that this ego has anything to do with the body.

However, the spiritual researcher leaves the body with his methods while investigating the ego, as well as that who wants to look at the air has to leave the lung. Thus, the spiritual researcher recognises by real observation that this self, this spiritual-mental of the human being, enters the physical body at birth, at conception respectively that he gets from the line of heredity. He recognises that this ego, which descends from the spiritual world, receives the body that the body inhales this ego, and the human being exhales it again if he dies. This is a pictorial expression how the spiritual-mental that descends from the spiritual world is connected with the physical-bodily.

Just then, however, an essential differentiation of the spiritual and the mental arises for the spiritual researcher also with the transition of the human being to the mental-spiritual surroundings in which he lives with that part of his being that goes through birth and death which is the everlasting, immortal in the human being compared with the transient body. This difference of the mental and the spiritual arises because we learn to recognise something in the mental which breaks away from the human being that is as it were only a died away keynote of that which you experience, otherwise, as thinking, feeling and willing. I would like to express myself as follows: we take a chanted song. We can regard the words of the song as a poem at first and can continue this consideration in listening the chanted song. However, we can also refrain from the contents of the words while singing and can pay attention to the music only. You can grasp the whole experience of the human being in thinking, feeling, and willing in such a way that you can also grasp an undercurrent there if you do not go into the contents of thinking, feeling, and willing.

To express myself even more clearly, I would like to characterise the matter still from another side. You all know that certain Asian people ascend to the spiritual-mental by methods about which I have said in my talks and books repeatedly that they are not applicable to our western cultural development in the same way that here we have to apply other methods to the conscious spiritual research. However, I may adduce something as comparison. You know that the Asian human beings get to a certain cognition of the soul because they recite mantras over and over again. One laughs in the West at the repetitions in the speeches of Buddha and does not know that for the Eastern human beings this repetition of certain sentences is a necessity because thereby just a certain undercurrent is attained in the inner absorption of the matter, disregarding the immediate contents. One hears music living in the soul with these mantras. The soul puts itself in such a thing. In my books, you can find that we do that in the Western spiritual development in a more spiritual-mental way that we do not resort to such a repeated singing or speaking of mantras. However, what is attained there in other way can be explained by the fact that one points out that one witnesses an undercurrent in thinking, feeling, and willing.

If one resorts to the full introspection, maintaining the contents of thinking, feeling and willing, as you have it in the usual awake consciousness, you discover the work of the spirit the easiest. Against it the mental is something more intimate, it often escapes from you. You have to do quite difficult and lengthy exercises if you want to find out it. While you can find out relatively easily that the spirit is destructive in the ongoing waking state, you have to apply subtler, more intimate exercises to observe that the emerging mental pictures are partial sleeping states. However, if you get to this more intimate experience in the soul, you also get from the mere subjective soul life to the objective soul life. Then you do not pursue the spiritual-mental only in that spiritual realm in which the human being lives between death and a new birth, now in a wholly spiritual experience, but you can pursue the mental in its state before birth and in its postmortal state. As strange as it still sounds to the modern human being, one can find out these things. Due to this experience which the Oriental develops just in a way which is so close to the intimate soul life he realised sooner than the Westerner did that the whole human soul life takes place in repeated lives on earth that the repeated lives on earth really result from observation.

It is an observation result of the mental experience. To experience the imperishable that goes through births and deaths in its spirituality is something else than this mental experience as it appears in the repeated lives on earth. It is like a specialisation of the spiritual experience.

As one sees the imagining being involved in the single human being as partial sleeping, one can observe in the outer world how in that spiritual realm, which one discovers as a scene of the everlasting spiritual in the human being, the mental is involved, while it specifies the general-everlasting spiritual life in repeated lives on earth. Those have begun once and will end once. I speak about that in the next talk.

You attain that by the real development of the mental abilities that not everybody needs to appropriate. However, every human being has the sense for truth. Unless prejudices cloud your sense for truth, you can agree with that which the spiritual researcher has to say, also before you yourself have become a spiritual researcher. Since the seer differs from other people as someone differs who watches the watchmaker from that who sees the clock only. He who sees the clock knows that it has originated from the intellectual activity of the watchmaker; he does not need watching the watchmaker. While the spiritual researcher describes from his research by visionary observation how that comes about what is in the everyday life, someone who observes this immediately will find the said confirmed everywhere, even if he himself is no spiritual researcher.

Even if this appears as something paradox in the general cultural development how the spiritual researcher has to think about body, soul and mind of the human being, that will also arise to spiritual research in the course of time—while natural sciences work from the other side on that what spiritual research has to say—what has arisen for natural sciences slowly and gradually. Consider only that there was a time when certain prejudices prevented the emergence of modern physiology and biology. In a similar way one has a prejudice to build the bridge from the human soul life to that what proceeds in the human body, while the soul life takes place. The study of anatomy became also only possible in the course of the Middle Ages. Before a prejudice was an obstacle to add that what happens there in the body to that what the soul can experience inwardly. Today spiritual science is in the same position. Even if one does not believe it, the today's prejudices are of the same value and come from the same causes. As in the Middle Ages one did not want to permit that bodies were dissected to recognise that what happens in them as a condition of the soul life, the most serious scientists are reluctant even today to investigate the spirit with spiritual-scientific methods. As the Middle Ages got around gradually to releasing the scientific investigation of the human body, the cultural development will also involve that the investigation of the spirit which is not identical with the soul is released to spiritual science.

Whether one goes to scientifically minded human beings, whether one goes to other psychologists and comes with spiritual-scientific results, one experiences the same, only in another field, what the biography of Galilei tells.

Up to Galilei's times the prejudice prevailed which continued by an ambiguous conception of Aristotle during the whole Middle Ages that the nerves arise from the heart. Galilei said to a friend that this were a prejudice. The friend was a strictly religious follower of Aristotle. He said, what I can read in Aristotle is true, and there you can read that the nerves arise from the heart. Then Galilei showed him at a corpse that the nerves arise from the brain, not from the heart that Aristotle had not recognised this because such anatomical studies were not yet usual. However, the follower of Aristotle remained unbelieving. Although he realised that the nerves arise from the brain, he said, indeed, the appearance militates for you, but Aristotle says something different, and if a contradiction is between Aristotle and nature, I do not trust nature but Aristotle. This happened really.

Still today, it is this way. Go to those who want to found psychic research in the old sense from a philosophical viewpoint, go to those who want to found psychic research scientifically, they state that one has anyhow to explain that from the psychic only which forms the basis of the soul phenomena coming from the mind or the body. If one points ever so much to facts of spiritual observation, one answers out of the same spirit, if a contradiction exists between that which Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, philosopher, physiologist, psychologist) or Paulsen (Friedrich P., 1846-1908, German philosopher and educator) or any authority say and that which spiritual science shows by spiritual observation, then we do not trust spiritual observation but that which one can read in the books to which we are accustomed in this time without authority. Since today one does no longer believe in authorities, but—indeed, in such a way that one does not notice it—in that which is officially labelled anyhow. Spiritual science will struggle through as well as natural sciences struggled through concerning the investigation of the body.

Naturalists like Du Bois-Reymond and others state that where the supersensible begins science must stop. I have already pointed in a former talk to the fallacy that happens there. Where from did it originate? Indeed, one felt—and Du Bois-Reymond felt rather clearly—that the human being is rooted in something spiritual. However, one must recognise this spiritual only by development of spiritual-scientific methods as the ground from which the mental of the human being originates. Modern science wants to make the things clear, while it envisages that what one can perceive with the senses; since the roots in the spiritual ground escape from it. Science does it like somebody who digs out a tree to face it clearly. Then he faces it clearly but the tree withers. Thus, modern science has dug out the tree of knowledge. However, just as the tree dug out from its ground dries up, knowledge also dries up which one digs out of the spiritual ground. Such a sentence like that of Du Bois-Reymond that science stops where the supersensible begins will be linked up to the contrary conviction in future. One will recognise, if one does not want to recognise the supersensible down to the natural phenomena, one removes the tree of knowledge from its topsoil and makes knowledge dry up. One does not say in future where the supersensible begins, science stops, but one experiences if one wants to found knowledge in the way that one takes out it from the spiritual ground that where in the human spiritual life the supersensible stops science cannot prosper that there a real science cannot originate beyond the supersensible, but that where the supersensible stops a dead science will only be.

As a continuation of yesterday's lecture, certain things must be said that are connected with subjects spoken of here a week ago. As a number of friends who were not then present are here for a special meeting, I will repeat certain matters in the lectures still to be given. This may be useful, because from remarks that have been made to me, it is obvious that important points have been misunderstood.

At the very outset let us be quite clear that the course of evolution as we have learned to know it in connection with great cosmic happenings proceeds both in these great cosmic phenomena and in the phenomena of human historical development. The so-called fourth post-Atlantean epoch, during which the Greco-Roman culture developed and attained its greatness, must be of particular interest to us in our age. As you know, from the standpoint of the science of the spirit this fourth epoch lasted until the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D. With the dawning of the fifteenth century, trends began to manifest in European culture of which we heard, for instance, in yesterday's lecture.

When we picture the nature of the Greco-Roman epoch, it appears to us as a kind of recurrence or revival of what spread over the earth as human culture during the period of Atlantis. It has often been said that the thoughts, the perceptions, and also the social life of the Greeks become intelligible when we regard this fourth post-Atlantean culture—although Atlantean culture was, of course, much more elemental and instinctive. It assumed a more spiritual form in the culture of Greece and Rome. What had been direct experience in Atlantis was transposed into reality in Greece through fantasy, imagination and thoughts, and through the will, which, in turn, was inspired, by fantasy and imagination. We must realize that this Greco-Roman culture constituted a deep disillusionment for the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. The luciferic and ahrimanic powers of the hierarchy standing nearest to the human hierarchy, desired that the Atlantean culture, as it had been in Atlantis, should simply re-appear in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. In other words it was the intention of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers that everything that had constituted the essential nature of Atlantean culture should be merely repeated during the Greco-Roman age. (You can read about this in An Outline of Occult Science or in the book, Cosmic Memory.)

This plan was frustrated inasmuch as humanity was raised to a higher stage consistent with the post-Atlantean era. What was essentially new and great in Greek and Roman culture constituted a spiritual disillusionment for the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. Through their different influences these powers desired to educate the Greeks and so to develop their powers of fantasy that the souls of men would gradually have become weary of the earth, would lose their inclination to incarnate further on the earth, and would tend to withdraw, as souls, from the earth in order to found a realm and planet of their own. The effect of this influence was annulled through the leadership of those powers we call the normal hierarchies, whereby the quality of fantasy and imagination in the Greeks, which also influenced their social life, was transformed into joy in the earthly. The Greek received into his nature such a joy in the life of earth and of the senses that he had no desire to live merely in the world of imagination where his soul would be alienated from earthly existence, but inclined rather to the attitude expressed in the well known words, “Better to be a beggar on the earth, than a king in the realm of shades.” This joy in life between birth and death enabled the normal powers to avert from the Greeks the danger inherent in the plan of the luciferic powers, namely, to lead away the souls of men so that the bodies still to be born on the earth would have gone about without egos, and the souls would have departed to a special planet of their own.

In Roman culture, on the other hand, Ahriman's aim was to help Luciferic by shaping the Roman Empire and what followed it in such a way that it would have become a great earthly mechanism for ego-less human beings. In this way he would have been of assistance to Lucifer. Whereas Lucifer's desire was to extract the juice of the lemons for himself, as it were, Ahriman, working in the Roman Empire, set out to thoroughly squeeze the lemons and to create an entirely mechanistic state organization. Thus do Ahriman and Lucifer play into each other's hands. The plan was frustrated by the development in a preeminently egoistic sense in the people of the Roman Empire of the concept of Civis, the citizen. Human egoism, be it remembered, can only develop in physical existence on the earth. Thereby Ahriman's plan to make men into ego-less beings was frustrated. It was precisely the bleakness, the lack of fantasy in Roman culture, the egoism in Roman politics and system of rights that thwarted Ahriman's plan.

The Greek and the Roman epochs were a great disillusionment for Ahriman and Lucifer. Once again they had not attained their goal. The destiny of Ahriman and Lucifer is that they work with their forces in earth evolution and repeatedly make the greatest efforts to hold back the wider progress of evolution; they try to establish a realm for themselves, and have again and again to suffer disillusionment. As I have said before, to ask why Lucifer and Ahriman are unable to perceive that their strivings will ultimately be of no avail is to judge the spiritual by human standards. Lucifer and Ahriman have a faculty of judgment different from that of man. We cannot judge from the human standpoint what is observed in the spiritual world. If we do so, we should soon be considering ourselves much cleverer than a god, or a being belonging to some higher hierarchical order. As we know, Lucifer and Ahriman, although they are retarded spirits, belong to a hierarchical order higher than that of man. It is therefore understandable that they are repeatedly disillusioned, but their strivings always begin anew.

Then came the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which has definite tasks in the stream of progressive spiritual evolution. Whereas the Greek life of fantasy, and the egoism of Rome were to develop in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the task of the fifth epoch was to develop the gift of material perception. I have characterized this by calling the ideal of material perception, in the sense of Goethe's “primal phenomenon,” the pure perception, the pure beholding of external reality. This faculty could not operate in earlier times because then the perception of material reality was invariably mingled with what came from atavistic clairvoyance. Men did not see the pure phenomenon, and they did not see pure external, material existence as such. They saw external existence veiled in the phantasmagoria of visionary clairvoyance. If people would observe a little more closely they would realize, even from history, that this is so. Plato did not consider sight as being so passive a faculty as we consider it in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Plato, the Greek, says expressly: Sight consists in a kind of fire going out from the eye to the objects. Plato, therefore, still knew something about the activity in sight. This activity had to be laid aside, forgotten, lost, in order that a different faculty belonging to the fifth epoch might arise. This faculty of the fifth epoch, which lasts from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the fourth millennium, consists in the development of the gift of free imagination that arises in complete inner freedom. On the one side, the primal phenomenon; on the other free imagination.

Goethe spoke of the primal phenomenon and also of free imagination. References to what he says in Faust have been made on many occasions. Here we have the beginnings of what must engross evolution in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The fifth epoch will thereby receive its stamp. But in this same epoch human beings will have to battle against attacks of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers that will be stronger than those launched in the days of Greek and Roman culture. Again in this later epoch the aim of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers is to alienate the souls of men from earthly life on the one hand, and on the other so to mechanize earthly life itself, to make its outer form so entirely mechanistic, that it would be impossible for the ego of man to live in the social order of the earth. He would therefore take leave of it to enter a life apart from the earth upon a separate planet.

When we speak of the attacks of luciferic and ahrimanic powers, such things as are here indicated are prepared long beforehand. These attacks begin actually to operate first during the fourth or fifth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but behind the curtains of world history, even before the beginning of this fifth epoch, complete and intense preparation was made by the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. Their plan was to bring all human faculties and human forces of will under the sway of a longing to be alienated from the earth, to leave the earth and build up a separate planetary body, while the earth was to be deserted and left desolate. As I say, the very strongest attacks have been undertaken. Think of what gave to culture its basic tone in the epoch of Atlantis. Lucifer and Ahriman wish, during the post-Atlantean period, to interpose the old Atlantean culture everywhere so that the faculties imparted by the progressive powers are rendered primitive for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and human beings will desire to depart. The attempt, therefore, consisted in placing everything that developed into a service of a world beyond the earth, as I have indicated. Thus, from two sides, from that of Lucifer and that of Ahriman, the spirit reigning in ancient Atlantean life was to be revived in order that the impulses connected with that ancient life might enter into the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

You will remember that in Atlantean times the impulses within the souls of men were turned to the Great Spirit who was designated by a word or sound of which an echo still exists in the Chinese Tao. Such was the designation of the Great Spirit in the time of Atlantis. The luciferic and ahrimanic striving consists essentially in bringing what had come later and what was still to come, into the service of the Tao, into the service of the Great Spirit. This was not, of course, the Great Spirit as he had reigned in Atlantis, but a being who had come after him, a kind of little son. Lucifer and Ahriman strove to resuscitate Atlantean impulses by reckoning, not with the normal powers of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but with the impulses that had remained behind in the service of the Great Spirit Tao. The only possibility of achieving this end was to transfer the impulses that had worked in the culture of the now submerged Atlantis to the regions that had emerged after the Atlantean flood. Thus a part of what had succeeded the Great Spirit passed over to the East, to Asia, as it were, where certain mystery cults were gradually established during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D.

These mystery cults assumed a certain character inasmuch as they were a renewal, a revival, of the ancient cult of Tao in its original form, not in the form in which it still exists among the degenerate Chinese who have intellectualized it. These mystery cults in Asia were a revival of that kind of initiation that led to actual perception of the elemental spiritual, living and weaving beneath the material world of the senses, and to actual perception of the One Great Spirit. Certain priests of these Asian mysteries were initiated into the ancient Atlantean cult, which naturally led to delusions because it was unsuited to this later epoch. One of these priests had attained such an advanced stage in his initiation in Asia that he possessed full knowledge of the nature of the Atlantean impulses and was able to hold actual converse with the successor, the unlawful successor, of the Great Spirit Tao. It was he, who, in Asia, transmitted the inspiration he had received through the Great Spirit, to an external, worldly power, to a pupil who then became known in history as Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan was the pupil of a priest who had been initiated into these Asian mysteries, and he instilled into Genghis Khan the following. The time has now come for divine justice to scour the earth. The charge has been laid upon you to put this divine justice into operation, and you must now place yourself at the head of all those men who, starting out from Asia, can enact divine justice all over the earth. Similar attempts modeled on the campaign of the Huns and so forth, had failed, but now, essentially through the impulse given by this Asian priesthood, the Mongol campaign was set in motion. This campaign was intended to carry into European culture influences that would have caused the souls of men to believe in divine justice, to fall under its sway, and gradually to take leave of the earth without any inclination to return. So the culture of the earth would have been destroyed. This was the inner purpose of the Mongol onslaughts that spread from Asia, and which, as you know, were not overthrown by physical deeds.

Remarkably, at the battle of Liegnitz in the thirteenth century, the Mongols were not conquered but remained the victors. Then, quite inexplicably, they turned back toward Asia without advancing further into Europe. So here too there is actual external evidence that a counterstroke, manifesting in a spiritual way, was put into operation. As has been said, the Europeans had not conquered the Mongols in Silesia; the Europeans had themselves been conquered. Although the Mongols were the victors, they turned back to Asia. But, in a sense, just because the purely external onslaught did not come to pass, or did not go very far, the impulses remained in Europe in the state of distillation in which they would have to operate in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So, in the cultural impulses that came over from the East, there is clearly and yet to be perceived what was intended to be brought to Europe as an aftermath of the mysteries of the Great Spirit.

Another part of the mystery culture of ancient Atlantis made its way, not toward the East, but toward the West, to the lands of America discovered later on by the Europeans. There the more ahrimanic part of the irregular post-Atlantean culture lived itself out. Whereas the luciferic part lived on more in Asia, the ahrimanic part worked more in America. Within America impulses were to arise that could then percolate from the West. Just as those other impulses could work from the East, so these could infiltrate from the West in order that the ahrimanic attack might be made in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Hence, in the West, the more ahrimanic side of the outlived Atlantean mystery culture was promulgated. This led to the establishment of mysteries that inevitably make a most repulsive impression upon those who have grown up in the tender culture of modern times, and do not like to hear the truth but only blessedness, as it is often called. These post-Atlantean mysteries developed especially on the soil of Mexico. Mysteries were established there, but they spread over a large part of the America the Europeans had not yet discovered. If their impulses and workings had been victorious, these mysteries would have driven souls away from the earth. By this means the service performed by Ahriman, the squeezing out of the lemons, would have become effective. The earth would gradually have become desolate, having upon it only the forces of death, whereas any living souls would have departed to found another planet under the leadership of Lucifer and Ahriman.

In order to execute the ahrimanic part of this task, it was necessary for the priests of those ahrimanic Atlantean mysteries to acquire faculties possessing the highest degrees of control and mastery over all the forces of death in earthly working. These forces would have made the earth; together with physical man—for the souls were to depart—into a purely mechanistic realm, a great dead realm in which no ego could have a place. These faculties would have had to be connected also with mastery of the mechanistic element in everything living, of the mechanistic elements in all life. For this reason these mysteries had to be instituted in a truly devilish form because such forces as would have been needed for the powerful aims of Ahriman can only arise when initiations of a special kind are attained. Such were these initiations of the ahrimanic post-Atlantean era in America. Everyone who was to attain a certain degree of knowledge was made to realize that this knowledge is acquired through certain faculties of perception that can only be engendered through an act of murder. Thus nobody whom had not committed murder was admitted to a certain degree of this initiation. The murder was performed under special circumstances. Steps led up to a kind of catafalque, a scaffold-like structure. The one to be murdered was tied to this and his body bent in such a way that his stomach could be excised with a single cut. This operation, the excision of the stomach, had to be performed with great dexterity. Certain experiences arose from the act of having cut into the living organism with such consummate skill, and under such special conditions. These experiences had to be acquired and through them a certain degree of knowledge concerning the mechanization of the earth could then be attained. Every time higher stages of initiation were to be reached, further murders had to be committed.

This cult was dedicated to the successor, the son of the Great Spirit, in the form he had assumed in America, and who was designated by a sound that approximates Taotl. Taotl is an ahrimanic distortion of the successor of Tao. This being, Taotl did not appear in a physical body but only in an etheric form. His arts, which were essentially impulses for the mechanization of earthly culture and of all earthly life, were acquired through these initiations I have described to you.

Now these initiations had a definite purpose. As has been said, the initiate acquired actual powers of black magic, the application of which would have led to the mechanization of the culture of the earth and to the expulsion of all egos, so that the bodies born would no longer have been capable of bearing an ego. But as forces in the world are in perpetual interaction, he who possessed such powers would also have become earth-bound; the initiate himself would have been permanently fettered to the earth forces. His act bound him to forces of which you will be able to learn something tomorrow at the performance of the scene from Faust, if you will follow attentively what the Lemurs represent. By these practices the initiate united himself with the earth forces and with everything that causes death on the earth. Thereby, he would himself have lost his soul. He saved himself from this fate by bringing it about that, as a result of the excision of the stomach, the soul of the one whom he murdered had lost his desire to come to the earth again and also the soul of the victim was enabled, through the intention of the murderer, to draw the murderer's soul into the realm that was to be founded beyond the earth. The soul of the initiated murderer was thus also to be drawn into the kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Many opposing sects were founded with the object of countering this devilish cult. One such sect was that of Tezcatlipoca. He too was a being who did not appear in a physical body but who was known to many of the Mexican initiates, in spite of the fact that he lived only in an etheric body. Tezcatlipoca was a being akin to Jahve or Jehovah. The aim of his cult, working in opposition to those of Taotl, was to establish a Jahve religion suited to the terrible conditions prevailing in Mexico. Tezcatlipoca was a spirit akin to Jahve.

Another sect venerated Quetzalcoatl. He, too, was a being who lived only in an etheric body. Quetzalcoatl was a being of whom we may say that he was connected with the Mercury forces. He was connected with medical art of a certain character. Such beings are always described by those who can perceive them through clairvoyance in such a way that the description conveys the impression of the actual reality. When Quetzalcoatl is described as a figure with a serpent-like body, as a green feathered serpent, this indicates to those who understand such matters that he was an actual being, but one who appears only in an etheric body. This cult continued through many millennia. It was widely practiced, not in public but within the precincts of certain Mexican mysteries, in order that the necessary post-Atlantean cultural impulses might be developed in secret in an ahrimanic form.

A third movement also developed in those regions. Counter-movements were necessary, and had there been none, the influences of these forces upon the culture of Greece and Rome, and later upon the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, would gradually have become so strong that they would have proved invincible to the progressive powers. Thus, a further counter-movement developed as a result of the birth of a being who lived in a physical body in contrast to those beings who only manifested in etheric bodies. The name given to this Being may be expressed by a combination of syllables that approximate Vitzliputzli. Vitzliputzli was a human being, a being who appeared in a physical body. In Vitzliputzli the spiritual individuality lived who, within a human body, took up the fight against the mysteries I have been describing. Among the Mexicans it was said of Vitzliputzli that he was born of a virgin who had conceived by the heavenly influence of a bird having drawn near to her. If by occult means, so far as it is possible, we investigate the life of Vitzliputzli in the Western Hemisphere we find this remarkable fact. He lived at the time when, in the Eastern Hemisphere, the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place, namely, between the years 1 and 33 A.D. That is the remarkable fact. Vitzliputzli was able to make short shrift of the most important initiates of the Mexican mysteries against whom he waged violent war.

