The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I would like to take the liberty of outlining tomorrow a world view from the perspective of spiritual science. Today, as an introduction, so to speak, I would like to precede it with a description of the world view of German idealism.

It is possible to speak of such a world view of German idealism if one attempts to extract from the innermost being of the German national soul, so to speak, what has been attempted by this national soul in the greatest period — in terms of intellectual life — to get closer to the riddles and secrets of the world. If we consider the impulses and forces assimilated by the national soul in those days as still active in the second half of the nineteenth century and continuing into our own time, when the world picture of German idealism has receded in the face of other endeavors, where it has lived hidden, as it were, as an urging force in the development of the national spirit, then one can also speak of such an effective world view in the present. However, we must bear in mind that, due to many things that have arisen in our intellectual life and have become dominant for the generality of this intellectual life, this – I would say – most “original German” intellectual construct of German idealism has receded. But especially in these days we may express our hopes that this world picture of German idealism will again come to the surface and incorporate its strength into the general process of human development.

In my lectures this winter, but also earlier, I have often mentioned a name that was borne by one of the most German minds of the second half of the nineteenth century; I have mentioned the name Herman Grimm, the great art historian. And it may be said that what I have ventured to suggest here about Herman Grimm can, especially when one considers what Herman Grimm achieved as an art historian, as an art observer and in other ways through his entire literary work, be proof that it is born directly out of German feeling, out of German thinking, in short, out of the innermost impulses of the German national soul. When Herman Grimm tried to lift up his soul to that which presented itself to him—more from his feelings than from philosophical reflection—as the world view of the Goethean worldview, he had to place this world view alongside the other which in modern times has found the widest dissemination and the widest interest; that world view, of which its adherents, its believers, repeatedly claim that it is based on the genuine and correct assumptions of science. This world-picture, which in a certain sense now holds sway in the minds of many, Herman Grimm, moved by his intuitive perceptions, desired to set beside the other, which presented itself to his imaginative fancy as the world-picture on which all Goethe's work and activity was based. I have already mentioned the conclusion which Herman Grimm arrived at when he made this attempt. He said:

“Long ago, in his” — Goethe's — “youth, the great Laplace-Kantian fantasy of the origin and the former destruction of the globe had taken hold.” Herman Grimm wanted to suggest the idea that if Goethe had wanted to profess this Laplace-Kantian world view, he would have had plenty of opportunities to do so because it had already taken hold in his youth. And now Herman Grimm continues:

"From the rotating nebula – which children already learn about at school – the central drop of gas forms, which later becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere, goes through all phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, over inconceivable periods of time , and finally to plunge back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, but one that is completely comprehensible to today's audience, and one that no longer requires any external intervention to come about, except for the effort of some external force to keep the sun at the same temperature."

Herman Grimm alludes to the world view that is so widespread today: that once upon a time there was nothing but extraordinarily thin matter, that this thin matter clumped together, began to rotate, to move in circles, that from this the world building gradually formed, the planets split, that then on the earth – the one of the planets split off from the central gas drop – in the course of time the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdom developed from the gas, and that then the whole course of evolution took on that form which presents itself to us as human 'history'. But then, later on, there would come a time when all living things would have to wither and dry up, when everything would fall back into the sun, and with it all life would sink back into inanimate matter. Many people believe that this world view is the only one that can be achieved on the solid ground of natural science. And, as I have already indicated, it is easy to make this world view comprehensible. Herman Grimm says of it: children already learn it at school. You just have to carefully slide a cut-out card through a drop of oil floating in a liquid, stick a needle through it from above and turn the needle to set the whole thing in motion; then smaller drops separate from the larger oil ball and move around the larger one. And so, there you have, quite “evidently,” the origin of a small world system, and from that you draw the conclusion that the origin of the great world system must have occurred in just the same way. However, I have always pointed out how obvious it is, even to a child, that the world could not have come into being any other way; but in this experiment, people usually forget one thing – and one should maintain perfection when demonstrating something. For it is usually not taken into account that the “Mr. Teacher” or the “Mr. Professor” is standing there, turning the needle and setting the whole thing in rotation, and one must not forget oneself in an experiment that one does. Therefore, if one wanted to accept the experiment cited as proof, one would have to place a giant Mr. Teacher or Mr. Professor into outer space.

Herman Grimm continues:

So said Herman Grimm. In contrast to this, it may be pointed out that the entire period of German Weltanschauungsidealismus in its striving for a Weltanschauungsbilde was basically a protest against the fact that the culture of the time incorporated precisely this world view with the most fruitless perspective; and it may be further pointed out how it actually came about that such a world view could take hold. But to do this, it is necessary to point out a little of the way in which, so to speak, popular thinking, the world-view thinking of the present day, has come about. And since it can be noted again and again how little account is taken of all the circumstances that are drawn upon in these arguments, I would like to point out that what I have to say in this regard is really not only of this war and is not said merely because we are living in these fateful times; rather, as many of the listeners here present know, it has been said and advocated again and again, not only in Germany but also outside of Germany. I would like to emphasize this in particular because it could very easily be thought that these discussions lack objectivity precisely because, in our fateful times, they draw attention to what can help to guide the German soul to what is rooted in the deepest depths of the German national spirit.

If we want to grasp the development of our newer world view, we have to go back – to not go further back – at least to the point in time when, under the impression of powerful external discoveries about the world building of space and also about the world building of time, humanity began to work on the renewal of the world view as well, as it must present itself to the human mind. In this context, it must be pointed out time and again how the work of Copernicus and what was achieved by minds such as Kepler, Giordano Bruno and Galileo in the wake of this work, basically provided the first impetus for the world view under the influence of which present-day education still stands. Today, I would like to focus on the extent to which Europe's individual nations and peoples have worked towards this world view, which now surrounds us in the consciousness of most thinking people; and how, on the other hand, the world view of German idealism has been incorporated into what Europe's peoples have contributed to the common world view.

The spirit that can appear to us as particularly characteristic in the — I would like to say — reshaping of the world view of modern times is that of Giordano Bruno, who was burned in 1600. By pointing to Giordano Bruno, we must point out the contribution that Italian culture, Italian thinking, and Italian striving for a world view has made to general world culture. In earlier lectures I pointed out that the life and striving of the human soul can be seen in three forms of expression by a true spiritual science: as sentient soul, as mind or emotional soul, and as consciousness soul. and that in this surge of inner experience, which comes about under the influence of the forces of the sentient soul, the forces of the mind or emotional soul and the forces of the consciousness soul, the actual self of the human being acts as the all-uniting element. I have also said that today one can certainly scoff at this classification as an arbitrary one, but that in the future spiritual science will make it clear that the division of the human soul into a part of feeling, a part of understanding and a part of consciousness is just as 'scientific' as the division undertaken by physics in order to divide light into seven colors or — we could also say — into three color groups: into the yellowish-reddish part, into the greenish part and into the blue-violet part. Just as one will study the colors of light in this threefold division, not out of arbitrariness but out of an inner nature of the thing, if one wants to come to a result at all, so the human soul in its wholeness must be studied in the three “color nuances” . The reason why the same mental operation that is accepted in physics is regarded as mere speculation in spiritual science is that today we are not accustomed to approaching the soul in the same way that we approach the nature of light in physics. I have also pointed out that the essential thing about the national impulses, in so far as they take hold of the human soul, consists, for example, in the case of the Italian people, in the fact that the impulses which play from the Italian folk soul into the soul of the individual Italian ripen the soul of feeling in the latter , but not in the sense that he is considered as an individual, but as a member of his people; so that a person who strives for a world view within Italian culture will do so as a person pulsating with the power that works through his sentient soul. And if we look at Campanella, at Vanini, and at other spirits in the newer age of Italian culture, we see that it was Giordano Bruno who most vividly expressed this aspect. Bruno, in the dawn of modern times, seizes with the powers, which we say are the powers of the sentient soul, that which Copernicus has brought up as a spatial world view?

Let us take the medieval world view. Man could see no further than the sky, which was bounded by the vault of heaven, in which the stars were set. Then there were the spheres of the individual planets, with the spheres of the sun and moon. Such a world view corresponded to the senses. But it was only compatible with the view of the world of space that preceded Copernicanism. As Copernicanism — I might say — descended into the infinite capacity for enthusiasm of the soul of Giordano Bruno, who with all the depths of his sensibility recognized the world, this view arose in him: What was called the vault of heaven up there is not up there at all; it is not a real boundary, but only a boundary up to which the human view of space comes. The world extends into infinity! And embedded in infinity are innumerable worlds, and dominating these innumerable worlds is the world soul, which, for Giordano Bruno, permeates this perceived universe in the same way that the individual human soul permeates the individual human elements that make up our organism. One needs only to read a page of any of Giordano Bruno's writings to realize that the enthusiasm kindled in his soul by Copernicanism led him to direct his hymns – for that is what his writings on revelation are – to the infinite world building permeated by the soul of the world. And so will others who, like him, have been inspired in their quest by his folk culture. Thus we see how in Giordano Bruno we are confronted with a world picture which everywhere sees not only the material and spatial in the world, but sees everything material and spatial at the same time spiritualized, ensouled; how the individual human soul is for him only an image of the entire world organism, which is permeated by the world soul just as our individual organism is permeated by our soul.

This world view of Giordano Bruno stands before us — I would like to say — formed from the same basis of feeling as the older world view of Dante; only that Dante's world view took up in its poetic creation what had also been handed down from earlier times and led into the infinite, but into the infinite supersensible. I have already pointed out how Giordano Bruno can teach us lessons that are so necessary to learn in the face of the newer spiritual science. For, in the first place, this newer spiritual science is always objected to on the ground that it asserts something that contradicts the “five senses” of man. Now, nothing contradicted the five senses of man more than the world-picture of Copernicus, which made on Giordano Bruno the impression just characterized; nevertheless, the world-picture of Copernicus has entered, if gradually, into the thought-habits of mankind. But other things have also become part of people's thinking. Just as Giordano Bruno called out to his contemporaries: “You imagine space as being limited by the blue vault of heaven; but this blue vault of heaven does not exist, because it is only the limit of your perception,” so the newer spiritual science must speak in the face of what the older world view sees in birth and death as the limitation of the world view. For what appears in birth and death as the limits of the temporal is just as little really there outside of human perception as the blue vault of heaven is really there for the spatial perception outside of human perception. It is only assumed as the boundary of the spatial because the human spatial view only extends as far as the blue vault of heaven. And because in relation to the temporal, human perception only extends to birth and death, birth and death are assumed to be the limits of the temporal; and today, with spiritual science, we stand at the same point in relation to birth and death as Giordano Bruno did in his time.

I would like to say: in order to effectively impress what emerged as his world view on the culture of the time, the stirrings arising from the sentient soul that Giordano Bruno gave to this world view were needed. It is as if what he has to say about the world does not in the least engage his intellect, does not in any way trouble his reason – one has only to read a page of his work to find confirmation of this – but as if everything emerges for him from the most direct intuition, that is how Giordano Bruno speaks. Thus, at the end of the Middle Ages, the Copernican world picture was accepted, which was bound to be accepted because it was so deeply significant for human progress. And so we can say: the “nuance of feeling” of the soul's life is clearly pronounced in the world picture of Giordano Bruno and also in that of those who, with him, received their most significant impulses from the Italian soul. For that is the significant thing that has come from this side to the present day: that all philosophizing, all the gathering of thoughts into a world-view, has flowed out of this most direct life of feeling. What warms the worldview with inner strength comes from this source. Therefore, we may say: insofar as the individual Italian places himself in his nationality, the enthusiastic soul speaks out of him when he wants to work out a worldview.

If we now turn to another current – one of those currents that then led to the modern world view: to the French current, we also find an excellent spirit at the starting point of the newer world view current; but if we look closely, we see him facing the origin of the world view under completely different conditions than Giordano Bruno: Descartes (Cartesius). He is also a spirit who, like Giordano Bruno, belongs to the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but he starts from completely different premises. Let us take a look at these premises as they present themselves in this outstanding mind. What is it that he starts from, in contrast to Giordano Bruno? In Giordano Bruno, we see how he is seized by an ever-increasing enthusiasm for what gives him the foundations of the modern world view. With Descartes, we see the opposite: we see how he starts from doubt, how he realizes that everything that arises from the external world or from within the soul as knowledge, as insight, as experience, can be doubted as to whether it is a reality, whether it is justified, whether it has more justification than a passing dream image. Descartes comes to doubt everything; but he seeks knowledge, to know with inner powers. First of all, he looks for the characteristics that knowledge must have in order for the soul to accept it; and for him, clarity and distinctness are these characteristics. What can present itself most clearly and distinctly to the soul bears the mark of certainty. I would like to say: in the sea of doubt in which he initially finds himself, he realizes that he must seek something that presents itself to him with clarity and distinctness, with transparency; for only that can count as a certainty for him. So it is not the original enthusiasm that drives him, but the striving for clarity, for distinctness and transparency. From this it then follows that he says to himself: And even if I doubt everything, even if everything I could perceive in the external and internal world were only a dream image: I cannot doubt that – whether it be a dream or not, I am thinking this; and if everything that takes place in the sea of experiences and that I can doubt is not, and this is established with clarity above everything: I think – then I am too! And from this clarity and distinctness, the thought arises in him: everything that presents itself to the soul as clearly and distinctly as this model of clarity and distinctness has legitimacy; one may think about the world as one must survey it: I think, therefore I am. And now let us see from this starting-point with Descartes and his followers how a world-picture comes into being that thirsts for clarity and distinctness. This clarity and distinctness was prefigured in Descartes' soul in that he was a great mathematician, and above all a special thinker on the basis of geometry. He demands mathematical clarity for everything that should belong to this world-picture. He and his successors then went on to say: About the world of space and about everything that moves in space, one can gain clarity and distinctness, one can form an image that is inwardly as clear and distinct as only mathematics itself is clear and distinct. But I would like to say that the soul-life actually escaped this world-picture. Not that Descartes denied the soul, but by taking certainty: I think, therefore I am —, he did not take it in such a way that one would get the impression that he delved into the soul as he delved into the external world of space, into what happens externally. What happens externally in space gives him the opportunity to survey the details, and also to survey the context of the details; but the interior remains more or less obscure. He said to himself: “Certain ideas that arise in the soul are clear and distinct; these are ‘innate’ ideas; by arising clearly and distinctly, they structure and organize the soul internally. But a connection between the inner-spiritual and the outer-spatial did not arise for him; they stood side by side like two worlds. Therefore, he could not — like Giordano Bruno, who thought of everything as inspired by the world soul and of this world soul pouring its spiritual impulses into everything — come to think of the soul in everything spatial as well. He said to himself: When I look at an animal, a spatial structure presents itself to me; I can look at it like another spatial structure; but it does not show anything other than spatial structures; therefore it appears like a moving automaton. He did not find in animals that which moves the animal. He found it only in himself. Therefore, he ascribed a soul only to human beings, not to animals. He called animals “living machines” — and with that we have the beginning of a mechanical world view. They were not so bold – neither Descartes nor his disciples – to deny what was present from the old religious tradition, this inner soul, but they sought to consider it as belonging only to humans; and in animals, they considered it as presenting its creations to the soul in the way that mathematical creations present themselves to the soul.

Do we not see clearly and distinctly the working of the intellectual or mind soul, the middle soul, in the striving for clarity and distinctness, which has increasingly become the characteristic of all work on a worldview in France? Until recently, this remained the basic feature of the current that worked from this perspective on the construction of a general world view. One might say that everything in a worldview that is mathematically transparent, that can be expressed in mathematically clear thoughts, that can be presented in such a way that one thing mathematically follows from another, came from this worldview – up to the world view created by Auguste Comte, where everything – from the simplest phenomena of nature to human social coexistence – is to be presented as in a large, powerful painting, with one sentence always following another in mathematics. It would be interesting to show how this nuance of the mind or soul, this systematizing soul, permeates this entire culture, how it forms the innermost nerve of this culture.

And if we now turn to a third current that also had an enormous influence on our intellectual culture, on our intellectual world view of the second half of the last century, if we turn to British culture, we find Bacon, Baco von Verulam, as the dominant spirit, in whose footsteps all of England's other leading spirits still follow. And how does he assert what he has to say? He said to himself: Mankind has lived for too long on mere ideals, has busied itself for too long with mere ideals and mere words, and it should now turn its attention to external things, to the things themselves, that is, to those things that present themselves to external observation ; one could only arrive at a true picture of the world by directing one's eyes and other senses to what is taking place in the external world, and only allowing “thoughts” to be valid insofar as they bring what is happening outside into a context. Bacon became the philosopher of experience, of the world view of experience, the world view that serves to summarize what is happening externally. Hence we see how, in the course of this school of thought, an outstanding mind such as Locke denies the possibility that the soul can gain any knowledge from itself; all it can do is to stand and observe the course of the world; then what it can observe will be written on the soul's blank slate. In this sense, the soul itself is a blank slate, a tabula rasa; not as with Descartes, innate ideas arise that are connected with the essence of the soul. Locke crosses out all innate ideas. For him, the world view arises only from the fact that the human soul focuses on its surroundings, that it analyzes, synthesizes and reflects on what is going on outside. This current extends right up to more recent times. People like John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and others are influenced by an impulse such as that just mentioned. One would like to say: with such a world view, everything that the soul could achieve by developing inwardly and bringing up what it does not yet have when it is placed in the world in a natural way, is rejected, so that it must stop at everything that presents itself externally and apply all the soul's strength to summarizing what presents itself from the outside.

When I first tried to find a concept, an idea for this kind of English philosophy, especially for John Stuart Mill, about fifteen years ago – this is presented in my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century” – I struggled to find a suitable expression to characterize John Stuart Mill's world struggled to find a fitting expression to characterize John Stuart Mill's world view; and even then I had to characterize this world view in such a way that I said: This point of view is that of the 'spectator of the world', it is not the point of view of a soul that works inwardly on itself with the belief that it can advance in the knowledge of the inner connections of things through this inner work. John Stuart Mill also takes this standpoint as a spectator, for Mill was also one of the followers of Locke and Bacon, and he faces the world in such a way that he stands before what is presented to the senses externally and what can be joined together in thoughts, just as thoughts are joined and dissolved in everyday life.

Now we see how, in yet another way, Giordano Bruno, Descartes and Bacon in the way they are characterized work on the creation of a world view, in German, Central European intellectual culture on the emergence of a world view; we see how, in solitude, a profound German mind seeks to gain a world view from the depths of the national soul. It is easy to misunderstand this thinker, who strives for the highest possible insights for a human being, and to ridicule him; but when we speak of German intellectual life, we must draw attention to this one man: Jakob Böhme, who lived at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is certainly easy to misjudge this simple shoemaker from Görlitz, for he did not speak as did Copernicus or Giordano Bruno, who drafted a world picture out of his elementary intuitive perception; nor did he speak out of a striving for clarity and distinctness, as we find in Descartes, and he spoke even less like Bacon, who wanted to summarize what presents itself outwardly to the senses. Rather, he spoke in such a way that when he delved into his soul or was with nature, something was there that had not been there before; he spoke of how an inward path is traversed that leads to the innermost secrets of existence. He spoke of what ignited within him when, as a shepherd boy, he once looked into a hole in the ground at the top of a mountain and saw a metal vessel full of gold in the recess. He said that this experience ignited something within him, and he wanted to say: A spark has been kindled in my soul, which has been ignited by the spirit that is weaving in the world; I felt connected to the spirit living in the world. And he goes on to tell us how he pursued this experience in his soul and also lived in a state of soul alienated from everyday life for seven days, how he had gone through a “paradise and realm of joy,” how he did not feel connected to reality through his senses, nor to what the senses presented through his mind, but how he felt connected through his soul to what invisibly and supersensibly reigns in things. But when he told this to his master, with whom he was then apprenticed, the latter told him to get out of there, because he could not use any young house prophets! And many still speak like this master today; in this respect, people have not become more understanding.

But if we delve into Jakob Böhme, we see how he wants to tie his soul to what pulses through the soul spiritually and emotionally. While Giordano Bruno directed his soul outwards, in order to see the 'soul of the world' everywhere, which he assumed, it is the case with Jakob Böhme that he only wants to form and shape his soul inwardly, that he does not want to look at the soul of the world outwardly, but rather immerses himself in it, so that he participates in the life of this soul of the world. Participates, I said. This is the starting point for world views that arise from a dark urge, for Jakob Böhme works without external scholarship, only from his soul. It is the beginning of the striving of a soul that draws its impulses from the impulses of the German national soul: this immersion in what is otherwise only observed or what is presented in clarity and distinctness. Jakob Böhme would not have understood what Cartesius strove for; for him it was not a matter of clarity and distinctness, but of allowing the soul to live the life of the great world soul. And if he could do that, then it did not matter to him whether it was clear and distinct, because “it is simply experienced!” And this “it is experienced” has remained like an impact, like a ferment within the striving of the German national spirit. Those spirits whom I mentioned in my lecture of eight days ago are the continuers of that first germ which was in Jakob Böhme; one can still see in them how they only want to strive clearly for what was already in Jakob Böhme's striving, which can be expressed by saying that he wanted to experience the secrets of the world — not just look at them!

Now, however, we must look at a second starting point for the more recent striving for a worldview if we want to recognize all the forces that are inherent in this newer striving for a worldview. This other starting point is often more admired today by people who are striving for a worldview than the starting point of Jacob Boehme; it is the one that is also found in a German mind, and again in an eminently cosmopolitan mind, namely in Leibniz. His world view is similar to that of Giordano Bruno, but expressed in a German world view nuance. If we want to characterize the Italian world view, we have to say: it is born out of the sentient soul. In the same sense, the French world view is born out of the mind or mind soul; especially when studying Cartesius, one notices this to a very special degree. The British world view is born entirely out of the consciousness soul, out of that consciousness soul which, especially in the stage of observation, is able to focus on what is external and what the mind can bring to consciousness from it. The German view of the world emerges from the I itself, from the most intimate inner workings of the soul. And just as light is present in both the red-yellow and the green-blue-violet, so the I is present in the sentient soul, in the mind or emotional soul and also in the consciousness soul, , but is therefore also a continuous back-and-forth striving, sometimes striving for the sentient soul, as with Jakob Böhme, sometimes more inclined towards the intellectual soul, as with Leibniz. What Jakob Böhme strives for inwardly as a way of living in the soul of the world, Leibniz strives for through the intellect, but not, as is the case with Descartes, not as a mathematical mind, but as a soul that has a clear awareness that man in his essence is a part of the whole world. And so Leibniz said to himself: What I am as a soul, a conceiving being, is basically everywhere, underlying the whole world. What we see in space is not a mere spatial construction, but the reality is that everything that is reality outside is of the same kind as that which is within me; only my soul comes to an alert consciousness, as it were. In the beings outside, which are not human, there are also such basic components as are present in humans. Leibniz calls them “monads.” What is “really” in them is consciousness. Only the monads of the mineral and plant kingdoms have something like a sleeping consciousness; then they become more and more aware and aware, to finally come to self-awareness in the human kingdom.

For Leibniz, the world is composed entirely of monads, and if you do not see the world as monads, it is because you see it indistinctly – as it is with a swarm of mosquitoes, which, seen from a distance, appears indistinct and looks like a cloud, but as soon as you get closer, it dissolves into the individual mosquitoes. So, for example, the table in front of me consists of monads, but these monads are seen pushed together like the individual midges in a swarm. Thus, for Leibniz, the entire world consists of individual monads, and just as the individual monads are mirrored in the whole world, so they are a microcosm in the macrocosm. One must imagine that the entire world is mirrored in every single monad, and a harmony implanted by the original monad spreads throughout the whole.

If one wants to characterize the salient feature of this Leibnizian world view, one must say: the salient feature is its abstractness, its thoughtfulness; and this abstract-thoughtfulness is indeed immediately apparent when one looks at it more closely. For what would be the use of it if, as Leibniz does with regard to the individual monads, one were to dwell only on a clock and say: the individual link, the individual cogwheel would be effective with the whole clock, would thus be a “little clock,” and all the effects of the clock would find expression in it? Certainly, anyone who has knowledge of the composition of the clock can say how its individual parts are connected. But what would it matter if one were to say that the real characteristic of the clock is its harmony? One encompasses it with an abstract concept. Today, however, people are usually glad when they can put an abstract concept for something; but one cannot grasp a clock through the mere concept of harmony. In this we can feel the contrast between a rational, abstract world view, as offered to us by Leibniz, and an ever-increasing immersion in the workings and weaving of the world spirit, as first presented to us by Jakob Böhme, albeit more in the form of a hunch.

In a similar way to Descartes, who sought the possibility of mathematically subordinating thoughts to the world view, Spinoza also strove for a world view that is comprehensible like a mathematical system; but at the same time, he wanted to shape it in such a way that, as one ascends from concept to concept, an ever higher and higher experience of the human soul results. He characteristically calls his mathematical world picture 'ethics' because, as he strings concept to concept, each successive one leads the soul ever deeper into the secrets of existence, until the soul, by becoming ever more absorbed in the concepts that lead from mathematics to mathematics, can feel at one with the unified substance of the world, with the unified spirit of the universe. It is an inward progression, a self-development in Spinoza. Therefore Spinoza stands alone in his striving for a world view. He has the impact that he was able to get from Descartes; but he has brought it into his world view in a deeper way through what he himself was able to get.

All the elements that have now been mentioned have influenced, in a certain way, what the world view of the nineteenth century has now become. But one can say: the blossoming and development of what was called “German Idealism” here eight days ago was a protest — which only never came to full effectiveness — against the fact that the world view developed into what Herman Grimm said: “A carrion bone that a hungry dog would avoid would be a refreshing, appetizing piece compared to this excrement of creation.” And it was always the case with the most outstanding minds, who stood with their natures within the development of the German people, that they endeavored to take up all the impulses that necessarily entered into the spiritual development of humanity in the construction of their world view, but to shape this world view in such a way that the striving for a worldview is not merely looking, not merely “watching”, but inner experience. Thus we see that in the characteristic spirit of German striving — in Goethe — the individual members, the various parts of the currents of world-view, are absorbed. In Goethe's 'Faust', which in this respect is a reflection of his own striving, we can see how his Faust develops out of the details of external observation, how he wants to arrive at an overall feeling for what permeates and animates the world. This is truly the spirit of Giordano Bruno. In this, and in the other, how later Goethe did not rest until he could fully immerse himself in Italian art, we see everywhere something of that nuance of feeling of the soul that seeks to expand one's own self into the world's self. And this already flows through the first parts that Goethe wrote down of his Faust.

On the other hand, we can see how the second world-view current, which in Descartes took the form of the pursuit of clarity and distinctness, has taken on a characteristically materialistic expression in Europe. Goethe was already aware of this as a young man when he was in Strasbourg, in Holbach's “Systeme de la nature”. I have already indicated how Descartes, in his world view, presents animals as animated automatons that are not ensouled. From what this Cartesian world view and, later, the British world view, which spread to the continent through Voltaire and fully embraced the aforementioned rejection of what the soul can inwardly achieve in inward striving, in order to accept only that which can be space can be systematized: from this arose the world view that Goethe opposed in Holbach's “Systeme de la nature,” which knows only the moving atoms that group themselves into molecules, and through whose agglomerations everything that can be seen in the world is said to arise. That world picture, which seeks to resolve everything into the effect of moving atoms and molecules, has clarity, the greatest clarity, and distinctness, a clarity, a distinctness that cannot be increased in such a world picture. But everything of a spiritual-soul nature must fall away from such a world picture. There is no room in it for anything of a spiritual-soul nature.

Goethe was already confronted with such a world view in his youth. He rejected it by saying:

Goethe finds this world view “cold and barren”.

And now we see how Goethe, summarizing everything that is in his soul, wants to combine clarity and distinctness with direct experience, in a way that was not present in Descartes. This is the characteristic that enters into the German world view during Goethe's time. How do we see the striving for clarity and distinctness in Descartes? In such a way that what one looks at, what one thinks about, must show itself clearly and distinctly. It must show itself clearly and distinctly to the observer. Goethe is clear about the fact that one does not gain any knowledge at all by merely seeing things clearly and distinctly placed before one; but he is clear about it, even if he does not want to stop at the mere inkling of Jakob Böhme: If one wants to gain a real world view that corresponds to reality, one must immerse oneself in things, to witness the forming of the crystal by placing oneself in the position of the forces that form the crystal; and in the same way, one must enter into the plant, witness the forces that make the plant a plant, and immerse oneself in all beings. Goethe does not want an abstract world view, cobbled together out of monads and harmonies, but a world view that is experienced. But not, as with Jakob Böhme, only intuitively, but by immersing oneself in all the things of the world, and through this immersion, the human being undergoes the path by which he or she approaches more and more the innermost sources of existence. That is why the world view that presented itself to him in Spinoza's work was able to have such an effect on Goethe. Spinoza never had the impulse to immerse his soul in the real external world. He sought to string together the impressions of the world in front of him, one after the other, but in such a way that the soul would undergo something in the process. Not that Goethe was ever a devout follower of Spinoza's world view; only those who know nothing about Goethe can say that. Rather, it is the case that Goethe felt the way he wanted to find his way into a world view with Spinoza, found it with him. The only difference is that what Spinoza strove for in an abstract way, Goethe wanted to seek in a concrete way. Just as Spinoza moves from concept to concept, Goethe wanted to move from plant to plant in order to experience what the plant experiences. Goethe called the soul's attainment by immersing itself in the plant world the “Utrpflanze”; and what the soul experienced by immersing itself in the animal world in the same way, he called the “Urtier”. Thus for Goethe the striving for a world-picture became a participation, but not a dark one as in Jakob Böhme; but the experience itself was to proceed in clarity and distinctness. This is witnessed to by Goethe's little essay on the “Metamorphosis of Plants”, in which he describes how the plant develops from root to leaf and to flower, with constant transformations taking place. But we must always bear in mind that Goethe sought to achieve his goal by immersing himself in the essence of things. While Cartesius, in his world view, threw everything of a spiritual nature out of the essence, for example out of animals, and turned them into living automatons, Goethe allowed his own soul to flow into plants, into animals, into the whole world, in order to connect with it in his soul and to recognize it clearly. Clarity and distinctness of experience is what entered the world-view striving of German idealism in Goethe's time. What Cartesius makes an external characteristic of knowledge, which he presents and behaves as a spectator, Goethe connects with the inner experience. And what is wrested with dark, elemental power from the soul of Jakob Böhme and expressed in his words, is also present in Goethe; but in that it shows itself in him, we find it in clarity and distinctness.

Now, however, we see in Goethe what the three great minds also strove for, which were cited as characteristic of German idealism.

Let us look at Fichte. Eight days ago, we characterized how he strives to gain a world view by seeking certainty entirely from the impulses of the innermost part of man, the I. And if we want to see through Fichte completely, what then dominates in his world view? We might put it this way: what dominates in his world view is everything that a person can develop within themselves, without directing any kind of gaze to the outside world, by gaining self-awareness. This is a welling up and flowing up from the innermost depths of the soul. I have often characterized it here: every external thing can be named by everyone in the same way as the name expresses it; but we can only name the I in such a way, if it is to express our being, by letting it resound within ourselves. Fichte did not express this; but it underlies his entire world view as an impulse, and he starts from the assumption that the I is only there when it places itself in the world. A volitional decision, then, is what Fichte seeks as the center of the development of his worldview. And he asserts of the ego — and this already characterizes Fichte's worldview — that it can find out of itself what the mission of itself is. For Fichte, this is the moral worldview. And the national world exists only to engage in moral activity. Thus, for Fichte, everything is permeated by the divine within man. Everything else is only appearance, is only created so that the moral world order can be active. The will, which is grasped in the consciousness of self, in the point of self-awareness, and radiates from the consciousness of self, is grasped as part of the soul of the world.

The way in which Fichte presents this shows us that, in a sense, he starts from full self-consciousness. Just as the light appears in every single color nuance – to return to this comparison – he starts from the self that appears in all three soul members; but he lets it prevail in such a way that it works through the consciousness soul. And in this respect, I would say that in Fichte we have the thinker who is the antipode, the opposite pole, of the British spirit. While the British spirit essentially brings to bear that which can prevail in the soul impulses in the consciousness soul, Fichte radiates everything that lives in the I into the consciousness soul. Hence the British spirit in Spencer's more recent work has come to expect the blessing of the world above all from the establishment of such an outer order, whereby the whole outer world is so arranged that the greatest possible benefit for outer human needs arises. What industrialization can offer humanity stands as an ideal in Spencer's world view; and to him, every link in a social order that is incompatible with the industrialization of society appears to be a curse, because the industrialization of society, of the state, brings eternal peace, according to Spencer, and works to eradicate everything that endangers peace. Thus the ultimate principle of utility has been incorporated into the world view.

With Fichte, we see that he is no less a practical mind. We have been able to emphasize how he directly influenced the development of his time, for example through his “Speeches to the German Nation,” how he stirred hearts, how he awakened enthusiasm, how his entire work is aimed at , but to take hold of what is not from the point of view of the external world of the highest benefit to mankind, but what is to be placed as the deepest ideals of the soul in the moral world order. So we see how Fichte works out of the nuance of the consciousness soul and, as it were, brings about the counter-image of the British spirit.

A spirit that places at the center of his world view what the soul can experience within itself, but which, through the way in which he processes this, is infinitely close to the French spirit, is Flegel. Hegel is one of the most German thinkers because he accomplishes from the opposite side what is peculiar to the French mind. Clarity and distinctness, systematic order in the spectator's point of view, in the point of view that is gained when one only confronts the world: that is what has emerged from Cartesius to Bergson as the characteristic of the French world view. Hegel wants to have the world picture as an experience; but he can only absorb from this world picture that which is as clear and distinct as a mathematical concept. That is why Hegel's world picture seems as clear as a mathematical concept. That is why one has the “cold feeling” towards it, as I have explained. But it is not a system of mathematical concepts that has been picked up, but it is conceived in such a way that it touches the soul in its deepest innermost being. And by touching the soul in its deepest innermost being, it finds itself elevated above all that is unclear and indistinct in the external view. But what remains for it, after all that is vague and indistinct has fallen away from it, is the clarity of the full being — to the point of the Gnostic and philosophical concept. What characterizes Hegel's world picture is this: even if it contains only external abstractions, these abstractions are experienced, directly experienced. That makes a great deal, to be sure. First of all, it makes it unthinkable for someone to become a “true Hegelian.” Basically, one cannot become a true Hegelian; it is an impossibility. Because thinking, continuing these external abstractions, really has no appeal for anyone else, and one always has the feeling that once someone has done this, that is enough in the world. What matters is the endeavor to see how the human soul can be experienced if one only experiences concepts, if one only feels as inner direct experience that which is a clear but also completely abstract concept. The pursuit of such a world view is what is admirable about Hegel; looking at him as he pursues it is what matters. Particularly when one is absorbed in a work such as his Phenomenology of Spirit (though admittedly very few people will be able to immerse themselves in it), one has a web of nothing but abstractions, of the most terrible abstractions; but it has life, it has soul. It is a characteristic sign that the German mind has once gone so far in its experience of a world picture that it said to itself: I find no clarity and distinctness anywhere; I will see what happens when I let one concept arise from the other. While Fichte allows the divine essence of the world to merge into “God as moral world order,” for Hegel God is the “world thinker”; and the individual soul can immerse itself through the most abstract logic by reflecting on the divine thoughts. That is certainly the tremendously sobering and cold thing about Hegel's philosophy, that if you get involved with it, you must get the thought: the divine order of the world was only concerned with “thinking,” and in order to represent thinking, everything else was represented. A moral worldview warms us; a moral worldview also, so to speak, places us in everyday life. Thinking only allows us to “behold” the world, and in this respect, beholding is also an experience with Hegel. And because it is the experience that is important in forming the world view of German idealism, we see how it is made fruitful by Hegel in such a way that he does not lose himself in the most external abstractions, but adheres to the thoughts that the divine order of the world allows the human race to experience by letting it go through history. The human soul is, as it were, directed to go through history in order thereby to take part in the course of the divine world-order. This “taking part” in the world, which I indicated in a much more universal sense in Goethe, is what we encounter in Hegel in relation to history. The way in which the thoughts run in relation to history, so they contribute to a world-picture of history. But in this experience of the logic of the world, history becomes for him what it must become: a twofold one. The whole ancient history up to the appearance of Christ on earth is the one part; and the appearance of Christ is a mighty impact, is the most powerful impact on earth-history, in order to bring something completely new into human evolution, which was not previously connected with the earth, and which now guides earthly evolution. The Christ-idea connects in the characterized way with the historical world picture, which the German evolution has brought forth. For Hegel, the whole of history is a progression conceived by the divine world government, so that it presents itself as an education of humanity to freedom. And the greatest educator, but one who divides the entire progress of earthly evolution into two parts, is the Christ-Being, which has come into earthly evolution from without — also in Hegel's sense. And the characteristic feature is this: with the clarity and distinctness that Cartesius demands, but with which all experience is also connected in Hegel, the soul can live itself into the whole course of history; there it immerses itself in the stage in which in which the event of Golgotha took place, and experiences in microcosm what the whole development of the earth has gone through, in that the Christ has incorporated Himself into the development of the earth.

Thus Hegel anchors his world picture in the soul of the intellect, and thereby becomes the opposite pole to Descartes' world view, just as Fichte is the opposite pole to the British world view.

The case is different when we come to the third of the thinkers mentioned, Schelling. One could say of him that his outer thinking already expresses how he can be brought into a relationship with the southern world view, the Italian one. I have already mentioned how he seeks to shape what underlies all natural and historical becoming out of a heightened imagination. In this regard, Schelling's outward appearance is physiognomically significant: his eyes, which sparkled throughout his life, bore witness to inner fire; the powerful forehead, his sardonic laughter and the inner fire made him a spirit similar to Giordano Bruno. Whereas in Fichte we have the point where the German mind tends towards the same nuance of soul as the British mind, but in complete contrast to it, and wants to grasp world events from within—whereas the German mind produces in Hegel something that is still opposed to the French mind , but which is more similar to it, the German spirit produces something in Schelling that is completely similar to Giordano Bruno, because Schelling works in just the same way as Giordano Bruno according to the nuances of the soul. It is only that Schelling builds his world view in a slightly different way than Giordano Bruno in all of nature and history. And while in Fichte the world-spirit pervading the world is the moral order of the world, while in Hegel we see this world-spirit as the clear and distinct logical thinker of the world, in Schelling — similarly to Giordano Bruno — we have before us the highest artist, art itself, the artist who creates everything in the world according to artistic principles. But if we compare Schelling's unique quest with Giordano Bruno's, we see again the difference between the work of the Italian national soul, which comes from the soul of feeling, and the work of the German national soul, which comes from the ego. In Giordano Bruno, everything is, as it were, of a piece, everything bears a common character. I would like to say: Giordano's world view is as clear as a shot. In Schelling, we see how he starts from the world view of his youth, how he laboriously searches to feel some of it, how one can experience a spark of world life in nature. And he arrives at the view that whatever lives in my spirit as feeling also lives in matter; matter is enchanted feeling, I must release it from the enchantment, must disenchant it; the experiencing of everything that is in nature is an experiencing of feeling. While Giordano Bruno attempts to gain his world-picture as if in a single bound, Schelling sets out on a journey. And I might say that from year to year we can follow how he seeks to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of the existence of the world. He is passing through the path of evolution. He had to go through it in such a way that in his youth he was still understood in the way the inwardness of the I had opened up to him; later, when he still wanted to show the I in the moral world, he was no longer understood, and in the end he was laughed at and ridiculed.

The world view of German idealism is above all a path into the deeper foundations of world existence. If I may use an image, I would say: the British world view is like a person who is in a house and looks out of a window. What he sees there, he takes as the description of the world; and so he takes what he sees through the tools of the house as the world itself. German idealism is pointed in the direction of seeking to experience the world-spirit together with it. If we follow the path, however, we see how he, also living in a house, grasps himself inwardly. In Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, we see that German idealism seeks to make itself at home in the house; it sees meaningful images everywhere in the house, and the “images” already express the external entities; and because it wants to decipher the images, it seeks a world picture. Fichte seeks it in the moral soul: a world picture, sketched in the house, not created through the windows. Hegel explains the pictures in the house that represent nature and humanity. Schelling, in turn, deciphers another part, or rather, Schelling makes “house music,” and in it he sees an imprint of what is going on outside. Hegel sees what has been painted about what is outside. All these minds have a world picture ; but they have created a home in order to decipher what is in the house. What they have not come to, however, is, I might say, the door of the house – that they might go out, so that when they had come through the gate they might fuse the image with reality, might experience it directly.

It is true that Goethe took this path – through the gate. But he also went through all the difficulties of this path. He showed us how we must struggle endlessly to find an expression for what we experience when we really set out on the path of experience. Thus he went through the experience with its struggles and difficulties, which such an experience must go through, just as one who seeks development must go through life. We see how Goethe defined a certain stage of his life in Faust of 1797, which he characteristically calls a “barbaric composition” and of which he is convinced that something completely new must come in at a new stage of his life. That is one of the characteristics of the German view of the world: it can never be “finished”. That superficial judgment, which finds the great only “great” when it is “flawless,” is not a judgment suited to the hero of human endeavor. Anyone who might entertain the opinion that we can have a work of art in the Faust that is just as perfect as that given us by Dante in his Divine Comedy would be mistaken. In Dante's work, everything is magnificently complete, as if cast from a single mold; in Goethe's, the individual parts are written piece by piece, one after the other, with each one left lying around for years, then taken up again, and so on. It really is, as he himself says, a “barbaric composition.” Goethe's Faust is certainly incomplete as a work of art, for the reason that it could not become a unified composition from a single mold, because it always went along with life. But the point is not that we say: Faust of 1797 is a barbaric composition, a “Tragelaph”, as Goethe put it, but that we take Goethe's point of view and try to understand how it can be a barbaric composition; only in this way do we escape blindness, while one can only speak of recognition with the abstract word.

Thus Goethe goes the way through the gate, knowing that one can go out through the gate, and differs from the philosophers in that he tries to get ahead. But at the same time he knows: whatever man can imagine of himself, whatever picture he can make of himself, it cannot be what Fichte presents in his philosophy, nor what Schelling or Hegel present; otherwise one arrives at nothing but abstractions, at an abstract moral world order and the like.

What then is it in the Goethean sense that man can only gain as an idea of himself? It is Homunculus, as he presents him in the second part of Faust, the little man Homunculus, an artificial product of what man can know of himself. This must now first be submerged into living nature. And how that which man bears of himself must merge with living nature, that Goethe presents in turn. In the lowest becoming you must begin, Homunculus is told.

Thus Goethe presents the process of development in its entire becoming. For example, when he speaks of the passage through the plant stage, where he uses the words: “It grunet so.” He admonishes the homunculus to immerse himself in the entire process of development; he even admonishes him: “Do not strive for higher places” - it must be “places”, not “orders”, as it because Goethe spoke in an unclear Frankfurt dialect, the transcriber wrote a “d” instead of a “t”; and the Goethe commentators have thought a lot about how the homunculus should come to all kinds of medals. And then it is further explained how, by becoming part of the world, he can come to appear as Helen; for what appears in Helen is the human reproduction of what passes through the secrets of the world.

Thus, in Goethe we see the setting out for a world picture. The German spirit is aware: I must go out through the gate to what is present in living nature; then, in the continuous development of my soul, a world picture will come about. This world picture, however, demands what it means to experience the world. Patience for this was not yet present in the second half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, the striving for a world view, as it was inaugurated by Goethe, is being held back. So it could come about that in the second half of the nineteenth century — characteristically in Karl Vogt, Büchner and Moleschott, who are referred to as the “materialists,” Haeckel himself could be mentioned in this context — that which the British world view has brought has been resurrected. One can say that the British world view was absorbed by the German spirit in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is Haeckel's tragedy that he must now turn against the British world view, even though it has entered into the German striving through the characterized development.

But in this respect, too, the German conception of the world differs from the British one: the British conception is satisfied with the pursuit of ideas that merely synthesize the external sense world, and it allows “faith” in some spiritual world to coexist with the external conception of the world in which it believes, as a “scientific” conception of the world. Thus, for Darwin, faith can arise as he expressed it in his main scientific work, saying: “Thus we have traced the life of organisms back to a few to whom – as he puts it – the Creator has breathed life!” Yes, the remarkable thing happened that the German translator even left this sentence out at first! For the German mind everything must be capable of furnishing the basis for a Weltanschhauung; for the British mind this demand need not be satisfied, because it does not have the consistency to build up its Weltbild to such an extent that everything becomes material for its Weltanschhauung. It can afford a “double entry”: the scientific world provides it with the building blocks for what it considers to be scientifically correct; for the rest, there is faith. For the German mind, no double-entry bookkeeping is good enough. That is why German idealism was overwhelmed by English empiricism. That is why we see strange phenomena in the German pursuit of a world view. I will cite only Du Bois-Reymond: in him lives the admiration for the Descartes-Laplacean spirit, which thinks the world as a great mathematician might have put it together from atoms and forces. But: Ignorabimus! We can never know anything about the soul and spirit. Cartesius and Giordano Bruno did not need to go so far as this. But Du Bois-Reymond goes so far as to say: “[...] that where supernaturalism begins, science ends.” Descartes does not say this, but Du Bois-Reymond does, where we find the German spirit overwhelmed by Descartes. And so one can show further how the Italian spirit, that of Giordano Bruno, has flowed into numerous endeavors of the German striving for a world view. Thus today we already find many who show how the plant has a “soul” and how everything is ensouled. We need only think of Raoul France. But we could also mention many of his contemporaries, even Fechner himself, who says that everything has a soul: a revival of the spirit of Giordano Bruno. But something is missing. What is missing is precisely what lived in Giordano Bruno. That is why I have often been able to point out: when someone like Raoul France comes and says: there are plants – when certain animals come near them, they attract them, lure them; once the animal has crept into them, they close up a gap and suck it dry... don't we see a soul life in the plant? We have to say: if you read the same thing in Giordano Bruno, you would fully understand it because it is imbued with the impulse of the sentient soul. But when it occurs, as it has done through the clarity and distinctness of German idealism, then what I have often stated applies: there is something that, by the very nature of its being, attracts small animals, absorbs them – very much like the Venus flytrap – and then even kills them. It is the mousetrap. And just as one can explain the ensoulment of plants in the sense of Giordano Bruno, so one can also want to explain the ensoulment of a mousetrap.

The fact that certain ideological impulses poured into the worldview of German idealism, which is the protest against all externalization of the worldview, means that something has taken place that can be said of: German idealism has retreated for a while into German souls and minds. And today we see it only as an ideal of struggle, of inner discipline; we see it as transformed into outer action, again filling souls with hope and confidence and with strength. But we must realize that this power is the same power that once sought an inward world-view through an inward struggle on the road to the world-picture of idealism. And this world-picture of German idealism is in reality that which the German spirit must seek as lying on its own predetermined road. And our fateful time contains many, many admonitions, but undoubtedly also the admonition that the German spirit must struggle to bring forth again that which is in its deepest depths, so that it may be an obvious part of all its striving, of all its work.

I do not believe that this could lead to a lesser understanding of the peculiarities of other nations, that the German spirit will become aware that it must become the bearer of the world view of inwardly experienced idealism. On the contrary: the more the German brings to the world that which lives in his soul as his deepest being, the more he will be valued in the world. We shall be all the more understood if we bear in mind the words of Goethe:

“The German runs no greater danger than that of rising with and by his neighbors; perhaps no nation is better suited to develop out of itself, because it has been to its great advantage that the outside world took notice of it so late.”

And indeed, it has taken so little notice to this day that it was possible to make such judgments about the German character as were heard.

This is what German idealism calls to us as a warning in our fateful time: may the self-confidence of the German national soul awaken in our souls! This German idealism had to produce a moral, logical, artistic world view in the house, since it already reigned, I might say, in the house; it had the gift of recognizing the world – in paintings in the house. And it must find the way through the gate into the surrounding area. And he must recognize what this path looks like, in contrast to others, which leads not only to looking at the surroundings through the windows, as is the case with the British world view, but to reaching these surroundings through the gate, to lovingly reach everything in the world by becoming one with it. If German idealism practised itself by contemplating the world pictures of the microcosm, the human body, it will also find the gate out of the body to the path already indicated by Goethe, and which leads to seeking the world view experienced with things instead of the merely conceived, devised, inwardly fought world view. is contained in the first ominous lines of Jakob Böhme, which in Goethe's work have taken on clear contours and shine forth as an ideal for the future, and which does not remain limited to the ideas suggested by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who were looking at the paintings in the house, but which can also find its way through the gate to connect the living human soul with the living soul of the world.

Allow me today to make a few suggestions, perhaps in a somewhat aphoristic form, about the interrelationship between body, soul and spirit in humans and then, based on this, to make a few comments about the relationship of humans to birth and death and to the universe in general. It goes without saying that all of this can only be hinted at. But those of the honored audience who have heard some or all of this year's winter lectures will find much of what can only be presented in aphorisms today more or less substantiated in the previous reflections, which, after all, dealt in detail with important questions of the life of the mind and soul. Especially during this winter and last winter, I often allowed myself to make the observation that spiritual science, as it is intended in the considerations presented in these lectures, is not something that wants to enter the spiritual cultural development of humanity today as if by the arbitrariness of an individual, but that it is deeply rooted in the spiritual life as it has gradually developed over time to our days. So that one can say: Especially when one looks through the nineteenth century, in many places there is a kind of approach to such a spiritual science. But due to very understandable circumstances, it has been brought about that in the course of the nineteenth century, and especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, the extraordinarily successful and, in its successes, by the spiritual science absolutely not to be doubted by spiritual science, has occupied the minds, and that as a result the beginnings of an actual spiritual-scientific world view have been more subdued than might otherwise have been the case.

In particular, it seems to me that Goethe's world view contains the most significant first steps towards a spiritual science and that basically, if Goethe's world view is really penetrated, one cannot doubt that in this Goethean view of the world there really is something like a germ from which spiritual science can develop. Certainly, in the course of the nineteenth century, people believed that they understood Goethe very deeply. They also honestly tried. But what is present in him as the most significant seeds of a spiritual-scientific view of the world can only be gained if one not only tries to turn one's soul's gaze directly to what Goethe himself , but when one tries to put oneself completely into the way he thought, how he looked at things, when one, so to speak, not only wants to be his observer, but his successor. It is well known, and I have also pointed this out several times in these lectures, how Goethe raised himself to a meaningful view of nature, let us say first in his observation of the metamorphosis of plants. What did he want to achieve with this metamorphosis of plants? Well, he wanted to show, first of all, that the plant being that expresses itself in roots, leaves, petals and fruit consists of individual members, but in such a way that these individual members arise from each other, are transformations of each other. He wanted to gain a comprehensive view of the plant being, for example, by trying to show that What we see as a colored petal is, from a certain point of view, essentially the same as the green leaf of the plant, only a metamorphosed, transformed leaf. And the fine organs that we find in the blossom, which we recognize as stamens, and so on, are in turn transformed petals, right up to the fruit. For Goethe, everything in the plant comes into being through the leaf transforming itself backwards and forwards, as it were. For him, the whole plant becomes a leaf, but a leaf that takes on different forms. In this way, spiritual contemplation in Goethe's sense, I would like to say, the intense focus on the individual part of the plant, rises to a whole of the plant, but to a whole that is spiritual, and that he now calls the type of the plant. It is remarkable that during his journey in Italy, Goethe believed that he was able to awaken more and more thoroughly in his mind what cannot be perceived with the outer senses in the plant, but what lives in the plant sensually - Goethe calls it a sensual-supersensible form - and what is expressed in different forms as a leaf, as a flower petal, as a stamen and so on. He also calls this type, which is sensual and supersensory, the idea of the plant. And I have already spoken here in earlier times about what was said after a botanical lecture given by the Jena professor Batsch, between Schiller and Goethe, who had both listened to the lecture. Schiller had found that it was all very nice and good, but that it did not form a whole, that it all crumbled away into mere details, that there was no overview. Goethe took a sheet of paper and sketched an ideal plant in front of Schiller's eyes, a plant that cannot be found anywhere in the physical world, but which he believed he could grasp as a sensual and supersensual form and that lives in every plant, so that every plant is only a particular manifestation of this, as he said, primal plant. So Goethe drew something that can never be found here or there with the naked eye. Schiller, who was not yet completely at home with such things at the beginning of the 1790s, could not find his way at all in what Goethe wanted with this primal plant. He said, “Yes, that's an idea, it's not a view; you can't see it anywhere!” Goethe became annoyed at this objection and said, “If what I have drawn here is an idea, then I perceive my ideas with my eyes!” Now, that was certainly a somewhat extreme way of expressing it, a slight exaggeration. But Goethe felt that he had not merely recorded an abstract idea, but something that arose in his soul with such inner necessity as arises for the eye in the individual plant life when the eye focuses on the individual plant. This life, with the sensual and the supersensual, as he called it, was a reality for Goethe; it was a reality for him.

Now Goethe pursued such observations with zeal and real effort. Those who have studied Goethe's endeavors know that he made all possible observations with real scientific effort, together with the Jena professors, especially with Loder. Goethe pursued the endeavors with zeal in order to arrive at something that could justify a similar approach for the whole realm of living beings. And it is well known – one need only read Goethe's scientific writings – how he then tried to find out for the human and animal forms as well how the various organs are basically only transformations of a basic form of the organ. And as I said, you can read about it in Goethe's scientific writings, how he, as it were, through a flash of inspiration, but one that was prepared for by his careful anatomical studies, found a happily burst animal skull on his second Italian journey and how the bones of the head, in their shell-like form, are only transformed and how their original form is that which we find superimposed on each other in the spine as vertebrae. One such vertebra, of which there are 30 to 33 stacked on top of each other, is transformed in a corresponding way, so to speak, puffed up by its inner driving forces – forgive the trivial expression – and internally shaped to match certain parts of the cranium, so that for Goethe the cranium is a transformed vertebra.

I am well aware of how this Goethean way of looking at things has been transformed by modern views. That is not what matters now, but the way of thinking, not the details. Now, one can assume that perhaps at the very moment when it dawned on him that the cranial bones are transformed vertebral bones, something is at work and driving in the vertebral bone, which, while remaining hidden in the vertebral bone, remained hidden in the vertebra, rises up, —- the idea occurred to him that the entire human brain is also transformed nervous substance, a transformed nerve link, just as such nerve links are now organized in the spinal cord. This means that not only the outer covering of the spinal cord and the skull present themselves as transformation forms of each other, but that the brain shows itself at a higher level as a transformation of what is found inside the spinal cord bone column as nerve organs, ganglia, if you will call them, superimposed on each other. This thought suggested itself at the time when Goethe had formulated the other thought with what he considered absolute certainty. But he did not elaborate on this thought, so that it cannot be found in his writings for the time being.

Perhaps I may mention that I have been intensively involved with Goethe's scientific studies for more than thirty years now and that it was clear to me from the beginning that the last thought must have been added to the first one by Goethe. But of course it would be something special if one could prove that Goethe really conceived this thought in connection with the first one. And when I was allowed to work in the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar from 1890 to 1897, it was natural for me to pursue such things. And already in the early 1890s, in about 1891, I was able to open a notebook that Goethe kept during the same period in which he made his discovery about the whirling nature of the skull bones. And in this notebook, written in Goethe's distinctive pencil letters, we find the following entry: “The brain itself is only a large main ganglion. The organization of the brain is repeated in every ganglion, so that each ganglion can be seen as a small subordinate brain.”

Thus the brain, the whole brain, is only that which we find in every link of the nervous system, at a different stage of development! Today I would like to draw your attention not so much to this fact as such, but to how Goethe's mind must have been predisposed in order to recognize such things and to assert such connections in what surrounds us sensually and physically in the animal, plant and human organization. What was Goethe actually striving for? Well, we saw it. He strove to find a sense-supersensible to what mere sensory observation can give, something that can only be grasped in the spirit, but which is just as much a reality as what can be seen with the eyes. So that Goethe came to the extreme saying: “Then I see my idea with my eyes!” Of course, he could only mean the eyes of the soul, because you cannot see ideas with your outer eyes.

In order to show how what Goethe thought about external connections contains the germ of what spiritual science has to say today, I now have to take a leap, so to speak. But this leap will appear natural to anyone who tries to gradually penetrate the spirit of Goethe's way of looking at things. If one wants to make progress in this way of looking at things, which Goethe, out of what I would call his instinctive genius, initially applied to the outer form of life, it is necessary for the human soul to undergo those inner developments that I have been talking about for years and particularly again this winter. As I mentioned last time, mentioned last time, you will find a brief indication of it in a few pages in the essay I wrote for the recently published journal 'Das Reich', which summarizes some of the material that you will find described in detail in my books 'Occult Science', 'Theosophy' or 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. I would like to say: that which makes the soul capable of looking at the world through the instrument of the physical organism must be elevated through special soul exercises, which I cannot describe again today, but which I have often described here. Through these inner exercises, through these inner soul-searchings, the soul must be enabled to see the soul-spiritual as such, to perceive it as such. To make that which appears more instinctively in Goethe the subject of conscious observation is the ascent from one spiritual science to another.

Now I have described — and as I said, you can read about it in the writings and essays mentioned — how the soul, through certain inner soul activities that it undertakes with itself, really brings about experiences that are of a completely different nature than the experiences one has in ordinary life through the instrument of the body; how the soul, by giving itself inner impulses that it would otherwise not give itself in outer life, can truly detach an inner element from the physical, just as - to repeat what was said the day before yesterday - oxygen is detached from hydrogen in the well-known chemical experiment. Through such soul exercises, the soul comes to experience itself purely in the soul element, to contemplate the soul aspect separate from the bodily. Since one cannot prove everything again and again, I would just like to point out that today I will present this only as the result of previous lectures, but that I have said a great deal about this detachment of the soul from the body.

When the human being comes to perceive the soul and spiritual as such, detached from the physical, the physical becomes something different and the soul-spiritual also something different. Just as there is no longer water, but oxygen and hydrogen, when you decompose the water in a chemical experiment, so the physical becomes another, the spiritual becomes another, of course only before the inner contemplation. But then, when the soul is fertilized by such real, now inner spirit-soul contemplations, then one gradually comes to look at the outer world quite differently than before. For this outer world is, after all, permeated by the spiritual everywhere. And then, I would say, the whole of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis becomes much more intense, much more saturated. He who, through the instrument of the outer body, first looks only at the outer sense world and its course, sees only that which is expressed in material existence. He can sense that the spirit reveals itself through material existence. But the spirit itself, how it rules and weaves in the material, can only be seen when the soul forces I spoke of in the earlier lectures are developed. But then the organs that one sees with physical eyes in humans and other living beings also appear in a completely different light. And then what is contained in Goethe's natural science is greatly expanded. Then, only by a straightforward continuation of what is contained in Goethe's ideas, one learns to recognize how the whole human head comes to us as the expression of what the human being actually is in the world from within. This whole human head appears to us as a complicated transformation product of something else. We know – this can be best understood by looking at the skeleton – that the human being visibly consists of two parts: the head and the rest of the organism, which is connected to the head in the skeleton only by small connecting links. So that we can really divide the human being into the head part and the rest of the physical organism when we look at it purely from an external, bodily point of view. And now, if, as I said, one fertilizes one's views through inner vision, one comes to the conclusion that the whole head is a complex transformation of the rest of the organism. On another level of development, the rest of the organism is, in a corresponding way, something similar to the head, just as the vertebra of the spinal column is something similar to the skull. The entire human head is transformed from the rest of the human organism. And one clearly gets the idea that this human head is, so to speak, like the rest of the organism, which has furthered the formative forces within it. The rest of the organism has remained at a certain stage; the laws of formation are held at a certain stage. In the head they have been further developed, further processed into form, further poured out into sculpture, I would say. The whole human head – the rest of the human being transformed, taken externally, bodily!

I would have to speak at length if I were to go into the details in this regard. But if one were to be able to hold an anatomical-physiological course here for weeks and go into the individual organs found in the head and in the other human organism, one would be able to prove in the strictest scientific sense, down to the last detail, how the basic idea, which I can only hint at now, can be absolutely proven. But now, in order to approach, as it were, an understanding of the whole, complete human being, one must consider the whole significance of what has been recognized, the whole, complete significance. In the human being as he stands before us, we have, in fact, two things before us: we have his head before us at a very different stage of development and formation than the rest of the organism, and we have the rest of the organism before us, of which we can say: In it lie formative forces that are only fixed at an earlier stage; if they were developed, they could become the head. Likewise, we can say: if the head had not fully developed its formative forces today, but had left them at an earlier stage, it would not have become the head, but would have presented itself in an external form as the rest of the organism.

We gain further insight into these conditions when we now consider the soul of man. And this soul of man can only be considered if one really rises from ordinary human knowledge to what I meant earlier and can only hint at today, with higher knowledge, with inner, supersensible vision. As you know, there is also a so-called psychology, a science of the soul. And especially in our time, this science of the soul wants to arise through exactly the same approach that is used in external natural science. People who still had something of the earlier approach to the soul in them and yet wanted to take full account of the entirely justified demands of modern natural science, tried to understand the soul life of the human being as it unfolds. Franz Brentano is a truly significant psychologist who still had something of an older science of the soul, which now seems to have been overcome, in him and wanted to take full account of modern science. However, in his “Psychology”, which was published in 1874, he could not rise to anything other than to classify what lives in the soul. This soul life is usually divided into thinking, feeling and willing. Brentano divides it somewhat differently. Franz Brentano is just such an observer of the soul who cannot rise to spiritual insight, but who wants to apply the way of looking at things, which one otherwise has only for external nature, for sensory perception, to the life of the soul. He only comes to a classification. Even in outer nature, Goethe does not seek to arrive at a mere classification, at what is called a system, but he seeks to arrive at a metamorphosis, he tries to present the transformation, and thereby, as it were, to follow that which lives supernaturally in its various transformations of form and to have an overall unity in the whole. Brentano, the psychologist, also breaks down the life of the soul and again cannot cope with the individual phenomena of the soul. It must truly be said that it is a hard nut to crack when one looks at the psychology of the present day, as it has developed in the nineteenth century in particular, with the eye of a psychologist of the soul who is trained in the way I have often described here. There you find this inability to get anywhere other than mere classifications: thinking, feeling and willing.

That which Goethe wants to have illuminated through all material, that which lives, this transformation and transmutation, this life, now not in an immobile contemplation that places thing beside thing and divides, but in a mobile, in a living, this life in such a contemplation must be applied in particular to the life of the soul if one really wants to grasp the life of the soul. You cannot just look at thinking, feeling and willing. That is quite impossible, one can only come to the division into thinking, feeling and willing. But when one examines soul life with the sharpened gaze of spiritual research for thinking, feeling and willing, then one finds in it a much more intense kind of metamorphosis, transformation than in what shines through the outer form of living nature. One grasps, so to speak, the transformation itself.

Can we recognize the essence of a thought if we grasp it only as a thought? No, we cannot! This is shown by spiritual insight. The thought transforms itself in the soul itself into feeling, and feeling in turn into will. And one must be able to grasp the metamorphosis of thinking, feeling and willing in one's inner mobility, then one grasps the soul. This can only be done by separating the soul from the physical body. And then one notices in direct inner experience what happens when we have a thought and compare it with a feeling, and compare feelings again with the will. We come to look inwardly at every thought that arises from the transformation of feeling. Every thought is a transformed feeling, and if we want to look at it inwardly, we must always perceive in the thought the incomplete, but half-dying of feeling. The life of thought is a dead emotional life. In thought lives, I might say, the rest of the emotional life. The life of feeling is transformed, but in such a way that the life of feeling passes, as it were, from a living state, of which one can be inwardly aware, into a more dead state.

When you say it like that, it sounds abstract. But when you experience it inwardly through soul-vision, when you really experience everything that makes your feelings turn into thoughts, for example when you have felt something vividly in the present and later you visualize this feeling only through a memory and then follows the path of how the feeling became a thought, then one experiences something so intensely inwardly, as one experiences, for example, 'when one sees a family member pass from life to death with an original, healthy family feeling. In the inner life of the soul, this very soul life, if one wants to recognize it, is permeated with intense inner liveliness, with intense inner participation. And no one should believe that the ascent from the external observation of nature to what is called the observation of the soul life is only something abstract or only that which is often addressed as confused mysticism, which mostly consists only of building a world view out of a dark feeling; but true soul science arises from the inner experience of the metamorphosis of soul facts,

But thought, too, can be awakened again into feeling, and it can transform itself into will. When, as has been indicated here several times, one watches how a thought seizes us as an ideal and then throbs through us, permeating the soul with enthusiasm until it becomes will, then one experiences, I might say, a birth, when one has raised the experience in question to the level of soul observation. This inner soul experience is what results from the exercises described, for example, in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. But through this, as you can see, an inner soul life is opened up that lies behind the ordinary soul life. The ordinary soul life proceeds in thinking, feeling and willing separately. But this soul life, which I have just described, lies behind the thinking, feeling and willing that is usually turned towards the outer sense world. It is not something that the spiritual researcher creates; it is something that he experiences only within the ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, something that he merely comes upon. He creates it no more than someone who comes in from outside and sees the table here now creates the table, although he creates its image by entering and looking at the table. In the same way, the spiritual researcher creates an image of the soul life that lies behind the ordinary soul life; but this soul life is present in every human soul. It lies, if one may say so, below the threshold of ordinary consciousness, which is turned towards the outer world or towards sensory perception in general.

I would like to say that there are also approaches to finding this soul life. Such approaches are to be found precisely in the development of thought in the nineteenth century. Because there is a yearning in all human beings for knowledge of the soul, such approaches have even gripped people in the broadest circles. We have one of these approaches in the concept, which Eduard von Hartmann did not exactly develop but did work with, in the concept of unconscious soul life. He did, after all, derive all conscious mental life from unconscious mental life. But the situation is somewhat skewed when it comes to Hartmann's unconscious, because it is only characterized in negative terms. If one says: What underlies the conscious is an unconscious, then one is saying no more than: everything that is outside of this table is a non-table, is a table. Now, if I describe everything that sits and stands here as non-table, as untable, I have not yet said anything special. It cannot be described in any other way than negatively if one stops at the level of conscious mental life with the realization. And that is what Eduard von Hartmann wants. One must inwardly fertilize the soul life, as has often been described here, and this ordinary soul life must descend to the other, so that the subconscious, unconscious soul life is grasped by an expanded consciousness, by a consciousness different from the ordinary consciousness that is turned towards the world of the senses.

You see, a soul life is grasped through spiritual insight. This soul life, which is grasped and appears directly in spiritual insight, what is it if not that which works inwardly in man and of which one must imagine that the outer body is somehow its expression, its revelation? But just as we have our ordinary conscious soul life, so its advantage lies precisely in the fact that this conscious soul life does not directly affect the body. Just imagine if the conscious soul life did affect the body - yes, it is really not an exaggeration when I present the following. Let us assume that we see the hand of a stranger and want to grasp its form. If this form did not appear to us as a mere idea, but permeated us, becoming truly alive within us, then our hand would have to metamorphose and become like the other person's hand. We would have to be able to absorb it completely, to make alive within us that which we can only visualize in abstract terms. And if we were to stand face to face with a whole, full human being who made such a strong impression on us that the impression was not just present in an abstract idea, we ourselves would have to take on the form of that person. Thus that which functions as ordinary conscious soul-life would not fulfill its task in the world at all if it were not so completely separated from our bodily life that it does not interfere with the bodily life and allow it to develop independently.

But we need only go back in human development to see at least a hint of what we can call – as I pointed out the day before yesterday – the shaping from within of the forms of the human organism. When we look at people, especially in their very earliest childhood, we see how what is within them is vividly shaped into what they later develop. We see how the spiritual enters into the bodily form. Of course, there are many objections to the assertion that I am now making. However, as I said, it is not possible to cover all the bases in a single lecture. These objections can be easily overcome if one can only talk about them in detail. So we see a vivid manifestation of what is inside a person, in the person's youth, in childhood, and in pathological conditions. We see how the soul and spirit intervene vividly in physical development. The ordinary soul life — one might say, thank God — cannot intervene in physical development; it would not fulfill its task. But read this excellent chapter in Schleich's new book: “On the Switching Mechanism of Thoughts”, this beautiful, I would say epoch-making chapter: “Hysteria - a Metaphysical Problem”, then you will see how it is referred to how, in fact, the soul-spiritual, what is grasped in thoughts, affects the plastic formation of the body in pathological states. We are healthy precisely because it is not so in the normal state. I will cite only the most primitive example from this book. The examples have always been known to anyone who deals with such things; but through the way in which they are introduced in this book, something epoch-making has indeed happened. The one example: a doctor enters a lady's room, in which a fan is humming. She says – she is hysterical, it is a pathological condition with which he is dealing –: There is a big bee! At first, the doctor wants to disabuse her of the idea that it is a big bee; after all, it is only a fan. Then she says: If it were to sting me! At first the doctor also wants to make it clear to her that that would not be so bad either. But at that moment the eye swells up into a lump the size of a chicken's egg.