It was human being, an initiate, not one of the three spirits, but an initiate, against whom Vitzliputzli fought. Vitzliputzli, a super-sensible being but in human form, battled with every means at his disposal against the initiate who had been responsible for the greatest number of murders, who had attained the greatest power, and of whom it can be said that if his aim had been realized, it would have betokened the victory of this ahrimanic post-Atlantean culture. Vitzliputzli fought against him and—as already said, this can only be discovered by occult means—in the year 33 A.D. succeeded in causing this mightiest black magician to be crucified. Thus, in the other hemisphere of the earth, an event parallel to the Mystery of Golgotha took place, inasmuch as the greatest black magician of all was crucified by the action of Vitzliputzli who had appeared on the earth for this purpose. As a result, the power of these mysteries was thereby broken so far as the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was concerned. It was subsequently revived, however, and history tells of the fate suffered by numerous Europeans who went to America after the discovery of that continent. Many Europeans met their death at the hands of Mexican priest-initiates who bound them to scaffold-like structures and cut out their stomachs with expert skill. This is a matter of historical knowledge, and it was an aftermath of what I have been describing to you.

By these means the ahrimanic impulse was inculcated into the etheric nature of the Western world. As I have said, this impulse in the fourth epoch was broken as a result of the crucifixion of the great initiated black magician by the deed of Vitzliputzli. Nevertheless, so much force remained that a further attack could have been made upon the fifth epoch, having as its aim so to mechanize the earth that the resulting culture would not only have culminated in a mass of purely mechanical contrivances but would have made human beings themselves into such pure homunculi that their egos would have departed. The Europeans were meant to acquire knowledge of this world, and indeed the modern age begins with the people of Europe being drawn to America. Whereas on the one side the campaigns of Genghis Khan and his successors were to have executed as it were a divine justice, on the other side, there was prepared an atmosphere of wild, ahrimanic, elemental forces into which the Europeans were to enter. In such matters complete cooperation takes place between Ahriman and Lucifer. For example, the Europeans were not to go over to that other world with disinterested, unselfish feelings but with hankerings and greed for something concerning which they gave way to all kinds of delusions. Later on it was possible to coarsen what was at first clothed in wonderful fantasy, inasmuch as the discovery by the Europeans of the wealth of external nature in America gave an intense stimulus to their hankerings and greed. But to begin with this was to take a more idealistic form. Thus, here again we have an example of cooperation between the luciferic and ahrimanic forces that always work hand in hand.

A successor of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, had settled in China as a ruler after the Mongols had stormed over to Europe. To Kublai Khan in China there came from Europe a Venetian, Marco Polo. At the court of Kublai Khan, who was himself under the influence of the initiation I have previously described, Marco Polo was deeply and fundamentally influenced. He wrote a book of just such a kind as to excite the imagination of the Europeans concerning the Western Hemisphere. Marco Polo's Travels spoke of a magic land in the West, which stirred up longings to discover it. It was this book that induced Christopher Columbus to set out on his voyage to America. So you see how greed was guided into a world of fantasy. Things work together with extraordinarily clever foresight. You must realize that there is plan in world history in which the evil powers also come into the picture, and that the methods with which history is studied today enable us merely to observe historical life from the external aspect. The only possibility of acquiring real knowledge is to connect the right facts in the light of the science of the spirit, such as the discovery of America at a definite point of time, and the stirrings of desire for a land of fantasy, this desire being, in its turn, an impulse capable of attracting souls away from the earth.

The fitting mood for discovering America at a definite epoch is created by the description of this land of fantasy associated with the stirring up of desire. It is a mood that worked especially upon the subconscious forces in the souls of men, and it was able to work on further in the cultural life. We must think of Marco Polo and his book as being definitely connected with what instigated Christopher Columbus to travel to the West. It is well known that his wish was to discover the magic land; indeed, this is mentioned in ordinary history.

I have here described how the ahrimanic and luciferic impulses work in order to make their attacks upon the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Now, this fifth epoch is such that the human beings lives in a middle sphere of the life of soul. Man's life of soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch must be protected from direct perception of the ahrimanic forces. True, man must learn through the science of the spirit to enter their domain, but external life must be protected in order that the powers that were mentioned both yesterday and today may unfold. These forces that have been brought to the earth in the concrete way that has been described, work below the level of the ordinary normal consciousness. Knowledge of man's life of soul is not attained by saying, as a generalization: There is a realm of consciousness, and there is a realm of subconsciousness, and natural urges and impulses work upward out of the subconscious. It is necessary to know how these urges and impulses are brought into existence on the earth, and to understand the concrete facts. In many domains we see aftermaths in the consciousness that is unfolded by the human soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We can picture the ahrimanic forces that originated in the way described as being active below the threshold of consciousness like lava, like volcanic forces under a soil that emits smoke if one sets fire to paper above it. This shows that beneath the soil there are terrifying forces that pour from every aperture under such circumstances. So it is with the forces of the soul. Beneath what is known to consciousness there are forces that have been influenced by what I have described. Then they press upward. Sometimes they reveal themselves only slightly, but at other times they force their way upward. In the super consciousness the luciferic forces are discharged into the soul as lightning and thunder discharge when the air is to be purified. There is little consciousness of these luciferic forces in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; during this epoch man's consciousness functions in a middle realm.

Investigations into what is thus working in the subconscious reveal that ahrimanic and luciferic attacks come from two directions, and that culture is really created by an interworking between the normal progressive hierarchies and the luciferic and ahrimanic forces. Now just because culture acquires a specific character in this way, human beings in the several regions of the earth are led in different ways to the great problems of life. I shall speak further of the aspect of knowledge and what then passes into the sphere of the social life.

We may assume that certain ahrimanic forces flow into the European culture from the realm of the subconscious in the wake of the impulses of which we have heard. These ahrimanic forces guide in a definite direction impulses that, in their turn, proceed from the good and progressive powers. It can be said that problems of two kinds, strivings for knowledge of two kinds, have arisen. But we must not say that human life has taken on a certain coloring as a result of the ahrimanic forces alone because interworking has taken place between the ahrimanic forces and the normal progressive forces. The minds of men were directed primarily to two problems. First, the problem of natural urges and impulses and second, the problem of birth. These expressions are derived, of course, from the most conspicuous phenomena. A great deal is embraced by these problems but I shall speak only of certain matters.

Let us think of the problem of natural urges and impulses. Under the influence of the forces I have described, human contemplation and striving is directed to a perception, to an experiencing, of man's natural urges and impulses. The mind is directed to these impulses and a certain view of life gradually unfolds. The problem of natural urges and impulses transforms itself into the problem of happiness or prosperity, which assumes a definite character. Hence in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, especially in the culture of the West, you find strivings in connection with the problem of prosperity, strivings directed to the creation of prosperity in life. Such striving is influenced by the forces I have described. Investigations are made, for example, into what can be done in order that the life of human beings on earth may be as happy and prosperous as possible. The establishment of earthly prosperity becomes an ideal. I do not say that ahrimanic forces alone are at work here; the good progressive forces are also present.

Thought about happiness and prosperity is, of course, quite justified. But under the influence of Ahriman it has assumed a certain character as a result of a really devilish tenet. This tenet defines the good in such a way that the good is a said to manifest actually through happiness or prosperity, through the happiness indeed of the greatest number, and connected therewith is the misery of the minority, just as if one were to describe an organism by suggesting that it develops only to the knees and dies off from there down. In such identification of happiness with the good, with virtue, there is an ahrimanic impulse. The Greeks, as represented by their greatest individuals, were impervious to such identification of the concept of prosperity with that of the good. But ahrimanic influences produced a mentality in humanity in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that seeks for the good in prosperity, in happiness. It is from this point of view that you must study the philosophy of Saint-Simon, and all the different efforts to discover principles of national economy, especially in Western Europe; only so will you be able to understand them. Even the thought of Rousseau is not free from this impulse. Such matters must be studied concretely and objectively.

Side by side with the problem of natural urges and impulses is that of sensory existence, existence in the material world of the senses. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the culture resulting from sensory existence ought, in reality, to be ennobled, but the ahrimanic powers desired to get this culture under their own control. Hence, their aim to produce a mentality that considers truth to be found in sensory existence alone. To this extent ahrimanic impulses are active in all that is embraced in the problem of sensory existence, of existence in the world of the senses. This problem of sensory existence is closely connected with the problem of birth, just as the problem of happiness and prosperity is connected with that of natural urges and impulses. In order to vindicate sensory existence and to cause men, through instinct, to regard all evolution as a material process, the genesis of the human being in birth was related directly to the evolution of the animals. There you can see the thread leading over to the problem of birth. Thinkers and seekers in the fifth epoch since the fifteenth century, have been deeply engrossed in the question of the birth processes of the human being. Those who understand the connections know the implications of the problem “How does man enter the earth?” Thought has been directed to the question of whether the soul passes over as soul from father and mother to the child, or whether the soul is implanted by super-sensible powers. To tackle the problem of birth in the widest sense is the task of the post-Atlantean era; it is a problem that arises in complete conformity with normal and regular progress, but it became ahrimanic by being made materialistic, inasmuch as man was placed at the apex of the animal world and, compared with the importance attached to sensory existence, the soul was left out of consideration.

Thus we see streaming in from the one side impulses that strive to distort the problem of natural urges into the problem of prosperity in a way that does not accord with the forces of the good and the moral. To make the problem of natural urges into the problem of the good and the moral would be to work in the direction of the normal forces of progress, for to develop the good and the moral in its full range out of the problem of natural urges would be to discover how to spiritualize this problem of man's natural urges and impulses. That is the normal task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It should rightly be worked out in great imaginations, of which examples are to be found in Goethe's Faust. Also as a result of ahrimanic influences, the problem of birth was diverted to study of evolution in the world of the senses alone. The problem of natural urges was diverted to the problem of material prosperity, and the problem of birth to the problem of evolution in sensory existence.

Bearing all these things in mind, we see how the ahrimanic powers stream into the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I have already said that because ahrimanic forces stream in on the one side, and luciferic forces on the other, the strivings of men become specialized. If things had happened otherwise, four great problems would have filled the feelings of men in all their work and productive activity down to the very tilling of the soil. The first of these problems is that of natural urges and impulses; the second the problem of birth; the third the problem of death, which is concerned not only with how the human being comes to the earth through birth but also how he leaves the earth through the gate of death. The fourth is the problem of evil.

That man's concern with these four problems has not been equally distributed over the fifth epoch is due to the fact that on the one side Ahriman has diverted the problem of natural urges into that of prosperity, and the problem of birth into that of material existence in the world of sense, thereby averting the true solution of these problems. Again, on the other side, Lucifer has directed the thought of the culture that is more Eastern in character to the problem of death and the problem of evil. You can see how fundamentally the whole of Russian spiritual life is dominated by the problems of death and evil, just as the spiritual life of the West is dominated by the problems of natural urges and of birth. In the writings of Soloviev, the most powerful Russian thinker of modern times, it is everywhere apparent that his mind is concerned on the one side with the problem of death, and on the other with the problem of evil. Just as the problem of the natural urges becomes that of prosperity, so in considering the problem of evil, man's thought is turned to the question of sin, of the sinful life. Hence the problem of sin, of redemption, of cleansing from sin, has nowhere been tackled so profoundly as it has been tackled in the East. But at the same time there has been something irregular in the endeavors made to solve this problem. The problem of evil and the problem of sin have been used by luciferic powers in order that, by directing thought to sin, and to sin in the bodily carnal life, the souls might be alienated from earth life.

Whereas in the West, Ahriman makes every effort to enchain man in sensory existence on the earth, to found a kingdom where the good is thought to lie in prosperity, and where the natural urges of men therefore find satisfaction, from the East comes abhorrence of sin, as a result of which souls are to be diverted from the earth, alienated from the earth by Lucifer. From the East attention is directed to the problem of sin and the problem of death. Hence, much contemplative thought in the East is directed to how death is overcome by what came to pass in Christ Himself. Impulses for life are sought in the Resurrection. Implicit in what I said a week ago, that the East turns more to the Christ and the West more to Jesus, there is this truth: that the East has need of the Risen One, the Spirit who is not made manifest in material existence but who overcomes material existence. This is the problem of death. In a treatise that is probably one of the most beautiful writings of Soloviev, he says that if death as a physical phenomenon, a physical fact, were to signify an end of human life, man would resemble all the other animals; he would not be man at all, he would be an animal. Through death the human being resembles the animals. Through the evil of which he is capable, he becomes even worse than the animals. This is a direct indication that Soloviev's thinking is influenced by the problem of death, and by the problem of sin and evil. But we find everywhere contemplation about knowledge concerning the soul, such as how the soul is not affected by death, and external life is arranged in such a way that, even in its justifiable expressions, it tends to take a path leading away from the earth. That is why in the East there are so many sects that subdue and mortify the bodily nature, which flood the body with death, as it were, striving to lead the life of natural impulses and the act of birth ad absurdum, through leanings to sacrifice and the like.

In the West there is the danger of becoming enchained within the life of the senses, whereby this life would become egoless. For if prosperity alone were to be established on the earth, the ego would never dwell there. If the good could only be established by the spread of prosperity over the earth, a state of things would arise such as came to pass in old Atlantis. In the middle period of Atlantean culture, too, great impulses were given that would have led to a state of prosperity in their further course. In the form and effects of what men first felt as an impetus of the good, they perceived a vista of prosperity, and so they gave themselves up to prosperity, devoted themselves wholly to it. The earth had to be purged of Atlantean culture because men had preserved from the good the element of prosperity alone. In the post-Atlantean era, Ahriman strives by direct means to institute a culture of mere prosperity. This would mean pressing out the lemon, the doing away with it! Egos would no longer be able to live if prosperity were the only aim pursued by culture. In short, prosperity and the good, prosperity and virtue are not concepts that can be substituted for one another.

We are gazing here into profound secrets of life. A justified element in the founding of culture, an element that inevitably leads to a certain form of prosperity among men, is so distorted that prosperity per se is set up as the goal. And a culture that would certainly enable the human soul, even in life, to rise above and to know both death and evil is distorted in such a way that contact with what can produce death and evil is avoided from the outset, and the bodily nature is shunned. This was to satisfy the aims of Lucifer.

In this way we must endeavor to understand how real and concrete forces work in human existence, and what is at work beneath and above the conscious life of soul in the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. If you recognize this leitmotif you will be able to understand many things. Only you must not give way to the delusion that everything luciferic and everything ahrimanic must for these reasons be avoided. That would be the very way to succumb to these forces! Everyone who lives together with humanity must realize that Lucifer and Ahriman have been granted their places in the world. If errors could not take place, the human being would never reach inner freedom; freedom could never come to man if he were incapable of forming the erroneous conception that prosperity and the good are identical; he would then have no opportunity of rising above this error. If man were incapable of living under the delusion that through subjugation of the external, earthly life, victory can be snatched from death and from evil, he would never in reality overcome death and sin. It is necessary for these things to pass into the life of man.

We must see to it that the woeful doctrine, “Ah! that is luciferic and must be avoided; that is ahrimanic and must be avoided,” does not obsess us, but that we confront these powers in the right way knowing that it is not for us to steer clear of Lucifer but to conquer his forces for progressive human culture. Nor must we simply steer clear of Ahriman, but conquer Ahriman's forces for the progressive culture of humanity. For into our culture these forces must be received. The battle lies in the fact that Ahriman's aim is to snatch the souls away. The task of humanity is to receive Ahriman together with his strong forces—all those forces of intellect, for instance, which are preeminently forces of intellect but they can also assume a form that is more akin to feeling—those forces that have been applied, for instance, to the problem of how a state is established. Think of the numbers of people who have wrestled with this problem, some more theoretically, some more practically. The most intense efforts have been made to solve this problem. Such forces must be wrested into the good service of humanity, and must not be made ahrimanic by resolutions to have nothing to do with Ahriman, or refusals to be concerned with what, in social problems, for instance, is alleged to proceed from Ahriman. That would lead to nothing.

It is the same as regards Lucifer. The impulse of perception, of feeling, given us by the science of the spirit must help us to confront in the right way the forces that are actually present in the world. Those who are unwilling to do this are like a man who says, “Evil elements! Oh no, I don't like them; I don't like them at all!” Of course, both attitudes are one sided, but we must remember that the working together of the evil and the good, the union of the evil and the good, make the elements fruitful in the state of balance we must bring about in life by learning to be master of the ahrimanic and the luciferic forces. In this state of balance lies the impulse that must be inculcated into life, and that it is the task of the science of the spirit to transmit.

As far as is possible, we shall speak of these things again tomorrow.

It was certainly out of a profound understanding of the world in general but above all out of a deep feeling for art, that Goethe coined the words: “The man to whom nature begins to reveal her open secret feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest exponent—art.” Without sacrificing any of the spirit in Goethe's words we may perhaps complete what he said by adding: “The man to whom art begins to reveal her secret feels an almost invincible antipathy towards her least worthy exponent, the science of aesthetics.” That science is not what I wish to dwell upon today. It seems to me not only true to the spirit of Goethe's words but wholly in sympathy with it if we speak of art and the experiences we can have, and may frequently have had, in connection with art, in the way we like to relate those we had, or still have, with a trusty friend.

When human evolution is in question we speak of “original sin”. Today I don't want to enlarge upon whether the shadow-side of man's life—important as that side is—can be exhausted if we speak of original sin in the singular. But it seems to me that in connection with a perceptive feeling for art and the creations of art it is necessary to speak of two original sins. Certainly one of these is the copying, the reproduction of the physical, that is, of what belongs purely to the world of the senses. The other seems to me to be the wish to express, represent or reveal, through art, the super-physical,. But it becomes very difficult to approach art either perceptively or creatively if both physical and super-physical are rejected. Yet the following seems to me to be in keeping with a sound human feeling: Anyone wishing in art for the physical alone can hardly get beyond a refined form of illustration, imitation which may indeed be raised to the level of art but can never become true art. And it can well be said that it reflects a life of soul run wild when anyone is willing to be satisfied by the merely illustrative element, of copying the physical or what is given in any other way by the sense world alone. It is due, however, to a kind of possession—possession by one's own understanding and reason—when there is a desire for the embodiment of an idea, for the artistic embodiment of what is purely spiritual. Interpreting a world-conception poetically, or through pictorial art, is not compatible with cultured taste; rather does it correspond to a state of barbarism in man's life of feeling Art itself, however, is deeply rooted in life; were this not sort through the whole way in which it arises it would have no justification for existence. For in face of a purely realistic world-conception art must exhibit all manner of unreality and into it must play many of the illusions of life. It is precisely because art is obliged to introduce into life what for a certain understanding is unreal, that, in some way or other, its roots must go deep down into life.

Now it may be said that from a certain boundary of perceptive feeling—from a lower boundary up to one that is higher, which in many people has to be first developed—artistic feeling in life makes its appearance everywhere. Even if not in the form of art itself this feeling arises when, in the ordinary physical existence met with in the world of the senses, what is super-physical and occult somehow makes its presence known. It arises within the super-physical, the result of pure thought, what is feelingly perceived and experienced in spirit—not by means of empty symbols or lifeless allegories but as if it would itself take on life in a physical form—lights up in a form that is perceptible to the senses. That what is ordinarily physical in everyday life has within it the super- physical, as if conjured there by magic—this is perceived by everyone who confines his mood of soul within the two boundaries mentioned.

We can certainly say this: If I am invited by anyone into a room with red walls, I take something for granted about the red walls which has to do with artistic perception. When I am taken into a red room and am face to face with the man who invited me there, I shall have the quite natural feeling that he is about to tell me all kinds of interesting things. If he does not do so I shall feel that my being invited into the red room had something insincere about it and I shall go away dissatisfied. If anyone receives me in a blue room and by his chattering stops me from getting a word in edgeways, the whole situation will make me uncomfortable and I shall complain that in the very colour of his room the man has been lying to me. One is constantly coming across such things in life. On meeting a woman in a red dress we shall feel that she rings untrue if she seems shy; and a woman with curly hair will appear genuine only if rather pert and if she is not pert we shall feel disappointed. It goes without saying that things need not be like that in in life; it is right that life should lead us away from such illusions. But there is a certain limited sphere in our mood of soul in which our feelings tend in this direction.

Naturally, too, these things are not to be taken as universal laws; they may be differently perceived by many people. The fact remains, however, that everyone in life, when confronting the external things of the sense-world, has a feeling that they contain, enchanted within them, what is spiritual—a spiritual situation, a spiritual attitude, a spiritual mood.

It may really appear as if what is seen here to be a demand of our soul, and which so often in our existence affords us bitter disappointment, must call for a special sphere of life to be created for the satisfaction of these particular needs. This special sphere seems to me that of art. Art fashions out of the rest of life precisely what satisfies the tendency lying within the limits of perception mentioned above.

Now it may be that we can fully realise what is experienced in art only by investigating more deeply the processes taking place in the soul, either in artistic creation or in the enjoyment of art. For we need only to have lived a little with art, we need only have made some attempt to get on intimate term with it, to find that the soul-processes in the artist and the lover of art we are about to describe are in a certain sense inverted yet in reality the same. What I am wanting to describe is experienced in advance by the artist; he experiences to begin with a certain process of the soul which then resolves itself into another process; whereas the man who just enjoys works of art experiences first the second process I refer to, and only afterwards the one from which the artist makes his start. Now it seems to me that the difficulty in approaching art psychologically lies in people not going deeply enough into the human soul to grasp what actually evokes the need for art. Perhaps ours is the first age fitted for giving clearer expression to this artistic need. For whatever we may think about a great many of the trends in the art of recent times, whatever we may think about impressionism, expressionism, and so on—the discussion of which often springs from a source that has nothing to do with art—whatever we may think about all this, one thing cannot be denied. We cannot deny that since these trends have prevailed, artistic perceptions, artistic life, out of certain regions of the soul far down in the subconscious and formerly not drawn from thence, have now been brought more to the surface of consciousness. Today there is of necessity more interest in the artistic and art-appreciating processes of man's soul—promoted by all the talk about things such as impressionism and expressionism—than was the case earlier, when the artistic concepts of the scholar were very far from what was actually living in art. In recent times, where the study of art is concerned, concepts, conceptions, have arisen which in a certain respect—at least in comparison with former days—come very near the creations of present-day art.

The life of the soul is really infinitely more profound than is generally supposed. Few people have any idea that, subconsciously and unconsciously, the human being has in the depths of his soul a number of experiences seldom spoken of in ordinary life We have to go deeper down into this life of the soul to discover the mood lying between those two boundaries. Our life of soul swings, as it were, between the various conditions, which all more or less represent two different types. On the one hand there is in man's soul something that seems to surge freely from its depths, something that often torments it, though quite unconsciously. It is something that, when the soul is especially susceptible to the mood mentioned, has a constant urge to discharge itself into consciousness as vision—though this should not take place in the case of a soundly-constituted human being. Our life of soul, when it has a tendency to this mood, is always striving, far more than we recognise, to transform itself in the sense of this vision. A healthy life of soul consists simply in confining the wish for visions to the striving for them, so that they may never actually arise.

This striving after the vision, which in reality exists in the soul of each of us, can be satisfied if we confront the soul with an external impression, an external form—for example, a work of sculpture—containing what is striving to arise but should not succeed in doing so when the soul is sound: the morbid vision. This work of art then, this outer form of what is thus striving to arise, will confine in a beneficial way to the depths of the soul what is actually wanting to become vision. We offer the soul, as it were from outside, the content of the vision, but we offer it a real work of art only if we are able out of our legitimate striving for the vision to divine what form, what plastic impression, we have to offer the soul to compensate for its longing after the visionary. I believe that many of the modern ways of approach which meet us in what is called expressionism get near this truth, and that explanations of them show a groping after what I have just been saying. People do not go far enough, however; they do not look sufficiently deeply into the soul, nor do they come to know that irresistible desire for that is visionary which is actually In the souls of us all. This is however, only the one side, and on becoming familiar with artistic creation and the appreciation of art, we can very well see how there is a source of artistic work which reflects this need of man's soul.

But there is another source of art. The source of which I have just been talking lies in a certain constitution of the human soul, in its desire to have what is visionary as a spontaneous conception. The other source lies in this—that secrets magically conjured within nature herself can be discovered only by allowing oneself, not to make scientific assumptions which are not needed, but to perceive what these deep mysteries really are in the nature that surrounds us.

These deep mysteries in nature around us, when spoken of, may perhaps appear very strange to the consciousness of present-day people. Yet there is something that precisely from our time onwards will make the kind of kind of mysteries to which I refer more and more recognized by the general public. There is in nature something which is not just the growing, sprouting life that delights the healthy souls in nature, there is also what we call death, destruction, what is constantly destroying and overcoming one life by another. Whoever is able to perceive this will also find—to make this excellent example—when confronting the human figure that this figure in its outer realisation in life, is all the time being killed by a higher kind of life. It is the secret of all life that there is ceaseless extermination of lower life by one that is higher. The human form, permeated as it is by the human soul, the human life, is continuously being killed, overcome, by this human life, this human soul. This happens in such a way that the human form may be said to bear something within it which, if left to its own life, would be quite different. It cannot pursue its own life, however, because within it a higher life, a life of another kind, is always deadening it.

On approaching the human form the sculptor, if only unconsciously, discovers this secret through his perception. He finds that this human form is wishing for something that does not come to expression in the human being but is killed by a higher life, the life of the soul. The sculptor conjures forth from the human form what is not existing in the actual man, something missing in the actual man hidden by nature. Goethe perceived something of this kind when he spoke of “open secrets”. We can go further and say: This secret is underlying the wide realms of nature everywhere. Strictly speaking no colour, no line, appear in nature without something lower being overcome by what is higher. The reverse can also be true; the higher can be overcome by the lower. It is always possible, however, to break the spell and to re-discover what has thus actually been overcome—and this is what constitutes artistic creation.

If , on reaching what has been overcome and then freed from enchantment, we know how to experience it in the right way, it becomes artistic perception.

About this same artistic perception I should like to say something more precise.

A great deal in Goethe's work still has to be brought to light, and that often contains truths very important from the point of view of man. Take Goethe's theory of metamorphosis which starts out with how, for example, the petals in a plant are merely transformed leaves, and which is then extended to all forms in nature. When once what lies in this theory is brought fully to light by a more comprehensive development of natural science than was possible in Goethe's day, when through an all-embracing perception nature has been unveiled, Goethe's theory of metamorphosis will be capable of fuller life and of far wider application. I may say that the understanding of this theory of his is still very limited; it is capable of wide extension.

If we keep to the human figure the following may be said by way of illustration: Whoever studies the human skeleton finds, even when studying it quite superficially, that this human skeleton consists of two definite members; this might be carried further but would lead us too far afield for today. The skeleton consists firstly of the head, which to a certain extent merely rests on the remaining skeleton, and secondly of that remaining skeleton. Anyone sensitive to the metamorphosis of form, anyone. who can see how one form passes over into another—in the sense Goethe meant when he said the green leaf passes over into the colourful petal—will be able, on extending this mode of observation, to see that the human head is a whole, the rest of the organism another whole, and that one is the metamorphosis of the other, In a mysterious way the whole of the rest of man may be said—when suitably perceived—to be capable of transformation into a human head. And the human head is something which in a rounded and more developed form contains the entire human organism,. The remarkable thing is, however, that when we are capable of perceiving this when inwardly we are able really to transform the human head into the appearance of man himself, the result in both cases is something quite different, In the one case, when the head is transformed into the whole organism, something appears which shows man as a kind of ossified being, contracted, narrowed, driven throughout. into a sclerotic condition. If we let the rest of the organism work upon us so that it becomes head, we get something in appearance very unlike an ordinary man but reminding us of one only in the forms of the head, Something appears that in its growth shows no tendency to form the bony structure of the shoulder-blades, but aims at becoming wings, at spreading indeed above the shoulders, and from the wings. developing upwards over the head to appear like a kind of hood that is trying to seize hold of the head in such a way that what in the human form constitutes the ear is spread out and joined up with the wings, In short, there appears a kind of spirit-form and this spirit-form rests enhanced within the human form. This it is which, if we develop further the perception of what Goethe foreshadowed in his theory of metamorphosis, throws light into the mysteries of human nature. From this example we can see how nature in all her various spheres has the characteristic of striving—not abstractly but visibly, concretely—to be something absolutely different from what is presented to our senses. When our perceiving is thorough, nowhere do we have the feeling that any form, anything at all in nature lacks the possibility of developing beyond what it is into something quite different. Such an example as this shows particularly well how in nature one life is constantly being overcome, and even killed, by a higher life.

We do not bring to visible expression what is thus perceived as a double man, as this twofold quality in man's growth, only because something higher, something superphysical, so unites these two sides of the human being, so balances them, that we have the ordinary human form, The reason why nature—not now in an outward, spatial way but inwardly and more intensively—seems to us so magical, so mysterious, is because in each of her works she is wanting to offer us more, infinitely mores than she can, and because she puts together her several parts, all that she organises, in such a way that a higher life swallows up the life inferior to it, allowing it only partial development. Whoever directs his perception to this, will everywhere find that this open secret, this magical quality running through the whole of nature is—like the inward striving after the vision, but here working from outside—what stir a man up to take his stand somewhere beyond nature, to choose something special out of the whole, and from there to let shine forth what nature is seeking to do in one of her works—what can become a whole but has not become so in nature herself.

Perhaps I may mention here that in the Anthroposophical Society's building at Dornach, near Basle, an attempt has been made to realise in plastic form all that has just been indicated. We have tried to make a sculptural group in wood to represent what may be called the typical man; but this group represents the typical man in such a way that what otherwise is only tendency, and held in check by higher life, first comes to expression in the whole form only in gesture which is then brought back into a state of rest. The endeavour has been made plastically to awaken this gesture which in the ordinary human being is kept under—not the gesture made by the soul but the one that is killed before it leaves the soul, the one held under by the life of the soul—and then to bring it to rest again. Thus it has been sought first to set the resting surface of the human organism in movement through gesture and then to return it to a state of repose. Through this one came quite naturally to see that something had to be given greater prominence. This something, a potentiality in every man but obviously held under by the higher life, is the asymmetry existing in us all—no-one's right and left sides being formed alike. But when this has been given greater prominence and what is held together in a higher life has been set free, then with a slightly humorous touch it has to be united with another, higher stage; then it is necessary for what approaches us in a natural way from outside to become reconciled. It becomes necessary to atone artistically for the offence against naturalism—for this stressing of asymmetry and for this translating into gesture of various things which have then to be brought to rest again. This inner offence had to be atoned for by our showing, on the other hand, the overcoming brought about when, through metamorphosis, the human head passes over into the sombre, constricted form which, in its turn, is overcome by the representative of man. This form is at the feet of the representative of man and thus can be felt as member, as part of him. The other form we had to create in addition expresses what feeling demands when not the head but the rest of the human form becomes powerful—as indeed it is in life though held in check by higher life—when all that generally remains in a stunted state is too prolific in its growth; what, for example, is characteristic in the shoulder-blades, what unconsciously is in a man's very formation, in him as a certain Luciferic element, an element that strives to get outside man's essential being. If all that lies in the human form, as arising from impulses and desires, takes actual shape—whereas otherwise it is overrun by a higher life, by the life of the understanding, the life of the reason, which develops and comes to realisation in the human head—then this makes it possible for us to free nature from enchantment, to capture from nature its open secret, by ourselves separating again the parts which nature killed by making them into a whole. Thus the onlooker is obliged in his heart to bring about what nature has already done before him. Nature has done all this, she has brought harmony to man in such a way that his various single members are combined in a harmonious whole. By setting free what has been enchanted into nature, we at the same time break nature up into her super-physical forces. Then there is no need to seek through dry allegory, nor in a way that is intellectual and without artistic feeling, for any idea, anything thought out, anything purely superphysical and spiritual, behind the objects of nature. One just asks nature quite simply: How would you develop in your various parts were your growth undisturbed by a higher life? We come to the rescue of something superphysical that has been held in the physical by enchantment and free it from the physical bonds that held it spellbound. We actually come to be naturalistic in a supernatural way.

I believe that in all the various tendencies and endeavours of recent times, still very much in an elementary stage, which call themselves impressionism, I believe we may perceive in all these the longing of our time really to discover and give shape to secrets of this kind, to this kind of physical-superphysical. For a feeling is abroad that what is actually accomplished in art—in artistic creation and in the appreciation of art—must today be raised into fuller consciousness than has been the case in former epochs. What is accomplished, namely, that a suppressed vision is appeased or that nature is confronted by something which repeats her process—this has always been striven for. Actually these are the two sources of all art.

But let us go back to the time of Raphael. In his time the striving naturally took a different form from that of our day, of, for example, Cézanne or Hodler. What in art is represented by these two streams, however, has always been aimed at, though more or less unconsciously. But in former times it would have been looked upon as very primitive had the artist himself been unaware that in his soul something approaches nature, of a spiritual though unconscious kind, which when the artist seeks it in the physical-superphysical removes the spell from what has been enchanted into nature. Thus if we stand before one of Raphael's works we always have the feeling—if we are willing to attempt the interpretation of what otherwise remains in the obscurity of the subconscious without occasion for expression—the feeling that in this work of art we come to an understanding with something, and also indirectly with Raphael himself.

About all this we may have the feeling (as I said, there is no occasion to speak of it even in our own soul) that we have been together with Raphael in a former life on earth, when we learned from him many things that have entered deeply into our soul, and that this centuries-old connection with the soul of Raphael had become entirely subconscious—suddenly, however, springing into life again as we stand in front of his works. We believe we are face to face with something that took place long ago between our soul and that of Raphael.

From the artist of more recent times we get no such feeling, The modern artist leads one spiritually, as it were, into his studio; what there takes place comes very near to the level of consciousness and belongs to the immediate present. Because this longing, this need of the age, prevails, the rising conception that is actually a suppressed vision, seeks in our time satisfaction through art. On the other hand there meets us, though today in a rather elementary form, a breaking- up of what is otherwise union—an imitation of nature's own process.

What infinite significance everything gains that recent painters have attempted in order to study the various colours, to study the light in its variety of shades, and to discover how, ultimately, every effect of light, every shade of colour, aims at becoming more than it can be when forced into a whole where it is killed by a higher life. What have they not attempted in order that, starting from a feeing of this kind, light should be awakened to life, treated in such a way as to set free what, when the light has to serve in bringing about the ordinary processes and happenings in nature, remains enchanted within light. We are only at the very beginnings of all this. From these beginnings, which today are the expression of a legitimate longing, it will probably be possible, however, to experience that something in the realm of art becomes a secret—a secret which is then revealed. When put into words this sounds rather trite but many things that sound so hide secrets; we have to draw near these secrets, especially to perception of them. What I am meaning here answers the question: Why is it impossible to portray fire and air? It is quite clear that in reality fire cannot be painted. No one could have the true perception of the painter who would want to paint the glittering, glowing life that is only to be held fast by the light. It should never enter the head of anyone to want to paint lightning—still less to paint the air!

On the other hand we have to admit that everything contained in light conceals within it what is striving to become like fire, striving to develop in such a way that it says something, gives an impression of something welling up out of the light, out of each single shade of colour—just as human speech wells up from the human organism. Every effect of light wants to tell us something, every effect of light has something to say to some other effect of light nearby. In every effect of light there is a life which is overcome, deadened, by higher conditions. If our perception takes this path we discover what the colour feels, what the colour is saying, and what is being striven for in this age of “plain air” panting. If we discover the secret of colour this perception is widened and we find that, strictly speaking, what I have just been saying is perfectly valid; but not in the same way for all colours because the colours say very different things. Whereas the bright colours, the reds and the yellows, attack us and tell us a great deal, the blue colours take the picture more into the realm of form. Through blue indeed we enter form, enter essentially into the form-creating soul. We have been on the road to such discoveries but often we have stopped short halfway. Many of Signac's pictures seem so little satisfying—though in another respect they can give much satisfaction—because blue is always treated in the same way as, let us say, yellow or red, without any recognition that a patch of blue when next to yellow expresses something quite different in value from yellow beside red. This appears rather trivial to anyone with a feeling for colour, yet in a deeper sense people are only just beginning to discover such secrets. Blue, violet, are colours which take the picture right out of the realm of the expressive into that of the inner perspective. It is quite conceivable that, solely by the use of blue in a picture by the side of the other colours, one can produce a wonderfully intensive perspective without the aid of any drawing. It is possible to go further in this direction. We come then to recognise that a design might be called the work of colour itself., When anyone succeeds in putting movement into his use of colour so that, in a mysterious way, the design follows the guidance of the colour, he will notice that this is particularly the case with blue. It is less so with yellow and red for it is not in their nature to be led in that way to inner movement, to move from one point to another. If we want to have a form inwardly in movement—in flight, for instance—a form which by reason of its inner movement at one time becomes small inwardly, at another big, a form moving in fact within itself, then without having recourse to any rational principle or any, never justifiable, intellectual aesthetics, but proceeding from a quite elementary feeling, we shall find ourselves absolutely obliged to use and bring into movement various shades of blue. We shall notice that in reality a line is able to come into being, the design able to make its appearance, definite form to arise, only when we continue what we began when setting the blue colour into movement. For every time we pass from the realm of painting, of working in colour, to that of outline of form, we carry the physical over into what is essentially superphysical. Passing from the bright colours through the blue and from there somehow inwardly into the picture, we shall have in the bright colours the transition to a physical-superphysical, which may be said to contain a slight superphysical tone: this is because colour always has something to say, because colour has soul that is always superphysical. We shall then find that the further we go into the realm of drawing the more we enter the abstract superphysical, which, however, because it makes its appearance in the physical must take to itself physical form.

Today I can give you only an indication of these things. It is clear, however, that this is the way to understand how in one particular sphere the colour, the sketch, can be so used in creative art that in its application is everything of which I said it is held under the spell of nature, and from this spell we free the super-physical, which is hidden in the physical and deadened by a higher life.

How, if we look at plastic art we shall find that here both for plane surfaces and lines, there are always two interpretations only one of which, however, I shall be speaking about. To begin with, right feeling will not suffer the plastic surface to remain what it is, for example in the ordinary human form; there it is killed by the human soul, by the life of the human being, thus by what is higher. When we have first drawn out, spiritually, the life of the soul in the human form, we have then to seek the life of the surface itself, the soul of the soul of the form itself. We see how this is to be found if we do not bend the surface once only but a second time as well, so that we get a double curve. We notice how in this way we can make the form speak, how, deep in our subconscious, as opposed to what I have shown to be more an analysing tendency, there is also a tendency that is synthetic. The physical nature falls into what is genuinely physical-superphysical, which is overcome only by the higher stages of life. Inside those barriers of the soul of which we have spoken, we have as instinctive urge to free nature from enchantment in this way, in order to see how the physical-superphysical lies hidden in nature in as many different forms as, shall we say, crystals in their rock bed, which because they are in that rocky bed have their surfaces worn down. But a man has within him, often very decidedly so, just when in his subconscious this cleavage, this analysing, this breaking down of nature into the physical-superphysical is very pronounced—he has within him the faculty that may be called aesthetic synthesis, a tendency to synthesize in art.

The strange thing is that anyone with a capacity for rightly observing his fellow men will discover how they always use one of their senses in a very one-sided way. When with the eye we see colours, forms, effects of light, we are giving the eye a most one-sided development. In the eye there is always something resembling the sense of touch; the eye while looking is, at the same time, always feeling. In ordinary life this is suppressed. Because the eye is given this one-sided trend, however, if we are able to perceive such things, we still find the urge in us to experience what is thus suppressed, namely, what the eye develops as a sense of feeling, a sense of self, a sense of movement when we move through space and feel the motion of our limbs. What in the eye is thus suppressed of the other senses, we feel—although it remains quiescent—to be aroused by looking at the other man, What is thus aroused by what we see, what, however, is suppressed by the one-sided trend of the eye, it is this that is given form by the sculptor.

The sculptor actually models forms which the eye indeed sees but sees so dimly that this dim vision remains in the subconscious. The sculptor makes use of that point where the sense of touch is just passing over into the sense of sight. Therefore he must, or will anyway try to, reduce the quiescent form, which to the one-sided eye is only an object, to reduce this form to gesture that is always inciting imitation of itself, and then to bring back this gesture, that has been thus conjured up, into a state of rest. In reality what in one direction has been aroused and in another direction brought again to rest, what when we create or enjoy artistic work is active in us as a process of the soul, is always, from one aspect, like a man's in-breathing and out-breathing in ordinary life. This process drawn up from the human soul has, at times, a grotesque effect, although on the other hand it promotes a feeling of the vastness, the endlessness, of all that has been enchanted into nature. The development of art—we see this in certain attempts made in recent decades and especially in those of today—moves altogether towards penetrating these secrets and more or, less unconsciously putting such things into form. There is no need to talk much about them; they will increasingly find expression through art.

We shall perceive, for example, the following. In the case of certain artists it can indeed be said that more or less consciously or unconsciously they have perceived something of this kind—we understand the recently-deceased Gustave Klimt, for instance, particularly well if we allow such assumptions to hold good for his perceptions and his reason. Some day the following will be perceived. Let us suppose someone were to feel the desire to paint a pretty woman. There must then take shape in his soul some kind of image of her. Anyone, however, who is sensitive can perceive that, the moment he has made this fixed image of her, he has inwardly, spiritually, super-physically deprived her of life. The very moment we decide to paint a portrait of a pretty woman we have spiritually given her over to death, we have taken something away from her. Otherwise, we could look at the woman as she is in life, we would not give shape in our picture to what it is possible to present there artistically. For artistically we have first to kill the woman; then we must be able to bring to bear that light touch of humour in order inwardly to call her back to life.

Now anyone with a naturalistic approach cannot do this; naturalistic art suffers from the inability to adopt this lighter touch. Naturalistic art therefore offers us a great deal that has no life, that kills all that is higher in nature; and it lacks that light touch needed for giving renewed life to what in the first place it has to kill. In the case of many charming women it appears indeed as if they had not only been secretly killed but maltreated beforehand. This deadening process always moves in one direction and is connected with the necessity for creating anew that which, on a higher level of life, overcomes in nature what is striving for existence There is always first a deadening, then through this lighter mood a giving of fresh life. This process must take place both in the soul of the creative artist and in that of the art-lover, Anyone wishing to paint some cheery young mountain-peasant has no need to make a faithful copy of what he sees; he must above all be clear that his artistic conception has killed the young peasant or anyway benumbed him and that he must awaken fresh life in this stiff image by fashioning him in a way that brings him into new connection with the rest of nature. This was attempted by Hodler and. is entirely in sympathy with what artists are longing for today,

These two sources of art can be said to represent very deep needs, subconscious needs, of the human soul. The satisfying of what would become actual vision, but is not permitted to do so in a man of a sound nature, this always develops more or less into the form of art called expressionism—though the name is not of importance. What is created with the purpose of re-uniting what in some form has been broken up onto its physical-superphysical constituents, or has been deprived of its immediate physical life, will lead to impressionism. These two needs of the human soul have ever been the source of art; and by reason of man's general development in recent times, the first of these needs has taken the expressionistic path , the second the impressionistic. In all probability as we hasten towards the future this will increase very much. If our perception is extended, and not just our intellectual consciousness, the art of the future will be perceived as the intensifying particularly of these two trends. These two trends—and this must be constantly emphasized if we are to avoid certain misconceptions—do not represent anything in the least unsound. Men will fall into an unsound condition if, between those two boundaries, the healthy, primitive and natural pull towards the visionary is not satisfied through artistic expression. Or they will do so when what is always going on in the subconscious, namely, the breaking down of nature into what is physical-superphysical in her is not, through the true touch of artistic humour, constantly permeated by a higher life so that they are enabled to recreate in their artistic work what is creatively brought to expression by nature.

I firmly believe that the processes of art lie in many respects extremely deep in the subconscious, yet in certain circumstances it can be important for life to have living, telling conceptions of the artistic process such as have an effect upon the soul that no weak conceptions can exercise, conceptions which flow actually into the feeling. When in accordance with feeling these two sources of art hold sway in the human soul, we shall certainly realise out of what sound perception Goethe spoke when at a certain moment of life (such things always savour of one-sidedness) he felt the pure, genuine, artistic nature of music: “Therefore music represents what is supreme in art, because it has no possibility of imitating anything in nature, being in its own element both content and form.” (As I said, this is one-sided, for every art can reach these heights; but characterizations are always one-sided.) Every art, however, in its inherent element becomes its own content and form, when it does not wrest nature's secrets from her by subtle reasoning but discovers in the way indicated today, the physical-superphysical. I believe that in the soul there often takes place a quite secret process when we become aware of the physical-superphysical in nature. It was Goethe himself who coined the expression “physical-superphysical”; and in spite of his having called the secret “open” it can be discovered only when subconscious forces of the soul are able to sink themselves deeply into nature.

What is visionary comes into being in the soul because the superphysical experience is pressing to discharge itself, is surging up out of the soul. The outward experience that is spiritual experience, not through vision—which in spiritual science is purified till it becomes Imagination—but through Intuition. Through the vision we place what is within us to a certain degree outside, so that the inner becomes in us the outer. In Intuition we go outside ourselves—step out into the world. This stepping out, however, remains an unreality as long as we are unable to set free what is spell-bound in nature and is always wishing to overcome nature by a higher life. If we made our way into what belongs to nature when this is freed from enchantment, we then live in Intuitions. In so far as these Intuitions prevail in art, they are indeed connected with intimate experiences possible for the soul when, outside itself, it is united with external things. This is why Goethe, out of his actual, highly impressionistic art, could say to a friend: “I will tell you something that can explain people's attitude to my work. It can be really understood only by those who have had the same kind of experience as myself, those who have been in a similar situation.” Goethe already possessed this artistic perception. This is apparent poetically in the second part of his Faust, which up to now has met with but little understanding. He was able artistically to perceive that the physical-superphysical is to be sought in the recognition of how each part of nature is striving beyond itself to become a whole, through metamorphosis to become something different; it comprises with this something different, a new product of nature but is then killed by a higher life.

When we thus penetrate into nature we come to true reality in a much higher sense than ordinary consciousness believes. What we here come to is the most conclusive proof that art has no need either to make merely a faithful copy of the physical or to bring to expression the superphysical, the spiritual, alone That would mean erring in two directions, But what art can shape, can express, is the physical in the superphysical, the superphysical in the physical. It is perhaps just this that constitutes man's naturalism in the truest sense of the term—that he recognises the physical-superphysical and can grasp it precisely through his being at the same time a super-naturalist. Thus, real artistic experiences can, I believe, be developed in the soul in such a way that they arouse understanding of art, appreciation of art, and that a man is enabled indeed to train himself to a certain extent to live in art as an artist. In any case a profound study of this kind of the physical-superphysical, and its realisation through art, will make Goethe"s words comprehensible—words arising out of deep perception and wide understanding of the world, words with which I began this lecture and now bring it to a close. These words will give a comprehensive picture of man's relation to art when once we are able to grasp in all its depths the relation of art to what is genuine, superphysical reality. Because human beings can never live without the superphysical, they will through their own needs be brought to realise more and more the truth of what Goethe has said: “The man to whom nature begins to reveal her open secret feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest exponent—art.”

Certain dread concerning the destiny of humanity in the future may come over one who enters with feelings into the thoughts which occupied us at the close of our last lecture. A picture of this future of humanity was brought before us which on the one hand was great and powerful, filling one with bliss, showing the future condition of the man who has understood the mission of our present age upon the earth, who has received the Christ-spirit and is thereby able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our earth, a glorious blessed picture of those men who are called in exoteric Christianity the “Redeemed,” and, not quite appropriately, the “Elect.” But the opposite picture had also to be put before you, the picture of the abyss in which is found a humanity which was not in a position to receive the Christ-spirit, which remained in matter, which excluded itself, so to speak, from the spiritualizing process leading into the future; and this portion of humanity which has fallen away from the spiritualized earth, and, in a certain sense apart from it, advances towards a frightful fate. When the beast with the seven heads and ten horns glowers at us from the abyss, the beast led astray by the other frightful being, the two-horned beast, this picture gives rise to fear and horror, and many aright ask: “Is it not hard and unwise on the part of Providence to lead a number of men to such a frightful fate, and in a way, to condemn them to the abyss of evil?” And the question might arise, “Would it not have been more fitting for a wise Providence to have averted this frightful fate from the very beginning?”

In answer to these questions, we might, to begin with, say something abstract, theoretical—and it already signifies a great deal for one who can grasp this theoretical statement is his feeling: It is extremely wise that Providence has taken care that this terrible fate is possible for a number of men. For if it were impossible for man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since to the occultist freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom. If it were impossible for man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.

But this is only an empty theory, you might say, and man rises but slowly to the point where he not only says this in words and accepts it in moments of speculation as a kind of explanation, but also experiences it in his feeling. Seldom does man now rise to the thought, “I thank thee, O wise Providence, that thou hast made it possible for me to bring thee a love which is not forced but springs up free in my own breast: that thou dost not force use to love thee, but that thou hast given me tine choice of following thee.” Nevertheless, man has to rise to this feeling if he wishes really to feel this theoretical explanation. We can, however, offer additional comfort, or, rather, another quieting assurance, from a clairvoyant observation of the world. For it was stated in our last lecture that at the present day, he alone has au almost unalterable tendency to the abyss who is already entangled in some way in the prongs of the two-horned beast, which leads men to the practice of black magic. Even for such as now fall into the arts of black magic it will still be possible to withdraw in the future. But those who do not come at all into any contact with black magic arts (and this is for the time being the case with most people), these may have nevertheless a certain tendency in the period following the War of All against All, towards final evil, but the possibility in the future of turning back again and following the good will be far greater than the compulsion unconditionally to follow evil.