This is how we see the effect of the mere thought. And as I said, thank God our ordinary thoughts are not such thoughts. And that is precisely why they are the right thoughts for ordinary life, that they cannot. They do not take this plasticizing form, they do not go down into the organism. For that, pathological conditions must arise; but then we see how thought can take hold of material life. Schleich quite rightly calls this an 'incarnation of thought'. But one must not think that one can remain within the ordinary life of the soul when speaking of such things. The ordinary thoughts that a person has are there for the purpose of understanding the world and as a basis for action. If a person is in good health, these thoughts certainly do not intervene in the ordinary life of the soul in a plasticizing way. But in a normal way, if you look at it spiritually, you find that what forms the human being, from childhood on, what shapes the forms, is now based on the same principle in a healthy way, just as the spiritual and soul life, which is still unconscious and remains unconscious as such, remains plastically formative. And it is precisely in this that man's further experience consists, namely, that what first enters the organism, what first takes hold of the organism, later separates itself from the organism, exists spiritually and soulfully on its own, and is experienced precisely as spiritual and soul-like. This is what the further development of man as an individuality consists of.

I have presented certain trains of thought to you; but these trains of thought are not really invented, not logically combined in any way, but they are lifted out of the soul's vision. And as I said, it is not a game of analogies, but it arises from the observation of the soul from the developed soul-spiritual knowledge that the same thing that can later intervene as a plastic principle in pathological conditions intervenes in the normal way in childhood life. The thoughts that I have thus suggested lead further, not by logical spinning, but by continuing the soul-spiritual view of the world. From the contemplation of bodily life, the thought was suggested: the human body, apart from the head, contains the same formative forces as the head, only at a less advanced stage; the head contains the same formative forces as the rest of the body, but at a far more advanced stage. These thoughts combine with each other in the inner vision. This more intimate acquaintance with the life of nature is attained by becoming acquainted with the spiritual and soul life in nature as well. In the higher vision, one must still clarify the following through the more intimate acquaintance with the subconscious spiritual life, as I have just described it. And one can do this through this more intimate acquaintance. Certain thoughts, I might say, only surmised by philosophers, become inwardly completely clear through the kind of knowledge meant here. Again and again, philosophers chew over and over - I do not mean this in a disparaging way - to gain some kind of concept of substance, of matter. In his Ignorabimus speech, D'Bois-Reymond presented in such a brilliant way all that can prove that what matter actually is, or, as he says, where matter haunts in space, cannot be grasped through knowledge. —- Matter basically always remains something unrecognized for ordinary knowledge; it remains outside of ordinary knowledge. Through spiritual knowledge one really comes to realize that matter itself cannot be perceived and that matter cannot enter into our inner being, just as little as the brass of a signet, which I imprint in the sealing wax, can enter into the substance of the sealing wax, although everything that is to enter, let us say the name Müller, passes from the signet to the sealing wax. What is externally material cannot be brought into the interior. But that which is to be brought in comes in in a similar way to the name Miller coming into the sealing wax. That which is in us cannot penetrate outwards to where matter is in space. Ordinary knowledge cannot grasp matter. Matter is simply imperceptible. I would have to talk at great length again if I wanted to explain in detail — which can be done — that matter cannot possibly be perceived as such. Matter can only ever be hypothetically added to the perceptions.

What is the actual basis for this? It is based on the fact that we do not perceive anything material at all. If only matter were spread out and we ourselves consisted of matter in the ordinary sense, we would be unable to perceive anything. Matter is not perceptible! How does matter become perceptible? Matter becomes perceptible because, in addition to matter (you don't have to force this 'in addition to'), there is still ether, etheric essence, in the world around us. When I speak of etheric essence, I must of course refer to what I have often said here, that the concept of ether as it is meant here does not correspond to any concept of ether as postulated by physics, although it can of course overlap with it in many ways. But finally, what kind of ether concept does modern physics have? This modern physics, which is actually on a wonderful path with those who research with all the tools of modern natural science, who make every effort to develop and increasingly develop the scientific way of thinking and attitude? From individual physicists, who must be taken very seriously indeed, in a completely different sense than the amateurish talk of a monistic worldview, we already have the sentence: If you want to have any idea at all about ether, then you can only do so by not imagining any material properties in the ether; ether must be imagined in such a way that all material properties are kept away from it. And now we are experiencing the marvelous fact that two opposing views of things are colliding. In the midst of these turbulent times, we are experiencing the clash of two worldviews with regard to the external, physical world, a fact of unspeakably great significance for anyone who is able to judge such a thing in its full gravity. We are now also experiencing the fact that what physicists have never really tackled in the right way, namely gravity, is being investigated. And there we experience it – I can only hint at these things in a purely historical way – that on the one hand the more materialistic view asserts itself and, as it were, tries to gain insight into the ether from ideas about the material, that is, from purely material properties. And on the other hand, we have a wonderful method of investigating gravity, which, as has already been said, seeks to strip away the material and dematerialize the natural in order to understand gravity. In short, if we want to understand the direction in which real science is heading today, we cannot rely in any trivial way on the talk of the so-called monistic world view, but we have to go into this true and serious scientific endeavor, which is permeated by truly impressive methodological discipline which, in attempting to go from matter up to the ether, strives more and more to achieve what I just meant by individual physicists even saying: the ether can only be imagined if it is no longer imagined with material properties.

In spiritual science, the ether now reveals itself through inner vision and through inner knowledge, just as one otherwise comes to know the external, the sensual existence. This is only possible through the first stage of spiritual vision. You can read about it in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. There, as the first step in spiritual insight, I use the term, please do not misunderstand me, imaginative knowledge. But that is just a term. What is meant is the kind of knowledge — I have often presented this in the last lectures here as well — in which the human being does not simply accept the perceptions, but has to build the perceptions himself. Just as one builds up externally what one also has in reality when one notes it down, so imaginative knowledge will inwardly express what one experiences spiritually. But through this knowledge one does indeed arrive at a conception of ether that cannot be conveyed by external material representations. And then one arrives at the fact that ether is spread out in the world and forms the possibility that things, figuratively speaking, turn their surface towards us so that they can be perceived, and that ether is within us, meeting the outer ether. Ether from within, ether from without meet, and in this way that which flows towards us ethereally from things, that which ethereally rises from us in the organism, is encompassed. This encompasses itself inwardly, and only through this does that which we call perception arise. What makes it so difficult to understand sensory perception is precisely the lack of knowledge of the facts just described.

Take the human eye! This human eye gives images of our surroundings precisely because the material processes from outside continue within the eye, so to speak. What happens in our inner eye is, without our consciousness being present, only a continuation of the laws of light that exist outside in the world. And when the outer ether continues into our eye and is grasped by the inner ether, this is how this perception of light arises. What I am about to say is a direct continuation of what is written in Goethe's beautiful and significant chapter on physical colors and their perception.

Thus we ascend from external matter to the ether, and in so doing we come closer to what lives within us. For that is the other thing now. Matter rises to the ether; we have ether within us; the inner ether enters into interaction with the outer ether. That is the one process. And now let us look at it from the other side. We have seen that when we have our soul life, the conscious soul life, which in a healthy state must not interfere with matter but which nevertheless contains the possibility of formative forces, this conscious soul life leads us down into a subconscious soul life. And this subconscious soul life has, I would say, a completely different power than the conscious soul life. The conscious soul life is the abstract soul life, the soul life that does not hurt us. I would like to give just one example of this: in the conscious soul life we can say a lie calmly, it does not hurt us. But if the lie arises in the subconscious, it hurts; that is, it has the power to develop into reality. It is only in our subconscious mental life that we have a mental life that is capable of forming itself, a mental life that is no longer separate from matter, but can now intervene in matter, although initially it can only intervene in the matter that is available to it. This subconscious mental life can now in turn intervene in what is in us as ether. And in that which is behind matter as ether, and in that which is below our consciousness as subconscious soul life, there arises an interaction that lies below our consciousness and above matter. This takes place in our subconscious. If you follow this train of thought, you can now easily explain the morbid states of mind as well. There is not enough time to go into them. I have often used the term subconscious here, which may even rightly appear dreadful at first to some people, and which really challenges one to make bad or good jokes about it. But the term should not be important. If we take a comprehensive view of the whole human being, he consists, of course, of matter, just as the other external things consist of matter, of the etheric being that he has within and that enters into relationship with the external ether, and of the subconscious soul life, which can now intervene in the ether in a formative way. And that which arises in the interaction between the subconscious soul life, which we discover in the spirit-sight, into which we dive in the spirit-sight, and the weaving, surging ether, that is precisely the imagination, the first step of spiritual vision.

And then, when through knowledge a person has struggled through to that which is not consciously experienced in him, but which is still inner life, then he also experiences how this inner life proves to be related to that which now lives in the external, but is not matter, cannot be imagined as material at all - even according to today's physics - how this becomes one in him.

We can grasp even more closely what I have often characterized in these lectures as the inner human being in the human being. The conscious soul life goes down to a subconscious soul life, and this subconscious soul life is now more powerful than this conscious one and organizes itself together with the etheric life. In this way we actually have that which is present in the human soul life. And when a person awakens this soul life within himself through the exercises described in the repeatedly mentioned books and essays, only then does he really perceive what can be called the spiritual world, just as he perceives the outer sensual world with his physical organism. In the thorough organization of his etheric body lies the possibility of perceiving and knowing a spiritual world, and of knowing that he himself comes from this spiritual world.

And now the thought broadens and is combined with the other thought, which was gained from Goethe's world view. For once one has grasped the inner human being, one can now begin to ask oneself: Yes, what about these two parts of the human nature, the head and the rest of the body, which are at different levels of development? Here we come to the fact that what can be imagined spiritually and soul-wise must be brought into quite different relationships with the head than with the rest of the organism. When one grasps the spiritual man in clairvoyance – but not in the way it is meant in spiritualism or in trivial superstition, but really in the sense that is always characterized here – the spiritual man who underlies the outer man, also the man who has ordinary consciousness — for that is nothing directly soul-like, but only something that lies below it — if one can grasp this person, one sees this inner person in a completely different connection with the main part of the person and with what the rest of the person's body is. And what we find is this: When we examine the head, we find in the head a plastic formation, a shaping, such that the soul-spiritual has flowed completely into the form, the soul-spiritual is completely shaped in the form and has even shaped itself in this form in such a way that it still retains some of its formative powers. And these retained formative forces are those that we can then develop as our thoughts. But what is developed in our thoughts only abstractly out of the head lies in the form in which it can only be achieved subconsciously, at the basis of the formation of our head. And in a completely different way, the spiritual-soul substance underlies the rest of the human organism. These formative forces do not penetrate so deeply into the rest of the human organism; there they retain a certain independence; there the soul-spiritual lives much more strongly alongside the physical body. If I may speak figuratively, imaginatively and figuratively – please allow me this tautology – I would therefore like to say: When the seer has the human head before him, he has a spiritual-soul form, but in addition, only extremely sparsely, a spiritual form. If he has the other human organism before him, he has the bodily form, but the spiritual is richly developed, only it has not yet become as organized in the material as it is in the head. In the head the spiritual has flowed into matter much more than in the rest of the organism. The human head is much more material than the rest of the organism. The rest of the organism is such that the spiritual has not yet flowed very much into the material and still has greater independence.

Now the spiritual insight of which I have spoken comes to a real understanding of the essential meaning of what I have just expressed. What forces of development are there in the human head that have reached a point that lies much, much further ahead in development than what can be observed in the rest of the organism? If one learns to look at what underlies the head, one learns to transfer the spiritual vision to the human head, then one oneself comes to experience soulfully what has been processed in the human head. When one experiences inwardly in soul what formative forces are at work in the human head — today I can only hint at these things in aphorisms — then one finds that what is processed there expands directly into a spiritual world, that one must really think of the formative forces as coming from the spiritual world, even if this passes through the human hereditary currents. Here again we have a beautiful point of contact between modern natural science and spiritual science. There are such points of contact everywhere. Today there are natural scientists who, through their natural research, also admit that such cosmic formative forces are at work in what builds up in the human being while he is developing in the mother's body. So we have something in the human head that is formed from the cosmos. In the human head there is an immediate imprint of the cosmos when one looks at the soul.

If we now ascend further to the spiritual, to the way I have described it to you, we come back further. We gain the following knowledge of the head: at birth, actually soon after conception, this human head is so constituted that its formative forces pass entirely into the material, leaving only a little of the soul behind, living out their full potential in the material. But these formative forces lead back to a time before conception. They lead up into the spiritual world, so that what arises from the cosmos in the formation of the head, the human being has essentially experienced in the spiritual world before he was conceived or born. And when we go from the soul to the spiritual, we will then, within this spirit, recognize in the formation of the head what comes from an earlier life on earth. It is precisely by observing the human head in a spiritual-scientific context that one passes directly from the present earth life into the earlier earth life. And this is supplemented by the other thought, when one now observes what is present in the rest of the organism, apart from the head. In this remaining organism, the soul-spiritual life is still separate, the whole human life, as it is led from birth to death in dealing with the outside world, in relation to other people, to the things of this world, to nature and all the spiritual conditions in which we live, to all social conditions; this is expressed in what is spiritual about us, in the rest of the organism, summarized in the human heart. This is not just a picture, but a real spiritual-physiological fact. But because this human organism has taken on its fixed form at birth, it can initially only remain spiritual-soul-like. However, it is present as formative forces, it remains present as formative forces, and it goes through death as formative forces. If we follow what is in the human organism, apart from the head, then we find that the spiritual view points us to what lies after death. And if we look at the human being spiritually, we find that this is transformed into the next earthly life.

And further: Concrete observation teaches us that the head, as it is now shaping itself with its inner formative powers, is the result of our physical life in a previous earthly existence, apart from the head. Our head has truly been transformed from an earlier life on earth, and our present organism, apart from the head, with all its experiences, retains the formative forces in a spiritual-soul way, and when it departs with death, it gives them to the spiritual world, and they develop so that they can participate in the formation of our head in the next life on earth. And we arrive at the great, significant law: in what our head is inwardly formed — mind you, inwardly formed — we have the result of the formation of what the rest of the organism, apart from the head, was predisposed to in a previous life on earth; and in what struggles and forces in the rest of our organism, we have what goes into the formation of the head in the next life on earth. Once this knowledge is acquired, it will be possible to draw a strict scientific distinction between what lies within the line of inheritance and what does not lie within the line of inheritance. In this field, natural science still has, I might say, very significant doors to open if it wants to meet what spiritual science has to say about the spiritual and soul life.

I would like to draw attention to just one point. Of course, natural science today rightly attributes certain characteristics that we have to the principle of inheritance; we have them from our father and mother, grandfather, grandmother and so on. But we should not think that the natural scientist is saying something when he comes and says: Yes, the spiritual scientist attributes inner formative forces to earlier earthly lives; we learn all this from inheritance! The spiritual researcher does not deny that which can be scientifically explained from heredity, which may lie in the physical line of reproduction, as the spiritual researcher is generally on the ground of natural science. But, as I said, natural science must first open up certain doors and follow certain guidelines. Just think about the following: as I pointed out the day before yesterday, a person reaches sexual maturity at a certain age and is then able to produce offspring. At that point, he has all the abilities within him to pass on to the next generation what he has in the way of physical-bodily formative forces. He must have it in himself. No new abilities can arise later. What a person acquires later in the way of abilities, which he in turn partially incorporates, as he previously incorporated the ability to reproduce, does not pass into the reproductive current, but these abilities work and have an effect in the person in such a way that they form the germ for that which goes through the gate of death, between death and new birth through the spiritual world and in a next life on earth, it is embodied anew in the way I have described. There is then a transition, and one can say - as grotesque as it may still sound today - the formation of the head, but, as I said, the head is formed from within. The formation of the head contains forces that we must seek as the spiritual and soul element accompanying the body, which exists independently of the head, in an earlier life on earth. But what we now have in addition to our head, before the spiritual and soul has completely poured into the physical, that prepares the configuration and shape of the head in a next earthly life. This is certainly still a paradoxical assertion today, and yet, it is how a comprehensive doctrine of metamorphosis for the whole person is built, a doctrine of metamorphosis that encompasses spirit, soul and body and shows how the reality within the human being goes through birth and death and how this reality in the human being is related to the universe. What is it that directly belongs to our earthly life? What directly belongs to our earthly life as an individual human being living between birth and death? Our head! What we usually find to be the most spiritual on the outside is most closely related to the earth. What is less related to the earth also passes into other than earthly worlds in the time between death and a new birth. And when, after the person has passed through the gateway of death, the spiritual has gained the strength to transform itself into the formation of the head, then it has attained its goal.

As you can see, spiritual science speaks in a very concrete way about what belongs to the eternal part of man. And in a very concrete way it can indicate how the human being is embedded in the whole universe. It can point out how that which is in the human head is so occupied by the forces of the earth that the whole spiritual and soul life has poured itself into the head, and how that which exists outside the head is only preparing to be joined to it in the next life on earth. We see how one earthly life follows another, in order to link up to eternity like chain links. When man – not now in an external, abstract description, but inwardly – grasps what can be experienced as the inner man, when the subconscious, the ethereal takes hold and the inner man becomes active, then the soul is seized and it can be understood beyond birth and death in connection with the universe. And when man has awakened this in himself, then a spiritual world also becomes visible before this inner man, a concrete spiritual world, as before the physical eyes, which develop out of transformed matter, the physical world becomes visible. The spiritual and soul worlds present themselves in a definite, concrete way. And just as we become acquainted with concrete physical things and beings through our bodily organization in the physical world around us, so we become acquainted with a spiritual world in concrete individual forms through the higher man, through the man who lives spiritually and soulfully in man. But the spiritual-soul in man must be grasped in a living way, otherwise it remains a mere inkling that can only be found in a conceptual construction. One can only come to the spirit, to the soul, by descending from the ordinary consciousness to the subconscious and really developing a new consciousness for the subconscious and thereby forming a higher human being in the human being with what otherwise pervades matter as ether. This is possible through experience, through real inner experience on the paths described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”. If one does not attain this spiritual level, then one remains within that which of the soul-spiritual asserts itself in the physical organism. One basically remains in that which is present in man between birth and death, and then one comes to that unclear mysticism, which unfortunately is confused by many with true, but now brightly clear mysticism, which is attained in the way I have just described, through the experience of the inner concrete spiritual-soul man. And because confused, hazy mysticism is confused with that which becomes bright and clear within, that is why spiritual scientific striving is still so often misunderstood today. The nebulous inner self, felt only through the detour of the body, does not really expand into a cosmic self, but becomes blurred in a general sense of the world. It is difficult to express this. That unclear, blurred mysticism is only what the soul can experience with the help of the bodily instrument. The soul must first be released from the body, then the soul-spiritual is truly experienced. And the spiritual must be seen, but not with the same powers of cognition with which the conceptual-legal, natural-legal in the sensual world is seen; because that is seen with the help of the bodily instrument, that does not even go through the gate of death with us. Natural laws are only meaningful between birth and death – not for nature itself, but for us. But when a person awakens the inner man and the spiritual world is around him, then he beholds a concrete spiritual world in which spiritual beings are as physical beings are in the physical world. And then it does not come to what otherwise a yes also quite commendable, but just limited metaphysics comes: in all possible ways one comes from a mere inkling of the spirit, which one veils with concepts, to pantheism, this foggy construct that sees an All-spirit everywhere, just as if one did not want to see individual plants and animals everywhere, but an All-nature. Whether one sees will everywhere, as Schopenhauer did, or finds a panpsychism by philosophical means, all these “pane” come about only because the soul-spiritual works only with the tool of the human head. And basically, mere philosophical idealism, which I have repeatedly tried to describe truly in all its magnitude this winter, could not lead to anything other than a conceptual understanding of the world; for the real spiritual world is only attained in the way I have indicated. But precisely when one works out this concrete view — and today I could only work it out aphoristically — what I have said can really be fully reconciled with the scientific world view, and does not offend any religious feeling. You will soon be able to read about this in my little work 'The Task of Spiritual Science', which will be published in the next few weeks. All that I have described so far only enables man to understand the world around him in all its phenomena. The spiritual world is present in the outer world in its effects, but these effects can only be fully understood when one grasps the spiritual foundations of these effects. Only when we have grasped the soul-forming forces that underlie the world, the spiritual forces of action, can we gain insight into what the world actually is.

Goethe first wanted to see the weaving and surging of the spirit, which had remained unconscious to him, in the reflection of the external material, and he could only perceive this in the living material through his metamorphosis. If the way of thinking that Goethe had is extended to body, soul and spirit, a true science of body, soul and spirit will really appear. Then such a science will also be possible, as I indicated the day before yesterday for understanding the individual national souls and for the historical development of humanity in general as it unfolds on earth.

One can say: there has always been a longing to achieve such a spiritual science. Today we call it anthroposophy, that is, I will try to justify this name for you. Anthroposophy because anthropology looks at the human being as one would if one only used the external organs of the human being. Anthroposophy arises when one lets the inner, awakened human being focus on what it means to be human. In earlier lectures I quoted a saying of Troxler from 1835, from which it can be seen how such an anthroposophy has been longed for. For in the time when Goethe's world view was more or less unconsciously at work in the better souls everywhere, there was already a longing and hope for such an anthroposophy. And as proof of this, let me quote a saying that Immanuel Hermann Fichte — whom I also mentioned in one of the last lectures — made in 1860; it should prove to you that what is being sought here today as spiritual science is something longed for and hoped for in the spiritual movement of the nineteenth century, even if it was somewhat subdued for the reason given. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great philosopher, says in his “Anthropology” at the end, 1860: “But anthropology already ends in the result, justified from the most diverse sides, that man, according to the true nature of his being, as in the very source of his consciousness, belongs to a supersensible world. In contrast, sense consciousness and the phenomenal world arising from its vantage point, with the entire human sensory life, have no other significance than to be the place in which the supersensible life of the spirit is carried out, in that the spirit, through its own act of free consciousness, introduces the otherworldly spiritual content of the ideas into the world of the senses... This thorough grasp of the human being now elevates “anthropology in its final result to ‘anthroposophy’.”

Anthroposophy, as it is meant here, is truly nothing arbitrarily invented, but something longed for and hoped for by the best minds of the nineteenth century. And I am convinced that it is based on a real penetration into the spirit of Goethe's world view. When, a few years ago, the question arose as to the name of the society within which this spiritual research, which is meant here, would be cultivated, I would have liked to have named this society the “Goethe Society” if the name had not already been given to another Goethe Society. It was named the Anthroposophical Society; but for good reasons, because you see: what appears today as spiritual science is long awaited and long hoped for, and it is that which today, I might say, is brought to the surface from subconscious depths of the soul, only the fulfillment of those hopes that were truly not present in the worst minds.

And such hopes were present in yet another way, in a remarkable way and, I might say, arising from the Goethean worldview, in a spirit that lived so completely with his soul in the Goethean worldview – in Herman Grimm. Here, something wonderful comes to light. Herman Grimm is, after all, a historian, especially an art historian. He tried, really out of Goethe's spirit — I am not saying now how he was able to grasp it, but how he was able to assimilate it and spiritualize it — to present the developmental process of historical phenomena in the sense of such a Goethean world view. What is he coming to? At one point in an essay he wrote about Macauley, Herman Grimm tried to understand how one can understand historical development and the place of the individual human being in history. He tried to form a concept about it: What is the place of the human being in the development of history? He still shrank back, because when he wrote the essay – it was at the beginning of the seventies – the time was not yet ripe to describe spiritual science in such a way as one can describe it today – even if it is still often regarded as fantasy or something worse. He does not attempt to ascend to spiritual science, but to form a thought, which he says he initially wants to just let be a fantasy, a thought through which he can imagine: how does the individual human being initially stand in the universe from an historical point of view?

Grimm then utters the following words: “It is conceivable that the spirit of a human being, released from the bonds of the body, might hover above the earth like a mere mirror of what is happening.” — He formally apologizes at the time because no spiritual science could be present: “I am not stating an article of faith here, it is just a fantasy. Let us assume that for some people immortality takes this form” — we have it, the fantasy, immortality takes this form for spiritual science! — ”that they float above the earth, unhampered by what previously blinded them, and reveal to them all the destinies of the earth and of man before the birth of the planet...” Herman Grimm had to imagine life in the spiritual world between death and a new birth at least hypothetically, in order to really imagine and think about the way in which man is embedded in history. And so he said: Now, how can we understand the individual human being? - “Now, suddenly, let us dream on” - one must dream, of course, but the dream becomes truth! “If this spirit, which so freely surveyed things, were forced to join the body of a mortal man again.” That is to say, in order to be able to imagine history and man's place in history, Herman Grimm necessarily had to think of repeated lives on earth. Only in this way could he imagine history.

This is how deeper spirits looked at history and the historical becoming and the inner standing of man. But as I said, such things flowed, I would say, under the prevailing stream of the more materialistic development of the world view in modern times and will probably be carried to the surface by our time, because our time already senses that the spirit and the soul must be recognized again. Indeed, this is felt most acutely when one tries to understand the historical development of humanity. And today it is obvious to seek to understand the historical development of humanity because we are at such a significant stage of this historical development. When one looks at such a view of history, for which Herman Grimm had to imagine repeated lives on earth, and then looks at another historical conception, one becomes very aware of how far mere adherence to the material can go, especially when one wants to understand historical development.

In this context, I have a spirit in mind, of whom I will present a few sentences to you at the end, because he is, of course, quite far removed from any understanding of the spiritual, of the soul. And yet a certain mind wants to explain historical development, for example why religions arose in different forms, why there was initially polytheism, then monotheism arose, and within monotheism Christianity arose, and within Christianity Protestantism arose again. Yes, that there is something spiritual and soulful at work inside, of course he cannot rise to that. But from what can be observed externally, albeit only in a rough way, when one looks at the outside world, including the outside world of history, only through the instruments of the body, he now tries to make clear how the history of religions has developed. He says – the words are not particularly important to the idea presented, but I will read them in the introduction: “As long as consolidation progresses, the organism that will prevail will be the living one that functions best at the given moment, and this tendency is just as evident in abstract thought as in trade and war.” So if you want to understand how a later state arises from an earlier one, then, in his opinion, you can see how the later state became more favorable than the earlier one.

And he applies this to religions: “The development of religions provides the most striking proof of this principle. Monotheism is cheaper than polytheism.” That is to say, people gradually strove to get more for less in the spiritual realm. So they advance from polytheism to monotheism, which is cheaper! It does not need such a widespread cult as polytheism! So: “Monotheism is cheaper than polytheism.” Consequently, the two great monotheistic religions were able to survive in Cairo and Constantinople, the two commercial centers of the first Middle Ages, while the Roman cult perished, along with the Greek and Egyptian and the various Persian religions.

So we have the later monotheistic religions because they are cheaper! They have only one God, so they need a simpler cult, are cheaper! Then he continues: “In the same sense, Protestantism is cheaper than Catholicism.” If you only look at the exterior, you cannot deny it, the Protestant church does not have as much decoration, has not developed as much worship, is cheaper.

“That is why Holland and England – I am not saying this! – adopted Protestantism when they snatched trade with the Orient from Italy and Spain.” Because the Dutch and the English wanted to have it cheaper, they adopted Protestantism!

“Atheism, finally, is cheaper than any religion, and it is a fact that all modern commercial centers tend towards skepticism, that the modern state itself seeks to reduce the costs of worship to a minimum.” Here we have cost as a principle of the progress of religions! However, this is again an example of the approach that I took the day before yesterday: that one can see how, from the different cultures, the endeavor is either to think more spiritually and psychologically about the course of human development, or more in terms of what can only be achieved through external observation.

The author is Brooks Adams, an American, and Roosevelt wrote the preface to this book! I will add nothing more to these thoughts, they show, as it were, the asymptote to which a purely external world view must lead. Of course, what is grasped as spiritual-soul will often appear to a purely external view of the world like mere dreaming. Dreaming — yes, people today would even forgive one for dreaming from a materialistic point of view. I am convinced that if someone, in a dream, could invent a machine that he then constructs in external reality, people would believe in this dream. All that is needed is the power to recognize in its reality that which is found only within the soul and spirit.

That this spiritual power belongs to the developmental and educational principles of the world-view development that has found expression in German spiritual life is precisely what I have tried to explain in the various lectures during this difficult time of trial. And when one has gained an insight into what spiritual science will and must be for the future of humanity, and sees how, ever since there has been a German development, the educational principles of this German development have been, shall we say, dreaming towards this spiritual science, then that also gives a firmness and certainty to stand still within the spiritual life of one's own nation and to have no need to vilify other spiritual lives and to utter such words of hatred as we heard only the day before yesterday, in order to gain inner strength, so to speak, inner justification in rejecting what is alien. German spiritual life can gain inner justification and inner strength by considering what lies within itself.

And so, at the conclusion of this lecture, let me express, as something that can take root in the soul as a feeling, the comparison of what spiritual science wills with what often lives as germs precisely in German cultural life. The way in which the soul and spirit are anchored in German cultural life gives us the inner certainty that Germanness cannot be overcome, because it is destined for greatness in the evolution of the world and of humanity, according to what it contains as germs within itself. We can say today: England possesses one quarter of the total dry land area, Russia one seventh, France one thirteenth, the German element barely one thirtieth of the land! Thus, those who expand over a quarter, plus a seventh, plus a thirteenth of the dry land, are opposed to those who have barely spread over a thirtieth of the dry land. And so those who have spread out over this one-thirtieth and who today consciously stand on this one-thirtieth in relation to what stands on a quarter, plus three-sevenths, plus three-tenths must imbue themselves with what can be experienced from the grasp of the innermost being. There is no doubt that inner necessities can be experienced: those who stand on a thirteenth plus a seventh plus a quarter in relation to those who stand only on a thirtieth, they must not overcome the latter, as they often say today in their fanatical ideal of hatred. For that which lives on this one thirtieth seems, by its inner nature and essence, to be destined for that which, within the earthly context, can still be called a long, long time and, for the human imagination, a temporal eternity. This German essence carries within itself the certainty of its continued existence. And from this certainty emerges what can be summarized in a few words: they will not overcome it, because if the world is to have meaning, they must not overcome it!

I

[ 1 ] The life of an age finds its most intimate expression in poetry. What the spirit of an epoch has to say to the heart of the individual is expressed in his songs. No art speaks such an intimate language as lyrical poetry. Through it we become aware of how intimately interwoven the human soul is with the greatest and the smallest processes of the universe. The mighty genius who walks on the heights of humanity becomes the friend of the simplest mind through his song. How man is drawn to man is revealed with perfect clarity in poetry. For we feel that we have no less claim to the spiritual gifts of our fellow men than to their lyrical creations. What the spirit achieves in other fields seems to belong to all mankind from the outset, and they believe they have a right to share in its enjoyment. The song is a voluntary gift whose communication springs from the selfless need not to possess the secrets of the soul for oneself alone. This basic trait of lyrical art may explain why it is the most beautiful means of reconciliation between the most diverse attitudes of people. The religious mind and the atheistic free spirit will meet sympathetically when the latter sings of his God and the latter sings of freedom. And poetry is also the field in which today the bearers of old, mature artistic ideals and the spirits of a nascent, nascent world view communicate most easily.

[ 2 ] The German sense of art in the second third of our century presents itself as an after-effect of the classical and romantic intellectual currents. The relationship that Goethe, Herder, Schiller and their successors had with nature and art was regarded as exemplary. They set high standards for themselves, but first asked their predecessors whether these standards were the right ones. This way of thinking continues to this day. Gradually, it became second nature to the creative spirits. They were under its spell without being aware of it.

[ 3 ] One such spirit is Theodor Storm. A naive view of nature, a simple, healthy sense are combined with a highly developed feeling for artistic form. Storm owes this feeling to the fact that his youth began soon after Goethe's death. The intellectual atmosphere of his age instilled in him a sense for perfect art forms as if it were innate. Storm poured the atmospheric Iyrian views into these forms, which his sense of nature and his deep feelings brought him.

[ 4 ] The classical sense of art bore different fruit from that of the North German Storm in two Swiss poets, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Gottfried Keller. Natures like Meyer can only flourish in times that were preceded by cultural peaks. They have inherited the need for the highest goals in life and at the same time an artistic seriousness that is not easily satisfied by their own achievements. Meyer wants to experience everything he experiences with dignity. His ideals are so distant that he is in constant fear of never reaching them. He wants to constantly indulge in festive feelings that others only allow themselves at certain times. What he has achieved always falls short of what he desires, so that an incessant alternation of longing and renunciation pervades his soul. He sees pathetic symbols in natural phenomena. He passes by the obvious relationships between things; instead he searches for rare, hidden connections between beings and phenomena. He becomes aware of the strongest contrasts everywhere, because his whole perception strives for the great line.

[ 5 ] Gottfried Keller is an essentially different personality. For him, the attainable is the standard he applies to everything. His whole outlook on life has something bourgeois and unaffected about it. A sound, simple mind and free, receptive senses alone determine his existence. He does not love his homeland out of an ethical instinct, but because he feels most comfortable in his homeland. He strongly emphasizes all the good things about his homeland and benevolently overlooks the unpleasant. He enjoys things as they are and never worries about whether something could be different. His description of nature reflects things as they are; he is not interested in symbols and parables such as those created by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. It is not in his nature to spiritualize feelings and sensations. For him, love always has a sensual trait. But this sensuality is a chaste, coarse and healthy one. He does not love the soul alone, he also loves the mouth; but his love remains childishly naïve.

[ 6 ] The southern German poet Johann Georg Fischer is of a similar nature. He is extremely content with life and its pleasures. He loves his existence so much and knows how to derive so much bliss from it that he only desires the hereafter if it is as beautiful and good as this life. He always feels his healthy strength and is never in doubt that it will lead him safely through life. He also knows how to find something pleasant in the shadows of life. His description of nature is not as simple as Keller's; it has something meaningful and pictorial about it. When he sings of female beauty, we admire the purity of soul that lies in his tones.

[ 7 ] In stark contrast to these southern German poetic natures is the austere beauty of Theodor Fontane's poetry. Meyer, Keller and Fischer never hold back how they feel about things. Fontane meaningfully juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings. He conceals what is going on inside him and leaves us alone with our hearts. He is a brittle person who likes to hide his own ego. Our soul trembles at his descriptions; he never tells us that his soul trembles too. The images his imagination creates have something monumental about them. The seriousness, the majesty of life speak to us from his poems. He sings of significant situations, strong contrasts, proud human characters.

[ 8 ] The poetry of Paul Heyse is post-classical in the truest sense of the word. He has everything from his predecessors: the purest sense of form, the ennobled view, the cheerful artistic spirit directed towards the eternal harmony of existence. Everywhere he dissolves the seriousness of life into the serenity of art. It is his conviction that art should lead man beyond the burdens and oppressiveness of reality. Without doubt, such a view is that of a true artist. But there is a huge difference between a person who has fought his way through the hardships of life, through the dissonances of existence, to the view of harmony that underlies the world, and one who simply accepts this view as tradition. The artist's serenity is only uplifting in the highest sense if it has its roots in the seriousness of life. Goethe, at the time of his perfection, looked at the world with the blissful calm of a sage, having acquired this calm in fierce battles; Heyse jumped unprepared into the field of balanced beauty. He is an epigone through and through. He has a sure eye for the genuine beauties of nature; but his eye has been trained to Goethe's way of looking at things. Heyse knows how to follow the most marvelous paths and make the most wonderful observations; but one always has the feeling that he is following paths blazed by others, and that he is rediscovering what someone else has already found.

[ 9 ] The lyrical poems of Martin Greif are born out of a tender soul, in which the finest impulses of nature and the human soul tremble nobly. He is not moved by the whole of an impression, but only by the soulfulness of it. A pious, devout spirit passes over to us from Greif's creations. Greif brings to life the quiet, modest melodies that rest in things as if enchanted. When we give ourselves over to his poetry, it is as if all the loud, demanding sounds of the world fall silent and a quiet music of the spheres enters our ears. The pious calm of the soul that Goethe loved so much has found a singer in Martin Greif.

[ 10 ] The Viennese Jakob Julius David is a poet whose entire oeuvre is like a single cry for this blessed peace, combined with the painful feeling that the gates to it are closed to him. His imagination paints gloomy pictures that speak vividly of the bitter suffering of a proud soul. The passionate desire, the ardent longing is abruptly replaced by wistful renunciation. As a strong nature, David cannot unlearn desire. A note of displeasure runs through all his poems, which abruptly stands out from the beauty of form that is characteristic of them. He is the representative of those contemporary poets who may have modeled their art on the great role models, but who are not at the same time able to wrestle their way through to the harmonious world view of these role models. David knows that disharmony is not the deepest meaning of life, but harmony does not reveal itself to him. That is why he cannot sing of joy and pleasure, but at best of oblivion and resignation. He is not able to lift anyone up from their suffering, but only to comfort them and exhort them to surrender.

[ 11 ] We see another Viennese poet in a steadily ascending development: Ferdinand von Saar. He is not a distinct personality who shows himself direction and goal out of inner strength. He found himself relatively late in life. By appropriating the unfamiliar, through wise self-education, he reached the point where genius sets in. In the "Nachklänge", which appeared recently, noble artistry and wise contemplation of the world emerge in equal measure. Pictures of noble beauty convey a profound view of nature and people. But nowhere do they bear the stamp of the inspiration of a brilliant imagination; they have gradually matured in a life that has tirelessly striven towards perfection. It is not rapturous enthusiasm that compels Saar's creations, but serious reverence. Saar is one of those artists who have the strongest effect on us when they do not reveal to us the individuality of their own heart, but when they make themselves the spokesperson for what moves all of humanity.

[ 12 ] The same is probably true of another contemporary poet, even if he is as far removed from Saar as possible in many respects: Emil Prinz von Schoenaich-Carolath. Schoenaich-Carolath must be conceded a certain degree of originality; but there is no doubt that he could only reach the artistic heights to which he attained in an epoch in which aesthetic education had reached such a level as in his own. Spirits such as his are only possible within the late culture of a people that had allowed great things to develop from it shortly before. They give back in a refined form what they have received. Schoenaich-Carolath has tones for all human feelings, for all processes of nature. His vision penetrates deep behind the phenomena. He has battles to fight in life, but one notices that during the struggle he never doubts his ultimate victory. If one has called him a Byronic nature, one should not have overlooked the fact that his Byronic restlessness is mixed with a happy confidence.

[ 13 ] In the truest sense of the word, Ernst von Wildenbruch is an afterbloom of classical German art. When he speaks to us, we always hear a great predecessor speaking along with him. It is fair to say that he learned to write poetry, certainly learned it very well. He is more a chosen one than a called one. And that can be said of many today. For this time it can only be applied to Alberta von Puttkammer. She is able, perhaps with just a little too many words, to paint moods of nature with unspeakable beauty. Life seems to her like a blissful elegy. Existence has thorns for her too; but she never lets us forget that the thorns are in rose gardens.

II

[ 14 ] A young generation of poets came onto the scene in Germany at the beginning of the 1980s. It included spirits who were as different as possible in terms of outlook on life and talent. However, they were united in the conviction that a revolution in artistic feeling and creativity was necessary. The rebellion against the prevailing taste of the time, in which Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach were regarded as serious artists, was justified. The principle: "Life is serious, art is cheerful" had been distorted into a caricature in shallow minds. Virtuoso poetic 'dalliance' was no longer distinguished from the noble, beautiful form born from the depths of the soul. The time was struggling for a new world view that wanted to reckon with the great scientific results of the nineteenth century and for a social design that would give those left behind in the struggle for happiness their rightful place. The leading poets knew nothing of such upheavals. This realization brought forth the words of anger in the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart, with which they declared war on contemporary taste in their "Kritische Waffengänge" in 1882. The poets who came together in 1884 to form the collection "Moderne Dichtercharaktere" were inspired by the same sentiment. And this initial rush was followed by the founding of journals and the publication of almanacs, in which disgust at outdated ideas found just as strong an expression as the boldest hopes for the future. Such sentiments gave rise to the recognition that for the past decade and a half has been increasingly accorded to a poet who, unlike many others, does not deliberately follow modern paths, but who naively embraces the circle of emotions that excite contemporary man with a vivid imagination: Detlev von Liliencron. He is a man full of life, who walks through life as a carefree enjoyer and is able to describe all its charms with vivid power. He is capable of all tones, from the most exuberant exuberance to the most fervent adoration of sublime works of nature. He is able to sing hymns of joy to frivolity and carelessness like a child of the world, and he can become pious like a priest when the heath spreads out its silent beauty before him. Liliencron is not a poet who looks at life from one point of view. You will search in vain for a unified world view that could be expressed in clear ideas. At every moment, he is completely absorbed in the impressions to which he has given himself. He does not worry or think about what lies beyond the things of the world. Instead, like a true bon vivant, he savors everything that lies within things. And he always finds the characteristic tone and the most perfect form to express the wealth of perceptions that impose themselves on his senses, which thirst for the whole breadth of reality. He has no need to distinguish between the valuable and the insignificant in this reality, for he is able to draw from the sight of an "old, discarded, torn, half-rotten, abandoned boot" a sentiment whose expression is worthy of a mood that the poet arouses in us. Liliencron draws natural scenes and experiences with rough, masculine lines; he juxtaposes sharp, telling contrasts of color. The strength of his personality is particularly evident in his song lyrics. No intimacy of feeling, no bitter pain is capable of alienating his secure sense of self from himself even for a moment.

[ 15 ] Under Liliencron's influence stands Otto Julius Bierbaum. However, he lacks a secure sense of self; he is a soft, dependent nature that always loses itself in the impressions of the outside world. Nowhere in his work is there any sign of a world view, of a conception that penetrates into the depths of beings. But while Liliencron's sharply defined personality physiognomy compensates for the same lack, Bierbaum's creations are devoid of higher interest. His amiable powers of observation know how to see little meaning in things. His mind is not burdened with the slightest urge for knowledge; what he copies from nature with a careless glance, he depicts in graceful, but sometimes rather uncharacteristic colors. He succeeds in creating charming images of nature; he is able to depict the small impulses of the heart in a magnificent way. Where he aims higher, he becomes unnatural. The big words, the powerful tones to which he often stoops, sound hollow because they have nothing shocking or exciting to communicate. Bierbaum appears like a walker who would like to play a hiker. When he pretends to be boldly and exuberantly pilgrimaging through life, it can't be particularly interesting because he avoids the abysses and dangers.

[ 16 ] Another poet dependent on Liliencron, Gustav Falke, arouses almost opposite feelings. He seeks out life in its mysterious depths, where it raises doubts and poses riddles. He is characterized by a highly developed artistic conscience. In his imagination, the events of the world are transformed into beautiful images. He searches in a serious way for harmony between desires and duties. He strives for the pleasures of existence; but he only wants them if his own merit wins them for him. Victory after a hard struggle is to his liking; he cannot particularly appreciate an easier one. Many an anxious question to fate springs from his serious spirit; a firm belief that man can be content if he adapts himself to the conditions of life leads him out of doubts and puzzles. There is something heavy in Falke's poetry; but this is only a consequence of his conception, which searches for the weighty qualities of things.

[ 17 ] Through serious artistic endeavor, Otto Ernst has worked his way up from a sentimental patheticist to a poet worthy of respect. Although his expression lacks immediacy and independence and his sensibility lacks moderation, there is much in his collections and among his poems published in magazines that reveals a true poetic personality. Especially where he remains in the modest circle of domestic happiness, of everyday events, Otto Ernst succeeds in creating atmospheric creations of a coherent art form. He becomes highly attractive when he lets his humor prevail, which has nothing worldly, but rather something philistine and mischievous, but which hits the nail on the head for those who are able to take the things in question seriously enough. One often has the feeling that Otto Ernst would accomplish far more if he naively abandoned himself to his original feelings and ideas and did not almost always do violence to them through the strict view he has of the tasks of art; he destroys many a charming feeling, many a meaningful image through an added, clever comparison, through a doctrinaire twist, through a philosophical observation that is supposed to say a lot but is usually only trivial.

[ 18 ] Poets of less distinctive character are Arthur von Wallpach, Wilhelm von Scholz and Hugo Salus. Wallpach's feeling for nature and his trust in life are reminiscent of Liliencron. Enchanting mood painting, sometimes in briskly applied, sometimes in intimately graded tones, is characteristic of him. Wilhelm von Scholz is one of those poets in whom every feeling, every idea is distorted when it is to be transformed by the imagination into an image. The word always strives to transcend that which the emotion encompasses. If it has a beautiful image in mind, it spoils it by emphasizing the content twice. His imagination is not content to say what is necessary; it overwhelms us with all the accidental ideas that come to it apart from what is necessary. Hugo Salus sometimes expresses the simple in too strange a way. Anyone who knows how to draw as much pleasure from nature as he does is surprised when he illustrates this pleasure with ideas that are often quite far-fetched. Salus does not focus his eye directly on things, as it were, but seeks out an altered reflection of them.

[ 19 ] The lyrical poems of Otto Erich Hartleben are born of a pure sense of beauty and highly developed taste. His style is characterized by a rare plastic power. Transparent clarity and perfect vividness is a basic trait of his imagination. This is the case despite the fact that his imagination is only slightly fertilized by images taken from external nature. It almost exclusively shapes the inner experiences of his own personality. This poet, who as a novelist and dramatist seeks out the contradictions of reality as objectively as possible and mercilessly reveals the humor inherent in the processes of life, holds a dialogue with his soul in his poetry, making intimate confessions to himself. One has the feeling that these are the most important, the most meaningful moments of his soul's life in which he expresses himself as a lyricist. He is then completely alone with himself and with little that is dear to him in the world. His most beautiful poems were written at turning points in his life, at moments when decisive events were taking place in his heart. And they speak of their creator's sense of calm, simple beauty, style and artistic harmony. Otto Erich Hartleben is more of a contemplative than an active nature. There is nothing impetuous in his nature. He is less a creative than a creative spirit. He prefers to let the content come to him, and then he takes pleasure in shaping it; that is where his productivity unfolds. He lacks Liliencron's verve, but he possesses the quiet grandeur that Goethe claims in his "Winckelmann" is the hallmark of true beauty. In the midst of the Sturm und Drang of the present, Otto Erich Hartleben, the lyricist, can be described as one of those who approach classical artistic ideals. His entire personality is attuned to an aesthetic-artistic view of the world. He only understands the problems of life to the extent that mature taste is called upon to decide them. Philosophy only exists for him insofar as he has a personal relationship to its questions. He can strike soft, intimate tones, but only those that are compatible with a proud, self-assured nature. All pathos is as alien to him as possible.

[ 20 ] Ferdinand Avenarius knows how to harmonize a certain classical-academic form and conception with modern sensibilities. His poetry has grown up on the foundation of theoretical ideas. His feelings do not emerge directly, but allow the ideas of reason to shine through everywhere. He has created a poem "Live!" in which he does not communicate his feelings, but an objective personality communicates his own. This kind of objective poetry will never be cultivated by a completely original spirit. It requires artistic conviction to serve as a support for the artistic imagination.

III

[ 21 ] What we so sorely lack in many of our most important contemporary poets, the prospect of a great, free world view, we encounter in the most beautiful sense in Ludwig Jacobowski. With his recently published collection "Leuchtende Tage", he has placed himself at the forefront of contemporary poets. In this book, the entire scope of human spiritual life is laid out before us as if in a mirror. The sublimity and perfection of the world as a whole, the relationship of the soul to the world, human nature in its most diverse forms, the sufferings and joys of love, the pains and bliss of the cognitive instinct, the mysterious paths of fate, social conditions and their repercussions on the human mind: all these elements of the great organism of life find their poetic expression in this book. Every single thing that this poet encounters, he grasps with receptive senses and with fertile imagination; but again and again he also finds access to the essence of the world that lies behind the flow of individual phenomena. The title of his book "Shining Days" seems to us like a symbol of his whole way of thinking. Like "eternal stars", the "shining days" of life console him for all the suffering and hardship with which the path to our life's goal is covered. Jacobowski formed this sunny world view out of hard struggles. It gives his creations a liberating undertone. His feelings are driven by the highest interests of life with a warmth and intimacy that are personal and immediate in the most beautiful sense. Just as the philosopher's reason distracts him from the individual experience and points him to those bright regions where the transience of everyday life is only a parable for the eternal powers of nature, so his immediate feelings push this poet in the same direction. He is an inventor of the world, just as the philosopher is a thinker of the world. He sees things with childlike, lively senses in their full, fresh tones of color; and he shapes them in the sense of harmony, without the contemplation of which the more deeply inclined person cannot live. Whoever possesses such poetic power, the highest wisdom works like the most loving naivety. The three most monumental forms of the life of the soul are revealed by Jacobowski in their innermost relationship: the childlike, the artistic and the philosophical. Weiler unites these three forms in himself in an original way and succeeds in striking poetic sparks from life everywhere. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not need to search for shells in order to extract precious pearls from them; the seed he reaches out for is enough for him. Jacobowski is far removed from anything artificial or elaborate. He uses the closest, simplest, clearest means. Just as the folk song always finds the simplest expression for the deepest emotional content, so does this poet. He has a feeling for the broad, simple lines of the world's context. He is understood by the naive mind, and he has the same effect on the philosopher who struggles with the eternal riddles of existence. Whether he speaks to us of the experiences of his own soul or describes the fate of a person who is transplanted from the country to the big city to be crushed by life, it will affect us to the same extent. In Jacobowski's nature, there is tenderness alongside substance. He has a firm trust in the direction of his soul. He spurns all the buzzwords of the time, all the favorite ideas of individual currents of the present. What flows from the strength of his personality is the only thing that determines him. In him, we encounter none of the abstruse oddities of those who today turn away from the healthy hustle and bustle of the world and search for all kinds of aesthetic and philosophical-mystical quirks in lonely corners of existence; he can hear the noise of the day because he feels the security within himself to find his way.

[ 22 ] A lyricist whose greatest power lies in the design, in the plastic rounding of the image, is Carl Busse. Within the framework of this image there is rarely anything significant in terms of content, but usually a meaningful mood. This poet is characterized by a fine sense of style for the appearance of form. He knows how to let the basic feeling of a poem come to life in the turns of language, in the harmony of expression. He is not concerned with the deepening of a feeling, but with its vivid, colorful imprint. When Busse paints us a mood, we will not miss a color tone that makes it a rounded whole, nor will we be easily disturbed by a foreign tone. The effervescence of emotion, the urge of passion never appears directly in his work, but is always subdued by artistic moderation. When he speaks of nature, he keeps himself in the middle between the naïve and the pathetic; when he communicates his own emotions to us, they do not come at us in a storm, but in measured steps. Buss's similes and symbols are not meaningful, but concise; his ideas move freely and swiftly from thing to thing; but the poet always knows how to firmly delimit the perimeter within which they are allowed to unfold. Thus Busse's poetry will satisfy those in particular who value external form above all else in poetry; the deeper natures who seek the great, the meaningful content, will not receive any strong impressions from his creations.

[ 23 ] In a most amiable manner, Martin Boelitz finds the expression for the most intimate moods of nature. Transient phenomena, which demand a careful eye if their fleeting, delicate beauty is to be captured, are his domain. His images of nature do not become vivid, but meaningful parables. And he clothes abstract ideas in a sensual garment, so that we may not be able to grasp them, but we believe we can feel them. Thus he lets "all wishes stand still" and "dream the day away"; thus he personifies "longing" and "loneliness". He sings less about the soul that lies in things than about the soul that spreads like a delicate fragrance between things and above them in an ethereal way. When he speaks of himself, he does so in a tone of spirited, serious cheerfulness. His view of life is a cheerful one; but it does not spring from deep thinking, but from a naïve carelessness. He does not overcome the difficulties of life; he takes his paths where there are none. It is not in the possession of strength that he feels happy, but in dreaming of such strength.

[ 24 ] Paul Remer draws on two sources: subtle thinking and a symbolically effective imagination. He is always based on a sentence, a thought; but he knows how to weave it into a symbolic process in such a way that we forget the mystery and are led to believe that he has extracted the symbolic from the process. Whether he depicts the experiences of the human soul symbolically in this way, whether he speaks of natural phenomena or of human actions: he is equally attractive. As he says in a poem about a blind woman: she listens to "the secret confidences of things", so he does it himself. He does not tell us what effects things have on each other, but what their souls have to say to each other. Remer does not describe the bright colors or the loud sounds of nature, but rather the deeper meaning of the colors and sounds.

[ 25 ] The poetry of Kurt Geuckes has sharp, characteristic lines. He does not offer us a unique, individual world of feeling. Thousands felt and feel like him. He is animated by an idealism that is universally human. But he possesses a rare poetic power to express this idealism. Strictly closed, artistic forms do not express an original, but a solid world view. The poet's fiery imagination depicts the darker sides of life in deep, poignant images. However, hope always spreads above the suffering and pain, appearing in a form that can only emerge from the conviction of a true idealist. He also reaches for the symbol when he wants to depict the meaningful in nature, and the symbols always have something masculine about them. But he is also no stranger to the mystical mood, and he always finds a healthy pathos to express it. His mind is turned towards the beautiful and great in the world, for the sake of which he gladly endures the small, ugly and depressing.

[ 26 ] A noble sense of nature and a soul in need of freedom speak from the poems of Fritz Lienhard. But these two traits of his personality are not very pleasing due to the one-sidedness with which they appear. The poet repeats in a rather monotonous way the healthy nature of simple, rural conditions and the depravity of the big city. The magnificent Wasgau forest and the "Venusberg" of Berlin: his love and his hate are enclosed in these two images. His enthusiasm for the fresh country also corresponds to a naive technique that works with the simplest of means.

[ 27 ] Whoever wants to calculate the driving forces of cultural development in recent decades will undoubtedly have to put a high figure on the proportion of women in public life. But perhaps in no other field is this share as clear as in poetry. For while in other fields women appear as fighters and wrestlers, here they are givers and communicators. Otherwise she tells us what she wants to be; here she expresses what she is. This has given us great insights into the female soul. Because the woman felt compelled to shape her inner life artistically, she herself has first become clearly aware of it. Books such as Gabriele Reuter's "Aus guter Familie", Helene Böhlau's "Halbtier" or Rosa Mayreder's "Idole" appear to men like insights into a new world.

[ 28 ] It is understandable that the most intimate art, poetry, also reveals to us the deepest secrets of a woman's heart. The most striking characteristic of modern women's poetry is its frankness about the nature of women. The present age, which has made unreserved truth a requirement of genuine art, has also opened women's mouths. What she once carefully guarded as the sanctuary of the heart, she now entrusts to art. She has gained faith, confidence in her own being, and while the important women of earlier times unconsciously pursued the ideals and goals of men when they wanted to form a view of life, today's women are building one of their own accord.

[ 29 ] The poetic creations of Ricarda Huch show us how clear and inwardly stable such a view of life can be. She has conquered a high, free point of view from which she surveys the phenomena of the world. Although she is not able to see this world in the sun's glare from her height, but only to resign herself to the nothingness of existence, she nevertheless finds in this resignation the inner freedom that an independently inclined person needs in order to find their way in life. Even if she finds the ship of life hurtling towards death, towards annihilation, she draws satisfaction from the awareness that she is allowed to set her sights firmly on the goal. It is not surprising that the female Faustian nature does not know how to create satisfaction for her striving in the first rush, since the male nature has hardly progressed beyond doubtfulness despite thousands of years of struggle. How could a female Nietzsche today elevate the life-affirming "Überweib" to an ideal, since we have experienced Schopenhauer's enthusiasm for nirvana in this century and Novalis' view that death is the true, higher purpose of life?

[ 30 ] The lyrical creations of Anna Ritter are not born out of the great questions of existence, not out of deep doubts and torments, but also out of a genuinely feminine feeling. Something graceful and musical is poured over her poetry. Nowhere does she struggle with form, but she sometimes achieves a perfection in this direction that must silence any critical doubts. Her talent for rhythm and the euphony of language seems so natural that the originality of many a praised nature poet looks like stiltedness in comparison. Love appears in the light that only the true, open-hearted woman can lend it. Sensuality speaks tenderly and chastely from Anna Ritter's songs; feminine desire expresses itself warmly and intimately. The poetry of the mother appears in graceful magic; the life of nature does not emerge powerfully, but all the more sweetly from this poet's soul. Her genuinely feminine disposition comes to the fore in the "Storm Songs". It is not the great male storm that rages in them, but the mysteriousness of the female soul. They are storms that are not overcome by the eternal, but by a happy, spirited optimism of life.

[ 31 ] Marie Stona is gifted with a clear awareness of the nature of women and their relationship to men. The contrast of the sexes and the effect of this contrast on the nature of the feeling of love: these are the ideas that tremble through her soul. Does the man give as much to the woman as she gives to him, that is an anxious question for her. And must not woman give man more than he can return, if she is to increase his strength and not destroy it? How can woman preserve her pride, her self-confidence, and yet sacrifice her self on the altar of love? These are the eternal cultural questions of woman that this poet explores and which she seeks to shape from a mind that is as rich as it is deep.

[ 32 ] The poems of Thekla Lingen express the moods to which the woman of the present day succumbs, who, because of a highly developed sense of freedom and personality, finds the social position offered to her by traditional views uncomfortable. They contain none of the thoughts and tendencies that come to light in modern women's issues. Thekla Lingen only expresses what she thinks and feels individually. But it is precisely this individuality that appears as the elementary content of the cultural struggle of women, which only comes to light in an intellectual way in the emancipation efforts.

IV

[ 33 ] Modern intellectual culture does not make it easy for people with a deep soul to find their way in life. The natural science reformed by Charles Darwin has brought us a new world view. It has shown us that living beings in nature, from the simplest forms up to the most perfect forms, have developed according to eternal, iron laws, and that man has no higher, purer origin than his animal fellow creatures. Furthermore, our intellect cannot close itself to this conviction. But our heart, our emotional life, cannot follow the intellect quickly enough. We still have within us the feeling that thousands of years of education have implanted in the human race: that this natural kingdom, this earthly world, which according to the new view has brought forth from its mother's womb like all other creatures, including man, has a lower existence than what we call "ideal", "divine". We would like to feel like children of a higher world order. It is a burning question of our spiritual development to follow the truth recognized by reason with our hearts. We can only return to peace when we no longer find the natural contemptible, but are able to revere it as the source of all being and becoming. Few of our contemporaries feel this as deeply as Friedrich Nietzsche did. For him, the confrontation with the modern and scientific world view became a matter of the heart that shook his entire emotional life. He began by studying the ancient Greeks and Richard Wagner's philosophical world of thought. And in Schopenhauer he found an "educator". This man of fine mind felt the suffering at the bottom of every human soul to a special degree. And he believed that the ancient Greeks up to Socrates, with their drives and instincts not yet faded by intellectual culture, were particularly afflicted with this suffering. In his view, art had only served them to create an illusion of life within which they could forget the pain that raged within them. Wagner's art, with its high, idealistic impetus, seemed to him to be the means to similarly lead us moderns beyond the deepest suffering of life. For the basic mood of every true human being is tragic. And only the artistic imagination can make the world bearable. Nietzsche had found the tragic human being described in Schopenhauer's philosophy. It corresponded to what he had gained from his studies of the world view in the "tragic age of the Greeks". He approached modern natural science with such attitudes. And it made a great demand on him. It teaches that nature has created the sequence of stages of living beings through development. It has placed man at the pinnacle of development. Should this development stop with man? No, man must continue to develop. He has gone from animal to man without his intervention; he must become superhuman through his intervention. This requires strength, the fresh, unbroken power of instincts and drives. And now Nietzsche became an admirer of everything strong, everything powerful that leads man beyond himself to the superman. He could no longer reach for artistic illusion to deceive himself about life; he wanted to implant as much health, as much strength into life itself as was necessary to achieve a superhuman goal. All idealism, he now believed, sucks this strength out of man, for it leads him away from nature and presents him with an unreal world. Nietzsche now makes war on all idealism. He worships healthy nature. He had tried to absorb the conviction of natural science into his mind. But he absorbed it into a weak, sick organism. His own personality was no carrier, no nursery for the superman. And so, although he could present it to mankind as an ideal, he could speak of it in enthusiastic tones, but he felt the glaring contrast when he compared himself with this ideal. The dream of the superman is his philosophy; his real life of the soul, with its deep dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of his own existence in the face of all superhumanity, generated the moods from which his Iyrian creations sprang. With Nietzsche there is not only a dichotomy between intellect and mind; no, the rift runs right through the life of the mind itself. Everything great comes from strength: that was his confession. A confession that not only his reason recognized, but to which he clung with all his feelings. And the strong man seemed to him like the opposite of himself. The unspeakable pain that overcame him when he looked at himself in relation to his world of ideas, he expressed it in his poems. A soul divided within itself is expressed in them. You have to feel the deep tragedy of Nietzsche's soul if you want to let his poems have an effect on you. One then understands the gloom in them, which cannot come from the joy of life for which he found such beautiful words as a philosopher. Because Nietzsche made the modern world view of natural science his personal cause, he also personally experienced nameless suffering under its influence. He, the thinker of the affirmation of life, who exultantly proclaims that we do not live our lives only once, that all things experience an "eternal return": he became the lyricist of the dying life. He saw the sun setting on his own existence, he saw the weak organism rushing towards a terrible end, and he had to preach the joy of life from within this organism. For him, life meant enduring suffering. And even if existence returns countless times, it can bring him nothing but a never-ending repetition of the same torments.

[ 34 ] The career of Hermann Conradi as a poet began promisingly. A youthful poetry is all he created in the short span of time he was granted to live. It looks like the dawn before a day that is as rich in stormy, exciting events as it is in sublime and beautiful ones. Two things weigh heavily on the bottom of his soul, which thirsts for all pleasures and knowledge. One is the realization of the painful fate of all mankind, whose gaze wanders out to the most distant stars and which would like to embrace the whole world with its life, and yet is condemned to see its existence bound to a small star, to a speck of dust in the universe. The other is the feeling that his own self is too weak to make his own possession of the little that is allotted to man in his limited existence. Man must lag far behind what his mind's eye sees as a distant goal; but I cannot even reach the near goals of mankind: this idea speaks from his poetry. It stirs up feelings in his mind that correspond to the eternal longing of all mankind, and also those that give deeper expression to his personal destiny. These feelings storm through his soul with demonic force. The urge to reach the heights of existence creates in Conradi a boundless desire; but this boundlessness never occurs without a serious longing for harmony of thought and will. The poet's world of thought strives towards the regions of the "great understanding of the world". But again and again he feels himself transported back to banal, worthless life and has to give in to dull resignation. Meagre symbols of the future paint themselves in the soul when it is seized by an ardent urge for satisfaction in the present. Such a change of moods is only possible in a spirit in which the high side of human nature dwells, and yet which also courageously admits to itself that it is not free from the low side of this nature. Conradi had a boundless sincerity towards the instincts in his personality that drew him down from the noble and beautiful. He wanted to bring his own self with all its sins up from the abysses of his inner self. The greatness that lies in the confession of his own misguided feelings and emotions is characteristic of him. Neither the memory of the past nor hope for the future can satisfy him. The former evokes an agonizing feeling of lost innocence and lust for life, the latter becomes a dreamlike nebulous image that dissolves into nothing when he tries to grasp it. And Conradii knows how to speak of all these feelings in his soul in bold and at the same time beautiful poetic forms. He has an extraordinary command of expression. He combines the power of feeling with true artistry. He has an extensive imagination that knows how to fetch ideas from everywhere in order to portray an inner life that wants to traverse all the spaces of the world.

[ 35 ] Richard Dehmel's poetry has its origins in a similar school of thought. He too wants to encompass the whole wide world with his feelings. He wants to penetrate the secrets that rest in the depths of beings like enchanted creatures, and at the same time he longs for the pleasures that are bestowed upon us by the things of everyday life. He is actually a philosophical nature, a thinker who refuses to walk the paths of reason, of the ideal world, because he hopes to pick better fruit in the field of poetry, of the sensual, figurative life of the imagination. And the fruits he finds there are indeed often exquisite ones, even though one notices that they were gathered by someone who would have found others more suited to his nature even easier. He could have the thought in its purest, most transparent form, but he does not want it. He strives for contemplation, for the image. That is why his poetry appears like a symbolic philosophy. It is not the images that reveal to him the essence, the harmony of things, but his thinking that reveals them to him. And then the images spring up around the thought, like the substances in the formation of a crystal in a liquid. But we can seldom stop at these images, at these views, for they are not there for their own sake, but for the sake of the thought. As images, they have something vague about them. We are happy when we see through the image to the thought. Dehmel appears at his most outstanding when he expresses his ideas directly in the meaningful manner of expression that is characteristic of him, and does not first struggle for visualizations. Where he presents ideas in their pure, thought-like form, they appear large and weighty. He also succeeds at times in expressing his ideas in splendid symbols, but only when he puts together in the simplest form a few characteristic ideas of the senses; as soon as he reaches for a richer abundance of such ideas, the strangeness of his imagination, the unpictorial nature of his intuition leaps to the eye. But what reconciles us with him even then is the great seriousness of his will, the depth of his emotional world and the proud height of his points of view. His paths always lead to interesting, captivating destinations. One is happy to follow him even if one is already convinced at the beginning of the journey that it is a wrong path. Dehmel the man always shows himself to be greater than the poet. His grand gestures may often be distracting, indeed they can sometimes seem like posturing, but there can never be any doubt that there is a powerful feeling behind the loud tone.

[ 36 ] A pithy nature is Michael Georg Conrad. The wholesome and folksy lives in his work. He combines strength with naivety. He succeeds in the simple song in a perfect way. He can speak to the heart in a powerful way. A noble enthusiasm for the truly sublime and beautiful can be heard in his creations. His real significance, however, lies in the field of the novel and in the powerful impulses he was able to give to German intellectual life when it was in danger of becoming bogged down in traditional forms. The future historian of our literature, who will not only look at phenomena according to their completed manifestation, but who will also trace the causes at work, must give Conrad a wide berth.

[ 37 ] A poet whose sensations swirl around the world like an uncertain factor is Ludwig Scharf. He knows how to strike warm, touching notes; one must respect the impulses of his wandering soul; but one cannot escape the feeling that he himself is at ease in the labyrinths, that he likes to wander in the labyrinth and does not want the saving thread to lead him out. Scharf is an eccentric of the emotional life. He feels lonely; but his creations lack what could justify his loneliness: the greatness of a personality founded in himself.

[ 38 ] Christian Morgenstern strives for the high points of view, from which all small peculiarities of things disappear and only the meaningful features are visible. His imagination seeks meaningful images, expressive content and saturated tones. Where the world speaks of its dignity, where man feels his self elevated by uplifting sensations: that is where this imagination likes to dwell. Morgenstern searches for the sharp, impressive characterization of feeling. You rarely find simplicity in his work; he needs resounding words to say what he wants.

[ 39 ] The poetic physiognomies of Franz Evers', Hans Benzmanns and Max Bruns' are less pronounced. Franz Evers still lacks his own content and form. It is clear from many of his creations that he strives for the depths of existence and for a proud, self-confident freedom of personality. Yet everything remains nebulous and unclear. But he feels himself to be a seeker and a struggler, and he carries within him the conviction that the riddles of the world can only be solved by those who approach them with holy devotion. Max Bruns is still stuck in the imitation of foreign forms. That is why his sensuous poems, which bear witness to a beautiful feeling for nature, cannot make a significant impression for the time being, but they arouse the best hopes in many quarters. Hans Benzmann is not an independent individuality, but a pleaser who likes to surround the simple with all kinds of colorful decoration, and who seeks the poetic not in the straightforward, the simple, but in the cumbersome. He succeeds in creating many a beautiful image, but he is almost never able to express himself without the superfluous and trivial.