From these lectures it may be seen that for those who now turn to a spiritual conception of the world, in order to live beyond the great War into the sixth epoch (which is represented by the opening of the seals), there is the possibility to receive the Christ-principle. They will be able to receive the spiritual elements which are laid down in the age signified by the community at Philadelphia, and in the near future they will manifest a strong tendency towards becoming spiritual. Those who turn to-day to a spiritual view receive a powerful disposition to enter upon the upward path. One must not fail to recognize how important it is even at the present time that a number of persons should not turn a deaf ear to the anthroposophical world conception, which is bringing to humanity in a fully conscious manner the first germs of spiritual life, whereas formerly this took place unconsciously. That is the important thing, that this portion of humanity should take with it the first conscious tendencies towards the upward movement.

Through a group of people dedicating themselves to-day to the foundation of a great brotherhood which will live over into the epoch of the seven seals, help will be provided for those others, who to-day still turn a deaf ear to the teachings of Spiritual Science. For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the epoch of the seals we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual world-conception, which is to-day flowing through the anthroposophical Movement. There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are to-day. The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word to-day is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world—all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world.

We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow. It will require much obduracy and much hardness to close the heart and mind to the powerful impressions of the future. The souls now living in bodies which have the heart to hear and feel Anthroposophy, are now preparing them-selves to live in bodies in the future in which power will be given them to serve their fellow-creatures, who up to that time had been unable to feel this heart beat within them. We are only preparing for the preparers, as yet nothing more. The spiritual movement is to-day but a very small flame; in the future it will develop into a mighty spiritual fire.

When we bring this other picture before our minds, when we let it enter right into our feelings, then there will live in us a very different feeling and a very different possibility of knowledge concerning this fact. To-day it is what we call black magic into which men can, in a certain way, fall consciously or unconsciously. Those who are now living thoughtlessly, who are quite untouched by the spiritual conception of the world, who live in their comfortable everyday torpor and say, “What does it matter to me what these dreaming Anthroposophists say?” these have the least opportunity of coming into the circle of black magic. In their case they are now only neglecting the opportunity to help their fellow-men in the future in their efforts to attain the spiritual life. For themselves they have not yet lost touch. But those who to-day are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual life, are really taking up into themselves in the very first beginnings the germs of some-thing one might call black magic. There are very few individuals to-day who have already fallen into black magic in the frightful sense in which this horrible art of humanity must really be spoken of.

You will best understand that this really is so if I give you but a slight indication of the way in which black magic is systematic-ally cultivated; then you will see that you may search high and low among all your acquaintances and you will find no one of whom you could believe that he was already inclining to such arts. All the rest is fundamentally only the purest dilettantism which may be easily got rid of in future ages. It is bad enough that in our day things are sometimes praised with the intention to defraud people—which in a certain sense is also the beginning of the art of black magic. It is also bad that certain ideas are percolating, which—although they do not absolutely belong to the black art—nevertheless mislead people; these are the ideas which rule the world to-day in certain, circles and which can flourish amidst materialistic thought, but which although not without danger, will not be irreparable in the next epochs. Only when a man begins to practise the ABC of black magic is he on the dangerous path to the abyss. The ABC consists in the pupil of a black magician being taught to destroy life quite consciously, and in doing so to cause as much pain as possible and to feel a certain satisfaction in it. When the purpose is to stab or to cut into a living being with the intention of feeling pleasure in that being's pain, that is the ABC of the black arts. We cannot touch upon the further stages, but you will find it horrible enough when you are told that the beginning in black magic is to cut and stab into living flesh, not like the vivisector cuts—this is already bad enough, but the principle of vivisection finds its overthrow in the vivisector himself, because in kamaloca he will himself have to feel the pain he has caused his victims, and for this reason will leave vivisection alone in the future. But he who systematically cuts into flesh, and feels satisfaction in it begins to follow the precipitous path of black magic, and this draws him closer and closer to the being described as the two-horned beast.

This seductive being is of quite a different nature from man. It originates from other world periods; it has acquired the tendencies of other world periods and will feel deep satisfaction when it meets with beings such as those evil ones who have refused to take up inwardly the good which can flow from the earth. This being has been unable to receive anything from the earth; it has seen the earthly evolution come but has said, “I have not progressed with the earth in such a way that I can gain anything from earthly existence.” This being could only have got something from the earth by being able to gain the rulership at a certain moment, namely, when the Christ-principle descended to the earth. If the Christ-principle had then been strangled in the germ, if Christ had been overcome by the adversary, it would have been possible for the whole earth to succumb to the Sorath-principle. This, however, did not take place, and so this being has to be content with those who have not inclined towards the Christ-principle, who have remained embedded in matter; they in the future will form his cohorts.

Now in order to understand these hosts more clearly we must consider two ideas which in a certain sense may serve as a key to certain chapters of the Apocalypse. We must study the ideas of the “first death” and the “second death.” What is the first death and what is the second death of man, or of humanity? We must form a clear picture of the ideas which the writer of the Apocalypse connected with these words. To this end we must once more recall to mind the elementary truths concerning human existence.

Consider a human being of the present day. He lives in such a way that from morning when he awakes until evening when he falls asleep he consists of four principles: the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the “I.” We also know that during his earthly existence man works from his “I” upon the lower principles of his being, and that during the earth existence he must succeed in bringing the astral body under the control of the “I.” We know that the earth will be followed by its next incarnation, Jupiter. When main has reached Jupiter he will appear as a different being. The Jupiter-man will have thoroughly worked from his “I” upon his astral body; and when to-day we say, The earth-man who stands before us in the waking condition has developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I,” we must say of the Jupiter-man: he will have developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I” but he will have changed his astral body into spirit-self. He will live at a higher stage of consciousness, a stage which may be described as follows: The ancient dim-picture-consciousness of the Moon, which existed also in the first epochs of the earth-consciousness, will again be there with its pictures as clairvoyant consciousness, but it will be furnished with the human “I,” so that with this Jupiter-consciousness man will reflect as logically as he does now with his day-consciousness on the earth.

The Jupiter-man therefore will possess spiritual vision of a certain degree. Part of the soul-world will lie open to him; the will perceive the pleasure and pain of those around him in pictures which will arise in his imaginative consciousness. He will there-fore live under entirely different moral conditions. Now imagine that as a Jupiter-man you have a human soul before you. The pain and pleasure of this soul will arise in pictures before you. The pictures of the pair of the other soul will distress you, and if you do not remove the other's pain it will be impossible for you to feel happy. The pictures of sorrow and suffering would torment the Jupiter-man with his exalted consciousness if he were to do nothing to alleviate this sorrow and thus at the same dine remove his own distressing pictures which are nothing but the expression of the sorrow around him! It will not be possible for one to feel pleasure or pain without others also feeling it.

Thus we see that man gains an entirely new state of consciousness in addition to his present “I”-consciousness. If we wish to understand the importance of this in evolution we must once more turn our attention to man when asleep.

During this condition the physical body and etheric body lie on the bed, and his “I” and astral body are outside. During the night (if we speak somewhat inexactly) he callously abandons his physical and etheric bodies. But through being able to liberate himself during the night from his physical and etheric bodies, through being able to live at night in the spiritual world, it is possible for man during this earthly existence to work transformingly from his “I” upon his astral body. How does he do this?

To describe this clearly let us take man in his waking state. Let us suppose that in addition to his professional work and duties he devotes a short time to higher considerations in order to make the great impulses his own which flow from John's Gospel, from the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ...” Let us suppose that he allows to rise within him the great pictures brought before him in John's Gospel, so that he is always filled by the thought: “At the beginning of our era a Being lived in Palestine whom I wish to follow. I will so order my life that everything may be approved by this Being; and I will consider myself as a man who has taken this personality as his ideal.” But we need not intolerantly think that John's Gospel alone may be taken. It is possible in many other ways to immerse oneself in something which can fill the soul with such pictures; and although in a certain way we must describe John's Gospel as the greatest revelation which has originated in humanity, which can exercise the most powerful effect, we may, however, say that others who devote themselves to the Vedanta wisdom or immerse themselves in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Dhammapada, will also have sufficient opportunities in following incarnations to come to the Christ-principle just through what they have thus acquired. Let us suppose that during the day a man fills his mind with pictures and ideas such as these, then his astral body is laid hold of by these thoughts, feelings and pictures, and they form forces in his astral body and produce various effects in it. Then when man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies at night, these effects remain in the astral body, and he who during the day has been able to immerse himself in the pictures and feelings of John's Gospel has produced something in his astral body which during the night appears in it as a powerful effect. In this way man works to-day during the waking consciousness upon his astral body.

Only the Initiate can become conscious of these effects to-day, but men are gradually developing towards this consciousness. Those who reach the goal of the earth evolution will then have an astral body completely permeated by the “I,” and by the spiritual content which it will have formed. They will have this consciousness as a result, as a fruit of the earth evolution, and will carry it over into the Jupiter evolution. We might say that when the Earth period has thus come to an end man will have gained capacities which are symbolically represented by the building of the New Jerusalem. Man will then already look into that picture-world of Jupiter; the spirit-self will then be fully developed in him. That is the goal of the earth evolution. What, then, is man to gain in the course of his earthly evolution? What is the first goal? The transformation of the astral body. This astral body which to-day is always free of the physical and etheric bodies at night will appear in the future as a transformed portion of the human being. Mau brings into it what he gains on the earth; but this would not be sufficient for the earth evolution. Imagine that man were to come out of the physical body and etheric body every night and were to fill his astral body with what he had acquired during the day, but that the physical and etheric bodies were untouched by it. Man would then still not reach his earthly goal. Something else must take place; it must be possible for man during his earthly evolution to imprint, at least in the etheric body, what he has taken into himself. It is necessary for this etheric body also to receive effects from what man develops in his astral body. Man cannot yet of himself work into this etheric body. Upon Jupiter, when he has trans-formed his astral body, he will be able to work into this etheric body also, but to-day he cannot do this; he still needs helpers, so to speak. Upon Jupiter he will be capable of beginning the real work on the etheric body. Upon Venus he will work upon the physical body; this is the part most difficult to overcome. To-day he still has to leave both the physical and etheric bodies every night and emerge from them. But in order that the etheric body may receive its effects, so that man shall gradually learn to work into it, he needs a helper. And the helper who makes this possible is none other than Christ, while we designate the Being who helps man to work into the physical body as the Father. But man cannot work into his physical body before the helper conies who makes it possible to work into the etheric body. “No man cometh to the Father, but by me.” No one acquires the capacity of working into the physical body who has not gone through the Christ-principle. However, when he has reached the goal of earthly evolution, man will have the capacity—through being able to transform his astral body by his own power—to work upon the etheric body also. This he owes to the living presence of the Christ-principle on the earth. Had Christ not united him-self with the earth as a living being, had he not come into the aura of the earth, that which is developed in the astral body would not be communicated to the etheric body. From this we see that one who shuts himself up by turning away from the Christ-principle deprives himself of the possibility of working into his etheric body in the way that is necessary during earthly evolution.

Thus we shall be able to characterize in another way the two kinds of men which we find at the end of the earth's evolution. We have those who have received the Christ-principle and thus transformed their astral body, and who have gained the help of Christ to transform the etheric body also. And we have the others who did not come to the Christ-principle; who also were unable to change anything in the etheric body, for they could not find the helper, Christ. Now let us look at the future of mankind. The earth spiritualizes itself, that is, man must lose completely something which he now un his physical existence considers as belonging to him. We can form an idea of what will then happen to man if we consider the ordinary course of his life after death. He loses the physical body at death. It is to this physical body that he owes the desires and inclinations which bind him to the ordinary life; and we have described what man experiences after death. Let us take a person who is fond of some particularly dainty food. During life he can enjoy this, but not after death. The desire, however, does not cease, for this is seated, not in the physical body but in the astral body, and as the physical instrument is absent it is impossible to gratify this desire. Such persons look down from kamaloca to the physical world which they have left; they see there all that could give them satisfaction, but they cannot enjoy it because they have no physical instrument for the purpose. Through this they experience a burning thirst. Thus it is with all desires that remain in man after death and are related to the physical world, because they can only be satisfied through physical instruments. This is the case every time after death; each time man sees his physical body fall away, and as something remains in him from this physical body it still urges him to the ordinary world of the physical plane, and until he has weaned himself from this in the spiritual world he lives in the fire of desire. Now imagine the last earthly incarnation before the spiritualization of the earth, the laying aside of the last physical body. Those who are now living on the earth will have progressed so far through the Christ-principle that, in a certain way, it will not be very difficult for than to lay aside the very last physical body; they will, however, be obliged to leave something, for all that can give pleasure from the objects of this earth will have disappeared once and for all from the spiritual earth. Think of the last death possible in our earth evolution, think of the laying aside of the last physical body. It is this last death of the incarnations which in the Apocalypse is called the first death, and those who have received the Christ-principle see this physical body as a sort of husk which falls away. The etheric body has now become important to them for, with the help of Christ, it has become so organized that it is for the time being adapted to the astral body and no longer desires and longs for what is below in the physical world. Only through all that has been brought into the etheric body through the help of Christ do men continue to live on in the spiritualized earth. Harmony has been produced between their astral and etheric bodies by the Christ-principle.

On the other hand there are those who have not received the Christ-principle. These do not possess this harmony. They too must lose the physical body, for there is no such thing in the spiritual earth. Everything physical must first be dissolved. It remains as desires for the physical, as the unpurified spiritual, as the spiritual hardened in matter. An etheric body remains which the Christ has not helped to be adapted to the astral body, but which is suited to the physical body. They are the souls who will feel hot fires of desire for physical sensuality; in the etheric body they will feel unappeasable, burning desire by reason of what they have had in the physical life and which they must now do without. Thus, in the next period, after the physical has melted away, we have men who live in an etheric body which harmonizes with the astral body, and we have others whose etheric body lives in discord because they desire what has fallen away with the physical body.

Then in the further stage of evolution there comes a condition where the spiritualizing of the earth has proceeded so far that there can no longer be even an etheric body. Those whose etheric body completely harmonizes with the astral body lay aside this etheric body without pain, for they remain in their astral body which is filled with the Christ-Being. They feel the laying aside of the etheric body as a necessity in evolution, for they feel within them the capacity to build it up again for them-selves because they have received Christ. Those, however, who in this etheric body desire what belongs to the past cannot retain this etheric body, when all becomes astral. It will be taken from them, it will be torn out of them, and they now perceive this as a second dying, as the “second death.”

This second death passes unnoticed over those who have made their etheric body harmonize with the astral body through the reception of the Christ-principle. The second death has no power over then. But the others feel the second death when they have to pass over into the future astral form. The condition of humanity will then be such that those who have reached the goal of evolution will have entirely permeated their astral body with Christ. They will be ready to pass over to Jupiter. Upon our earth they have made the plan of the Jupiter evolution. This is the plan which is called the New Jerusalem. They live in a new heaven and a new earth, that is, Jupiter. This new Jupiter will be accompanied by a satellite, composed of those who are excluded from the life in the spiritual, who have experienced the second death and are, therefore, unable to attain the Jupiter consciousness.

Thus we have such men as have pressed forward to the Jupiter consciousness, who have attained to spirit-self; and such beings as have thrust away the forces which would have given them this consciousness. They are those who only upon Jupiter have attained to the “I”-consciousness of the earth, who exist there, so to speak, as man now exists on the earth with his four members. But such a man can develop himself only on the earth, the earth alone has the environment, the ground, the air, the clouds, the plants, the minerals which are necessary to man if he wishes to gain what may be gained within the four members. Jupiter will be quite differently formed, it will be a new earth, soil, air, water, everything will be different. It will be impossible for beings who have only gained the earth consciousness to live a normal life; they will be backward beings.

But now comes something more for our comfort. Even on this Jupiter there is still a last possibility, through the strong powers which the advanced will have, to move those fallen beings to turn back and even to convert a number. Only with the Venus incarnation of the earth will conic the last decision, the unalterable decision. When we reflect upon all this, the thought we recently considered will be seen in a new light. It will no longer call forth anxiety and disquietude, but only the determination: “I will do everything necessary to fulfil the earth mission.”

When we consider all this in the right way, a mighty picture of the future of humanity opens up before us and we get some idea of all that was in the illuminated soul of the writer of the Apocalypse who wrote down what we, in a faltering way, can discover from a study of it. Every word of the writer, indeed every turn of expression, is significant. We must only try to understand it clearly. Thus, according to our last lecture, in 666 we are referred to the beast with the two horns, and then a remarkable statement is made, “Here is Wisdom! Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.” An apparent contradiction, but one of the many contradictions which are to be found in every occult work and exposition. You may be sure of one thing; that an exposition which runs so smoothly that the ordinary human intellect can find no contradiction is certainly not based on an occult foundation. Nothing in world-evolution is so shallow and trivial as that which the human intellect, the ordinary intelligence perceives as free from contradiction. One must penetrate more deeply into the substrata of human contemplation and then the contradictions will disappear. One who observes how a plant grows from root to fruit, how the green leaf changes into the petals, these into the stamens, etc., may say, “Here we have contradictory forms, the flower-leaf contradicts the stem-leaf.” But one who looks more deeply will see the unity, the deeper unity in the contradiction. So it is with what the intellect can see in the world. It is precisely in the deepest wisdom that it sees contradictions. Hence it must not disturb us when here in the Apocalypse we meet with an apparent contradiction: “Let him that hath understanding ponder over the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

We must once more consider by what means it may be possible for a man to be led astray by the two-horned beast. We have pointed out that since the middle of the Atlantean epoch man has slept through the higher spiritual development, so to speak. This sleep still exists at the present time. But it was necessary. If it had not entered in, that which we call the intellect would never have been developed. Man did not possess this before our epoch, he acted from other impulses. His pictures drove him to action, without reflection. He had lost this ancient gift of spiritual vision and in its place he has developed intellect and thereby descended into matter. This has drawn a veil over the spiritual world, but at the same time the intellect has been acquired. This may be a great hindrance to the spiritual development. At the very last it will be nothing else but this misguided intellect, this misguided intelligence, which can prevent man from coming to the Christ-principle; and if those who at last succumb to the two-horned beast could look back upon what has dealt them the worst blow they would say, “The tendency to descend into the abyss only came later, but that which darkened the Christ-principle for me was the intellect.” Let him who has this intellect reflect upon the number of the beast; for only through man having become man, that is to say, through his being gifted with this ego-intellect, can he succumb to the beast 666. For the number of the beast is at the same time the number of a man. And only one possessing intellect can perceive that this is so. It is the number of that man who has let himself be misled by his intellect. Deep truths such as these are concealed in these things.

Thus you see that the writer of the Apocalypse gives you a great deal when you reflect upon the various intimations we have given. He expresses many of the truths known to Spiritual Science. He gives what he promises. He leads man to the vision of what is to come; to the vision of the beings and powers which guide the world. He leads us to the spirit in the first seal, and to the form presented in the last seal. Here we see how the regular form of the New Jerusalem is revealed to him spiritually. The regularity of the New Jerusalem is indicated in the last chapter by its description as a cube. To describe all that is in this last picture would take us too far.

It is now necessary to point out for what purpose the Apocalypse was written. I should indeed have to say a great deal if I were to describe this in detail, but you cm at least take away with you one hint, one which we find at a certain part of the Apocalypse. The writer of the Apocalypse says: A time will come when that high degree of consciousness will actually have developed, when man will see the beings who direct the world, the beings represented by the Lamb and by the appearance of the Son of Man, with the flaming sword. We are referred to this in tones which contain within them that assurance of which we have spoken. The writer of the Apocalypse, who is a great seer, knows that in ancient times men were gifted with a dim clairvoyance. We have described this and have seen how at that time inns were the companions, so to speak, of beings in the spiritual world, and themselves saw the spiritual world. But who has lost this gift of seership? Who? We must now put this forward as an important question. We have seen that fundamentally it was lost by those men who were led to the physical plane, the physical life, when the second half of the Atlantean epoch began. Man looked upon the solid formation of our earth, upon the clearly outlined objects of our earth. The ancient clairvoyance disappeared; he became self-conscious, but the spiritual world was closed to him. The formations which un ancient times filled the air like an ocean of mist, disappeared; the air became clear, the ground distinct. Man descended to the visible earth. This took place comparatively late, it coincided with the attainment of the present intellect, the present self-consciousness of man. Now let us remember what has been said about this earth as well as about the great Event of Golgotha. If some one had observed the earth at that time from a distance with spiritual vision at the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, he would have perceived that its whole astral aura changed. The earth was then permeated by the Christ-force. Through this event the earth will be able to reunite with the sun. This power will grow. This is the power which preserves our etheric body from the second death. Christ becomes the Earth-spirit more and more, and the true Christian understands the words, “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot”; he considers the body of the earth as the body of Christ. The earth as a planetary body is the body of Christ; of course at present this is only at its beginning. Christ has still to become the Earth-spirit; He will smite himself fully with the earth, and when the earth later unites with the sun, the great Earth-spirit, Christ, will be the Sun-Spirit.

The body of the earth will be the body of Christ; and men must work upon this body. They began this when they entered upon the earth; they have worked upon this earth with their forces. In all traditions one can fund something which is little noticed because little understood. Thus, for example, in the Persian tradition we find that since the time men lost clairvoyant consciousness they have become beings who have pierced the earth. While they live in the phases which they pierce the earth—that is, while they work upon the earth—during this time when they pierce the body of Christ they do not see with clairvoyant consciousness the guiding powers and, above all, they do not see the Christ face to face. But the writer of the Apocalypse refers to the time when not only those who at that time had spiritual vision will see the spiritual, but when humanity will again have come to the stage where it is possible to see the Christ-Being himself. All will see him, including those who have pierced him, these who had to pass through a portion of their evolution in cultivating the earth, in the piercing of the earth, they will see the Christ. For these sayings are such that they lead those who gradually learn to unveil them deep into the imaginative world of the Mysteries, of the Apocalyptic language.

What, then, did the Apocalyptist wish to write, what did he wish to represent? This question will be answered if we briefly refer to the origin of the Apocalypse. Where do we first fund what is written down in the Apocalypse? If you could look back into the Mysteries of ancient Greece, into the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, if you could go back into the Mysteries of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia and India, you would find the Apocalypse everywhere. It existed, it was there. It was not written down, but lived from one generation of priests to another, through the generations of the Initiators, where the memory was so vivid that one could master such abundant material. Memory even in much later times was far better than ours; we need only remember the singers of the Iliad, how they went about and sang their songs from memory. It is comparatively not long ago, that memory has deteriorated so much. In the Mysteries these truths were not written down, but they lived from generation to generation of the Initiators. Why was the Apocalypse written? It was intended to serve as an instruction for those who brought the pupils into Initiation. At that time the one who was to be initiated was led out of the physical body and remained as if dead. But when he had been led out, the Initiator enabled him to see in his etheric body that which later through the Christ-impulse he would be able to see spiritually in the physical body. Thus the ancient Initiates were the prophets who could point to Christ; and they did so. They were able to do this, because Christ is shown in this Apocalypse as due to appear in the future. The Mystery of Golgotha had never yet taken place where a person in the physical body could set forth the whole drama of Initiation historically. Where then could the possibility of this Event of Golgotha be comprehended? At a certain stage the Initiates had comprehended it outside their body. That which took place on Golgotha had taken place before in another consciousness. There might have been thousands there, and yet the Event of Golgotha could have passed by them unnoticed. What would it have been to them? The death of an ordinary condemned person! It was only possible to understand what took place on Golgotha where the contents of the Mysteries were known. The Initiators could say, You can understand the one whom we have shown you during the three and a half days, whom the prophets announced to you, if you use the means which the Mysteries can give you. The Apocalyptist had received the tradition of the Mysteries orally; he said, “If I am permeated with what can be experienced in the Mysteries, Christ appears to me.” Thus the Apocalypse was nothing new; but its application to the unique Event of Golgotha was something new. The essential thing was that for those who have ears to hear it was possible, with the help of what is in the Apocalypse of John, to penetrate gradually to the true understanding of the Event of Golgotha. This was the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. He received the Apocalypse from the ancient Mysteries; it is an ancient sacred book of humanity and has only been presented externally to humanity by the disciple whom the Lord loved and to whom he bequeathed the task of announcing his true form. He is to remain until Christ comes; so that those who have a more illuminated consciousness will be able to understand him. He is the great teacher of the true Event of Golgotha. He has given to man the means by which he can really understand the Event of Golgotha. At the beginning of the Apocalypse the writer says (I have tried to translate the first few words in such a way that they convey the true meaning): “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto his servant, to show in brief what must needs come to pass. This is put in symbols and sent through an angel to his servant John, who wrote these things.” He wishes to describe it in brief; what does this mean? It means in other words: “If I were to describe in detail all that will take place from now up to the goal of the earth evolution, I. should have to write a very great deal, but I will show it to you in a short sketch.” This the translators who could not penetrate into the spirit of the Apocalypse have translated as “to show what must shortly come to pass.” They thought that what is described in the Apocalypse was to happen in the near future. But it ought to read: “I will briefly describe what will take place.” The original text fully admits of the true interpretation I have tried to give in the introduction to Seals and Columns.

We have said much in these lectures concerning this ancient sacred record of the human race, much concerning the secrets which the Lord imparted to humanity by the disciple whom he loved. You may have learnt from this that the Apocalypse is a profound book full of wisdom, and have perhaps many tines during these considerations been troubled because much in it is so difficult to understand. Now I should like to say one thing at the close of our studies. All that I have been able to say to you corresponds exactly to the intentions of the writer of the Apocalypse, and was always taught in this way in the schools which have kept to the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. But it is by no means all that could be said and one can go much deeper into the truths, into the foundations of the Apocalypse. And if we were to penetrate fully into all the depths, what I have been able to say to you would seem only like a first superficial presentation. It cannot be done in any other way, we can at first give only a superficial presentation. One must go through this. One has to begin with the elementary things, and then, when one has gone a little further, greater depths will be found. For below the surface there is a very great deal of which we have been only able to unveil a very little. If you go further along the path which in a certain way you have begun by turning your attention to the exposition of the Apocalypse of John, you will gradually penetrate into the depths of the spiritual life. You will come into depths which cannot possibly be expressed to-day, because they could not be brought into consciousness, because no one has yet ears to hear. The ears must first be prepared to hear, by such explanations as have now been given. Then they will gradually be there, cars able to hear the Word which flows at such profound depths through the Apocalypse. If you have been able to receive a little of what could be imparted, you must be aware that only the most superficial things could be given, and of these only a few observations. May it give you the impulse to penetrate more and more deeply into what can only be surmised through these lectures. If I were to say only what can be said about the surface, I should have to lecture for still many, many weeks. These lectures could only be a stimulus for further study, and those who feel the impulse to penetrate more deeply into the Apocalypse will have received them in the right way.

To-day, the 8th May, the Theosophical Society celebrates the Day of the White Lotus, which to the outer world is known, in the usual terminology of the day, as the death-day of the instigator of that Spiritual stream in which we now stand. To us it would seem more appropriate to select a different designation for to-day's festival, one taken from our knowledge of the Spiritual world and which should run more like this: ‘The day of transition from an activity on the physical plane to one in the Spiritual worlds’. For to us it is not only an inner conviction in the ordinary sense of the words but an ever-increasing knowledge, that what the outer world calls death is but the passing from one form of work, from an activity stimulated by the impressions of the outer physical world, to one entirely stimulated by the Spiritual world. When to-day we remember the great instigator, H. P. Blavatsky, and the leading persons of her movement who have also now passed over into the Spiritual realm, let us in particular try to form a clear idea of what we ourselves must make of our Spiritual movement so that it may represent a continuation of that activity which she exercised on the physical plane as long as she remained on it; so that on the one hand it may be a continuation of that activity and at the same time be possible for the Foundress herself to continue her work from the Spiritual world, both now and in the future. On such a day as this it is seemly that we should in a sense break away from our usual study of theosophical matters, and theosophical life, and should instead go through a sort of conscientious retrospect, a retrospect concerning what the tasks and duties the theosophical movement sets before us, and which may also lead us to a sort of prevision of what this movement should become in the future, and what we should do, and avoid doing.

What we are carrying on as the Theosophical movement came into the world as the result of certain quite special circumstances and certain historical necessities. You know that there was here no question, as in other Spiritual movements or unions of any sort,—of one or more persons determining to follow certain ideals according as the quality of their hearts and minds leads them to feel enthusiasm for these ideals, trying to enthuse other people and to induce them to form societies or unions for carrying these into practice. Not in this way should we view the Theosophical movement if we understand it aright. We only do this if we look upon it as an historical necessity of our present life: something which, regardless of what people feel or would like to feel about it, was bound to come, for it already lay in the womb of time, so to speak, and had to be brought to birth. In what way then may we regard the Theosophical movement? It may be considered as a descent, a new descent of Spiritual life, of Spiritual wisdom and Spiritual forces, into the sensible physical world from the super-sensible ones. Such a descent had to take place for the further development of man, and must repeatedly take place in the future. It cannot of course be our task to-day to point out all the different great impulses through which Spiritual life has flowed down from the super-sensible worlds in order that the soul-life of man should be renewed when it had, so to speak, grown old; but in the course of time this has frequently occurred. One thing, however, must be borne in mind.

In the primeval past, not long after the great Atlantean catastrophe which the traditions of the various countries record as the story of the Flood, came that impulse that we may describe as the inflow of Spiritual life that poured into the development of mankind through the Holy Rishis. Then came that other stream of Spiritual life that flowed down into man's evolution through Zarathustra or Zoroaster, and we find another stream of like nature in that which came to the old Israelites through the revelations of Moses.

I want during the next few evenings to talk to you about various things in connection with our present civilisation, things which are necessary to right understanding and action in the world to-day. It is not very difficult—in view of the many facts that meet one almost at every turn—to perceive signs of decline within our civilisation, and that it contains forces that make for its downfall. Recognising these forces of decline and fall within our civilisation, we have then to seek out the quarters from which it may draw fresh sources of new strength. If we survey our present civilisation we shall see that there are present in it three main downward forces,—three forces which gradually and inevitably must bring about its overthrow. All the distressing phenomena which we have hitherto experienced in the course of man's evolution, and all those that we have still to go through,—for in many respects we are only just at the beginning,—are all only so many symptoms of a vast process going on in our age, which, taken as a whole, presents a phenomenon of decline and fall.

If we look beyond our own immediate civilisation, beyond what has taken place in our own times merely, or during the last three or four hundred years,—if we take a wide survey of the whole course of man's evolution we may observe that earlier ages had a groundwork for their civilisation, a foundation for the habits and thoughts of everyday life, such as we to-day only believe ourselves to have. These old civilisations, especially the heathen civilisations, had something of a scientific character about them, a scientific character of a sort which made men realise that what lived within their own souls was part of the life of the whole universe. Just think what a vivid conception the Greeks still possessed of worlds extending beyond the bounds of everyday existence, of a world of gods and spirits behind the world of sense. One has but to recall how great a part was played in everyday life by whatever could form any sort of link between the people of those older civilisations and a spiritual world to which they were no strangers. In all their daily transactions, these men of the old civilisations were conscious of forming part of a creation that was not exhausted within the limits of the everyday world, but where spiritual beings made their activities felt. The commonest everyday affairs were carried on under the guidance of spiritual forces. Thus, in the heathen civilisations especially, we find when we look back on them, a dominant scientific character, which is best described by saying: in those days people—we can put it in that way—people had a COSMOGONY; that is, they recognised themselves to be members of the whole universe. They knew that they were not merely beings that had gone astray and were wandering about over the face of the green earth like lost sheep, but that they were part and parcel of the whole wide universe, and had their own functions in the universe as a whole. The men of old days possessed a COSMOGONY.

Our civilisation possesses no instinct for the creation of a cosmogony in real life. Our mode of conception is not, in the strict sense of the term, a genuinely scientific one. We have tabulated isolated facts and have constructed a logical system of concepts, but we have not got a real science, forming a practical link between us and the spiritual world. How paltry is the part played by the science of our day in common life, compared with what a man of old felt pulsing through him from forces of the spiritual world! In all his actions, he had a cosmogony; he knew himself a member of the whole vast universe. When he looked up at the sun and the moon and the stars, they were not to him strange worlds; for he knew himself, in his own deepest nature, akin to the sun and moon and world of stars. Thus, the old civilisation possessed a Cosmogony; but for our civilisation this cosmogony is lost. Without a cosmogony in life, man cannot be strong.—That is one thing,—what I might call the scientific element,—that is bringing about the downfall of our civilisation.

Another, the second element that is bringing about its downfall, is that there is no true impulse for FREEDOM. Our civilisation lacks the power to ground life upon a broad basis of general freedom. Only very few people in our day arrive at any real conception of freedom. There are plenty who talk about it; but very few to-day arrive at any real conception of what freedom really is, and fewer still have any real impulse for it. And so, it comes, that our civilisation is gradually sinking into something where it can find neither strength nor support—into fatalism. Either we have religious fatalism, in which men yield themselves up to religious forces of some sort or another, make these religious forces their master, and ask nothing better than to be pulled about by strings, like puppets at a show; or else we have the fatalism of natural science. And the effects of such scientific fatalism are seen in the way people have come to regard everything that happens as happening by natural necessity, or by economic necessity, and as leaving no scope for free action on the part of man. When men feel themselves fettered to the world of economics or the world of nature, that is, to all intents and purposes, fatalism. Or else, again, we have that fatalism which has come in with the more modern forms of religious faith,—a fatalism that deliberately precludes freedom. Just ask yourselves how many hearts and souls there are to-day that consciously yearn to yield themselves up, for Christ, or a spiritual power of some kind, to do what he pleases with them. Why, it is even an accusation that one frequently hears made against Anthroposophy, that it lays too little stress on men being redeemed by Christ and not by themselves. People prefer to be led; they prefer to be guided; they would really prefer fatalism to be true. How often lately, in these troublous [troubled?] years, has one not heard that kind of talk from one person or another. They would say: “Why doesn't God, why doesn't Christ, come to the help of this or that set of people? There must, after all, be a divine justice somewhere!” People would like this divine Justice ... They would like to have it suspended aloft as a fate. They do not want to get to that ingrained innate strength which comes from the impulse of Freedom and permeates the whole being. A civilisation that does not know how to foster the impulse of Freedom weakens men and dooms itself to downfall.

That is the second thing. Of the forces that are bringing about the decline of our civilisation, the first is the lack of a COSMOGONY, and the second is the lack of a genuine impulse for FREEDOM.

The third is that our civilisation is incapable of evolving anything that can give fresh fire to religious feeling and purpose. Our civilisation, in truth, aims at nothing more than nursing the old religions and fanning their cold ashes. But to bring new religious impulses into life,—for that our civilisation lacks the strength. And lacking this, it lacks also the strength for true altruistic action in life. That is why all the processes of our civilisation are so egoistic, because it has within itself no real, no strong, altruistic motive-power. There is nothing, friends, that can supply altruistic motive-power, but a spiritual view of life. Only when a man comes to recognise himself as a member of the spiritual world, does he cease to be so tremendously interested in himself that the whole world revolves round him. When he does,—then, indeed, egoistic motives cease and altruistic ones set in. Our age, however, is little given to cultivating so great an interest in the spiritual world. The interest in the spiritual world has got to be a good deal further developed before people really feel themselves members of it.

And so, one might say that it was like impulses given from on high that REINCARNATION and KARMA came amongst us and into our civilisation. But how were these impulses interpreted? At bottom it was in a very egoistic way that these ideas of Reincarnation and Karma were understood, even by those who took them up. For instance, they would say: “Oh, well! In some life or other everyone has deserved what he gets.” Even otherwise quite intelligent people have been known to say that the ideas of Reincarnation and Karma of themselves sufficiently warranted the existence of human suffering. There was at bottom no justification for the social question,—so said many otherwise intelligent people,—for, if a man was poor, it was what he had earned in his previous incarnation, and he has to work off in this incarnation only what he deserved from a previous one. Even the ideas of reincarnation and karma are unable to permeate our civilisation in any way except one which gives no stimulus to the altruistic sense. It is not enough for us merely to introduce ideas such as those of reincarnation and Karma,—the question is, in what way we introduce them. If they become merely an incentive to egoism, then they do not raise up our civilised life, they only serve to sink it lower.

There is another way, again, in which reincarnation and karma become unethical, anti-ethical, ideas; many people say: “I must be good, so that I may have a good incarnation next time.” To act from such a motive, to be virtuous in order that one may have as pleasant a time as possible in one's next incarnation,—this is not mere simple egoism, it is double egoism; yet this double egoism is what many people did actually get out of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. So that one may say that our civilisation possesses so little of any altruistic religious impulse that it is incapable of conceiving even such ideas as those of reincarnation and karma in the sense that would make them a stimulus to altruistic, not to egoistic actions and sentiments.

Those are the three things which are acting within our civilisation as forces of decline and fall:—lack of a COSMOGONY, lack of a sound foundation of FREEDOM, lack of an ALTRUISTIC SENSE. But without a cosmogony there is no real science or system of knowledge, there is no real knowledge; then all knowledge ultimately becomes a mere game, in which all the worlds and the civilisation of man are toys. And this is what knowledge has, in many respects, become in our age,—in so far as it is not merely a utilitarian incident of external culture, of external technical culture. Freedom has become in many respects in our age an empty phrase, because the force of our civilisation is not that which lays a large foundation of freedom nor spreads abroad the impulse of freedom. Neither have we in the economic field the possibility of progressing further in the social direction, because our civilisation contains no altruistic motive-force, but only egoistic, that means anti-social motive-forces,—and one cannot socialise with antisocial forces. For socialising means creating a social framework such that each man lives and works for the rest. But just imagine in our present civilisation each man trying to live and work for the rest! Why, the whole order of society is so instituted that each one can only live and work for himself. All our institutions are like that.

The question then arises:—How are we going to surmount these signs of our civilisation's decline and fall? To plaster over such signs of decline in our civilisation, my dear friends, is quite impossible. There is nothing for it but to recognise the facts as they have just been stated, to regard them dispassionately and without reservations, and to harbour no illusions. One must say to oneself: There they are, these forces of decline and fall, and one must not imagine that one can in any way turn them in another direction, or anything of that sort. No, they are very powerful forces of decline, and it is necessary to give them their proper name, and to speak of them as we are doing now. This being so, what we have got to do is to turn to where forces can be found for the re-ascent. That is not to be done by theorising, People in the present day may invent the most beautiful theories, may have the most beautiful principles, but with theories one can do nothing. To do anything in life, it must be by means of the forces that are actually present in the world; and one must summon them up. If our civilisation were through and through as I have been describing it,—I mean, if it were like that through and through,—then there would be nothing for it but to say to ourselves: “There is nothing for it, but just to let our civilisation go to pieces, and ourselves go to pieces along with it.” For to attempt in any way to redress the signs of the times by mere theories or conceptions would be an utter absurdity.

One can but ask:—Does not the root of the matter perhaps lie really deeper? It does lie deeper; and in this way:—People to-day—and I have here often pointed out the same thing from different aspects,—people to-day are too much bent upon the absolute. When they ask: “What is true?” they mean, “What Is true absolutely?”—not what is true of a particular age. When they ask, “What is good?” they are asking, “What is good absolutely?” They are not asking, “What is good for Europe? What is good for Asia? What is good for the 20th century? What is good for the 25th century?” They are asking about absolute Goodness and Truth. They are not asking about what actually exists in the concrete evolution of mankind. We must put the question to ourselves in a different way, for we must look at the actuality of things, and from the point of view of actuality; questions must be differently put, very often so put that the answers seem paradoxical compared with what one is inclined to assume from a surface view of things. We must ask ourselves: Is there no possibility of arriving once more at a mode of conception which is cosmogonical, which takes in the universe as a whole? Is there no possibility of arriving at an impulse of freedom which shall be an actual influence in social life? Is there no possibility for an impulse which shall be religious and at the same time an impulse of brotherhood, and therefore the real basis for an economic social order? Is there no possibility^ of arriving at such an impulse? And if we put these questions before us from a real aspect, then we get real answers. For the point, we have here to remember is this: that the various types of people on the earth to-day are not all adapted to the whole all-comprehensive universal truth, but that the various types of men are only adapted to particular fields of the true activity. We must ask ourselves; Where in the life of earth to-day may there, perhaps, exist the possibility for a cosmogony to evolve? Where does the possibility exist for a sweeping impulse of freedom to evolve? And where does the impulse exist for a communal life among men, which is religious and also, in a social sense, brotherly?

We will take the last question first; and if we contemplate the state of affairs on our earth impartially, we shall come to the conclusion that the temperament, the mode of thought for an actual brotherly impulse upon our earth is to be sought amongst the Asiatic peoples, the peoples of Asia, especially in the civilisations of Japan and India. Despite the fact that these civilisations are already fallen into decadence, and despite the fact that external, superficial appearances are against it, we find there enshrined in men's hearts those impulses of generous love towards all living things, which alone can supply foundations for religious altruism in the first place, and, in the second, for an actual, altruistic, industrial form of civilisation.

But here we are met by a peculiar fact: that the Asiatics have, it is true, the temperament for altruism, but that they have not got the kind of human existence which would enable them to carry their altruism into practice; they have merely got the temperament but they have no possibility, no gift, for creating social conditions in which altruism could begin to be externally realised. For thousands of years the Asiatics have managed to nurse the instincts of altruism in human nature. And yet they brought this to a state in which China and India were devastated by monster famines. That is the peculiar thing about the Asiatic civilisation, that the temperament is there, and that this temperament is inwardly perfectly sincere, but that there exists no gift for realising this temperament in outward life. That is just the peculiar thing about this Asiatic civilisation, that it contains a tremendously strong instinct for altruism in men's inward nature, yet no possibility for the moment of realising 4t externally. On the contrary, if Asia were left to herself alone, this very fact, that she has this capacity for paying the inward basis of altruism, without any gift for realising it outwardly, would turn Asia into an appalling desert of civilisation.

We may say, then, that of these three things: the impulse for COSMOGONY, the impulse for FREEDOM, the impulse for ALTRUISM, Asia possesses more especially the inward temperament for the third. It is, however, but one third of -what is necessary to bring our civilisation into the ascendant, which Asia possesses,—the inward temperament for altruism.

What has Europe got? Well, Europe has got the utmost necessity for solving the social question; but she has not got the temperament for the social question. To solve the social question, she would need to have the Asiatic temperament. The social necessities of Europe are such as to supply all the conditions requisite for a solution of the social question; but the Europeans would first need to become permeated through and through with the way of thought which is natural to the Asiatic, only the Asiatic has no gift for actually perceiving social needs as they exist externally. Often, indeed, he even acquiesces in them. In Europe, there is every external incentive to do something about the social question, but the temperament is lacking. On the other hand, there is in Europe, in the very strongest degree, the talent, the ability which would provide the soil for Freedom,—for the impulse of freedom. The strong point of European talents, specifically European talents, lies in developing in the very highest degree the inner sentiment, the inner feeling for freedom. One might say that the gift for getting to a real idea of Freedom is specifically European; but among these Europeans there are no people who act freely, who could make freedom a reality. Of Freedom as an idea, the Europeans can form the loftiest conception. But just as the Asiatic would be able to set about doing something, if he possessed the clear thought of the Europeans without their other failings, if he could only get the clear-out European idea of Freedom, so the European can evolve the most beautiful conception of Freedom, but there is no possibility, politically, of realising this idea of freedom through the direct agency of the European peoples, for, of the three essentials to civilisation,—the impulse for altruism, the impulse for freedom, the impulse for cosmogony,—the European possesses only one-third, the impulse for Freedom. The other two he has not got.

So, the European also has only got one-third of what is necessary in order really to bring forth a new age. It is very important that people should at last recognise these things as being the secrets of our civilisation. In Europe we can, at least, say that we have all the conditions of thought and feeling requisite for knowing what freedom is, but, without something more, there is no possibility for us to actualise this freedom. I can assure you, for instance, that in Germany the most beautiful things were written by various individuals about freedom, at the time when all Germany was groaning under the tyranny of Ludendorff and Co. Most beautiful things were written about freedom at the time. Here in Europe, a talent undoubtedly exists for conceiving the impulse of freedom. That is one-third, so far, towards the actual upraising of our civilisation,—one-third, not the whole.

Leaving Europe and going westwards—and I take Great Britain and America together in this connection,—passing, then, to the Anglo-American world, we find there again, one-third of the impulses, just one out of the three impulses necessary to the upraising of our civilisation, and that is, the impulse towards a cosmogony. Anyone acquainted with the spiritual life of the Anglo-American world knows that, formalistic as Anglo-American spiritual life is in the first instance, that, materialistic as it is in the first instance, and though, indeed, it even tries to get what is spiritual in a materialistic fashion, yet it has got in it the makings of a cosmogony. Although this cosmogony is to-day being sought along altogether erroneous paths, yet it lies in Anglo-American nature to seek for it. Again, a third, the search for a cosmogony. But there the possibility of bringing this cosmogony into connection with free altruistic man does not exist. There is the talent for treating this cosmogony as an ornamental appendage, for working it out and giving it shape; but no talent for incorporating the human being in this cosmogony as a member of it. Even the spiritualist movement, in its early beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, of which it still preserves some traces, had, one may say, something of a cosmogony about it, although it led into the wilderness. What they were trying to get at were the forces that lay behind the sense-forces; only they took a materialistic road, a materialistic method, to find them. But they were not endeavouring through these means to arrive at a science of the formalist kind that you get, for instance, among the Europeans; they were trying to become acquainted with the real actual super-sensual forces. Only, as I said, they took a wrong road, what is still known as the “American” way. So here, again, we have one-third of what will have to be there before our civilisation can really rise again.

One cannot to-day arrive at the secrets of our civilisation, my dear friends, unless one can distinguish how these three impulses needed for its rise are distributed among the different parts of our earth's surface; unless one knows that the tendency towards Cosmogony is an endowment of the Anglo-American world, that the tendency towards Freedom lies in the European world, whilst the tendency towards Altruism and towards that temperament which, properly realised, leads to socialism is, strictly speaking, peculiar to Asiatic culture. America, Europe, Asia, each has one- third of what must be attained for any true regeneration, any real reconstruction of our civilisation.

These are the fundamental ideas which must inspire thought and feeling to-day for anyone who is in earnest and sincere about working for a reconstruction of our civilisation. One cannot to-day shut oneself up in one's study and ponder over which is the best programme for the coming times. One has got to-day to go out into the world and search out the impulses already existing there. As I said, if one looks at our civilisation and at all that is hurrying it to its fall, one cannot avoid an impression that it is impossible to save it. And it cannot be saved unless people come to see that one thing is to he found amongst one people, and the second amongst another, the third amongst a third,—unless people all over the earth come together and set to work on big lines to give practical recognition to what none of them, singly, can of himself achieve, in the absolute sense, but which must be achieved by that one who is marked out, so to speak, by destiny for that particular work. If the American to-day, besides a cosmogony, wants also to evolve freedom and socialism, he cannot do it. If to-day the European, besides founding the impulse for freedom, wants to supply cosmogony and altruism, he cannot do it. No more can the Asiatic realise anything save his long- engrained altruism. Let this altruism be once taken over by the other groups of the earth's inhabitants, and saturated with that for which each has a special talent, then, and then only, we shall really get on.

We have got once for all to admit to ourselves that our civilisation has grown feeble, and must again find strength. I have expressed this in a rather abstract way, and to make it more concrete will put it as follows:—The old pre-Christian civilisations of the East produced, as you know, great cities. Great cities existed in them. We can look back over a wide spread range of civilisations in the East, which all produced great cities. But the great cities they produced had, as well, a certain character about them. All the civilisations of the East had this speciality for creating, along with the life of great cities, the conception that, after all, man's life is a void, a nothing, unless he penetrates beyond the merely physical into the super-physical. And so, great cities such as Babylon, Nineveh, and the rest, were able to develop a real growth, because men were not led by these cities to regard what the cities themselves brought forth as being itself the actual reality, but, rather, what is behind it all. It was in Rome that people came to make the civilisation of cities a gauge of what was to be regarded as real. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the country round them. If history, as we have it, were not such a conventional fiction,—a “fable convenue,”—and would only revive past times in their time aspect, it would show us the Greek cities rooted in the country. But Rome no longer had her roots in the country. Indeed, the whole history of Rome consists in the conversion of an imaginary world into a real world, the conversion of a world which is unreal into one which is real. It was in Rome that the Citizen was first invented,—that ghastly mock-figure alongside the living being, Man. For man is a human being; and if he is a citizen besides, that is a fiction. His being a citizen is something that is entered in the church register, or the town register, or somewhere of the sort. That besides being a human being, endowed with particular faculties, he is also the owner of assessed property, duly entered in the land register,—that is a fiction alongside the reality. That is thoroughly Roman thought. But Rome achieved a great deal more than that. Rome managed to take all that results from the separation of the town from the country,—the real, actual country,—and to give it a fictitious reality. Rome, for instance, took the old religious concepts and introduced into them the Roman legal concepts. If we go back to the old religious concepts with an open mind, we do not find the Roman legal concepts contained in the old religious ones. Roman jurisprudence simply invaded religious ethics. All through religious ethics, thanks to what Rome has made of them, there is, at bottom, a notion of the supersensible world as of a place with judges sitting, passing judgment on human actions, just as they do on the Benches of our law-courts, that are modelled on the Roman pattern.