V

[ 40 ] John Henry Mackay is called the "first singer of anarchy" with the publication of his poems "Tempest" in 1888. In the book in which, in 1891, he described the cultural currents of our time with a clear view and from a deep knowledge, he emphasized in "The Anarchists" that he was proud of this name. This lyrical collection is one of the most independent books ever written. The Anarchist view of life, much maligned but little known, has found in Mackay a poet whose powerful feeling is fully equal to its great ideas. "In no field of social life" - he himself says in the "Anarchists" - "is there today a more hopeless confusion, a more naive superficiality, a more dangerous ignorance than in that of anarchism. The very utterance of the word is like the waving of a red scarf - most people rush at it in blind rage, without allowing themselves time for calm examination and reflection." The view of the true anarchist is that one man cannot rule over the actions of another, but that only a state of social life is fruitful in which each individual sets for himself the aim and direction of his actions. Everyone usually believes he knows what is equally pious for all people. Forms of community life - our states - are thought to be justified, which seek their task in supervising and guiding the ways of men. Religion, state, laws, duty, justice and so on are concepts that have arisen under the influence of the view that one should determine the goals of the other. Concern for one's "neighbor" extends to everything; only one thing remains completely unconsidered, namely, that if one person prescribes the ways to another's happiness, he deprives the latter of the possibility of providing for his own happiness. It is this one thing that anarchism regards as its goal. Nothing should be binding on the individual but what he imposes on himself as an obligation. It is sad that the name of the noblest of world views is misused to designate the conduct of the most learned disciples of violent domination, those fellows who believe they are realizing social ideals when they cultivate the so-called "propaganda of action". The follower of this school of thought stands on exactly the same ground as those who try to make their fellow human beings understand what they have to do by means of inquisition, the cannon and the penitentiary. The true anarchist fights against the "propaganda of action" for the same reason that he fights against communal orders based on violent intervention in the circle of the individual. The free, anarchist mode of imagination lives as a personal need in Mackay's emotional life. This need emanates as a mood from his lyrical creations. Mackay's noble feeling is rooted in the basic feeling that the personality has a great responsibility towards itself. Humble, devoted natures search for a deity, for an ideal that they can worship, adore. They cannot give themselves their value and therefore want to receive it from outside. Proud natures only recognize in themselves what they have made of themselves. Self-esteem is a fundamental trait of noble natures. They only want to contribute to the general value of the world by increasing their value as individuals. They are therefore sensitive to any foreign interference in their lives. Their own ego wants to be a world unto itself so that it can develop unhindered. Only from this sanctification of one's own person can the appreciation of another's self emerge. He who claims complete freedom for himself cannot even think of interfering in the world of another. One may therefore assert that this anarchism is the way of thinking that necessarily flows from the nature of the noble soul. He who appreciates the world must, if he understands himself, also appreciate that part of existence in which he directly intervenes in the world, his own self. Mackay is a noble, self-assured nature. And anyone who descends into the abysses of his own soul with such seriousness as he does awakens passions and desires in him of which the unfree have no idea. From the solitary point of view of the free soul, man's view of the world expands. "There the soul rises from brooding dreams to wander the paths of the world as the chosen one." When the gaze penetrates deep within, it also has the gift of wandering over the infinite spaces, and the human being enters the mood that Mackay expresses in his poem "Weltgang der Seele" ("The Soul's World Walk") in the words that the soul's "trembling wings were waved by courage for flight in the eternal spaces".

[ 41 ] How deeply Mackay is able to feel with every human personality is demonstrated by his poignant poem "Helene". The love of a man for a fallen girl is portrayed here by a poet whose feeling and imagination have given him the warmth of expression that can only have its origin in the perfect freedom of the soul. If one pursues the human ego into such abysses, then one also gains the certainty of finding it on the heights.

[ 42 ] Mackay has been called a tendentious poet. Those who do so show that they neither judge the nature of tendency poetry correctly nor know the relationship of the poet Mackay to the world view he represents. His ideals of freedom form the basic mood of his soul in such a way that they appear as an individual expression of his inner self, just as the sounds of love or the glorification of the beauties of nature do for others. And it is certainly no less poetic to give words to man's deepest thoughts than to his inclination towards women or his joy in the green forest and birdsong. To the eulogists of so-called "unintentional creativity", who are quick with their doctrinaire objections when they sense something like a thought in poetry, it should be borne in mind that man's most precious asset, freedom, does not arise in the dullness of the unconscious, but on the bright heights of developed consciousness.

[ 43 ] About fifteen years ago, Karl Henckell turned the great question of contemporary life, the social question, into the basic motif of his poetry out of the stormy fire of an idealistic soul. He wanted to counter the poems of the 1970s, which comfortably proclaimed inherited ideas in new ways, with a "morning wake-up call of the victorious and liberating future". A hopeful idealism shines out of the gloomy feelings that compassion for the longings, aspirations and struggles of his time formed in Henckell. He did not want to serve the mendacious "old beauty", but the new truth, which creates an image of the suffering of the struggling contemporary human being. Plasticity of expression and harmony of tone cannot be the character of this poetry, which oscillates between indignation at the social experiences of the present and vague expectations of the future. The exaggerated hyperbole takes the place of the calmly beautiful metaphor. A stinging glow sprays from the verses, not soothing warmth. Freedom in all its forms becomes the idol to which the poet pays homage. He incorporates science, which allows the spiritual to emerge from the material, into his way of imagining so that it can free him from the bonds of religious bondage, the mythological way of looking at things. But the idea of freedom can also become a tyranny. If it shapes sharply defined life goals, it kills the truly independent life of nature. A heart that constantly cries out for freedom can perhaps mean nothing other than new shackles instead of the old ones. It is a higher development in Henckell's individuality that he also wanted to free himself from freedom again. He found the way to the inner freedom that says: "Let schools and parties teach and shout, you can only flourish as an artist and free yourself alone." The "Tambour", who wanted to serve the free spirit with a loud drumbeat, has transformed himself into the violinist who has found beauty and sings of it. And thus Henckell has also been granted the happiness that can be enjoyed by natures that are strong enough to create a purpose in life from within that meets the stormy desire, the longed-for ideals. It is not the trivial happiness that nourishes a fleeting existence from the superficial pleasures of life; it is the harsh happiness that rises like a proud castle above the steep rock of painful experiences, the happiness that Goethe meant when he had Tasso say: "And when man falls silent in his agony, a god gave me to say what I suffer." Bruno Wille called his Iyrian collection, published in 1897, "Einsiedelkunst aus der Kiefernheide". With this title, he made a significant reference to the basic character of his personality. He sought what his soul thirsted for in people: happiness and perfection. But he could not find them there. That is why he returned to where he had come from, to the hermitage of his soul, and chose nature as his companion, which keeps the loyalty that people talk so much about but do not know how to keep to one another. What he has striven for in vain in alliance with men is granted to him through the friendship of nature. It is not an innate trait of Wille's mind that drove him to hermitage. His soul would not have called out to him from the outset like Nietzsche's: "Flee into your solitude! You live too close to the small and wretched. Flee from their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but revenge." Although a rich inner life and a developed sense of nature were always present in Wille and he had developed a certain self-sufficiency in himself, he threw himself into the hustle and bustle of social community life. What in Nietzsche stems from the hypersensitivity of the organism, from its peculiarity of smelling the many impurities in the souls of people, as it were, was brought about in Wille through rich experience within the hustle and bustle of the "flies of the market". This experience gave rise to a desire that appears in Nietzsche like a prejudice: "Worthy know the forest and the rock to be silent with you. Resemble again the tree you love, the broad-headed one: silent and listening, it hangs over the sea." And Bruno Wille not only knows how to be silent with the forest and the rock, but also how to hold an intimate conversation with them. He knows how to loosen nature's tongue. The silent plants, the mystical blowing of the wind, they reveal to him the intimate secrets of nature, and the distant stars entrust him with great revelations. His gaze rises to the red Mars, whose surface is covered not by naïve popular belief but by serious science with its legendary inhabitants, to spy out where the poor, imperfect children of the earth can find redemption from the old woe. The longing of his soul sucks in the sublime sounds of eternal nature in order to live together with the universe, to weave his own self into the infinite soul of the world. "Endless hosts of worlds shall you, the soul, travel..." And this own self is not the empty, insubstantial self of the enthusiast who seeks outside what he cannot find within himself; it is the full self that longs for a fulfillment that brings him just such riches as it holds within itself. The poor self gives itself away because it is needy; the rich self pours out its abundance into its surroundings. A poetic pantheism speaks to us from Wille's poetry. What Goethe desires and expresses in "Künstlers Abendlied": "How I long for you, nature, to feel you faithful and dear!.... You will cheer up all my powers in my mind, and extend this narrow existence to eternity", that lives as the keynote in Wille's poetry.

[ 44 ] In Julius Hart's soul too, as in Bruno Wilde's, the individual spirit marries with the All-Spirit. But this All-Spirit is not the natural spirit resting blissfully in itself; it is a world spirit ravaged by all the storms of human passion. Its feelings float back and forth between drunken enjoyment, proud joy in eternal becoming and dull renunciation. Birth and death, which nature only shows in its outer shell, which revolves around the deep, eternal, never dying life: we encounter them again and again in Hart's poetry. In this poet we find a sense of nature that does not bring up the noble harmony of the gods from the depths of things, but instead sees its own soul moods embodied in the processes of the outside world. What is going on in his heart is proclaimed to him by nature in large-scale symbolism. And the rhythms with which he sings of this symbolism are captivating. The primordial in the human being, the great, gigantic destiny that does not act from the outside, but which from the abysses of the soul drives individuality demoniacally onwards through good and evil, through truth and error, through joys and pains: Hart finds words for this that resound fully and weigh heavily on our souls. Understandably, such a poet also had to find tones for the feeling that comes from the region of the soul that is most developed in modern man, the social one. This social feeling has awakened feelings in his own heart, as they appear in his poem "On the Journey to Berlin", which provides a reflex image of the unsparing, great world events of the present from a strong, deeply excitable soul. There is a philosophical streak in Hart's personality. It lends his poems seriousness and depth. And this trait is thoroughly Iyrical. Even where he could be philosophical, Hart becomes lyrical. This can be seen in his book "The New God", in which he sets out his world view. What he has in mind as such is not laid out in thought, but sounds out of a lyrical mood.

[ 45 ] Clara Müller has earned the right to be counted among the social poets with her collection "Mit roten Kressen". The appealing thing about these poems is that the social imagination and thinking is thoroughly personal. The poet's own suffering and renunciations have opened her eyes to those of others. And how rich her life was in instructive experiences is also beautifully attested to by the poetry, which appears in form with noble simplicity.

[ 46 ] Gustav Renner and Paul Bornstein may be mentioned when speaking of the personalities on whom one places hopes for the future. The simple, natural tones of the former and the pathos of the latter, which seems to be truthful. The simple, natural tones of the former and the warmth of the latter, which seems like truth, certainly arouse such hopes.

[ 47 ] In his first poems, we encounter more maturity in Emanuel von Bodman. His style evokes an impression reminiscent of Rembrandt's paintings. He loves to juxtapose significant perceptions that form sharp contrasts, so that together they have great expressive power. The epigrammatic brevity that is characteristic of him is heightened in its effect by such juxtapositions.

VI

[ 48 ] "In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing, but the form everything; for through the form alone the whole of man is acted upon, while through the content only individual forces are acted upon. The content, however sublime and far-reaching it may be, therefore always has a restrictive effect on the spirit, and true aesthetic freedom can only be expected from the form. This, then, is the real secret of the master's art, that he extinguishes the material through the form; and the more imposing, presumptuous, seductive the material is in itself, the more arbitrarily it pushes itself forward with its effect, or the more the viewer is inclined to engage directly with the material, the more triumphant is the art that forces it back and asserts its dominion over it." With these words, Schiller described an artistic goal in his letters "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", as envisioned by the poet Stefan George. The sensation, the feeling, the image that tremble in the artist's soul must first be shaped and formed if they are to have artistic value. Every fiber of these primal elements of the soul's life must have been seized by the creative power and made into something other than its natural state. For this only excites man, it is no concern of the artist. He is not concerned with the individual colors, the individual sounds, the individual ideas, but with the way in which they are put together in the work that we enjoy aesthetically. Schiller evidently saw an ideal in this cult of form, but felt that it could easily fall into loneliness, and therefore added that the more imposing and powerful the content, the material, and the more powerful the form that has to cope with it, the more valuable the form is. The more captivating what one has to say is, the greater the skill required to say it in a way that is pleasing as such. In poetry, the artist has to deal with his own soul; his feelings, his emotions are the material. The art will not lie in the fact that these sentiments and feelings have greatness, but that greatness appears in how these emotions of the soul are expressed. Whoever remains within Schiller's mode of conception will, however, have to admit that the more significant the content that is expressed, the more highly the mode of expression, however artful it may be, is to be valued. In poetry, it is the artist's own soul that provides this 'content, the personality. The greater the personality we see through the lyrical work of art, the more valuable it will appear to us. Robert Zimmermann, who as an aesthete radically carried out the view that it is form alone that arouses artistic pleasure, said in order to make this clear: one and the same thing, for example a statue, is a stone to the naturalist, especially the mineralogist, and a demigod to the aesthete. The former is merely concerned with the material, the latter with what has been artistically made from the material. With regard to poetry, one would have to say in the sense of this view: the emotions of the soul of another may be attractive or repulsive to man, they may cause his participation or his antipathy; to the aesthete they can only be harmonious or inharmonious, rhythmic or unrhythmic.

[ 49 ] Stefan George now lives entirely in the element of artistic expression, of form. When the vibrations of his soul emerge, they should no longer cling to anything that merely interests the human being; they should be completely absorbed in the artistic element of form. The world only gains value for this personality insofar as it is rhythmically moving, harmoniously shaped, insofar as it is beautiful. And if others see beauty in the fact that the eternal, the elemental forces of existence appear to us in the transient, Stefan George denies the eternal entities any value if they are not beautiful. His three collections of poems: "Hymns, Pilgrimages, Algabal" - "Books of Pastoral and Prize Poems, of Sagas and Songs of the Hanging Gardens" - the "Year of the Soul", they are the world as rhythm and harmony. The world is my rhythm and my harmony, and what does not flow into this golden realm, I leave behind in the chaos of the worthless: that is George's basic mood.

[ 50 ] One might call this mood drunk with beauty. And Hugo von Hofmannsthal is also drunk with beauty. But if one can say of Stefan George: he forces beauty to come to him, then one must say of Hofmannsthal: this beauty forces him to himself. Like a bee, he flies through the world; and there he stops, where there is the honey of the spirit, the beauty, to collect. And just as honey is not the blossom and fruit itself, but only the juice from it, so Hofmannsthal's art is not a revelation of the eternal secrets of the world, but only a part of this whole. One gladly accepts this part and enjoys it in solitary hours, just as the bee feeds on the collected honey in winter. The Viennese poet's art is as sweet as honey. But the power that gigantically creates the things of the world and animates them is missing in this art. It is not stormed by the power and passion of the elements; it blows in it and weaves a harmony of the spheres that resounds at the bottom of the world's soul. And it must become quite still and silent around us, the storm of world events must cease, the wild will must die for a moment if we want to hear the quiet music of this poet. The strange similes of this lyric poet, his peculiar paraphrases and word combinations only impose themselves on the mind that seeks exquisite beauty. Those who seek the eternal forces of nature in their characteristic manifestations will pass these beauties by. For they are like the revelations of the eternal in the luxury of nature. And yet, even in Hofmannsthal's oddities, one senses the necessity of world phenomena. One will not be able to fend off the accusation of a philistine mode of imagination if one rejects this luxurious art; but it must be conceded that few human creations are such seducers of philistinism as the poems of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

[ 51 ] The mood of devotion, standing in adoration before the eternal riddles of nature, resounds to us from the lyrical poems of Johannes Schlaf. So great, so lofty, so mysterious are the riddles before him that he can only look at them with half-open eyes because he is afraid to allow the fullness of existence to penetrate him. The anticipation pours into his soul enough of the blissful delight of the glories of the world; he wants to avoid full vision, the brightness of perception. He, too, resorts to rare imaginings in order to clothe the imagined in words; but not as a spirit drunk with beauty, but because of his passionate devotion to the truth, whose majesty he does not want to bring too close to the sober senses through the garb of everyday life. This poet, who is one of the prophets of radical naturalism in the field of drama: as a lyric poet, he has made himself a singer of the eternal essences that are hidden deep within things.

[ 52 ] Arno Holz took a different path of development. He turned away from the beautiful, naturalistic poetry to which he was devoted at the beginning of his career. The naturalistic doctrine has gained the upper hand over naturalness. For it is natural that feeling in art rises above direct experience. The style that gives a higher form to perceptions: it springs from a natural longing. From that which feels most satisfied when man finds means of art which stand without precedent in life, which are the soul's own free creation and yet revelations of the eternal elemental forces. Goethe describes this satisfaction by characterizing the impression of music. "The dignity of art is perhaps most eminent in music, because it has no substance that needs to be accounted for. It is entirely form and content and elevates and ennobles everything it expresses." For every inner experience, when it emerges from the depths of the soul, should, in Holz's opinion, bring its own individual form into the world; and only this form, born simultaneously with the content, should be the natural one. Holz does not want to accept the path from the experience to the completed artistic form. It is not, as Schiller says, in the conquest of the material by the form that the true artistic secret of the master lies; rather, the master is the one who is able to eavesdrop on the form lying within the material. In this way, Holz has turned from the inspiring singer, who was moved when he expressed the fate of misery, the longing for a better future, into the careful recorder of immediate impressions, which only give satisfaction to the aesthetic feeling when they are accidentally artistic. However, they very often are, because the poetic spirit lives in wood despite its theory, which is hostile to poetic art in the higher sense.

[ 53 ] The poems of Cäsar Flaischlen are effective due to the deep, cozy personality that expresses itself in them. He is a personality who is not able to take life lightly. He has to fight against the passionate strivings of the soul. It thirsts for satisfaction. Pride wants to conquer it, which keeps it away from its goals. But in the end, it is not unlimited power that she trusts, but a bit of modesty that sets herself manly goals when she sees that the distant ones are unattainable. For Flaischlen would rather be a full man within the narrower circle than half a man within the wider one. To be whole in accordance with his own soul fund, inwardly harmonious and based on himself: that is the basic character of his personality. The things of the world pass before his eyes with dignified simplicity, and his verses and his particularly charming poems in prose flow just as simply, often all too unpretentiously.

[ 54 ] Richard Schaukal has a gift for observation that focuses on the expressive in the world. Things and events are stylized for his gaze. He transforms the sublime into the sublime, and the beautiful into the simply beautiful. For his eye, the slender expands completely into a straight line; the transitions from one thing to another cease, and contrast abruptly replaces contrast. But all this in such a way that we have the impression that in his art things clarify themselves through sharp contours and contrasts; they make their indeterminacy disappear and emphasize their characteristic features. A colorful language is on a par with this way of looking at things. He is able to say meaningfully what he has seen meaningfully. He is at the beginning of his artistic career. It seems to be a meaningful beginning.

[ 55 ] The imagination of Rainer Maria Rilke is wonderfully sensitive to the intimate relationships of natural beings and human experiences. And he has an accuracy of expression that is able to present all the subtle relationships between the things that the poet discovers to us with full, rich tones. This is not the accuracy of the great characterizer, this is that of the nature-loving wanderer who loves the things he encounters on his wanderings and to whom they tell many of their quiet secrets because they too love him and have gained his trust.

[ 56 ] Hans Bethge has sonorous colors of expression and a great capacity for impressing the solemn tones of the outside world. However, neither evokes the feeling that it comes from the poet's very own soul, but appears as an expression of what is felt. This impression is heightened by the coquetry with which this poetry approaches us. It is likely, however, that this strangeness in the poet's personality is only a precursor to his own beautiful achievements, the forerunners of which can be heard in his current creations.

In our last lecture we showed the period of Art which finally merged into that of the great masters of the Renaissance. We ended by revealing the connecting threads in the artistic world of feeling, which finally led up to what was so wondrously united in Leonardo, in Michangelo and in Raphael. Yet at the same time, in these three masters we must also see the starting point of the new age, in an artistic sense. It is the dawn of the 5th post-Atlantean age, which is heralded in the realm of Art. All three were living, at the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean age. Leonardo was born in 1452, Michelangelo in 1475 and Raphael in 1483; Leonardo dies in 1519, Raphael in 1520, and Michelangelo in 1564. Here we find ourselves at the starting point of the new age. At the same time, something is contained in these artists which we must undoubtedly regard as a culmination of the spiritual stream of preceding ages, inasmuch as they poured their impulses into the realm of Art. It is true, my dear friends, that in our time people have little understanding for what is important in this respect, for in our time—I do not say this as mere criticism—art has been far too much expelled from the spiritual life as a whole. It is even considered a failing of the historian or critic, if he seeks once more to give Art its place in the spiritual life as a whole. People say that our attention is thus diverted unduly from the artistic or aesthetic impulses as such, attaching an excessive value to the content, to the subject-matter, and yet, this need not be the case at all. Indeed, it is only in our own time that this distinction has acquired so much importance. It had no such direct significance in former epochs—epochs when the artistic understanding was more developed in the ordinary common sense of the people. We must not forget how much has been done to extirpate a true artistic understanding by all the atrocities which have been placed before the human mind of men in recent times, by way of pictorial representation and the like. True understanding for the manner of representation has been lost. European humanity, in a certain sense, no longer cares how a given subject-matter is presented to it. In wide circles, artistic understanding has to a large extent been lost.

Speaking of former epochs, and especially of the epoch to which we are now referring, we may truly say artists such as Raphael, Michelango and Leonardo were by no means one-sidedly artistic, but carried in their souls the whole of the spiritual life of their time and created out of this. In saying this, I do not mean that they borrowed their subject-matter from the spiritual life of their time. I mean far more than this. Into the specifically artistic quality of their creation, in form and colouring, there flowed the specific quality of the world-conception of that time. In our time, a world-conception is a collection of ideas which can, of course, be represented in sculpture or in painting and it is frequently embodied, needless to say, in forms and colours and the like which to the true artistic sense will nevertheless be an atrocity. In this respect, unfortunately, we must repeatedly utter warnings, even within our anthroposophical stream of evolution. The feeling for what is truly artistic is not always prevalent among us. I still remember with a shudder how at the beginning of the theosophical movement in Germany a man once came to me in Berlin, bringing with him reproductions of a picture he had painted. The subject was: Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. It is true there sat a huddled figure under a tree, but the man—if you will pardon me the apt expression—understood as little of Art as an ox, having eaten grass throughout the week, understands of Sunday. He simply thought, here is the subject; let us paint it, and it will represent a work of Art. Of course, it represented something. Namely, he who imagined the scene to himself—“Buddha under the Bodhi Tree”—could see it so, no doubt. But there was absolutely no reason why such a thing should ever have been painted.

It is a very different thing when we say of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, that they bore within them the whole way of feeling which permeated the Italian civilisation of their time. For this civilisation entered livingly into the artistic quality of their work, into their whole manner of presentation; nor can we fully understand these artists if we have no feeling for the civilisation in the midst of which they lived. Today, indeed, people believe the most extraordinary things. They will believe, for instance, that a man can build a Gothic church even if he has not the remotest notion of High Mass. Of course, he cannot do so in reality. Or they believe that one can paint the Trinity even if one has no feeling for what is intended to be living in it. In this way, Art is expelled from its living connection with the spiritual life as a whole. At the same time, on the other hand, people fail to understand the artistic element as such, imagining that with aesthetic views and feelings which happen to be prevalent today they can set to work and ciriticise Raphael or Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose whole way of feeling was quite different. It was only natural (though I should need many hours to say in full what should be said on this point), it was only natural for them to be living in the whole way of feeling of their time. We cannot understand their creative work unless we understand the character which Christianity had assumed at the time when these artists blossomed forth. You need only remember that at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century Italian Christianity witnessed the rise even among the Popes, of men who truly cannot be said to have satisfied even the most rudimentary demands of morality, nor need one be in any way a pietist to say so. And, of course, the whole army of priests were of like character. The idea that a specific moral impulse must be living in what goes by the name of “Christian” had been lost sight of, comparatively speaking. And when in later times it emerged again—in pietist and moralising forms, by no means identical with what I described the other day when speaking of St. Francis,—it was imbued with quite a different feeling of Christianity than inspired those who lived, for instance, under an Alexander VI, a Julius II or a Leo X. If, on the other hand, we consider the Christian traditions, the concepts and ideas (and when I say ideas I include “Imaginations”) connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, we find them still living in the souls with an intensity of which the man of today has little notion. Human souls lived in the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, as in a world that was their very own, and they saw Nature herself in the midst of this same world. We need but call to mind: In that time, even for the most educated, this Earth, of which the Western half was still unknown (or was only just begining to be known and was not fully really reckoned with),—this Earth was the centre of the whole Universe. Going down beneath the surface of the Earth, one found a subterranean kingdom; going but a little way above, a super-earthly. We might almost say, it was as though a man only need lift his arm, to grasp with his hand the feet of the heavenly beings. Heaven still penetrated down into the earthly element. Such was the conception—a harmony, an interplay of the spiritual above and the Earth beneath it, with the world of the senses which contained mankind. Even their view of Nature was in this spirit.

Those, however, among whom we find the three great masters of the Renaissance were striving forth from yonder age. And the one who harbours within him, as in a seed, all that came forth since then—nay, much that is still destined to come forth,—that one is Leonardo. The soul of Leonardo was equally inclined to the feelings of the former time and of the latter. His soul had most decidedly a Janus head. By his education, by the habits of his life, by all that he had seen, he lived with his feelings still in the olden time. Yet he had a mighty impulse to that conception of the world which only came forth in the succeeding centuries. He had an impulse, not so much towards its width as to its depth. From various indications in my other lectures, you know that the Greeks—and even the men of later times during the 4th Post-Atlantean age—knew life quite differently than we do,—that is to say, out of a different source of knowledge. The sculptor, for example, knew the human figure from within—from a perception of the forces that were at work within himself, the forces which we today describe in Anthroposophy as the etheric. Out of this inner feeling of the human figure the Greek artist created. In course of time this faculty was lost. Another faculty now had to appear: the power to take hold of things with outward vision. Man felt impelled to feel and understand external Nature. I showed you last time, how Francis of Assisi was among the first who sought to perceive Nature through a deep life of feeling. Now Leonardo was the first who endeavoured in a wider sense to add to this feeling of Nature, a conscious understanding of Nature. Because it was no longer given to him, as to the men of former ages, to trace from within outward the forces that are at work in man, he tried to know these things by contemplation from without. He tried to know by outward vision what could no longer be made known by inward feeling. An understanding of Nature as against a feeling for Nature: this is what distinguishes Leonardo da Vinci from Francis of Assisi, and this determines the whole constitution of his spirit. He was all out to understand. And though we need not take it word for word—for the sources, as a rule, relate only the current legends—nevertheless, the legends themselves were founded upon fact, and there is truth in it when we are told how Leonardo took especial pains to study characteristic faces, so that by dint of outward contemplation the working of the formative forces of the human organism might become his own inner experience. Often he would follow a character about for days and days, so that the human being might become as if transparent to him, revealing how the inner being works into the outer form. Yes, there is truth in this,—and that he invited peasants to his house and set before them tasty dishes or told them stories, so that their faces assumed every possible expression of laughter and contortion and he could study them. All this is founded upon fact. And when he had to paint a Medusa he brought all manner of toads and reptiles into his studio, to study the characteristic animal faces. These are legendary anecdotes; and yet they truly indicate how Leonardo had to seek, to discover the mysterious creation of Nature's forces. For Leonardo was truly a man who sought to understand Nature. He tried in an even wider sense to understand the forces of Nature as they play their part in human life. He was no mere artist in the narrower sense of the word; the artist in him grew out of the whole man, standing in the very midst of the turning-point of time. The church of San Giovanni in Florence had sunk a little, owing to a subsidence of the soil. He wished to raise it again—a task that could easily be carried out today; but in that time such a thing was considered absolutely hopeless. He wanted to have it raised bodily, as it stood. Nowadays, as has justly been observed, it would only be a question of the cost; in his time it was an idea of genius, for no one beside Leonardo thought such a thing was possible. He also thought of constructing machines whereby men would be able to fly through the air; and of irrigating great areas of swamp. He was an engineer, a mechanic, a musician, a cultured man in social intercourse, a scientist according to his time. He constructed apparatus so unheard-of in that age that no one else could make anything of them. What poured into his artist's hand was working, therefore, from a many-sided understanding of the world. Of Leonardo we can truly say, he bore his whole Age within him, even as it came to expression in the profound external changes which were then enacted in Italy. Leonardo's whole life—his artistic life included—bears the stamp of this his fundamental character. In spite of the fact that he grew out of the Italian environment, he was not altogether at home there. True, he was a Florentine, but he spent only his youth in Florence, and then went on to Milan, having been summoned thither by the Duke Ludovico Sforza—sommoned by no means (as we might naively imagine) as the great artist whom we recognise in him today, but as a kind of court entertainer. From the skull of a horse, Leonardo constructed an instrument of music, from which he enticed various notes, and was thus able with great humour to entertain the ducal house. We need not say that he was intended as a kind of “fool,” but as an entertainer to amuse the Court, most certainly. The works of Art which he produced in Milan, to which we shall presently refer, were certainly created out of the very deepest impulse of his own being. But he had not been summoned to the Court of the Sforza's for this purpose; and though he entered well into all the life at Milan, we find him afterwards, on his return to Florence, working at a battle-picture, intended to glorify a victory over Milan. Then we see him end his life at the French Court.

The one dominating impulse in Leonardo is to see and feel what interests the human being of his time; the political events, complicated as they were, more or less swept past him. He only skimmed off them, as it were, the uppermost and human layer. Indeed, in many respects he rather gives us the impression of an adventurer, albeit one endowed with colossal genius. He bears his whole Age within him; and out of this feeling of his Age as a whole, his creations arise. We shall present them not in chronological but in a freely chosen order, for in Leonardo the main point is to see how he creates out of a single impulse, and for this reason the chronological sequence is less important.

An altogether different nature, though possessing the characteristics of the Renaissance in common with him, was Michelangelo. If we can say of Leonardo that he bore the whole forces of his time within him (and for this very reason often came into disharmony with it and remained misunderstood, just because he understood it in its depths, in the forces that only found their way to the surface during later centuries), of Michelangelo, on the other hand, we may say: he bore within him, above all, the Florence of his time. What was the Florence of his time? It was, in a sense, a true concentration of the existing order of the world. This Florence he bore within him. Unlike Leonardo, he did not stand remote from political affairs. The complicated political events around him—and the whole world-order of that time played into these politics—entered again and again into the soul of Michelangelo. And when again and again he went to Rome, he bore his Florence with him, and painting and sculpting a Florentine element into the Roman setting. Leonardo bore a universal feeling into the works he created; Michelangelo carried a Florentine feeling into Rome. As an artist he achieved a kind of spiritual conquest over Rome, making Florence arise again in Rome.

Thus Michelangelo entered intensely into all that was taking place through the political conditions in Florence during his long life. We see this in the succession of his life-periods. As a young man, when his career was only just beginning, he witnessed the reign of the great Medici, whose favourite he was, and by whose favour he was enabled to partake in all that the Florence of that time could offer to a man's spiritual life. Whatever of ancient Art and artistry was then available, Michelangelo studied it under the protectorate of the Medici; and it was here that he produced his earliest work. Indeed, he loved his protector, and grew together in his own soul with the soul-nature of the Medici. But presently he had to realise that the sons of his patron were of quite a different kind. He who had done so much for Florence—out of an ambitious disposition, it is true, yet cultivating largesse and freedom—died in 1492; and his sons proved themselves more or less common tyrants. Michelangelo had to experience this change in comparatively early youth. Whereas at the beginning of his career the mercantile spirit of the Medici had allowed free play to Art, he must now witness this mercantile spirit itself masquerading as a political spirit, and striving towards tyranny. Yes, he witnessed on a small scale the rise in Florence of what was afterwards to take hold of all the world. It was a terrible experience for him, and yet not unconnected with the whole surrounding world of the new Age. It was now that he first went to Rome, and we may say: In Rome he mourns the loss of what he has experienced as the true greatness of Florence. We can even recognise how the plastic quality of his work is connected with this great change in his feelings: Into the very line we notice what the political changes in Florence had brought about in his soul. Any one who has a deeper feeling for such things will see in the Pieta in the Vatican a work which in the last resort is born out of the mourning soul of Michelangelo—Michelangelo mourning for the city of his fathers.

Then, when better times returned and he went back to Florence, he stood once more under a new impression. He felt uplifted in his soul,—Freedom had entered into Florence once again. He poured out this new feeling into the indescribably great figure of his David. It is not the traditional David of the Bible. It is the protest of free Florence against the encroaching principle of “great powers,” of mighty States. Its colossal character is connected with this very feeling.

Again, when he was summoned by Pope Julius to decorate the Sistine Chapel, now in a far fuller sense than before, he bore his Florence with him into Rome. What was it that he bore with him? It was a whole world-conception, of which we can say that it shows the rise of the new age, just as truly as we can say, on the other hand, that in the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, representing the creation of the World and the great process of Biblical history, we have the twilight of an ancient world-conception. Thus Michelangelo carries with him a whole world to Rome,—carries with him something that could never have arisen at that time in Rome itself, but that could only arise in Florence: the idea of one mighty cosmic process with all the Prophetic gifts and Sibylline faculties of man. You will find further explanations on these things in earlier lectures. These inner connections could only be felt and realised in Florence. What Michelangelo experienced through all the spiritual life that had reached its height in the Florence of that time, cannot, in truth, be felt today, unless we transplant ourselves through Spiritual Science into former epochs. Hence the usual histories of Art contain so many absurdities at this point. A man can only create as Michelangelo created if he believes in these things and lives in their midst. It is easy for a man to say that he will paint the world's creation. Many a modern artist would credit himself, no doubt, with this ability,—but one who has true feeling will not be able to assent. No one can paint the evolution of the world who does not live in it, like Michelangelo, with all his being.

But when he returned once more to Florence, he was already driven, after all, by the new stream, which—to put it bluntly—replaces the sacramental by the commercial character. True, he was destined still to create the most wonderful works, in the Medici Chapel. But in the background of this undertaking was an element which could not but inspire him with melancholy feelings. The purpose was the glorification of the Medici. It was they who mattered,—who in the meantime had become powerful, albeit less in Florence than in the rest of Italy. Then once more the political changes drove him back. The betrayal of the Malatestas, their penetration into Florence, drove him back again to Rome. And now he painted, as it were, into the Last Judgment, the protest of a Florentine, the great protest of humanity, of the human individual against all that would oppose it. Hence the real human greatness of his Last Judgment, the greatness which it undoubtedly breathed forth, as it proceeded from his hand. For now, also, parts of it have been completely spoiled.

But he still had to undergo experiences which entered very, very deep into all the impulses of feeling in his soul. How many events had he not experienced, how much did they not signify for the development of his picture of the world: For the things I have indicated were of great importance to him. They may be taken abstractly today, but in the soul of Michelangelo they worked without a doubt as very deep soul-impulses. But we must add that I have mentioned the fact that he witnessed, too, the great change which came over Florence through the appearance of Savonarola. This was a protest within the life of the Church against what was characteristic of that time in Christianity. So free an Art as was developed in Leonardo and in many others like him could only unfold in this way inasmuch as the ideas of Christianity were lifted out of their context and taken by themselves. I mean the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha—the conception of the Trinity, of the Last Supper, of the connection between the earthly and the spiritual realms, and so forth. All these conceptions, lifted right out of the moral element, assumed a free imaginative character which the artist dealt with at his pleasure, treating it like any worldly subject, with the only difference that it contained, of course, the sacred figures. These things had been objectified, loosed from the moral element; and thus the Christian thought, loosed from the moral element, slid over by and by into a purely artistic sphere. All this took place quite as a matter of course, and the gradual elimination of the moral element was a natural concomitant of the whole process. Savonarola represents the great protest against this elimination of the moral element. Savonarola appears; it is the protest of the moral life against an Art that was free of morals,—I do not say, void of morals, but free. Indeed, we must study Savonarola's will if we would understand in Michelangelo himself what was due to Savonarola's influence.

But this was not all. You must imagine Michelangelo as a man who in his inmost heart and mind could never think in any other than a Christian way. He not only felt as a Christian; he conceived the order of the World in mighty pictures, in the Christian sense. Imagine him placed in the midst of that time, when the Christian conceptions had, as it were, become objectified and could thus slide so easily into the realms of Art. Such was the world in which he lived. But he experienced withal the Northern protest of the Reformation, which spread with comparative speed, even to Italy; and he also witnessed the great and revolutionary change which was accomplished from the Catholic side as a counter-Reformation, against the Reformation. He experienced the Rome of his time,—a time whose moral level may not have been high, but in which there were free and independent spirits, none the less, who were decidedly agreed to give a new form to Catholicism. They did not want to go so far as Savonarola, nor did they want it to assume the form which afterwards came forth in the Reformation. They wanted to change and recreate Catholicism by continuous progress and development. Then the Reformation burst in like another edition, so to speak, of the Savonarola protest. Rome was seized with anxiety and fear, and they parted from what had pulsated through their former life. Michelangelo among others had built his hopes on such ideas as were concentrated, for example, in Vittoria Colonna, hoping to permeate with high ethical principles what had reached so great a height in Art. With a Catholicism morally recreated and renewed, they hoped to permeate the world once more. Now, however, there arose the great Roman powers, the strong Catholic ideas, the Jesuitical principle, and Paul IV became the Pope. What Michelangelo was now to witness must have been terrible for him, for he saw the seeds of an absolute break with what had still been known to him as Christianity. It was the beginning of Jesuitical Christianity. And so he entered on the twilight of his life.

Michelangelo, as I said, had carried Florence into Rome. With Raphael once again it was different. Of Raphael we may say, he carried Urbino—East-Central Italy to Rome. Here we come to that strange magic atmosphere whose presence we feel when we contemplate the minor artists of that region whence Raphael grew forth. Consider the creations of these artists—the sweet and tender faces, the characteristic postures of the feet, the attitude of the figures. We might describe it thus: Here there arose artistically somewhat later what had arisen earlier in a moralising and ascetic sphere in Francis of Assisi. It enters here into artistic feeling and creation, and leaves a strangely magic atmosphere—this tenderness in contemplating man and Nature. In Raphael it is a native quality, and he continues to express it through his life. This is the feeling which he carries into Rome; it flows from his creations into our hearts and minds if we transplant ourselves into the character they once possessed, for as pictures they have to a great extent been spoilt.

What Raphael thus bears within his soul, having evolved in the lonely country of Urbino, stnads, as it were, alone within the time; and yet taking its start from Raphael, it spread far and wide into the civilisation of mankind. It is as though Raphael with this element were carried everywhere upon the waves of time, and wheresoever he goes he makes it felt—this truly artistic expression of the Christian feeling. This element is everywhere poured out over the influence of Raphael.

Summing up, therefore, we may say: Leonardo lives in the midst of a large and universal understanding. He strikes us, stings us, as it were, into awakeness with his keen World-understanding. Michelangelo lives in the policical understanding of his time; this becomes the dominant impulse of his feeling. Raphael, on the other hand, remaining more or less untouched by all these things, is borne, as it were, upon the waves of time, and bears into the evolution of the ages a well-nigh inexpressible quality of Christian Art. This, then, distinguishes and at once unites the three great masters of the Renaissance; they represent three elements of the Renaissance feeling, as it appears to us historically.

Let us now give ourselves up to the impressions of Leonardo's works. We will first show some of his drawings, which reveal how he creates his forms out of that keen understanding of Nature which I sought to characterise just now. Thereafter, not quite in the historic order, we shall show those of his pictures which have the character of portraits. Only then will we go on to his chief creation, the “Last Supper,” Finally, we shall return and show him once more at his real starting-point. The first picture is a well-known Self-portrait.

This, then, is one of Leonardo's portraits. There follows the other one, still better known.

Here we have a picture from an early period of his development, showing how Leonardo grew out of the School of Verrocchio. Tradition has it that the finely elaborated landscape round this figure here was painted by Leonardo in the School of Verrocchio, and that Verrocchio, seeing what Leonardo could achieve, laid down his brush and would paint no more.

Here, again, you see how Leonardo drew—how he tried, even to the point of caricature, to extract the characteristic features by dint of studious contemplation, as I described just now.

We need not imagine that he stood alone in things like this; they had, indeed, been done by others in his time. Leonardo only stands out through his extraordinary genius, but it was altogether a quest of the time—this search for the strong characteristic features, as against what had come forth in earlier times from higher vision and had grown a mere tradition. It was characteristic of that time to seek for what appears directly to external vision, and thus bring out with emphasis whatever in the outward features of a being is most significant of individual character.

Far more important than the subject-matter, the point was to study and portray with precision the positions of the bones and so forth.

This is the portrayal of a thunderstorm.

The two pictures we now show are not attributed to him with certainty, nor are some others which we shall see presently, but they bear the character of Leonardo and are therefore not without connection.

In this famous picture we see the other aspect of Leonardo, where we might say he seeks to attain the very opposite pole from what was illustrated in the former sketches. There he tried to discover and bring out with emphasis the individual and characteristic in all details. People will often not believe that an artist who can create such a work as the Mona Lisa has any need of going in the other direction to the point of caricature. I have, however, often drawn attention to this fact. Think of the inherently natural impulse whereby our friend the Poet, Christian Morgenstern, went from his sublime, serene creations to the humorous poems with which we are familiar, where he seeks the very extremes of caricature. There is this inner connection in the artist's soul. If he desires to create a work so inwardly complete, harmonious, serene as this, he often has to seek the faculties he needs for such creation by emphasising characteristic individual features even to the point of caricature.

These pictures, which, as I said, are not in historic order, represent Leonardo in the quality of an artist seeking for inner clarity, completeness and perfection.

Here is the Dionysos figure, the God Dionysos. You will find indications on these matters in various other lectures. The painting is based on proven designs and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci. However, it is believed that it was carried out by an unknown student from the workshop of Leonardo and between 1683 and 1693 it was modified and painted to represent Bacchus.

We now come to the Last Supper—which he created, it is true, at an earlier time, and worked upon during a long period. We have often spoken of it. We know what an essential progress in the artistic power of expression is visible in this picture as against the earlier pictures of the Last Supper by Ghirlandajo and others. Observe the life in this picture; see how strongly the individual characters come out in spite of the powerful unity of composition. This is the new thing in Leonardo. The adaptation of the strong individual characters to the composition as a whole is truly wonderful. At the same time each of the four groups of disciples becomes a triad complete and self-contained; and, again, each of these triads is marvellously placed into the whole. The colour and lighting are inexpressibly beautiful. I spoke once before of the part of the colouring in this composition. Here we look deep into the mysterious creative powers of Leonardo. If we try to feel the colours of the picture as a whole, we feel they are distributed in such a way as to supplement one another,—not actually as complementary colours, but in a similar way,—so much so that when we look at the whole picture at once, we have pure light—the colours together are pure light. Such is the colouring in this picture.

We now come to the details of the picture. This is generally considered to be an earlier attempt at the Head of Christ. These reproductions are familiar.

This is Morghan's engraving, from which we gain a more accurate conception of the composition than from the present picture at Milan, which is so largely ruined. You are, of course, familiar with the fate of this picture, of which we have so often spoken.

This is a very recent engraving,—a reproduction which reveals the most minute study. It is frequently admired and yet, perhaps, for one who loves the original as a work of art, it leads too far afield into a sphere of minute and detailed drawing. Still we may recognise in this an independent artistic achievement of considerable beauty.

Here we have a fragment of the battle picture projected by Leonardo, which I mentioned a short while ago.

We will now go on to Michelangelo. Considering Leonardo once again, you will see there is something in him which comes out especially when, instead of taking the chronological order, which is in any case a little uncertain, we take his work in groups, as we have done just now. Then we see clearly what different streams are living in him. The one, which comes out especially in his Last Supper, aims at a peculiar quality of composition combined with an intense delineation of character. It stands apart and alongside of that other tendency in which he does not seek this kind of composition. This other _stream we find expressed in the pictures in the Louvre, and at St, Petersburg and London, which we showed before the Last Supper. It might have come forth at any time; one feels it is almost by chance that the pictures of this kind do not exist from every period in his life. That which comes to expression in these pictures is in no way reminiscent of the peculiar composition in the Last Supper, but aims at a serene composition while seeking to express individual character to a moderate extent.

We now come to Michelangelo. To begin with, his portrait of himself.

Here we have Michelangelo before he reached his independence, working in Florence, perhaps under the influence of Signorelli and others, still, in fact, a pupil.

And now we think of Michelangelo moving to Rome for the first time, under all the influences which I described just now.

Look at this picture and then at the following one; compare the feeling in the two.

Look at this work. Undoubtedly it is created under the feeling of his coming to Rome. A more or less tragic element, a certain sublime pessimism pervades it. Let us return once more to the former one, and you will see the two creations are very similar in their artistic character. They express the same shade of feeling in Michelangelo. We now return once more to the Pieta.

People who feel the story more than the artistic quality as such have often said that the Madonna, for the situation in which she is here portrayed, is far too young. This arose out of a belief which was still absolutely natural in that time and lived in the soul of Michelangelo himself:—the belief that owing to her virgin nature the Madonna never assumed the features of old age.

Here you have the work of which we spoke before. The figure strikes us most of all by its colossal quality, not in the external sense, but a quality mysteriously hidden in its whole artistic treatment.

We now come to the Sistine Chapel. To begin with, we have the Creation of the World,—the first stage, which we might describe as the creation of Light out of the darkness of night.

This picture bears witness to a tradition still living at that time as regards the creation of the World. It was that Jehovah created, in a sense, as the successor of an earlier Creator, whom He overcame, or transcended, and who now departed. The harmony of the net World-creation with the old which it transcended is clearly shown in this picture. Truly, we may say, such ideas as are expressed in this picture have vanished absolutely; they are no longer present.

This, then, is the creation of that which went before mankind.

Here we find the creation of man. There follows the creation of Eve.

We now move more and more away from the theme of World-creation into the theme of History—the further evolution of the human race. This is the fall into sin.

We come to the Sibyls, of whom I have spoken in a former lecture. They represent the one supersensible element in the evolution of man, which is contrasted with the other, the prophetic quality. We shall see the latter presently in the series of the Prophets. Here we have the Sibylline element. In my cycle of lectures given at Leipzig, on “Christ and the Spiritual World,” you will find the fuller description of its relation to the prophetic. That Michelangelo included these things at all, in his series of pictures, proves how closely he connected the earthly life with the supersensible—the spiritual. See now the succession of the Sibyls; observe how a real individual life is poured out into each one: in every detail, each one brings to expression a quite specific visionary character of her own.

Observe the position of the hand. It is no mere chance. Observe the look in her eyes, coming forth out of an elemental life; you will divine many things which we cannot express in words, for that would make the thing too abstract,—but they lie hidden in the artistic treatment.

And now we come to the Prophets.

These are examples of his scenes from the Old Testament.

Here we come to his later period in Florence: to the Medicis and the Chapel at which he had to work for the Medicis under conditions that I described before. I have spoken of these tombs of Juliano and Lorenzo in a lecture which I believe has also been printed.

This is the second tomb, with the figures of Morning and Evening.

Once again we accompany Michelangelo to Rome, where he creates, once more by comman of the Pope, the Last Judgment—the altar-piece for the Sistine Chapel. The greatness of this piece lies in the characterisation, the universal significance of the characters. Consider in this picture all that is destined, as it were, for Heaven, all that is destined for Hell, and Christ in the centre, as the cosmic Judge. You will see how Michelangelo sought to harmonise this cosmic scene. Majestically as it was conceived, with an individual and human feeling. Hermann Grimm drew the head of Christ from the immediate vicinity, and it proved to be very similar to the head of the Apollo of Belvedere. We will now show some of the details.

and another detail, the group above the boat:

And now, though in time it belongs to a somewhat earlier period, we give what Michelangelo created for the monument of Pope Julius; for, in fact, this was never finished, and Michelangelo was working at it in the very latest period of his life and finished portions of it.

It is significant that Pope Julius II, whose character undoubtedly contained a certain greatness, called for this monument to be erected to his efforts. It was to have included a whole series of figures, perhaps thirty in number. It was never completed, but there remained this, the greatest figure in connection with it—Michelangelo's famous figure of Moses, of which we have often spoken,—and the two figures now following:

This was completed in the very latest period of his life. It is hard to say exhaustively how it arose. One thing is certain: the group expresses an idea which Michelangelo carried with him throughout his life. Whether there was another group which has somehow been lost, in which he treated this scene at a very early stage in his career, or whether it was the same block at which he worked again, remodelling it at the end of his life, it is hard to say. But we see it here as his last work. Not only is it the one which he completed when he was a very old man; it corresponds to an artistic idea which he carried throughout his long life, and is connected far more deeply than one imagines with the fundamental feeling of his soul. True, he could not have created it thus at every phase of his life. It would always have turned out a little differently; it would always have reproduced the basic mood of his soul in a somewhat different way. But the deep and pure Christian feeling that lives in Michelangelo comes to expression especially in this particular relationship of Christ to the Mother, in this scene of the entombment. Again and again the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha arises in the soul of Michelangelo in this way:—He feels that with the Mystery of Golgotha a deed of Heavenly Love took place, of an intensity that will hover for ever before the eyes of man as a sublime ideal, but that can never be attained by man even in the remotest degree, and must therefore inspire with a tragic mood him who beholds these World-events.

And now imagine, with this idea living in his soul, Michelangelo saw Rome becoming Jesuitical. With this idea in his soul, he underwent all the feelings of which I spoke; and whatever he saw in the world, he measured in relation to this standard. Truly, he underwent much in his long life. While he was creating his earliest artistic works in Florence, the Pope in Rome was Alexander VI, the Borgia. Then he was summoned to Rome, and painted the Creation of the World for Pope Julius. We see the dominion of the Gorgias in Rome replaced by Pope Julius, and then by the Medici, Leo X. In this connection we must realise that Pope Julius II, although he worked with poison, murder, slander, etc., was none the less in earnest about Christian Art. Pope Julius, who replaced the political Borgia princes, strove for the Papal See in order to make it great through spiritual life. Although he was a man of war, nevertheless, in his inmost soul, even as a fighter, he only thought of himself as in the service of spiritual Rome. Of Julius II we must not fail to realise that he was a man of spiritual aims, thoroughly in earnest with all that lay in his impulse to re-erect the Church of St. Peter, and, indeed, with all that he achieved for Art. He was selflessly in earnest about these things. It may sot strange to say this of a man who in carrying out his plans made use of poison, murder and the like. Yet such was the custom of the time in the circles with whose help he realised his plans. His highest ideal, none the less, was that which he desired to bring into the world through the great artists. For a spirit like Michelangelo it is, indeed, profoundly tragical to feel how a perfect good can never find its realisation in the world, but must always be realised one-sidedly. Yet, this was not all, for he lived to witness the transition to the commercial Popes, if we may call them so—those of the house of Medici, who were, in truth, far more concerned with their own ambitions, and were fundamentally different in spirit from Julius II and even from the Borgias. Certainly, these were no better men. We must, however, judge all these things in relation to the time itself. It is easy nowadays to feel Pope Alexander VI, or his son Caesar Borgia, or Julius II, as human atrocities; for today it is permitted to write of them quite independently and freely, whereas many a later phenomenon cannot yet be characterised with equal freedom: But we must also realise:—The sublime works achieved at that time are not without causal relationship with the characters of all these Popes,—indeed, many things would certainly not have come to pass if Savonarola or Luther had occupied the Papal See. And now we come to Raphael.

Here is the picture of which I spoke last time. We will bring it before our souls once more. On the left we have the same subject treated by Perugino, and on the right by Raphael. It is the Sposalizio or Marriage of the Virgin. Here you can see how Raphael grew out of the School of his teacher, Perugino, and you can recognise the great advance. At the same time, we see in the picture on the left all that is characteristic of this School on the level from which Raphael began. See the characteristic faces, their healthily—as we today call it—sentimental expression. See the peculiar postures of the feet. A certain characterisation is attempted; yet it is all enclosed in a certain aura of which I spoke before,—which appears again in Raphael, transfigured, as it were, raised into a new form and power of composition. You recognise here the growth of this power of composition, too. But if you compare the details, you will find that in Raphael it is grasped more clearly and yet at the same time it is more gentle, it is not so hard.

This whole picture is to be conceived of as a world of dream. It is generally known as the “Dream of a Knight.”

We will now let work upon us a number of Raphael's pictures of the Madonna and of the sacred legend. These—especially the Madonnas—are the works of Raphael which first carried him out into the world.

In all these pictures you still have the old, characteristic postures and attitudes which Raphael took with him from his home country.

These are the Madonnas which bear witness to the further development of Raphael. Ile follow him now into the time when he went to Rome. It is not known historically exactly when that was. Probability is that he did not simply go there in a given year,—1500 is generally assumed—but that he had been to Rome more than once and gone back again to Florence, and that from 1500 onward he worked in Rome continuously. Now, therefore, we follow him to Rome and come to those pictures which he painted there for Pope Julius.

This picture is well-known to you all, and we, too, have spoken of it in former lectures. Many preparatory sketches of it exist. In the form in which you see it here, it was done to the order of the Pope,—the Pope who craved, as I said just now, to make Rome spiritually great.

We must, however, hold fast to one point, which is revealed by the fact that some elements of the motif of this picture appear at a very early stage, even in Perugia, representing this idea, this scene, or, rather, the motif of it.

Thus the idea was already living at that early stage, and was able to take shape in this remarkable corner of East-Central Italy.

We must conceive the motif of the picture as living in the very time itself. Below are the human beings—theologians, for the most part. These theologians are well aware that everything which human reason can discover is related to what St. Thomas Aquinas called the “Praeambula Fidei,” and must be permeated by what comes down from Spiritual Worlds as real inspiration, wherein are mingled the attainments of the great Christian and pre-Christian figures of history, and by means of which alone the secret of the Trinity is to be understood. This mystery, we must conceive, bursts down into the midst of the disputations of the theologians below. We may conceive that this picture is painted out of the will to unite the Christian life quite fundamentally with Rome—to make Rome once more the center of Christianity by rebuilding the derelict Church of St. Peter, according to the desires of Pope Julius. Under the influence of the Pope, wishing to achieve a new greatness of Christianity centered in Rome, such ideas are brought together with the fundamental concept; the secret of the Trinity. This fact explains what I may call, perhaps, the outer trimmings of the picture. (Even in the architectural elements which it contains, we see designs which re-occur in St. Peter's.) It is as though this picture were to proclaim: Now once again the secret of the Trinity shall be taught to the whole world by Rome. There are many preliminary sketches showing not only that Raphael only by and by achieved the final composition, but that this whole way of thinking about the inspiration, the Idea of the Trinity had been living in him for a long time. It was certainly not the case that the Pope said: “Paint me such and such a picture.” He rather said, “Tell me of the idea that has been living in you for so long,” and thus together, so to speak, they arrived at the conception which we now see on the wall of the Segnatura.

Now we come to the picture which, as you know, is commonly named the School of Athens, chiefly because the two central figures are supposed to be Plato and Aristotle. The one thing certain is that they are not. I will not dwell on other views that have been put forward. I have spoken of this picture, too, on previous occasions. But they are certainly not Plato and Aristotle. True, we may recognise in these figures many an ancient philosopher, but that is not the point of the picture. The real point is, that in contrast to what is called “Inspiration” Raphael also wished to portray what man receives through his intelligence when he directs it to the supersensible and applies it to investigate the causes of things. The various attitudes which man can then assume are expressed in the several figures. No doubt Raphael introduced the traditional figures of ancient philosophers, as, indeed, he always tried to make use of this or that tradition. But that is not his real point; the point was to contrast the supersensible Inspiration, the descent of the super-sensible as an inspiration to man, on the one hand; and on the other hand the attainment of a knowledge of the world of causes through the intelligence of man directed to the Supersensible. In this sense, the two central figures are to be understood as follows: On the one hand we have a man still in the younger years of life, a man with less experience of life, who speaks more as a man who looks around him on the Earth, there to perceive the causes of things. Beside him is the old, old. man who has assimilated very much in life, and knows how to apply what he has seen on Earth to heavenly things. And then there are the other figures who, partly by meditation, partly by arithmetical, geometrical or other exercises, or by the study and interpretation of the Gospels and the sacred writings, seek to discover the causes of things by applying their human intellect. I have already spoken of these things and I believe that Lecture, too, has been made accessible. I think if we take the contrast of the two pictures in this way, we shall not be misled into nonsensical speculations as to whether this one is Pythagoras or the other Plato or Aristotle—which speculations are at all events beside the mark and inartistic. Much ingenuity has been applied in deciphering the several figures: Nothing could be more superfluous in relation to these pictures. Rather should we study to observe the wonderful varieties expressed in the search for all that is attainable by the intelligence of man.

You may also compare the two pictures. In this present picture the whole thing is placed in an architectural setting, whereas in the other, the “Disputa,” the wide World is the setting. It is the difference between Inspiration whose house is the great universal edifice and the quest of the human intelligence which, as you see it here, goes on in an enclosed and human space.

We come to what is attainable in the human sphere, without the latter being influenced out of the supersensible.

This is like a commentary to the Disputa—the knowledge of the Divine Mysteries represented in a more allegorical figure, and leading on to the Disputa.

Here we have a picture taken from the whole complex which Raphael did for Pope Julius II in order to inspire the idea that Christianity must gain the victory and all that resists it must be overcome.

This is only another aspect of the same idea.

Also belonging to the same group.

Raphael's Sibyls. If you remember those of Michelangelo, you will observe the immense difference. In the Sibyls of Raphael—I beg you to see it for yourselves—human figures are portrayed, to represent beings standing within the cosmos,—Beings into whom the whole cosmos is working. They themselves are dreaming, as it were, within the cosmos as a very part of it and have not fully come to consciousness. The various supersensible Beings, angelic figures between them, bring them the secrets of the worlds. Thus they are dreamy Beings, living within the universal nexus. Michelangelo, on the other hand, portrays the human and individual in all that his Sibyls are dreaming, or evolving out of their dream-consciousness. Michelangelo has to create out of the individual, nay, we may even say, the personal character of each one. These Sibyls of Raphael, on the other hand, live and move and have their being over and above the individual. Even inasmuch as they are individual, they live and move in a cosmic life.

In this room we have the picture of the Transfiguration. (No picture of room available)

Here is the picture itself. It is even possible that Raphael himself did not complete it, but left it unfinished at his death. Christ is soaring heavenward.

To those who say that Raphael in his latest period painted visionary pictures, we need only reply by pointing to this figure (the figure of the boy). It is portrayed in a perfectly real, Occultly realistic sense, how the figure makes it possible for the scene to become visible to the others. Through what I would call the mediumistic nature of the unconsciousness of madness, this figure influences the others, enabling them to behold such a thing as this.

Here we have the figure of the Christ.

And now, my dear friends, think of all that Raphael had painted. All that has passed before you was contained between his twenty-first and his thirty-seventh year, in which he died. In his twenty-first year he painted the first picture which we showed—the Marriage of the Virgin—contrasting it with Perugino's painting. Hermann Grimm worked out in a beautiful way something that bears eloquent witness to Raphael's free and independent evolution, proving even outwardly to some extent what I just said before. Raphael, although he was carried on the waves of time, and learnt, of course, very much from the world, nevertheless took with him into Rome the peculiar nature of that Middle-Eastern part of Italy. In spite of his youth, he created out of his own inmost nature and progressed undisturbed, with perfect regularity in his evolution. Hermann Grimm pointed out that we come to the chief culminating points in Raphael's creative work if, starting from his twenty-first year, we go forward in successive periods of four years. From his twenty-first year we have his Sposalizio; four years later the Entombment, which we have not shown today—an exceedingly characteristic picture, which, especially when we take into account the related sketches and everything connected with it, expresses a certain climax in the work of Raphael. And then, once more, four years later, we have a climax of creative work in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. Progressing thus by stages of four years, we see how Raphael undergoes his evolution. He stands there in the world with absolute individuality, obeying an impulse connected only with his incarnation, which impulse he steadily unfolds and places into the world something that takes its course with perfect regularity, like the evolution of mankind.

And now consider these three figures all together,—standing out as a summit in the life of Art, in the evolution of mankind. It lies in the deep tragedy of human evolution that this supreme attainment is connected with a succession of Popes—Alexander VI, Borgia, Julius II, Leo X,—men who occupy the first position as regards their artistic aims and who were called upon to play their part in human evolution as rulers in high places. And yet they were of such a character as to take with them into these high places the worst extremes which even that age could nroduce by way of murder, misrepresentation, cruelty and poison. And yet, undoubtedly—down to the Medici, who always retained their mercantile spirit,—they were sincere and in earnest where Art was concerned. Julius II was an extraordinary man, inclined to every kind of cruelty, never scrupling to use misrepresentation and even poison as though it were, in a world-historic sense, the best of homely remedies. Yet it was rightly said of this man that he never made a promise that he did not keep. And to the artists, above all, he kept his promise to a high degree; nor did he ever bind or fetter them, so long as they were able to render him the services which he desired, in the work which he intended.

Consider, alongside of this succession of Popes, the great men who created these works—the three great characters who have passed before our souls today. Think how in the one, in Leonardo, there lived much that has not yet been developed further, even today. Think how there lived in Michelangelo the whole great tragedy of his own time, and of his fatherland, both in the narrower and in the wider sense. Think how there lived in Raphael the power to transcend his Age. For while he was most intensely receptive to all the world around that carried him as on the waves of time, nevertheless, he was a self-contained nature. Consider, moreover, how neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo could carry into their time that which could work upon it fully. Michelangelo wrestled to bring forth, to express out of the human individuality itself all that was contained in his time; and yet, after all, he never created anything which the age was fully able to receive. Still less could Leonardo do so, for Leonardo bore within his soul far greater things than his Age could realise. And as to Raphael—he unfolded a human nature which remained for ever young. He was predestined, as it were, by providential guidance to evolve such youthfulness with an intensity which could never grow old. For, in effect, the time itself, into which all that came forth from his inner impulses was born, first had to grow young. Only now there comes the time when men will begin to understand less and less of Raphael. For the time has grown older than that which Raphael could give to it.

In conclusion, we will show a few of Raphael's portraits.

These, then, are the two Popes who were his patrons.

We have come to the end of our pictures.

In the near future, following on the tree great masters of the Renaissance, we shall speak of Holbein, Durer, and the other masters—the parallel phenomena of these developments in Southern Europe.

Today I wanted especially to bring before our souls these three masters of the Renaissance. I have tried to describe a little of what was living in them, and of their stimulus if, starting from any point of their work, you dwell on the historic factors which influenced and entered into them. You will perceive the necessary tragedy of human history, which has to live itself out in one-sidedness. We can learn much for our judgment of all historic things, if we study how the world-historic process played into that Florentine Age whose greatness is identified with Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Today especially I fancy no one will regret the time he spends in dwelling on a historic moment like the year 1505, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were at the same time in Florence—Raphael still as a younger man, learning from the others; and the other two vying with one another, painting battle-pieces, glorifying the deeds that belonged to political history. Especially at the present moment, anyone who has vision for the facts of history in all its domains, and sees the significance of outward political events for the spiritual life, will profit greatly by the study of that time. Consider what was working then:—how the artistic life sought and found its place in the midst of the outer events, and how through these artistic and external events of the time, the greatest impulses of human evolution found their way. See how intimately there were interwoven human brutality and high-mindedness, human tyranny and striving towards freedom. If you let these things work upon you from whatever aspect, you will not regret the loss of time, for you will learn a great deal even for your judgment of this present moment. Above all, you will have cause to rid yourself of the belief that the greatest words necessarily signify that the greatest ideas are behind them, or that those who in our days are speaking most of freedom have any understanding at all of what freedom is. In other directions, too, much can be gained for the sharpening of our judgment in this present time, by studying the events which took place in Florence at the beginning of the 16th century, while under the immediate impression of Savonarola who had just been put to death. We see that Florence in the midst of Italy, at a time when Christianity had assumed a form whereby it slid over on the one hand into the realm of Art, while on the other hand the moral feelings of mankind made vigorous protest against it, was a form fundamentally different from that of Jesuitism which found its way into the political and religious stream immediately afterwards, and played so great a part in the politics of the succeeding centuries down to our day.

Of course, it is not proper at this moment to say any more about these things. Perhaps, however, some of you will guess for yourselves, if you dwell upon the chapter of human evolution whose artistic expression we have today let work upon our

May I speak to you today about something which is subject to many misunderstandings and about which many extraordinary errors are spread abroad. Most of you know that I have already spoken¹ on the same subject on the occasion of our General Meeting this year, and that, at that time, following an ancient occult practice, I spoke separately to men and to women. For specific reasons which could probably become still clearer from the lecture itself, I have departed today from this ancient custom, and, indeed, because the very thing that motivated me both then and now to discuss this matter is connected with the [prospect] that sooner or later—hopefully sooner—this ancient custom will be abandoned altogether.

I said: many misunderstandings have circulated about the subject. I need only mention one fact out of my own life to show you that it really is not exactly easy today to get beyond what are bluntly the bizarre and superstitious notions in existence about it. On the other hand, I need only say how easily, how unbelievably, one can put one's foot in it, when dealing with these extraordinary facts.

May I simply recall an incident in my life. Perhaps you will scarcely credit it, and yet it is true. It is now some seventeen or eighteen years ago² that I was in company with university professors, and some particularly gifted poets. Among the professors, there were also some theologians, from the theological faculty of the university in question. They were Catholics. Now, in this company, the following was said, not without foundation, and in all seriousness, that one of these theologians, a very erudite man, would not go out at night any more, because he believed that the Freemasons would be on the loose. The man in question represented a major department; but he did not tell the story, a colleague did. He went on to relate that while he was in Rome, a number of monks of a particular order—there would have been eleven, twelve or thirteen of them—had vouched on oath for the [truth of the] following event.

In Paris an eminent bishop had preached a sermon in which he had spoken of the terrible danger to the world of the Order of Freemasons. After the sermon a man came to him in the sacristy and said that he was a Freemason and could give the bishop a chance to witness a meeting of the Lodge. The bishop assented, saying to himself: I will, however, take some holy relics with me, so that I am protected.—Then a meeting place was arranged. The man in question led the bishop into the Lodge, where a hiding place was pointed out to him, from which he could observe all that took place. He placed himself in position, held the Holy Relics in front of him and waited for whatever would befall. What he then saw, was related in the following way. I emphasise that some of those in the company thought it all rather doubtful at the time.

The Lodge was then opened. (It bore in reality the name ‘Satan's Lodge’—though it had quite a different name in the outside world.) Then a remarkable figure appeared. By ancient custom—how he knew this custom, he did not relate—the figure did not walk. (It is indeed well known that spirits do not walk, but glide, so many believe.) This remarkable figure opened the session. The bishop would on no account divulge what happened next—it became too terrible—but he called upon the whole power of the relics and there was a rumbling like thunder through all the rows [of seats], the call resounding: We are betrayed!—and the one who had opened the session disappeared. Briefly, a brilliant victory of episcopal powers over what was to be done, one supposes.

This was discussed as a completely serious matter³ [in the company]. You can see from that, that there arc people today, perhaps gentlemen more erudite than many others, well-known people, who nevertheless take the view that this sort of thing can happen in Freemasonry.

Now what happened was⁴ that in the mid-eighties a French book appeared, which represented the secrets of the Freemasons in a most gruesome way, making them certainly more gruesome than secret. This book particularly revealed how the Freemasons celebrated Black Mass. This book was a ploy by a French journalist called Leo Taxil. He stirred up a lot of dust by bringing in a Miss Vaughan as a witness. The result of all this was that the Church found the Freemasons and their nocturnal intrigues so dangerous that they felt it necessary to found a world society against Freemasonry. A kind of council was held in Trent; although it was not a real council, it was dubbed ‘The Second Council of Trent. It was attended by many bishops and hundreds of priests; a cardinal presided. [The Congress became a major coup for Taxil.] But afterwards rebuttals were published, after which Mr Taxil revealed that the entire contents of his books, including the people mentioned in them, were his own invention.

You see, there are plenty of opportunities for incurring censure over such things. This was one of the worst cases of a body with a world-wide reputation doing so. From it you have to draw at least one conclusion; that hardly anything is really known about the Freemasons. For if something was known about them it would be easy to become informed, and then such rubbish could not gain currency.

Indeed, this or that opinion about Freemasonry predominates in large sections of the public. Today, to be sure, it is not all that difficult to form an opinion, as there is already a tolerably abundant literature, written partly by those who have studied many documents, but in part also containing things which the Freemasons would say had been brought into the open by turncoats. Anyone who concerns himself to any extent with this literature will draw some sort of conclusion from what it deals with. However, one can rule out coming to a correct conclusion from it, since it is still pre-eminently true what Lessing, who was himself a Freemason, said.⁵ When he was accepted, the Worshipful Master asked him: ‘Now you see, don't you, that you have not been initiated into anything particularly subversive or anti-religious?’ To which Lessing replied: ‘Yes, I must admit that I haven't learnt any such thing. I would in fact have been glad to do so, for then, at least, I would have learned something.’

That is the statement of a man who was able to consider the matter with the right understanding, and who admitted that he had learned precisely nothing from what took place there. You can at least draw the conclusion from that, that those who are not Freemasons know nothing [about it], since even those who are Freemasons know nothing of any importance. They generally get the impression that they have gained nothing in particular from it. And yet it would be quite wrong to make such an inference.

Now there is still another opinion, which has little to do with real Freemasonry. In a text appearing in 1875,⁶ the author claims that Adam became the first Freemason. One can hardly go further back than the first man in searching for the founder of an association.

Others claim that Freemasonry is an old Egyptian art; in short, that it is what has always been known as the ‘Royal Art,’ and this is indeed placed by some back in primeval times. Finally, many rites—for thus the symbolic ways and manners of the Freemasons are designated—bear Egyptian names, and so from these names you may infer that something deriving from ancient Egyptian culture is involved. At least the opinion is widely held, both in and out of Freemasonry, that it is something very ancient.

Now Freemasonry is something which can indeed provide people with scope for reflection. The name itself connects with two perceptions differing totally from each other. Some claim—and they are no very great party within Freemasonry—that all Freemasonry originated in the work done by masons, in the craft of erecting buildings; while the other opinion considers this to be a childish and naive conception and claims that Freemasonry was in reality always an art to do with the soul; and that the symbols taken from the work of masons—such as, for example, apron, hammer, trowel, chisel, compass, rule, square, plumb-line, spirit-level, etc.—are to be seen as symbolic of soul development. Thus, by the expression ‘Masonry’ is to be understood nothing else than the building of the inner person, the work on the perfection of self. If you talk with a Freemason today, you can then experience him telling you that it is a childish and naive outlook that believes that Freemasonry has ever had anything to do with the work that masons do. On the contrary, it has never concerned itself with anything else than these things: the building of the Wonder Temple, which is the theatre of the human soul, the work on the human soul itself, which has to be perfected, and the art which one must apply to all this. Now all this is expressed in these symbols, so as not to expose it to profane eyes.

Looked at from our contemporary standpoint, both of these views are wholly and utterly wrong, and are so for the following reasons. As regards the first opinion, present day man—in talking about the Freemasons having derived from the work of building—no longer conceives himself to be as significant as he properly should; as for the second opinion, that the symbols are only there to serve as metaphors for the work on the soul, this opinion—even though it is regarded by most Freemasons as something quite irrefutable—is, when properly conceived, a nonsense. It is much more correct to link Freemasonry with the work of building, not, indeed, as architecture or construction are thought of today, but in a fundamentally deeper sense.

Today there are broadly two trends in Freemasonry. The one is represented by far the larger number of those calling themselves masons today. And this majority trend claims now that all masonry is comprised in what it terms the so-called Symbolic or Craft Masonry. Its principal outward characteristic is that it is divided into three degrees, the apprentice, journeyman and master degrees; as for the inward characteristics, we will have something to say presently. Apart from these Craft Masons, there are still quite a number of masons who maintain that Craft Masonry is only a product of the decline of the great universal masonic idea. [They consider] it would be a falling away from this great masonic idea, if it is claimed that masonry comprises only these three Symbolic or Craft degrees; whereas in fact the essence, the fundamental meaning of Freemasonry lies in the so-called Higher Degrees, which are best preserved in the so-called Scottish or Accepted Rite, which, in a particular respect, still conserves [a relic of] what is called the Egyptian, the Misraim or the Memphis Rite.⁷

Thus we have two tendencies confronting each other: the Craft Masonry, and the Higher Degree masonry. The Craft- Masons claim that the Higher Degrees are nothing but a frippery based in human vanity, that takes pleasure in having something special, something spiritually aristocratic, with its ascent from degree to degree, and its pride in the possession of the eighteenth or twentieth or still higher degree.

Now you have already become acquainted with quite a bundle of things likely to lead to misunderstandings.

The Higher Degree Freemasonry traces itself back to the old Mysteries, to the procedures which to the extent possible we have described and will describe, in our theosophy; procedures which have been in existence since primordial times and still exist today, and which have preserved the higher super-sensible knowledge for mankind. This super-sensible knowledge, accessible to men, would be transmitted [by] those who could attain entry to these Mystery centres; for certain super-sensible powers were developed in them, enabling them to see into the super-sensible world. These primordial Mysteries—they have become something else nowadays, and we do not want to speak of that now—contained the original seed for all later spiritual culture. For what was enacted in these primordial mysteries was not what constitutes human culture today.

If you wish to understand present-day culture and immerse yourself in it, you will find that it divides into three realms—the realm of wisdom, the realm of beauty and the realm of strength. The whole extent of spiritual culture is in fact contained in these three words. Therefore they are known as the three pillars of human culture. They are the same as the three Kings in Goethe's fairy story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily⁸ —the Gold King, the Silver King and the Brass King. This is connected with Freemasonry being called ‘the Royal Art.’ Today these three realms are separated from each other. Wisdom is essentially contained in what we call science; beauty is essentially embodied in what we call art; and what, in Freemasonry terms, is known as Strength is contained in the regulated and organised living together of humanity in the State. The Freemason subsumes all this in the relation of the will to these three principles, wisdom, beauty and strength.

What they [these three principles] were to give to humanity was in primeval times bestowed on the candidate for initiation by the revelation of the Mystery secrets. We arc now looking back to a time when religion, science and art had not yet become separated, but when they were still combined. In fact, to anyone who can see supersensibly, astrally, these three principles are not for him separate; wisdom, beauty and the domain of the will impulses are for him one unity—On the higher realms of vision there is no abstract science; only a science which exists in pictures, in that which has only a shadowy existence in the [external] world, and finds a shadowy expression in the imagination. What can [now] be read in books, in this or that record of the Creation [about the origin of the world and of humanity I, was not described; instead it was brought before the eyes of the pupil in living pictures, in magnificent harmonious colour. And what the pupil would perceive as wisdom was art and beauty at the same time, was something which stirred his feelings to greater heights than we experience in front of an exquisite work of art. The yearning for truth and beauty, wisdom and art, and the religious impulse as well, [all] developed themselves simultaneously. The artist's eye looked at what was enacted [in the Mysteries]⁹ and he who sought piety found the object of his religious ardour in these high events that were enacted before his eyes. Religion, art and science were one.

Then came the time when this unity split itself up into three cultural provinces; the time when the intellect went its own way. Science arose at the same time when the Mysteries which I have just described lost their importance. You know that Western philosophy and science, science proper, began with Thales. That is the time when it first developed out of the former fullness of the life of the Mysteries. Then also began what in the Western sense is conceived of as art; for Greek dramatic art developed itself out of the Mysteries. Whereas in India, up to the time of the Egyptian cult,¹⁰ one was concerned with the suffering and death of gods, with the great Greek tragedian-poets, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, etc., we are dealing with individual human beings, who are images of the great Godhead. Through these human beings, the pupils of the Mysteries reconstructed the suffering, struggling and needy Godhead, thus displaying God to the human audience through their human imagery.

Whoever wants to understand what Aristotle meant by purification, catharsis,¹¹ must interpret the concept by means of the astral, by means of the secrets of the Mysteries. The expressions which he employs for tragedy [by way of explaining it] are a dim reflection of what the pupils learnt in the Mystery [schools]. Remember how Lessing investigated the soul forces of fear and compassion that are to be aroused through tragedy. That has furnished the material for many a great and learned discussion since the days of Lessing. [For the Mystery pupil] these emotions would be aroused in reality, when God was portrayed to him in his passage through the world. The passions present [deep] in the human soul were thereby straightforwardly stirred up and drawn out, just as one induces a fever and brings it to its culmination. This led to purification so as to be able to proceed to rebirth. All this appeared in shadow images in the ancient Greek tragedies. Just as with science, so has art, too, developed out of these ancient Mysteries.

It is to these ancient Mysteries that the Higher Degree Freemasons trace back their origin. In their higher degrees they have nothing else than an imitation of the higher degrees of the Mysteries, into which the Mystery candidate was gradually initiated. Now we can also understand why the Craft Freemasons insist so much that there should be no more such higher degrees. Actually, the higher degrees have more or less lost their meaning in Freemasonry in recent centuries. What has taken place in culture during recent centuries has been largely uninfluenced from this quarter. But there was a time when the great cultural impulses issued precisely from what Freemasonry should be. in order to understand this, we must look a little deeper into an age to which I have often referred already here, but now wish to mention in a masonic context, that is, the twelfth century of our European cultural development.

At that time occultism, appearing under a variety of names, played a much greater role in the contemporary culture than anyone could ever imagine today. But all these different names are no longer relevant today, and I will indeed explain why. By an example from Freemasonry itself, I will show you why these names contribute nothing essential to understanding the matter.

What I am now about to relate, anyone can experience if they become an apprentice Freemason; and, since these things are known, at least by name, I am able to speak about them.

A customary practice is what is known as ‘tyling.’ When the Lodge is opened and the Worshipful Master has taken his seat and the Outer Guard is at his post, the first question of the Worshipful Master is: Has the Lodge been tyled? The number of Freemasons who understand what this expression means are probably very few. Since the matter is simple, I can indeed give you an explanation of the term. At the time of which I am speaking, to be a Freemason meant to stand in vehement opposition to everything that commanded outward, official power. Therefore it was necessary to conduct the affairs of the Freemasons, with exceptionally great caution. Precisely for this reason, it was at that time necessary for Freemasonry to appear under various names which sounded harmless. Among other names they called each other ‘Brethren of the Craft’ and so on. Today Freemasonry has accomplished a large part of what it then set out to do. Today it is itself officially a power in the world.

If you ask me what Freemasonry is really about, I must answer with abstract words; it consists in this, that its members aim to anticipate in thought by several centuries the events that are to occur in the world; and to perfect the high ideals of humanity in a fully conscious way, so that these ideals are not just abstract ideas.

Today, when a Freemason talks about ideals and one asks him what he means by the highest ideals, he will say that the highest ideals are wisdom, beauty and strength; which, however, on further consideration, is usually nothing but a form of words. If at that time—or now indeed—the discussion about these ideals is with someone who actually understands something about this, then the discussion will be about something quite specific—about something so specific that it relates to the course of events in the coming centuries, in the same way as the thoughts of an architect building a factory relate to the factory when finished.

At that time [in the twelfth century] it was dangerous to know [in advance] what was to happen later. Hence it was necessary to make use of harmless sounding words, as a cover. And that is also where the expression originated, ‘Is the Lodge tyled?’, which means, in effect, ‘Are only those present who know the meaning of the things which have to be implanted in the future development of mankind by Freemasonry?’ For each had to reflect that they must never let themselves be recognised as Freemasons when they appeared in public. This precautionary rule, then essential, has been maintained until our time. Whether many Freemasons know what is meant thereby, is questionable. Most think it is some sort of verbal formality, or they interpret more or less astutely. I could give you countless more such examples that would show you how outer circumstances have led to the adoption of practical rules for which people now try to discover some deep symbolic explanation.

But now for the very heart of what was attempted in the twelfth century. That is expressed in the deeply significant Saga of the Holy Grail,¹² of that enchanted vessel which is said to have come from the distant East, and to have the power to rejuvenate people, to bring the dead back to life, and so on.

Now what is the Holy Grail—in Freemasonry terms—and what is it that lies at the bottom of the whole saga? We shall best be able to understand what it is all about if we call to mind a symbol of certain Freemasonry associations, a symbol misunderstood today in the coarsest way imaginable. It is a symbol taken from sexual life. It is absolutely true that precisely one of the deepest secrets of Freemasonry has a symbol taken from sexual life; and that many people who try to explain such symbols today are only following their own sordid fantasies when they understand these symbols in an impure sense. It is very likely that the interpretation of these sexual symbols will play no small role in times to come, that it is precisely this which will then reveal the parlous state into which the great ancient secrets of Freemasonry have fallen today; and on the other hand, how necessary it is in the present time for the pure, noble and profound basis of the Freemasonry, symbols to be kept sacred and unblemished.

Those of you who heard my recent lecture¹³ at the General Meeting will know that the true original significance of these symbols is connected with the reason for not allowing women to become Freemasons until a short while ago, and the reason for addressing men and women separately on these matters until [just] recently. On the other hand you also know that these symbols are linked—and I particularly stress this—with the two great streams running through the whole world, and rising to the highest spiritual realm; which streams we also encounter as the law of polarity in the forces of male and female.¹⁴ Within that culture which we now have to consider, the priestly principle is expressed in masonic terminology as the female principle in the spiritual realm—in that spiritual realm which is most closely related to cultural evolution. The rule of the priests is expressed by the female [principle]. On the other hand, the male principle is everything which is opposed to this priestly rule; however, in such a way that this opponent has to be considered as the holiest, the noblest, the greatest and the most spiritual [principle] in the world, no less. There are thus two streams with which we have to deal: a female and a male stream. The Freemasons see Abel as representing the female current, Cain, the male.

Here we come to the fundamental concept of Freemasonry, which to be sure is old, very old. Freemasonry developed in ancient times as the opponent of the priestly culture. We must now, however, make clear, in the right way, what is to be understood by priestly culture.

What is involved here has nothing to do with Petty opposition to churches or creeds. Priestliness can show itself in the most completely secular [people]; even what manifests itself today as science, that holds sway in many cultural groups, is nothing else than what is known in Freemasonry terms as the priestly element, though [there are?] other [such groups?] which are profoundly masonic. We must conceive such things, then, in their entire profundity, if we want to appraise them correctly. May I explain by an example how what manifests as science can often be what is denoted in Freemasonry as the priestly element.

Who today among doctors would not scoff if told about the healing properties of the spring at Lourdes? On the other hand, what doctor would not accept as a matter of course that it is wholly reasonable for certain people to go to Wiesbaden or Karlsbad? I know I am saying something fearfully heretical, but then I represent neither the priesthood nor even medicine; however a time is already coming when an unbiased judgment will be pronounced on both. Were there an effective medicine today, faith in the power of healing would be among the things a doctor would prescribe. One patient would be sent to Karlsbad and another to Lourdes, but both for the same reason. Whether you call it great piety on the one hand, or blatant superstition on the other, in the last analysis it is the same thing.

Understood in this way, we can characterise what underlies the priestly principle as refraining from investigating fundamentals, as accepting things as they present themselves from whatever aspect of the world, as being satisfied with what is thus given. The symbol of that for which man does nothing, the proper symbol for what is, in the truest sense of the word, donated to man, that symbol is taken from sexual life. The human being is [indeed] productive there, but what manifests itself in this productive force has nothing to do with human art, with human science or with human ability; from it is excluded everything which causes itself to be expressed in the three pillars of the ‘Royal Art.’ So when some present these sexual symbols to humanity, they want to say: In this symbol, human nature expresses itself, not as man has made it, but as it has been given by the gods. This finds its expression in Abel, the hunter and herdsman, who offers the sacrificial animal, the sacrificial lamb, thereby offering what he himself has done nothing to produce, which came into existence independently of him.

What did Cain, on the other hand, offer? He sacrificed what he had obtained by his own labour, what he had won from the fruits of the earth by tilling the soil. What he sacrificed needed human skill, knowledge and wisdom: that which demands comprehension of what one has done, which is based in a spiritual sense on the freedom of man to decide things for himself. That has to be paid for with guilt, by killing, first of all, the living things which had been,given by Nature or by Divine Powers, just as Cain killed Abel.

Through guilt lies the path to freedom. Everything which is born into the world—upon which man can, at best, act only in a secondary way—everything given to man by Divine Powers, everything which is there without him needing to work at it incessantly; all this is given to us first of all in the Kingdoms of Nature over which we have no control—in those Kingdoms (the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms) whose forces are isolated from any human contribution, because in these Kingdoms it is physical reproduction that is involved. All the reproductory forces in these Kingdoms are given to us by Nature. Inasmuch as we take what is living for our use—because we make the world our dwelling place, which developed itself out of what is living—we thereby offer the sacrifice given to us, just as Abel offered the sacrifice given to him.

The symbol for these three Kingdoms is the Cross. The lower beam symbolises the Plant Kingdom, the middle or cross beam, the Animal Kingdom, and the upper beam, the Human Kingdom.

The plant has its roots buried in the earth and directs upwards, in the blossom, those parts which, in man, are directed downwards. It is the reproductive organs of the plant that appear in the blossom. The downward-turned part, the root, is the plant's head, buried in the earth. The animal is the plant turned half way and carries its backbone horizontally, in relation to the earth. Man is the plant turned completely round, so that the lower part is directed upwards.

This view lies at the basis of all the mysteries of the Cross. And when theosophy shows us how man has to pass, In the course of his evolution, through the various Kingdoms of Nature, through the Plant, Animal and Human Kingdoms, then that is the same thing expressed by Plato in the beautiful words, ‘The World Soul is nailed to the Cross of the World Body.’¹⁵ The human soul is a spark struck from the World Soul, and the human being, as physical human being, is plant, animal and physical man at the same time. Inasmuch as the World Soul has divided itself up into the individual sparks of human souls, it is, as it were, nailed to the World Cross, nailed to what is expressed in the three Kingdoms, the Animal, Plant and Human Kingdoms. Powers which man has not mastered are at work in these Kingdoms. If he wants to control them, then he must create a new Kingdom of his very own, which is not expressed in the Cross.

When talking about this subject I am often asked: Where is the Mineral Kingdom in all this? The mineral kingdom is not symbolised in the Cross; because it is that Kingdom which man can already express himself in clear and blinding clarity, where he has learnt to apply the techniques of weighing and calculating, of geometry and arithmetic; in short, everything pertaining to inorganic nature, to the inorganic Mineral Kingdom.

If you contemplate a temple, you know that man has erected it with ruler, compasses, square, plumb-line and spirit level, and finally with the thinking that inorganic nature has transmitted to the architect in geometry and mechanics. And as you continue your contemplation of the whole temple, you will find it to be an inanimate object born out of human freedom and brainwork. You cannot say that, however, if you subject a plant or an animal to human observation.

So you see that what man has mastered, what he is able to master, is, up to now, the realm of the inanimate. And everything which the human being has converted to harmony and order out of the inanimate world is the symbol of his Royal Art on earth. What he has implanted into the Mineral Kingdom with his Royal Art started as an outflow, an incarnation of Divine wisdom. Go back to the time of the ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians, when it was not only the intellect that was used in building, but when heightened perceptions permeated everything; the controlling of inorganic nature was then seen as the ‘Royal Art,’ which is why the control of nature was denoted as ‘Free masonry.’ At first this may seem to be fantasy, but it is more than that.

Picture to yourselves that instant, that point in time in our earth's development, when no one had yet applied his hand to the shaping of inorganic Nature, when the whole planet was presented to man just as it came from Nature! And what happened then? Look back to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, in which stone was fitted to stone through human agency. Nature's creation was given a new shape as a result of human thought. Human wisdom has thus transformed the earth. That was perceived as the proper mission of free constructing man on earth. Using a wide variety of tools, guided by human wisdom, human powers have brought about in the mineral world a transformation that has unfolded between primordial times and the present day, when human powers can influence far distances without mechanical means. And that is the first pillar, the pillar of wisdom.

Somewhat later we see the second pillar established, the pillar of beauty, of art. Art is likewise a means of pouring the human spirit into lifeless matter, and again the result is an ensoulment (conquest)¹⁶ of the inanimate to be found in Nature. Try for a moment to picture in your mind how the wisdom in art gradually overcomes and masters lifeless Nature, and you will see how what is there without man's participation is reshaped piece by piece by man himself. Visualise—as a fantasy, if you must—the effect of the whole earth having been transformed by the hand of man, the effect of the whole earth becoming a work of art, full of wisdom and radiating beauty, built by man's hand, conceived by man's wisdom! It may seem fantastic but it is more than that. For it is humanity's mission on earth, to transform the planet artistically. You find this expressed in the second pillar, the pillar of beauty.

To which you can add, as the third pillar, the reshaping of the human race in national and state life, and you have the propagation of the human spirit in the world; you have this right here in the realm of what is lifeless.

Hence the medieval people of the twelfth century reflected, in looking back to the ancient wisdom, that the wisdom of times past was preserved in marble monuments, while contemporary wisdom is to be found in the human heart. For it is manifested through the artist, becoming a work of art through the labour of his hands. What he feels he impresses into matter that is unformed, he chisels out of the dead stone; while the inner soul of man does not of course live in this dead stone, it does manifest itself there. All art is dedicated to this purpose; there is always this mastering of unliving, inorganic nature, regardless of whether it is a sculptor chiseling marble or a painter arranging colour, light and shade. And even the statesman gives structure to Nature [?]¹⁷ ... always,—apart from when plant, animal, or human forces come into it—you are dealing with man's own spirit.

Thus, the medieval thinker of the twelfth century looked back at the occult wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans, at Greek art and beauty, and at the strength in the concept of the state in the Roman Empire. These are the three great pillars of world history—wisdom, beauty and strength. Goethe portrayed them in his ‘Fairy Story’ as the Three Kings—occult wisdom in the Gold King, beauty as in Greece in the Silver King, and, in the Brass King, strength as it found its world historical expression in the Roman concept of the State, and as then adopted in the organisation of the Christian Church. And the Middle Ages; with its chaos¹⁸ resulting from the impact of the migrating nations, and with its mixed styles, is expressed in the misshapen Mixed King made of gold, silver and brass; what was kept separate in the various ancient cultures, is mixed together in him. Later, the separate forces must once more develop themselves out of this chaos, to a higher level.

All those who, in the Middle Ages, took the Holy Grail as their symbol, set themselves the task of using human powers to bring these separate forces to a higher stage [of development]. The Holy Grail was to have been something essentially new, even though it is closely related in its own symbolism to the symbols of a very ancient mystical tradition.

What then is the Holy Grail? For those who understand this legend correctly, it signifies—as can even be proved by literary means¹⁹—the following:

Till now, man has only mastered the inanimate in Nature -the transformation of the living forces, the transformation of what sprouts and grows in the plants, and of what manifests itself in animal [and human] reproduction that is beyond his power. Man has to leave these mysterious powers of Nature untouched. There he cannot encroach. What results from these forces cannot be fully comprehended by him. An artist can certainly create a strangely beautiful Zeus, but he cannot fully comprehend this Zeus; in the future, man will reach a level where he can do that as well. Just as it is so, that man has achieved control over Inanimate nature, has mastered gravity with spirit level and plumb-line, and the directional forces of Nature with the aid of geometry and mechanics; so it is the case that in future man will himself control what he only receives as a gift from Nature or the Divine powers—namely, the living.

When in the past Abel sacrificed what he had been given by Divine hand, he was thus sacrificing, in the realm of the living, only what he had received from nature. Cain, by contrast, had offered something which he had himself won from the earth by his own labour, as the fruits of effort.²⁰ Hence, at this time [in the Middle Ages], a radically new impulse was introduced into Freemasonry. And this impulse is that denoted by the symbol of the Holy Grail, the power of self-sacrifice. I have often said, harmony in human relationships is not brought about by preaching it, but by creating it. Once the necessary forces have been awakened in human nature, there is no more unbrotherliness. [The concepts of] majority and minority are meaningless in what the masonic symbols express; in it there can be no contention, for it is only a matter of ‘can’ or ‘cannot.’

No majority can decide whether one should use a plumb-line or a spirit level; the facts must decide that. In that all men are brothers, there they find themselves to be one. On that there can be no contention, if everyone treads the path of objectivity, the path which entails the acquisition of higher powers. Thus, the bond [of the Freemasons] is without doubt a bond of brotherhood which in the broadest sense depends on what men have in common in inanimate Nature.

However, not every power is still available there. Some things which were once there have disappeared again, because in the cycle of Nature in which we now find ourselves, and which we call earth, it is material perception which is to the fore, while intuitive perception has been lost. May I indicate just one case; in architecture, the ability to design a really acoustic building has been completely lost. Yet, in the past, this art was understood. Whoever puts a building together by outward [concepts] alone, will never create an acoustic; but anyone who thinks intuitively, with his thoughts rooted in higher realms will be enabled to accomplish an acoustic building. Those who know that also know that, in the future, those forces of outward nature over which we have no control at present must be conquered, just as man has already conquered gravity, light and electricity in inanimate nature.

Although our age is not yet so advanced as to be able to control outwardly living Nature, although that cultural epoch has not yet come in which living and life-giving forces come to be mastered, nevertheless, there is already the preparatory school for this, which was founded by the movement called the Lodge of the Holy Grail. The time will however come—and it will be quite a specific point in time—when humanity, deviating from its present tendency, will see that deep inward soul forces cannot be decided by majority resolutions; that no vote can settle questions involving the limitless realm of love, involving what one feels or senses. That force which is common to all mankind, which expresses itself in the intellectual as an all-embracing unity about which there can be no conflict, is called Manas. And when men have progressed so far that they are not only at one in their intellect, but also in their perceptions and feelings, and are in harmony in their inmost souls, so far that they find themselves in what is noble and good, so far that they lovingly join together in the objective, in what they have in common, in the same way that they agree that two times two makes four and three times three equals nine; then the time will have arrived when men will be able to control the living as well. Unanimity—objective unanimity in perception and feeling—with all humanity really embracing in love: such is the pre-condition for gaining control over the living.

Those who founded the movement of the Holy Grail in the twelfth century said that this control over living [nature] was at one time available, available to the gods who created the Cosmos and descended [to earth] in order to give mankind the germ of the capacity for the same divine forces that they already possessed themselves; so that man is now on the way to becoming a god, having something in his inner being which strives upwards towards where the gods once stood. Today, the understanding, the intellect, is the predominant force; in the future it will be love [Buddhi], and in a still more distant future, man will attain the stage of Atma.

This joint force (communal force)²¹ which gives man power over what is symbolised by the cross,

is expressed as far as the gods' use of the force is concerned—by a symbol, namely by a triangle with its apex pointing downwards. And when it is a matter of this force expressing itself in man's nature, as it germinally strives upwards towards the Divine force, then it is symbolised by a triangle with its apex pointing upwards. The gods have lifted themselves out from man's nature and have withdrawn from him; but they have left the triangle behind with him, which will develop further within him. This triangle is also the symbol of the Holy Grail.^†

The medieval occultist expressed the symbol of the Grail—the symbol for awakening perfection in the living—in the form of a triangle. That does not need a communal church, entwining itself around the planet in a rigid organisation, though this can well give something to the individual soul; but if all souls are to strike the same note, then the power of the Holy Grail must be awakened in each individual. Whoever wants to awaken the power of the Grail in himself will gain nothing by asking the powers of the official church whether they can perhaps tell him something; rather, he should awaken this power in himself, and should not question all that much. Man starts from dullness [of mind] and progresses through doubt to strength. This pilgrimage of the soul is expressed in the person of Parsifal, who seeks the Holy Grail. This is one of the manifold deeper meanings of the figure of Parsifal.

Does it further my knowledge if a corporate body, be they ever so great, proclaims mathematical truth through their official spokesmen? If I want to learn mathematics, I must occupy myself with it, and gain an understanding of it .or myself. And of what use is it if a corporate body possesses the power of the Cross?²² If I want to make use of the power of the Cross, the control of what is living, then I must achieve this myself. No one else can tell it to me, or communicate it through words; at best they can show it to me in the symbol, give me the shining symbol of the Grail, but it cannot be told in an intellectual formula.

The first accomplishment of this medieval occultism would have been, consequently, what appeared in so many different movements in Europe: the striving for individuality in religion, the escape from the rigid uniformity of the organised church. You can barely grasp to what extent this tendency underlies Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.²³ What manifested itself for the first time in the Reformation was already inherent in the symbol of the Holy Grail. Whoever has a feeling for the great meaning of what can confront us in this symbolism, will understand its great and deep cultural value. The great things of the world are not born in noise and tumult, but in intimacy and stillness. Mankind is not brought forward in its development by the thunder of cannons, but through the strength of what is born in the intimacy of such secret brotherhoods, through the strength of what is expressed in such world-embracing symbols, which inspire mankind.

Since that time, through innumerable channels, the hearts of men have received as an inflow, what was conceived by those who were initiated into the mysteries of the Holy Grail in the middle of the twelfth century; who had to hide themselves from the world under pseudonyms, but who were really the leaven preparing the culture of the last four hundred years,

The guardians of great secrets, of those forces which continually influence human developments live in the occult brotherhoods. I can only hint at what is really involved, because the matter itself goes very deeply into the occult realm.

For those who really gain access to such mysteries, one practical result is a clearer perspective of world happenings [in the future].

Slowly but surely the organic, the living forces intervene in the present-day cycle of humanity's development. There will come a time—however fantastic this might seem to contemporary people—when man will no longer paint only pictures, will no longer make only lifeless sculptures, but will be in a position to breathe life into what he now merely paints, merely forms with colours or with a chisel.

However, what will appear less fantastic is the fact that today the first dawn is already beginning, for the use of these living forces in the affairs of social life- that is the real secret surrounding the Grail. The last event brought about in the social sphere by the old Freemasonry was the French Revolution, in which the basic idea of the old Freemasonry came into the open in the social sphere with the ideas of equality, liberty and fraternity as its corollaries. Whoever knows this also knows that the ideas which emanated from the Grail were propagated through innumerable channels, and constituted the really active force in the French Revolution.

What is today called socialism exists only as an abortive and impossible experiment, as a final, I may say desperate, struggle in a receding wave of humanity's [development]. It cannot bring about any really positive result. What it sets out to achieve, can only be achieved through living activity; the pillar of strength is not enough. Socialism can no longer be controlled with inanimate forces. The ideas of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity were the last ideas to flow out of the inanimate. Everything that still runs on that track is fruitless and doomed to die. For the great evil existing in the world today, the dreadful misery that expresses itself with such frightful force, that is called the social question, can no longer be controlled by the inanimate. A Royal Art is needed for that; and it is this Royal Art which was inaugurated in the symbol of the Holy Grail.

Through this Royal Art, man must acquire control of something similar to the force which sprouts in the plant, the same force that the occultist uses when he accelerates the growth of a plant in front of him. In a similar way, a part of this force must be used for social salvation. This power, which is described by those who know something of the Rosicrucian mysteries—as for example did Bulwer Lytton in his futuristic novel Vril²⁴ is at present still in an elementary, germinal, stage. In the Freemasonry of the future, it will be the real content of the higher degrees. The Royal Art will in the future be a social art.

Again, I have to tell you something which will seem fantastic to the uninitiated, on account, I may say, of the comprehensive, all-embracing range of the idea. What man prints as a form deriving from his soul on the matter of this earth Round is eternal, it will not pass away. Even though the matter thus given form outwardly decays, what the Royal Art has given form to, in pyramids, temples and churches, is imperishable. What the human spirit has given shape to, in matter, will remain present in the world as a continuing force. That is completely clear to those who are initiated in such matters. Cologne's Gothic cathedral will, for example, pass away; but it is of far reaching significance that the atoms were once in this form. This form itself is the imperishable thing that will henceforth participate in the ongoing evolutionary process of humanity, just as the living force that is in the plant participates in the evolution of Nature! The painter, who paints a picture today, who prints dead matter with his soul's blood, is also creating something which will sooner or later be disposed in thousands of atoms. What has imperishable and continuing value, what is eternal, is that he has created, that something from his soul has flowed into matter.

States and all other human communities come and go before our eyes. But what men have formed out of their souls, as such communities, constitute humanly-conceived ideas of eternal value, with an eternally enduring significance. And when this human race once again appears on the earth in a new form, then it will see the fruits of these elements of eternal value.

Today, whoever turns his gaze upwards to the starry heavens sees a wonderful harmony. This harmony has evolved, it was not always there. When we build a cathedral we place stone upon stone, when we paint a picture we place colour next to colour, when we organise a community we make law upon law; in exactly the same way, creative beings once worked upon what confronts us today as the cosmos. Neither moon nor sun would shine, no animal, no plant, would reproduce itself, unless everything we face in the cosmos had been worked upon by beings, unless there were such beings who worked as we work today on the remodelling of the cosmos. Just as we work on the cosmos today through wisdom, beauty and strength, so too did beings who do not belong to our present human Kingdom once work on the cosmos.

Any harmony is always the outcome of the disharmony of an earlier time. Just as stones were given form for a Greek temple, just as they abounded in other forms, in a perplexing variety of forms, out of which they became a coordinated structure, just as the profusion of colours on the palette is meaningfully arrayed in a picture, so, in just the same way, all matter was in other chaotic relationships before the creating spirit transformed it into this cosmos. The same thing is recapitulating itself at a new level, and only he who sees the whole can work on the details correctly and clearly. Everything which has had real significance for humanity's progress in the world has been brought about with care and judgment and through initiation into the great laws of the world plan. What the day produces is ephemeral. What is created in the day through knowledge of the eternal laws is, however, imperishable. To create in the day through knowledge of the eternal laws is the same thing as Freemasonry.

Thus you see that what confronts us in art, science and religion, beyond what is given by the gods and expressed in the symbol of the Cross, is in fact brought about by Freemasonry, from which everything that has been properly built in the world derives. Freemasonry is thus intimately involved in everything that human hand has shaped in the world, with everything that culture has created out of raw, inanimate matter. Go back to the great things the cultural epochs have produced; consider, for example, the poems of Homer. What is contained in them? What the initiates have taught mankind in great world-embracing ideas. The great artists did not invent their topics, but rather gave form to what embraces all humanity. Is a Michaelangelo conceivable without the power of Christian concepts? Try in the same way to trace back to its origin whatever has achieved a really incisive cultural meaning, and you will in every case be led back to what has come from initiation [in the Mysteries].

Everything must in the end undergo a schooling. The last four hundred years were in fact a schooling for humanity—the school of godlessness, in which there was purely human experimentation, a return to chaos if seen from a particular point of view. Everyone is experimenting today, without being aware of the connection with higher worlds—apart from those who have once more sought and found that connection with spiritual realms. Nearly everyone lives entirely for himself today, without perceiving anything of the real and all-penetrating common design. That of course is the cause of the dreadful dissatisfaction everywhere.

What we need is a renewal of the Grail Chivalry in a modern form. Anyone who can approach this will thereby come to know the real forces which today are still lying hidden in the course of human evolution.

Today so many people take up the old symbols without understanding them; what is thus made out of the sexual symbols in an uncomprehending way comes nowhere near to a correct understanding of masonic concepts. Such understanding is to be sought in precisely those things which redeem mere natural forces; in penetrating and mastering what is living in the same way that the geometrician penetrates and masters the inanimate with his rule, compasses, spirit level and so forth; and in working upon the living in the same way those who build a temple put the unliving stones together. That is the great masonic concept of the future.

There is a very ancient symbol in Freemasonry, the so-called Tau:

This Tau sign plays a major role in Freemasonry. It is basically nothing else than a Cross from which the upper arm has been taken away. The Mineral Kingdom is excluded in order to obtain the Cross at all—man already controls that. If one lets the Plant Kingdom come into play [in Aktion treten] then one obtains the Cross directed upwards:²⁵

What unfolds itself from the earth, from the soul, as power over the earth, is the symbol of future Freemasonry.

Whoever heard my last lecture about Freemasonry²⁶ will remember my telling you about the Freemasonry legend of Hiram-Abiff, and how at a particular point he makes use of the Tau sign, when the Queen of Sheba wanted him to call together once more the workers engaged in building the Temple. Now the people working together in social partnership would never appear at Solomon's command; but at the signal of the Tau—which Hiram-Abiff raised aloft—they all appeared from all sides. The Tau sign symbolises a totally new power, based on freedom, and consisting in the awakening of a new natural force.

May I be allowed to resume at the remark with which I ended last time,²⁷ when I told you where such great control over inanimate Nature leads. Without much fantasy, one can show what is. involved by an example. Wireless telegraphy works across a distance from the transmitting station to the receiving station. The apparatus can be set to work at will, it is effective over great distances, and one can make oneself understood by it. A similar force to that by which wireless telegraphy works will be at man's disposal in a future age, without even any apparatus; this will make it possible to cause great devastation over long distances, without anyone being able to discover where the disturbance originated. Then, when the high point of this development has been reached, it will eventually come to the point where it falls back on itself.

What is expressed by the Tau is a driving force which can only be set in motion by the power of selfless love. It will be possible to use this power to drive machines, which will, however, cease to function if egoistical people make use of them.

It is perhaps known to you that Keely invented a motor²⁸ which would only go if he himself were present. He was not deceiving people about this; for he had in him that driving force originating in the soul, which can set machines in motion. A driving force which can only be moral, that is the idea of the future; a most important force, with which culture must be inoculated, if it is not to fall back on itself. The mechanical and the moral must interpenetrate each other, because the mechanical is nothing without the moral. Today we stand hard on this frontier. In the future machines will be driven not only by water and steam, but by spiritual force, by spiritual morality. This power is symbolised by the Tau sign and was indeed poetically symbolised by the image of the Holy Grail.²⁹ Man is no longer merely dependent on what Nature will freely give him to use; he can shape and transform Nature, he has become the master craftsman of the inanimate. In the same way he will become the master craftsman of what is living.

As something that must be conquered, the old sexual symbol stands at the turning point for Freemasonry. You could compare the old sexual symbol of the Freemasons with the new symbolism for future Freemasonry by the analogy of placing a rock struck from a cliff face and covered with rough grass next to a beautifully worked statue by a sculptor. Those who have been to some extent initiated into the Royal Art have been aware of this. Goethe, for instance, has expressed this marvelously in the Homunculus episode in the Second Part of Faust. There are still many mysteries³⁰ in that work, which remain to be revealed.

All this indicates that humanity faces a new epoch in the development of the occult Royal Art. Those who officially represent Freemasonry today know the least about what this future Freemasonry will be. They are the least aware that something quite new will replace the old symbols they have so often misinterpreted, and that this will have an entirely new significance.

Just as it is true that everything of real importance in the past stems from the Royal Art, so it is also true that everything of real importance in the future will derive from the cultivation of the same source. Certainly, every schoolboy today can demonstrate the theorem of Pythagoras; only Pythagoras could discover it, because he was a master in the Royal Art. It will be the same in the Royal Art of the future. Thus you see that the masonic Art stands at a turning point in its development, and has the closest links with the work of the Lodge of the Grail, with what can appear as salvation in the dreadful conflicts all around us.

These conflicts are only beginning. Humanity is unaware that it is dancing on a volcano. But it is so. The revolutions beginning on our earth make a new phase of the Royal Art necessary. Those people who do not drift thoughtlessly through life, will know what they have to do; that they have to participate in our earth's evolution. Therefore, from a certain point of view, this very ancient Royal Art must be represented in a new form to stand alongside of what is so ancient, in which there lies an inexhaustible force. Those who can grasp the new masonic ideas will strike new sparks from Freemasonry's ancient symbols. Then it will also become plain that contention between Craft and Higher Degree Freemasonry is meaningless set against the endeavours of real Freemasonry.

For this it is necessary to answer the question—and that brings us back to our starting point—‘What was the Royal Art up till now?’ The Royal Art was the soul of our culture. And this culture of ours has two basic ingredients. On the one hand, it is built up by those forces in the human soul which concern themselves with the inanimate; and on the other hand, by the forces of those people who make it their principal task to control the inanimate simply bv means of the forces summoned up by their organism; and they are the men, hence the Royal Art has hitherto been a male art. Women were therefore excluded and could not take part in it. The tasks carried on in the Lodges were set apart, kept separate—the details do not matter—from everything related to the family or to the reproduction of the purely natural basis of the human race.

In Freemasonry, a double life was led; the great ideas which came to expression in the Lodges were not to be mixed up with anything connected with the family. The work in the Lodges, being related to the inmost life of the soul, ran parallel to nurturing the social life of the family. The one current lay in conflict with the other. The women were excluded from Freemasonry. This ceased the instant that Freemasonry stopped looking backwards and turned its gaze forward. For it was precisely what flowed in from outside[?] which was seen as the female current; the Freemasons considered what came from Nature as something priestly. And hitherto Freemasonry had regarded that as hostile.

Man is by his nature the representative of the force that works on the inanimate, whereas the woman is seen as the representative of the living creative force that continually -develops the human race from the basis in Nature. This antithesis must be resolved.

What has to be achieved in the future can only be brought about by overcoming everything in the world that relies upon .he old symbols, that are expressed precisely in what is sexual. The Freemasonry that is obsolete today has these symbols, but is also aware of the fact that we must overcome them. However, these sexual [symbols] must be kept in existence outside in the institutions that relate to what is natural and only in this division can the matter be resolved.

Neither the architect nor the artist nor the statesman have anything to do—in their way of thinking, I ask you -o ponder that—with the basis of sexuality in Nature. They all labour to control inanimate forces with reason, with the intellect. That is expressed in the masonic symbols. Overcoming this basis in Nature in the far future, gaining control of the forces of life—as in the far-off times of the Lemurian race, man started to gain control of inanimate forces—that will be expressed in new symbols. Then the natural basis will have been conquered not only in the sphere of the inanimate, but also in the sphere of the animate.

When we reflect on this, then the old sexual symbols appear to us as precisely what has to be overcome, in the broadest sense; and then we discover what in the future must be the creative and truly effective principle, in the concept of uniting both male and female spiritual forces. The outward manifestation of this progress in Freemasonry is therefore the admission of the female sex.

There is a meaningful custom in Freemasonry which relates to this matter. Everyone inducted into the Lodge is given two pairs of gloves. He puts one pair on himself; the other pair is to, be put on the lady of his choice. By this is signified that the pair should only touch each other with gloves on, so that sensual impulses should have nothing to do with what applies to Freemasonry. This thought is also expressed in another symbol; the apron is the symbol for the overcoming of sexuality, which is covered by the apron. Those who do not know about this profound masonic idea will be unable to have any inkling of what the apron really means. One cannot bring the apron into line with Freemasonry in the narrow sense.

We thus have the conquest of the natural by the free creative spirit on the one hand, but the separation by means of the gloves, on the other. However, we could even take the gloves off in the end, once what is lower has been conquered by applying the immediate free spiritual forces of both sexes. Then only will what manifests itself today in sexuality be finally overcome. When human creation is free, completely free, when man and woman work together on the great structure of humanity, the gloves will no longer be distributed, for man and woman will be freely able to stretch out their hands to each other, because then spirit will be speaking to spirit, not sensuality to sensuality. That is the great idea of the future.

If anyone today wants to enter the ancient Freemasonry, then he will only be at the high point of masonic thinking about the future shape of mankind if he works in this spirit, and if he understands what the times demand of us, regardless of what the Order was in antiquity. If it becomes possible to discover an understanding of what is called the secret of the Royal Art, then the future will undoubtedly bring us the rebirth of the old good and splendid Freemasonry, however decadent it is today.

One of the ways in which occultism will permeate humanity will be through Freemasonry reborn. The very best things reveal themselves precisely through the faults of their own virtues. And although we can only look upon Freemasonry today as a caricature of the great Royal Art, we must nevertheless not lose heart in our endeavour to awaken its slumbering forces again, a task which is incumbent on us³¹ and which runs in a parallel direction to the theosophical movement. So long as we do not dabble in the question which weighs upon us, but really grapple with it out of the depths of our understanding of world events, make ourselves understand what is manifesting itself in the souls of the sexes, in the battle of the sexes, then we will see that it is out of these forces that the formative powers of the future must flow.

All today's chatter is nothing. These questions cannot be answered, unless the answer is drawn out of the depths. What exists in the world today as the social question or the question of woman, is nothing, unless it is understood out of the depths of world forces, and brought into harmony with them.

Just as it is true that the great deeds of the past had their origin in Freemasonry, so is it also true that the great practical deeds of the future will be gained from the depths of future masonic ideas.

• 1 . In the two lectures 17 and 18 in this volume on 23rd October 1905, to men and women separately.
• 2 . Rudolf Steiner here refers to his association with the circle around Marie Eugenie della Grazie in Vienna during the eighties of the last century. See in this connection The Story of My Life.
• 3 . The occasion for this lay in the discussions prevailing at that time between the Church and Freemasonry concerning the sensational work by Leo Taxil on satanic practices of the Freemasons which had already appeared in 100,000 copies at the time of these discussions. Die Drei-Punkte-Brifder ∴—see following note.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner refers here to the now famous Taxil-Vaughan swindle. Leo Taxil (pseudonym for Gabriel Jogand Pages), 1854–1907, brought up by Jesuits and known since the seventies as an anti-clerical writer and founder of several free-thinking societies, became a member of the Paris Lodge: ‘Le Temple de I'Honneur Francais’ in 1881, but was excluded from it soon afterwards because he was supposed to have forged letters of ∴ Brother Hugo and Louis Blanc. In 1885 he staged his repentant return to the Church. In obedience to the encyclical of Leo XIII of 20th April 1884, Humanum Genus in which the unmasking of Freemasons as confederates of the Devil was required, he commenced his main work, Les Freres Trois-Points (Paris, 1885, German: H. Gruber S.J., Die Drei-Punkte Bruder Paderborn 1886–87), started his unmasking campaign with other writings concerned with his fabricated Freemasonry system of ‘Palladism’ and was even called to a private audience with Leo XIII in 1887. The unparalleled success of Leo Taxil and his two other accomplices: the German, Karl Hacks (pseudonym, Dr. Bataille; brother-in-law of. the publisher of the ultramontane Kolnischen Volkszeitung) and the Italian Domenico Margiotta, in Catholic Church circles reached its climax when Taxil invented the witness Miss Diana Vaughan (Miss Diana Vaughan. Memoires d'une Expalladiste. Publication mensuelle). With the co-operation of the highest Church dignitaries, Taxil founded an Anti-Freemasonry Union which summoned a first Anti-Freemasonry Congress in Trient, September 1896. Thirty-six bishops, fifty episcopal delegates and over seven hundred opponents of the Lodges, most of them priests, took part in the Congress. The Sovereign Bishop Cardinal Haller of Salzburg and the leader of the Catholic nobility in Germany, Prinz Karl zu Lowenstein, chaired the meeting. The Congress was a public declaration of the revelations of Taxil and Miss Vaughan, only a few sceptics demanded proof. The first to start questioning the Taxil affair was the Freemason Gottfried Joseph Findel who published his Katholischer Schwindel as early as 1896. In general, however, H. Gruber S.J., who had long been a believer in Taxil, is credited with being the first to raise doubts about him with his three volume work: Leo Taxits Palladismus-Roman. This work only appeared in 1897, however. A.E. Waite, with his Devil-Worship in France or the Question of Luzifer (London, 1896) is also said to have this distinction.
  
  >By this time Taxil admitted in a great assembly in Paris, 19th April 1897, that everything was a deliberate swindle on his part and that the Devil Bixtru and his satanic Bride, Miss Vaughan, had never existed. According to the Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei, Taxil's confession came about earlier than was intended ‘because, according to his own admission, he could not carry the mystification any further after the appearance of Findel's work.’ Bibliographical references: Das Papsttum in seiner sozial-kulturellen Wirksamkeit, Graf von Hoensbroech, Leipzig, 1900; Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg, Karl Heise, Basle, 1920; Entlarvte Freimaurerei, Friedrich Hasselbacher, Berlin, 1939.
• 5 . According to Menckeberg, (G.E. Lessing als Freimaurer, Hamburg, 1880) Lessing, on his enrolment in the Hamburg Lodge on 15th October 1771, was asked by the Worshipful Master, von Rosenberg: ‘Now, you see indeed, I have told the truth! You have not discovered anything anti-religious or politically dangerous, have you?’ Lessing is said to have replied: ‘Ha, I wish I had discovered something of the sort. It would have pleased me better.’
• 6 . It cannot be determined what text Rudolf Steiner was referring to. However, according to Heckethorn, quoted previously, this notion already appeared in 1751 in the Konstitutionenbuch .ffir irlandische Logen.
• 7 . This is Seiler's shorthand version. In text (a) it is rendered: ‘so-called Scottish? or the same rite as that which corresponds, in a particular respect, to what is called the Egyptian, the Misraim, or the Memphis Rite.’ The Reebstein text (d) only has: ‘Scottish or Accepted Rite—Memphis Rite.’
• 8 . On this, see note 6 to the lecture given on 29th May 1905 (lecture 13).
• 9 . In text (a) ‘in the Mysteries’ is replaced by ‘in the spiritual world.’ In the shorthand version of Seiler these words are missing. For his fair copy he apparently made use of text (a).
• 10. This sentence is incomplete in all versions. It is given in the published version as corrected by Marie Steiner from text (a).
• 11. Compare also: ‘Aristotle on the Mystery Drama’ (NSL 420. Anthroposophical Monthly, Volume 4, No. 9) Speech and Drama,
  Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1960.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner often spoke about the Grail Mysteries at the time of these lectures: for instance in Berlin, on 19th May 1905 (Anthroposophical News Sheet, Volume 5, No. 11), and in Landin (Mark), on 29th July 1906 (typescript copy: Z307).
• 13. The double lecture given on 23rd October 1905 to men and women separately (lectures 17 and 18 in the present volume).
• 14. This sentence is not word for word as transcribed. The various texts are different. Text (a) omits from this sentence the words ‘great streams’ and has in their place ‘forces of male and female,’ and ends at the word ‘realms,’ omitting the rest. Seiler's fair copy has the same wording, but the shorthand version has a gap here. In Reebstein's text (d) we find the following: ‘The symbols are connected with questions running through the whole world, which meaning ... basic forces of male and female.’ The notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers give the following: ‘The two sexes are only an expression of the two great currents, which confront us as the Law of Polarity.’ The printed version has been revised by the editor to give a meaningful rendering.
• 15. See note 10 to lecture given on 22nd May 1905 (lecture 12).
• 16. ‘Ensoulment’ (Beseelung), ‘conquest’ (Besiegung). Texts (a) and (b) have the former; text (d) the latter.
• 17. The questionable word ‘nature’ was given in texts (a) and (b) but was missing in the other texts.
• 18. This sentence was incomplete in texts (a) and (b) and was made up from texts (d) and (e).
• 19. Rudolf Steiner was obviously referring here to the saga of ‘Poor Henry’ composed by Hartmann von Aue (1165—C 1215), a contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. (See also note 13). Rudolf Steiner often referred to this poem later in his lectures.
• 20. This sentence only occurs in text (a). Reebstein's text (d) on the other hand, is the only text to contain this sentence: ‘Abel is the one who in the future will have the power to create [what is] holy through [the forces of] his soul.’
• 21. Text (a) has ‘communal force’ (Gemeinsam keitskraft). In Seiler's fair copy it is ‘joint force’ (Gesamtkraft), but in Seiler's shorthand copy, Gemeinsamkeitskraft can be read. The whole text, ‘including the preceding paragraph, is rendered in Reebstein's text (d) in the following way: ‘Objective love was present in the gods who created the cosmos. Something superhuman stirs itself, which today is understanding, which later will be love. Manas, Buddhi, Atma is a joint force which gives power over the Cross.’
• †. See note following the lecture.
• 22. Text (a) has the word ‘Christ’ instead of the word ‘Cross,’ but on the other hand, Seiler's shorthand and fair copy, as well as Reebstein's text (d), give ‘Cross.’
• 23. Composed around 1200–1210. First printed 1477. Forgotten then for many years and only came to be known again about 1750. First critical edition by Lachmann (1833) followed by numerous others. English translations: J.L. Weston, A Knightly Epic, 2 volumes, London, 1894, in verse; Mustard and Passage, Parzival, Vintage Books, New York, 196 1; A.T. Hatto, Parzival, Penguin Classics, 1980.
• 24. The Right Hon. Lord Lytton, The Coming Race, George Routledge and Sons, London, 1870. Translated into German by Gunther Wachsmuth at Rudolf Steiner's instigation, Stuttgart, 1922, under the title: Vril oder eine Menschheit der Zukunft.
  
  In an answer to a question put to Rudolf Steiner at the end of a lecture held in Leipzig, 13th October 1906, regarding the meaning of Vril, he said the following:
  
• 25. the Cross directed upwards. The explanations of the Tau symbol are fragmentary and the texts differ in their wording.
  
  Text (a) has the following: ‘The Tau sign plays an important role in Freemasonry. It is basically nothing else than a Cross with the upper, arm taken away. In a figurative sense, therefore, the mineral realm has been omitted. But in order to arrive at the Cross at all, the plant kingdom must be brought into play, whereby one arrives at the upward pointing Cross.’
  
  Text and symbol of (a) both seem questionable. Marie Steiner, who once made some preparatory corrections of (a), left off the symbol in its original form and replaced it with the following: ‘In order to arrive at the Cross at all, the plant kingdom must be brought into play, whereby the upward pointing Cross is obtained.’
  
  In text (b) the following version is given: ‘This Tau sign plays an important role in Freemasonry. It is nothing else but the Cross. Only one of the beams is left off. The mineral kingdom has been left off in order to arrive at the Cross at all. If you allow the plant kingdom to come into play you get the upward pointing cross.’ In the shorthand version of this there is a gap after the words: ‘in order to arrive at the Cross at all.’ Instead, the symbol is inserted after ‘upwards pointing Cross,’ whereas it has been left out of the fair copy.
  
  The text (d) only has:
  ‘The Tau plays an important role τ
  It is nothing else than the Cross.
  If the productive forces of the plant ...’ It is significant that the Tau symbol has been drawn, but not the reverse form, in a text which otherwise provides the greatest number of diagrams.
  
  Text (f) has the following: ‘The Tau is the Cross, from which the upper beam has been removed. The mineral realm has been left off, man controls it already. For if one lets the plant realm come into play one arrives at (symbol). What develops out of the earth, out of the soul as power over the earth, is the symbol of future Freemasonry.’
  
  The other texts do not contain a reference to this.
• 26. Double lecture on 23rd October 1905, for men and women separately (lectures 17 and 18).
• 27. In the lecture of 28th December 1905 (unpublished as yet), Rudolf Steiner said: ‘Allow me to conclude my observations of the old year with an allusion I have made once before [in the lectures of December 1904, included in the present volume]. A major work of destruction is being carried out all around us, which could tell an observant person—even if he were not clairvoyant—that we stand at the beginning of a great work of destruction involving outer material [culture] as it has developed in recent centuries—for material development only goes up to a certain point.’
• 28. The American, John Worrell Keely (born 1837) caused much talk in the second half of the nineteenth century through the invention of the ‘self-motor,’ the so-called Keely Motor. A treatise on his experiments is to be found in H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Book III (X ‘The Coming Force,’ pp. 554–556). Among the lectures of Rudolf Steiner there are several references to this subject, notably in the lecture given during the Great War on 20th June 1916: ‘Cosmic Being and Egohood’ (cycle C 43), where he says: ‘It was a concept still. Thank God it was only a concept at that time for, if this Keely's concept had become reality then, what would this war have become!’ Compare also the lecture given in Dornach on 1st December 1918, in In the Changed Conditions of the Times, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1941.
• 29. Texts (a) and (b) have: ‘the Tau’ of the Holy Grail. The other texts do not have this passage, the image of the Holy Grail is Marie Steiner's correction; perhaps, however, it rests on an error in copying and it should read: ‘the Taube’ (i.e., ‘dove’) of the Holy Grail.
• 30. See in this context Rudolf Steiner's later lectures: The Problem of Faust, twelve lectures, Dornach, between 13th September 1916 and 19th January 1919.
• 31. Rudolf Steiner is referring here to the Section dealing with cult and symbolism of his Esoteric School which he was about to found. See in this connection: The Course of My Life,Chapter XXXII

Dear attendees!

The German nation is engaged in a tremendously serious struggle. A struggle that shakes and throbs through all of us. A struggle in which a new wave of our nation's destiny is to be formed out of blood and out of acts of arms.

It is a time when, one might say, the furthest extremes of human feeling, human emotion, and human imagination collide, flowing through our hearts. Deep sorrow, which spreads over countless losses, pain and grief, blood – all this provides a kind of foundation, but one that is surmounted by an atmosphere of enthusiasm, an atmosphere of bliss at what the members of the German nation are able to do in order to to maintain and secure, in the face of the iron necessity imposed on them, that position in the world, that position within European culture, which they have inherited as a precious legacy from their fathers, as a precious legacy from the historical development of Europe itself. In such a time, in which a new destiny is being formed out of blood and military deeds: But the most important things of the present, of such a present, are spoken about in different words than those that can be spoken in such a reflection, as it is this evening. The weapons speak, of course in the figurative sense. Courage speaks, the bravery of those who are exposed to the great historical fields of our present events.

But especially in such a time everything must be close to us that is connected with the whole attitude, with all the tasks, with the whole feeling and will of the German people. Therefore, it may well be appropriate for us to devote an hour of reflection to that which can take shape in our soul when we turn our gaze to something that has developed not within the valor of arms, not within the arena of external events, but deep within the innermost being of the soul itself. But we feel, perhaps more than usual, especially in such a time, how – just as blood flows through all parts of the human organism, a blood flows through you – so a power, such an essence flows through all the expressions of life of the people. Therefore, in tonight's meditation, I would like to present as one of the symptoms of the German character what I would call the world view of German idealism.

I would like to present it as it has been incorporated into the various world views of the European peoples. The nations that are fighting with each other in our present time have also been touched in their interrelations by what the content of their worldview, their conception of life, is. And in this struggle of worldviews and conceptions of life, what can be called the worldview of German idealism has emerged. I would not, dear ladies and gentlemen, wish to fall into the tone in which Germany's enemies today fall when they endeavor to describe German thinking and German feeling to their own people. I think it is much more in keeping with the German character to let the facts speak for themselves. Especially in this area, where the most inner and sacred goods of the human soul are at stake. The judgment about the significance of the German people in the development of mankind can only be formed from a calm, serious, objective consideration of the facts of the spiritual development of mankind itself.

If we now consider the interrelationships of those nations with which the German people have come into contact in the course of their more recent struggle for a world view, if we consider these, then a central theme emerges from precisely that point of view which has been taken for years in these lectures, also in this city, from this place, from the point of view of spiritual science, from which I have been allowed to lecture every winter for years in this city as well.

If one wants to look into the soul of a nation, then it is necessary to first look at the essence of the individual human soul. I cannot discuss today in detail the thoughts that I have often expressed here about this individual human soul; I will only touch on them from the point of view that should lead to our reflection today. Particulars that are to be mentioned today will be the subject of tomorrow's lecture. But by pointing out some of the things I have been allowed to say here over the years, also proving them from the foundations of spiritual science, it may be said that, before the eye of spiritual research, this human soul does not present itself as the vague surge of inner life, as which it so often presents itself to today's soul teaching, which is more influenced by a positivistic - as it were - view. Spiritual science regards this mixing up of all the individual expressions and structures of the soul life, as is often found in the external soul science of today, as just as unscientific and as unfruitful for a true contemplation of life as it would regard the failure to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen in scientific observation when one wishes to consider it in its connection with world phenomena. I have often said, as here, that just as the chemist breaks down water into hydrogen and oxygen in order to be able to observe it in its context in the natural world, so the spiritual observer must explore the human soul in its , which is not an arbitrary abstraction, which does not correspond to a mere external judgment, but to a real experience of that which makes up the whole extent of human soul life.

The spiritual researcher must first divide this human soul life into a sum of those processes that he designates with the term sentient soul. This sentient soul is connected with the elementary effects of the human soul, with that which, I might say, is still directly released from the physical, the bodily. The sentient soul is connected with this; with that which still lies partly in our blood; with that which breaks away from our inner feelings to become impulses of our being, without us being able to completely radiate it with the light of our consciousness. The sentient soul is spiritual, but it is the part of the human soul that is most intimately bound to the body of all the human soul parts. But it is also the soul element that causes the human being to direct his soul outwards. It is the soul element that ensouls the senses: the eyes when they look out into the world that is to be observed by the human being; the other senses when they come into contact with the surrounding world.

A soul element that then breaks away more, that is already more permeated by human consciousness, by the inner intentionality of the human soul, that is less bound to the elementary of human physical nature, is the mind or emotional soul. Of course, on the one hand, dear honored attendees, this mind or emotional soul is freer from the outer physical nature than the sentient soul, but it is also poorer for it. All the richness that is poured into our soul life through the elemental impulses of our entire human nature being poured into the sentient soul is no longer present in the intellectual or mind soul. As a mind soul, it is inward, but it is more loosely connected to the whole extent of the outer life of nature.

The soul element in which the human being can best, I would say, fulfill his present task in this life through the activity inherent in him, is then the consciousness soul. It is the soul through which the human being most comprehends himself as a personality, most becomes aware of himself as an individuality in the world. It is the faculty by which man can develop the highest degree of consciousness in himself, by which he can know himself as a self. But it is the soul element that, because it is most inward, shows least how man is connected with all the depths of outer existence. It is the soul member that is most closely connected to the human conscience, to that which is most personal to the human being, and at the same time it is most devoted to what the human being designates and must designate as his useful purposes, which are satisfied in external existence.

Precisely in the same way, to use yet another comparison that shows how spiritual science thinks entirely in terms of natural science, precisely in the same way as there are seven colors in a rainbow, but we can trace them back to three —, just as there are three color shades in a rainbow and the observation of these three nuances does not correspond to some kind of amateurism, but to real science - the reddish-yellow nuance, the greenish nuance, the blue-violet nuance - so the triad of these nuances is present in the life of the soul: the sentient soul, the soul of mind or feeling, and the consciousness soul. And just as the unified light is expressed through the nuances of the rainbow, so it is through the nuances of the soul, through the three, I could also say modes of activity of the human soul, that which we describe as the actual I, as the reality of the human inner being. Just as light appears through the yellow-reddish, through the green, through the blue-violet, so the I appears through the sentient soul, through the mind or emotional soul, through the consciousness soul.

Now, esteemed attendees, just as we can find this very structure in the individual human soul – as I said, I can only mention this today – so we can only truly get to know the souls of nations if we illuminate them from the point of view that we gain from this view of the human soul itself. We then gain the insight that, insofar as the souls of nations express themselves in the whole of human development, these national souls themselves are nuanced in such a way that one national soul expresses more the character of the sentient soul, another more the character of the mind or emotional soul, and yet another national soul more the character of the consciousness soul. It is really not an arbitrary way of looking at it. It is not, I might say, a forced abstraction when one regards the peoples of Western Europe, the Western and South-Western European peoples, in this way, according to the character of their folk souls. On the contrary: an unbiased study of the way in which the folk soul expresses itself leads to such a conception.

Let us now consider the soul nature of the Italian people from this point of view. Of course, dear readers, the individual stands out from his people when he strives to do so. But that is why there is a national character that bears the nuance of the national soul. There is no need to construct something arbitrarily, but only to go into what – if one has just one guiding thread from the knowledge of the human soul – naturally follows from the nature of the folk soul. Then the following consideration can be described as by no means unfruitful, as it seems to me.

The nuance of human soul nature that is expressed in the Italian soul can be described as the nature of the sentient soul. And if we, esteemed attendees, turn our gaze, our soul's gaze, to the cultural development that has been poured out on the peoples of Europe since the dawn of modern cultural development, since the sixteenth or seventeenth century, we find in it the opportunity to become acquainted with the various soul nuances and their mutual relationships and their mutual forces of influence, I would say, in an unbiased way. We find that in a very special way in the sixteenth century, there emerges that which one can say It is the task that was precisely the task of the Italian national soul, by virtue of the character of its sentient soul. Yes, precisely the greatest thing that came from this side, both from this time and from what immediately preceded this time, testifies to us that it has this character.

Let us take the personality who is so often referred to when speaking of the dawn of the modern world view. Let us take Giordano Bruno; he who fell victim to the fanaticism of the opposing world view of the sixteenth century. When we let the peculiar world-view of this man take effect on us, we feel in this personality the echo of what comes to us from Dante. We feel in it, in the world-view of Giordano Bruno, the echo of what comes to us in colors and in the richness of form from the painting of Raphael or Michelangelo. What do we find in all this? Just when you delve into the way in which Giordano Bruno presents himself to the world, how he presents himself to the world - placing himself in it, surveying the whole universe, breaking through what the medieval world view still saw as an outer boundary - how he breaks through the firmament of the space and pointing out into the infinite, as he could do it through his sensory activity inspired by inner feeling, so we can say to ourselves: He has conjured up this image of the world, which is as much scientific as artistic, out of direct perception, out of the same inner soul activity through which Dante, by virtue of his feelings, conjured that which he felt for the individual members of his people into the mighty image he created of the spiritual worlds into which the soul passes through the gate of death according to his vision. The essential thing – today we can only touch on this – in Giordano Bruno's world view, and also in the world view that his predecessor – from whom he adopted much, Telesius had, and also in the world view that Galileo wove into his world view, we see everywhere that the main emphasis is on directing the human being's attention to what external perceptions [and what] the sensory world gives. To explore this sensual world in such a way that one also uses all the powers of the mind, that is, the powers of the mind or soul, the powers of the consciousness soul, in order to achieve the sensual image in perfection. We see this as a task that opens up for us in this field of the culture of the national soul.

Thus we see a world picture emerging in southwestern Europe, which owes its greatness primarily to the fact that it is focused on external sensuality, and all the other powers of the soul that are not sensuality are used to arouse this sensuality in a pure way. This world view emerges from the elementary powers of the sentient soul.

And if we ascend to the Western peoples of Europe, and consider French culture from this point of view, we find expressed in it - I can only describe these things symptomatically today, by placing individual personalities before you as the living symptoms of historical development. If we look at this culture, we find a man like Cartesius, like Descartes, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, shaping into a world picture, I might say, the very essence of this culture. And if we engage with this world view, if we ask ourselves: what forces in the human soul shape this world view, in contrast to the forces of the sentient soul, which have just been cited for the Italian world view? We find that it is the powers of the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling. Just as I might say that the Italian conception of the world is supposed to present to the human soul what I might call the purely sensuous nature, so the conception of the world of the scientific intellect, or what we may here call purely rationalistic judgments about the world, is supposed to form a conception of the world. The human mind, which is so directed to the finite in the human conception of the world precisely because it is placed in the finite human being, is cultivated by Cartesius: What are the sources of your certainty? How can you say something certain about that which is true, which is truthful, real? And because he draws from the sources of thought, from the rationality of human beings, Cartesius, Descartes, develops rationalism as - I would say - the characteristic expression of the French national soul. This intellect first of all attaches itself to that which is immediately present: to the human self itself, to the inner personality. It attempts to attain certainty of life and the world from this inner personality, from that power which in turn is most intimately connected with this personality. “I think, therefore I am!” the world-famous saying of Descartes. Man assures himself of his existence by becoming aware of his mind at work within him. He cannot doubt his mind. Therefore, he can find in his mind the sources of certainty that can be given to him.

But a world picture emerges from it, dear honored attendees, over which the whole nature of the mind is poured out. The mind has the peculiarity that it is, so to speak, a self-contained entity in itself and also in its setting in the human personality. It does not go beyond the boundaries of the human personality. I would like to say: Descartes also remains in a sense in thinking. He does not stimulate in himself the other powers of the soul, those powers of the soul through which we can let the whole human being flow into nature and its secrets, in order to feel and sense this nature and to live with it. Descartes remains in thinking, remains in ratio. This characterizes his entire world view. The characterization, which is particularly characterized, dear attendees, by the fact that Cartesius, by only focusing on self-assurance - on what his own thinking assures him of as certain - comes to believe that animals are only living machines. They are not ensouled like humans. The thinking that has become fixed in one's own personality - I would like to say - does not find the way out of itself to submerge lovingly into the outer nature. It does not even reach as far as the soul for the animal world. Soul-less machines, mechanisms, moving machines are the animals. [He penetrates even less to the essence of the other nature. To arrive at certainty, realism withdraws the means by which it could penetrate to the soul of all the rest of nature. One would like to say: This world view wanted to secure human truth; and in this way it secured it, that it renounced a way of living in nature.

Thus we see a world picture over which spreads – I would like to say – that which man finds in himself through his thinking. This world picture then worked through the whole French world-view development. We find it today in a certain sense in Bergson and Boutroux. Everywhere we see how people rely on what is supposed to follow only from human thinking. We see it emerge particularly characteristically at the end of the eighteenth century, [...] where it is expressed in the materialism of French thought as a worldview, which is basically the father of all theoretical materialism, [yes] of all materialistic worldviews of the most recent times; before which Goethe once by confronting it – and thus in the personality in whom the world view of German idealism was most vividly present – faced Goethe, by saying: There the world of moving atoms is presented to us. If we could at least see some reason why these atoms move, and if we could see why our whole beautiful, diverse and magnificent world with all its wonders arises from these moving atoms.

But materialism – so Goethe believes – [...] only lives in some concepts of moving atoms, and does not show – since it has no need to show – how connected that is, which it thus assumes to be behind the phenomena, with the great diversity and beauty of the world's phenomena! We see one of the most German of Germans, Goethe, rebelling against this materialist world view. This world view expresses the entire character of the intellectual soul or mind soul.

And if we look at British culture from this perspective, we find that this British culture, as it begins in more recent times, directly channels the power of the human soul to that which is spread out before human observation. We see how Bacon von Verulam appears - a personality who demands of the human soul in the most incisive way that it purify all that [which leads it away from what it can observe by being in the world, what it can observe with its senses - with the consciousness that is peculiar to us as human beings! Bacon wanted to cleanse the world view of all that man can bring into it through his mere thinking, through a deepening into his inner self.