Yes, so persistent is the influence of these Roman legal concepts, that when there is any talk of Karma, one actually finds that the majority of people to-day who accept the doctrine of Karma picture it working, as though Justice were sitting over there beyond, meting out rewards and punishments according to our earthly notions, a reward for a good deed, and a punishment for a bad one,—exactly the Roman conception of law. All the saints and supernatural beings exist after the fashion of these Roman legal concepts which have crept into the supernatural world.

Who to-day, for instance, comprehends the grand idea of the Greek “Fate”? The concepts of Roman jurisprudence do not help us much to-day, do they, towards the understanding of the “Oedipus.” Indeed, men seem altogether to have lost the capacity for comprehending tragic grandeur, owing to the influence of Roman legal concepts. And these Roman legal concepts have crept into our modern civilisation; they live in every part of it; they have become in their very essence a fictitious reality, something imaginary,—not something one imagines, but something that is imaginary. It is absolutely necessary for us clearly to see that, in our whole way of conceiving things, we have lost touch with reality, and that what we need is to impregnate our conceptions afresh with reality. It is because men's concepts are, at bottom, hollow, that our civilisation still remains unconscious of the need for the common co-operation of men all over the round earth. We are never really willing to go to the root of what is taking place under our eyes; we are always more or less anxious to keep on the surface of things. Just to give you another example of this. You know how in the various parliaments throughout the world in former days,—say, the first half of the 16th century, or a little later,—party tendencies took shape in two definite directions, the one Conservative the other Liberal,—which for a long time enjoyed considerable respect. The various other parties that have come up since were later accessions to these two main original ones. There was the party of a conservative tendency, and the party of a liberal tendency. But, my dear friends, it is so very necessary that one should nowadays get beyond the words to the real thing behind, and there are many matters about which one must ask, not what people, who stand for a certain thing, say about it, but what is going on subconsciously within the people themselves. If you do so, you will find that the people who attach themselves to one or other of the parties of a conservative tone are people who in some way are chiefly connected with agrarian interests, with the care of land and cultivation of the soil; that is to say, with the primal element of human civilisation. In some way or other this will be the ease. Of course, on the surface, there may be all sorts of other circumstances entering in as well. I do not say that every conservative is necessarily directly connected with agriculture. Of course there is here, as everywhere else, a fringe of people who adhere to the catchwords of a cause. It is the main feature that one has to consider; and the main feature is that that part of the population which has an interest in preserving certain forms of social structure and in keeping things from moving too fast, is agrarian.

On the other hand, the more industrial element, drawn from labour that has been detached from the soil, is liberal, progressive. So that these two-party tendencies have their source in something that lies deeper; and one must, in every case, try to lift such things out of the mere phrases into which they have fallen,—to get through the words to the real thing behind them.

But ultimately, it all tells the same tale,—that the form of civilisation in which we have been living is one whose strength lies in words. We must push forward to a civilisation built upon real things, to a civilisation of real things. We must cease to be imposed upon by phrases, by programmes, by verbal ideals, and must get to the clear perception of realities. Above all, we must get to a clear perception of realities of a kind that lie deeper than forms of civilisation in city or country, agricultural or industrial. And much deeper than these are those impulses which to-day are at work in the various members of the body human distributed over the globe,—of which the American is making towards Cosmogony, the European towards Freedom, and the Asiatic towards Socialism.

At present, this certainly comes out, has and does come out, in a curious way. Anglo-American civilisation is conquering the world, But, in conquering the world, it will need to absorb what the conquered parts of the world have to give; the impulse to Freedom and the impulse to Altruism; for in itself it has only the impulse to Cosmogony. Indeed, Anglo-American civilisation owes its success to a cosmogonic impulse. It owes it to the circumstance that people are able to think in world-thoughts. We have often and often talked about this during the war, and how the successes of that side proceeded from supersensible impulses of a particular kind, which the others refused to recognise. The cosmogonic element cannot and must not be left thus isolated; it must be permeated from the domain of freedom.

Yes, my dear friends, but then, to see the full meaning of this, it is, I need hardly say, necessary to get right, right away from phrases, and pierce to the realities. For anyone who is tied to phrases would naturally think; Well, but who of late has stood out as the representatives of Freedom, if not the Anglo- American world?—Why, of course, in words, yes, to any extent, but what matters about a thing is not how it is represented in words, but what it is in reality. We have had over and over again, as you know, occasion to refer to -the language of “Wilsonism.” Phraseology of the Wilson type has been gaining ground in Western countries for a long-time past. In October 1918, it even for a time laid hold of Central Europe. And over and over again here,—I remember there was always quite a little commotion here when, over and over again, as the years went on, one had to point out the futility of all that Woodrow Wilson's name stood for, how utterly hollow and abstract it all was, for which Woodrow Wilson's name stood. But now, you see, people even in America are apparently beginning to see through Wilsonism, and hour hollow and abstract it all is. Here, there was no question of any national feeling of hostility towards Wilson, there was no question of antagonism proceeding from Europe. It was an antagonism arising from the whole conception of our civilisation and its forces. It was a question of showing Wilsonism for what it is,—the type of all that is abstract, all that is most unreal in human thought. It is the Wilson type of thought which has had such one-sided results, because it has absorbed the American impulse without really possessing the impulse of freedom (for talking about freedom is by no means a proof that the impulse of freedom itself is really there), and because it had not the impulse for really practical Altruism.

The life of Central Europe, with all that it was, lies in the dust. What lived in Central Europe is, to a great extent, sunk in a fearful sleep. At the present moment, the German is, one might say, forced to think of freedom, not as they talked of it in all manner of fine phrases at the time when they were groaning under the yoke of Ludendorff,—when constraint of itself engendered an understanding of the idea of freedom. Mow they think of it, but with crippled powers of soul and body, in total inability to summon up the energy for real intense thought. We have in Germany all sorts of attempts at democratic forms, but no democracy. We have a republic, but no republicans. And this is in every way a symptom that has especially manifested itself in Central Europe, but it is characteristic of the European world in general.

And Eastern Europe?—For years and years, the proletariat of the whole world have been boasting of all that Marxianism was going to do. Lenin and Trotsky were in a position to put Marxianism into practice; and it is turning into the wholesale plunder of civilisation, which is identical with the ruin of civilisation. And these things are only just beginning. Yet for all that, there does exist in Europe the capacity for founding freedom, ideally, spiritually. Only, Europe must supplement this in an actual practical sense, through the co-operation of the other people on the earth.

In Asia, we can see the old Asiatic spirit lighting up again in recent years. Those people who are spiritual leaders in Asia (take, for example, the one I have already alluded to, Rabindranath Tagore),--the leading spirits of Asia show by their very way of speaking that the altruistic spirit is anything but dead. But there is still less possibility now than there was even in old days, of achieving a civilisation through this one third only of the impulses that go to the making of a civilisation.

All this is the reason why to-day there is so much talk about things which are peculiar to the civilisation that is dying, but which people talk about as though they stood for something that could be effective as an ideal. For years, we have had it proclaimed that “Every nation must have the possibility of ...” well, I don't quite know of what, living its own life in its own way, or something of that sort. Now, I ask you: For the man of to-day, if he is frank and honest about it, what is a “nation”?—Practically just a form of words, certainly nothing real. If one talks about the Spirit of a Nation, in the sense in which we speak of it in Anthroposophy, then one can talk about a Nation, for then there is a reality at the back of it; but not when it merely signifies an abstraction. And it is an abstraction that people have in mind today when they talk of the “freedom” of nationalities, and so forth. For they certainly don't believe in the reality of any sort of national Being. And herein lies the profound inward falsity to which men to-day do homage. They don't believe in the reality of the national Being, yet they talk of the “Freedom of the Nation,” as if to the materialist man of our day, the “nation” meant anything at all. What is the German nation? Just ninety millions of persons, who can be added together and summed up, A plus A plus A. That is not a National Being—a self-contained entity—for men to believe in. And it is just the same with the other nations. Yet people talk about these things and believe that they are talking about realities, and all the while are lying to themselves in the depths of their souls.

But it is with Realities we are dealing when we say; The Anglo- American Being—a striving towards cosmogony; the European Being—a striving towards freedom; the Asiatic Being—a striving towards altruism. When we then try to comprehend these three divided forces in a consciousness that embraces the universe as a whole,—when, from out of this consciousness of the universal whole, we say to ourselves: “The old civilisation is bursting through its partitions, it is doomed,” to try to save it -would be to work against one's age, not with it. We need a new civilisation upon the ruins of the old one. The ruins of the old civilisation will get ever smaller and smaller; and that man alone understands the present times who has will and courage for one that shall be really new. But the new must be grounded, neither in a sense of country as among the Greeks and Romans, nor in a sense of the Earth, as with men of modern times. It must proceed from a sense of the Universe, the world-consciousness of future man, that world-consciousness which once more turns its eyes away from the earth here, and looks up to the Cosmos. Only, we must arrive at a view of this Cosmos which shall carry us in practice beyond the Schools of Copernicus and Galileo.

My dear friends, the Europeans have known how to express the earth's environment in terms of mathematics; but they have not known how, from the earth's environment, to extract a real science. For the times in which he lived, Giordano Bruno was a remarkable figure, a great personality; but to-day we need to realise that where he could only perceive a mathematical order, there a spiritual order reigns, reality reigns. The American does not really believe in this purely mathematical world, in the purely mathematical cosmos. His particular civilisation leads him to reach out to a knowledge of the supersensible forces beyond, even though he is, as yet, on the wrong road. In Europe, there was no sort of knowledge that they did not pursue; and yet when Goethe, in his own way, really put the question: “What is scientific knowledge?” there was no getting any further; for Europe had not got the power to take what can be learnt from the study, say, of Man, and widen it into a cosmogony, a science of the universe. Goethe discovered metamorphosis, the metamorphosis of plants, the metamorphosis of animals, the metamorphosis of man. The head, in respect of its system of bones, is a vertebral column and spinal marrow, transformed. So far, so good; but you need to follow it up and develop it, until you realise that this head is the transformed man of the previous incarnation, and that the trunk and limbs are the man in the initial stage of the coming incarnation. Real science must be cosmic, otherwise it is not science. It must be cosmic, must be a cosmogony, otherwise this science is not something that can. give inward human impulses which will carry man on through life. The man of modern times cannot live instinctively; he must live consciously. He needs a cosmogony; and he needs a freedom that is real. He needs more than a lot of vague talk about freedom; he needs more than the mere verbiage of freedom; he needs that freedom should actually grow into his immediate life and surroundings. This is only possible along paths that lead to ethical individualism.

There is a characteristic incident in connection with this. At the time when my Philosophy of Freedom appeared, Edouard von Hartmann was one of the first to receive a copy of the book, and he wrote me: “The book ought not to be called The Philosophy of Freedom,” but “A Study in Phenomena connected with the Theory of Cognition, and in Ethical Individualism.” Well, for a title that would have been rather long-winded; but it would no# have been bad to have called it “Ethical Individualism,” for ethical individualism is nothing but the personal realisation of freedom. The best people were totally unable to perceive how the actual impulses of the age were calling for the thing that is discussed in that book, The Philosophy of Freedom.

Turning now to Asia,—indeed, my dear friends, Asia and Europe must learn to understand each other. But if things go on as they have in the past, then they will never understand each other, especially as Asia and America have to understand each other as well The Asiatics look at America and see that what they have there is really nothing more than the machinery of external life, of the State, of Politics, etc, The Asiatic has no taste for all this machinery; his understanding is all for the things that arise from the inmost impulses of the human soul. The Europeans have, it is true, dabbled in this same Asiatic spirit, the spiritual life of Asia; but it must be confessed that they have not, so far, given proof of. any very great understanding of it. Nor have they been in very perfect agreement, and the kind of disagreement that arose plainly showed that they had very little understanding of how to introduce into European culture what are the real actuating impulses of Asiatic culture. Just think of Mme. Blavatsky; she wanted to introduce into the civilisation of Europe every kind of thing out of the civilisation of India, of Thibet. Much of it was very dubious, that she tried to introduce. Max Müller tried another way of bringing Asiatic civilisation into Europe. One finds a good deal in Blavatsky that is not in Max Müller; and there is a good deal in Max Müller that is not in Blavatsky. But from the criticism Max Müller passed on Blavatsky it is plain how little insight there was into the subject. In Max Müller's opinion, it was not the real substance of the Indian spirit that Blavatsky had brought over to England, but a spurious imitation, and he expressed his opinion in a simile, by saying: That if people met a pig that was grunting, they would not be astonished; but if they met a pig talking like a man, then they would be astonished. Well, in the way Max Müller used the simile he can only have meant that he, with his Asiatic culture, was the pig that grunted, and that Blavatsky was as if a pig should start talking like a man! To me it certainly seems that there is nothing remarkably interesting about a pig grunting; but one would begin to feel rather interested if a pig were suddenly to start running about and talking like a man Here the simile of itself shows that the analogy they found was a very thin one and lies chiefly in the words. But people do not notice that nowadays; and if one does make bold to point out the absurd side of the matter, then people think one ought not to treat “recognised authorities” like Max Müller in that kind of way, it is not at all proper!

That is just where it is, my dear friends, the time is at hand when one must speak out honestly and straightforwardly. And if one ie to be honest and straightforward, one must speak out quite plainly about the occult facts of our civilisation in the present day,—such facts as these: That the Anglo-American world has the gift for Cosmogony, that Europe has the gift for Freedom, Asia the gift for Altruism, for religion, for a social-economic order.

These three temperaments must be fused together for a complete humanity. We must become men of all the worlds, and act from that standpoint, as inhabitants of the universe. Then, and then only, can that come about which the age really demands.

We will talk more about this tomorrow. To-morrow we meet at 7 o'clock. First there will be the Eurhythmic performance, then a break, and after that the lecture.

What I am going to say today is intended to deal with primary and secondary education, and to deal with it in such a way that what is of essential value can be useful for the present time, the grave times, in which we are now living. I believe you will have seen for yourselves that what could be given only as outline in my book The Threefold Commonwealth has many deep contributing factors—indeed very many, if we take into consideration all that arises from the new shaping of the world. So that actually in everything that must be said on this subject, preeminently where fresh activity has to be aroused, only guiding lines can be given to begin with instead of anything of an exhaustive nature.

When we look at the times in which we are living—and we need to do so for we have to understand them—it must constantly strike us what a gulf there is between what must be called a declining culture and a culture that may be described as chaotic, but all the same on the up-grade. I expressly draw attention to the fact that today I am wanting to deal with a special aspect of my subject, and therefore ask you to take it in connection with the lectures as a whole, once they are brought to completion.

I should like to start by drawing your attention to something that is clearly noticeable, namely, how the culture based on bourgeois social contract is in rapid decline, whereas we are witnessing the dawn of another culture based on what is largely not understood and represented by the proletariat. If all this is to be understood—it can be felt without being understood but will then lack clarity—we must grasp it in its symptoms. Symptoms are always a matter of detail; I ask you to remember this in what I am saying today. I shall naturally be forced by the subject itself to take details out of their context, but I shall take pains so to shape this symptomatology that it will not be able to work in the way of agitators or demagogues, but will really be shaped by the relevant circumstances. We may meet with much misunderstanding in this direction today, but that we shall have to risk.

Now in the course of years I have often asked you to bear in mind that, on the ground of the world-outlook represented here, it is perfectly possible to be a real upholder and defender of the modern natural scientific approach to the world. You know how frequently I have referred to all that can be said in defense of this approach! At the same time, however, I have never failed to point out what a fearful counterpart it has. Quite recently I reminded you that this can be seen at once when anyone, as a result of what we call here the symptomatic method of study, points to some particularly telling example and goes to work quite empirically. Now in another connection I have had to sing the praises of a recent remarkable work by the outstanding biologist Oskar Hertwig, Das werden der Organismen—Eine Wiederlegung der Darwinischen Zufallstheorie. Then, to avoid misunderstanding after the publication of a second book of his, I have had to remark how this man has followed up a really great book on natural science with a quite inferior work on social conditions. This is a fact fraught with meaning for the present time. It shows that even on the excellent foundation of the natural scientific approach to the world, what is pre-eminently necessary for an understanding of the present times cannot arise, namely, knowledge of the social impulses existing in our age. I want today to give you another example to bring home to you with greater emphasis how, on the one hand, bourgeois culture is on the decline and can be saved only in a certain way; how, on the other hand, there exists something that is on the ascent, something that must be carefully tended with understanding and judgment if it is to be a sarting point for the culture of the future.

Now I have before me a book that is a symptomatic and typical product of the declining bourgeoisie. It appeared immediately after the world war with the somewhat pretentious title The Light Bearer. This light bearer is admirably adapted to spread darkness over everything which today is most necessary for social culture and its spiritual foundation. A remarkable community of people have foregathered, who in separate articles have written remarkable things about a so-called rebuilding of the social organism. Naturally I can quote only certain passages from this rather voluminous work. To begin with we have a scientist named Jakob von Uexkull, really a good typical scientist who—and this is the important point—has not only a certain knowledge of natural science, is not merely well versed in it, but in his research work is recognised as an accomplished scientist of the day. He feels impelled, however, like others bred in the scientific tradition, to treat us to his views upon organising the world socially. He has learnt about the 'cell-state' as the organism is often called in scientific circles. He has certainly learnt to develop his mind, with which he then observes the social life. I want to refer you just to a few instances from which you may be able to see how this man, not from his knowledge of natural science but as a result of his scientific method of thinking—really quite correct but wholly absurd for practical life—how he now looks at the structure of modern society: he turns to the social organism, to the natural scientific organism, the organism as it is in nature, and finds that "the harmony in a natural organism can at times be disturbed by processes of disease"—and referring to the social organism goes on to say:

“All harmony can be disturbed through disease. We call the most terrible disease of the human body cancer. Its characteristic is the unrestrained activity of the protoplasm which, without considering the preservation of the organs, goes on producing more and more protoplasmic cells. These press upon the bodily structure; they cannot, however, fulfil any function themselves for they are lacking in structure.

“We recognise the same disease in the human community at large when the people's motto: liberty, equality, fraternity, replaces the motto of the state: compulsion, diversity, subordination.”

Now here you have a typical scientific thinker. He looks upon it as a cancerous disease when the impulse towards liberty, equality and fraternity arises out of the people. In place of freedom he wants to put compulsion, in place of equality, diversity, in place of fraternity, subordination. This is what from the 'cell-state' he has learnt to adopt as his method of viewing things, and which he then applies to the social organism. The rest of what he puts forward too is not without significance when considered from the symptomalogical point of view. He goes so far as to find something in the social organism that corresponds in the natural organism to the circulation of the blood, not at all in the way I have described it in various lectures, but as he himself pictures it. He goes to the length of looking upon gold as blood circulating in the social organism and says: “Gold possesses the faculty of circulating independently of commodities, finally reaching the collecting centres represented by the great banks (Gold heart)”. Thus this scientist seeks a heart for his social organism and finds it in the collecting centres of the great banks, “which can exercise an overwhelming influence on the movements of both gold and commodities”.

Now I particularly stress that I have no intention of making fun of anything here. I want just to let you see how a man, who from this point of view has the courage to think things out to their logical conclusion, is actually obliged to think. If today many people deceive themselves about our having during the last three or four centuries brought evolution to the point of making this kind of thinking quite intelligible, then it is evident that these people are asleep in their souls, that they give themselves up to cultural narcotics which prevent their looking with wide awake souls at what is concealed in bourgeois culture. For this reason I have shown you a symptom that sheds light on this light bearer, sheds light on the elements of present-day culture, in so far as, out of the scientific method of thinking, this culture understands the social life. In a further examnple I want to show you how different a result we experience from what we meet within the spiritual sphere.

Among those belonging to the society just mentioned there is a man with a more spiritual bent, by name Friedrich Niebergall. Now this Friedrich Niebergall is quoted because his attitude towards certain things we consider of value is most sympathetic. But I should like to say here that what matters is the nature of the sympathetic attitude with which from such a side certain matters are approached. If we know this, and if we are not mere egoists but understand the great social impulses, perhaps we do not value this sympathetic attitude very highly; and it would be good if in these matters we were not to give ourselves up to illusion. We know, some of us at least could know, that what we carry on here and call spiritual science, or anthroposophy, we have for some time considered to be the true spiritual foundation of what today is on the ascent. Here, it is true, extremes meet; and I have always been forced to experience how some of those very people who participate in our anthroposophical endeavors turn to other movements they feel to be closely akin, but which differ from our endeavors in that they belong to the worst phenomena of the bourgeois decline, whereas spiritual science has from the first been strongly opposed to all that is behind this. So we find confused together in a certain Johannes Müller, who has no power of discriminating the different streams—like Niebergall for example—we find in this Johannes Müller a phenomenon showing just the characteristics of our decadent culture; and on the other hand (you know I do not say these things out of mere foolishness) you find mention of my name. It is true that all kinds of elegant things, most elegant things, are said about what I try to accomplish. You must, however, realise how in all that is put forward in anthroposophy my every effort is directed towards taxing man's understanding and fighting in a pronounced way against anything in the way of nebulous mysticism or so-called mystic theosophy. This could be done only by approaching the highest spheres of knowledge with clear insight, lucid ideas, which will be striven for when through natural science we have learnt, not the natural scientific outlook of today, but true thinking. After the gentleman in question has declared how fine much of anthroposophy is, he adds: “Round this basis of practical truth there then springs forth a confused medley of alleged knowledge concerning the life of the soul, of mankind and of the cosmos—as once was the case in the all-embracing gnostic systems offered out of the secret wisdom of the East to an age seeking in like manner inner depths and peace of soul.” It is not possible to say anything less to the point than this. For the fact that the author describes this as confused nonsense, a confused medley, rests solely on his lacking the will to adopt the mathematical method of our spiritual science. This is generally the case with those wishing to gain conceptions from a knowledge that is on the decline. The result of disciplining inner experience by mathematical method appears to this author therefore to be a confused medley. But this conf used medley that brings into the matter mathematical clarity, perhaps indeed mathematical dryness, is what is essential, for it preserves what is meant to be pursued here from all fantastic mysticism, all nebulous theosophy. Without this so-called confused medley there can be no real foundation for the future life of spirit. It is true that by reason of our social conditions there had to be a struggle to make it possible for spiritual science to be carried on in the very modest dimensions it has reached today. We had to struggle with what very often appears as a result of most people—who now have time, and nothing but time, for the affairs of spiritual science—still having those old habits of thinking and perceiving which are on the decline. Hence, we have to struggle so hard against what easily spreads in a circle such as ours, namely, sectarianism, which naturally is the very opposite of what is meant to be cultivated here, and against every kind of personal wrangling which, it goes without saying, leads to the systematic slandering that has flourished so exuberantly on the soil of this movement.

Now whoever studies the life of spirit today from symptoms such as these will soon come to the point of saying: What is particularly needed in the sphere of spiritual endeavour is a return to original sources. The clamor for a new form of social life is always heard at a time when people harbor the most widespread anti-social impulses and anti-social instincts. These anti-social impulses and instincts are particularly evident in people's private intercourse. They are to be seen in what men give or do not give—to each other. They are to be seen in the characteristic way people ignore the thoughts of others, talk others down, and finally pass them by. In our day the instinctive capacity really to understand the people we meet is extraordinarily rare. The following also is a disappearing phenomenon—the possibility of people nowadays being convinced of anything unconnected with their social status, education or birth. Today people have the most beautiful thoughts, but it is very difficult for them to be enthusiastic about anything. In thought they pass by all that is best, and this is a deeply rooted characteristic of our age. As consequence of this fact—you know that recently I have talked of logic based on fact as being important for the present time in contrast to mere logic of thought—as consequence of this a longing exists in men today to have recourse to authority and the pronouncements of feeling rather than by their own inner activity to work through to things. Those today who talk a great deal about freedom from authority are the very people who, at heart, believe in it most firmly and long to submit themselves to it. Thus we see, only it is generally unnoticed because most people are asleep, a rather questionable tendency among those who, without finding any way out of it, are involved in this cultural decline, namely the tendency to sink back into the bosom of the old Catholic Church. Were people to realise what lies in this tendency to return to the Catholic Church they would be much astonished. Under the present conditions, if this tendency were to increase, at no very distant date we should have to witness a mighty swing over to the bosom of the Catholic Church by masses of the people. Whoever is able to observe the special features of our present culture knows that this is threatening us.