Just as sensualism is the world view corresponding to the Italian national character; just as rationalism is the world view corresponding to the French national character, so is so-called empiricism, the focus on external reality, which of course initially only has a meaning for the human consciousness soul, for that in which the human being wants to place himself here as an earthly being with his conscious purposes. This outer reality, what is given in empiricism, as it is said, is the object of the outer consciousness soul. That is what one wants to gain when one looks at it in terms of its characteristic properties, the British world view, that is, all the content it can contain. And from the dawn of modern spiritual life up to Darwin and Spencer, up to the present English world view, we find this basic trait everywhere. But we see that in recent times, strangely enough, it has united with that which lives so truly in the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul, as I said earlier, sets out to get to know the human being through the purposes he pursues as an external being on earth in his immediate sensory surroundings. The consciousness soul focuses on these purposes. On what is useful to man. Let us look back at the example of Darwin. And we see from the form that Darwin gave to the theory of the development of the organic how the principle of usefulness is already being considered in the becoming of the beings. The beings arise and perfect themselves in the struggle for existence. How in the struggle for existence? Because the being that is organized in such a way that it is most useful to itself displaces the others.

It is characteristic that the emergence of the so-called pragmatism – this name was coined in England and more recently in America – is the latest form of the world view prevailing there. What is this pragmatism? It asks: Yes, to what extent can a person, who wants to approach truth through thought, arrive at the truth? It was felt quite intensely that one cannot actually educate oneself with one's soul powers through mere thoughts. Yes, but what are mere thoughts? What are thoughts that a person can form when he looks at phenomena? Is there a world of thoughts that one could say are real? Man goes through the world, so they say, he looks at things. He thinks about them. Is there somehow a power that forms the truth in man? So pragmatism asks. - No, man cannot find such an external power. But man forms concepts, and he can then have them. How can he have them? In such a way that they enable him to summarize the phenomena of the world in a purposeful way. This pragmatism does not seek some background of a source of truth, but it seeks to form such a conception that is expedient for summarizing the multiplicity of phenomena, thereby summarizing the multiplicity of phenomena in the best possible way. This is a concept that can be perceived because it serves to summarize the phenomena. There is no other source of truth.

When we speak, for example, of a unity in the human soul's manifestation – we can assume this unity from what has been said – then we can summarize the individual expressions of the human soul in a purposeful way.

When we speak of gravity, we do not do so because of any inner truth. There is nothing else that prompts us to speak of gravity when we form the concept of gravity, other than the fact that it corresponds to the purpose of summarizing many phenomena that we encounter in the world under one unifying concept. Utility pours over the whole human striving for a world view within pragmatism.

I did not in any way attempt to characterize the facts from any point of view of sympathy or antipathy, but I tried to identify the guiding thread of the worldviews of the three nationalities according to the nuance of soul that expresses itself in the corresponding people, in the corresponding culture. One can see that what I have briefly characterized – and this is why it can only appear arbitrary – but precisely if one were to go deeper, all arbitrariness would disappear, it could be traced through the entire scope of the development of the worldviews of the respective peoples could be traced through the entire scope of the development of the world view of the peoples concerned – testifies to us: Italian culture has particularly developed the sentient soul character; French culture the rational mind or mind soul character; British culture the consciousness soul character.

Now let us turn our gaze to the center of Europe. Let us try to let this soul's gaze briefly roam over those phenomena that also present themselves to us within the last period of human development. This new period announces itself in a peculiar way. There we see, I might say, in a world view of beauty, Giordano Bruno creating out of a purified sensualism, in a state of drunken sensuality. But at the same time, there we see in the sixteenth century, in the seventeenth century in France, Montaigne creating out of the intellectual or emotional soul a world view of pure doubt. Here we see, in Montaigne, I might say, in a different way, less ingeniously, less philosophically than in Descartes, but in him, how one of the most significant signs of this culture is expressed. We see how he is confined to what man alone is capable of thinking, to what is connected with his thinking; but at the same time, he senses that this thinking is limited in its validity as truth by the fact that it dwells only within us. This gives him doubt about the external sense world. That is why Montaigne says: Yes, the external senses provide us with a certain image of the external world. But does it have to be true? We have no means of knowing, for we can only believe our reason. But we have no means in it of proving that something is not revealing itself that is something quite different from what we can suspect behind the sensory phenomena. The sensory phenomena can be deceptive. But can what we have in reason tell us the truth either? We see that we want to prove something in our reason. But soon we come to realize how deceptive this reasoning was in us. Now we have to prove what we have proved all over again. And that presents itself to us immediately, as if from this or that point of view. But it is questionable. We begin to demand a proof of the proof of the proof. The true sage, says Montaigne, is the only one who doubts everything, who goes through the world with a soul that can bear doubt.

And in the field of world view, the Italian's and the Frenchman's contemporary is precisely Bacon, who wants to refer the human soul, as I have characterized it, to that which is purely the object of external utility. This contemporary of his, regardless of what objections one might otherwise have against him, regardless of what point of view one might take: it is characteristic of the development of Central Europe, characteristic of the development of German folk culture, this personality – a contemporary of Giordano Bruno, intoxicated, as it were, with sensuality, of the doubter Montaigne, of Bacon, who referred to mere external empiricism, is Jakob Böhme, the profound German mystic. He – who, while Giordano Bruno wants to connect the drunken mind with the whole world, the outer sensual infinity of the world, who, while Montaigne wants to find man alone wise when he is able to doubt everything, the contemporary of Bacon – is Jakob Böhme, [the contemporary contemporary of just that Bacon] who, when he wants to point man to the truth, points him away from everything he might possibly imagine or develop within himself, and points him to the mere intellectual and conceptual summarization of the phenomena of the consciousness soul. The contemporary of these three, who all point man outward, is Jakob Böhme, who at the same time turned his inner path toward those realms that the human soul can enter when it becomes fully conscious of itself in its deepest inwardness.

And let us turn to this wonderful world picture of Jakob Böhme. We see how this contemporary of Montaigne, the greatest modern doubter, seeks certainties borne inwardly by the deepest soul faculties in a purely spiritual, supersensible world, in a world of human inwardness, which he knows at the same time, because it is human inwardness, to be the inwardness of that which confronts us in the external world, in outer existence. The great affinity of that which man finds when he reaches most deeply into his inner being, with that which man finds when he roams most widely through the whole extent of outer existence, that is what Jakob Böhme wants to show, out of the German soul.

The greatest seeker of certainty – a contemporary of the greatest doubters. The greatest believer in human inwardness, and at the same time the greatest denier of what human inwardness might assert with certainty about any phenomenon in the world. We see emerging at the dawn of the newer development of the world a mind that has arisen out of the culture of the German people and that wants to go to the center of the soul's being and, from the activity of this center, wants to illuminate all that lives in the lives in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul or mind, in the consciousness soul, like light in the color nuances that appear to be externally divided into reddish-yellow, greenish, and bluish-violet. A culture of the I, a culture that finds its way into the human interior, seeks because it is clear that if you dive deep enough into this human interior, you will find in these depths, in the abyss of the human interior, the gateway to what is still behind what the drunken science of Giordano Bruno finds as the exterior. Jakob Böhme knows how to find the inner core of this outer appearance for himself, in accordance with his attitude and the tenor of his world picture, by descending into his own inner being. Thus, in the heart of Europe, at the dawn of the newer evolution of humanity, we find a world picture that mysticism has sensitively characterized.

Even if we consider it imperfect from our present-day point of view, ... we find that it sets the tone for the development of world-view, showing us - as I said, it is not intended to present any dogmatic world-view, only to characterize the development - how the German worldview strives to seek the forces that it is supposed to shape in the human ego, which is aware of immersing itself in the spirit of the universe when it only delves deeply enough, in the human ego, in the intimate, in the innermost nature of the human soul itself. And we find this character, ladies and gentlemen, held throughout the more recent development.

He who stands as it were as the first cornerstone of this newer Central European, this newer spiritual world-view development is much misunderstood: Kant. It often seems to people as if Kant had wanted to put forward a world-view of doubt, a world-view of uncertainty. But in another way, what Kant wanted has also been formed from the depths of the human being's ego nature. And now something very peculiar in the newer development comes to light. As I said, I only want to emphasize the facts, let the developments be characterized by an at least striving - I don't know how far I will achieve it, but at least striving - impartiality towards the facts. One thing in particular comes to us from this German development. That which must inspire man in his innermost being, although it is not directly real, is placed in the focus of the soul: the idea, the ideal.

The most alien thing to the times in which Kant lived and the culture from which Kant emerged would be the British view of today, as expressed in the British world view: that truth should have no other source [than the expediency for which external phenomena are to be summarized]. For absolutely valuable, so that no doubt, nothing that could somehow take away certainty, should approach it, absolutely certain is that which makes human life valuable, although it is not an external sensual reality, that is the idea, that is the ideal. This world view felt that ideas and ideals reach into the human soul and give the human soul the highest value. No matter whether the human soul attains such a high value from nature or from some other source, it attains the highest value through the fact that ideas can be present in it. And now, more or less unconsciously, Kant was already living with the impulse to eliminate everything that did not want to recognize the absolute, unconditional validity of the ideas, their highest value for the human soul. He found that A science has been developed, a world view has emerged that is based on the sensory world. But man cannot, with the powers that come from his soul, grasp this sensual world view in such a way that he can get to its direct sources — if I may use the pedantic word, but it is from Kant himself —, to the “thing in itself”. So Kant tried to get to the bottom of this sensuality, this external reality, as it presents itself to the human senses, to bring clarity to it. He examines the human soul life in his own way. He finds: What presents itself as the sensory world is not the immediate reality. And the human soul is not at all able to penetrate into the immediate reality with the powers it has. Only through those forces that are the forces of the idea, the forces of the ideal, can it experience reality directly within itself. And so we see the remarkable thing about Kant: that he does not, as is often believed, want to present a world view of doubt, of groundlessness, of non-recognition, but that he was seeking a world view that would remove all doubt by making it clear that we cannot know anything about the senses, but because we cannot know anything, we can give all the more to the fact that what projects into our soul life as an idea, as an ideal, has an unconditional value. Sensuality must not disturb us in our contemplation of the absolutely valuable, the idea, the ideal, by the certainty it has. Kant does not present a world view of doubt, but a world view that seeks to eliminate doubt from the world. However, he does come to say that he must fight knowledge. Kant says it in order to make room for faith. At first, he only believes that a kind of faith can unfold for that which enters the human soul in an idealized way; but that is precisely what characterizes him: the ideal, the idea, is so valuable to him that he himself dethrones knowledge for its sake, in order to provide this ideal with the right throne, the right world standing.

And now we see how the individual heroes of the world view of German idealism follow. We see how directly the – I would say – very own national philosopher of the Germans, how directly Johann Gottlieb Fichte, embraces this Kantian world view. Let us look back at rationalism, at the purely intellectual world view of Descartes, which represents the original form of the world view of French popular culture: “I think, therefore I am”. In thinking, something is seen that can be trusted as a source of certainty. But from this thinking one must conclude – but I don't want to get involved in philosophical ravings now or have to come to it by some other means than by conclusion – that this thinking is based on a being, a first being that can be recognized by thinking, that can be looked at, because it proves that it must be there because one thinks. It is there, because one thinks, because thinking emerges from it. All this, if you look at it carefully, is so utterly alien to Fichte's remarkable, magnificent – I would even say heroic, in a world-view sense – soul. Fichte creates a completely different view of the human inner being, of the deepest soul. One that is still extremely difficult to understand today. For Fichte does not want to arrive at the soul, at the ego, by grasping it in its being. Rather, Fichte wants to grasp being [in its being generated] as an act of doing, that is, in order for me to experience my ego as me, I must continually create myself. In the moment when I lose the creative powers in me, when I cannot, out of unknown depths, place myself in a direct existence for my inner being, I am no longer an ego. With that, the thought, the “I think” is submerged in the will. And the inseparable unity of will and thought is made the basis of the human ego. At the same time, the characteristic of the self refers to something that is in a state of constant creation, of constant activity. You are only with yourself if you bring about this state of being with yourself every moment. To the extent that you can and do create yourself, in every moment of your sensual-physical and intellectual existence, you are a self.

What does Fichte, the most national of German philosophers, want? He wants to grasp the center of human existence, and he wants to grasp it in such a way that he does not develop in it a lasting, an actually lasting, [that he seeks a] unchanging being, but a continually active, a never resting. The human being, who is then his own creature. The most wonderful thing about strength, about human capacity, placed at the center of the soul's light, appears to us at the same time as the center of Fichte's world view. And here at this center, Fichte wants to grasp the self-generating I, the I that is endowed not only with the ability to think about its being, but with the ability to continually will itself. Here he wants to grasp at the same time, not in an existence that one wants to seek behind appearances, that one wants to seek here or there through some other science, but in the volition that the ego itself generates, Fichte wants to seek what lives within, in this human volition, in this human inner activity, through which the ego continually generates itself: the idea, the ideal. The I generates itself, and into this stream of self-generation the idea, the ideal, pours itself. Into this stream of self-generation the most intimate coexistence of the divinely high ideal, the divinely pure idea, with what man calls his most intimate inner experience, pours itself directly into it.

And now, I would say, Fichte advances to what is perhaps the boldest – there is, of course, much that is debatable, but still: boldest – thought that a thinking world view, a merely thinking world view, has ever conceived. Fichte looks at this self-creating I, at this I that is in the one moment because it creates itself, but does not merely sustain this being now until the next moment, but also lives through its deeds in the next moment, and in the next moment again, which never rests, always creating itself - Fichte looks at this I, and in it he now finds his reality. True reality must be measured by the standard of this reality. What, as we have just seen, intrudes into this I? As this I creates, ideas and ideals flow into its creative powers. They are the absolute valuable.

But now this I, with the help of the bodily organization, confronts the external sense world. This external sense world is permanent, it is something that cannot create itself, and is therefore less real than the I, which is constantly creating itself. Why then does the I, this absolutely creative I, enter the less real sense world? Because this I, with the ideas, the ideals, with the moral duty - which flows into the ideas, the ideals, into this I - needs a field of activity to live itself out. For Fichte, the world of the senses is not there for its own sake, but, as he says, as a sensitized material for the reception of duty, that is, of ideas and ideals. For Fichte, the world is there because duties, ideas, and ideals are paramount in spiritual life, and because these ideas and ideals need a world of the senses in order to be active. Thus the world of sense must be there as the consequence of ideas and ideals. Today we need not go into what we have on our soul, perhaps against the scope or the fundamental truth of such a world view; we only want to go into the way of the people's striving. We want to go into what strives within the soul power of the people to recognize the truth. We want to trace the character of this popular striving in the time that preceded the one in which the German people created their state, the external structure of their activity, which they must now defend with blood and arms, but which they created because they drew the strength to do so from what preceded this state, but which is rooted in the deepest peculiarity of the German national soul. And from this point of view, let us also direct our gaze to the man who has now continued Fichte in a certain way, who has worked alongside Fichte, after Fichte, the much-tried Schelling.

To focus on that which forms Fichte's basic essence, on a world view that is above all permeated by the ideas and ideals that flow into human beings and that require external sensuality to because the ideas and ideals - to fill out the world view - need an object within which they can operate, building on this Fichtean premise, Schelling also delved into this center, into the human ego. That center, where, according to Fichte's view, this thinking is linked to the soul of the world. But Schelling, he feels differently than Fichte. To him it seems prosaic, it seems abstract to name all of nature with all its diversity, with all that delights our senses, with all that promotes our welfare, our happiness, with all that the mind so gladly, so willingly immerses itself in, from which it draws so draws so much from — that which spreads out in the wide, visible nature —, that only looks at it from the point of view that it is there to give a sensualizing material to the duty, to the spiritual in the world picture, which flows into the ego; Schelling finds this impossible in view of his attitude. He has, I would say, too much German feeling in him.

Fichte's greatness is German willpower. Schelling's greatness is the German mind, which lovingly wants to engage with the smallest and the greatest phenomena of nature, with that which pours gloriously through space, that which spreads out in time. But while he wants to penetrate into every detail with a loving mind, he is also clear about one thing: certainty, security, true reality can only be found where you immerse yourself in yourself, where you can find the union of the human soul with the world soul in your own self. What you seek there and [...] find, you find because you experience it directly, because you experience it in such a way that, by being, you are at the same time with you [...] as that which, as true reality, pulses through life. What you can find in yourself, you will never find in outer nature. Therefore, fill yourself with that within you which can be a reflection of that which is most profound in this external nature as well. And so, what Schelling experienced within grew to such an extent that when he observed nature, he merged with the external existence of nature. Thus, nature itself became soul-like and spiritual to him. So Schelling looks into nature and says to himself: the essence of the human soul rests within it. But when I look out into nature, it is the same essence. I look at the stone: it has something, is connected with something, which is like the essence of the human soul; it only has it enchanted in form, in external nature; it has brought it into forms. And so the plant world in all its diversity. And so the animal world. And so also the outer physical human world. If I want to express myself figuratively: for Schelling it becomes as if - before the human soul entered this physical existence - a world spirit soul deeply related to the human soul... that which the human soul only and feels within itself, had first spread out before itself in forms, so that the human soul can see itself here twice..., and its essence poured out, magically poured out in space and in time, as it lives outside in nature.

But then Schelling says to himself, if that is so, if this nature is an enchanted soul-being, then I must find - when I experience nature by fully putting myself in the place of every single being, in every single form of life - the spirit of nature living out itself everywhere. But I do not find it by looking at nature dull. I must create it. My soul must create out of my soul that which lives most deeply in animal, plant and stone. My soul must put itself in that place and thereby create it. Hence Schelling's bold expression: to comprehend nature is to create nature.

And thirdly, we see the person who most fully developed this world view of German idealism, albeit only in abstract thoughts that are difficult for some to grasp. We see Hegel, the man from Stuttgart, the profound one, the most profound of the three. We can call Fichte the most powerful, the man of the German will, Schelling the man of the German mind, we can call Hegel the man of German reason itself. While Schelling immerses himself in nature, but only by taking the creative power of the ego with him, in order not just to comprehend nature, but to create nature out of the human soul through contemplation, Hegel wants to, as it were, from the soul, from what it is directly, from the universe that it creates for itself according to the Fichtean ego being, from which he wants to penetrate into what the soul is together with the deepest world thoughts. From the individual spirit, from the individual ego, Hegel wants to go to the world spirit, which is connected at one point with the individual spirit of man.

From the human ego to the world ego, Fichte sought a human essence that has within itself the power to continually generate and thus to develop and educate itself. Schelling seeks in the human being the power that can create in the ideal world picture that which is inherent in nature, while Hegel seeks in the human soul that which can receive the divine world spirit in itself, where it can hold a dialogue with this divine world spirit. While Schelling wants to pour the whole human soul into the soul-like nature, Hegel wants to sink all of this human soul-like nature into the essence of the world spirit, into the essence of the world soul. And he is clear about one thing: when the soul looks beyond what is outwardly spreading, when it lives completely with itself, then it communes with the world spirit. Then that which lives in it as concept, as idea, as ideal, is that which the world spirit lets flow into it. And by going from idea to idea, developing the whole organism of ideas that it can develop, the soul does not merely follow itself, no, it is aware that when it withdraws from all externality in this way, it unites with the world spirit. She does not think for herself, the world spirit itself thinks its thoughts in her. I surrender myself to the thinking of the world spirit, to the rule of world reason. As a result, the whole organism of the world idea - the world view of German idealism - spreads in the soul.

We can certainly say, esteemed attendees, that Fichte sought the human ego in its power, in its self-creative activity, but he remained - and because a greatest is boldly striven for, this greatest - I would say — itself the error of its virtue, it has its one-sidedness. Fichte stopped at this self-creative of the ego at something, so that one must say, at the point where he stopped, because the human soul actually creates itself only as a knowing being. It is therefore characteristic that Fichte calls what he has created as philosophy, as a world view, the theory of knowledge. The way Fichte grasps this self-creative I is actually only the knowing human being. But for us it is the path that matters, not a dogma, not an absolute truth, but the search for the German national soul. One would like to say: All that is spread out in this human nature, in that it experiences the whole fullness of the world of feeling, that the whole of outer nature is mirrored in it, all that is formed in the totality of the human inner soul life, with its deep pain, its high bliss and deep suffering, it is not directly explainable in the way in which the self-creative I is active in Fichte. The only thing that can be explained is – I would like to say – the knowing I. If man were to stand in the world as a knower, as a mere recognizer, if man's only task in the world were to have knowledge, then it would be as Fichte thought. But we see a wonderful development of strength in the fact that, on the one hand, all thinking, all research, all reflection is devoted to incorporating this one impulse into the world view of German idealism. Even if Fichte believed that he was answering all the riddles of the world, he did not answer them in their entirety, but he did show the one thing: How does man, as a cognizer, as a knower, as one who investigates the world, stand before himself? And how is he, as a knowing human being, connected to the sources of existence? To place this nuance in the world view of German idealism was, after all, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's task.

In Schelling, we find how the whole of external nature becomes something for him – I would like to say – that stands before his soul as a human physiognomy stands before our soul. We do not merely perceive it by describing individual lines, by characterizing its expression, but we perceive it in such a way that we perceive the soul speaking through it in it, in its inwardness, and allow ourselves to be affected by what is behind the physiognomy as the soul-like. Thus, what is spread out before man in nature, in its wonderfully deep unity, becomes the great physiognomy of the world soul that Schelling tried to decipher. But because he sets out in the strictest sense of the word to create everywhere: by enjoying nature and observing it, he can only create as much as was already revealed by nature according to the character of his time. This general character of human soul-creation, insofar as the soul-like is a reflection of nature's creation, that is what Schelling reveals. But while man stands in relation to nature in such a way that all his deepening of his soul life cannot replace for him the direct experience, the loving engagement with phenomena, insofar as one can observe them, Schelling believes that he can create more from within about nature than the mere predisposition for observation. Once again, with the error of a great spiritual virtue, he grasps a nuance of the world view of German idealism in a one-sided way!

Hegel seeks to experience the ruling world spirit itself in the human soul. He seeks to have such thoughts in the soul, such a developing reason, as if the world spirit itself were made to speak in the soul. But Hegel remains one-sided. For him, this world spirit does not appear as the one [that in all activity, at one time imparts the essence of the activity of the one being and at another time, in another activity, reveals a different essence.] In Hegel this world spirit appears as the great logician, who alone unfolds the details of the world's reason, and the world's reason becomes the only all-existing. But to present this single thing in its characteristic before the world, to incorporate this nuance into the world view of German idealism, this mistake of a great virtue, this one-sidedness, was necessary to grasp the thought in its highest degree: Man, when he plunges into his inner self, can depart from his ego to such an extent that he is so powerfully active in his ego that he extinguishes this ego itself, so that the world spirit may shine forth in him! In order to grasp this thought with the greatest intensity, it had to be grasped in this one-sided way. For in the search for truth, it is the power of comprehension that matters most to us, and not that the world spirit itself be conceived like a mere logician.

But we also see, we also know, honored attendees, how these three nuances in the world view of German idealism are intimately connected with the entire spiritual striving of the German people. For when this world-evolution of the German people was to be shaped into a personality, when the deepest, most intimate and at the same time most comprehensive and most living human and spiritual striving of this people was to be embodied in Goethe, then, I might say, he embodied in synthesis what had emerged with the greatest emphasis of one-sidedness in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But at the same time, by building up thoughts, I might say, with all the inwardness of the human soul and with all the powers of natural existence, living through them in the image of the human striving personality itself in Faust, [by characterizing him in such a way that as Goethe did] depict it, the universality of the human soul's striving for light could only emerge in modern times from [that] folk culture, which seeks the light at the center of the soul's life, while the other modern cultures seek the individual color nuances of the soul. We see, but we see the nature of the human ego as it is always creatively active, as it must intervene in every subsequent moment to create its being anew, to transform itself. We see this distinctly - only in all its broad vitality and in full abundance - I would say - the merely ideal in the human being embodied in Faust, in that Faust whose motto is: “Whoever strives, we can redeem him!” In that Faust, who is indeed presented to us as being in the concrete, in the immediately elementary, striving for what Fichte presents as theory. So that this Faust-I continually creates itself throughout the entire plot of Faust in order to successively insert its I into other spheres, other fields of world existence, in order to become related to other spheres, to other fields of world existence.

And we see how Schelling lives as a nuance, Schelling's view as a nuance in “Faust”. Schelling stands before nature, as before the great magician, and experiences: even if it is an illusion, it is an illusion to ignite a great aspiration; I say not to depict, but to ignite. Schelling stands before nature as if he could create it from within by wanting to understand it. Understanding nature means creating nature – and we see Faust transformed into the living, into the fullness of human existence. Faust, as he wants to reach “all life force and seed”. How he longs with all his might, which itself is magical power, to grasp that which creates and lives in nature, to unite with it, to unite with the spirit of nature. He wants the spirit, the spirit of life, which “swells and ebbs in the tides of life, in the storm of action,” to stand before him. He does not seek to create nature, he seeks to understand, he seeks that which creates in nature, as the world and deed genius.

Schelling sought in an abstract way in his soul the creator in nature. Faust sought the center in nature, where the essence is to be found, which, as the creator, stands in opposition to the created. Like Schelling, he wants to achieve a living force that creates as nature does. Faust, on the other hand, seeks to reveal such a being that flows and surges from one individual being to another in nature and shows us not only what has been enchanted and created, but also what lives in everything created as a creator.

And just as Hegel, as a philosopher, incorporated his nuance of reason, which is supposed to be the conversation of the world spirit itself in the individual human soul, into the world view of German idealism, so we see - and this in turn is implemented in the living so admirably in the whole striving of Faust - we see, as the goal that appears to us, what man can experience in his inmost being when he has always endeavored, when he has become akin to all the self-creative powers that the I continually creates and fathoms, but thereby continually develops, ceaselessly develops. When man has gone through this, when he has knocked at those gates through which nature unlocks its creativity, when he has found the spirit that he addresses as “Exalted Spirit, you gave me everything, everything” - in other words, the spirit that the creator stands vis-a-vis the created – he comes through all possible stages of human development to the one where he is able, when his eyes are closing, when he goes blind, when he is standing directly before death, to unite with the world spirit. Admittedly, Goethe touches here on an inner experience of the union of the human soul with the world spirit, which in its abundance and experiential content infinitely transcends the mere abstraction of Hegel's reasoning world spirit. But the attitude is the same in both cases.

We could cite many more examples, and we would see everywhere the German way of seeking the foundations and sources that underlie ideas and ideals, so as to have the world not merely as a symbol before the external senses, but as a weaving, surging world picture of ideas and ideals. And like this world picture of German idealism, such a shaping of this knowledge demands that it can say: Yes, all external sensuality is such that what stands as the most valuable for the soul life can intervene: the ideas and ideals originating from the divine sources of the world. In this way, in the sense of human striving within German culture, that which strives towards the world view of German idealism places itself within the other world views. And I believe that the German may objectively describe as his striving what has been characterized there, without his being able to believe that the slanderous accusations now made by his enemies have any value. He may say: He does not seek the individual color nuances of the soul; he seeks what - like the light shining through the individual color nuances - shines through and flows through these individual color nuances as the innermost, as the best of the human soul.

And one can indeed say, dear attendees, that when one points to this world view of German idealism, one reveals something that cannot live in every soul. Certainly, it appears that way; but two things must be emphasized. I can only hint at these two things, but they could also be explained further if one goes into the phenomena that were just pointed out. So great, so powerful was the will in this striving for the world view of German idealism, in the time of Germany, which was the most significant time of idealistic struggle – as our present time will undoubtedly appear as the most significant time of real struggle – so this world view of German idealism in Germany's most ideal time seems to present itself to our minds that we can say: What the people who have endeavored to achieve worldviews and the most diverse tasks in the nineteenth century and up to the present day within our culture have done, was to try to penetrate from different points in order to understand these individual representatives of the worldview of German idealism more precisely. Even their opponents were always somehow trying to penetrate this world view from different angles, at least to fight and struggle with it. And whatever world views and attitudes towards life have developed since then, we can feel the pulse of German idealism everywhere, even from opposing points of view. We can feel it to this day. We feel it as something that belongs to the best of the German character, to that which is realized in this German character. We feel it as one of the most characteristic expressions of the German essence. We feel it as that which symptomatically denotes the greatness and power of the German mission, and which may be so designated because there is truly in such a designation a striving that cannot make this designation appear as megalomania, but that the fullest modesty is connected with this characteristic.

Thus we see that we are still standing inside – and to what extent we are standing inside, I will have to elaborate on tomorrow in the lecture – we see how we are standing inside with all our striving in the full revelation of what was struck at that time, what was struck by individuals. That is the one thing I want to emphasize: the greatness of the world view of German idealism. Above all, it is connected with what has been done to this day by those who strove for a conception of the world and of life, and what will be done for those who follow in this sense for a long time to come.

The other thing I want to emphasize is that every impulse of a worldview that enters the worldview initially occurs in a few people. And the way it occurs is not decisive for the way it works. But if one delves into it, not intellectually, but rather in terms of feeling and emotion, not in terms of dogma, but in terms of the will, in terms of the particular orientation that underlies the world view of German idealism, then one finds that there is something in it that can still be lived out, that can still be developed, that one can say: something can arise from it that bears no resemblance to the difficult-to-understand arguments of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, something that can develop in such a way that it can be easily understood by the simplest mind.

Dear attendees! It is only through years of immersing myself in this world view of German idealism that I have come to the full conviction that there is something in it that can be implanted in human nature from childhood on, that there is a trinity to which the human being can be educated, to a feeling of self-creation in the I, which directly gives the human being - I would like to say - in all his striving a religious trait, as was the case with Fichte. Not Fichte's philosophy, but the forces that lived in Fichte's philosophy, to let them take effect on oneself, and to transfer them to general culture, to the simple man, to each individual, that will be possible one day. To become aware that something lives in the human soul that is intimately related to nature, to that which lives in the innermost part of nature, this special attitude towards nature, this life with the mind towards nature, this feeling of oneself in — The tendency of Hegel is that man can descend so deeply into his soul that he can hold a dialogue there with the world soul itself. Hegel's tendency for man to be able to descend so deeply into his soul that he can hold a dialogue with the world soul itself, that when he becomes free from the life in the outer natural and sensual world, he can hear his harmony with the world spirit resound spiritually within him, this attitude towards the divinely active, ruling world spirit, that will, without the Hegelian world view with the logical character perhaps even being known, be encouraged in the simplest soul by the person to whom one wants to transfer what I mean.

The world view of German idealism, not as it is dogmatic, but as it has been lived as a goal, as a spiritual impulse, can become popular. And however paradoxical and strange it may sound, the effect that this world view of German idealism can have on a human soul, what it can trigger in a human soul, how it can attune this human soul spiritually, sensually, working, creating in everyday life, is just as possible as the deeper meaning of the Grimm fairy tales becoming part of the human soul. It is no more difficult to live together intimately with the sense of the Grimm fairy tales, with the sense of the German folk tale, the German folk legends, than with the sense of that which lives in the world view of German idealism. But this points us to a development of that to which this world view of German idealism is the root, into far-off futures. And what is destined to develop will develop, however many those circling around Germany, around the German people, those who want to fight against the existence of the German people. The great trust that the German can have in his future can arise from the insight into what he has tied to his most sacred, to his national feeling.

And so, from the feeling that can be absorbed from the world view of German idealism, from what has been striven for and from the fact that these forces that could strive for such things are in the German nation, the great confidence that the German has in his further development, which he may express in the confidence that he may have in all the difficult struggles and the terrible struggles in which he is involved, and could still be involved. In this way, without resorting to sympathy or antipathy, and above all without resorting to antipathy, preconceived notions or hatred for what other national souls have to shape, one can describe the peculiar character of German national striving, as it expresses itself in one of its blossoms, in the world picture of German idealism, and one can say: Those who can understand something like that will understand whether the German people have a mission peculiar to them, to which they must cling, regardless of their nationality. Whether there is much understanding for this world view of German idealism in our time, especially among our enemies, is another question. And again: by speaking about this world view of German idealism, the German can at the same time show that he can speak differently, can speak from the spiritual facts, and that this is different from the way in which many of those who want to dispute the German's existence speak today, who have imposed on him the necessity of a fierce struggle for this existence.

I think, esteemed attendees, that the German need only emphasize in such a way what is most profound in his world view - and in nothing disintegrate those slanders that also encircle Germany, that encircle the German people. Let us see how differently one must speak in the context of the German essence. It is also a simple fact. Esteemed attendees! What, for example, did the inhabitants of Britain have to invent to justify what is expressed in their current struggle? How did the Germans merely have to point out that the necessity of their struggle for existence was imposed on them, whereas the inhabitants of Britain had to point out? They had to point to something that cannot be described as anything other than a mask. Could they point to something about which the German can say: he had to create the German state in the last decades, after the German, out of his nature, had worked towards this state until then? Could the inhabitants of Britain justify the necessity of their existence in the way they created it through the Boer War, in about the same way as the German can justify what the German does today as the consequence of the war of 1870/71? The true reasons had to be masked there. That the struggle for freedom of other nations is not the ideal there, one need only refer to the history of Britain.

The French had to – and this is again not something that arises from some kind of hatred, but from the mere characterization, from the mere objective characterization of the facts – invent a new sophistry through the minds of Bergson and Boutroux, who characterize the German world view by wanting to conclude from the innermost character – as Boutroux wanted in a lecture he gave to his French audience, based on this German world view – that, by its very character, it is a world view that wants to conquer everything in the world, that wants to clash with everything in a warlike manner.

Bergson had to invent his own philosophical sophistry to show how France's struggle against the German essence is a struggle of the spirit against matter, a struggle of civilization against barbarism. We see a completely new sophistry blossoming.

Russia has prepared herself well for what she needed to do in order to prepare in a corresponding way for what now threatens the German essence from there. Russia needs a new term for her old delusion, so as not to point to her mission as a matter of course, as the Germans do, but to point to something that lives as a delusion. Now, again, it is not the intention here to make a characterization from the outside, but because I naturally do not have the time to characterize in detail the extent to which the striving that threatens us from the East is a delusion, I would like to cite another key witness, a spirit who must know this, a spirit who is most deeply rooted in modern Russian intellectual life, the great Soloviev, who is placed in the nineteenth century and who – I would like to say – brings the whole of Russian intellectual life together as if in a philosophical focus for reflection. He speaks of how another spirit of Russia summarizes Russia's world-historical mission in the words: Why does Europe not love us, why does Europe fear us? Danilevsky poses this question. And he says:

“Europe fears us as the new and higher type of culture, called to replace the decrepitude of Romance-Germanic civilization.”

These words express the entire delusion of the East. It should not be denied that the seeds germinating in the East contain magnificent and powerful seeds for the future of humanity. In the way they are now living, I will characterize it by reading Solowjow's, the great Russian's, answer to this characteristic of Danilewski:

“Nevertheless, both the content of Danilevsky's book and his later admissions and those of his like-minded friend”

- meaning a certain Strakhov -

"Europe looks at us with apprehension and mistrust because dark and unclear elemental forces live in the Russian people, because its spiritual and cultural forces are poor and insufficient, but because its demands are clear and sharply defined. The calls for what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully out into Europe: that it wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, defeat Germany, conquer Constantinople and, if possible, also India.

The great Russian Solowjow characterized the comprehensive Russophobia long before it had been reborn in a new form, long before it had been reborn in the form that it currently poses as a threat from the East. And then he continues:

“And when we are asked how we intend to replace what we have destroyed and lost, how we propose to bless humanity, what spiritual and cultural rejuvenation we can bring into world evolution, then we must either remain silent or spout senseless phrases.”

I do not want to say this; one of the greatest of Russian minds characterizes what appears to be a Russian delusion from the East, thus.

“And,”

he continues,

“If Danilevsky's bitter confession is true, that Russia is beginning to fall ill”

written in the 80s of the nineteenth century,

"then, instead of asking ourselves why Europe does not love us, we should rather be asking ourselves a different, more important question that is closer to us: why and how did we become ill? Russia is still quite physically strong, as it showed in the last Russian war; so our suffering is a moral one. We are burdened, in the words of an old writer, by the sins hidden in the national character and of which we are not aware - and so it is above all necessary to bring these into the light of clear consciousness."

Written in the 80s of the nineteenth century!

“As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts must only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question for true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of Russia's sins.”

The question may arise: Is this the Russian patriot who has ignited the present war with the ideals of the madness that Soloviev rejects here, or is it Soloviev who, in this way, vigorously points out what Russia needs and what most certainly could not have led to this war?

Italy, to justify what it has developed from its world conquest plan as its current actions – it would have to be much too detailed, one would come to far too much detail if one wanted to somehow characterize the strange words of d'Annunzio, but I think one will be able to add the whole peculiarity of what sounds like a justification from there to the justification of the opposing states, if one merely points out the one thing: The Italian people were looking for a justification for their current actions, and many, many words were spoken; but one in particular was always mentioned, which indicates that The French need a new sophistry, the English need a new mask, the Russians need their old delusion, and the Italians need – a new saint. Through completely profane means, egoism has been canonized! For the word of “holy egoism” as the justifying essence of that which arises from below is repeatedly heard by us anew.

It can be left to objective judgment to decide whether this – as one may speak of the innermost part of the German, as in the sense of the world view of German idealism – whether this justifies more objectively the mission of the German people or the sophistry, the mask, the delusion there and even the new saint there.

In view of the world view of German idealism, esteemed attendees, as in one of the nuances in the essence of the German national soul, to which the German so intimately wants to and must connect today, in view of the many nuances in this national soul, also precisely on this nuance of German idealism, the world view of German idealism, one may also recognize in it that which I believe, that in all modesty – without being guilty of that which is so slanderously spoken about the German from all sides today – in all modesty the German may say that he recognizes in three ways that which is his duty today. He feels in three ways that it is his duty today. He feels justified in this threefold way before the innermost part of his conscience, his conscience as a human being and as a part of history, knowing that he has no right to speak in a sophistical way about other inferior national spirits, about their barbaric habits. He need only call to mind the most sacred part of his own striving and recognize this most sacred part of his own inner striving as the precious, holy legacy of German prehistory. Then he can feel that the one thing by which he knows how to position himself powerfully in the German present and in the right way - is the love of the German past and of all that German past has been handed down to the German of the present, which he must adhere to, for which he stands up in love because he recognizes it in his innermost being, which makes him happy, which inspires him, which lifts him above pain and suffering. It is the love for the past.

And what sustains him through the difficult duties of the present is his faith in the present of the German spirit, in the power that flows from this German spirit into the present and that must bring about what will maintain the German spirit in its position as firmly as it has been handed down from the bright past. Love for the past and faith in the present join the third, which flows from the other two, and which pours into the soul strength and confidence, which follow from the other two in a living way. They join, the first two, love and faith, to the well-founded hope, flowing from the innermost nature of Germanness - to use this Fichte word - for the future fulfillment of that which the past has inspired for the German, for which the German present strives. Love for the past, faith in the present, hope for the future: these are what hold us together in our hard, but also blissful present, in body, soul, and spirit.

10.

[ 1 ] All striving of mankind, as of every living thing, exists for the satisfying, in the very best way, of impulses and instincts implanted by nature. When human beings strive toward morality, justice, knowledge and art, this is done because morality, justice, and so forth, are means by which these human instincts can develop themselves according to their nature. The instincts would atrophy without these means. Now it is a peculiarity of the human being that he forgets this connection between his life needs and his natural impulses, and regards these means for a natural, powerful life as something with unconditional intrinsic value. Man then says that morality, justice, knowledge, and so on, must be attained for their own sakes. They do not have an intrinsic value in that they serve life, but rather that life first receives value when it strives toward these ideal possessions. Man does not exist to live according to his instincts, like an animal, but that he may ennoble his instincts by placing them at the service of higher purposes. In this way man comes to the point where he worships as ideals what he had first created for the satisfaction of his impulses, ideals which first give his life true inspiration. He demands subjugation to ideals which he values more highly than himself. He frees himself from the mother ground of reality and wishes to give his existence a higher meaning and purpose. He invents an unnatural origin for his ideals. He calls them “God's will,” the “eternal, moral laws.” He wishes to strive after “truth for truth's sake,” “virtue for virtue's sake.” He considers himself a good human being only when he has supposedly succeeded in controlling his egotism, that is, his natural instincts, and in following one ideal goal selflessly. For such an idealist, that man is considered ignoble and “evil” who has not attained such self control.

[ 2 ] Now all ideals originally stem from natural instincts. Also what Christ considers as virtue, which God has revealed to Him, man has originally discovered as satisfying some instinct or other. The natural origin is forgotten, and the divine imagined and superimposed. A similar situation exists in relation to those virtues which the philosophers and preachers of morality set up.

[ 3 ] If mankind had only sound instincts and would determine their ideals according to them, then this theoretical error about the origin of these ideals would not be harmful. The idealists, of course, would have false opinions about the origin of their goals, but in themselves these goals would be sound, and life would have to flourish. But there are unsound instincts which are not directed toward strengthening and fostering life, but rather toward weakening and stunting it. These take control of the so-called theoretical confusion and make it into the practical life purpose. They mislead man into saying, A perfect man is not the one who wants to serve himself and his life, but the one who devotes himself to the realization of an ideal. Under the influence of these instincts, the human being does not merely remain at the point where he erroneously ascribes an unnatural or supernatural origin to his ideals, but he actually makes such ideals part of himself, or takes over from others those which do not serve the necessities of life. He no longer strives to bring to light the forces lying within his own personality, but he lives according to a pattern which has been forced upon him. Whether he takes this goal from a religion or whether he himself determines it on the basis of certain assumptions not lying within his own nature, is of no importance. The philosopher who has in mind a universal purpose for mankind, and from this purpose directs his moral ideals, lays just as many fetters upon human nature as the originator of a religion who says to mankind, This is the goal which God has set for you, and this you must follow. It is also of no importance whether man intends to become an image of God or whether he invents an ideal of the “perfect human being,” and resembles this as much as possible. Only the single human being, and only the impulses and instincts of this single human being are real. Only when he directs his attention to the needs of his own person, can man experience what is good for his life. The single human being does not become “perfect” when he denies himself and resembles a model, but when he brings to reality that within him which strives toward realization. Human activity does not first acquire meaning because it serves an impersonal, external purpose; it has its meaning in itself.

[ 4 ] The anti-idealist of course will also see in unsound human activity an instinctive expression of man's primeval instincts. He knows that only out of instinct can the human being accomplish even what is contrary to instinct. But he will of course attack that which is against instinct, just as the doctor attacks a sickness, although the doctor knows that the sickness has arisen out of certain natural causes. Therefore, we may not accuse the anti-idealist by saying, you assert that everything toward which man strives, therefore all ideals as well, have originated naturally; and yet you attack idealism. Indeed, ideals arise just as naturally as sickness, but the healthy human being fights idealism just as he fights sickness. The idealist, however, regards ideals as something which must be cherished and protected.

[ 5 ] According to Nietzsche's opinion, the belief that man will become perfect only when he serves “higher” goals is something that must be overcome. Man must recollect and know that he has created ideals only to serve himself. To live according to nature is healthier than to chase after ideals which supposedly do not originate out of reality. The human being who does not serve impersonal goals, but who looks for the purpose and meaning of his existence in himself, who makes his own such virtues as serve the unfoldment of his own power, and the perfection of his own might—Nietzsche values this human being more highly than the selfless idealist.

[ 6 ] This it is what he propounds through his Zarathustra. The sovereign individuum which knows that it can live only out of its own nature and which sees its personal goal in a life configuration which fits its own being: for Nietzsche this is the superman, in contrast to the human being who believes that life has been given to him as a gift to serve a purpose lying outside of himself.

[ 7 ] Zarathustra teaches the superman, that is, the human being who understands how to live according to nature. He teaches those human beings who regard their virtues as their own creations; he tells them to despise those who value their virtues higher than themselves.

[ 8 ] Zarathustra has gone into the loneliness to free himself from humility according to which men bow down before their virtues. He reappears among mankind only when he has learned to despise those virtues which fetter life and do not wish to serve life. He moves lightly like a dancer, for he follows only himself and his will, and disregards the lines which are indicated by the virtues. No longer does the belief rest heavily upon him that it is wrong to follow only himself. Now Zarathustra no longer sleeps in order to dream about ideals; he is a watcher who faces reality in freedom. For him the human being who has lost himself and lies in the dust before his own creations, is like a polluted stream. For him the superman is an ocean which takes this stream into itself without becoming impure. For the superman has found himself; he recognizes himself as the master and creator of his virtues. Zarathustra has experienced grandeur in that all those virtues which are placed above the human being have become repugnant to him.

[ 9 ] “What is the greatest which you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt, the hour in which your happiness becomes repugnance, and likewise your intellect and your virtue.”

11.

[ 10 ] The wisdom of Zarathustra is not in accord with the thinking of the “modern cultured person.” The latter would like to make all human beings equal. If all strive after only one goal, they say, then there is contentment and happiness upon earth. They require that man should restrain his special, personal wishes, and serve only the whole, the universal happiness. Peace and tranquility will then reign upon earth. If everyone has the same needs, then no one disturbs the orbits of others. The individual should not regard himself and his individual goals, but everyone should live according to their once-determined pattern. All individual living should vanish, and all become part of a universal world order.

[ 11 ] “No shepherd and one flock! Everyone desires the same, everyone is equal; he who feels otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

[ 12 ] “‘Formerly all the world was insane,’ say the best of them, and blink.

[ 13 ] “People are clever and know all that has happened, so there is no end to their mocking. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled; otherwise it disturbs the digestion.”

[ 14 ] Zarathustra had been a lone-dweller too long to pay homage to such wisdom. He had heard the peculiar tones which sound from within the personality when man stands apart from the noise of the market place where one person merely repeats the words of another. And he would like to shout into the ears of human beings: Listen to the voices which sound forth in each individual among you. For only those voices are in accord with nature which tell; each one of what he alone is capable. An enemy of life, of the rich full life, is the one who allows these voices to resound unheard, and who listens to the common cry of mankind. Zarathustra will not speak to the friends of the equality of all mankind. They can only misunderstand him. For they would believe that his superman is that ideal model which all of them should resemble. But Zarathustra wishes to make no prescriptions of what men should be; he will refer each one only to himself, and will say to him, Depend upon yourself, follow only yourself, put yourself above virtue, wisdom, and knowledge. Zarathustra speaks to those who wish to find themselves, not to a multitude who search for a common goal; his words are intended for those companions who, like him, go their own way. They alone understand him because they know that he does not wish to say, Look, there is the superman, become like him, but, Behold, I have searched for myself; I am as I teach you to be; go likewise and search for your own self; then you have the superman.

[ 15 ] “To the one who dwells alone will I sing my song and to the twain-dweller; and unto him who still has ears for the unheard, his heart will I burden with my happiness.”

12.

[ 16 ] Two animals, the serpent, the wisest, and the eagle, the proudest, accompany Zarathustra. They are the symbols of his instincts. Zarathustra values wisdom because it teaches the human being to find the hidden paths to reality; it teaches him to know what he needs for life. And Zarathustra also loves pride because pride arouses self-estimation in the human being, through which he comes to regard himself as the meaning and purpose of his existence. Pride does not place his wisdom, his virtue, above his own self, in favor of “higher, more sacred” goals. Still, rather than lose pride Zarathustra would lose wisdom.

For wisdom which is not accompanied by pride does not regard itself as the work of man. The one who lacks pride and self-esteem, believes his wisdom has come to him as a gift from heaven. Such a one says, Man is a fool, and he has only as much wisdom as the heavens wish to grant him.

[ 17 ] “And should my wisdom abandon me—Oh, it loves to fly away—may my pride then still fly with my foolishness”

13.

[ 18 ] The human spirit must pass through three metamorphoses until he finds himself. This is Zarathustra's teaching. At first the spirit is reverent. He calls that virtue which weighs him down. He lowers himself in order to raise his virtue. He says, All wisdom comes from God, and I must follow God's paths. God imposes the most difficult upon me to test my power, whether it proves itself to be strong and patient in its endurance. Only the one who is patient is strong. I will obey, says the spirit at this level, and will carry out the commandments of the world-spirit, without asking the meaning of these commandments. The spirit feels the pressure which a higher power exerts upon it. The spirit does not take its own paths, but the paths of him he serves.

The time arrives when the spirit becomes aware that no God speaks to him. Then he wishes to be free, and to become master of his own world. He searches after a thread of direction for his destiny. He no longer asks the world spirit how he should arrange his own life. Rather, he strives after a firm command, after a sacred “you shall.” He looks for a yardstick by which he can measure the worth of things. He searches for a sign of differentiation between good and evil. There must be a rule for my life which is not dependent on me, on my own will: so speaks the spirit at this level. To this rule will I submit myself. I am free, the spirit means to say, but only free to obey such a rule.

[ 9 ] At this level, the spirit conquers. It becomes like the child at play, who does not ask, How shall I do this or that, but who merely carries out his own will, who follows only his own self. “The spirit now demands his own will; he who is lost in the world has now won his own world.”

[ 20 ] “I named for you three metamorphoses of the spirit: How the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last, a child. Thus spake Zarathustra.”

14.

[ 21 ] What do the wise desire who place virtue above man? asks Zarathustra. They say, Only he who has done his duty, he who has followed the sacred “thou shalt,” can have peace of soul. Man shall be virtuous so that he may dream of fulfilled duty, about fulfilled ideals, and feel no pangs of conscience. The virtuous say that a man with pangs of conscience resembles one who is asleep and whose rest is disturbed by bad dreams.

[ 22 ] “Few know it, but one must have all virtues to sleep well. Do I bear false witness, do I commit adultery?

[ 23 ] “Do I lust after my neighbor's wife? All this is incompatible with good sleep.

[ 24 ] “Peace with God and with thy neighbor: this is what good sleep needs. And peace also with thy neighbor's devil! Otherwise it will haunt you at night.”

[ 25 ] The virtuous person does not do what his impulse tells him, but what produces his peace of soul. He lives so that he may peacefully dream about life. It is even more pleasant for him when his sleep, which he calls peace of soul is disturbed by no dreams. This means that it is most pleasant for the virtuous person when from some source or other he receives rules for his actions, and for the rest, he can enjoy his peace. “His wisdom is called, Wake, in order to sleep well. And indeed, if life had no meaning, and I should have to choose nonsense, to me this would be the most worthy nonsense to choose,” says Zarathustra.

[ 26 ] For Zarathustra also there was a time when he believed that a spirit dwelling outside of the world, a God, had created the world. Zarathustra imagined him to be an unsatisfied, suffering God. To create satisfaction for himself, to free himself from his suffering, God created the world; Zarathustra thought this, once upon a time. But he learned to understand that this is an illusion which he himself had created. “O you brothers, this God whom I created, was the work of a man and illusion of man, like all gods!” Zarathustra has learned to use his senses and to observe the world. And he becomes satisfied with the world; no longer do his thoughts sweep into the world beyond. Formerly he was blind, and could not see the world. For this reason he looked for salvation outside of the world. But Zarathustra has learned to see and to recognize that the world has meaning in itself.

[ 27 ] “My ego taught me a new pride, which I teach mankind: not to hide the head in the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which carries meaning for the earth.”

15.

[ 8 ] The idealists have split man into body and soul, have divided all existence into idea and reality. And they have made the soul, the spirit, the idea, into something especially valuable in order that they may despise the reality, the body all the more. But Zarathustra says, There is but one reality, but one body, and the soul is only something in the body, the ideal is only something in reality. Body and soul of man are a unity; body and spirit spring from one root. The spirit is there only because a body is there, which has strength to develop the spirit in itself. As the plant unfolds the blossom from itself, so the body unfolds the spirit from itself.

[ 29 ] “Behind your thinking and your feeling, my brother stands a mighty master, an unknown wise one: he is called self. He lives within your body, he is your body.”

[ 30 ] The one with a sense for reality searches for the spirit, for the soul, in and about the real. He looks for intellect in the real; only he who considers reality as lacking in spirituality, as merely “natural,” as “coarse”—he gives the spirit, the soul a special existence. He makes reality merely the dwelling place of the spirit. But such a one also lacks the sense for the perception of the spirit itself. Only because he does not see the spirit in the reality does he search for it elsewhere.

[ 31 ] “There is more intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom.”

[ 32 ] “The body is one great intelligence, a plurality with one meaning, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.

[ 33 ] “An instrument of your body is also your small intelligence, my brother, which you call spirit, a small instrument and a toy of your great intelligence.”

[ 34 ] He is a fool who would tear the blossom from the plant and believe the broken blossom will still develop into fruit. He is also a fool who would separate the spirit from nature and believe such a separated spirit can still create.

[ 35 ] Human beings with sick instincts have undertaken the separation of spirit and body. A sick instinct can only say, My kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of a sound instinct is only this world.

16.

[ 36 ] But what ideals have they not created, these despisers of reality! If we look them in the eye, these ideals of the ascetics, who say, Turn your gaze away from this world, and look toward the other world, what then is the meaning of these ascetic ideals? With this question, and the suppositions with which he answers them, Nietzsche has let us look into the very depths of his heart, left unsatisfied by the more modern Western culture. (Genealogie der Moral, Section 3)

[ 37 ] When an artist like Richard Wagner, for example, becomes a follower of the ascetic ideal during his last period of creativity, this does not have too much significance. The artist places his entire life above his creations. He looks down from above upon his realities. He creates realities which are not his reality. “A Homer would not have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles, or if Goethe had been a Faust.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 4). Now when such an artist once begins to take his own existence seriously, wishes to change himself and his personal opinion into reality, it is no wonder when something very unreal arises. Richard Wagner completely reversed his knowledge about his art when he became familiar with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Previously, he considered music as a means of expression which required something to which it gives expression—the drama. In his Opera and Drama, written in 1851, he says that the greatest error into which one can fall with regard to the opera is,

“That a means of expression (the music) is made the purpose, but the purpose of expression (the drama) is made the means.”

[ 38 ] He professed another opinion after he had come to know Schopenhauer's teaching about music. Schopenhauer is of the opinion that through music, the essence of the thing itself speaks to us. The eternal Will, which lives in all things, becomes embodied in all other arts only through images, through the ideas; music is no mere picture of the will: the will reveals itself in it directly. What appears to us in all our reflections only as image, the eternal ground of all existence, the will, Schopenhauer believed he heard directly in the sound of music. A message from the other world is brought to Schopenhauer by music. This point of view affected Richard Wagner. Thus he lets music no longer be a means of expression of real human passions as they are embodied in drama, but as a “sort of mouthpiece for the intrinsic essence of things, a telephone from the other world.” Richard Wagner now no longer believed in expressing reality in tones; “henceforth he talked not only music, this ventriloquist of God, but he talked metaphysics: no wonder that one day he talked ascetic ideals.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 5).

[ 39 ] If Richard Wagner had merely changed his opinion about the significance of music, then Nietzsche would have had no reason to approach him. At most Nietzsche could then say, Besides his art works Wagner has also created all sorts of wrong theories about art. But that during the last period of his creativity Wagner embodied in his an works the Schopenhauer belief in the world beyond, that he utilized his music to glorify the flight from reality, this was distasteful to Nietzsche.

[ 40 ] The Case of Wagner means nothing when it is a question of the significance of the glorification of the world beyond at the expense of this world, when it is a question of the significance of ascetic ideals. Artists do not stand on their own feet. As Richard Wagner is dependent upon Schopenhauer, so “at all times were the artists valets to a morality, a philosophy or a religion.”

[ 41 ] It is quite different when the philosophers represent a contempt of reality, of ascetic ideals. They do this out of a deep instinct.

[ 42 ] Schopenhauer betrayed this instinct through the description which he gives of the creating and enjoying of a work of art. “That the work of art makes the understanding of ideas, in which the aesthetic enjoyment consists, so much easier, depends not merely upon the fact that through emphasis of the material and discarding of the immaterial, art represents the things more clearly and more characteristically, but it depends much more upon the fact that the complete silence of the will, necessary for the objective understanding of the nature of things, is achieved with most certainty through the fact that the object looked upon does not lie at all within the realm of things which are capable of a relationship to will.” (Additions to the third book of Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Reflection, Chapter 30) “When an outer circumstance or an inner soul mood lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, then knowledge takes away the slavish service of the will when attention is no longer directed to the motive of willing, but comprehends the things free from their relationship to will, that is, without interest, without subjectivity, considers them purely objectively, completely surrendered to them insofar as they are mere representations, not insofar as they are motives; then is begun the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods. Then, during that moment, we are freed from the contemptible pressure of the will; we celebrate the sabbath of the will's hard labor, the wheel of Ixion stands still.” Ibid. ¶ 38)

[ 43 ] This is a description of a type of aesthetic enjoyment which appears only with philosophers. Nietzsche contrasts this with another description “which a real spectator and artist has made—Stendhal,” who calls the beautiful une promesse de bonheur. Schopenhauer would like to exclude all will interest, all real life, when it is a question of the observation of a work of art, and would enjoy it only with the spirit; Stendhal sees in the work of art a promise of happiness, therefore, an indication for life, and sees the value of art in this connection of art with life.

[ 44 ] Kant demanded that a beautiful work of art should please without interest: that is, that the work of art lift us out of the reality of life and give us purely spiritual enjoyment.

[ 45 ] What does the philosopher look for in artistic enjoyment? Escape from reality. The philosopher wants to be transferred into an atmosphere foreign to reality, through works of art. Thereby he betrays his basic instinct. The philosopher feels most satisfied during those moments when he can be freed from reality. His attitude toward aesthetic enjoyment proves that he does not love this reality.

[ 46 ] In their theories the philosophers do not tell us what the spectator whose interests are turned toward life, demands of a work of art, but only what is of interest to themselves. And for the philosopher the turning away from life is very useful. He does not wish to have his hidden thought paths crossed by reality. Thinking flourishes better when the philosopher turns away from life. Then it is no wonder when this philosophical basic instinct becomes a mood almost hostile to life. We find that such a soul mood is cultivated by the majority of philosophers. And a very close connection exists between the fact that the philosopher develops and elaborates his own antipathy toward life into a teaching, and the fact that all men acknowledge such a teaching. Schopenhauer did this. He found that the noise of the world disturbed his thought work. He felt that one could meditate about reality better when one escaped from this reality. At the same time, he forgot that all thinking about reality has value only when it springs from this reality. He did not observe that the withdrawing of the philosopher from reality can occur only when the philosophical thoughts which have arisen out of this separation from life can be of higher service to life. When the philosopher wishes to force the basic instinct, which is only of value to him as a philosopher, upon the whole of mankind, then he becomes an enemy to life.

[ 47 ] The philosopher who does not regard the flight from the world as a means of creating thoughts friendly to the world, but as a purpose, as a goal in itself, can only create worthless things. The true philosopher flees from reality on the one hand, only that he may penetrate deeper into it on the other. But it is conceivable that this basic instinct can easily mislead the philosopher into considering the flight from the world as such to be valuable. Then the philosopher becomes a representative of world negation. He teaches a turning away from life, the ascetic ideal. He finds that “A certain asceticism, a hard and joyous renunciation of the best will, belongs to the favorable conditions of highest spirituality, as well as to their most natural consequences. So from the beginning it is not surprising if the ascetic ideal is never treated, particularly by the philosophers, without some objections.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 9)

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[ 48 ] The ascetic ideals of the priests have another origin. What develops in the philosopher as the luxuriant grow of an impulse he considers justified, forms the basic ideal of the working and creating of the priest. The priest sees error in the surrender of the human being to real life; he demands that one respect this life less in face of another life, which is directed by higher than merely natural forces. The priest denies that real life has meaning in itself, and he challenges the idea that this meaning is given to it through an inoculation of a higher will. He sees life in the temporal as imperfect, and he places opposite to it an eternal, perfect life. The priest teaches a turning away from the temporal and entering into the eternal, the unchangeable. As especially significant of the way of thinking of the priest, I would like to quote a few sentences from the famous book, Die Deutsche Theologie, German Theology, which stems from the fourteenth century, and about which Luther says that from no other book, with the exception of the Bible, and the writings of St. Augustine, has he learned more about what God, Christ, and man are, than from this. Schopenhauer also finds that the spirit of Christianity is expressed more perfectly and more powerfully in this book than elsewhere. After the writer, who is unknown to us, has explained that all things of the world are imperfect and incomplete, in contrast to the perfect, “which in itself and in its essence comprehended all things and decided all things, and without which, and outside of which no true being exists, and in which all things have their being,” he continues that man can penetrate into this being only if he has lost all “creaturedom, creationdom, egodom, selfdom, and everything similar,” nullifying them in himself. What has flowed out of the perfect, and what the human being recognizes as his real world, is described in the following way: “That is no true being, and has no being other than in the perfect, but it is an accident or a radiance, and an illusion which is no being, or has no being other than in the fire from which the radiance streams, or in the sun, or in the light. The book says, as do belief, and truth, sin is nothing but that the creature turns away from the unchangeable good and turns toward the changeable, that is, that it turns away from the perfect to the incomplete and imperfect, and most of all to itself. Now note, If this creature takes on something good as existence, life, knowledge, understanding, possession, in short, all those things which one calls good, and thinks that they are good, or that it itself is good or that good belongs to it, or stems from it, just as often as this happens, so often does it turn itself away. In what way did the devil do anything different—or what was his fall and turning away—than that he thought he was something, and that that something was his, and also that something belonged to him? This acceptance, and his ‘I’ and his ‘me,’ his ‘to me,’ and his ‘mine’—all this was his turning away and his fall. Thus it is still ... For all that one considers good or would call good, belongs to no one, except to the eternal, true Good, who is God alone, and he who takes possession of it does wrong, and is against God.” (Chapters 1, 2, 4, of German Theology, 3rd edition)

[ 49 ] These sentences express the attitude of every priest. They express the particular character of the priesthood. And this character is exactly the opposite of that which Nietzsche describes as the more valuable, more worthy of life. The more highly valued type of man wants to be everything that he is, through himself alone; he wants all that he considers good and calls good to belong to no one but himself.

[ 50 ] But this mediocre attitude is no exception. It is one of “the most widespread, oldest facts that exist. Read from a distant star, perhaps, the writing of our earth existence would lead to the conclusion that the earth is the really ascetic star, a corner of dissatisfied, proud, disagreeable creatures who cannot free themselves from a deep dissatisfaction with themselves, with the earth, and with all life.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 11) For this reason, the ascetic priest is a necessity, since the majority of human beings suffer from an “obstruction and fatigue” of life-forces because they suffer from reality. The ascetic priest is the comforter and physician of those who suffer from life. He comforts them by saying to them, This life from which you are suffering is not the real life; for those who suffer from this life, the true life is much more easily attainable than for the healthy, who depend upon this life and surrender themselves to it. Through such expressions the priest breeds contempt for, and betrayal of the real life. He finally brings forth the state of mind which says that to obtain the true life, the real life must be denied. In the spreading of this mood, the ascetic priest seeks his strength. Through the training of this soul mood, he eliminates a great danger which threatens the healthy, the strong, the ego-conscious, from the unhappy, the suppressed, the broken-down. The latter hate the healthy and the happy in body and soul, who take their strength from nature. This hatred, which must express itself, is that the weak wage a continuous war of annihilation against the strong. This the priest tries to suppress. Therefore, he represents the strong as those who lead a life which is worthless and unworthy of human beings, and, on the other hand, asserts that true life is obtainable only by those who were hurt by the earth life. “The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, shepherd, and champion of the sick herd; in this way we understand his tremendous historic mission for the first time. The domination over the sufferers is his kingdom. His instinct directs him toward it. In this he finds his own special art, his mastery, his form of happiness.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 15)

It is no wonder that such a way of thinking finally leads to the fact that its followers not only despise life, but work directly toward its destruction. If it is said to man that only the sufferer, the weak, can really attain a higher life, then in the end the suffering, the weakness will be sought. To bring pain to oneself, to kill the will within oneself completely, will become the goal of life. The victims of this soul-mood are the saints. “Complete chastity and denial of all pleasure are for him who strives toward real holiness; throwing away of all possessions, desertion of every dwelling, of all dependents, deep, complete loneliness, spent in profound, silent reflection, with voluntary penitence and frightful, slow self-torture, to the complete mortification of the will, which finally dies voluntarily by hunger, or by walking toward crocodiles, by throwing oneself from sacred mountain heights in the Himalayas, by being buried alive, or by throwing oneself under the wheels of the Juggernaut driven among the statues of the idols, accompanied by the song, jubilation and dance of the Bajadere,” these are the ultimate fruits of the ascetic state of mind. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, World as Will and Representation, ¶ 68).

[ 51 ] This way of thinking has arisen out of the suffering of life, and it directs its weapons against life. When the healthy person, filled with joy of life, is infected by it, then it destroys the sound, strong instincts within him. Nietzsche's work towers above this in that in face of this teaching he brings out the value of another point of view for the healthy, for those of well-being. May the malformed, the ruined, find their salvation in the teaching of the ascetic priests; Nietzsche will gather the healthy about him, and will give them advice which will please them more than all ideals which are inimical to life.

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[ 52 ] The ascetic ideal is implanted in the guardians of modern science also. Of course, this science boasts that it has thrown all old beliefs overboard, and that it holds fast only to reality. It will consider nothing valid which cannot be counted, calculated, weighed, seen or grasped. That through this “one degrades existence to a slavish exercise in arithmetic and a game for mathematicians,” is of indifference to the modern scholar. (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 373). Such a scholar does not ascribe to himself the right to interpret the happenings of the world, which pass before his senses and his intellect, so that he can control them with his thinking. He says, Truth must be independent of my art of interpretation, and it is not up to me to create truth; instead, I must allow the world to dictate truth to me through world phenomena.

[ 53 ] The point to which this modern science finally comes when it contains within itself all arranging of world phenomena, has been expressed by Richard Wahle, a follower of this science, in a book which has just appeared: Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende, The Totality of Philosophy and its End. “What can the spirit who peers into this world-house and turns over the questions about the nature and goal of happenings, find as an answer at last? It has happened that as he stood so apparently in opposition to the world surrounding him, he became disentangled, and in a flight from all events, merged with all events. He no longer ‘knew’ the world. He said, I am not sure that those who know exist; perhaps there are simply events. They occur, of course, in such a way that the concept of a knowing could develop prematurely and without justification, and ‘concepts’ have sprouted up to bring light into these events, but they are will-o-the-wisps, souls of the desires for knowing, pitiful postulates of an empty form of knowledge, saying nothing in their evidence. Unknown factors must hold sway in the transitions. Darkness was spread over their nature. Events are the veil of the nature of truth.”

[ 54 ] That the human personality, out of its own capacities can instill meaning into the happenings of reality, and can supplement the unknown factors which rule in the transitions of events: modern scholars do not think at all about this. They do not want to interpret the flight from appearances by ideals which stem from their own personality. They want merely to observe and describe the appearances, but not interpret them. They want to remain with the factual, and will not allow the creative fantasy to make a dismembered picture of reality.

[ 55 ] When an imaginative natural scientist, for example, Ernst Haeckel, out of the results of individual observations, formulates a total picture of the evolution of organic life on earth, then these fanatics of factuality throw themselves upon him, and accuse him of transgression against truth. The pictures which he sketched about life in nature, they cannot see with their eyes or touch with their hands. They prefer the impersonal judgment to that which is colored by the spirit of the personality. They would prefer to exclude the personality completely from their observations.

[ 56] It is the ascetic ideal which controls the fanatics of factuality. They would like a truth beyond the personal individual judgment. What the human being can “imagine into” things, does not concern these fanatics. “Truth” to them is something absolutely perfect—a God; man should discover it, should surrender to it, but should not create it. At present, the natural scientists and the historians are enthused by the same spirit of ascetic ideals. Everywhere they enumerate in order to describe facts, and nothing more. All arranging of facts is forbidden. All personal judgment is to be suppressed.

[ 57 ] Atheists are also found among these modern scholars. But these atheists are freer spirits than their contemporaries who believe in God. The existence of God cannot be proven by means of modern science. Indeed, one of the brilliant minds of modern science, DuBois-Reymond, expressed himself thus about the acceptance of a “world-soul:” before the natural scientist decides upon such an acceptance he demands “That somewhere in the world, there be shown to him, bedded in nerve ganglia and nourished with warm, arterial blood under the correct pressure, a bundle of cell ganglia and nerve fibers, depending in size on the spiritual capacity of the soul.” (Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Limits of Natural Science, page 44). Modern science rejects the belief in God because this belief cannot exist beside their belief in “objective truth.” This “objective truth,” however, is nothing but a new God who has been victorious over the old one. “Unqualified, honest atheism (and we breathe only its air; we, the most intellectual human being of this age) does not stand in opposition to that (ascetic) ideal to the extent that it appears to; rather, it is one of its final phases of evolution, one of its ultimate forms, one of its logical consequences. It is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two thousand year training in truth, which finally forbids itself the lie of the belief in God.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 27). Christ seeks truth in God because He considers God the source of all truth. The modern atheist rejects the belief in God because his god, his ideal of truth, forbids him this belief. In God the modern spirit sees a human creation; in “truth” he sees something which has come into being by itself without any human interference. The really “free spirit” goes still further. He asks, “What is the meaning of all will for truth?” Why truth? For all truth arises in that man ponders over the appearance of the world, and formulates thoughts about things. Man himself is the creator of truth. The “free spirit” arrives at the awareness of his own creation of truth. He no longer regards truth as something to which he subordinates himself; he looks upon it as his own creation.

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[ 58 ] People endowed with weak, malformed instincts of perception do not dare to attach meaning to world appearances out of the concept-forming power of their personality. They wish the “laws of nature” to stand before their senses as actual facts. A subjective world-picture, formed by the instrumentality of the human mind, appears worthless to them. But the mere observation of world events presents us with only a disconnected, not a detailed world picture. To the mere observer of things, no object, no event, appears more important, more significant than another. When we have considered it, the rudimentary organ of an organism which perhaps appears to have no significance for the evolution of life, stands there with exactly the same demand upon our attention as does the most noble part of the organism, so long as we look merely at the actual facts. Cause and effect are appearances following upon each other, which merge into each other without being separated by anything, so long as we merely observe them. Only when with our thinking, we begin to separate the appearances which have merged into each other, and relate them to each other intellectually, does a regular connection become visible. Thinking alone explains one appearance as cause and another as effect. We see a raindrop fall upon the earth and produce a groove. A being which is unable to think will not see cause and effect here, but only a sequence of appearances. A thinking being isolates the appearances, relates the isolated facts, and labels the one factor as cause, the other as effect. Through observation the intellect is stimulated to produce thoughts and to fuse these thoughts with the observed facts into a meaningful world-picture. Man does this because he wishes to control the sum of his observations with his thoughts. A thought-vacuum before him presses upon him like an unknown power. He opposes this power and conquers it by making it conceivable. All counting, weighing and calculating of appearances also comes about for the same reason. It is the will to power which lives itself out in this impulse for knowledge. (I have represented a process of knowledge in detail in my two writings, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, and Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom.)

[ 59 ] The dull, weak intellect does not want to admit to himself that it is he himself who interprets the appearances as expression of his striving toward power. He considers his interpretation also as an actual fact. And he asks, How does a man come to find such an actual fact in reality? He asks, for example, How is it that the intellect can recognize cause and effect in two appearances, one following upon the other? All theorists of knowledge, from Locke, Hume, Kant, down to the present time, have occupied themselves with this question. The subtleties which they have applied to this examination, have remained unfruitful. The explanation is given in the striving of the human intellect toward power. The question is not at all, Are judgments, thoughts about appearances, possible? but, Does the human intellect need such judgments? He needs them, hence he uses them, not because they are possible. It depends upon this: “To understand that for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves such judgments must be believed to be true, though naturally they still may be false judgments!” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 11) “And fundamentally we are inclined to assert that the most erroneous judgments are the most indispensable for us; that man could not live without belief in logical fiction, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, likening one's self to one's self, without a constant falsification of the world through number; that renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.” (Ibid, ¶ 4). Whoever regards this saying as a paradox, should remind himself how fruitful is the use of geometry in relation to reality, although nowhere in the world are really geometric, regular lines, planes, etc., to be found.

[ 60 ] When the dull, weak intellect understands that all judgments about things stem from within him, are all produced by him, and are fused with the observations, then he does not have the courage to use these judgments unreservedly. He says, judgments of this kind cannot transmit knowledge of the “true essence” of things to us. Therefore, this “true essence” remains excluded from our knowledge.

[ 61 ] The weak intellect tries in still another way to prove that no security can be attained through human knowledge. He says, The human being sees, hears, touches things and events. Thereby he perceives impressions of his sense organs. When he perceives a color, a sound, then he can only say, My eye, my ear are determined in a certain way to perceive color and tone. Man perceives nothing outside of himself except a determination, a modification of his own organs. In perceiving, his eyes, his ears, etc., become stimulated to feel in a certain way; they are placed in a certain condition. The human being perceives this condition of his own organs as colors, tones, odors, etc. In all perceiving, the human being perceives only his own conditions. What he calls the outer world is composed only of his own conditions; therefore, in a real sense it is his work. He does not know the things which cause him to spin the outer world out of himself; he only knows the effects upon his organs. In this light, the world appears like a dream which is dreamed by the human being, and is occasioned by something unknown.

[ 62 ] When this thought is brought to its consequential conclusion, it brings with it the following afterthought. Man knows only his own organs, insofar as he perceives them; they are parts of his world of perception. And man becomes conscious of his own self only to the extent that he spins pictures of the world out of himself. He perceives dream pictures, and in the midst of these dream pictures, an “I,” by which these dream pictures pass; every dream picture appears to be an accompaniment of this “I.” One can also say that each dream picture appears in the midst of the dream world, always in relation to this “I.” This “I” clings to these dream pictures as determination, as characteristic: Consequently, as a determination of dream pictures, it is a dream-like being itself. J. G. Fichte sums up this point of view in these words: “What develops through this knowing, and out of this knowing, is but a knowing. But all knowing is merely reflection, and something is always demanded of it which conforms to the picture. This demand cannot be satisfied by knowledge; and a system of knowledge is necessarily a system of mere pictures, without any reality, without significance, and without purpose.” For Fichte, “all reality” is a wonderful “dream without a life, which is being dreamed about, without a spirit who dreams.” It is a dream “which is connected with itself in a dream.” (Bestimmung des Menschen, Mission of Man, 2nd Book)

[ 63 ] What meaning has this whole chain of thoughts? A weak intellect, which does not dare to give meaning to the world out of himself, looks for this meaning in the world of observations. Of course, he cannot find it there because mere observation is void of thoughts.

[ 64 ] A strong, productive intellect uses his world of concepts to interpret the observations. The weak, unproductive intellect declares himself to be too powerless to do this, and says, I can find no sense in the appearances of the world; they are mere pictures which pass by me. The meaning of existence, therefore, must be looked for outside, beyond the world of appearances. Because of this, the world of appearances, that is, the human reality, is explained as a dream, an illusion, a Nothing, and “the true being” of appearances is searched for in a “thing in itself,” for which no observation, no knowledge is sufficient, that is, about which the knower can form no idea. Therefore, for the knower, this “true being” is a completely empty thought, the thought about a Nothing. For those philosophers who speak about the “thing in itself,” a dream is a world of appearances. But this Nothing they regard as the “true being” of the world of appearances. The whole philosophical movement which speaks about the “thing in itself,” and which, in more modern times, leans mainly upon Kant, is the belief in this Nothing; it is philosophical nihilism.

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[ 65 ] When the strong spirit looks for the cause of a human action and achievement, he will always find it in the will power of the individual personality. But the human being with a weak, timid intellect will not admit this. He doesn't feel himself sufficiently strong to make himself master and guide of his own actions. He interprets the impulses which guide him as the commandments of another power. He does not say, I act as I want to act, but he says, I act according to a law which I must obey. He does not wish to command himself; he wishes to obey. At one level of their development, human beings see their impulses to action as commandments of God; at another level, they believe that they are aware of a voice inside them, which commands them. In the latter case they do not dare to say, It is I myself who command; they assert, In me a higher will expresses itself. One person is of the opinion that it is his conscience which speaks to him in each individual case, and tells him how he should act, while another asserts that a categorical imperative commands him. Let us hear what J. G. Fichte says: “Something simply will happen because something just must happen; conscience now demands of me that it happen, and simply for this reason I am here; I am to realize it, and for that I have intellect. I am to achieve it, and for that I have strength.” (Ibid, Third Book) I mention J. G. Fichte's sayings with great pleasure because he maintained with iron consequence his opinion of the “weak and malformed.” He maintained it to the very end. One can only realize where this opinion finally leads when one looks for it where it was thought through to the end; one cannot depend upon those who are incomplete thinkers, who think each thought only to the middle.

[ 66 ] The fount of knowledge is not sought in individual personalities by those who think in the above mentioned way, but beyond personality in a “will in itself.” Just this “will in itself” shall speak to the individual as “God's voice,” as the “voice of conscience,” as categorical imperative, and so on. This is to be the universal leader of human actions, and the fount of all morality, and is also to determine the purpose of moral actions. “I say that it is the commandment to action itself which gives me a purpose through itself. It is the same in me which urges me to think that I should act in such a way, urges me to believe that out of these actions something will result; it opens the view to another world.” “As I live in obedience, at the same time I live in the reflection of its purposes; I live in the better world which it promises me.” (Ibid, Third Book) He who thinks thus, will not set a goal for himself; he will allow himself to be led to a goal by the higher will which he obeys. He will free himself from his own will, and will make himself into an instrument for “higher” purposes in words which express the highest; achievements of obedience and humility known to him. Fichte described the abandonment to this “eternal Will in itself.” “Lofty, living Will, which no name names and no concept encompasses, may I raise my soul to you, for you and I are not separated. Your voice sounds within me; mine resounds in you; and all my thoughts, when they are true and good, are thought within you. In you, the incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and the world becomes perfectly comprehensible to me. All problems of my existence are solved, and the most complete harmony arises within my spirit” ... “I veil my countenance before you. I lay my hand upon my mouth. As you yourself are, and as you appear to yourself, I can never understand, as certainly as I never could become you. After I have lived a thousand thousand spirit lives, I shall comprehend you as little as I do now in this hut upon earth.” (Ibid, Third Book)

[ 67 ] Where this will is finally to lead man, the individual cannot know. Therefore the one who believes in this will confesses that he knows nothing about the final purposes of his actions. For such a believer in a higher will, the goals which the individual sets for himself, are not “true goals.” Therefore, in place of the positive individual goals created by the individuum, he places a final purpose for the whole of mankind, the thought content of which, however, is a Nothing. Such a believer is a moral nihilist. He is caught in the worst kind of ignorance imaginable. Nietzsche wanted to deal with this type of ignorance in a special section of his incompleted work, Der Wille zur Macht, The Will to Power.

[ 68 ] We find the praise of moral nihilism again in Fichte's Bestimmung des Menschen, Destiny of Man (Third Book): “I shall not attempt what is denied me by the very Being of Limitations, and I shall not attempt what would avail me nothing. What you yourself are, I do not care to know. But your relationships and your connections with me, the Specific, and toward everything Specific, lie open before my eyes; may I become what I must become, and all this surrounds me in more brilliant clarity than the consciousness of my own existence. You create within me the knowledge of my duty, of my destiny, in the order of intelligent beings; how, I know not, nor do I need to know. You know, and you recognize what I think and what I will; how you can know it, through what act you achieve this consciousness, I understand nothing. Yes, I know very well that the concept of an act and of a special act of consciousness is valid only for me, but not for you, Infinite Being. You govern because you will that my free obedience has consequences to all eternity; the act of your willing I do not understand, and only know that it is not similar to mine. Your act and your will itself is a deed. But the way you work is exactly opposite to that way which I alone am able to understand. You live and you are because you know, will, and effectuate, ever present in the limited intellect, but you are not as I conceive a being to be through eternities.”

[ 69 ] Nietzsche places opposite to moral nihilism those goals which the creating individual will places before itself. Zarathustra calls to the teachers of the gospel of submission:

[ 70 ] “These teachers of the gospel of submission. Everywhere where there is smallness and sickness and dirt, there they creep like lice, and only my disgust prevents me from crushing them under foot.

“Attend! This is my gospel for their ears: I am Zarathustra, the godless, who asks, Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?

“I am Zarathustra, the godless; where do I find my equal? All those are my equals who determine their will out of themselves, and who push all submission away from themselves.”

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[ 71 ] The strong personality which creates goals is disdainful of the execution of them. The weak personality, on the other hand, carries out only what the Divine Will, the “voice of conscience” or the “categorical imperative” says Yes to. That which is in accordance with this Yes, the weak person describes as good, that which is contrary to this Yes, it describes as evil. The strong personality cannot acknowledge this “good and evil,” for he does not acknowledge that power from which the weak person allows his “good and evil” to be determined. What the strong person wills is for him good; he carries it through in spite of all opposing powers. What disturbs him in this execution, he tries to overcome. He does not believe that an “Eternal Will” guides the decisions of all individual wills toward a great harmony, but he believes that all human development comes out of the will-impasses of the individual personalities, and that an eternal war is waged between the expressions of individual wills, in which the stronger will always conquers the weaker.

[ 72 ] The strong personality who lays down his own laws and sets his own goals, is described by the weaker and less courageous as evil, as sinful. He arouses fear, for he breaks through traditional ways; he calls that worthless which the weak person is accustomed to call valuable, and he invents the new, the previously unknown, which he describes as valuable. “Each individual action, each individual way of thinking causes shuddering; it is almost impossible to estimate exactly what those more uncommon, more select, more criminal spirits must have suffered in the course of history so that they were always regarded as bad, as dangerous, yes, even so that they themselves considered themselves in this light. Under the domination of custom, all originality of every kind has evoked a bad conscience. Up to this very time the heaven of the most admirable has become more darkened than it would have had to be.” (Morgenröte, Dawn, p. 9)

The truly free spirit makes original decisions immediately; the unfree spirit decides in accordance with his background. “Morality is nothing more (specifically, nothing more!) than obedience to customs of whatever nature these may be; but customs are the traditional way of acting and evaluating.” (Ibid, p. 9). It is this tradition which is interpreted by the moralists as “eternal will,” as “categorical imperative.” But every tradition is the result of natural impulses, of lives of individuals, of entire tribes, nations, and so on. It is also the product of natural causes, for example, the condition of the weather in specific localities. The free spirit explains that he does not feel himself bound by such tradition. He has his individual drives and impulses, and feels that these are not less justified than those of others. He transforms these impulses into action as a cloud sends rain to the earth's surface when causes for this exist. The free spirit takes his stand opposite to what tradition considers to be good and evil. He creates his own good and evil for himself.

[ 73 ] “When I came to men, I found them sitting there on an old presumption: they all assumed that they had long known what was good and evil for man.

“All debating about virtue seemed to them an old, worn-out affair, and he who wanted to sleep well, still spoke about good and evil before going to sleep.

“This sleepiness I disturbed by my teaching; what is good and what is evil, nobody knows; then let it be the creator.

“But that is he who creates man's goal and who gives meaning to the earth and to the future. It is he who first brings it about that there is something good and evil.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 74 ] Besides this, when the free spirit acts according to tradition, he does this because he adopts the traditional motives, and because he does not consider it necessary in certain cases to put something new in place of the traditional.

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[ 75 ] The strong person seeks his life's task in working out his creative self. This self-seeking differentiates him from the weak person who, in the selfless surrender to that which he calls “good,” sees morality. The weak preach selflessness as the highest virtue, but their selflessness is only the consequence of their lack of creative power. If they had any creative self they would then have wished to manifest it. The strong person loves war because he needs war to manifest his creation in opposition to those powers hogstile to him.

[ 76 ] “Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage, and as for your thoughts, if they succumb, then shall your very uprightness nevertheless attain triumph over their collapse!

[ 77 ] “You shall love peace as a means to a new war, and a short peace more than a long one.

[ 78 ] “I do not challenge you to work, but to fight. I do not challenge you to peace, but to victory. Your work be your struggle! Your peace be a victory!

[ 79 ] “You say that the good circumstance may even sanctify war, but I say to you, it is the ‘good’ war which sanctifies every circumstance.

[ 80 ] “War and courage have accomplished more great things than love for one's neighbor. Until now, not your sympathy but your courage has saved the unfortunate.” (Zarathustra, 1st Part, About War and People of War)

[ 81 ] The creative person acts without mercy and without regard for those who oppose. He has no cognizance of the virtue of those who suffer, namely, of sympathy. Out of his own power come his impulses to creativity, not out of his feelings for another's suffering. That power may conquer, for this he fights, not that suffering and weakness may be cared for. Schopenhauer has described the whole world as a hospital, and asked that the actions springing out of sympathy for suffering be considered as the highest virtue. Thereby he has expressed the morality of Christendom in another form than the latter itself has done. He who creates, though, does not feel himself destined to render these nursing services. The efficient ones, the healthy, cannot exist for the sake of the weak, the sick. Sympathy weakens power, courage, and bravery.

[ 82 ] Sympathy seeks to maintain just what the strong wishes to overcome, that is, the weakness, the suffering. The victory of the strong over the weak is the meaning of all human as well as of all natural development. “Life in its essence is a usurping, a wounding, an overcoming of the strange, of all that is misfit and weak. Life is the suppressing, the hardening and forcing through of one's own forms, the embodying, and, in the least and mildest, the erupting in boils.” (Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 259).

[ 83 ] “And do you not wish to be a dealer of destiny and unmerciful? How else can you be mine or conquer with me?”

“And if your hardness will not strike as lightning and cleave and cut, how then can you ever create with me?

“For the creators are hard, and it must seem to you a blessing to press your hand upon the millennia as if upon wax.

“A blessing to inscribe upon the will of millennia as if upon bronze, harder than bronze, more precious than bronze. Entirely hard is the most precious alone.

“This new tablet, O my brothers, I raise above you, thou shalt become hard.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 84 ] The free spirit makes no demands upon sympathy. He would have to ask the one who would pity him, Do you consider me as weak, that I cannot bear my suffering by myself? For him, each expression of sympathy is humiliating. Nietzsche shows this aversion of the strong person toward sympathy in the fourth part of Zarathustra. In his wanderings Zarathustra arrives in a valley which is called “Snake Death.” No living beings are found here. Only a kind of ugly green snake comes here in order to die. The “most ugly human being” has found this valley. He does not wish to be seen by anyone because of his ugliness. In this valley he sees no one besides God, but even His countenance he cannot bear. The consciousness that God's gaze has penetrated into all these regions becomes a burden for him. For this reason he has killed God, that is, he has killed the belief in God within himself. He has become an atheist because of his ugliness. When Zarathustra sees this human being, he is overcome by what he believed he had destroyed within himself forever: that is, sympathy for the most frightful ugliness. This becomes a temptation for Zarathustra, but very soon he rejects the feeling of sympathy and again becomes hard. The most ugly man says to him, “Your hardness honors my ugliness. I am too rich in ugliness to be able to bear the sympathy of any human being. Sympathy humiliates.”

[ 85 ] He who requires sympathy cannot stand alone, and the free spirit wishes to stand completely on his own.

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[ 86 ] The weak are not content with pointing to the natural will to power as the cause of human actions. They do not merely seek for natural connections in human development, but they seek for the relationship of human action to what they call the “will in itself,” the eternal, moral world order. They accuse the one who acts contrary to this world order. And they also are not satisfied to evaluate an action according to its natural consequences, but they claim that a guilty action also draws with it moral consequences, i.e., punishment. They consider themselves guilty if their actions are not in accord with the moral world order; they turn away in horror from the fount of evil in themselves, and they call this feeling bad conscience. The strong personality, on the other hand, does not consider all these concepts valid. He is concerned only with the natural consequences of actions. He asks, Of what value for life is my way of acting? Is it in accord with what I have willed? The strong cannot grieve when an action goes wrong, when the result does not accord with his intentions. But he does not blame himself. For he does not measure his way of acting by supernatural yardsticks. He knows that he has acted thus in accord with his natural impulses, and at most he can regret that these are not better. It is the same with his judgment regarding the actions of others. A moral evaluation of actions he does not grant. He is an amoralist.

[ 87 ] What tradition considers to be evil the amoralist looks upon as the outstreaming of human instincts, in fact, as good. He does not consider punishment as morally necessary but merely as a means of eradicating instincts of certain human beings which are harmful to others. According to the opinion of the amoralist, society does not punish for this reason but because it has “moral right” to expiate the guilt, and because it proves itself stronger than the individual who has instincts which are antagonistic to the whole. The power of society stands against the power of the individual. This is the natural connection between an “evil” action of the individual and the justification of society, leading to the punishment of the individual. It is the will to power, namely, the acting of these instincts present in the majority of human beings, which expresses itself in the administration of justice in society. Thus, each punishment is the victory of a majority over an individual. Should the individual be victorious over society, then his action must be considered good, and that of others, evil. The arbitrary right expresses only what society recognizes as the best basis of their will to power.

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[ 88 ] Because Nietzsche sees in human action only an outstreaming of instincts, and these latter differ according to different people, it seems necessary to him that their actions also be different. For this reason, Nietzsche is a decided opponent of the democratic premise, equal rights and equal duties for all. Human beings are dissimilar; for this reason their rights and duties also must be dissimilar. The natural course of world history will always point out strong and weak, creative and uncreative human beings. And the strong will always be destined to determine the goals of the weak. Yes, still more: the strong will make use of the weak as the means toward a certain goal, that is, to serve as slaves. Nietzsche naturally does not speak about the “moral” right of the strong to keep slaves. “Moral” rights he does not acknowledge. He is simply of the opinion that the overcoming of the weak by the strong, which he considers as the principle of all life, must necessarily lead toward slavery.

[ 89 ] It is also natural that those overcome will rebel against the overcomer. When this rebellion cannot express itself through a deed it will at least express itself in feeling, and the expression of this feeling is revenge, which dwells steadily in the hearts of those who in some way or other have been overcome by those more fortunately endowed. Nietzsche regards the modern social democratic movement as a streaming forth of this revenge. For him, the victory of this movement would be a raising of the deformed, poorly endowed to the disadvantage of those better equipped. Nietzsche strove for exactly the opposite: the cultivation of the strong, self-dominant personality. And he hates the urge to equalize everything and to allow the sovereign individuality to disappear in the ocean of universal mediocrity.

[ 90 ] Not that each shall have the same and enjoy the same, says Nietzsche, but each should have and enjoy what he can attain by his own personal effort.

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[ 91 ] What the human being is worth depends only upon the value of his instincts. By nothing else can the value of the human being be determined. One speaks about the worth of work, or the value of work, or that work shall ennoble the human being. But in itself work has absolutely no value. Only through the fact that it serves man does it gain a value. Only insofar as work presents itself as a natural consequence of human inclinations, is it worthy of the human being. He who makes himself the servant of work, lowers himself. Only the human being who is unable to determine his own worth for himself, tries to measure this worth by the greatness of his work, of his achievement. It is characteristic of the democratic bourgeoisie of modern times that in the evaluation of the human being they let themselves be guided by his work. Even Goethe is not free from this attitude. He lets his Faust find the full satisfaction in the consciousness of work well done.

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[ 92 ] Art also has value, according to Nietzsche's opinion, only when it serves the life of the individual human being. And in this Nietzsche is a representative of the opinion of the strong personality, and rejects everything that the weak instincts express about art. All German aesthetes represent the point of view of the weak instincts. Art should represent the “infinite” in the “finite,” the “eternal” in the “temporal,” and the “idea” in the “reality.” For Schelling, as an example, all sensual beauty is but a reflection of that infinite beauty which we can never perceive with our senses. The work of art is never there for the sake of itself, nor is beautiful through what it is, but only because it reflects the idea of the beautiful. The sense picture is only a means of expression, only the form for a supersensible content, and Hegel calls the beautiful, “the sense filled appearance of the Idea.” Similar thoughts also can be found among other German aesthetes. For Nietzsche, art is a life-fostering element, and only when this is the case, has it justification. The one who cannot bear life as he directly perceives it, transforms it according to his requirements, and thereby creates a work of art. And what does the one who enjoys it demand from the work of art? He demands heightening of his joy of life, the strengthening of his life forces, satisfaction of his requirements, which reality does not do for him. But in the work of art, when his senses are directed toward the real, he will not see any reflection of the divine or of the superearthy. Let us hear how Nietzsche describes the impression Bizet's Carmen made upon him: “I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a better musician, a better listener. Is it at all possible to listen still better? I continue to bury my ears beneath this music; I hear its wellsprings. It seems to me that I experience its development, its evolving. I tremble in face of dangers which accompany any daring adventure. I am delighted with happy fortunes for which Bizet is not responsible. And, strange, fundamentally I do not think about it, nor do I even know how much I ponder about it. For, meanwhile, entirely different thoughts run through my head. Has one noticed that music frees the spirit, gives wings to the thoughts, that one becomes more of a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician, that the grey heavens of abstraction are lighted by flashes of lightning, that the light is strong enough for all the tracery of things, the large problems near enough for grasping, and the world is seen as from a mountain? I have just defined philosophical pathos. And, inadvertently, answers fall into my lap, a small hail of ice and wisdom, of solved problems. Where am I? Bizet makes me fruitful. All good makes me fruitful. I have no other gratitude, I also have no other measure for that which is good.” (Case of Wagner, ¶ 1.) Since Richard Wagner's music did not make such an impression upon him, Nietzsche rejected it: “My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections. ... As a fact, my petit fait vrai is that I no longer breathe easily when this music first begins to work upon me; that soon my foot becomes angry with it and revolts: it desires to beat, dance, march. It demands first of all from the music the pleasures which lie in good walking, striding dancing. But doesn't my stomach also protest? My heart? My circulation? Do not my intestines also grieve? Do I not become unknowingly hoarse? And so I ask myself, ‘What does my entire body really want from this music?’ I believe that it seeks levitation. It is as if all animal functions become accelerated through these light, bold, abandoned, self-sure rhythms; as if the brazen, leaden life would lose its weight through the golden tender flow of oily melodies. My melancholy heaviness could rest in the hide and seek and in the abysses of perfection; but for that I need music.” (Nietzsche contra Wagner)

[ 93 ] At the beginning of his literary career Nietzsche deceived himself about what his instincts demanded from art, and thus at that time he was a disciple of Wagner. He had allowed himself to be lead astray into idealism through the study of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He believed in idealism for a certain time, and conjured up before himself artistic needs, ideal needs. Only in the further course of his life did he notice that all idealism was exactly contrary to his impulses. Now he became more honest with himself. He expressed only what he himself felt. And this could only lead to the complete rejection of Wagner's music, which as a mark of Wagner's last working aim, assumed an ever more ascetic character, as mentioned above.

[ 94 ] The aesthetes who demand that art make the ideal tangible, that it materialize the divine, in this field present an opinion similar to the philosophical nihilist in the field of knowledge and morality. In the objects of art they search for a beyond which, before the sense of reality, dissolves itself into a nothingness. There is also an aesthetic nihilism.

[ 95 ] This stands in contrast to the aestheticism of the strong personality, which sees in art a reflection of reality, a higher reality, which man would rather enjoy than the commonplace.

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[ 96 ] Nietzsche places two types of human beings opposite each other: the weak and the strong. The first type looks for knowledge as an objective fact, which should stream from the outer world into his spirit. He allows himself to have his good and evil dictated by an “eternal world will” or a “categorical imperative.” He identifies each action as sin which is not determined by this world will, but only by the creative self-will, a sin which must entail a moral punishment. The weak would like to prescribe equal rights for all human beings, and to determine the worth of the human being according to an outer yardstick. He would finally see in art a reflection of the divine, a message from the beyond. The strong, on the contrary, sees in all knowledge an expression of the will to power. Through knowledge he attempts to make all things conceivable, and, as a consequence, to make them subject to himself. He knows that he himself is the creator of truth, and that no one but himself can create his good and his evil. He regards the actions of human beings as the consequences of natural impulses, and lets them count as natural events which are never regarded as sins and do not warrant a moral judgment. He looks for the value of a man in the efficiency of the latter's instincts. A human being with instincts of health, spirit, beauty, perseverance, nobility he values higher than one with instincts of weakness, ugliness or slavery. He values a work of art according to the degree to which it enhances his forces.

[ 97 ] Nietzsche understands this latter type of man to be his superman. Until now, such supermen could come about only through the coalescing of accidental conditions. To make their development into the conscious goal of mankind is the intention of Zarathustra. Until now, one saw the goal of human development in various ideas. Here Nietzsche considers a change of perception to be necessary. “The more valuable type has been described often enough, but as a happy fortune, as an exception, never as consciously willed. Moreover, he specifically is most feared; until now he was almost the most terrible one; and out of the terror the reverse type was willed, bred, achieved: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man—the Christ.” (Antichrist, ¶ 3.)

[ 98 ] Zarathustra's wisdom is to teach about the superman, toward which that other type was only a transition.

[ 99 ] Nietzsche calls this wisdom, Dionysian. It is wisdom which is not given to man from without; it is a self-created wisdom. The Dionysian wise one does not search; he creates. He does not stand as a spectator outside of the world he wishes to know; he becomes one with his knowledge. He does not search after a God; what he can still imagine to himself as divine is only himself as the creator of his own world. When this condition extends to all forces of the human organism, the result is the Dionysian human being, who cannot misunderstand a suggestion; he overlooks no sign of emotions; he has the highest level of understanding and divining instinct, just he possesses the art of communication in the highest degree. He enters into everything, into every emotion; he transforms himself continually. In contrast to the Dionysian wise one, stands the mere observer, who believes himself to be always outside his objects of knowledge, as an objective suffering spectator. The Apollonian stands opposite to the Dionysian human being. The Apollonian is he who, “above all, keeps the eye very active so that it receives the power of vision.” Visions, pictures of things which stand beyond the reality of mankind: the Apollonian spirit strives for these, and not for that wisdom created by himself.

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[ 100 ] The Apollonian wisdom has the character of earnestness. It feels the domination of the Beyond, which it only pictures, as a heavy weight, as an opposing power. The, Apollonian wisdom is serious for it believes itself to be in possession of a message from the Beyond, even if this is only transmitted through pictures and visions. The Apollonian spirit wanders about, heavily laden with his knowledge, for he carries a burden which stems from another world. And he takes on the expression of dignity because, confronted with the annunciation of the infinite, all laughter must be stilled.

[ 101 ] But this laughing is characteristic of the Dionysian spirit. The latter knows that all he calls wisdom is only his own wisdom, invented by him to make his life; easier. This one thing alone shall be his wisdom: namely, a means which permits him to say Yes to life. To the Dionysian human being, the spirit of heaviness is repellent, because it does not lighten life, but oppresses it. The self-created wisdom is a merry wisdom, for he who creates his own burden, creates one which he can also carry easily. With this self-created wisdom, the Dionysian spirit moves lightly through the world like a dancer.

[ 102 ] “But that I am good to wisdom, and often too good, is because she reminds me so very much of life itself. [ 103 ] She has the eye of life, her laughter and even her golden fishing rod; how can I help it that the two are so alike? [ 104 ] Into your eye I gazed recently, O Life: gold I saw flickering in your eyes of night! My heart stood still before such joy.[ 105 ] A golden boat I saw flickering on the waters of night, a sinking, drinking, ever-winking, golden, rocking boat!

[ 106 ] “Upon my foot, so wild to dance, you cast a glance, a laughing questioning, a melting, rocking glance. [ 107 ] Twice only you shook your castanet with tiny hands. Thereupon, my foot rocked with urge to dance.

[ 108 ] “My heels arched themselves, my toes listened to understand you. Indeed, the dancer carries his ear—in his toes!” (Zarathustra – 2nd and 3rd Parts. “The Dance Song.”)

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[ 109 ] Since the Dionysian spirit draws out of himself all impulses for his actions and obeys no external power, he is a free spirit. A free spirit follows only his own nature. Now of course in Nietzsche's works one speaks about instincts as the impulses of the free spirit. I believe that here under one name Nietzsche has collected a whole range of impulses requiring a consideration which goes more into individual differentiations. Nietzsche calls instincts those impulses for nourishment and self preservation present in animals, as well as the highest impulses of human nature, for example, the urge toward knowledge, the impulse to act according to moral standards, the drive to refresh oneself through works of art, and so on. Now, of course, all these impulses are forms of expression of one and the same fundamental force, but they do represent different levels in the development of this power. The moral instincts, for example, are a special level of instinct. Even if it is only admitted that they are but higher forms of sensory instinct, nevertheless they do appear in a special form within man's existence. This shows itself in that it is possible for man to carry out actions which cannot be led back to sensory instincts directly, but only to those impulses which can be defined as higher forms of instinct. The human being himself creates impulses for his own actions, which are not to be derived from his own sensory impulses, but only from conscious thinking. He puts individual purposes before himself, but he puts these before himself consciously, and there is a great difference whether he follows an instinct which arose unconsciously and only afterward was taken into consciousness, or whether he follows a thought which he produced from the very beginning with full consciousness. When I eat because my impulse for nourishment drives me to it, this is something essentially different from my solving a mathematical problem. But the conceptual grasp of world phenomena presents a special form of general perceptability. It differentiates itself from mere sensory perception. For the human being, the higher forms of development of the life of instinct are just as natural as the lower. If both of them are not in harmony, then he is condemned to unfreedom. The case may be that a weak personality, with entirely healthy sense instincts, has but weak spiritual instincts. Then of course he will develop his own individuality in regard to the life of senses, but he will draw the thought impulses of his actions from tradition. Disharmony can develop between both worlds of impulses. The sense impulses press toward a living out of one's own personality; the spiritual impulses are fettered to outer authority. The spiritual life of such a personality will be tyrannized by the sensuous, the sensuous life by the spiritual instincts. This is because both powers do not belong together, and have not grown out of a single state of being. Therefore, to the really free personality belongs not only a soundly developed individualized life of sense impulses, but also the capacity to create for himself the thought impulses for life. Only that man is entirely free who can produce thoughts out of himself which can lead to action, and in my book, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, I have called the capacity to produce pure thought motives for action, “moral fantasy.” Only the one who has this moral fantasy is really free, because the human being must act in accordance with conscious motives. And when he cannot produce the latter out of himself, then he must let himself be given them by outer authority or by tradition, which speaks to him in the form of the voice of conscience. A man who abandons himself merely to sensual instincts, acts like an animal; a human being who places his sensuous instincts under another's thoughts, acts unfreely; only the human being who creates for himself his own moral goals, acts in freedom. Moral fantasy is lacking in Nietzsche's teaching. The one who carries Nietzsche's thoughts to their conclusion must necessarily come to this insight. But in any case, it is an absolute necessity that this insight be added to Nietzsche's world conception. Otherwise one could always object to his conception thus: Indeed the Dionysian man is no slave to tradition or to the “will beyond,” but he is a slave of his own instincts.

[ 110 ] Nietzsche looked toward the original, essential personality of the human being. He tried to separate this essential personality from the cloak of the impersonal in which it had been veiled by a world conception hostile to reality. But he did not come to the point where he differentiated the levels of life within the personality itself. Therefore he underestimated the significance of consciousness for the human personality. “Consciousness is the last and most recent development of the organic, and consequently the least prepared and the weakest. Out of consciousness come innumerable errors, which bring it about that an animal, a human being, disintegrates earlier than otherwise would be necessary—collapses ‘over his destiny,’ as Homer says. If the preserved union of instincts were not so overwhelmingly powerful, if, on the whole it did not serve as a regulator, mankind would go to pieces because of their confused judgment, spinning fantasies with open eyes through their superficiality and gullibility. In short, just because of their consciousness, mankind must be destroyed,” says Nietzsche (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 11.)

[ 111 ] Indeed, this is entirely admitted, but it does not affect the truth that the human being is free only insofar as he can create within his consciousness thought motives for his actions.

[ 112 ] But the contemplation of thought motives leads still further. It is a fact based upon experience, that these thought motives which the human being produces out of himself, nevertheless manifest an overall consistency to a certain degree in single individuals. Also, when the individual human being creates thoughts in complete freedom out of himself, these correspond in a certain way with the thoughts of other human beings. For this reason, the free person is justified in assuming that harmony in human society enters of its own accord when society consists of sovereign individualities. With this opinion he can confront the defender of unfreedom, who believes that the actions of a majority of human beings only accord with each other when they are guided by an external power toward a common goal. For this reason the free spirit is most certainly not a disciple of that opinion which would allow the animal instincts to reign in complete freedom, and hence would do away with all law and order. Moreover, he demands complete freedom for those who do not merely wish to follow their animal instincts, but who are able to create their own moral impulses, their own good and evil.

[ 113 ] Only he who has not penetrated Nietzsche so far as to be able to form the ultimate conclusions of his world conception, granted that Nietzsche himself has not formed them, can see in him a human being who, “with a certain stylized pleasure, has found the courage to unveil what perhaps lurked hidden in some of the most secret depths of the souls of flagrant criminal types.” (Ludwig Stein, Friedrich Nietzsches Weltanschauung und ihre Gefahren, Friedrich Nietzsche's World Conception and its Dangers, p. 5.) Still today the average education of a German professor has not reached the point of being able to differentiate between the greatness of a personality and his small errors. Otherwise, one could not observe that such a professor's criticism is directed toward just these small errors. I believe that true education accepts the greatness of a personality and corrects small errors, or brings incomplete thoughts to conclusion.

[ 1 ] It is not possible to penetrate into the nature of waking consciousness without observing the state through which the human being passes during sleep, and it is impossible to solve the riddle of life without considering death. For a human being in whom there is no feeling for the significance of supersensible knowledge, doubts may arise in regard to such knowledge because of the way in which it carries on its considerations regarding sleep and death. Supersensible knowledge is able to understand the motives that give rise to such a distrust. For it is quite comprehensible when someone says that man is here for an active, purposeful life and his accomplishments are based upon his devotion to it; furthermore, that the occupation with states such as sleep and death can only result from an inclination to idle dreaming and can only lead to empty imaginings. The rejection of what is thus held to be “fantastic” may readily be looked upon as the expression of a healthy soul, and an inclination toward “idle dreaming” of this kind as something unhealthy, characteristic of persons lacking in vital energy and the joy of life, and who are incapable of “real accomplishment.” It is wrong to declare forthwith that such an opinion is false, for it contains a certain kernel of truth. It is a quarter-truth that must be supplemented by the other three-quarters belonging to it, and a person who sees the one-quarter very well, but who has no conception of the other three-quarters, will only be made distrustful by our combating the true one-quarter. It must, in fact, be acknowledged without question that a consideration of what lies concealed in sleep and death is unhealthy if it leads to a weakening, to an estrangement from real life, and we must admit that much that has called itself occult science in the world from time immemorial, and is practiced also today under that name, bears a character unhealthy and hostile to life. But this unsound element does not spring from true supersensible knowledge. On the contrary, the real fact is the following. Just as man cannot always be awake, he also cannot, in regard to the real conditions of life in its widest sense, get along without what the supersensible is able to offer. Life continues during sleep, and the forces that are active and creative during the waking state receive their strength and renewal from what is given to them by sleep. Thus it is with what can be observed in the manifest world. The domain of the world is greater than the field of this observation, and what is known about the visible universe must be supplemented and fructified by what can be known about the invisible. A human being who does not continually draw strength for his weakened forces from sleep must of necessity destroy his life. Likewise, a world concept that is not fructified by a knowledge of the hidden world must lead to desolation. It is similar with death. Living beings succumb to death in order that new life may arise. It is precisely the knowledge of the supersensible that can shed clear light upon the beautiful words of Goethe: “Nature has invented death that she might have abundant life.” Just as there could be no life in the ordinary sense of the word without death, so can there be no true knowledge of the visible world without insight into the supersensible. All knowledge of what is visible must plunge again and again into the invisible in order to evolve. Thus it is evident that the science of the supersensible alone makes the life of revealed knowledge possible. It never weakens life when it appears in its true form. When, having been left to itself, life becomes weak and sickly, supersensible knowledge strengthens it and makes it, ever and again, fresh and healthy.

[ 2 ] When man sinks into sleep, there is a change in the relationship of his members. That part of the sleeping man that lies in bed contains the physical and ether bodies, but not the astral body and not the ego. Because the ether body remains united with the physical body in sleep, the life-activities continue; for, the moment the physical body were left to itself, it would have to crumble to dust. What, however, is extinguished in sleep includes the mental images, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, the capacity to express a conscious will, and similar facts of existence. The astral body is the bearer of all this. An unbiased point of view can naturally never entertain the thought that in sleep the astral body is destroyed along with all pleasure and pain and the world of ideas and will. It simply exists in an other state. In order that the human ego and astral body not only be filled with joy and sorrow and all the other facts of existence mentioned above, but also have a conscious perception of them, it is necessary that the astral body be united with the physical and ether bodies. In the waking state, all three are united; in the sleeping state, the astral body withdraws from the physical and ether bodies. It assumes a different kind of existence from the one that falls to its lot during its union with the physical and ether bodies. It is the task of supersensible knowledge to consider this other kind of existence in the astral body. Observed from the standpoint of the outer world, the astral body disappears in sleep; supersensible perception must follow its life until it again takes possession of the physical and ether bodies on awakening. Just as in all cases where it is a matter of knowledge of the hidden things and events of the world, so supersensible observation is necessary for the discovery of the facts of the sleeping state in their particular form. If, however, what can be discovered by means of supersensible observation has once been uttered, it is comprehensible to truly unbiased thinking, for the processes of the hidden world reveal themselves in their effects in the manifest world. If it is seen how the revelations of supersensible perception make the sensory processes comprehensible, such a corroboration by means of life itself is the proof that can be required for such things. Anyone not desiring to employ the means for acquiring supersensible perception, indicated later on in this book, can have the following experience. He may at first accept the evidence of supersensible perception and then apply it to the manifest facts of his experience. He may, in this way, find that life has thereby become clear and comprehensible, and the more exact and thorough his observations of ordinary life are, the more readily will he come to this conviction.

[ 3 ] Although the astral body, during sleep, experiences no mental pictures and also no pleasure and pain, it does not remain inactive. On the contrary, it is just in the sleep state that a lively activity is incumbent upon it. It is an activity into which it must again and again enter in rhythmical succession, if it has been for a time active in connection with the physical and ether bodies. Just as the pendulum of a clock, after having swung to the left and returned again to the center, must swing to the right because of the momentum gathered in its left swing, so the astral body and the ego living within it, after having been active for a time in the physical and ether bodies must, as a result of this, unfold a subsequent activity, body-free, in a surrounding world of soul and spirit. For the ordinary conditions of human life, unconsciousness occurs during this body-free condition of the astral body and ego because it presents the antithesis of the state of consciousness developed in the waking state through union with the physical and ether bodies, just as the swing of the pendulum to the right is the antithesis of the swing to the left. The necessity of entering into this state of unconsciousness is experienced by the soul-spirit nature of man as fatigue. But this fatigue is the expression of the fact that the astral body and ego, during sleep, prepare themselves to transform, during the following waking state, what has arisen in the physical and ether bodies through purely organic formative activity when freed from the presence of the spirit and soul elements. This unconscious formative activity and what takes place in the human being during and by means of consciousness are antitheses that must alternate in rhythmic succession.—The physical body can retain the form and stature suitable for man only by means of the human ether body, which in turn receives its proper forces from the astral body. The ether body is the builder, the architect, of the physical body, but it can only build in the right way if it receives the impulse for this purpose from the astral body. In the astral body reside the prototypes according to which the ether body gives form to the physical body. During the waking state, the astral body is not filled with these prototypes of the physical body, or at least only to a certain degree, for, during the waking state, the soul puts its own images in the place of these prototypes. When man directs the senses toward his environment he forms, by means of perception, thought images that are likenesses of the world about him. These likenesses are at first disturbances for the images that stimulate the ether body to maintain the physical body. Were the human being able, through his own activity, to bring to his astral body the images that are required to give the right impulse to the ether body, then there would be no such disturbance. This very disturbance, however, plays an important role in human existence. It expresses itself in the fact that the prototypes for the ether body do not act to the full extent of their power during waking life. The astral body carries on its waking activity within the physical body. In sleep, it works upon the physical body from without.^c3

[ 4 ] Just as the physical body, for example, needs the outer world, which is of like nature to itself, to supply it with the means of subsistence, something similar is also the case with the astral body. Just imagine a physical human body removed from its surrounding world. It would have to perish. This demonstrates that without the whole physical environment it is not possible for the physical body to exist. In fact, the entire earth must be as it is, if human physical bodies are to exist upon it. The whole human body is, in reality, only a part of the earth; indeed, in a wider sense, a part of the whole physical universe. In this respect its relationship is similar, for example, to that of a finger to the entire human body. If the finger is severed from the hand, it can no longer continue to be a finger; it withers. This would also happen to the human body were it removed from the organism of which it is a member, from the life conditions offered it by the earth. If we were to lift it a sufficient number of miles above the earth's surface, it would perish just as the finger perishes that has been severed from the hand. If less consideration has been given to this fact in respect of the physical body and the earth than in respect of the finger and the body, it is simply because the finger cannot stroll about on the body in the way that the human being walks about on the earth, and because in the former case the dependence is more obvious.

[ 5 ] Just as the physical body belongs to the physical world in which it is embedded, so does the astral body belong to its own world; during waking life, however, it is torn out of this world of its own. What happens there may be illustrated by an analogy. Imagine a vessel filled with water. A drop within this whole mass of water is not something isolated. Let us, however, take a little sponge and with it absorb a drop from the whole. Something similar occurs with the human astral body on awaking. During sleep it is in a world like itself; in a certain sense it constitutes something that belongs to this world. On awaking, the physical and ether bodies suck it up; they fill themselves with it. They contain the organs through which the astral body perceives the outer world. But in order that it may acquire this perception, it must separate itself from its own world. From this world it can only receive the prototypes that it needs for the ether body.—Just as the physical body receives its food, for example, from its environment, so during the sleep state the astral body receives the images from the world about it. It lives there actually in the universe, separated from the physical and ether bodies, in the same universe out of which the entire human being is born. The source of the images through which the human being receives his form lies in this universe. During sleep he is harmoniously inserted into it, and during the waking state he lifts himself out of this all-encompassing harmony in order to gain external perception. In sleep, his astral body returns to this cosmic harmony and on awaking again brings back to his bodies sufficient strength from it to enable him to dispense with his dwelling within the cosmic harmony for a certain length of time. The astral body, during sleep, returns to its home and on awaking brings back with it renewed forces into life. These forces that the astral body brings with it on awaking find outer expression in the refreshment that healthy sleep affords. Further descriptions of occult science will show that this home of the astral body is more encompassing than that which belongs to the physical body of the physical environment in the narrower sense. Whereas the human being is physically a part of the earth, his astral body belongs to worlds in which still other cosmic bodies besides our earth are embedded. Therefore he enters, during sleep, into a world to which other worlds than the earth belong, a fact that will only become clear from later descriptions.

[ 6 ] It ought to be superfluous to call attention to a misunderstanding that can easily arise in regard to these facts, but to do so is not out of place in our age in which certain materialistic modes of thought are prevalent. Those who hold such thoughts can naturally say that it is only scientific to investigate the physical conditions of such a thing as sleep. They maintain that although scholars are not yet in agreement concerning the physical causes of sleep, yet one fact is certain: that definite physical processes must be assumed as lying at the foundation of this phenomenon. Oh! if people would only acknowledge the fact that supersensible knowledge in no way contradicts this assertion! It agrees with everything that is said from this point of view just as one agrees that in the physical erection of a house one brick must be laid upon another, and when it is finished, its form and cohesion can be explained by purely mechanical laws. In order that the house may be built at all, however, the thought of the builder is necessary. This thought is not to be discovered when merely the physical laws are investigated.—Thus, just as the thoughts of the builder of the house lie behind the physical laws that make the house comprehensible, so behind what physical science presents in an absolutely correct way lies the spiritual content of which supersensible knowledge speaks. It is true, this comparison is often presented when it is a matter of justification of a spiritual background of the world and it may be considered trivial. But in these things the point is not whether there is a familiarity with certain concepts, but rather whether they are properly evaluated in arguing the question. Opposing theories can have so great an effect on the power of judgment that the possibility of arriving at a proper evaluation is entirely excluded.

[ 7 ] Dreaming is an intermediate state between waking and sleeping. What dream experiences offer to thoughtful consideration is a multi-colored interweaving of a picture world that conceals within it certain rules and laws. This world of dreams seems to display an ebb and flow, often in confused succession. In his dream life, the human being is freed from the law of waking consciousness that fetters him to sense-perception and to the rules governing his power of reason. Yet dreams have certain mysterious laws that are fascinating and alluring to man's prescience, and that are the deeper reason why the beautiful play of fantasy underlying artistic feeling is readily likened to “dreaming.” It is only necessary to call to mind certain characteristic dreams to find this corroborated. Someone dreams, for example, that he drives away a dog that is rushing upon him. He awakens and finds himself in the act of unconsciously throwing off a part of the bedclothes that had pressed upon an unaccustomed part of his body and had, therefore, become burdensome. What does dreaming here make out of the sense-perceptible process? What the senses would perceive in the waking state, the life of sleep allows to remain in complete unconsciousness. It retains, however, something essential, namely the fact that the sleeping person wishes to ward off something. Around this fact sleep weaves a pictorial process. The images, as such, are echoes of waking-day life. The manner in which they are borrowed from it has something arbitrary about it. Every person has the feeling that under the same external provocation, the dream could conjure up different pictures in his soul, but they express symbolically the feeling that the person has something he wishes to ward off. Dreams create symbols; they are symbol-makers. Inner processes, too, can transform themselves into such dream symbols. A person dreams that a fire is crackling near him; in his dream he sees the flames. He awakens and finds that he has been too heavily covered and has become too warm. The feeling of too much warmth is symbolically expressed in the dream picture. Quite dramatic experiences can be enacted in dream. For example, a person dreams that he is standing at an abyss. He sees a child running toward it. In his dream he experiences all the agony of the thought: Oh! if the child would only take heed, would only pay attention and not fall into the abyss! He sees it falling and hears the dull thud of its body below. He awakens and becomes aware that an object hanging on the wall of his room had become loosened and, in falling, has made a dull sound. Dream life expresses this simple occurrence in an event that is enacted in exciting pictures.—For the present we do not need to enter into a consideration of why, in the last example, the moment of the dull thud of the falling object should spread out into a series of events that seem to extend over a certain period of time. We need only keep in mind how the dream transforms into a picture what sense-perception would offer were we awake.

[ 8 ] We see that as soon as the senses cease their activity, something creative asserts itself in man. This is the same creative element that is also present in completely dreamless sleep and there presents the soul state that appears as the antithesis of the soul's waking state. If this dreamless sleep is to take place, the astral body must be withdrawn from the ether and physical bodies. During the dream state, it is separated from the physical body in so far as it no longer has any connection with this body's sense organs, but it still retains a certain connection with the ether body. That the processes of the astral body can be perceived in pictures is due to this connection with the ether body. The moment this connection ceases, the pictures sink down into the darkness of unconsciousness, and we have dreamless sleep. The arbitrary and often absurd character of dream pictures rests upon the fact that the astral body, because of its separation from the sense organs of the physical body, cannot relate its pictures to the proper objects and events of the external environment. This fact becomes especially clear if we consider a dream in which the ego is, as it were, split up; when, for example, a person dreams that, as a pupil, he cannot answer a question put to him by his teacher, while directly afterwards the teacher, himself, answers the question. Because the dreamer cannot make use of the organs of perception of his physical body he is unable to relate the two occurrences to himself, as the same individual. Thus, in order to recognize himself as an enduring ego, he must be equipped with the external organs of perception. Only if a person had acquired the capacity of becoming conscious of his ego otherwise than through these organs of perception, would the enduring ego become perceptible to him outside his physical body. Supersensible consciousness must acquire these capacities, and the means of accomplishing this will be considered later on in this book.

[ 9 ] Even death occurs only because there is a change in the relationship of the members of man's being. What supersensible perception has to say about death can also be observed in its effects in the outer world, and by unbiased reason the communications of supersensible knowledge can be verified on this point also through observation of external life. The expression of the invisible within the visible is, however, less obvious in these facts. It is more difficult fully to feel the importance of what, in the events of external life, corroborates the communications of supersensible knowledge in this realm. Even more than in the case of many things already mentioned in this book it would be quite natural here to declare that these communications are simply figments of the imagination, if no heed is paid to the knowledge of how a clear indication of the supersensible is contained in the sensory.

[ 10 ] In passing over into sleep, the astral body only severs its connection with the ether and physical bodies, the latter remaining bound together; in death, the physical body, however, is severed from the ether body. The physical body is left to its own forces and must, for that reason, disintegrate as a corpse. When death occurs, the ether body enters into a state that it never experienced during the time between birth and death, except under rare conditions that will be spoken of later. It is now united with its astral body, without the presence of the physical body, for the ether body and astral body do not separate immediately after death. For a time they remain together by means of a force whose existence is easily to be understood. If it did not exist, the ether body could not sever itself from the physical body, for it is bound to it. This is seen in sleep when the astral body is unable to tear these two members of the human organism apart. This force begins its activity at death. It severs the ether body from the physical, with the result that the ether body is now united with the astral body. Supersensible observation shows that after death this union varies in different people. Its duration is measured by days. For the present this duration is only mentioned by way of information.—Later the astral body separates from its ether body also and continues on its way bereft of it. During the union of the two bodies man is in a condition that enables him to perceive the experiences of his astral body. As long as the physical body is present, the work of refreshing the worn out organs must begin from the moment the astral body is severed from it. With the severance of the physical body this work ceases. The force that is employed for this work when the human being sleeps remains after death and can now be used to make the astral body's own processes perceptible.

An observation that clings to the externals of life may say that these are statements that are clear to those endowed with supersensible perception, but there is no possibility of anyone else ascertaining the truth about them. This is not a fact. What supersensible perception observes in this realm, removed from ordinary perception, can be comprehended by ordinary thought power after it has once been discovered. This thought power must consider in the right way the relationships of life that are present in the manifested world. Thinking, feeling, and willing stand in such a relationship to each other and to the experiences of man in the outer world, that they remain incomprehensible if the manner of their revealed activity is not considered as the expression of an unrevealed activity. This manifest activity becomes clear to the judgment only when it can be looked upon, in its course within physical human life, as the result of what supersensible knowledge establishes for the non-physical. In regard to this activity we are, without supersensible knowledge, much like a man in a dark room without light. Just as the physical objects around us are perceived only in the light, so will what takes place through the soul-life of man be explicable only by means of supersensible knowledge.

During the union of the human being with his physical body, the outer world enters his consciousness in images; after casting off this body, what the astral body experiences when it is not bound to the outer world by means of physical sense organs becomes perceptible. It has at first no new experiences. Union with the ether body prevents it from experiencing anything new. What it does possess, however, is a memory of the past life. The still present ether body allows this memory to appear as a comprehensive, living picture. This is the first experience of the human being after death. He perceives the life between birth and death in a series of pictures spread out before him. During physical life, memory exists only during the waking state when man is united with his physical body. Memory is present only to the extent allowed by this body. Nothing is lost to the soul that makes an impression upon it during life. Were the physical body a perfect instrument for this, it would be possible at every moment of life to conjure up before the soul the whole of life's past. This hindrance disappears at death. As long as the human being retains the ether body, a certain perfection of memory exists, and it disappears to the degree that the ether body loses the form it had during its sojourn in the physical body, when it resembled the physical body. This is also the reason why the astral body after a time separates from the ether body. It can remain united with the latter only as long as the ether form, which corresponds to the physical body, endures. During life between birth and death, a separation of the ether body from the physical body takes place only in exceptional cases, and then only for a short time. If, for example, a person presses heavily upon one of his limbs, a part of the ether body may separate from the physical. When this occurs we may say that the limb has “gone to sleep.” The peculiar feeling one has at that time comes from the severance of the ether body. (Naturally, here also a materialistic mode of thought may deny the existence of the invisible within the visible and say that all this simply comes from the physical disturbance caused by the pressure.) In such a case, supersensible perception is able to observe how the corresponding part of the ether body passes out of the physical. If a person experiences an unusual shock, or something of the kind, a separation of the ether body from a large part of the physical body may result for a short time. This happens if a person for one reason or another sees himself suddenly near death; if, for example, he is on the verge of drowning, or if, on a mountaineering trip, he is in danger of a precipitous fall. What is told by people who have experienced such things comes very near the truth and may be corroborated by supersensible observation. They state that in such moments their entire life passed before the soul in a great memory-picture. Of the many examples that could be cited here, only one will be referred to because it originates with a person to whose mode of thinking all that has been said here about these experiences must appear as idle fancy. For anyone who takes a few steps in supersensible observation, it is always useful to become acquainted with the statements of those who consider this science as something fantastic. Such statements cannot be so lightly attributed to the prejudice of the observer of the supersensible. (Spiritual scientists may well learn a great deal from those who consider their endeavors nonsense, and they need not be disconcerted if there is no reciprocal “affection” in this respect on the part of the critics. To be sure, for supersensible perception itself there is no need of verification of its results through such experiences. It does not desire to prove anything by these references, but to elucidate its findings.) The eminent criminologist and well known researcher in many other fields of natural science, Moritz Benedict, relates a personal experience in his memoirs. Once, when he was near being drowned while bathing, he saw in memory his whole life before him as though in a single picture.—If others describe differently the pictures experienced under similar circumstances, even in a way that lets them appear to have little to do with the events of their past, this does not contradict what has been said. For the pictures that occur in the quite unusual condition of the separation of the ether body from the physical are often not readily explicable in regard to their relation to life. Proper consideration will always recognize this relationship. Neither is it an objection if someone, for example, once came near drowning and did not have the experience described. It must be remembered that this can only occur when the ether body is actually separated from the physical and at the same time remains united with the astral body. If through the shock a loosening of the ether and astral bodies also takes place, then the experience does not occur, because there exists complete unconsciousness, as in dreamless sleep.

[ 11 ] In the period immediately following death the experiences of the past appear summarized in a memory-picture. After the separation of the ether body and the astral body, the latter is left to itself in its further journey. It is not difficult to see that, within the astral body, everything remains that it has made its own through its own activity during its sojourn in the physical body. To a certain degree, the ego has developed spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. As far as they are developed, they receive their existence, not from what exists as organs in the bodies, but from the ego. The ego is the very member that needs no external organs for self-perception; it also needs none in order to remain in possession of what it has united with itself. The objection can be made, “Why, then, is there no perception in sleep of this spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man, which have been developed?” There is none, because the ego is fettered to the physical body between birth and death. Even though in sleep the ego, united with the astral body, is outside the physical body, it remains, nevertheless, in close union with the latter, for the activity of the astral body is directed toward this physical body. Thus the ego with its perception is relegated to the external sense world and cannot therefore receive the revelations of the spirit in its direct form. Only at death does the ego receive these revelations because, at death, the ego is freed from its connection with the physical and ether bodies. Another world can flash up for the soul the moment it is withdrawn from the physical world that chains the soul's activity to itself during life. There are reasons why even at this moment all connections between man and the external sense world do not cease. Certain desires remain that maintain this connection. These are desires that the human being creates because he is conscious of his ego, the fourth member of his being. Those desires and wishes arising out of the nature of the three lower bodies can only be active within the external world, and when these bodies are laid aside the desires cease. Hunger is caused by the external body; it is silenced as soon as this outer body is no longer united with the ego. If the ego possessed no other desires than those arising from its own spiritual nature, it could at death draw complete satisfaction from the spiritual world into which it is translated. But life has given it still other desires. It has enkindled in the ego a longing for enjoyments that can only be satisfied through physical organs, although the desires do not have their origin in these organs themselves. Not only do the three bodies demand their satisfaction through the physical world, but the ego itself finds enjoyments within this world for which the spiritual world offers no means of satisfaction. For the ego there are two kinds of desires in life: the desires that have their source in the bodies, and therefore must be satisfied within these bodies, ceasing with the disintegration of these bodies, and the desires that have their source in the spiritual nature of the ego. As long as the ego is within the bodies, these desires also are satisfied by means of bodily organs, for in the manifestations of the bodily organs the hidden spirit is at work, and in all that the senses perceive they receive at the same time something spiritual. This spiritual element exists also after death, although in another form. All spiritual desires of the ego within the sense world exist also when the senses are no longer present. If a third kind of desire were not added to these two, death would signify merely a transition from desires that can be satisfied by means of the senses to those that find their realization in the revelation of the spiritual world. This third type of desire is produced by the ego during Its life in the sense world because it finds pleasure in this world also in so far as there is no spirit manifest in it.—The basest enjoyments can be a manifestation of the spirit. The gratification that the hungry being experiences in taking food is a manifestation of spirit because through the eating of food something is brought about without which, in a certain sense, the spirit could not evolve. The ego can, however, transcend the enjoyment that this fact of necessity offers. It may long for good tasting food, quite apart from the service rendered the spirit by eating. The same is true of other things in the sense world. Desires are created thereby that would never have come into being in the sense world had the human ego not been incorporated in it. But neither do these desires spring from the spiritual nature of the ego. The ego must have sense enjoyments as long as it lives in the body, also in so far as it is spiritual; for the spirit manifests in the sense world and the ego enjoys nothing but spirit when, in this world, it surrenders itself to that medium through which the light of the spirit radiates. It will continue to enjoy this light even when the sense world is no longer the medium through which the rays of the spirit pass. In the spirit world, however, there is no gratification for desires in which the spirit has not already manifested itself in the sense world. When death takes place, the possibility for the gratification of these desires is cut off. The enjoyment of appetizing food can come only through the physical organs that are used for taking in food: the palate, tongue, and so forth. After throwing off the physical body man no longer possesses these organs. But if the ego still has a longing for these pleasures, this longing must remain ungratified. In so far as this enjoyment is in accord with the spirit, it exists only as long as the physical organs are present. If it has been produced by the ego, without serving the spirit, it continues after death as desire, which thirsts in vain for satisfaction. We can only form an idea of what now takes place in the human being if we think of a person suffering from burning thirst in a region in which water is nowhere to be found. This, then, is the state of the ego, in so far as it harbors, after death, the unextinguished desires for the pleasures of the outer world and has no organs with which to satisfy them. Naturally, we must imagine the burning thirst that serves as an analogy for the conditions of the ego after death to be increased immeasurably, and imagine it spread out over all the other still existing desires for which all possibility of satisfaction is lacking. The next task of the ego consists in freeing itself from this bond of attraction to the outer world. In this respect the ego has to bring about a purification and emancipation within itself. All desires that have been created by it within the body and that have no inherent rights within the spiritual world must be rooted out.—Just as an object takes fire and is consumed, so is the world of desires, described above, consumed and destroyed after death. This affords us a glimpse into the world that supersensible knowledge designates as the “consuming fire of the spirit.” All desires of a sensual nature, in which the sensual is not an expression of the spirit, are seized upon by this “fire.” The ideas that supersensible knowledge must give in regard to these processes might be found to be hopeless and awful. It might appear terrifying that a hope, for whose realization sense organs are necessary, must change into hopelessness after death; that a desire, which only the physical world can satisfy, must turn into consuming deprivation. Such a point of view is possible only as long as one does not consider the fact that all wishes and desires, which after death are seized by the “consuming fire,” in a higher sense represent not beneficial but destroying forces in life. By means of such destructive forces, the ego tightens the bond with the sense world more strongly than is necessary in order to absorb from this very sense world what is beneficial to it. This sense world is a manifestation of the spirit hidden behind it. The ego would never be able to enjoy the spirit in the form in which it is able to manifest through bodily senses alone, did it not want to use these senses for the enjoyment of the spiritual within the sense world. Yet the ego deprives itself of the true spiritual reality in the world to the degree that it desires the sense world without the spirit. If the enjoyment of the senses, as an expression of the spirit, signifies an elevation and development of the ego, then an enjoyment that is not an expression of the spirit signifies the impoverishing, the desolation of the ego. If a desire of this kind is satisfied in the sense world, its desolating effect upon the ego nevertheless remains. Before death, however, this destructive effect upon the ego is not apparent. Therefore the satisfaction of such desires can produce similar desires during life, and man is not at all aware that he is enveloping himself, through himself, in a “consuming fire.” After death, what has surrounded him in life becomes visible, and by becoming visible it appears in its healing, beneficial consequences. A person who loves another is certainly not attracted only to that in him which can be experienced through the physical organs. But only of what can thus be experienced may it be said that it is withdrawn from perception at death; just that part of the loved one then becomes visible for the perception of which the physical organs were only the means. Moreover, the only thing that then hinders that part from becoming completely visible is the presence of the desire that can only be satisfied through physical organs. If this desire were not extirpated, the conscious perception of the beloved person could not arise after death. Considered in this way, the picture of frightfulness and despair that might arise in the human being concerning the events after death, as depicted by supersensible knowledge, must change into one of deep satisfaction and consolation.

[ 12 ] The first experiences after death are different in still another respect from those during life. During the time of purification man, as it were, lives his life in reverse order. He passes again through all that he has experienced in life since his birth. He begins with the events that immediately preceded death and experiences everything in reverse order back to childhood. During this process, everything that has not arisen out of the spiritual nature of the ego during life passes spiritually before his eyes, only he experiences all this now inversely. For example, a person who died in his sixtieth year and who in his fortieth year had done someone a bodily or soul injury in an outburst of anger will experience this event again when, in passing through his life's journey in reverse order after death, he reaches the place of his fortieth year. He now experiences, not the satisfaction he had in life from his attack upon the other person, however, but the pain he gave him. From what has been said above, it is at the same time also possible to see that only that part of such an event can be experienced painfully after death that has arisen from passions of the ego having their source only in the outer physical world. In reality, the ego not only damages the other person through the gratification of such a passion, but itself as well; only the damage to itself is not apparent to it during life. After death this whole, damaging world of passion becomes perceptible to the ego, and the ego then feels itself drawn to every being and every thing that has enkindled such a passion, in order that this passion may again be destroyed in the “consuming fire” in the same way it was created. Only when man in his backward journey has reached the point of his birth have all the passions of this kind passed through the fire of purification, and, from then on, nothing hinders him from a complete surrender to the spiritual world. He enters upon a new stage of existence. Just as, at death, he threw off the physical body, then, soon after, the ether body, so now that part of the astral body falls away that can live only in the consciousness of the outer physical world. For supersensible perception there are, thus, three corpses: the physical, the etheric, and the astral corpse. The point of time when the latter is thrown off by man is at the end of the period of purification, which lasts about a third of the time that passed between birth and death. The reason why this is so can only become clear later on, when we shall consider the course of human life from the standpoint of occult science. For supersensible observation, astral corpses are constantly present in the environment of man, which have been discarded by human beings who are passing over from the state of purification into a higher existence, just as for physical perception there are physical corpses in the world in which men dwell.

[ 13 ] After purification an entirely new state of consciousness begins for the ego. While before death the outer perceptions had to flow toward the ego in order that the light of consciousness might fall upon them, now, as it were, a world flows from within of which it acquires consciousness. The ego lives in this world also between birth and death. There, however, this world is clothed in the manifestations of the senses, and only there where the ego, taking no heed of all sense-perceptions, perceives itself in its innermost sanctuary is what otherwise appears veiled by the sense world revealed in its real form. Just as before death the self-perception of the ego takes place in its inner being, so after death and after purification the world of spirit in its plenitude is revealed from within. This revelation, in fact, takes place immediately after the stripping off of the ether body. But, like a darkening cloud, the world of desires, which are still turned toward the outer world, spreads out before it. It is as though dark demoniacal shadows, arising out of the passions “consuming themselves in fire,” intermingled with a blissful world of spiritual experience. Indeed, these passions are now not mere shadows, but actual entities. This becomes at once apparent when the physical organs are removed from the ego and it, therefore, can perceive what is of a spiritual nature. These creatures appear like distortions and caricatures of what the human being previously knew through sense-perception. Supersensible perception says about the world of the purifying fire that it is inhabited by beings whose appearance for the spiritual eye can be horrible and painful, whose pleasure seems to be destruction and whose passion is bent upon a spiritual evil, in comparison with which the evil of the sense world appears insignificant. The passions indicated, which human beings bring into this world, appear to these creatures as food by means of which their power receives constant strengthening. The picture thus drawn of a world imperceptible to the senses can appear less incredible if one for a moment observes a part of the animal world with unprejudiced eyes. For the spiritual gaze, what is a cruel, prowling wolf? What manifests itself in what the senses perceive in it? Nothing but a soul that lives in passions and acts through them. One can call the external form of the wolf an embodiment of these passions, and even if a person had no organs with which to perceive this form, he would still have to acknowledge the existence of the being in question, if its passions showed invisibly in their effects; that is, if a power, invisible to the eye, were prowling around by means of which everything could happen that occurs through the visible wolf. To be sure, the beings of the purifying fire do not exist for sensory, but for supersensible consciousness only; their effects, however, are clearly manifest: they consist in the destruction of the ego when it gives them nourishment. These effects become clearly visible when a well-founded pleasure increases to lack of moderation and excess, for what is perceptible to the senses would also attract the ego only in so far as the pleasure is founded in its own nature. The animal is impelled to desire only by means of that in the outer world for which its three bodies are craving. Man possesses nobler pleasures because a fourth member, the ego, is added to the three bodily members. But if the ego seeks for a gratification that serves to destroy its own nature, not to maintain and further it, then such craving can be neither the effect of its three bodies, nor that of its own nature. It can only be the effect of beings who, in their true form, remain hidden from the senses, beings who can set to work on the higher nature of the ego and arouse in it passions that have no relationship to sense existence, but can only be satisfied through it. Beings exist who are nourished by desires and passions that are worse than any animal passions, because they do not have their being in the sense world, but seize upon the spiritual and drag it down into the realm of the senses. For that reason the forms of such beings are, for supersensible perception, more hideous and gruesome than the forms of the wildest animals, in which only passions are embodied that originate in the sense world. The destructive forces of these beings exceed immeasurably all destructive fury existing in the visible animal world. Supersensible knowledge must, in this way, enlarge the human horizon to include a world of beings that, in a certain respect, stand lower than the visible world of destructive animals.