Now whence does all this arise? Here I must draw your attention to an essential phenomenon of our present social life. The special feature of what in the last few centuries has increased to ever wider dimensions, and will increase further in those lands which will preserve their civilisations throughout the present chaos—this special feature is the technical coloring of the culture, the particular technical shade taken on by the culture of recent times. Were I to speak exhaustively on this subject, I should have to point in detail to all that now is referred to just in passing; and one day I shall do so. This technical culture has indeed one quite definite quality; this culture in its nature is through and through altruistic. In other words there is only one favourable way for technical accomplishments to be wide­spread, namely, when the men actively engaged in them in contrast to egoism, develop altruism. Technical culture makes it increasingly necessary—and those who are able to observe these things see the necessity on every fresh advance of technical culture—for work organised on a technical basis to be entirely free from egoism. In contrast to this there has developed at the same time what has had its origin in capitalism, which must not necessarily be linked to technical culture or remain so linked. Capitalism, when it is private capitalism, cannot work other than egoistically, for its very being consists in egoistic activity. Thus in recent times two streams meet in diametrical opposition to one another: modern technical life which calls upon men to be free from egoism, and, coming from the past, private capitalism, which can prosper only by the assertion of egoistic impulse. This is what has made its way into our present situation, and the only means of extricating ourselves is to have a life of spirit which has the courage to break away from the old traditions.

Now today there are many people concerned with the problems of future primary and secondary education, school education, and of professional training for human beings. Especially when we are studying the question of primary and secondary education we must say to these people: Well and good, but with the best will in the world, can you interest people at large in primary and secondary education if you do nothing to change present conditions of education and matters of the spirit? Have you the material for the work? What actually are you able to do? With your principles—perhaps socialistic in a good sense—you may be able to found schools for a great mass of the people and to found institutions for their higher education. You may organise everything of this kind to which your good will impels you. But have you the material really to organise for the benefit of the people what you want with good will to extend to them? You tell us that you found libraries, theatres, concert halls, exhibitions, lecture courses, and polytechnics. But the question must arise: What books do you have in your libraries? What kind of science is dealt with in your lectures? You place on your library shelves those very books which belong to the bourgeois culture that is on the decline; you hand over the scientific education in the polytechnics to men who are products of that bourgeois culture. You give the nature of education new forms, but into these new forms you cast what you have absorbed of the old. For instance you say: For a long time we have been trying to give primary and secondary education a democratic form; up to now the various states have been against this for they want to educate men to be good civil servants.—True you are opposed to this education of good civil servants; you allow the people to be educated by them, however, for up to now you have nothing else in mind but these civil servants whose books are on the shelves of your libraries, whose scientific method of thinking you propagate by means of your lectures and whose habits of thinking permeate your colleges.—You see from this that in these serious times the matter must be taken far more profoundly than it generally is today.

Now let us just look at certain details to have at least something clear before us. We will begin with what we may call primary and secondary education. Under this heading I include everything that can be given to the human being when he has outgrown the education to be acquired in his family, when to this must be added the education and instruction obtained at school. Those who know the nature of man are clear that school education should never be a factor in the evolution of the human being until approximately the change of teeth has taken place. This is just as much a scientific law as any other. Were people to be guided by the real nature of human beings instead of by mere dummies, they would make it a regulation that school instruction should not begin till after the change of teeth. But the important question is the principles upon which this school instruction of children is to be based. Here we must have in mind that whoever is able to bring his thoughts and efforts into harmony with the ascending cultural evolution can really do nothing today bµt recognise, as inherent in the principles holding good in school education and instruction, what lies in the nature of the human being himself. Knowledge of human nature from the change of teeth until puberty must underlie any principles in what we call primary and secondary education. From this, and from a great deal of the same nature, you will realise that, if we take this as our basis, the result will be the same education for everyone; for obviously the laws which hold good in human evolution between approximately the seventh and fifteenth years are the same for all human beings. The only question we need answer concerning education and instruction is: To what point have we to bring human beings by the time they reach their fifteenth year? This alone may be called thinking in terms of primary and secondary education. At the same time this alone is thinking in a modern way about the nature of instruction. The consequence of this today will be that we shall no longer ignore the necessity of making an absolute break w1th the old school system, that we shall have in all earnest to set to work on organising what, during the years specified, is to be given to children in accordance with the evolution of the growing human being. Then a certain basis will have to be created—something that , when social goodwill exists , will not be a nebulous idea for the future but something practical which can be immediately acted upon. The basis for this will have to be created in the first place by a complete change in the whole nature of examination and instruction of the teacher himself. When today the teacher is examined, this is often done merely to verify whether he knows something that, if he is at all clever and doesn't know it, he can read up in a text book. In the examination of teachers this can be entirely omitted, but with it will go the greater part of such examinations in their present form. In those that will take their place the object will be to discover whether the man, who has to do with the education and instruction of the developing human being, can establish with him a personally active and profitable relation; whether he is able to penetrate with his whole mentality—to use a word much in fashion—into the soul of the growing human being, into his very nature. Then the teacher will not just teach reading, arithmetic or drawing; he will be fit to become a real moulder of the developing human being.

Thereupon, from all future examinations, which will take a very different form from their present one, it will be easy to discover if the school staff are really creative in this sense. For this means that the teacher will know: I must help this pupil in some particular way if he is to learn to think; another in another way if he is to unfold his world of feeling.—For the world of feeling is intimately bound up with the world of memory, a thing few people know today, most modern professors .being the worst possible psychologists . The teacher must know what to give to his pupil if the will is to unfold in such a way that the seeds, sown between his seventh and fifteenth years, may bring about the strengthening of the will for the whole of his life. The cultivation of will is brought about when everything that has to do with practical physical exercises and artistic pursuits is adapted to the developing being. Whoever is a teacher of those who are in process of development will concentrate all his effort on enabling the human being to become man. In this way he will discover how to utilise all that is conventionally called human culture—speaking, reading and writing. All this can best be utilised in the years between seven and fifteen for the development of thinking. However strange it may seem, thinking is the most external thing in man, and it must be developed on wha tever establishes us in the social organism. Consider how the human being on coming into the world through birth lacks any propensity towards reading and writing and how these belong to his life as a member of a community. Thus, for the development of thinking we must, comparatively early, have good instruction in languages, naturally not in what was spoken formerly but in languages as used today by the civilised peoples with whom we have contact. This efficient teaching in languages would naturally not consist in teaching the grammatical anomalies as is done today in the grammar school; it must be started in the lowest classes and continued. It will be important too that teaching should be given in a conscious way to unfold the feeling and the memory bound up with it. Whereas everything relating to arithmetic and geography—of which children can absorb an extraordinary amount when it is given them rightly—stands between what has to do with thinking and what has to do with feeling, everything taken into the memory has more to do with pure feeling, for instance, the history that is taught, the myths and legends that are told. I can only touch on these things.

But it is also necessary in these first years to give particular attention to the cultivation of will. Here it is a matter of physical exercises and artistic training. Something entirely new will be needed for this in these early years. A beginning has been made in what we call eurythmy. Today we witness a great deal of physical culture that is decadent and belongs to the past; it pleases many people. In its place we shall put something that so far we have had occasion to show only to the employees of the Waldorf—Astoria factory through the sympathetic help of our good Herr Molt; we shall put what—if it is given to the growing human being instead of the present gymnastics—promotes culture in both body and soul. It can so develop the will that the effect remains throughout life, whereas cultivation of the will by any other means causes a weakening of it when vicissitudes and various experiences are met with in the course of life. In this sphere particularly, however, we shall have to go to work with common sense. In the way instruction is given, combinations will have to be made little dreamt of today; for instance drawing will go hand-in-hand with geography. It would be of the greatest importance for the growing pupil to have really intelligent lessons in drawing; during these lessons he would be led to draw the globe from various sides, to draw the mountains and rivers of the earth in their relation to one another, then to turn to astronomy and to draw the planetary system. It goes without saying that this would have to be introduced at the right age, not for the seven-year-olds but certainly before they reached fifteen, perhaps from the twelfth year onwards, when if done in the right way, it would work on growing youth very beneficially.

What in a didactic and pedagogical way I have just now been discussing concerning primary and secondary education will, in accordance with the logic of facts, have a quite definite consequence, namely that nothing will play a part in teaching that is not in one form or another retained for the whole of life. Today, as a rule, only what is included among the faculties plays its part rightly—what is done by learning to read is concentrated in the faculty of reading, what is done in learning to count is concentrated in the faculty of arithmetic. But just think how it is when we come to things having rather to do with feeling and memory. In this sphere children today learn a great deal only to forget it, only to be without it for the rest of life. In future, stress must be laid on this—that everything given to a child will remain with him for life.

We should then come to the question: What is to be done with the human being when having finished with the primary and secondary school he goes out into life? Here it is important that everything unsound in the old life of spirit should be overcome, that at least where education is concerned the terrible cleft made by class distinction should be abolished.

Now the Greeks, even the Romans, were able to devise for themselves an education that had its roots in their life, that was bound up with their way of life. In our time we have nothing which binds us in our most important years with our quite different mode off living. Many people, however, who later take up positions of authority, learn today what was learnt by the Greeks and Romans, and thus become divorced from life today; added to which this is spiritually the most uneconomical thing possible. Besides, we are today at a point in human evolution—if people only knew it—when it is quite unnecessary for preserving our relation to antiquity that we should be brought up in their ideas. What people in general need of the old has for a long time been incorporated in our culture, in such a way that we can absorb it without years of training in an atmosphere foreign to us. What we should imbibe of Greek and Roman culture can be improved upon, and this has also been the case; but that is a matter for scholars and has nothing to do with general social education. What is to be imbibed from antiquity for our general social education, however, has been brought to such a stage through the work of great minds in the past, and is so much in our midst, that if we rightly absorb what is there for us we have no need to learn Greek and Latin to deepen our knowledge of antiquity; it is not in the least essential and is no help at all for the important things in life. I recall how, to avoid misunderstandings, I found it necessary to say that, though Herr Wilamowitz is most certainly a Greek scholar of outstanding merit, he has nevertheless translated the Greek plays in a way that is really atrocious; but, of course, these translations have been acclaimed by both the press and scholars. Today we must learn to let people participate in life; and if we organise education so that people are able to participate in life, at the same time setting to work on education economically, you will find that we are really able to help human beings to a living culture. This, too, will enable anyone with a bent towards handicraft to take advantage of the education for life that begins about the fourteenth year. A possibility must be created for those who early show a bent towards handicraft or craftsman ship to be able to participate in what leads to a conception of life. In future, pupils who have not reached their twenty-first year should never be offered any knowledge that is the result of scientific research and comes from scientific specialisation. In our day, only what has been thoroughly worked out ought to have a place in instruction; then we can go to work in an out-and-out economic way. We must, however, have a clear concept of what is meant by economy in didactic and pedagogical matters. Above all we should not be lazy if we want to work in a way that is economic from the pedagogical point of view. I have often drawn your attention to something personally experienced by me. A boy of ten who was rather undeveloped was once given over into my charge, and through pedagogical economy I was enabled to let him absorb in two years what he had lacked up to his eleventh year, when he was still incapable of anything at all. This was possible only by taking into account both his bodily and his soul nature in such a way that instruction could proceed in the most economical way conceivable. This was often done by my spending three hours myself in preparation, so as in a half-hour or even in a quarter to give to the boy instruction that would otherwise have taken hours—this being necessary for his physical condition. If this is considered from the social point of view, people might say that I was obliged in this instance to give all the care to a single boy that might have been given to three others who would not have had to be treated in this way. But imagine we had a social educational system that was reasonable, it would then be possible for a whole collection of such pupils to be dealt with, for it makes no difference in this case whether we have to deal with one or fourteen boys. I should not complain about the number of pupils in the school, but this lack of complaint is connected with the principle of economy in instruction. It must be realised, however, that up to his fourteenth year the pupil has no judgment; and if judgment is asked of him this has a destructive effect on the brain. The modern calculating machine which gives judgment the place of memorising and calculating is a gross educational error; it destroys the human brain, makes it decadent. Human judgment can be cultivated only from and after the fourteenth year when those things requiring judgment must be introduced into the curriculum. Then all that is related, for example, to the grasping of reality through logic can be begun. When in future the carpenter or mechanic sits side-by-side in school or college with anyone studying to be a teacher, the result will certainly be a specialisation but at the same time one education for all; but included in this one education will be everything necessary for life. If this were not included matters would become socially worse than they are at present. All instruction must give knowledge that is necessary for life. During the ages from fifteen to twenty everything to do with agriculture, trade, industry, commerce will have to be learnt. No one should go through these years without acquiring some idea of what takes place in farming, commerce and industry. These subjects will be given a place as branches of knowledge infinitely more necessary than much of the rubbish which constitutes the present curriculum during these years. Then too during these years all those subjects will be introduced which I would call world affairs, historical and geographical subjects, everything concerned with nature knowledge—but all this in relation to the human being, so that man will learn to know man from his knowledge of the world as a whole.

Now among human beings who receive instruction of this kind will be those who, driven by social conditions to become workers in a spiritual sense, can be educated in every possible sphere at schools specially organised for such students. The institutions where people today are given professional training are run with a terrible lack of economy. I know that many people will not admit it but there is this lack of economy; above all validity is ascribed to the most curious conceptions belonging to the world-outlook that is on the decline. Even in my time I have experienced this—people have begun to press where it is a question in the universities of historical and literary subjects, for fewer lectures and more "seminars"; today we still hear it said that lectures should be given as little space as possible on the programme but seminars encouraged. One knows these seminars. Faithful followers of a university tutor gather together and learn strictly in accordance with the ideas of this tutor to work scientifically. They do their work under his coaching and the results of the coaching are forever visible. It is altogether another matter if a man, in the years when he should be learning a profession, goes of his own free will to a course of intelligent lectures, and then has the opportunity of embarking upon his own free exposition—though certainly this would be connected with what the lectures contained. Practical application can certainly be included in the programme but this exaggerated emphasis on seminars must be stopped. That is just an undesirable product of the second half of the nineteenth century, when the emphasis was on the drilling of human beings rather than on leaving them to develop freely.

Now when we are discussing this stage in education it must be said that a certain educational groundwork ought to be the same for everyone, whether he is destined to be a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher; that is one aspect of the matter; in addition to this, everyone must receive what contributes to the general culture of man, whether he is to become a doctor, a machine maker, architect, chemist or engineer; he must be given the opportunity of receiving general culture, whether he is to work with his hands or his head. Today little thought is given to this, though certainly in some places of higher education many things are better than they were. When I was at the Technical College in Vienna a Professor was giving lectures on general history. Each term he started to give his general history; after three or perhaps five lectures he ceased—there was no longer anyone there. Then, at this college, there was a Professor of history of literature . Thus there were the means to receive what was universally human besides specialised subjects. To these lectures on the history of literature, which included exercises in rhetoric and instruction on how to lecture, like those given, for example, by hand—to these lectures I always had to drag someone else, for they were held only if there was an audience of two. They could be kept going, therefore, only by a second being dragged in, and this was someone different practically every time. Except for this, the only attempt to provide students with the information they needed about conditions in life was by lectures on constitutional law or statistics. As I said, these things have improved; what has not improved is the driving force that should exist in our whole social life. This will improve, however, when there is a possibility for all that constitutes the universally human not to be made intelligible only to those with a definite professional view but intelligible from a universally human aspect. I have often been surprised how distorted my lectures on anthroposophy have been by my audience; for if they had taken them in a positive way they could have said: we won't bother about the anthroposophy in these lectures, but what is said about natural science, which receives great praise when coming from the ordinary natural philosopher—that is enough for us. For as you all know these lectures are always interspersed with general information about nature. But there are many people who are not interested in taking things from a positive angle, preferring to distort what they have no wish to accept. What they refused to accept, by the very way in which the thoughts were formed, by the whole mode of treatment, as well as the necessary interspersing of natural science, could be taken as contributing to universal human knowledge, which the manual worker could receive just as well as the scholar, and which was also generally intelligible as natural science. Just consider other endeavors towards a world-outlook. Do you imagine that in monistic gatherings, for instance, people can understand anything if they have not a scientific background? No, and if they have not, they merely gossip. What here we pursue as anthroposophy is something that can change all knowledge of nature, and even of history, so that everyone will be able to understand them. Just think how intelligible to everyone what I have shown to be a great leap historically in the middle of the fifteenth century can be. That, I think, is intelligible to everyone. But it is the groundwork without which there can be no understanding at all of the whole social movement in our time. This social movement is not understood because people do not know how mankind has developed since the middle of the fifteenth century. When these things are mentioned people come forward and declare: Nature does not make leaps, so you are wrong to assume there was such a thing in the fifteenth century. This foolish proposition that nature never makes a leap is always being harped upon. Nature continually makes leaps; it is a leap from the green leaf of a plant to the sepal which has a different form—another leap from sepal to petal. It is so too in the evolution of man's life. Whoever does not teach the history that rests on senseless conventional untruth, but on what has really happened, knows that in the fifteenth century men became different in the finer element of their constitution from what they were before, and that what is brought about today is the development of what they have grasped in the centre of their being. If there is a desire to understand the present social movement, laws of this kind in historical evolution will have to be recognised. You have only to call to mind the way in which matters here are dealt with and you will say: To understand all this no special knowledge is necessary; there is no need to be a man of culture; everyone can understand it. This indeed will be what is demanded in the future—that no philosophies or world-conceptions should be propagated which can be understood only by reason of a form of education belonging to a certain class. Take up any philosophical work today, for example, by Eucken or Paulsen, or anyone else you want information about, take up one of those dreadful works on psychology by university professors—you will soon drop it again; for those who are not specially trained in the particular subject do not understand the language used. This is something that can be set right only by universal education, when the whole nature of education and instruction will be absolutely changed in the way I have tried to indicate today.

You see, therefore, that in this sphere too we can say: here we have a big settling-up—not a small one. What is necessary is the development of social impulses or, rather, social intincts, through instruction, through education, so that people do not pass by one another. Then they will understand each other so that a practical living relation is develcped—for nowadays the teacher passes his pupil by, the pupil passes his teacher. This can happen only if we run our pen through what is old—which can be done. The facts of the case do not prevent this; it all goes back to human prejudice. People cannot believe that things can be done in a new way; they are terrified that their life of spirit may lose what was of value in the old way. You have no idea how anxious they are on this score. Naturally they are unable to take all this in; for instance they cannot see all the possibilities created by having an instruction that is economical. I have often told you that provided this is done at the right age it is possible from the beginning of geometry—the straight line and the angle—up to what used to be called the pons a sinorum, the Pythagorean theorem. And on my attempting this you should have seen the joy of the youngsters when, after three or four hours work, the theorem of Pythagoras dawned upon them. Only think what a lot of rubbish has to be gone through today before young people arrive at this theorem. What matters is the enormous amount of mental work wasted, which has its effects in later life; it sends its rays into the whole of life, right into its most practical spheres. Today it is necessary for people to come to a decision in these matters—fundamentally to re-organise their way of thinking. Otherwise—well, otherwise we simply sink deeper into decline and never find the path upwards.

In the idea which I developed here yesterday, I wished to point out that it is necessary for the evolution of humanity to impress very clearly upon ourselves certain ideas in Spiritual culture which have not as yet appeared in the present era. This is something that is of main importance, that certain ideas now non-evident, or least not in current use, should again come into the spiritual life of man. If we follow up the spiritual life of modern times in its various ramifications, we see that its characteristic is that in spite of all the arrogance, all the self-conceit which comes to light at times, the spiritual life does not contain any new ideas. Although all sorts of world-conceptions have appeared, of an ethical, artistic, and even philosophical or scientific nature, they all deal with old ideas which have been in use for a long time, and which are then mixed together, as in a kaleidoscope. We need new conceptions, yes new conceptions such as should rise are lacking. For that reason certain old truths cannot be understood to-day, truths which appeared among the Ancients and which are handed down traditionally; for instance, ideas which appeared in Plato or Aristotle as being the latest in this respect. In earlier times they appeared with still more significance; but today they are either not understood at all or else rejected, but only because they are not understood. I will give you an illustration of such a conception. When a man today sees something, he thinks: “The object is outside, it sends the light to me; the light comes into the eye, and in that passive—one may not say mysterious—manner, is produced with the soul experiences as the sensation of color.” In Plato another conception is found. There something appears which we cannot understand otherwise, if we take it literally, than as if the eye sent forth something to the object which grasps it in a mysterious manner; as if the eye stretched out a feeler which grasps the object. This can be found in Plato. The more recent ideas of natural science can of course make nothing of this, can understand nothing of it. It is the kind of idea which you can find recorded in the ordinary textbooks—or even in the ‘scholarly’ books—on the History of Philosophy. But you cannot do much with such books either, because such ideas rests upon something which existed in ancient times in a certain atavistic second-sight or second-feeling, which has gradually died out, but which must be rediscovered in our time, in another way. Since olden times certain ideas have been lost which must be recovered.

These concepts have been lost chiefly because what one may call the Latin or Roman culture had to pour over Europe, especially over Western Europe. The study of this Latin, Roman culture in its expansion over Europe would yield very illuminating results, if we observed it aright. We must be clear on the point that as regards blood, nothing is left in Italy today of the race which we call the “Ancient Roman.” The present-day battalions, although they may be responsible for many things in our time, are certainly not responsible for what I'm about to relate now. What streamed forth from the Roman Empire merely streamed forth into Europe in a cultural way, but it had a parching, burning effect on certain fundamental, basic ideas; ideas which must, as it were, again be redeemed from their grave. We need only call to mind the following fact. With the overthrow of Alesia, that town which was destroyed in the last era before the birth of Christ and is situated in what is now the province of the Côte d'Or in France, a piece of old Celtic-Gaelic culture was entirely rooted out by the Romans. (On the scene of the old ruined Alesia, Napoleon III ordered a monument erected to Vercingetorix!) Perhaps today Alesia would be called a gigantic “Academy.” Ten-thousand Europeans studied there in the way in which science and knowledge was studied at that time. All that was done away with, and in its place came what was spread abroad as the Roman culture. This is only an historical observation, intended to show that in Europe, also, older concepts existed in the old places of culture which have since been destroyed.

Today I wish to draw your attention to two ideas which must be incorporated into science as well as into everyday life, in order that a better understanding of the world may become possible. One of these is that an idea exists that really the perception of the world comes about through the senses. This happens in the following way.

If we stand opposite a color object it certainly impresses us; what takes place between the colored object and the human organism is a destructive process in the latter. I have often laid stress on this. It is in a sense a death in miniature, and the nervous system is the organ for continuous destructive processes. These disturbances, which are continually being brought about through the action of the outer world on our own organism, and balanced again, however, by the action of the blood. In the human organism there is a continual counteracting process between blood and nerves. This process comes about because the blood furnishes a quickening process and the nerves a sort of death-process, a destructive one. For instance if we stand opposite a colored object which works on us from the outer world, a destructive process takes place in our nervous system. Something is destroyed in a physical body as well as in the etheric body, a sort of canal is hollowed out in our organism through the destructive process which runs along a definite course. Thus when we “see” something, a canal is bored from the eye to the edge of the brain. Not that something takes place that has to be analysed and solved, from the brain-covering to the eye; but, on the contrary, a hole is bored and through this hole the astral body slips, so as to be able to see the object. Plato was still able to see this. It could still be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, and we must re-acquire it through learning really know the human organism with the newer clairvoyance, learning to know this canal, this hole which is bored, leading from the eye to the brain-covering, through which the Ego unites itself with what works from outside. Mankind must learn not to form such concepts as are customary in the present-day theory of knowledge or physiology, but must learn to say: “A canal, a tunnel, is forward from the brain-covering to the eye, and by this means a door opens through which the astral body and the ego come into connection with the outer world.” This is a concept of which the present day has no idea! For that reason it does not know what physiological facts result from this. Today students learn physiology at the Universities, and learn very exactly the customary concepts which I have just mentioned, but they do not learn how things are really related, they learn just the opposite, which has no sense. This is one such concept.