[ 14 ] When man, after death, has passed through this world, he finds himself confronted by a world that contains the spirit, producing a longing within him that finds its satisfaction only in the spirit. Now too, however, he distinguishes between what belongs to his ego and what forms the environment of this ego, that is, its spiritual outer world. Only, what he experiences of this environment streams toward him in the way the perception of his own ego streams toward him during his sojourn in the body. While in the life between birth and death his environment speaks to him through his bodily organs, after all bodies have been laid aside the language of the new environment penetrates directly into the “innermost sanctuary” of his ego. The entire environment of the human being is filled with beings of like nature with his ego, for only an ego has access to another ego. Just as minerals, plants, and animals surround him in the sense world and compose that world, so after death he is surrounded by a world that is composed of beings of a spiritual nature.—Yet he brings with him into this world something that does not belong to his environment there, namely, what the ego has experienced within the sense world. Immediately after death, and as long as the ether body was still united with the ego, the sum of these experiences appeared in the form of a comprehensive memory picture. The ether body itself is then, to be sure, cast off, but something from this memory picture remains as an imperishable possession of the ego. What has thus been retained appears as an extract, an essence made from all the experiences that the human being has passed through between birth and death. This is life's spiritual yield, its fruit. This yield contains everything of a spiritual character that has been revealed through the senses. Without life in the sense world, however, it could not have come into existence. After death the ego feels this spiritual fruit of the sense world as its own inner world with which it enters a world composed of beings who manifest themselves as only his ego can manifest itself in its innermost depths. Just as the plant seed, which is an extract of the entire plant, develops only when it is inserted into another world—the earth, so what the ego brings with it out of the sense world unfolds like a seed upon which the spiritual environment acts that has now received it. If the science of the supersensible is to describe what occurs in this “land of the spirits,” It can indeed only do so by portraying it in pictures. Still, these pictures appear as absolute reality to supersensible consciousness when it investigates the corresponding occurrences imperceptible to the physical eye. What is to be described here may be illustrated by means of comparisons with the sense world, for although it is wholly of a spiritual nature, it has, in a certain respect, a similarity to the sense world. For example, just as in the world of the senses a color appears when an object impresses the eye, in the “land of the spirits,” when a spiritual being acts upon the ego, an experience is produced similar to one made by a color. But this experience is produced in the way in which, in the life between birth and death, only the perception of the ego can be produced in the soul's inner being. It is not as though the light struck the human inner being from without, but as though another being were acting directly upon the ego, causing it to portray this activity in a colored picture. Thus all beings of the spiritual environment of the ego express themselves in a world of radiating colors. Since their origin is of a different kind, these color experiences of the spirit world are, naturally, of a character somewhat different from the experiences of physical color. The same thing can be said of other impressions that the human being receives from the sense world. The impressions that resemble most those of the sense world are the tones of the spiritual world, and the more the human being becomes familiar with this world, the more will it become for him an inwardly pulsating life that may be likened to tones and their harmonies in sensory reality. These tones, however, are not experienced as something reaching an organ from outside, but as a force streaming through the ego out into the world. The human being feels the tone as he feels his own speaking or singing in the sense world, but he knows that in the spiritual world these tones streaming out from him are at the same time manifestations of other beings poured out into the world through him. A still higher manifestation takes place in the land of spirit beings when the tone becomes “spiritual speech.” Then not only the pulsing life of another spirit being streams through the ego, but a being of this kind imparts its own inner nature to this ego. Without that separation which all companionship must experience in the physical world, two beings live in each other when the ego is thus permeated by “spiritual speech.” The companionship of the ego with other spirit beings after death is really of this kind.

Three realms of the land of spirits appear before supersensible consciousness that may be compared with three regions of the physical sense world. The first region is the “solid land” of the spiritual world, the second, the “region of oceans and rivers,” the third, the “atmospheric region.”—What assumes physical form on earth so that it may be perceived by means of physical organs is perceived in its spiritual nature in the first realm of the land of spirit beings. For example, the force that gives the crystal its form may be perceived there, but what thus appears is the antithesis of the form it assumes in the sense world. The space, which in the physical world is filled with the stone mass, appears to spiritual vision as a kind of cavity. Around this cavity, however, the force is visible that gives form to the stone. The color the stone possesses in the physical world is experienced in the spiritual world as the complementary color. Thus a red stone appears greenish in the spirit land and a green stone, reddish. The other characteristics also appear In their complementary forms. Just as stones, earth masses, and so forth, make up the solid land—the continental regions—of the physical world, so the structures described above compose “the solid land” of the spirit world.—Everything that is life within the sense world is the oceanic region in the spirit world. Life to the physical eye is manifest in its effects in plants, animals, and men. Life to spiritual vision is a flowing entity that permeates the land of spirits like seas and rivers. A still better analogy is that of the circulation of the blood in the body, for whereas oceans and rivers appear irregularly distributed within the physical world, there is a certain regularity, like that of the circulation of the blood, in the distribution of this streaming life of the land of spirit beings. This flowing life is heard simultaneously as a spiritual entoning.—The third realm of the spirit land is its “atmosphere.” What appears in the sense world as sensation exists in the spiritual realm as an all-pervading presence like the earth's air. Here we must imagine a sea of flowing feeling. Sorrow and pain, joy and delight flow through this realm like wind or a raging tempest in the atmosphere of the sense world. Imagine a battle raging upon earth. Not only human forms confront each other there, forms that can be seen with the physical eyes, but feelings stand forth opposing feelings, passions opposing passions. The battlefield is filled with pain as well as with human forms. Everything that is experienced there of the nature of passion, pain, joy of conquest, is present not alone in its effects perceptible to the senses, but the spiritual sense becomes conscious of it as atmospheric processes in the land of spirits. Such an event in the spirit is like a thunder storm in the physical world, and the perception of these events may be likened to the hearing of words in the physical world. Therefore it is said that just as the air surrounds and permeates the earth beings, so do “wafting spiritual words” enclose the beings and processes of the spirit land.

[ 15 ] There are still other perceptions possible in this spiritual world. What may be compared to warmth and light of the physical world is also present. What permeates everything in the spirit land, like warmth permeating earthly things, is the thought world itself, only here, thoughts must be imagined as living, independent entities. What is apprehended as thoughts in the physical world is like the shadow of what exists in the land of spirits as thought beings. If we imagine thought, as it exists in human beings, withdrawn from man and endowed as an active entity with its own inner life, then we have a feeble illustration of what permeates the fourth region of the spirit land. What man perceives as thoughts in his physical world between birth and death is only the manifestation of the thought world as it is able to express itself through the instrumentality of the bodies. But all such thoughts entertained by human beings, which signify an enrichment of the physical world, have their origin in this region. One need not think here merely of the ideas of the great inventors, of the geniuses. It can be seen how every person has sudden ideas that he does not owe merely to the outer world, but with which he transforms this outer world itself. Feelings and passions whose causes lie in the outer world have to be placed in the third region of the spirit land. But everything that can so live in the human soul as to make him a creator, causing him to transform and fructify his surroundings, is perceptible in its primeval, essential form in the fourth sphere of the spiritual world.—What exists in the fifth region may be compared with physical light. It is wisdom revealing itself in its innermost form. Beings belonging to this region shed wisdom upon their environment, just as the sun sheds light upon physical beings. What is illuminated by this wisdom appears in its true significance and meaning for the spiritual world, just as a physical object displays its color when it is shone upon by the light.—There exist still higher regions of the land of the spirits, descriptions of which will be found in a later part of this work.

After death, the ego is immersed in this world, together with the harvest that it brings with it from its life in the sense world. This harvest is still united with that part of the astral body that has not been thrown off at the end of the period of purification. Only that part falls away which after death was inclined with its desires and longings toward physical life. The immersion of the ego in the spiritual world, together with what it has acquired in the sense world, may be compared with the insertion of a seed into the ripening earth. Just as this seed draws substances and forces from its environment in order to develop into a new plant, so, too, unfolding and growth is the very essence of the ego being embedded in the world of spirit.—Within what an organ perceives lies hidden the force by means of which the organ itself is created. The eye perceives the light, but without the light there would be no eye. Beings that pass their lives in darkness develop no organs of sight. In this manner the whole bodily organism of the human being is created out of the hidden forces lying within what is perceived with these bodily members. The physical body is built up by the forces of the physical world, the ether body by those of the life world, and the astral body is formed out of the astral world. When the ego is now transplanted into the spirit land, it encounters those forces that remain hidden to physical perception. In the first region of the spirit land the spiritual beings are perceptible who always surround the human being and who have also fashioned his physical body. Thus in the physical world, man perceives nothing but the manifestations of those spiritual forces that have also formed his own physical body. After death, he is himself in the midst of these formative forces that now appear to him in their own, previously concealed, form. Likewise, in the second region he is in the midst of the forces composing his ether body. In the third region, forces stream toward him out of which his astral body has been organized. The higher regions of the spirit land also now impart to him what composes his form in his life between birth and death.

[ 16 ] These beings of the spirit world now co-operate with what man has brought with him as fruit from the former life and what now becomes a seed. By means of this cooperation man is built up anew as a spiritual being. In sleep the physical and ether bodies continue their existence; the astral body and ego are, to be sure, outside of these two bodies, but still united with them. Whatever influences the astral body and the ego receive in this state from the spiritual world can only serve to restore the forces exhausted during the waking period. When the physical and ether bodies have been laid aside, however, and when, after the period of purification, those parts of the astral body that are still connected with the physical world through their desires are also laid aside, all that streams toward the ego from the spirit world now becomes not only a perfector, but a recreator. After a certain length of time, which will be discussed in later parts of this work, an astral body has formed itself around the ego; the former can again dwell in ether and physical bodies befitting the human being between birth and death. He can again pass through birth and appear in a new earth existence into which the fruit of the previous life has been incorporated. Up to the time of re-forming a new astral body, man is a witness of his own re-creation. Since the powers of the spirit land do not reveal themselves to him by means of outer organs, but from within, like his own ego in self-consciousness, he is able to perceive this revelation as long as his mind is not yet directed to an outwardly perceptible world. The moment, however, the astral body is newly formed, his attention turns outward. The astral body once more requires an external ether and physical body. It therefore turns away from the revelations of the inner world. For this reason an intermediate state now begins, during which man sinks into unconsciousness. Consciousness can only reappear in the physical world when the necessary organs for physical perception have been formed. During this period in which consciousness, illuminated by inner perception, ceases, the new ether body begins to attach itself to the astral body and the human being can then again enter into a physical body. Only an ego that has of itself produced life spirit and spirit man, the hidden, creative forces in the ether and physical bodies, would be able to take part consciously in the attachment of these two members. As long as man is not developed to this point, beings who are further advanced than he in their evolution must direct the attachment of these members. The astral body is led by such beings to certain parents, so that he may be endowed with the proper ether and physical bodies.—Before the attachment of the ether body is completed, something extraordinarily significant occurs for the human being who is re-entering physical existence. He has, in his previous life, created destructive forces that became evident when he experienced his life in reverse order after death. Let us take again the example suggested above. A person had caused someone pain in an outburst of anger in the fortieth year of his previous life. After death, he met this pain of the other person in the form of a force destructive to the development of his own ego. So it is with all such occurrences of his previous life. On re-entering physical life, these hindrances to evolution confront the ego anew. Just as at death a kind of memory picture of the past life arose before the human ego, now a pre-vision of the coming life presents itself. Again he sees a tableau, which this time displays all the hindrances he must remove if his evolution is to make further progress. What he thus sees becomes the starting point of forces that he must carry with him into a new life. The picture of the pain that he has caused another person becomes the force impelling the ego, on re-entering life, to make reparation for this pain. Thus the previous life has a determining effect upon the new life. The actions of this new life are in a certain way caused by those of the previous life. This orderly connection between a former and a later existence must be considered as the law of destiny. It has become the custom to designate this law by the name karma, a term borrowed from oriental wisdom.

[ 17 ] The fashioning of a new corporeal organization is not the only activity that is required of the human being between death and a new birth. While this building up is taking place, man lives outside the physical world. But during this time the earth proceeds in its evolution. Within relatively short periods of time the earth changes its countenance. How did those regions, which at present are occupied by Germany, appear a few millennia ago? When man reappears in a new life, the earth as a rule presents quite a different appearance from the one it had in his previous life. While he was absent from the earth all sorts of changes have occurred. Hidden forces also are at work in this transformation of the face of the earth. Their activities proceed from the same world in which man dwells after death, and he himself must co-operate in this transformation of the earth. He can do so only under the guidance of higher beings, as long as he has not acquired, through the development of life spirit and spirit man, a clear consciousness concerning the relationship between the spirit and its expression in the physical. But he helps to transform the earthly conditions. It can be said that human beings, during the period between death and a new birth, transform the earth in such a way that its conditions harmonize with their own development. If we observe a particular spot on the earth at a definite point of time and observe it again after a long span, finding it in a fully changed condition, the forces that have wrought this change are the forces of the human dead. In this way men have a relationship with the earth also during the period between death and a new birth. Supersensible consciousness sees in all physical existence the manifestation of a hidden spirituality. For physical observation, it is the light of the sun, climatic changes, and similar phenomena that bring about the transformation of the earth. For supersensible observation, the forces of the human dead are active in the rays of light that fall upon the plants from the sun. By observing supersensibly one becomes aware of how human souls hover above the plants, how they change the surface of the earth, and so forth. The attention of the human being is not only turned upon himself and upon the preparation for his own new earth life; indeed, he is called upon to work spiritually upon the outer world, just as he is called upon to work physically in the life between birth and death.

[ 18 ] Not only from the land of spirit beings does human life affect the conditions of the physical world, however, but, vice versa, all activity in physical existence has its effects in the spiritual world. An example will illustrate what happens in this respect. A bond of love exists between mother and child. This love arises out of an attraction between the two that has its roots in the forces of the sense world. But it changes in the course of time; a spiritual bond is formed more and more out of the sensory, and this spiritual link is fashioned not merely for the physical world, but also for the land of spirits. This is also true for other relationships. What has been spun in the physical world through spiritual beings remains in the spiritual world. Friends who have become closely united in life belong together also in the land of spirits and, after laying aside their bodies, they are in much more intimate communion than in physical life. For as spirits they exist for each other through the manifestation of their inner nature in the same way that the higher spiritual beings manifest their existence to one another through their inner nature, as we have described above, and a tie that has been woven between two people brings them together again in a new life. Therefore, in the truest sense of the word, we must speak of people finding each other again after death.

[ 19 ] What has once taken place with a person, during the period from birth to death and then from death to a re-birth, repeats itself. Man returns to earth again and again when the fruit that he has acquired in one physical life has reached maturity in the land of the spirits. Yet, we must not think here of repetition without beginning and end, for the human being passed, at some time, from other forms of existence into those that take place in the manner described, and he will in the future pass on to others. A picture of these transitional stages will be presented when, subsequently, the evolution of the cosmos—in relation to man—is described from the standpoint of supersensible consciousness.

[ 20 ] The processes that occur between death and a new birth are, naturally, still more concealed for outer sensory observation than the spiritual element that underlies manifest existence between birth and death. This sensory observation can see the effects of this part of the concealed world only where they enter into physical existence. The question for sensory observation is, whether the human being who passes through birth into life brings with him something of the processes described by supersensible cognition as taking place between a previous death and birth. if someone finds a snail shell in which no trace of an animal is to be seen, he will nevertheless acknowledge that this snail shell has come into existence through the activity of some animal and will not believe that it has been constructed in its form purely by means of physical forces. Likewise, a person who observes a living human being and finds something that cannot have its origin in this life, can admit with reason that it originates in what the science of the supersensible described, if thereby a clarifying light is thrown upon what is otherwise inexplicable. Thus intelligent sensory observation would be able to find that the invisible causes are comprehensible through their visible effects, and to anyone who observes this physical life entirely without prejudice, the above will appear—with every new observation—more and more convincing. It is only a question of finding the right standpoint for observing the effects in outer life. For example, where are the effects of what supersensible cognition describes as processes of the time of purification? How do the effects of the experiences that man undergoes manifest themselves after this time of purification in the purely spiritual realm, according to the evidence of spiritual research?

[ 21 ] Problems enough force themselves into every earnest and deep consideration of life in this field. We see one person born in need and misery, equipped with only meager ability, and he appears to be predestined to a pitiable existence because of the conditions prevailing at his birth. Another will, from the first moment of his life, be cherished and cared for by solicitous hands and hearts; brilliant capacities unfold in him, he is cut out for a fruitful, satisfactory existence. Two contrasting points of view can be asserted in respect of such problems. The one adheres to what the senses perceive and what the intellect, bound to the senses, can grasp. This point of view sees no problem in the fact that one person is born to good fortune, the other to misfortune. Although such a point of view may not wish to use the word “chance,” still those who hold it are not ready to assume an interrelated web of laws that causes such diversities, and with respect to aptitudes and talents, this way of thinking adheres to what is said to be “inherited” from parents, grandparents, and other ancestors. It will refuse to seek the causes in spiritual events that man himself has experienced before his birth, and through which he has formed his capacities and talents, quite apart from the hereditary descent from his ancestors.—Another point of view will not feel satisfied with such an interpretation. It will hold that even in the outer world nothing occurs at a definite place or in definite surroundings without the necessity of presupposing a reason for the cause of it. Although in many instances these causes have not yet been investigated, yet they exist. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands; there is something in its nature that unites it with the Alpine regions. Likewise, there must be something in a human being that causes him to be born in a definite environment. This is not to be explained by causes that lie merely in the physical world. To a serious thinker this must appear as though a blow dealt another should be explained not by the feelings of the aggressor, but rather by the physical mechanism of his hand.—Those who have this point of view must also be dissatisfied with all explanations of aptitude and talents as mere inheritance. Yet it may be said in this connection that obviously certain aptitudes continue to be inherited in families. During two and a half centuries musical aptitudes were inherited by the members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians, some of whom in their childhood were destined for quite different professions, have appeared in the Bernoulli family. The “inherited” talents have always impelled them to take up the family profession. Furthermore, it can be shown through exact investigation of the line of ancestry of an individual that, in one way or another, the talents of this individual have appeared in the ancestors and that they present only a summation of inherited tendencies. The one having the second point of view mentioned will certainly not disregard such facts, but they cannot mean the same thing to him as to the other who rests his explanations solely upon the processes of the sense world. The former will point out that it is just as impossible for the inherited traits to sum themselves up into an entire personality as it is for the metal parts of a clock to form themselves into a clock. If the objection is made that the united activity of the parents can bring about the combination of traits and that this, as it were, takes the place of the clock-maker, he will reply, “Just look with impartiality at the completely new element in every child's personality; this cannot come from the parents for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.” ^c4

[ 22 ] Unclear thinking can cause great confusion in this realm. The worst is if those having the first point of view previously stated look on those having the second as opponents of what is based upon “sure facts.” But these latter may not even think of denying the truth or the value of these facts. They also see quite clearly, for example, that a definite spiritual predisposition, even a spiritual direction, is “inherited” in a family, and that certain capacities summarized and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are ready to admit that the most illustrious name seldom stands at the beginning, but at the end of a blood relationship. But those holding this view should not be blamed if they are forced to draw conclusions from these findings quite different from those of the persons who merely hold to the facts of the senses. The latter may be countered by saying that the human being certainly displays the attributes of his ancestors, for the soul-spirit element, which enters into physical existence through birth, takes its physical form from what heredity gives it. But by this, nothing else is said than that a being bears the qualities of the medium in which it is immersed. The following is certainly a strange and trivial comparison, but the unprejudiced mind will not deny its justification when it is said that the fact that a human being appears clothed in the traits of his forebears gives no more evidence of the origin of his personal characteristics than the fact that he is wet because he fell into the water gives evidence of his inner nature. It can be said further that if the most illustrious name stands at the end of a blood relationship covering many generations, it shows that the bearer of this name needed this blood relationship in order to form the body required for the development of his entire personality. It is, however, no proof whatsoever of the “inheritance” of the personal element itself; in fact, for a healthy logic, this fact proves just the opposite. If indeed the personal gifts were inherited, they would have to stand at the beginning of this series of generations and be transmitted to the descendants. But the appearance of a great endowment at the end of a human series proves that it is not inherited.

[ 23 ] It is not to be denied that those who speak of spiritual causation in life often add to the confusion. They often speak too much in general, indefinite terms. When it is declared that the inherited attributes are summed up into the personality of a human being, this can certainly be compared with the statement that the metal parts of a clock have assembled themselves. But it must also be admitted that many statements about the spiritual world are similar to the declaration that the metal parts of a clock cannot assemble themselves so that the hands move forward; therefore something spiritual must be present that takes care of the forward movement of the hands. In respect of such an assertion, he builds on a firmer foundation who says, “Oh, I shall not trouble about such ‘mystical beings’ who advance the hands of the clock; I am trying to learn to understand the mechanical relationships that bring about this forward movement of the hands.” For it is not a question of merely knowing that behind such a mechanism as the clock, for example, there stands something spiritual—the clock-maker—but it is of significance only to learn to know the thoughts in the mind of the clock-maker that have preceded the construction of the clock. These thoughts can be found again in the mechanism.

[ 24 ] All mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensible brings only confusion for they are incapable of satisfying the opponents. The latter are right when they say that such general references to supersensible beings are not an aid to the understanding of the facts. These opponents, it is true, may say the same thing about the definite indications of spiritual science. In this case, however, it can be shown how the effects of hidden spiritual causes appear in outer life. The following can be maintained: Suppose that what spiritual research has established by means of observation is true, namely, that man after death has passed through a period of purification and that he has experienced psychically during that time how a definite act, which has been performed in a previous life, is a hindrance to further evolution. While he was experiencing this, the impulse developed in him to rectify the consequences of this act. He brings this impulse with him into a new life, and it then forms the trait of character that places him in a position where this rectification is possible. Consider the totality of such impulses, and you have a reason for the destined environment in which a person is born.—The same may apply to another supposition. Again assume that what spiritual science says is true, namely, that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in the spiritual human seed, and that the land of the spirits in which this seed exists between death and rebirth is the realm in which these fruits ripen in order to appear again in a new life changed into talents and capacities, and to form the personality in such a way that it appears as the effect of what has been gained in a former life.—Anyone who makes these assumptions and, with them, observes life without prejudice will see that through them all facts of the sense world can be acknowledged in their full significance and truth, while at the same time everything becomes comprehensible that must remain forever incomprehensible to the one who, while relying only on physical facts, directs his attitude of mind toward the spiritual world. Above all, every illogical assumption will disappear, for instance the one mentioned above, that because the most important name stands at the end of a blood relationship series, the bearer of that name must have inherited his talents. Life becomes logically comprehensible by means of the supersensible facts communicated by spiritual science.

[ 25 ] The conscientious truth-seeker who, without personal experiences in the supersensible world, wishes to find his way within the facts will, however, still be able to raise an important objection. For it can be asserted that it is inadmissible to assume the existence of any fact whatever simply for the reason that something that otherwise is inexplicable can thereby be explained. Such an objection is surely wholly without meaning for the one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensible experience. In the subsequent chapters of this work, the path will be indicated that can be traveled for the purpose of becoming acquainted, not only with other spiritual facts to be described here, but also with the law of spiritual causation as an individual experience. However, the above objection can, indeed, have significance for the person who is not willing to tread this path, but what can be said in refutation of this objection is also valuable for the one who has decided to take this path. For a person who accepts this in the right way has made the best initial step that can be taken on the path.—It is absolutely true that we should not accept something, the existence of which we do not otherwise know, simply because something, which otherwise remains incomprehensible, can be explained by it. In the case of the spiritual facts mentioned, however, the matter is quite different. If they are accepted, this has not only the intellectual consequence that life becomes comprehensible through them, but by the admission of these assumptions into our thoughts something else is experienced. Imagine the following case. Something happens to a person that arouses in him a feeling of distress. He can take this in two different ways. He can experience distress over the occurrence and yield himself to its disturbing aspects, even perhaps sink into grief. He can, however, take it in another way. He can say, “In reality, I have in a past life developed in myself the force that has confronted me with this event; I have, in fact, brought this thing upon myself,” and he can arouse in himself all the feelings that can result from such a thought. Naturally, the thought must be experienced with the utmost sincerity and all possible force if it is to have such a result for the life of feeling and sensation. Whoever achieves this will have an experience that can best be illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men get hold of a stick of sealing wax. One makes intellectual observations concerning its “inner nature.” These observations may be very clever; if there is nothing to show this “Inner nature,” one might easily reply that this is pure fantasy. The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a cloth and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is a tremendous difference between the thoughts that have passed through the head of the first man, arousing his observations, and those of the second man. The thoughts of the first have no actual results; those of the second, however, have aroused a force, that is, something actual, from its concealment.—This is also the case with the thoughts of the human being who imagines that, through a former life, he has implanted into himself the power to encounter an event. This mere thought arouses in him a real force by means of which he can meet the event quite differently from the way he would have met it had he not entertained this thought. The inherent necessity of this event, which otherwise he might have considered merely due to chance, dawns upon him, and he will at once understand that he has had the right thought, for it had the force to disclose to him the facts. If a person repeats such inner processes, they become the means of an inner supply of strength and thus they prove their truth through their fruitfulness, and this truth becomes manifest gradually and powerfully. These processes have a healthy effect in regard to spirit, soul, and body; indeed, in every respect they act beneficially upon life. Man becomes aware that in this way he enters in the right manner into the relationships of life, whereas he is on the wrong path when he considers only the one life between birth and death. His soul becomes stronger because of this knowledge.—Such purely inner proof of spiritual causation can only be produced by each person himself in his own intimate soul life, but everyone can have such proof. Anyone who has not produced this proof cannot, of course, judge its power. Anyone who has produced it can no longer have any doubt about it. It is not surprising that this is so, for it is only natural that what is so intimately connected with man's innermost nature, his personality, can also be satisfactorily proved only by means of the most intimate experience.—The objection cannot be made, however, that each person must deal personally with such matters since they have to do with an inner experience of this kind, and that they cannot be the concern of spiritual science. It is true that each person must have the experience himself, just as each person must himself understand the proof of a mathematical problem. The means by which the experience can be attained, however, holds good for everyone, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem holds good for everyone.

[ 26 ] It should not be denied that—aside from supersensible observations, of course—the proof by means of the forceproducing power of the corresponding thoughts just referred to, is the only one that holds its own if viewed with impartial logic. All other considerations are certainly important, but they all will possess something that offers a point of attack. To be sure, anyone who has acquired a sufficiently unprejudiced point of view will find something in the possibility and actuality of the education of man that has logically effective power of proof for the fact that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the bodily sheath. He will compare the animal with the human being and say to himself that in the former, its normal characteristics and capacities appear at birth as something definite, which shows clearly how it is predestined by heredity and how it will develop in the outer world. See how the tiny chick from birth carries out vital functions in a definite way. In the human being, however, something enters into relationship with his inner life, through education, that can exist without any connection whatsoever with heredity, and he can make the effects of such outer influences his own. Anyone who teaches knows that forces from the inner being must come to meet such influences. If this is not the case, then all schooling, all education is meaningless. For the unprejudiced educator, there exists a clear-cut boundary between inherited characteristics and those inner human forces that shine through these characteristics originating in former earth lives. True, it is impossible to adduce “weighty” proofs for these things in the same way that certain physical facts may be demonstrated by means of the scales. But then, these things are the intimacies of life, and for the person who has a sense for such things, these impalpable evidences are likewise conclusive, even more conclusive than the obvious reality. That animals can be trained, that is, that they acquire qualities and faculties through education, offers no objection for the one who is able to see the essential thing. Aside from the fact that everywhere in the world transitions are to be found, the results of animal training do not fuse in like manner with the animal's personal nature, as is the case with human beings. It is even emphasized that the abilities the domestic animal acquires through training during its life with man, are inheritable, that is, that they have their effects in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having learned to do so or having seen it done. Who would assert a similar thing in regard to human education?

[ 27 ] There are thinkers who through their observation pass beyond the opinion that the human being is constructed from without purely through the forces of heredity. They rise to the idea that a spiritual being, an individuality, precedes physical existence and forms it. Many of them do not find it possible to comprehend that there are repeated earth lives, and that in the intervening existence between lives the fruits of the previous ones act cooperatively as formative forces. Let us mention one out of the list of such thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in his work Anthropology² cites his observations that bring him to the following comprehensive conclusion:

The parents are not the producers of the child in the fullest sense of the word. They offer the organic substance, and not alone that, but at the same time the median, sensory soul element that expresses itself in temperament, in special soul coloring, in definite specification of impulses, and the like, the general source of which is ‘fantasy’ in that broader sense already proved by us. In all these elements of personality the mixture and peculiar union of the parent souls is unmistakable; there are good reasons, therefore, to explain these as purely a product of procreation; all the more so, if procreation is understood to be an actual soul process. We had to come to this conclusion. But the actual conclusive central point of the personality is lacking just here. For by means of a deeper, more penetrating observation we see that even those characteristics of mind and soul are only vestures and instruments for embracing the real spiritual, ideal aptitudes of man, capable of furthering or retarding them in their development, but in no way capable of bringing them into existence out of themselves.

And we read further:

Each person existed previously in accordance with his spiritual fundamental form, for spiritually considered, no individual resembles another any more than one species of animal resembles another. (see Note #3)³

These thoughts only go so far as to permit a spiritual being to enter the physical corporeality of man. Since, however, this spiritual being's formative forces are not derived from the causes of a former life, each time that a personality comes into existence a spiritual being of this kind would have to emerge out of a divine primal fount. Assuming this to be true, there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship that exists between the aptitudes struggling forth out of the human inner being and what approaches this inner being in the course of life from the outer earthly environment. The human inner being, which in every individual would have to spring from a divine primal source, would have to stand as a complete stranger before what confronts it in earth life. Only then will this not be the case—and so it is indeed—if this human inner nature had already been united with the external world—in other words, if it is not living in this world for the first time. The unbiased educator can clearly make the observation, “I bring something to my pupil from the results of earth life that is indeed foreign to his merely inherited characteristics, yet is something that makes him feel as if he had already been connected with the work in which these results of earth life have their source.” Only repeated earth lives, in connection with the facts in the spiritual realm between these earth lives as presented by spiritual research, can give a satisfactory explanation of the life of present day humanity, considered from every point of view.—The expression, “present day” humanity, was intentionally used here, for spiritual research finds that there was a time when the cycle of earth lives began, and that at that time conditions different from those of the present existed for the spiritual being of man as it entered into the corporeal sheath. In the following chapters we shall go back to this primeval state of the human being. When it will have to be shown, from the results of spiritual science, how this human being has attained his present form in relation to the evolution of the earth, we shall then be able to point out still more exactly how the spiritual essential core of man penetrates into the physical body from supersensible worlds, and how the spiritual law of causation—“human destiny”—is developed.

• c3. The connection between sleep and fatigue is, in most cases, not viewed in a manner demanded by the facts. Sleep is supposed to be a result of fatigue. That this thought is much too simple is shown by the fact that a man, not at all tired, may fall asleep while listening to an uninteresting lecture, or on some similar occasion. Whoever maintains that such an occasion tires the listener, tries to explain by a method that lacks a serious scientific attitude. Unprejudiced observation must lead to the conclusion that waking and sleeping present different relationships of the soul to the body, which must appear in the regular course of life in rhythmical sequence like the right and left swing of a pendulum. The result of such unprejudiced observation is that the filling of the soul with the impressions of the outer world awakes in it the desire, after experiencing this state, to enter another in which it is absorbed in the enjoyment of its own bodily nature. Two soul states alternate: the state of surrender to outer impressions and the state of surrender to one's own bodily nature. In the first state the desire for the second is unconsciously produced; the second state then takes its course in unconsciousness. The expression of the desire for the enjoyment of one's own bodily nature is fatigue. We must then actually say that we feel tired, because we wish to go to sleep, not that we wish to go to sleep because we feel tired. Since the human soul can, through habit, arbitrarily call forth in itself the states that of necessity appear in normal human life, it is possible that, when the soul makes itself insensitive to a given outer impression, it calls forth in itself the desire for enjoyment of its own bodily nature; that is to say, the soul goes to sleep, even though this state is not induced by the inner condition of the human being.
• c4. The statement that, if the personal talents of a human being were subject only to the law of heredity, they would have to show themselves not at the end but at the beginning of a blood relationship, might easily be misunderstood. It might be said that talents cannot show themselves at the beginning, for they must first be developed. But this is not a valid objection. For, if we wish to prove that something is inherited from a forebear, we must show how there is to be found again in the descendant what existed already previously. If it were shown that something was present at the beginning of a blood relationship that would be found again in the further course of its evolution, we might then speak of heredity. We cannot do this, however, if at the end something appears that previously did not exist. The reversal of the above sentence was only to show that in this case the idea of heredity is an impossible one.
• 2. Hermann Fichte, Anthropologie, p. 528. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1860.
• 3. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Anthropologie

[ 1 ] The essence of man's waking consciousness cannot be penetrated without observing the condition he lives through in sleep; so too, is the riddle of life insoluble without the study of death. People who have no feeling for the importance of supersensible knowledge will find grounds for skepticism in the very fact that it dwells so much on the facts of sleep and death. We can appreciate the motives of this kind of skepticism. For it is not unreasonable to insist that man is here to lead an active life, and that the more he is devoted to this life, the more efficient and creative he will be; to delve into such things as sleep and death can only spring from a tendency to idle dreaming and lead to nothing more than empty figments of the mind.

People may easily regard the refusal to indulge in such “empty figments” as a sign of mental health, and see in the pursuit of these “idle dreamings” something morbid, natural enough to those deficient in vitality and vigor, without ability to do creative work. We should do wrong merely to brush aside this opinion. There is in it a modicum of truth; it is a quarter-truth, and only needs to be complemented by the remaining three quarters. By arguing against it we only kindle the mistrust of those who see the one quarter well enough but are unaware of the other three.

A study of what lies hidden behind sleep and death is only morbid if it produces weakness and aversion from the realities of life. This may be granted without reservation. Admittedly moreover, much that has claimed the title of “Occult Science” in the past or is pursued today under this name, bears an unhealthy stamp, inimical to life. But the true science of the supersensible does not give rise to anything unhealthy of this kind.

The fact is rather this: As a man cannot always be awake, so for the full reality of life he cannot do without what the supersensible provides. Life goes on in sleep; the faculties with which we work and achieve results in waking consciousness derive strength and renewal from what sleep imparts. So too it is with what man is able to observe within the manifest world. The real world is wider than the field of this type of observation. Therefore the knowledge man can gain within the visible domain needs to be fertilized and complemented by all that he can come to know of the invisible. A man who did not ever and again derive from sleep the renewal of his exhausted powers would destroy his life; likewise, a way of thinking which is not made fruitful by the knowledge of hidden worlds must ultimately lead to emptiness and desolation.

So too with “death.” All living things are subject to death, to the end that new life may arise. It is the knowledge of the supersensible which throws clear light on Goethe's well-known saying, “Nature herself invented death, to have abundant life.” As without death there could be no life in the ordinary meaning of the term, so without insight into the supersensible there can be no true knowledge even of the visible world. Our knowledge of the visible must penetrate again and again to the invisible, that it may live and grow. Thus it becomes apparent that the science of the manifest world is awakened to essential life by the science of the supersensible. In its true form, the latter never has a weakening effect. Time and again it brings refreshment and healing into the outer existence which when abandoned to its own resources becomes weak and ill.

[ 2 ] When a man falls asleep the connection between the members of his being undergoes a change. What we see lying there on the bed includes the physical and the etheric body of the sleeper, but not the astral body nor the I or Ego. Inasmuch as the etheric body remains connected with the physical, the vital functions continue during sleep; left to itself alone, the physical body would of necessity disintegrate. It is the thoughts, the mental images, it is pain and pleasure, joy and grief, the power of giving conscious direction to the will, and all other things of this kind, which are blotted out in sleep. Now of all this the astral body is the bearer.

For an unbiased mind there can of course be no question of supposing that the astral body with its pains and pleasures, with its whole world of ideation and volition, is annihilated during sleep. It is still there, only in a different state. If the human I and astral body are not merely to contain pain and pleasure and all the other things above named, but to have conscious perception of them, the astral body must be united with the physical and etheric bodies, as indeed it is in waking life. In sleep it is not so; it has then withdrawn from the physical and the etheric bodies, as indeed it is in waking life. In sleep it is not so; it has then withdrawn from the physical and the etheric and entered into quite another mode of existence than pertains to it when united with them.

It is the task of supersensible science to investigate this other mode of existence. In sleep the astral body vanishes from external observation; supersensible perception must now trace it through the stages of its life, till on awakening it once more takes possession of the physical and the etheric body.

As with all other knowledge of the world's hidden realities, supersensible observation is necessary for the discovery of the spiritual facts concerning sleep; properly states, however, what has thus been discovered is intelligible to unbiased thinking. For the realities of hidden worlds are manifest in their effects. If we perceive how the processes of the sense-world are made intelligible by the information derived from supersensible perceptions, such confirmation by the facts of life is the kind of proof we may expect. Anyone not wishing to apply the methods—later to be described—for the attainment of supersensible perception, can have the following experience. To begin with, he may simply take the statements of supersensible science and apply them to what is manifest within the compass of his experience. He will discover that life becomes clear and intelligible to him in the process. Indeed the more exact and searching his study of the ordinary life he knows, the more will he be held to this conviction.

[ 3 ] Although the astral body during sleep experiences no ideas or thoughts in consciousness, though it is unaware of pain or pleasure or the like, yet it does not remain inactive. On the contrary, it is precisely during sleep that a most vital activity devolves upon it—an activity into which it has to enter again and again in rhythmical succession, when for a time it has been working in unison with the physical and the etheric body. A pendulum, returning to the middle after swinging left, will swing to the right through the very momentum it has gathered on the left. So it s with the astral body and the I or Ego which it bears within it. Having been active in the physical and etheric body for a time, for a succeeding period of time—precisely as an outcome of this activity—they need to live and move and have their being in a body-free condition, in an environment of pure soul and spirit.

As man is constituted in ordinary life, unconsciousness ensues during this body-free condition of the astral body and Ego. Unconsciousness is in effect the antithesis of the state of consciousness evolved in waking life by union with the physical and the etheric bodies, just as the swing of a pendulum to the right is the antithesis of the swing to the left. The need to enter into this unconscious state is felt by the human soul and spirit as tiredness, fatigue. Fatigue itself is the expression of the fact that during sleep the astral body and Ego are making themselves ready for the next waking state, when they will once again be undoing and reversing in the physical and etheric body what has arisen in the latter—through a purely organic and unconscious formative activity—while free from the soul-and-spirit. This unconscious formative activity, and what takes place in man during his conscious life and by virtue of it, are contrasting states which have to alternate in rhythmical succession.¹

[ 4 ] The form and shape, proper to the physical body of man, can only be maintained by means of a human etheric body, which in its turn must be endowed with the appropriate forces by the astral body. The ether-body is the form-giving agent or architect of the physical. But it can only form the physical body aright if it receives from the astral body the necessary guidance and stimulation. In the astral body are the “pattern-forms” or archetypes according to which the etheric body gives the physical its appointed shape.

Now in the waking life the astral body is not imbued with these archetypal patterns for the physical body, or only to a limited extent. For while awake the soul puts its own pictures, its own images, in their place. Turning his senses to the surrounding world, in the very act of perception man forms pictures, mental images of his surroundings. These images are, to begin with, “disturbers of the peace” for those pattern-forms which stimulate the etheric body in its work of building and maintaining the physical. Only if a man were able by his own inner activity to supply his astral body with such pictures as could give to the etheric body the right kind of stimulus, only then would there be no such disturbance. Yet the fact is that this very disturbance plays an essential part in human life, and as an outcome, while a man is awake the archetypal pictures for his etheric body cannot work with their full power. The astral body fulfills its waking function within the physical body; in sleep it works upon the latter from without.

[ 5 ] Just as the physical body—in the supply of nourishment for example—has need of the outer world to which it is akin, a similar thing is also true of the astral body. Imagine a human physical body taken right away from its appropriate surroundings; it would inevitably perish. The physical body's existence is impossible without the entire physical environment. The whole Earth must be as it is, if human physical bodies are to be present on it. In truth, this human body is but a portion of the Earth-planet, and in a wider sense of the whole physical Universe. In this respect it is as the finger is to the human body as a whole. Separate the finger from the hand—it cannot remain a finger; it will shrink and wither. Such too would be the fate of the human body if severed from the body of which it is a member—from the life-conditions with which the Earth provides it. Raise it a sufficient number of miles above the Earth and it will perish, as the finger does when cut off from the hand. As to his physical body, man may be less aware of this fact than with regard to the finger in relation to this body as a whole. But this is merely because the finger cannot walk about the body as man does about the Earth; hence the dependence is more obvious in the one case than in the other.

Even as the physical body is embedded in the physical world to which it belongs, so too the astral body belongs to a world of its own, from which however it is torn away by man's waking life. This may be illustrated by a comparison. Imagine a vessel full of water. Within the mass of water a single drop has no separate existence. But take a little sponge and draw a drop away, thus severing it from the total mass. Something of this kind happens to the human astral body on awakening. During sleep it is in a world of its own kind, a world to which it properly belongs. On awakening, the physical and the etheric body draw it in and fill themselves with it. These two bodies contain the organs whereby the astral body perceives the external world, to attain which perception it has to be detached from its own world. Yet from the latter alone can it derive the archetypal patterns which it needs for the etheric body.

As food and other necessities are received by the physical body from its environment, so do the pictures of the astral body's environment come to it during sleep. The fact is that the astral body is then living, outside the physical and the etheric, in the great Universe—the selfsame Universe out of which the entire man is born. For in that Universe is the source of the creative patterns,--the archetypal pictures to which man owes his form. In his true being he belongs to the great Universe and is in harmony with it. In waking life he detaches himself from the all-embracing harmony, in order to have outer perceptions. In sleep his astral body returns into the harmony of the Universe, whence on awakening he brings sufficient force into his bodies to enable him for a time once more to forgo the sojourn there.

The astral body thus returns to its pristine home during sleep, and on awakening brings with it into life newly strengthened forces. All this finds expression in the refreshment which a healthy sleep affords. As the further exposition of Occult Science will reveal, the home of the astral body is of far wider compass than the more obvious physical environment to which the physical body belongs. While as a physical being man is a member of the Earth, his astral body belongs to worlds wherein other heavenly bodies are contained besides our planet Earth. The astral body therefore, during sleep, enters a Universe to which other worlds than the Earth belong. But this can only be made fully clear in the further course of our explanations.

[ 6 ] Though it should really be superfluous, prevalent habits of materialistic thought render it not unnecessary to set aside a possible misunderstanding in this connection. People adhering to these ways of thought will be inclined to say: “Surely the scientific procedure is to investigate the physical conditions of such a thing as sleep. Though scientists may not yet be agreed as to its precise causation, this much at any rate is certain: physical processes of one kind or another can be assumed to underlie the phenomenon of sleep.” If only it were realized that supersensible science is not at all against such a contention! All that is said from this quarter is readily accepted, just as it will be admitted that for a house to come into physical existence one brick must be laid on the other, and that when the house is finished its form and its stability are explainable by purely mechanical laws. Yet for the house to come into being the thought of the architect was also necessary. This thought will not be discovered by mere investigation of the mechanical and physical laws. Behind the physical laws in terms of which the structure of the house can be explained, there are the thoughts of the creator. So too, behind what physical science and physiology are perfectly right in bringing forward, there are the hidden realities of which the science of the supersensible is telling.

Admittedly, the same comparison is frequently adduced to justify belief in a spiritual background of the world, and one may find it trite. But in these matters the point is not whether a line of thought is familiar, but whether we have given it due weight. We may well be prevented from appreciating the true weight of an idea because ideas derived from a contrary way of thinking have too much influence upon our judgment.

[ 7 ] A midway condition between waking and sleeping is dreaming. Reflecting on our dream-experiences, we are confronted by a world of pictures, iridescent and in manifold confusion, though not without some hint of underlying method. Pictures arise and fade away again, often bewildering in their sequence. Man in his dream-life is released from the laws which bind his waking consciousness to the perceptions of the senses and the logical rules of judgment. Yet in the world of dreams we seem to divine mysterious laws of its own, fascinating and alluring. This is the deeper reason why we are prone to compare with dreaming the play of fancy and creative imagination which our aesthetic and artistic sense delights in.

We need only call to mind a few characteristic dreams to find all this confirmed. A man will dream, for example, that he is chasing away a dog which has been rushing at him. He awakens and finds himself in the unconscious act of pushing away a portion of the bed-clothes which had been weighing on an unaccustomed part of his body and had become oppressive. In such an instance, what does the dream make of the real, sense-perceptible event? To begin with, the life of sleep leaves entirely in the unconscious what the senses would have perceived in waking life. But it holds fast to one essential—the fact that we are wanting to ward something off—and around this it weaves an imaginary sequence of events. In substance these imaginary pictures are like echoes from the waking life of the day-time, echoes selected at random. The dreamer will generally feel that with the same external cause his dream might just as well have conjured up quite other pictures. Only in one way or another they would relate, in this instance, to the sensation of having to ward something off. The dream, therefore, creates symbolic pictures; it is in fact a symbolist. Inner bodily conditions too can be translated into dream-symbols of this kind. A man will dream that a fire is crackling beside him; he sees the very flames. On awakening, he finds that he put on too many bed-clothes and has grown too hot. The feeling of excessive heat comes out symbolically in the picture of the fire.

Experiences of the most dramatic kind can be enacted in a dream. For instance, a man dreams that he is standing near the edge of a cliff and sees a child running towards it. The dream lets him undergo all the tortures of the thought, “What if the child should fail to notice and fall over!” Presently he sees the child fall and hears the dull thud of the body down below. He wakes up and finds that a familiar object, hanging on the wall of the room, has worked loose and made a dull sounds as it fell. A simple enough event—the dream-life turns it into a sequence of dramatic pictures, full of suspense and excitement.

For the present we need not stop to ponder, how and why—in the last example—the instantaneous thud of the falling object gets extended into a whole series of events, seeming to occupy a considerable time. The point is that the dream translates what waking sense-perception would have shown, into scenes and pictures.

[ 8 ] We see from this that when the senses create from their activity, immediately a creative faculty begins to stir in man. It is the same creative faculty which is at work in fully dreamless sleep, there giving rise to the state of soul we were describing as the antithesis of the waking state. For dreamless sleep, the astral body has to be withdrawn both from the etheric body and from the physical. In dreaming, while separated from the physical body—no longer joined to the physical sense-organs—it still remains connected to some extent with the etheric. The very fact that what is going on in the astral body is perceived in pictures, is due to its connection with the etheric body. The moment this connection too is severed, the pictures fade into complete unconsciousness; dreamless sleep ensues.

The arbitrary, often nonsensical character of dream-pictures is due to the fact that the astral body, disconnected as it is from the sense-organs of the physical, cannot relate its pictures to the proper objects and events of the external world. This becomes very evident when we contemplate the kind of dream in which the I, the Ego, is in a sense divided. For instance, one dreams of oneself as a pupil who cannot answer a question the schoolmaster is putting; yet in the very next moment the master himself gives the required answer. Unable to make use of the organs of perception of his physical body, the dreamer cannot relate the two events to himself as to one and the same person. Even to recognize himself as a continuous and coherent I, man therefore needs to be equipped with outer organs of perception. Only if he had attained the faculty to be aware of his own I without the help of such organs of perception, only then would the continuity and oneness of the I still be perceptible to him even outside the physical body. For supersensible consciousness, faculties of this kind must indeed be acquired. The way to do so will be dealt with in a later chapter.

[ 9 ] Not only sleep; death too is due to a change in the mutual connection between the members of man's being. And here once more, what is apparent to supersensible perception can also be seen in its effects within the manifest world. Here once again, unbiased thinking will find the statements of supersensible science confirmed by the facts of external life, though in this instance the impress of the invisible in the visible domain is less in evidence, and it is therefore not so easy to realize the weight and bearing of those realities of outer life which answer to the statements of supersensible science. Here even more than for other things already dealt with in this volume, if the mind is not open to discern the way in which the sense-perceptible domain relates to the supersensible and indicates the latter's presence, it is only too easy to pronounce the findings of Occult Science mere figments of imagination.

[ 10 ] When a man falls asleep, whereas his astral body is released from its connection with the etheric and physical bodies, the latter still remain united. Not so in death. Left to its own unaided forces, the physical body will now inevitably disintegrate. For the etheric body, on the other hand, death brings about a condition in which it never was throughout the whole time between birth and death, save in exceptional circumstances to be mentioned later. For the etheric is now united with its astral body, and the physical body is no longer with them. The fact is that the etheric and astral bodies do not separate immediately after death. They hold together for a time, by virtue of a force which obviously must be there, for otherwise the etheric body could never have freed itself form the physical, to which it is tenaciously attached, as is shown by the fact that in sleep the astral body fails to part them. At death, the force that holds the etheric and astral bodies together becomes at least effective, detaching the etheric from the physical. To begin with therefore, the etheric body after death is united with the astral body. Supersensible observation shows that this their union varies from one individual to another. All we need say at the moment is that it lasts for a short time—for a few days—after which the astral body frees itself from the etheric body also, and goes on its way without it. While the connection of the two persists, man is in a condition consciously to perceive the experiences of his astral body. So long as the physical body was there, the separation of the astral body from the physical in sleep involved the immediate commencement of its work upon the physical body from without, for the renewal of the outworn organs. With the severance of the physical body at death, this work is at an end. But the spiritual forces which were expended on it during sleep are still there and can now serve a different end, namely to make perceptible the processes within the astral body as such.

From a point of view which would restrict scientific observation to the outer aspects of life, it will be said: “These are so many assertions, evident no doubt to those endowed with supersensible perception; men who are not thus endowed have no way of assessing the truth.” Yet this is not so. Even in this domain, remote though it may seem from ordinary sight and thought, what the science of the supersensible observes can be taken hold of, once discovered, by the normal faculties of thought and judgment. One need only ponder with due judgment the manifest and given relationships of human life. The thinking, feeling and willing of man are related to one another, and to his experiences in and with the outer world, in ways that are unintelligible unless the manifest activities and relationships are understood as the expression of an unmanifest. To thoughtful contemplation, what is here manifest remains opaque and untransparent till we are able to interpret the way the way it takes its course within the physical life of man, as an outcome of non-physical realities disclosed by supersensible cognition. Unillumined by the science of the supersensible, it is as though we were in a dark room without a light. Just as we cannot see the physical objects around us until we have a light, so too we cannot explain what goes on in and through the soul-life of man till we have knowledge of the supersensible.

While man is joined to his physical body, the outer world enters his consciousness in images. After the physical body has been laid aside, he becomes aware of the experiences the astral body undergoes when unconnected with the outer world by physical sense-organs. To begin with, the astral body has no essentially new experiences. Its still remaining connection with the etheric body stands in the way of any new experience. But it possesses in an enhanced degree the memory of the past earth-life, which memory the etheric body—being still united with it—makes to appear in a vivid, all-embracing tableau.

Such is the first experience of the human being after death. He sees his past life from birth till death in a vast series of pictures, simultaneously spread out before him. During this earthly life, memory is only present while—in the waking state—man is united with his physical body. Moreover, it is only present to the limited extent the physical body permits. Yet to the soul herself nothing is lost; everything that has ever made an impression on the soul during this life is preserved. If the physical body were but a perfect instrument for the purpose, it would be possible for us at every moment to conjure up before the soul the whole of our past earthly life. At death all hindrance is removed, and while man still retains the ether-body he has a relatively perfect memory. This vanishes, however, in proportion as the ether-body loses the form it had while it indwelt the physical—a form which bears a fundamental likeness to the latter. This also is the reason why the astral body after a time separates from the etheric. For the astral body can only remain united with the etheric while the latter retains the imprint, the form that corresponds to the physical body.

During the life between birth and death a severance of the etheric body from the physical only takes place in exceptional cases and then only for a short duration. When, for example, a man subjects an arm or leg to an unusual pressure, a portion of the etheric body may become separated from the physical. We say then that the limb has “gone to sleep.” The peculiar sensation it gives is in fact due to the severance of the etheric body. (Here too, of course, materialistic thinking can deny the invisible within the visible, maintaining that the effect is merely due to the physical or physiological disturbances induced by the excessive pressure.) In such a case supersensible perception actually sees the corresponding part of the etheric body moving out and away from the physical. Now when a man undergoes an altogether unaccustomed shock or something of that nature, a like severance of the etheric may ensue for a brief space of time over a large proportion of the body. This happens if he is brought very near to death, as on the point of drowning, or when in imminent danger of a fall in mountaineering.

What is related by individuals who have had such experiences comes very near the truth. Supersensible observation confirms it. They tell how at such a moment the whole of their past life appeared before them in a vast tableau of memory. Among the many examples that might be cited, we select one, the author of which—by the whole tenor of his thought—would have rejected as empty fancies what is here said about these matters. Incidentally, when one is taking the first steps in supersensible observation it is always useful to familiarize oneself with the findings of those who think the science of the supersensible fantastic. They are less easily attributed to favorable bias. (Let occult scientists learn as much as they can from those who deem their efforts futile. If the latter do not respond in kind we need not feel discouraged. Supersensible observation does not of course depend on these evidences for the verification of its results, and in adducing them the intention is not to prove, only to illustrate.)

The eminent anthropologist and criminologist Moritz Benedict, a scientist distinguished too in other branches of research, tells in his reminiscences of an experience of his own. Once he was very nearly drowned while bathing. He saw the whole of his past life in memory before him as though in a single picture.

It is no contradiction if others have described quite differently the pictures they experienced on such occasions, to the extent sometimes that there seemed little connection with the events of their past lives. For the pictures that arise during this altogether unaccustomed state of severance from the physical body are often not so easy to elucidate in their relation to the human being's life. None the less, if thoroughly gone into, some such relation will always be discerned. Nor is it valid to object that someone on the point of drowning did not have the experience at all. For the experience is only possible when the etheric body, while severed from the physical, remains united with the astral. It will not occur if the shock brings about a detachment of the etheric from the astral body too, since there will then be complete unconsciousness, just as there is in dreamless sleep.

[ 11 ] Once more, then: gathered together in a great memory-tableau, the past life of man comes before him during the time immediately following his death. Thereafter, the astral body—severed now from the etheric—goes on its further way alone and by itself. It is not difficult to see that in this astral body there will no remain whatever it has made its own by dint of its own activity while living in the physical. The Ego has to some extent elaborated Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. These, in so far as they are evolved, owe their existence to the Ego to the I—not to the organs of the bodies. Now by its very essence the I is the being which needs no outer organs for its perception. No more does it need outer organs to retain what it has once united with itself.

It may perhaps be objected: why, then, in sleep is there no perception of the evolved Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man? There is none because from birth until death the Ego is chained to the physical body. In sleep, it is true, it is with the astral body outside the physical. Yet even then it remains in close connection with the latter, for to the physical body the activity of the astral body, closely associated with the Ego, is directed. Bound as it is to the physical throughout earthly life, the Ego is dependent for its perceptions on the outer world of the senses; it cannot yet receive the manifestations of the spiritual in its original and proper form. Such manifestations can only come to the human Ego when released by death from its connection with the physical and etheric bodies. In life, the physical world holds the soul's activities chained to itself; another world can light up for the soul the moment it has been drawn forth, out of the physical body.

Yet there are reasons why even at this juncture man's connection with the external, sense-perceptible world does not altogether cease. Cravings, in effect, persist, maintaining the connection. These are the cravings man engenders for himself through the very fact that he is Ego-conscious—endowed with an Ego, the fourth member of his being. The cravings and desires which spring from the nature of the three lower bodies can only take effect in the outer world; when these bodies are laid aside, these cravings cease. Due as it is to the external body, hunger is naturally silenced when this body is no longer joined to the Ego. When death has taken place, the Ego, if it had now no other cravings than derive from its own spiritual nature, could draw full satisfaction from the spiritual world into which it is then transplanted. But life has given it other cravings besides these. Life has kindled in it a longing for enjoyments which, while only satisfiable by means of physical organs, are not in essence attributable to these organs. Not only the three bodies crave for satisfaction through the physical world; the Ego too finds enjoyments in this world—enjoyments such that in the spiritual world there are no objects to satisfy the longing for them.

Two kinds of wishes are proper to the Ego during earthly life. First are the wishes which, originating as they do in the three bodies, have to be satisfied in and through the bodies; these wishes naturally cease when the bodies disintegrate. Secondly there are the wishes which originate in the spiritual nature of the Ego. So long as the Ego is living in the bodies, these wishes too will find their satisfaction by means of bodily organs. For the unmanifest, the spirit, is at work here too—manifested through the organs of the body. In and with all that they perceive, the outer senses are at the same time receiving a spiritual portion. This spiritual portion is present also after death, though in a different form. Therefore the spiritual that the Ego craves for in the world of the senses is still available to it when these senses are no longer there.

If then a third kind of wish were not added to these two, death would merely signify the passing on from cravings satisfiable by means of bodily senses, to such as find fulfillment in the direct revelations of the spiritual world. But there are wishes of a third kind—wishes which the Ego engenders for itself while living in the sense-world inasmuch as it takes pleasure in this world even where the latter is not making manifest the spirit.

The lowest kinds of enjoyment can be true manifestations of the spirit. The satisfaction food affords to a hungry creature—this too is a manifestation of the spirit. For by the creature's nourishment something is accomplished, without which—in one essential direction—the spiritual itself could not evolve. But the I of man is able to go beyond this due enjoyment. The I can long for the tasty dish, quite apart form the function nourishment fulfils and in the fulfilling of it serves the spirit. The same applies to many other things belonging to the “sensual” world—that is to say, the world of the senses. Desires are thus engendered which would never have occurred in the sense-perceptible world of Nature, had not the I of man entered this world. Nor is it from the spiritual being of the I as such that these desires spring. The natural enjoyments of the senses are needed by the Ego—even as a spiritual being—while living in the body. In and through sense-perceptible Nature the spiritual manifests itself; it is none other than the spirit which the Ego is enjoying when given up to sensual manifestations through which the spirit-light is shining. In the enjoyment of this light it will continue, even when the nature of the outer sense is no longer the medium through which the spiritual light is radiating.

For sensual desires on the other hand, from which the living spirit is absent, there can be no fulfillment in the spiritual world. Therefore when death ensues the possibility of their assuagement is utterly cut off. The enjoyment of tasty food can only be brought about by means of the bodily organs—tongue, palate and the like—used in taking of food. These organs man no longer has when the physical body haw been laid aside. And if the Ego still feels need of such enjoyment, the need must remain satisfied. In so far as the enjoyment is in harmony with the spirit, it will be present only as long as the physical organs are there. But in so far as the human I has fostered it without thereby serving the spirit, the wish for the enjoyment will persist after death, vainly thirsting for satisfaction.

What now goes on in man can only be imagined if we think of one who has to suffer burning thirst in a desert country where no water is to be found. Such is the lot of the human I after death in so far as it harbors unextinguished cravings for the enjoyments of the outer world and has no organs for their satisfaction. Only, if thirst is here to serve as a comparison for the Ego's plight after death, we must imagine it boundlessly enhanced and extended to all the manifold cravings which may still persist, for the assuagement of which there is no possibility whatever.

The next stage through which the Ego passes is that it gradually frees itself from all these bonds of attachment to the outer world. In this respect it has to bring about within itself a purging and a liberation. All the desires the Ego has engendered while living in the body and that have not their rightful home within the spiritual world, must now be extirpated. As a combustible material is seized and burned by fire, so is the world of cravings dissolved and annihilated after death.

Herewith we peer into a world which supersensible wisdom has very properly described as “the consuming fire of the spirit.” This “fire” seizes hold of every craving which is not only sensual—related, that is, to the sense-perceptible world—but is so in such a way that in its essential nature it does not express the spirit. Pictures like these, in terms of which supersensible insight cannot but describe what actually happens after death, may appear terrible and cheerless. Well may it seem appalling that a hope, for the satisfaction of which sensory organs are that a hope, for the satisfaction of which sensory organs are required, must after death give way to utter hopelessness, or that a wish which the physical world alone is able to fulfill, must change into the burning want of fulfillment. Yet one can only think in this way while failing to perceive that all the wishes and cravings, seized upon after death by the “consuming fire,” represent forces which are not wholesome but in a higher sense destructive, inimical to life. These forces cause the Ego to form closer bonds of attachment to the sense-world than are needed in order to receive from this world that which will serve the Ego's progress. Nature—the “world of the senses”—is a manifestation of the hidden spiritual. There is a form in which the spiritual can only become manifest by means of bodily senses, and in this form the Ego would never be able to receive it, were it not to use the senses for the enjoyment of what is spiritual in the garb of Nature. But the Ego becomes estranged from the world's real and true and spiritual content when cravings for sensual enjoyments through which the spirit is no longer speaking. While sensual enjoyment as an expression of the spirit helps to uplift and evolve the Ego, that which does not express the spirit spells its impoverishment and desolation. And though a craving of this latter kind may lead to satisfaction and enjoyment within the sense-world, its emptying and devastating effect upon the I of man is still there. Only that this effect does not become perceptible to the I until after death. While life goes on, the enjoyment consequent on such a craving can beget new wishes of its kind, and man does not become aware that by his own doing he is enveloping him in a consuming fire. The fire that enveloped him already during life is made perceptible to him after death, and in so doing becomes transmuted into its wholesome and beneficial consequences.

When one human being loves another, he is not only attracted by those of the other's features which are directly sensible by physical organs of perception. And yet of these alone can it be said that death will render him unable any longer to perceive them. On the other hand, after death there becomes visible in the beloved the very reality of being for the perception of which the physical organs were but the means. Moreover then the one thing that will mar this perfect visibility will be the persistence of cravings which can only be satisfied by means of physical organs. Nay, if these cravings were not purged, conscious perception of the beloved would not be possible at all after death. Looked at in this light, the terrible and hopeless picture which the after-death events described by supersensible science might at first sight be seeming to convey, gives place to one that is deeply comforting and satisfying.

[ 12 ] In yet another respect our experiences after death are different from those we have in life. During the time of purification, man—in a sense—lives backwards. He goes again through all that he experienced in life, ever since his birth. Starting from the events immediately preceding death, he re-experiences it all in reverse order, back into childhood. And as he does so, there become visible to him all those things in his life which did not truly spring from the spiritual nature of the Ego. These too he now experiences in an inverted way. Say for example that a man dies in his sixtieth year, and that at the age of forty, in an outburst of anger, he caused another person pain in body or in soul. He will experience the event in consciousness again after death, when in his backward journeying through life he arrives at his fortieth year—the moment when it happened. But he will no experience, not the satisfaction he felt in giving vent to his anger, but instead the suffering the other person underwent through his unkindness. The example shows that what is painful in the after-death experience of an event of this kind is due to a craving to which the Ego gave way—a craving which had its origin in the outer material world and in this alone. In truth, by giving vent to such a craving the ego was doing harm not only to the other human being but to itself; only the harm done to itself remained invisible during life. After death the whole world of harmful cravings becomes perceptible to the Ego. The man now feels drawn to every being and to every object by contact with which a craving of this kind was ever kindled in him, so that the craving may be destroyed even as it originated—destroyed in the consuming fire.

When in his backward journeying man has attained the moment of his birth, all such cravings having now undergone the cleansing fire, there is no longer anything to hinder his unimpaired devotion to the spiritual world. He enters on a new stage of existence. Just as in death the physical body, and soon after it the etheric body was laid aside, so now there falls away and disintegrates the part of the astral body which is unable to live save in the consciousness of the external, physical world. Therefore for supersensible science there are no less than three corpses—physical, etheric and astral. The point of time at which the astral corpse is shed is given by the fact that the period of purification lasts about a third as long as the past life between birth and death. Why this is so will only be clear at a later stage, when the whole course of human life has been more thoroughly gone into in the light of Occult Science. For supersensible perception there are ever present in man's environment the astral corpses cast aside by those who are passing form the stage of purification on to higher levels of existence. It is analogous to what is obviously true for physical perception: physical corpses come into being where human communities are living.

[ 13 ] After the time of purification an entirely new state of consciousness begins for the I of man. Before death, perceptions came to him from without, for the light of his consciousness to fall upon them. Now, as it were, a world of coming to him—into his consciousness—from within. It is a spiritual world, in which the I is also living between birth and death. Here however, it is veiled in the manifestations of the senses; and only when—turning aside from all outward perceptions—the I becomes aware of itself in the inmost “holy of holies” of its being, what otherwise is shrouded in the veils of sense-perceptible Nature, makes itself known directly and in its pristine form. Like to this inner perception of the I before death, “form within outward” is the manifestation of the spiritual world in its fullness, after death and when the time of purification has been absolved.

This kind of manifestation is indeed already there as soon as the etheric body has been laid aside, but like a darkening cloud the world of cravings obscures it, clinging still to the external world. It is as though a blissful world of purely spiritual consciousness were to be interspersed with black demonic shadows, due to the cravings that are being purged in the consuming fire. Indeed these cravings are now revealed to be no mere shadows but very real beings; this becomes evident to man's Ego as soon as the physical organs are taken from him and he is thereby enabled to perceive what is spiritual. The beings look like distortions and caricatures of what was known to him hitherto by sense-perception. For of this realm of the purging fire, supersensible observation must relate that it is inhabited by beings whose appearance of the spiritual eye can only kindle pain and ghastly horror. Their very joy seems to consist in destruction; their passion is directed to an evil compared to which the evils known to us in the outer world seem insignificant. Whatever man takes with him thither by way of cravings of the kind above defined, appears as nourishment to these beings—nourishment by means of which they constantly renew and reinforce their powers.

The picture we have thus been painting of a world imperceptible to the outer senses may seem less incredible if one will look with open mind at well-known aspects of the animal creation. What, to the eye of the spirit, is a ruthlessly prowling wolf? What is revealing itself in the figure of the wolf as the outer senses see it? Surely it is none other than a soul that lives in cravings and acts out of its cravings. The very form of the wolf may be described as an embodiment of its cravings. Even if man had no organs to perceive this outer form, he would still have to recognize the wolf's existence if the cravings, though invisible, made themselves felt in their effect—if there were on the prowl a power invisible to human eye, yet by whose agency all that the visible wolf is doing were being done.

The beings of the purging fire are not present to the outer senses—only to supersensible consciousness. Their effects however are only too evident, in that they tend to destroy the Ego that gives them nourishment. When right enjoyment is carried to intemperance or to excess these effects are made visible enough.

Nature too, as perceived by the outer senses, would entice the Ego, but only in so far as the enjoyment were true to the Ego's own essential being. An animal is urged by instinct to desire that alone of the outer world for which its three bodies crave. Man has higher forms of enjoyment because he has not only the three bodily members but the fourth, the I—the Ego. If then the Ego craves for forms of satisfaction which serve, not the furtherance or maintenance but the destruction of its own being, such desires can neither be the outcome of the three bodies nor of the Ego's proper nature. They can only be the work of beings whose true shape and form remain hidden from the senses, but who gain access precisely to the higher nature of the Ego and entice it into cravings unfounded in the nature of the senses, yet only satisfiable by its means. In effect, there are beings whose food consists of cravings and passions more evil and pernicious than those of any animal, for they live not in the true nature of the senses but seize the spiritual and drag it down on to the sensual level. Their forms and features are to the spiritual eye more hideous and ghastly than those of the most savage animals. The latter, after all, do but incorporate natural passions, natural desires. The destructiveness of these beings boundlessly exceeds the wildest ravings known to us in the animal world as seen by the outer senses. Supersensible knowledge must in this way extend man's outlook to a world of beings who in a sense are on a lower level than any visible animal, even the most noxious and destructive.

[ 14 ] When after death man has passed through this world, he finds himself face to face with a world of pure spiritual content—a world, moreover, which begets in him only such longings as will find satisfaction in the purely spiritual. But he still distinguishes what appertains to his own I or Ego from what constitutes his environment, which we might also call the “spiritual outer world” for the Ego. Only, once more, his experiences of this environment come to him in the same way in which the inner perception of his own I came to him while living in the body. While in the life between birth and death the environment of man speaks to him through the organs of his bodies, when he has laid all the bodies aside the language of his new environment of man speaks to him through the organs of his bodies, when he has laid all the bodies aside the language of his new environment speaks directly into the inmost “holy of holies” of the I am. Now therefore the whole environment of man is replete with beings alike in kind to his own I, for in effect, only an I has access to an I. Even as minerals, plants and animals, surrounding him in the world of sense, constitute sense-perceptible Nature, so after death man is surrounded by a world composed of spiritual Beings.