Another is very frequently found today if we go into that sphere which is called the sphere of learning and scholarship—of course with full justification. It is they are described (and this is of course unavoidable today) how man is born as an undeveloped being; how then gradually his ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ develop, and in this gradual development of soul and spirit are produced through the organism of the body becoming finer and more complicated. You can find this idea introduced by psychologists and especially by scholars, as also in all the popular books. Thus it appears to man; but what appears to thus is Maya. In many respects what we first encounter is the opposite of truth. This idea too is the opposite of what is true. Instead of this, we ought really to say (I may just remind you of what you said in “The Education of the Child,” where what I am about to say is expressed, though put somewhat differently): “While the child is quite young, soul and spirit are still ‘psychic’ and ‘spiritual,’ and as the child grows, his soul and spirit are gradually transformed into the material, the bodily. Soul and spirit gradually become of a bodily nature, man gradually becomes a complete image of soul and spirit.” It is very important that we should hold this idea. For if we do, we shall no longer say that what runs about on the ground on two legs is man; we shall become conscious of the fact that that is only the image of man, that man after being born in a super-sensible manner gradually grows in unity with the body and creates a full image of himself in his body. Spirit and soul disappear into the body, and appear less and less in their own nature. Thus we must adopt exactly the opposite concept to the customary one. We must know why, for instance, we really become “20 years old;” it is because spirit has descended into the body, because it has transformed itself into the body, because that which is body is an external image of the spirit. Then we shall also understand that gradually, when we are growing “old,” the reverse transformation is going on. The body becomes chalky and salted, but the spirit becomes more psychic and spiritual. Only man has not then the power of holding on to it, because while here, he stands face-to-face with the physical world and wishes to express himself through the body. What thus becomes more and more independent, only appears in its entirety after death. Thus it is not the case that the soul and spirit becomea blunted in old age; on the contrary, they become ever freer and freer. Of course the materialistic thinker, when these things are put before him, will frequently object that even Kant, for instance, who was a very clever man, grew weak in his old age; so that they are at any rate the soul and spirit could not have made themselves free. Materialistic thinker only makes that objection because he cannot observe the soul and spirit nature, and see how it had already grown gradually into the spiritual world. For very many people it will be a hard nut to crack if they are told to believe that when men grow old they do not become weak or even feeble-minded, but more psychic and more spiritual. Only, when the body is worn out, we can no longer express the psycho-spiritual which we have cultivated, through the body. It is like the case of a pianist: he might become a better and better player, but if his piano is worn out we cannot perceive this. If you were only to know his capabilities as a pianist from his plane, you will not be able to gather much if the piano is out of tune and has broken strings. So that Kant, when he was an old man and “feeble-minded” was not weak minded as regards the spiritual world; there he had become glorious.

Thus when we get the truth we have exactly to reverse certain conceptions. We must take it quite seriously that in the world we have to do with Maya, with the great illusion, for we must exactly reverse many of our ideas. If we seriously consider that in the external physical reality we are face to face with the great illusion, we shall also be able to accept the fact that external physical man when 70 years of age and apparently weak has his spirit somewhere else than on the physical plane. The obstacles in the way of understanding the teachings of Spiritual Science to a great extent consist in the fact that we are not able to form correct ideas as to what is happening on the ordinary physical plane. We form false ideas about what is happening on the physical plane, and the consequences is that these separate us from the true and right world and do not allow us to reach it. If we form such concepts as the second one to which I referred, we shall then no longer be very far from the knowledge which Spiritual Science is now giving out from its investigations concerning man immediately after death.

When man enters physical life through birth, he gradually enters more and more closely into relationship with his physical body. We have now become acquainted with a correct idea of this relationship. We do not always notice, because it would require too much explanation, that something similar also takes place between death and a new birth. The matter can be presented in a similar manner as regards the time between death and rebirth. We may say that man then gradually enters into relation with something similar to this physical body here on earth. Our physical bodily nature is not merely physical; it embraces, as we know: the physical body, the etheric body or body of formative-forces, and the astral body, the outer psychic or soul-body. As we have to appropriate these three ‘skins’ or ‘shells’ for physical life, so have we to put on coverings between death and rebirth, indeed three such coverings which, I will call: “Soul-Man,” “Soul-Life” or “Life-Soul,” and “Soul-Self.” As we take on the physical body here for use in the physical world, so do we take on the “Soul-Life” or the “Life-Soul.” Just as we take on the astral body, the Soul-body for our life Earth, so do we take on after death the “Individual Soul” or “Soul-Self.” I select these expressions for the reason that they should not be confused with what men will appropriate in another way for the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan time; there is a resemblance, but, because it belongs to another stage of being, it must in consequence be differentiated. But names are not the important thing in this matter. It is only necessary for us to study a little how these coverings are appropriated.

When man enters that life which runs its course between death and rebirth, the first characteristic is that he finds himself surrounded by a number of pictures. These pictures all proceed from his experiences between his last birth and last death, or even from earlier times; but we will first of all limit ourselves to what happened in the last earth-life. Thus first of all appear pictures which proceed from the last life; they are to be found in the environment of man. The essential point is that these are in the environment of the dead. The remarkable thing is that at first he has a certain difficulty in developing a consciousness that these pictures are connected with himself. This world of pictures is what is referred to in the book “Theosophy” as the experiences in the Soul World; but this retrospect in pictures is only a part of the collective picture-world which surrounds him there. Other pictures besides these are present; and the life of the dead consist in gradually recognizing these pictures as belonging to himself. Consciousness has to set to work to make them fully recognize in the right way that these pictures belong to him. We can only thoroughly understand what is here in question when we become conscious that the life which we lead here between birth and death is much richer than we are aware of. Suppose you live in certain circumstances, in company with certain people—what takes place consciously between you is really only one part of what goes on. Things are continually happening. You must recollect that life here so runs its course that we observe but a small part of what we experience. Take an ordinary occurrence for instance. You have gathered together here this evening, each one of you present has entered into some relationship with the others. Did you probably consider how much of this you have carried over into your consciousness, you will find it is indeed but very little. For if you are three yards away from another person and then approach him, this drawing three yards nearer to him represents a whole sum of facial impressions; you see his face differently the nearer you approach and so on. The ordinary physical intellect is quite unable to grasp what we are really always experiencing during physical life. What we experienced consciously is but a quite small part of it; by far the most important part remains subconscious. For instance, if you read a letter; as a rule you become conscious of the content, but in your subconsciousness much more than that goes on; there is not only happens that you are always either slightly vexed or pleased by the beautiful or ugly handwriting, but with every feature of the handwriting something passes from the writer into you which you do not observe with your ordinary consciousness but which lives as a dream, continuously through your whole life. We indeed find it so difficult to really to understand dreams for the reason that much appears in them which is not taken into consideration at all in our waking consciousness. Suppose one lady sits here and another there. If the one lady does not particularly notice that another is sitting over there and does not look at her very closely, it may occur that she does not observe the other at all, does not become aware of her gestures, or what she's doing. But all that remains in the subconscious soul, and into our dreams may enter just that which we hardly observed or noticed in our waking consciousness. This may very easily happen when in waking consciousness one directs one's attention to a particular subject, for instance, if when walking along the street plunged in thought and a friend passes by; perhaps one may not even have noticed him, yet one may dream of him, in spite of not knowing that he had passed one in the street. A great deal happens in life, of which but very little enters the waking consciousness. But all the enormous amount that goes on in the life of man, especially what is concerned with the soul and which remains in the subconsciousness, all this becomes pictures around a man. The fact that you come here today and will go away again causes the picture of the whole room to remain bound up with you, and all the more so inasmuch as it has all made a more psychic impression; psychically it is not confined in rigid boundaries.

Thus innumerable pictures are connected with human life. They are all rolled up—I can find no other expression for it—within the life of man. You carry millions of pictures which are being rolled up all through your life; and the first thing that happens after death is the “unrolling of the pictures,” as one might call it; the unrolling of posthumous imaginations. Around each man a world of imaginations gradually forms; and his consciousness consists in recognizing himself in this imaginative world. This is described from somewhat different point of view in the Vienna lectures of life between death and rebirth; but one must observe things from the most varied points of view. The unrolling of the pictures: here we can draw a comparison with what we are, as little children just born, when we still have a somewhat unformed body. Many people (though not precisely the mothers of the children concerned) say that every little child looks like a frog; it is not yet quite human but gradually shapes itself. Just as the child shapes itself, and that grows of which we may say that we have it in us when we lived materially, so does the growth take place in life which we might call the “unrolling of life's pictures.” For in this unrolling of the pictures the “Soul-Man” is formed, one of the principles of man. You must absolutely imagine that this, which is there after death, spreads out, and that the Soul-Man, the picture-man, the imaginative spiritual-body, forms itself thus; it first of all develops in the imaginative images.

Herein we can help the dead tremendously if we go through such ideas together with him as are at the same time those of Spiritual Science, or such ideas as we evolved yesterday of the bluish-red Earth with the golden Jerusalem. These are concepts for which the dead man longs, for he yearns for well-directed and ordered Imaginations. By means of these we can help him, and especially do we help him if we go through with him what we have experienced together with him, for the pictures can hold onto that they may wish to unroll. If we live call up things which have passed unnoticed, and go through these with the dead man, he gains enormously thereby. For instance, I mean by this, if you call to mind the picture of him while he was still alive, how he went through the door as he came out of his office and reached home, how you greet him—incidents wherein the Soul came to expression in a visible pictorial manner. There may be loving memories connected with these things—and of course it may also be otherwise. You will by this means come together with the dead man in thought. I have shown in many different ways how we can mingle this picture-world, in which the dead man must develop, and in which his consciousness must expand, with our own concepts. Concepts and ideas which the dead man strove to attain but could not fully reach and which make something clear to him—these become his picture world. You must work with him at the forming of his Soul-Man.

Of course, in the time which follows on death, the other bodies, the Soul-Life or the Life-Soul and also the Soul-Self, are already formed in the dead. But these very principles form themselves more and more definitely, in such a way that at first, immediately after death, the dead feels them as something for the future which he will only gradually developed by and by. In this respect the deceased has the feeling that he must work out the “Soul-Man,” he must work upon that, but the “Life-Soul” he must allow to develop, that must develop itself gradually. It is of course already present, as is the intelligence in the child; but it must develop gradually as the intelligence does in the child. Thereby an inspirational force appears in the dead man immediately after his death, but this develops and becomes ever stronger and stronger; and when we help the dead, we help them to develop this inspirational force. For gradually something must speak to the deceased from out of the pictures. They must become more than merely the remembrance of life; they must tell him something new, something which life could not yet tell him; for what they now say to him must become the germ for what he builds up as his next Earth-life.

Thus the Soul-Life, the Life-Soul, begins to develop and the pictures become more and more speaking. The dead man first of all directs his attention chiefly to the Earth—if I may express myself thus. As we here on Earth direct our thoughts to the Spirit-world, so does the dead man turn his soul downwards to the Earth, which is seen by him, for example, as I described yesterday, as blue in the Eastern hemisphere and reddish in the Western hemisphere; into this come these pictures, they are interwoven in it. He always sees his own life within the universal picture of the Earth; he sees his life among us. Therefore we can help him to understand these pictures aright. He certainly leaves the Earth, but with the eye of his soul does not leave it. And as inspiration develops more and more, gradually the Earth begins to sound, the pictures gradually tell him more and more.

The question is often asked whether this help can only be given to the dead soon after death or can it also be given after years or tens of years. It never ceases! No one can live on Earth long enough for it to have become unnecessary to help someone who died before us. Even if a person has been dead for 30 or 40 years, the connection, if it was karmic, still exists. Of course we must clearly realize that when the soul of the friend who is still here is undeveloped, he may have a clearer consciousness of disconnection at the beginning. At the beginning the consciousness of the connection with the dead friend may be felt and experienced very strongly, because the pictures are still passive and chiefly still contain what they contained on earth. Later on, they begin to sound; the music of the spheres sounds forth from them. That is something strange and unknown, and we can only gain information about it from Spiritual Science, through which we learn what will take place on the Earth in the future epochs. But it is not very frequent that there is such an active need to approach the dead man after decades, as immediately after his departure. Gradually the inclination towards the dead disappears in the living (experience proves this)—the living feeling for them dies out . This is too a reason why a later time the connection with the dead is felt less actively. This calls our attention to the fact that the first part of life between death and rebirth is chiefly devoted to the formation of the “Soul-Man,” which floats around man is a world of Imagination. Later on, his time is devoted to the inspirational force of the soul: the Life-Soul—though of course it was there from the beginning. And before him, as an ideal, is what we may call the Soul-Self. That too was there from the beginning, fir the Soul-Self gives him individual consciousness. As the intelligence of the child must be cultivated, although present within him from the beginning, so does man develop the Soul-Self in his life between death and rebirth. The time when the soul is again slowly approaching the earth life is chiefly devoted to the cultivation of the Soul-Self. Between death and rebirth man's Soul-Self reaches its highest development in the time when he becomes, spiritually, blooming with youth. Here on Earth we speak of growing old; in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, we have to speak of growing young. Here we speak of becoming gray with age, there we speak of one becoming blooming with youth. These things were well known not so very long ago. Let me remind you of Goethe's “Faust;”, where it says: “He grew young in the Land of the Mist,” which means: “He was born in the Northern World.” In former times they did not say: “someone was born,” but “he has become young,” which referred to his life before birth. Goethe still used this expression “become young in the Land of the Mist.

Thus the last part of the time between death and rebirth is that in which the soul chiefly works out the intuitive side. The first part of the time after death the imaginative part of the soul is active; that is the Soul-Man. Then the inspirational part of the soul, the Life-Soul, develops gradually to its full height, and afterwords that which gives full individuality to the soul is developed, the Soul-Self, the intuitive part, the capacity of entering something different and other than oneself and of finding one's way into it. Into what does the soul find its way? From what do its intuitions chiefly proceed?

At a certain point of the life between death and rebirth the soul begins to feel itself related to the succession of generations which lead down to Father and Mother. It gradually feels itself related to the ancestors, as they are brought together in marriage and have children and so on. Immediately after death, we feel the unrolling of the pictures and looking down upon the Earth, we see these pictures grouped together in their great imaginative connections. And as we turn again to the Earth-life we become more and more intuitive, and the pictures which I called forth yesterday appeared before the soul in larger outlines: the sphere of the Earth gleaming bluish over Asia, India and East Africa; and on the other side where lies America (one circles around the earth) glittering reddish; between these there is green and other shades. The Earth also ‘sounds’ in manifold tones: melodies, harmonies, courses of the music of the spheres. Amidst all this, the pictures we had gradually began to move—the pictures of the successive generations which we had first of all. Gradually one learns no one's 36th and 35th pair of ancestors, then the 34th, 33rd, 32nd and 31st, right down to one's own father and mother. One learns to know this; it is interwoven into the imaginative images. Intuition is impressed into it until one comes to father and mother. This ‘impression’ is really an entering into what lives through the generations. The second half of life between death and rebirth is of such a nature that during this time a man becomes quite accustomed to live in what is below, to live in the outer world already in advance, in that which then becomes his nearest as well as his less near environment, to live not in himself but in this other world. That living in the other is the first experience of life after death. Then one is born again and that first one still retains something of this other life. For this reason we must say that in the first seven years the human being is an “imitator,” he imitates everything that he perceives. Read the book “The Education of the Child” on this subject . Imitation is like the last impression of this “living in the other”which continues into physical life. It is the pre-eminent quality when transformed into the spiritual element, between death and rebirth, and it is the first quality which appears in the child: to imitate everything it sees. This imitative faculty of the child will never be understood unless we know that it proceeds from the magnificent intuitive life in the psycho-spiritual world during the latter part of the time between death and rebirth.

Here is again a concept which the spiritual development of the future must grasp. In olden times—chiefly because men knew of the Spirit through atavistic clairvoyance—the belief in immortality, which has become doubtful to men who think materialistically, was actuated by direct perception; men knew that life continued. But in the future the thought of immortality must be aroused from the other end. Men will understand that life here is the continuation of the spiritual life. As formally in conformity with the nature of the times, men looked first to the continuation of life after death, so in the future they will learn more and more looked chiefly at all life here as a continuation of the life between death and rebirth. Certainly the churches have erected barriers against this. For nothing is considered so great a heresy by the church as the thought of the “pre-existence of the soul” and, as is well known, the old Church Father Origen was looked at askance, principally because he still knew of the pre-existence of the soul. It was not only because—as I have already said—the “spirit” was done away with in the ninth century by the Church Council at Constantinople, by setting up the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but only of ‘body and soul,’ though it conceded that the soul has something of a spiritual nature in it. “It is forbidden to think,” said the Council, “that man consists of body, soul and spirit; he has a soul-like in the spirit-like soul, but he only consists of body and soul.” That is of course still the law of the church today. But something else is bound up with this, which is at the same time “unprejudiced science.” And this is the more interesting part. Among philosophers you find men everywhere divided into body and soul; a threefold division into body, soul and spirit is still very little supporter. Read the “celebrated Wundt” and you will see that it is “unprejudiced science” to divide man into body and soul. It is not unprejudiced science. It is the last remnant of the dogma of the eighth Ecumenical Council! Only the philosophers have forgotten that and look upon it as unprejudiced science. That is the one barrier: the doing away with the spirit. The other barrier which the church has erected is the suppression of the believe in pre-existence. I recall the celebrated philosophical theologian or theological philosopher—whichever you like to call him—Frohschammer in Munich. His books are on the Index. But that has not prevented him, however, from turning against the thought of a pre-existence of the soul, because, he says, that if really the soul did not exist beforehand, if it were not conceived at the same time as the body, then the parents would only produce a “little animal”which later receives the soul. That to him is an uncomfortable concept. (I have introduced this as a note in my ”Riddles of the Soul.”) But it is not so. When we know the fact that man is connected for more than thirty generations with the blood running through the generations, we cannot say that the parents only produce a little animal; for the whole process of the spirit which passes through more than thirty generations, belongs to it. Only one must become conscious of this.

Thus in the future men will not only turn their minds to the question of whether this life lasts after death; they will be able to say, if they study the physical earth-life correctly, that this physical earth-life is the continuation of a spiritual life! Close attention will be directed to this in the future. It will be recognized that the spiritual life continues into the mortal one, and the mortal into the immortal one; and when men recognize the mortal in the immortal, they will have therewith a sure foundation for the knowledge of the immortal. If they understand this earth-life properly, they will no longer try to explain it out of itself alone. Of course it would then be necessary to acquire other ideas such as I have just now set forth. It is indeed necessary to correct many an idea. One acquires with much difficulty ideas which count in life, and popular language is a great hindrance in this respect. We must indeed reckon with popular language first of all, because otherwise we should not be understood at all. But it is a great hindrance to think that we acquire a “likeness” direct from the parents. That is nonsense. I have said in the public lecture that our method of science is suffering very much because what is acknowledged in regard to the science of the inorganic is not also apply to the organic. No one will seek to refer the magnetic power in the magnet to the horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, but will explain the magnetism in the magnet or in the magnetic needle by what pertains to the Cosmos; but the origin of the egg in the hen or the embryo in man—these are not explained from the Cosmos! The Cosmos, however, works everywhere. And strange as it may appear, just as though a sense-impression a canal is poured into the eye in order to open the door for the Ego to come out, so does propagation rest on the fact that in reality room is made for it. What happened is that the organism of the mother is so prepared that room is created and what originates therein is derived from the Cosmos, from the whole Macrocosm. It is a complicated process; but in the being of the mother the room only is prepared; the organization of the mother is so far disturbed as to provide a cavity into which the macrocosm can enter. That is the essential point and even embryology will grasp this before long. They will understand that the most important part connected with embryo is where there is nothing, where the substance of the mother is pushed back because the macrocosm wishes to enter. But man is already united with and beholds the forces which work from the Cosmos through this macrocosmic element, which prepared itself ever since he was intuitively bound up with his ancestors—in the longest case from 32 to 35 generations ago. From the sphere of his stars, to which he is assigned, man beholds the ray fall upon the Earth, he beholds the place where he will be incarnated. Then he gradually approaches the Earth.

These are things which—as I think—can fill our minds with a significant impression. We cannot take up Spiritual Science as we might perhaps take up mathematics, but we shall accept it as something deeply connected with our higher feelings, which makes us in reality different beings, and which deeply enriches human life and lays the foundation of a real cosmic consciousness. This vivifying, in the best sense of the word “quickening” effect of spiritually-scientific knowledge is both essential and important. We certainly should not fail to recognize that at the present time we are to a certain extent in a state of transition with regard to the things here meant. Our age must take this on itself, as its Karma. Today people still say lightly: “Must I indeed except such complicated ideas in order to understand your teaching of the destiny of man? Other teaching makes it easier for people.” the point is that we are living in a time of transition and these ideas are still strange to people; but you will have to become accustomed to them. The time must come when these things will even be taught to children and thereby the discovery will be made that children will understand them surprisingly well. They will understand much better than others what comes from the pictures of Spiritual Science, for they bring much imaginative faculty with them out of the spiritual world, which we set to work to drive out of them, do not take into account and sometimes brutally ignore; otherwise we should admit that many a child says uncommonly clever things, much cleverer than grown-up people. Sometimes what a child says is much more interesting than what the professor says, because it is more connected with the real being of the world. These things should really be taken with a certain coloring, then it will no longer be difficult to introduce things in a suitable manner to the child-mind. The transition to this is naturally not easy and therefore people very willingly abandon the thought. But just from many questions of a child-mind we can recognize, if we pay attention to the direction and tone of the question, that reminiscences of a former life are present in the child.

We must take what is called Spiritual Science absolutely in earnest and must be of the opinion that it must find its way into the social life to which education and instruction also belong. In this respect much more might be done today than is usually considered possible. For what I recently remarked is absolutely true: when those who wish to become teachers or educators are examined today, attention is paid above all to what they have acquired in the way of knowledge—which really is quite unnecessary, for when they are preparing themselves, they can always read up in a suitable compendium what it is necessary for them to have for teaching purposes. What is learnt on examination is very soon forgotten again. We can see this best when we remember how our own school life was carried on. I once had to go through an examination. At the appointed time the professor was ill. I went to the assistant who said: “Yes, the Professor is ill, and his illness may last another week; I can sympathize with you; if you have to go about in this grand condition for a week, you will have forgotten everything, but there is no help for it.” It is therefore reckoned that what one has to give out in the examination will very soon be forgotten! It is simply a comedy! But what will have to be taken into account will be to consider what sort of man is being let loose on the young. The question is to study the human being in each one, not only what he has squeezed into the mechanism of his life of ideas. The question is whether the real man is in a position to establish that mysterious relationship to youth which is necessary. It will then not be at all so difficult really to bring to youth what Spiritual Science can evolve for it.

I want chiefly to draw your attention today to such facts of the human collective life as can make clear to your consciousness that we must not only preserve old ideas, but that man needs new ideas, that our legacy of ideas must be enriched by many things. You will see how it will be sought after when once such a thing as Spiritual Science is spread abroad. Mankind has been longing for it for a long time. Most people wish to spare themselves from taking in too many ideas; for that reason they go so willingly to lime-light lectures, or other illustrative lectures, where they can look on and need not take in many ideas. As a rule when something new is offered to people they ask: “Now what does he really want?”But what do these people themselves want when they ask: “What is he really after?” they would like the matter to be translated into what they already know! But in the domain of Spiritual Science there can be no question of that; there one must take up new ideas which do not already exist, which once in olden times were partly present in another form, but which are not yet here today. One must resolve to penetrate into new ideas. This is often very difficult, for if men would really take up new ideas they would not ask: “What is he really after?” but would accept it. In future a much more useful question will be: “What ought I really think?” and not “What does he really want?” Then we should see how that which is developed as “opinion,” also sets free life-forces within us, so that we come to the truth; we should see that although vision is certainly subtle, it is not at all so far away. First, however, prejudices will have to be overcome. There is, for example, a popular little book called “Introduction to Philosophy.” In it are ideas which I criticized both yesterday and today. But the compiler is especially remarkable when he speaks about “Supernaturalism.” He considers the supernatural, the super-sensible as particularly harmful, for the reason that he is of the opinion that “what is natural”is something which every man can judge and test for himself, but with the super-sensible, supernatural, the danger would be in the fact that everybody would not be able to judge for himself but would have to accept a thing on the authority of others. Of course this is related to the other statement, that the priesthood of all times had made use of this and that men have become spoiled by supernaturalism, because they thereby became dependent on the belief in authority. If however we observe the true circumstances, we can say that when the official philosophies of today come to speak of the super-sensible, they simply become childish. For it is a childish conception, and implies that the man had no idea of how universally prevalent the belief in authority is, just as in our present time, even though people wish to hold themselves free from it. How many people are there who know upon what the Copernican teaching is based? They learn it by someone illustrating it to them by placing some spirit or other on a chair as it were in the universe and showing from there how the Sun moves and how the planets revolve around it. All that is nonsense. If men were shown all that really can be disclosed to them, they would have a quite different concept and would see how uncertain all the hypotheses are. But just think what an enormous amount men believe in authority today! How happy they are today in another sphere (to remind you of a side-phenomena) when secret acts are discovered through a Bolshevik Government, upon which the fate of countless people depend! There is a proof of the matter as regards what is “natural,” everyone can prove it; but as regards the supernatural, it is believed that men would lose their independence! This is really turning things upside down. And one of the tasks of Spiritual Science will in many respects consistt in setting things on their feet again. That things should have been turned upside down is quite natural, for the Consciousness Soul had to be developed. Now however they must again be set on their feet, in a proper manner.

In the next lecture we will follow this up and we shall see that this picture of “setting things on their feet” is by no means untrue, but has indeed an even deeper significance.