Yet he brings with him thither something more—something which in yonder world is not his environment. In effect, he brings with him what his Ego has experienced while living in the sense-world. The sum-total of these his experiences first appeared to him in an all-embracing memory-tableau immediately after death, while the etheric body was still connected with his Ego. The ether-body was then laid aside, but something of the memory-tableau remained as an enduring possession of the Ego. It is as thought an extract, a quintessence, were distilled of all the experiences that had come to the human being between birth and death. This is the thing that endures. It is the spiritual yield, the fruit of life. The yield, once more, is of a purely spiritual nature. It contains all the spiritual content, manifested during life through the outer senses. Spiritual though it is, without man's sojourn in the sense-world it could never have come into existence. After death, the I of man feels this spiritual fruit, culled in the world of the senses, to be his own—his inner world. With this possession he is entering into the spiritual world—a world composed of beings who manifest themselves as an I alone can manifest itself in its own inmost depths. A seed, which is a kind of extract of the whole plant, can only develop when planted in another world—the earthly soil. What the Ego brings with it from the sense-world is like a seed—a seed received into the spiritual world, under whose influences it will now develop.

The science of the supersensible can at most give pictures in attempting to describe what happens in this “Land of Spirits.” Yet the pictures can be true to the reality. Experiencing the facts invisible to the external eye, supersensible consciousness can feel these pictures of them to be true. The spiritual realities can thus be illustrated by comparisons from sense-perceptible Nature. Purely spiritual though they are, they none the less bear a certain likeness to this world of Nature. As in this world a color will appear when the eye receives an influence from the appropriate object, so too in Spirit-land, under the influence of a spiritual Being, the Ego will experience a kind of color. Only the color-experience will come about in the way in which the Ego's own inner self-perception—and this alone—comes about during the life between birth and death. It is not as though light from outside were impinging on him; rather as though another Being directly influenced the Ego of man, impelling him to represent the influence to himself in a color-picture. Thus do all Beings in the spiritual environment of the Ego find expression in a world radiant with color.

Needless to say, since the manner of their origin is so very different, the color-experiences of the spiritual world differ in character from those we enjoy in the world of Nature. The same applies to other kinds of sense-impression which man receives from this world. It is the sounds of the spiritual world which are most like the corresponding impressions of the sense-world. The more man lives his way into the spiritual world, the more does it become for him an inner life and movement, comparable to the sounds and harmonies of sense-perceptible reality. Only he feels the sound, not as approaching an organ of perception from outside, but as a power flowing outward into the world from his own Ego. He feels it as in the sense-world he would feel his own speech or song; yet in the spiritual world he is aware that the sounds, even while proceeding from himself, are in reality the manifestation of other Beings, pouring themselves into the World through him.

There is a yet higher form of manifestation in the Spirit-land, when spiritual sound is enhanced to become the “spiritual Word.” Not only does the surging life and movement of another spiritual Being then pour through the I of man; the Being himself communicates his inmost being to the I. Without the remnant of separation which in the world of the senses even the most intimate companionship must have, two beings live in one-another when the Ego is thus poured through and through by the spiritual Word. In all reality, such is the Ego's companionship with other spiritual beings after death.

Three distinct regions of Spirit-land—the land of Spirits—are apparent to supersensible consciousness. We may compare them with three domains of sense-perceptible Nature. The first is as it were the “solid land” of the spiritual world; the second the “region of oceans and rivers;” the third the “air” or “atmosphere.

Whatever assumes physical form upon Earth and is thus made perceptible to physical organs, is seen in its spiritual essence in the first region of Spirit-land. For example, one may there perceive the power which builds the form of a crystal. Only what there reveals itself is like the antithesis of what appears to the senses in the outer world. The space which is here filled by the rocky material appears to the spiritual eye as a kind of hollow or vacuum; while all around the hollow space is seen the force building the form of the stone. The characteristic color which the stone has in the sense-world is experienced in the spiritual world as its complementary. Seen therefore from Spirit-land, a red stone is experienced with a greenish and a green stone with a reddish hue. Other properties too appear as their antithesis. Even as stones, rocks and geological formations constitute the solid land—the continental region—of the world of Nature, so do the entities we have been describing constitute the “solid land” of the spiritual world.

All that is life in the sense-world is the oceanic region of the spiritual world. To the eye of sense, life appears in its effects—in plants and animals and human beings. To the eye of the spirit, life is a flowing essence, like seas and rivers pervading the Spirit-land. Better still is the comparison with the circulation of the blood in the human body. For while the seas and rivers in external Nature appear as though distributed irregularly, there is a certain regularity in the distribution of the flowing life above all which is experienced as living spiritual sound.

The third region of Spirit-land is the airy sphere or “atmosphere.” All that is feeling and sensation in the outer world is present in the spirit-realm as an all-pervading element, comparable to the air on Earth. We must imagine an ocean of flowing sensation. Sorrow and pain, joy and delight, are wafted in that region as are wind and tempest in the atmosphere of the outer world. Think of a battle being fought on Earth. Not only are there facing one another the figures of the combatants which the outer eye can see. Feelings are pitted against feelings, passions against passions. Pain fills the battlefield no less than the forms of men. All that is there of passion, pain, victorious exultation, exists not only in its outer sense-perceptible effects; the spiritual sense becomes aware of it as a real event in the airy sphere of Spirit-land. Such an event is in the spiritual like a thunderstorm in the physical world. Moreover the perception of such events may be compared to the hearing of words in the physical world. Hence it is said: Even as the air enwraps and permeates the inhabitants of earth, so does the wind of the Spirit—the “wafting of the spiritual Words”—enwrap and permeate the beings and events of Spirit-land.

[ 15 ] Further perceptions are possible in the spiritual world, comparable to the warmth and also to the light of the physical world. Warmth permeates all earthly things and creatures, and it is none other than the world of thoughts which in like manner permeates all things in Spirit-land. Only these thoughts must be conceived as independent living Beings. The thoughts man apprehends within the manifest world are but a shadow of the real thought-being, living in the land of Spirits. One should imagine the thought, such as it is in man, lifted out of him and as an active being endowed with an inner life of its own. Even this is but a feeble illustration of what pervades the fourth region of Spirit-land. Thoughts in the form in which man perceives them in the physical world between birth and death are but a manifestation of the real world of thoughts—the kind of manifestation that is possible by means of bodily organs The thoughts man cultivates—those above all which signify an enrichment of the physical world—originate in this region of Spirit-land. This does not only apply to the ideas of great inventors or men of genius. Fruitful ideas “occur” to every human being—ideas he does not merely borrow from the outer world, but which enable him to work upon this world and change it. While feelings and passions occasioned by the external world belong to the third region of Spirit-land, all that can come to life in the soul of man so that he becomes creative, acting on his environment in such a way as to transform and fertilize it, is manifested in its archetypal being in the fourth region of the spiritual world.

The prevailing element of the fifth region may be likened to the light of the physical world. It is none other than Wisdom, manifested in its pristine, archetypal form. Beings belong to that region who pour Wisdom into their environment, even as the Sun sheds light upon physical creatures. Whatsoever the Wisdom shines upon, is revealed in its true significance for the spiritual world, just as a physical creature reveals its color when the light is shining on it. There are yet higher regions of Spirit-land; we shall refer to them again in later chapters.

Such is the world in which the I of man is steeped after death, with the yield he brings with him from his life in the outer world of sense. This yield, this harvest, is still united with the part of the astral body which was not cast off when the time of purification was over. For, as we saw, only part of the astral body then falls away—namely the part which with its wishes and cravings clung to the physical life even after death. The merging of the Ego into the spiritual world with all that it has gained from the sense-world may be likened to the embedding of a seed into the ripening earth. The seed draws to it the substances and forces of the surrounding soil, so that it may unfold into a new plant. In like manner, development and growth are of the essence of the I of man when planted in the spiritual world.

In what an organ perceives also lies hidden the creative force to which the organ is due. It is the eye that perceives the light, and yet without the light there would be no eye. Creatures that live perpetually in the dark fail to develop organs of sight. Thus the whole bodily man is created out of the hidden forces of what the several members of his bodies are able to perceive. The physical body is built by the forces of the physical world, the ether-body of those of the world of life; the astral body has been formed out of the astral world. Transplanted into Spirit-land, the Ego meets with these creative forces, which remain concealed from physical perception. Spiritual beings who, though unseen, surround man all the time, and who have built his physical body, become perceptible to him in the first region of Spirit-land. While in the physical world he can perceive no more than the outer manifestation of the creative and formative spiritual powers to which his own physical body is due, after death he is in their very midst. They now reveal themselves to him in their original and proper form, previously hidden from him. In like manner, throughout the second region he is amid the creative forces of which his ether-body consists, and in the third there flow towards him the powers of which his astral body is formed and organized. The higher regions too of Spirit-land now pour in upon him the creative powers to which he owes the very form and substance of his life between birth and death.

[ 16 ] These Beings of the spiritual world henceforth collaborate with the fruit of his former life which man himself has brought with him—the fruit which is now about to become the seed. And by this collaboration man is built up anew—built, to being with, as a spiritual being. In sleep the physical and etheric bodies are still there; the astral body and the Ego although outside, are in communication with them. The influences from the spiritual world received by the astral body and the Ego during sleep can only serve to repair the faculties and forces exhausted in the waking hours. But when the physical and the etheric body, and after purification the parts of the astral body which were still chained to the physical world by desire, have been cast off, what flows to the Ego from the spiritual world becomes not only the repairer; henceforth it is the re-creator. And after a lapse of time (as to the length of which we shall have more to say,) the Ego is again invested with an astral body, able to live in an etheric and physical body such as are proper to the human being between birth and death. He can be born again and re-appear in a new earthly life, in which the fruits of his former life have been incorporated.

Till his investment with a new astral body, man is the conscious witness of his own re-creation. And as the Beings of Spirit-land reveal themselves to him not through external organs but from within, like his own inmost I in the act of self-awareness, he can perceive the revelation so long as his attention does not yet incline towards a world of outer percepts. But from the moment when his astral body has been newly formed, he begins again to turn his attention outward. The astral once again demands an external body—physical and etheric—and in so doing turns away form what is manifested purely from within. Hence there now comes an intermediate condition during which man is plunged into unconsciousness. Consciousness will only be able to re-awaken when in the physical world the necessary organs—organs of physical perception—have been developed. During this intermediate time—the spiritual consciousness illumined by purely inner perception having faded—a new etheric body begins to be formed and organized about the astral body. This being done, man is prepared to re-enter into a physical body. Consciously to partake in the last two events—his re-equipment with an etheric and with a physical body—would only be possible for an Ego which by its own spiritual activity had developed the hidden creative forces of these bodies, in other words, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. So long as man has not yet reached this stage, Beings more advanced in evolution than himself have to direct the process. Such Beings guide the astral body towards a father and mother, so as to endow it with the appropriate etheric and physical bodies.

Now before the new etheric body has been formed and incorporated with the astral body, an event of great significance is undergone by the human being about to re-enter physical existence. In his preceding life, as we saw, he engendered hindering and disturbing forces, revealed to him during his backward journeying after death. Let us return to the above example. At age forty in his former life, in a sudden upsurge of anger, a man did harm to another. He was confronted after death by the other's suffering, as a force hindering the development of his own Ego. So too with all such occurrences of the preceding life. Now on re-entry into physical life these hindrances to his development confront the I of man. As after death a kind of memory-tableau of the past, he now experiences a pre-vision of his coming life. He sees it in a kind of tableau once again, showing him all the obstacles he must remove if his development is to go forward. What he thus sees becomes the source of active forces which he must carry with him into the coming life. The picture of the suffering he caused his fellow-man becomes a force impelling his Ego, now about to enter earthly life once more, to make good the hurt which he inflicted. Thus does the former life wield a determining influence upon the new; the deeds of the new life are, in a way, caused by the deeds of the old. In this relationship of law and causation between an earlier and a later life we have to recognize the real Law of Destiny—often denoted by a word taken from Oriental Wisdom, the law of “Karma.”

[ 17 ] The building of a new bodily organization is however not the only activity incumbent upon man between death and a new birth. While this is going on he lives outside the physical world. But this world too is going forward in its evolution all the time. In comparatively short periods of time the face of the Earth is changed. What did it look like a few thousand years ago, say in the regions of Middle Europe? When man appears again in a new life, the Earth will as a rule be looking very different from what it did last time. Much will have altered during his absence, and in this changing of the face of the Earth, here once again hidden spiritual forces are at work. These forces issue from the very same spiritual world in which man sojourns after death, and he himself is working in and with them; he too has to cooperate in the necessary transformation of the Earth. So long as he has not yet developed Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man and thus attained clear consciousness of the connection between the spiritual and its physical expression, he can of courser only do this under the guidance of higher Beings. None the less, he participates in the work of transforming the conditions upon Earth, and it is true to say: During the time between death and a new birth human beings are at work transforming the condition of the Earth so that it shall accord with what has been evolving in themselves. Picture a region or locality on Earth such as it was at a given time in the past, and then again—profoundly changed—a long time after; the forces which have wrought the change are in the realm of the dead. Thus are the souls of men still in communication with the Earth even between death and a new birth. Supersensible consciousness sees in all physical existence the outer manifestation of hidden spiritual realities. To physical observation, it is the rays of the Sun, changes of climate and the like which bring about the transformation of the Earth. To supersensible observation, in the light-ray falling from the Sun upon the plants and virtues of the dead are working. We become conscious of how the souls of men are hovering about the plants, changing the earthly soil, and other things of this kind. Man's activity after death is devoted not only to himself—not only to the preparation for his own new earthly life—but he is called to work upon the outer world in a spiritual way, even as in the life between birth and death it is his task to work upon it physically.

[ 18 ] Not only does the life of man in Spirit-land influence and modify the prevailing conditions of the physical world, but conversely too, his life and action in physical existence have their effect in the spiritual. To take one example: there is a bond of love between a mother and her child. The love proceeds from a natural attraction, rooted in forces of sense-perceptible Nature. Yet in course of time it is transformed. The natural grows ever more into a spiritual bond, and this is welded not only for the physical world but for the spiritual.

So too it is with many other relationships of life. Threads that are spun in the physical world by spiritual beings persist in the spiritual world. Friends who were closely united in this life belong together in Spirit-land as well; nay, when their bodies have been laid aside, they are in still more intimate communion. For as pure spirits they are there for each other in the way that was described before; it is from within that spiritual beings manifest themselves to one-another. Moreover, bonds that have once been woven between one human being and another will lead them together again in a new life on Earth. Thus in the deepest sense it is true that we find one-another again after death.

[ 19 ] The cycle of human life from birth till death and thence to a new birth repeats itself periodically. Again and again man returns to the Earth when the fruits gained in a preceding physical life has ripened in Spirit-land. But this is not a repetition without beginning or end. Time was when man advanced from other forms of existence to those here described, and in the future he will pass on to different ones again. We shall gain an idea of these transitions in due course, when in the light of supersensible consciousness we shall be describing the evolution of the World in its relation to Man.

[ 20 ] For outer observation, what does on between death and a new birth is of course still more hidden than the underlying spiritual reality of manifest existence between birth and death. As to this part of the hidden world, sensory observation will only see the corresponding effects when they enter into physical existence. The question is, therefore, whether on entering this life through birth man brings with him any evidence of the events since a preceding death, described by supersensible science. Finding a snail's shell in which no trace of any animal can be detected, we shall admit that the shell was produced by an animal's activity and vital functions. We cannot imagine this form to have been the product of mere inorganic forces. In like manner, if in our contemplation of man's earthly life we find what cannot possibly have had its origin in this present life, we can admit with reason that is may be the outcome of what the science of the supersensible describes, if in fact, a light of explanation thereby falls on the otherwise inexplicable. Here therefore too, wide-awake observation with the senses and the thinking mind can find the visible effects intelligible in the light of invisible causes. A man who looks at life with fully open mind will come to see increasingly that this is right; it will impress itself on him with every new observation. The question only is to find the appropriate point of view in each instance. Where, for example, are the effects to be seen of what the human being underwent during the time of purification described by supersensible science? How do the effects appear of his experiences after purification in a purely spiritual real—once more, according to the researches of spiritual science?

[ 21 ] Riddles enough impress themselves upon our thought whenever we earnestly reflect on human life. We see one man born in misery and need, equipped with scanty talents. By the very circumstances of his birth he seems predestined to a life of hardship and limitation. Another is tended and looked after with every care and solicitude from the first moment of his existence. Brilliant faculties unfold in him; he seems predestined to a fruitful and fully satisfying life. In face of such questions two different ways of thought and feeling can make themselves felt. The one wants strictly to adhere to what is seen by the outer senses and understood by the intellect which takes its data from them. A man of this way of thinking will see no deeper question in the fact that one human being is born to happiness, another to ill fortune. And even if he does not have recourse to the word “chance,” he will not think of looking for a deeper law or causal nexus to which these things might be due. As to the presence or the lack of innate talents, he will insist that these are “inherited” from parents, grandparents and other forebears. He will decline to seek the causes in spiritual experiences the individual himself went through before his birth, whereby he shaped his gifts and talents for himself quite apart from physical heredity.

A man imbued with the other way of thought and feeling will not be satisfied with this. Surely—he will aver—even in the manifest world nothing happens in a given locality and environment without some underlying cause. And though in many instances our science may not yet have found them, we can assume the causes to be there. An alpine flower does not grow in low-lying plains; there is something in its nature belonging to the alpine heights. So too there must be something in a human being, causing him to be born into a given environment. Nor is it adequate to look for causes within the physical world alone. To one who thinks more deeply, undue insistence on these causes is like attempting to explain the fact that one man hit another, not by the feelings of the one who dealt the blow but by the physical mechanism of his hand.

This other way of thinking will feel equally dissatisfied with the attributing of gifts and talents to “heredity” alone. Of course it may be pointed out how talents have been and are sometimes inherited in families. For two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. No less than eight mathematicians of distinction sprang form the Bernoulli family. Though some had very different careers mapped out for them in childhood, again and again the “hereditary” talent drew them into the family profession. It might also be contended that by a detailed study of his ancestry a particular man's talents can be shown to have appeared in one way or another in his forebears, so that he is merely benefiting by the summation of inherited potentialities.

A man whose thinking leans towards the spiritual will certainly not disregard evidences of this kind, and yet for him they cannot be what they are to those who want to base all their explanations on facts accessible to the outer senses. He will point out that inherited potentialities cannot of their own accord add up into a complete and integrated personality, any more than the several metallic parts will of their own accord assemble into the watch. And if objection is made that the conjunction of the parents can surely have brought about the combination, thus as it were taking the watchmaker's place, he will answer: Look but with open vision, how altogether now a thing is the personality of every child we see! This cannot possibly come from the parents, for the simple reason that it is not there in them.

[ 22 ] Unclear thinking may give rise to much confusion here. It is silliest of all when those of the former way of thinking represent those of the latter as disregarding and opposing well-established facts. For it need never occur to them to deny the truth or value of the facts alleged. They too can fully see that a mental or spiritual gift or even bent of mind will be “inherited” in a particular family, or that inherited potentialities, added and combined in a descendant, have produced a man or woman of eminence. Readily will they acquiesce when told that the most eminent name is seldom to be found at the head but generally at the latter end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss when they derive from all those things quite other thoughts than do those who will not go beyond super-sensible data. For to the latter the following answer can be made. Certainly a man bears the stamp of his forebears, for the soul-and-spirit, entering physical existence through birth, derives the bodily element from what heredity provides. But this is to say no more than that an entity naturally bears the features of the medium in which it is immersed! It is a quaint and no doubt a trite comparison, yet to an open mind it is surely apposite: A man who has fallen into the water will be wet, but his wetness is no evidence of his inner nature. No more is a human beings' however obvious investment with some of the characteristics of his forebears evidence as to the origin of those which are uniquely his. Moreover this too may be said: If the most eminent name comes at the end of a line of descent, it shows that the bearer of the name required that very line of blood-relationship to form the body needed in this life for his own individual development and expression. It is no proof of the hereditary character of what he—individually—was. Indeed to healthy logic it proves, if anything, the reverse. For if individual gifts were inherited, they surely would appear at the beginning of a line of descent and be handed down from thence to the individual descendants. That they appear at the end, is evidence that they are not hereditary.

[ 23 ] Now it cannot be denied that many of those who believe in spiritual causes also tend to make confusion worse confounded. They talk too much in vague and general terms. To maintain that a man is the mere sum-total of his inherited characteristics may indeed by like saying that the metallic parts have assembled of their own accord into the watch. Yet it must also be granted that many would-be arguments on behalf of a spiritual world are as though one were to say: “The metallic parts of a watch cannot of themselves join up so as to drive the hands forward; therefore there must be some spiritual entity driving them forward.” As against such a construction, the man who answers: “What do I care for ‘mystical’ being of this kind? I want to know the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement is in fact produced,” is building on far better ground. The point is not to be vaguely aware that underlying the mechanical contrivance—the watch, in this instance—there is the spiritual entity, the watchmaker. The thing of practical significance is to get to know the thoughts in the mind of the watchmaker—thoughts which preceded the making of the watch. These thoughts are in the mechanism and can be found there.

[ 24 ] Merely to dream and spin fancies about the supersensible can only lead to confusion and is least likely to satisfy opponents. They are quite right in contending that the vague reference to supersensible begins in no way helps one to understand the facts. Many opponents, it is true, will make the same objection to the precise and clear descriptions of spiritual science. But in this case it can be pointed out how the effects of hidden spiritual causes are manifested in external life. It can be said: Assume for once that what is claimed to have been found by spiritual observation is actually true. Assume that after death a man passed through a time of purification, when he experienced in soul how a thing done by him in a preceding life was going to be an evolutionary hindrance. While he had this experience, there grew in him the impulse to make good the consequences of his action. This impulse he brings with him into a new life; the presence of it is a trait in his nature, leading him to the place and situation where the needed opportunity is given. Think of all impulses of this kind, and you have a cause for the particular human environment into which the man was destined to be born.

Or take another assumption. Suppose once more: what spiritual science tells is true. The fruits of a past life on Earth are embodied in the spiritual seed of man. The Spirit-land wherein he sojourns between death and a new earthly life is the realm where these fruits ripen, to re-emerge in the new life transmuted into aptitudes and talents and making him the man his is, so that his present character and being appear as the effect of what was gained in a former life. Take this as a hypothesis and with it candidly look out into life. If it consistent, in the first place, with a healthy recognition of the outer facts—facts accessible to the senses—in their full truth and import. At the same time it makes intelligible ever so many things which, if one had to rely upon the outer facts alone, must remain unintelligible to anyone whose mind and feeling do not incline towards the spiritual world. Above all, it will put an end to that inverted logic, of which a typical instance was the proposition that because the most eminent name occurs at the end of a hereditary tree, therefore the man who bears it must have inherited his gifts. The supersensible facts ascertained by spiritual science makes life intelligible to sound logic and straightforward thinking.

[ 25 ] Still, the conscientious seeker after truth, without experience of his own in the supersensible world yet looking for a deeper understanding of the facts, may have another difficulty at this point, the force of which should be admitted. He may contend: Surely we cannot assume that a thing is true merely because it helps explain the otherwise inexplicable. Needless to say, this objection will not trouble those who know the thing in question by their own supersensible experience. Later on in this book a path will be indicated which one may go along, to learn to know by one's own experience not only the other spiritual facts here described but the law of spiritual causation too. But for those who do not want to take this path, the difficulty remains. Moreover even for those who do, what will now be said in answer to it may be of value. Rightly received and understood, it is indeed the very best way of taking the first step.

Certainly we ought not to assume things of the existence of which we have no other knowledge, merely because they give a satisfying explanation of the otherwise inexplicable. But with the spiritual facts here adduced the case is really different. To assume them has not the mere intellectual consequence of making life intelligible theoretically. When we receive them—even as hypotheses—into our thoughts, we experience far more than this, and different in kind. Think of a man to whom a great misfortune happens, from which he suffers deeply. He can meet the occurrence in either of two ways. He can experience the pain of it, give himself up to this emotion and maybe even succumb to his distress. But he can fact it in a different way, saying to himself: “In reality, it was I who in the past life planted in myself the forces which have now confronted me with this occurrence. I have inflicted it upon myself.” He can now kindle in himself all the feelings which this thought may carry in its train. Of course the thought must be entertained with great earnestness and intensity to have an adequate effect upon his life of feeling. But anyone who manages to do this will make a very significant discover—best illustrated by a comparison. Each of two men, let us suppose, is given a stick of sealing-wax. The one indulges in intellectual reflections upon its “inner nature.” His thoughts may be profound, but if this inner nature is in no way revealed he will very soon be told that they are vain speculation. The other rubs the sealing-wax with a silken cloth and demonstrates how it will attract small bodies. There is a vital difference between the thoughts that passed through the first man's head, giving rise to his philosophical reflections, and those of the second man. The former are without factual consequence, whereas the latter have led to a force of Nature—a real and potent fact—being conjured forth from its hidden state.

Such are the thoughts of one who thinks how in a former life he planted in himself the force that led him into a painful misfortune. The mere idea that this was so kindles in him a real power—a power to meet the event quite differently than he could do without it. It dawns upon him how inherently necessary, how essential was the event which he could otherwise only have looked upon as an unfortunate mischance. With direct insight he will realize: “This thought was right, for it has had the power to reveal to me the real state of affairs.” Inner experiments of this kind, actively repeated, become an ever increasing source of inner strength, and by their fruitful outcome prove their truth. The demonstration grows impressive—ever more so. In spirit and in soul, and physically too, the experience is health-giving—in all respects a positive and beneficial influence upon one's life. A man becomes aware that with such thoughts he takes his proper stand amid the ups and downs of life, whereas if he were only thinking of the single life between birth and death he would be giving himself up to illusions. Knowledge of reincarnation fortifies his inner life.

Admittedly, this intimate and searching proof of the spiritual law of causation can only be gained by each man for himself, in his own inner life. And it is really possible for everyone. No-one who has not gained it for himself can judge of its demonstrative power, while those who have can hardly doubt it any more. We need not be surprised that this is so. For where a thing is so bound up with a man's individuality, his inmost being, it is but natural that it can only be adequately proved by his own inner experience.

This does not mean however that because it answers to an inner experience of the soul the question can only be settled by each man for himself and therefore cannot be the subject-matter of a valid spiritual science. True, everyone must have the experience himself, just as everyone has to perceive for himself the proof of a theorem in mathematics. But the pathway by which the experience is reached, no less than the method of proving the mathematical theorem, is universally valid.

[ 26 ] Apart of course from actual observation in the supersensible, the proof above described is undeniably the only one which by the potency an fertile outcome of its thoughts stands firm in face of every fair and rational approach. Other considerations may be of great significance, and yet in all of them a sincere opponent may find loopholes. One other thought—evident enough to fair-minded insight—does however deserve mention. The very fact of education—that man is educable—goes a long way to prove that in the human child there is a spiritual being clad in a bodily garment and working his way through into life. Compare man with the animal. The characteristic properties and faculties of the animal are apparent from birth onward—a well-defined totality, of which the plan is manifestly given by heredity and then develops by contact with the outer world. See how the chick begins to fulfill the functions of its life as soon as ever it is hatched. How different with man! While he is being educated things which may well have no connection whatever with his heredity meet him and come into relation with his inner life. He proves able to assimilate and make his own the effects of these external influences. As every educator is aware, powers and faculties from the pupil's own inner life must come to meet these influences; if they do not, schooling and education are useless. An educator of sufficient insight will even mark the clear dividing line between the inherited tendencies and those inner faculties of his pupils which ray right through the latter, originating as they do in former lives.

True, in this field we cannot offer proofs as literally “weighty” as are the scientific proofs for which a balance is used in a physical experiment. But we are dealing here with the more intimate realities of life. To a sensitive thinker the kind of evidence just indicated, intangible though it is, has a validity even more cogent than that of tangible and ponderable data.

Animals too can of course be trained to develop special qualities and aptitudes, as though by education. But if we once discern what is essential, this is no valid objection. Quite apart from the fact that transitions between one thing and another are everywhere to be found, the effects of training do not merge into the animal's individual being as in the case of man. We are even told how the skills and aptitudes domestic animals acquire by their association with man or by deliberate training can be inherited. In other words, the effect is not individual but generic. Darwin describes how dogs will “fetch and carry” without previous training and without ever having seen it done. Who would say the same of human education?

[ 27 ] Now there are thinkers who see beyond the mistaken notion that man is outwardly pieced together by mere hereditary forces. They rise to the idea that a spiritual being, an individuality, precedes and helps to form the bodily existence. But many of them are not yet able to realize the fact of repeated lives on Earth, the fruits of earlier lives playing a decisive part during an intermediate spiritual form of existence. We will cite one of these thinkers, Immanuel Hermann Fichte—son of the great philosopher—who in his Anthropolgie (p. 528) sums up his observations as follows:

“The parents are by no means the progenitors in the full sense of the word. What they contribute is the organic material, and not only this; also the intermediate qualities of heart and mind and sensibility, shown in the temperament, in shades of feeling, instinctive tendencies and the like, the common source of all which we found in the imaginative power—Phantasie—using this word in the wider sense already indicated. In all these elements of a man's personality, the mingling and conjunction of the souls of his parents is unmistakable. These we may justly regard as a simple outcome of procreation, the more so since the act of procreation—as we were driven to admit—is an event in the soul-life too. Yet in all this the core and coping-stone of the individuality is not yet contained. For as a deeper penetration shows, even these subtler traits of heart and mind and feeling are but a sheath, an instrument, a vestment to contain the essentially spiritual, ideal potentialities of the man himself. True, they can further—or it may be hinder—these potentialities in their development, but they can never bring them forth out of themselves.”

A little later on (p. 532) Fichte adds:

“As to his archetypal spiritual form each human being pre-exists. Spiritually seen, two human individuals are no more like one another than are two animal species.”

These ideas only go so far as to allow that a spiritual being enters the physical, bodily nature of man to indwell it. But as they ail to attribute the form-giving powers of this being to causes originating in former lives, a fresh spiritual being would have to issue from the Divine Source of all, every time a human personality arose. On this assumption it would not be possible to explain the undoubted relationship between the innate tendencies which work their way outward from a man's inner being, and what comes to meet this inner being from his external, earthly and social environment during the course of his life. The inner being of man, springing for each single one—as it were, new-born—from the Divine Fount, would then confront what is to meet him in the earthly life as a complete stranger. This will only not be the case as indeed we know it is not—if the man's inner being has already been connected with this inner world and is not living in it for the first time. An open-minded teacher and educator can attain this perception: “What I am bringing to my pupil out of the fruits of human life on Earth is to a great extent foreign to his mere hereditary endowment, and yet it somehow touches him as though he had already been a participant—partaking in the work to which the fruits are due.”

Only repeated lives on Earth—taken together with the events in the spiritual realm between, as shown by spiritual science—can give a satisfying explanation of the life of present-day mankind when looked at in an all-round way. We say expressly, “present-day mankind.” Spiritual research reveals that there was a time when the cycle of man's earthly lives first began. Moreover the conditions then obtaining for the entry of his spiritual being into the bodily sheaths differed from those of today. In the next chapters we shall be going back to that primeval state of man, and in so doing it will emerge from the results of spiritual science how he evolved into his present form, in close connection with the evolution of the Earth as such. Then too it will be possible to indicate more fully how the spiritual core of man's being enters from supersensible worlds into the bodily vestments, and how the spiritual law of causation—how human destiny works itself out.

• 1. Supplementary Notes section.

It is an oft-repeated and a justifiable opinion, with regard to all the realms of human spiritual life, that man's greatest riddle here in our physical life is man himself. And we may truly say that a large part of our scientific activity, of our reflection, and of much besides in man's life of thought, is applied to the solving of this human riddle, to discerning a little wherein the essence of human nature consists. Natural science and spiritual science try to solve from different sides this great riddle comprised in the word Man. In the main, all the more profound natural scientific research seeks to attain its final goal by bringing together all the processes of nature, and so forth, in order to comprehend the external laws. And all spiritual science seeks the sources of existence for the sake of comprehending, of fathoming, man's being and destiny. If then, on the one hand, it is unquestioned that in general man's greatest riddle is man himself, we may say that in relation to life this expression may have a still deeper significance, in that it is necessary on the other hand to emphasize what each of us feels upon meeting another person: namely, that fundamentally each single person is in turn an enigma for others and for himself because of his special nature and being. Ordinarily, when we speak of this human enigma, we have in mind man in general, man without distinction regarding this or that individuality; and certainly many problems appear for us when we wish to understand human nature in general. But today we have not to do with the general riddles of existence, but rather with that enigma, not less significant for life, which each person we meet presents to us. For how endlessly varied are human beings in their deepest individual essence!

When we survey human life we shall have to be especially attentive to this riddle which each person presents, for our entire social life, our relation of man to man, must depend more upon how in individual cases we are able to approach with our feeling, with our sensibility, rather than merely with our intelligence, that individual human enigma which stands before us so often each day, with which we have to deal so often. How difficult it is regarding the people we meet to come to a clear knowledge of the various sides of their nature, and how much depends in life upon our coming to such clear knowledge regarding those people with whom we come in touch. We can of course only approach quite gradually the solution of the whole riddle of the human individual, of which each person presents a special phase, for there is a great gap between what is called human nature in general and that which confronts us in each human individual.

Spiritual science, or as we call it more recently, Anthroposophy, will have a special task precisely regarding this individual enigma—man. Not only must it give us information about what man is in general, but it must be, as you know, a knowledge which flows directly into our daily life, into all our sensibilities and feelings. Since our feelings and sensibilities are unfolded in the most beautiful way in our attitude toward our fellow men, the fruit of spiritual science, of spiritual scientific knowledge, will be revealed the most beautifully in the view we take of our fellow men because of this knowledge.

When in life a person stands before us, we must always, in the sense of this spiritual science, or Anthroposophy, take into consideration that what we perceive outwardly of the person is only one part, only one member, of the human being. To be sure, an outer material view of man regards as the whole man what this outer perception and the intellect connected with it are able to give us. Spiritual science shows us, however, that the human being is something very, very complicated. And often, when one goes more deeply into this complexity of human nature, the individual is then also seen in the right light. Spiritual science has the task of showing us what the innermost kernel of the human being is; what we can see with the eyes and grasp with the hands is only the outer expression, the outer shell. And we may hope to come to an understanding of the external also if we are able to penetrate into the spiritual inner part.

In the great gap between what we may call human nature in general and what confronts us in each individual, we see nevertheless many homogeneous characteristics in whole human groups. To these belong those human qualities which today form the subject of our consideration, and which we usually call the temperament. We need only utter the word ‘temperament’ to see that there are as many riddles as men. Within the basic types, the basic colorings, we have such a multiplicity and variety among individuals that we can indeed say that the real enigma, of existence is expressed in the peculiar basic disposition of the human being which we call temperament. And when the riddles intervene directly in practical life, the basic coloring of the human being plays a role. When a person stands before us, we feel that we are confronted by something of this basic disposition. Therefore it is to be hoped that spiritual science is able to give also the necessary information about the nature of the temperaments. For though we must admit that the temperaments spring from within, they nevertheless express themselves in the whole external appearance of the individual. By means of an external observation of nature, however, the riddle of man is not to be solved; we can approach the characteristic coloring of the human being only when we learn what spiritual science has to say about him.

It is of course true that each person confronts us with his own temperament, but we can still distinguish certain groups of temperaments. We speak chiefly of four types, as you know: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholic temperament. And even though this classification is not entirely correct in so far as we apply it to individuals—in individuals the temperaments are mixed in the most diverse way, so we can only say that one temperament or another predominates in certain traits—still we shall in general classify people in four groups according to their temperaments.

The fact that the temperament is revealed on the one side as something which inclines toward the individual, which makes people different, and on the other side joins them again to groups, proves to us that the temperament must on the one side have something to do with the innermost essence of the human being, and on the other must belong to universal human nature. Man's temperament, then, is something which points in two directions; and therefore it will be necessary, if we wish to solve the mystery, to ask on the one hand: In how far does the temperament point to what belongs to universal human nature? and then again on the other: How does it point to the essential kernel, to the actual inner being of the individual?

If we put the question, it is natural that spiritual science seems called upon to give enlightenment, for spiritual science must lead us to the innermost essential kernel of the human being. As he confronts us on earth, he appears to be placed in a universality, and again on the other side he appears as an independent entity. In the light of spiritual science man stands within two life streams which meet when he enters earth existence. And here we are at the focal point of the consideration of human nature according to the methods of spiritual science. We learn that we have in the human being, first of all, that which places him in his line of heredity. The one stream leads us from the individual man back to his parents, grandparents, and further ancestors. He shows the characteristics inherited from father, mother, grandparents, and all preceding ancestors farther and farther back. And these attributes he transmits again to his descendants. That which flows down from ancestors to the individual man we designate in life and in science as inherited attributes and characteristics. A man is placed in this way within what we may call the line of heredity; and it is known that an individual bears within him, even in the very kernel of his being, qualities which we must certainly trace back to heredity. Very much about an individual is explicable if we know his ancestry, so to speak. How deeply true are the words uttered with regard to his own personality by Goethe, who had such a deep knowledge of the soul:

My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my solemn bearing,
From mother comes my gayety
And my delight in yarning.

Here we see how this great knower of human nature has to point even to moral qualities when he wishes to refer to inherited characteristics. Everything we find as transmitted from ancestors to descendants interprets for us the individual person in a certain respect, but only in a certain respect; for what he has inherited from his ancestors gives us only one side of the human being. Of course the present-day materialistic conception would like to seek in the line of ancestry for everything under the sun, would like even to trace back a man's spiritual being (his spiritual qualities) to ancestry; and it never wearies of declaring that even a man's qualities of genius are explicable if we find signs, indications, of such characteristics in this or that ancestor. Those who hold such a view would like to compile the human personality, so to speak, from what is found scattered among the ancestors. Anyone who penetrates more deeply into human nature will of course be struck by the fact that beside these inherited attributes, in each man something confronts us which we cannot characterize otherwise than by saying: That is his very own; we cannot say, as a result of close observation, that it is transmitted from this or that ancestor. Spiritual science comes in here and tells us what it has to say about it. Today we are able to present only sketchily what is involved in these questions, to indicate only sketchily the findings of spiritual science.

Spiritual science tells us: Certainly it is true that the human being is placed in the stream which we may call the stream of heredity, the stream of inherited attributes. Besides that, however, something else appears in an individual, namely, the innermost spiritual kernel of his being. In this are united what the individual brings with him from the spiritual world and what the father and mother, the ancestors, are able to give to him. With that which flows down in the stream of the generations is united something else which has its origin, not in the immediate ancestors, the parents, and not in the grandparents, but which comes from quite other realms, something which passes from one existence to another. On the one side we may say: A man has this or that from his ancestors. But if we watch an individual develop from childhood on, we see how from the center of his nature something evolves which is the fruit of foregoing lives, something he never can have inherited from his ancestors.

What we see in the individual, when we penetrate to the depths of his soul, we can only explain to ourselves when we know a great comprehensive law, which is really only the consequence of many natural laws. It is the law of repeated earth lives, so greatly tabooed at the present time. This law of re-embodiment, the succession of earth lives, is only a specific case of a general cosmic law.

It will not appear so paradoxical to us when we think the matter over. Let us observe a lifeless mineral, a rock crystal. It has a regular form. If it is destroyed, nothing of its form remains which could pass over to other rock crystals. The new rock crystal receives nothing of its form. Now if we rise from the world of minerals to the world of plants, it becomes clear to us that a plant cannot originate according to the same law as a rock crystal. A plant can originate only when it is derived from the parent plant. Here the form is maintained and passes over to the other entity. If we rise to the animal world, we find that a development of species takes place. We see that the 19th century considered this discovery of the development of the species as among its greatest results. Not only does one form proceed from another, but each animal in the body of the mother repeats the earlier forms, the lower evolutionary phases of his ancestors. Among the animals we have a rising gradation of species. Among human beings, however, we have not only a gradation of species, a development of kinds, but we have a development of the individual. What a man acquires in the course of his life through education, through experience, is just as little lost as the animal's succession of ancestors.

A time will come when a man's essential core is traced back to a previous existence. It will be recognized that the human being is a fruit of an earlier existence. This law will have a peculiar destiny in the world, a destiny similar to that of another law. The opposition against which this teaching has to assert itself will be overcome, just as the opinion of the scientists of earlier centuries was overcome: that the living can originate from the lifeless. Even into the 17th century the learned and the unlearned had no doubt whatever that from ordinary lifeless things not only lower animals could be evolved, but that earthworms, even fish, could originate from ordinary river slime. The first who declared energetically that the living can originate only from the living was the great Italian natural scientist, Francesco Redi (1627 to 1697), who showed that the living derives only from the living. That is a law which is only the forerunner of another: namely, that the soul-spiritual derives from the soul-spiritual. On account of this teaching he was attacked, and only with difficulty escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today burning is no longer the custom; but anyone who appears with a new truth today, for instance, anyone who wishes to trace back the soul-spiritual element to the soul-spiritual, would not be burned, to be sure, but would be looked upon as a fool. A time will come when it will be considered nonsense to think that a man lives only once, that there is not something permanent which unites itself with his inherited characteristics.

Spiritual science shows how that which is our own nature unites with what is given to us by heredity. That is the other stream into which the individual is placed, the stream with which the present civilization does not wish to have anything to do. Spiritual science leads us to the great facts of so-called re-embodiment, of reincarnation, and of karma. It shows us that we have to take into consideration the innermost essential kernel of man as that which descends from the spiritual world and unites with something which is given by the line of heredity, unites with what it is possible for the father and mother to give to the individual. For the spiritual scientist that which originates from the line of heredity envelops this essential kernel with outer sheaths. And as we must go back to father and mother and other ancestors for what we see in the physical man as form and stature, and so forth, for the characteristics which belong to his outer being, so we must go back to something entirely different, to an earlier life, if we wish to comprehend a man's innermost being; perhaps far, far back, beyond all hereditary transmission, we may have to seek the human being's spiritual kernel which has existed for thousands of years, and which during these thousands of years has entered again and again into existence, again and again has led an earth-life, and now in the present existence has united itself again to what it is possible for father and mother to give. Every single human being, when he enters into physical life, has a succession of lives behind him. And this has nothing to do with what belongs to the line of heredity. We should have to go back more than centuries if we wished to investigate what was his former life when he passed through the gate of death. After he has passed through the gate of death he lives in other forms of existence in the spiritual world. And when again the time comes to experience a life in the physical world, he seeks his parents. Thus we must go back to the spirit of man and his earlier incarnations, if we wish to explain what in him confronts us now as the soul-spiritual part. We must go back to his earlier incarnations, to what he acquired in course of them. We have to consider how he lived at that time, what he brought with him, as the causes of what the individual possesses today in the new life as tendencies, dispositions, abilities for this or that. For each person brings with him from his former life certain qualities of his life. Certain qualities and his destiny he brings with him to a certain degree. According as he has performed this or that deed, he calls forth the reaction, and feels himself thus to be surrounded by the new life. So he brings with him from earlier incarnations the inner kernel of his being and envelops it with what is given him by heredity.

Certainly this one thing should be mentioned, because it is important, since actually our present time has little inclination to recognize this inner kernel of being, or to look upon the idea of reincarnation as anything but a fantastic thought. It is considered today to be poor logic, and we shall hear materialistic thinkers objecting over and over again that what is in man arises entirely through heredity. Just look at the ancestors, he says, and you will discover that this or that trait, this or that peculiarity, existed in some ancestor, that all the individual traits and qualities can be explained by tracing them in the ancestors. The spiritual scientist can also point to that fact, and he has done so. For example, in a musical family musical talent is inherited, etc. That is all supposed to support the theory of heredity. Indeed, the law is expressed point blank, that seldom does genius appear at the beginning of a generation; genius stands at the end of a line of heredity. And that is supposed to be a proof that genius is inherited. Here one proceeds from the standpoint that some person has a definite characteristic—he is a genius. Someone traces back the peculiar abilities of the genius, seeks in the past among his ancestors, finds in some ancestor signs of a similar characteristic, picks out something here and there, finds this quality in one, that in another, and then shows how they finally flowed together in the genius who appeared at the end of the generation; and he infers from it that genius is transmitted. For anyone whose thinking is direct and logical that could at best prove the opposite. If finding qualities of genius among the ancestors proves anything, what does it prove? Surely nothing else than that man's essential being is able to express itself in life according to the instrument of the body. It proves nothing more than that a man comes out wet if he falls into the water. Really it is no more intelligent than if some one wishes to call our special attention to the fact that if a man falls into the water he gets wet. It is only natural that he takes up something of the element into which he is placed. Surely it is quite self-evident that the qualities of the ancestors would be carried by that which has flowed down through the line of heredity, and has finally been given through father and mother to the particular human being who has descended from the spiritual world. The individual clothes himself in the sheaths which are given to him by his ancestors. What is intended to be presented as proof of heredity could much better be looked upon as proof that it is not heredity. For if genius were inherited, it would have to appear at the beginning of the generations and not stand at the end of a line of heredity. If anyone were to show that a genius has sons and grandchildren to whom the qualities of genius are transmitted, then he would be able to prove that genius is inherited; but that is just not the case. It is limping logic which wishes to trace back man's spiritual qualities to the succession of ancestors. We must trace back spiritual qualities to that which a man has brought with him from his earlier incarnations.

If now we consider the one stream, that which lives in the line of heredity, we find that there the individual is drawn into a stream of existence through which he gets certain qualities: We have before us some one possessing the qualities of his family, his people, his race. The various children of the same parents have characteristics conditioned in this way. If we consider the true individual nature of a human being, we must say that the soul-spiritual essential kernel is born into the family, the people, the race; it envelops itself with what is given by the ancestors, but it brings with it purely individual characteristics. So we must ask ourselves: How is harmony established between a human essence which perhaps has acquired centuries earlier this or that quality and the outer covering with which it is now to envelop itself, and which bears the characteristics of family, people, race, and so forth? Is it possible for harmony to exist here? Is it not something in the highest sense individual which is thus brought into earth life, and is not the inherited part at variance with it? Thus the great question arises: How can that which has its origin in quite other worlds, which must seek father and mother for itself, unite with the physical body? How can it clothe itself with the physical attributes through which the human being is placed within the line of heredity?

We see then in a person confronting us the flowing together of two streams; of these two streams each human being is composed. In him we see on the one side what comes to him from his family, and on the other what has developed from the individual's innermost being; namely, a number of predispositions, characteristics, inner capacities and outer destiny. An agreement must be effected. We find that a man must adapt himself to this union, in accordance with his innermost being on the one side, and on the other in accordance with that which is brought to him from the line of heredity. We see how a man bears to a great degree the physiognomy of his ancestors; we could put him together, so to speak, from the sum of his various ancestors. Since at first the inner essential kernel has nothing to do with what is inherited, but must merely adapt itself to what is most suitable to it, we shall see that it is necessary for a certain mediation to exist for that which has lived perhaps for centuries in an entirely different world and is again transplanted into another world; the spirit being of man must have something here below to which it is related; there must be a bond, a connecting link, between the special individual human being and humanity in general, into which he is born through family, people, race.

Between these two, namely what we bring with us from our earlier life and what our family, ancestors and race imprint upon us, there is a mediation, something which bears more general characteristics, but at the same time is capable of being individualized. That which occupies this position between the line of heredity and the line which represents our individuality is expressed by the word TEMPERAMENT. In that which confronts us in the temperament of a person we have something in a certain way like a physiognomy of his innermost individuality. We understand thus how the individuality colors, by means of the qualities of temperament, the attributes inherited in the succession of generations. Temperament stands right in the middle between what we bring with us as individuals and what originates from the line of heredity. When the two streams unite, the one stream colors the other. They color each other reciprocally. Just as blue and yellow, let us say, unite in green, so do the two streams in man unite in what we call temperament. That which mediates between all inner characteristics which he brings with him from his earlier incarnation, on the one side, and on the other what the line of heredity brings to him, comes under the concept temperament. It now takes its place between the inherited characteristics and what he has absorbed into his inner essential being. It is as if upon its descent to earth this kernel of being were to envelop itself with a spiritual nuance of that which awaits it here below, so that in proportion as this kernel of being is able best to adapt itself to this covering for the human being, the kernel of being colors itself according to that into which it is born and to a quality which it brings with it. Here shine forth the soul qualities of man and his natural inherited attributes. Between the two is the temperament—between that by which a man is connected with his ancestors and that which he brings with him from his earlier incarnations. The temperament balances the eternal with the transitory.

This balancing occurs through the fact that what we have learned to call the members of human nature come into relation with one another in a quite definite way. We understand this in detail, however, only when we place before our mind's eye the complete human nature in the sense of spiritual science. Only from spiritual science is the mystery of the human temperament to be discovered.

This human being as he confronts us in life, formed by the flowing together of these two streams, we know as a four-membered being. So we shall be able to say when we consider the entire individual: This complete human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body or body of formative forces, the astral body, and the ego.

In that part of man perceptible to the outer senses, which is all that materialistic thought is willing to recognize, we have first, according to spiritual science, only a single member of the human being, the physical body, which man has in common with the mineral world. That part which is subject to physical laws, which man has in common with all environing outer nature, the sum of chemical and physical laws, we designate in spiritual science as the physical body.

Beyond this, however, we recognize higher super-sensible members of human nature which are as actual and essential as the outer physical body. As first super-sensible member, man has the etheric body, which becomes part of his organism and remains united with the physical body throughout the entire life; only at death does a separation of the two take place. Even this first super-sensible member of human nature—in spiritual science called the etheric or life body; we might also call it the glandular body—is no more visible to our outer eyes than are colors to those born blind. But it exists, actually and perceptibly exists, for that which Goethe calls the eyes of the spirit, and it is even more real than the outer physical body, for it is the builder, the moulder, of the physical body. During the entire time between birth and death this etheric or life body continuously combats the disintegration of the physical body. Any kind of mineral product of nature—a crystal, for example—is so constituted that it is permanently held together by its own forces, by the forces of its own substance. That is not the case with the physical body of a living being; here the physical forces work in such a way that they destroy the form of life, as we are able to observe after death, when the physical forces destroy the life-form. That this destruction does not occur during life, that the physical body does not conform to the physical and chemical forces and laws, is due to the fact that the etheric or life-body is ceaselessly combating these forces.

The third member of the human being we recognize in the bearer of all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, impulses, passions, desires, and all that surges to and fro as sensations and ideas, even all concepts of what we designate as moral ideals, and so on. That we call the astral body. Do not take exception to this expression. We could also call it the “nerve-body.” Spiritual science sees in it something real, and knows indeed that this body of impulses and desires is not an effect of the physical body, but the cause of this body. It knows that the soul-spiritual part has built up for itself the physical body.

Thus we already have three members of the human being, and as man's highest member we recognize that by means of which he towers above all other beings, by means of which he is the crown of earth's creation: namely, the bearer of the human ego, which gives him in such a mysterious, but also in such a manifest way, the power of self-consciousness.

Man has the physical body in common with his entire visible environment, the etheric body in common with the plants and animals, the astral body with the animals. The fourth member, however, the ego, he has for himself alone; and by means of it he towers above the other visible creatures. We recognize this fourth member as the ego-bearer, as that in human nature by means of which man is able to say “I” to himself, to come to independence.

Now what we see physically, and what the intellect which is bound to the physical senses can know, is only an expression of these four members of the human being. Thus, the expression of the ego, of the actual ego-bearer, is the blood in its circulation. This “quite special fluid” is the expression of the ego. The physical sense expression of the astral body in man is, for example, among other things, the nervous system. The expression of the etheric body, or a part of this expression, is the glandular system; and the physical body expresses itself in the sense organs.

These four members confront us in the human being. So we shall be able to say, when we observe the complete human being, that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. That which is primarily physical body, which the human being carries in such a way that it is visible to physical eyes, clearly bears, first of all, when viewed from without, the marks of heredity. Also those characteristics which live in man's etheric body, in that fighter against the disintegration of the physical body, are in the line of heredity. Then we come to his astral body, which in its characteristics is much more closely bound to the essential kernel of the human being. If we turn to this innermost kernel, to the actual ego, we find what passes from incarnation to incarnation, and appears as an inner mediator, which rays forth its essential qualities.

Now in the whole human nature all the separate members work into each other; they act reciprocally. Because two streams flow together in man when he enters the physical world, there arises a varied mixture of man's four members, and one, so to speak, gets the mastery over the others, and impresses its color upon them. Now according as one or another of these members comes especially into prominence, the individual confronts us with this or that temperament. The particular coloring of human nature, what we call the actual shade of the temperament, depends upon whether the forces, the different means of power, of one member or of another predominate, have a preponderance over the others. Man's eternal being, that which goes from incarnation to incarnation, so expresses itself in each new embodiment that it calls forth a certain reciprocal action among the four members of human nature: ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body; and from the interaction of these four members arises the nuance of human nature which we characterize as temperament.

When the essential being has tinged the physical and etheric bodies, that which arises because of the coloring thus given will act upon each of the other members; so that the way an individual appears to us with his characteristics depends upon whether the inner kernel acts more strongly upon the physical body, or whether the physical body acts more strongly upon it. According to his nature the human being is able to influence one of the four members, and through the reaction upon the other members the temperament originates. The human essential kernel, when it comes into re-embodiment, is able through this peculiarity to introduce into one or another of its members a certain surplus of activity. Thus it can give to the ego a certain surplus strength; or again, the individual can influence his other members because of having had certain experiences in his former life.

When the ego of the individual has become so strong through its destiny that its forces are noticeably dominant in the fourfold human nature, and it dominates the other members, then the choleric temperament results. If the person is especially subject to the influence of the forces of the astral body, then we attribute to him a sanguine temperament. If the etheric or life-body acts excessively upon the other members, and especially impresses its nature upon the person, the phlegmatic temperament arises. And when the physical body with its laws is especially predominant in the human nature, so that the spiritual essence of being is not able to overcome a certain hardness in the physical body, then we have to do with a melancholic temperament. Just as the eternal and the transitory intermingle, so does the relation of the members to one another appear.

I have already told you how the four members express themselves outwardly in the physical body. Thus, a large part of the physical body is the direct expression of the physical life principle of man. The physical body as such comes to expression only in the physical body; hence it is the physical body which gives the keynote in a melancholic.

We must regard the glandular system as the physical expression of the etheric body. The etheric body expresses itself physically in the glandular system. Hence in a phlegmatic person the glandular system gives the keynote in the physical body.

The nervous system and, of course, what occurs through it we must regard as the physical expression of the astral body. The astral body finds its physical expression in the nervous system; therefore in a sanguine person the nervous system gives the keynote to the physical body.

The blood in its circulation, the force of the pulsation of the blood, is the expression of the actual ego. The ego expresses itself in the circulation of the blood, in the predominating activity of the blood; it shows itself especially in the fiery vehement blood. One must try to penetrate more subtly into the connection which exists between the ego and the other members of the human being. Suppose, for example, that the ego exerts a peculiar force in the life of sensations, ideas, and the nervous system; suppose that in the case of a certain person everything arises from his ego, everything that he feels he feels strongly, because his ego is strong—we call that the choleric temperament. That which has received its character from the ego will make itself felt as the predominating quality. Hence, in a choleric the blood system is predominant.

The choleric temperament will show itself as active in a strongly pulsating blood; in this the element of force in the individual makes its appearance, in the fact that he has a special influence upon his blood. In such a person, in whom spiritually the ego, physically the blood, is particularly active, we see the innermost force vigorously keeping the organization fit. And as he thus confronts the outer world, the force of his ego will wish to make itself felt. That is the effect of this ego. By reason of this, the choleric appears as one who wishes to assert his ego in all circumstances. All the aggressiveness of the choleric, everything connected with his strong will-nature, may be ascribed to the circulation of the blood.

When the astral body predominates in an individual, the physical expression will lie in the functions of the nervous system, that instrument of the rising and falling waves of sensation; and that which the astral body accomplishes is the life of thoughts, of images, so that the person who is gifted with the sanguine temperament will have the predisposition to live in the surging sensations and feelings and in the images of his life of ideas.

We must understand clearly the relation of the astral body to the ego. The astral body functions between the nervous system and the blood system. So it is perfectly clear what this relation is. If only the sanguine temperament were present, if only the nervous system were active, being quite especially prominent as the expression of the astral body, then the person would have a life of shifting images and ideas; in this way a chaos of images would come and go. He would be given over to all the restless flux from sensation to sensation, from image to image, from idea to idea. Something of that sort appears if the astral body predominates, that is, in a sanguine person, who in a certain sense is given over to the tide of sensations, images, etc., since in him the astral body and the nervous system predominate. It is the forces of the ego which prevent the images from darting about in a fantastic way. Only because these images are controlled by the ego does harmony and order enter in. Were man not to check them with his ego, they would surge up and down without any evidence of control by the individual.

In the physical body it is the blood which principally limits, so to speak, the activity of the nervous system. Man's blood circulation, the blood flowing in man, is that which lays fetters, so to speak, upon what has its expression in the nervous system; it is the restrainer of the surging feelings and sensations; it is the tamer of the nerve-life. It would lead too far if I were to show you in all its details how the nervous system and the blood are related, and how the blood is the restrainer of this life of ideas. What occurs if the tamer is not present, if a man is deficient in red blood, is anemic? Well, even if we do not go into the more minute psychological details, from the simple fact that when a person's blood becomes too thin, that is, has a deficiency of red corpuscles, he is easily given over to the unrestrained surging back and forth of all kinds of fantastic images, even to illusion and hallucination—you can still conclude from this simple fact that the blood is the restrainer of the nerve-system. A balance must exist between the ego and the astral body—or speaking physiologically, between the blood and the nervous system—so that one may not become a slave of his nervous system, that is, to the surging life of sensation and feeling.

If now the astral body has a certain excess of activity, if there is a predominance of the astral body and its expression, the nerve-system, which the blood restrains to be sure, but is not completely able to bring to a condition of absolute balance, then that peculiar condition arises in which human life easily arouses the individual's interest in a subject, but he soon drops it and quickly passes to another one; such a person cannot hold himself to an idea, and in consequence his interest can be immediately kindled in everything which meets him in the outer world, but the restraint is not applied to make it inwardly enduring; the interest which has been kindled quickly evaporates. In this quick kindling of interest and quick passing from one subject to another we see the expression of the predominating astral element, the sanguine temperament. The sanguine person cannot linger with an impression, he cannot hold fast to an image, cannot fix his attention upon one subject. He hurries from one life impression to another, from perception to perception, from idea to idea; he shows a fickle disposition. That can be especially observed with sanguine children, and in this case it may cause one anxiety. Interest is easily aroused, a picture begins easily to have an effect, quickly makes an impression, but the impression soon vanishes again.

When there is a strong predominance in an individual of the etheric or life-body—that which inwardly regulates the processes of man's life and growth—and the expression of this etheric body—that system which brings about the feeling of inner well-being or of discomfort—then such a person will be tempted to wish just to remain in this feeling of inner comfort. The etheric body is a body which leads a sort of inner life, while the astral body expresses itself in outer interests, and the ego is the bearer of our activity and will, directed outward. If then this etheric body, which acts as life-body, and maintains the separate functions in equilibrium, an equilibrium which expresses itself in the feeling of life's general comfort—when this self-sustained inner life, which chiefly causes the sense of inner comfort, predominates, then it may occur that an individual lives chiefly in this feeling of inner comfort, that he has such a feeling of well-being, when everything in his organism is in order, that he feels little urgency to direct his inner being toward the outer world, is little inclined to develop a strong will. The more inwardly comfortable he feels, the more harmony will he create between the inner and outer. When this is the case, when it is even carried to excess, we have to do with a phlegmatic person.

In a melancholic we have seen that the physical body, that is, the densest member of the human being, rules the others. A man must be master of his physical body, as he must be master of a machine if he wishes to use it. But when this densest part rules, the person always feels that he is not master of it, that he cannot manage it. For the physical body is the instrument which he should rule completely through his higher members. But now this physical body has dominion and sets up opposition to the others. In this case the person is not able to use his instrument perfectly, so that the other principles experience repression because of it, and disharmony exists between the physical body and the other members. This is the way the hardened physical system appears when it is in excess. The person is not able to bring about flexibility where it should exist. The inner man has no power over his physical system; he feels inner obstacles. They show themselves through the fact that the person is compelled to direct his strength upon these inner obstacles. What cannot be overcome is what causes sorrow and pain; and these make it impossible for the individual to look out upon his contemporary world in an unprejudiced way. This constraint becomes a source of inner grief, which is felt as pain and listlessness, as a sad mood. It is very easy to feel that life is filled with pain and sorrow. Certain thoughts and ideas begin to be enduring; the person becomes gloomy, melancholic. There is a constant arising of pain. This mood is caused by nothing else than that the physical body sets up opposition to the inner ease of the etheric body, to the mobility of the astral body, and to the ego's certainty of its goal.

And if we thus comprehend the nature of the temperaments through sound knowledge, many a thing in life will become clear to us; but it will also become possible to handle in a practical way what we otherwise could not do. Look at much which directly confronts us in life! What we see there as the mixture of the four members of human nature meets us clearly and significantly in the outer picture. We need only observe how the temperament comes to expression externally.

Let us, for instance, take the choleric person, who has a strong firm center in his inner being. If the ego predominates, the person will assert himself against all outer oppositions; he wants to be in evidence. This ego is the restrainer. Those pictures are consciousness-pictures. The physical body is formed according to its etheric body, the etheric body according to its astral body. This astral body would fashion man, so to speak, in the most varied way. But because growth is opposed by the ego in its blood forces, the balance is maintained between abundance and variety of growth. So when there is a surplus of ego, growth can be retarded. It positively retards the growth of the other members; it does not allow the astral body and the etheric body their full rights. In the choleric temperament you are able to recognize clearly in the outer growth, in all that confronts us outwardly, the expression of what is inwardly active, the actual deep inner force-nature of the man, of the complete ego. Choleric persons appear as a rule as if growth had been retarded. You can find in life example after example; for instance, from spiritual history the philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the German choleric. Even in external appearance he is recognizable as such, since in his outer form he gave the impression of being retarded in growth. Thereby he reveals clearly that the other members of his being have been held back by the excess of ego. Not the astral body with its forming capacity is the predominant member, but the ego rules, the restrainer, the limiter of the formative forces. Hence we see as a rule in those who are preeminently men of strong will, where the ego restrains the free formative force of the astral body, a small compact figure. Take another classical example of the choleric: Napoleon, the “little General,” who remained so small because the ego held back the other members of his being. There you have the type of the retarded growth of the choleric. There you can see how this force of the ego works out of the spirit, so that the innermost being is manifest in the outer form. Observe the physiognomy of the choleric! Take in comparison the phlegmatic person! How indefinite are his features; how little reason you have to say that such a form of forehead is suited to the choleric. In one organ it is shown especially clearly whether the astral body or the ego works formatively, that is in the eye, in the steady, assured aspect of the eye of the choleric. As a rule we see how this strongly-kindled inner light, which turns everything luminously inward, sometimes is expressed in a black, a coal-black eye, because, according to a certain law, the choleric does not permit the astral body to color that very thing which his ego-force draws inward, that which is colored in another person. Observe such an individual in his whole bearing. One who is experienced can almost tell from the rear view whether a certain person is a choleric. The firm walk proclaims the choleric, so to speak. Even in the step we see the expression of strong ego-force. In the choleric child we already notice the firm tread; when he walks on the ground, he not only sets his foot on it, but he treads as if he wanted to go a little bit farther, into the ground.

The complete human individual is a copy of this innermost being, which declares itself to us in such a way. But naturally, it is not a question of my maintaining that the choleric person is short and the sanguine tall. We may compare the form of a person only with his own growth. It depends upon the relation of the growth to the entire form.

Notice the sanguine person! Observe what a strange glance even the sanguine child has; it quickly lights upon something, but just as quickly turns to something else; it is a merry glance; an inner joy and gaiety shine in it; in it is expressed what comes from the depths of the human nature, from the mobile astral body, which predominates in the sanguine person. In its mobile inner life this astral body will work upon the members; and it will also make the person's external appearance as flexible as possible. Indeed, we are able to recognize the entire outer physiognomy, the permanent form and also the gestures, as the expression of the mobile, volatile, fluidic astral body. The astral body has the tendency to fashion, to form. The inner reveals itself outwardly; hence the sanguine person is slender and supple. Even in the slender form, the bony structure; we see the inner mobility of the astral body in the whole person. It comes to expression for example in the slim muscles. It is also to be seen in his external expression. Even one who is not clairvoyant can recognize from the rear whether a person is of sanguine or choleric temperament; and to be able to do this one need not be a spiritual scientist. In a sanguine person we have an elastic and springing walk. In the hopping, dancing walk of the sanguine child we see the expression of the mobile astral body. The sanguine temperament manifests itself especially strongly in childhood. See how the formative tendency is expressed there; and even more delicate attributes are to be found in the outer form. If in the choleric person we have sharply-cut facial features, in the sanguine they are mobile, expressive, changeable. And likewise there appears in the sanguine child a certain inner possibility to alter his countenance. Even to the color of the eyes we could confirm the expression of the sanguine person. The inwardness of the ego-nature, the self-sufficient inwardness of the choleric, meets us in his black eye. Look at the sanguine person in whom the ego-nature is not so deep-rooted, in whom the astral body pours forth all its mobility—there the blue eye is predominant. These blue eyes are closely connected with the individual's invisible inner light, the light of the astral body.

Thus many attributes could be pointed out which reveal the temperament in the external appearance. Through the four-membered human nature we learn to understand clearly this soul riddle of the temperaments. And indeed, a knowledge of the four temperaments, springing from a profound perception of human nature, has been handed down to us from ancient times. If we thus understand human nature, and know that the external is only the expression of the spiritual, then we learn to understand man in his relation even to the externalities, to understand him in his whole process of becoming; and we learn to recognize what we must do concerning ourself and the child with regard to temperament. In education especially notice must be taken of the kind of temperament that tends to develop in the child. For life's wisdom, as for pedagogy, an actual living knowledge of the nature of the temperaments is indispensable, and both would profit infinitely from it.

And now let us go further. Again we see how the phlegmatic temperament also is brought to expression in the outer form. In this temperament there predominates the activity of the etheric body, which has its physical expression in the glandular system and its soul expression in a feeling of ease, in inner balance. If in such a person everything is not only normally in order within, but if, beyond this normality, these inner formative forces of ease are especially active, then their products are added to the human body; it becomes corpulent, it expands. In the largeness of the body, in the development of the fatty parts, we see that which the inner formative forces of the etheric body are especially working on. The inner sense of ease of the phlegmatic person meets us in all that. And who would not recognize in this lack of reciprocal action between the inner and the outer the cause of the ofttimes slovenly, dragging gait of the phlegmatic person, whose step will often not adapt itself to the ground; he does not step properly, so to speak; does not put himself in relation to things. That he has little control over the forms of his inner being you can observe in the whole man. The phlegmatic temperament confronts one in the immobile, indifferent countenance, even in the peculiarly dull, colorless appearance of the eye. While the eye of the choleric is fiery and sparkling, we can recognize in that of the phlegmatic the expression of the etheric body, focused only upon inner ease.

The melancholic is one who cannot completely attain mastery over the physical instrument, one to whom the physical instrument offers resistance, one who cannot cope with the use of this instrument. Look at the melancholic, how he generally has a drooping head, has not the force in himself to stiffen his neck. The bowed head shows that the inner forces which adjust the head perpendicularly are never able to unfold freely. The glance is downward, the eye sad, unlike the black gleam of the choleric eye. We see in the peculiar appearance of the eye that the physical instrument makes difficulties for him. The walk, to be sure, is measured, firm, but not like the walk of the choleric, the firm tread of the choleric; it has a certain kind of dragging firmness.

All this can be only indicated here; but the life of the human being will be much, much more understandable to us if we work in this way, if we see the spirit activating the forms in such a way that the external part of the individual can become an expression of his inner being. So you see how significantly spiritual science can contribute to the solution of this riddle; but only if you face the whole reality, to which the spiritual also belongs, and do not stop merely with the physical reality, can this knowledge be practically applied in life. Therefore only from spiritual science can this knowledge flow in such a way as to benefit the whole of humanity as well as the individual.

Now if we know all that, we can also learn to apply it. Particularly it must be of interest to learn how we can handle the temperaments pedagogically in childhood. For in education the kind of temperament must be very carefully observed; with children it is especially important to be able to guide and direct the developing temperament. But later also it is still important, for anyone in self-education. For the person who wishes to train himself it is invaluable that he observe what is expressed in his temperament.

I have pointed out to you here the fundamental types, but naturally in life they do not often appear thus pure. Each person has only the fundamental tone of a temperament, besides which he has something of the others. Napoleon, for example, had in him much of the phlegmatic temperament, although he was a choleric. If we would govern life practically, it is important to be able to allow that which expresses itself physically to work upon our soul.

How important this is we can see best of all if we consider that the temperaments can degenerate, that what may appear to us as one-sidedness can also degenerate. What would the world be without the temperaments—if people had only one temperament? The most tiresome place you could imagine! The world would be dreary without the temperaments, not only in the physical, but also in the higher sense. All variety, beauty, and all the richness of life are possible only through the temperaments. Do we not see how everything great in life can be brought about just through the one-sidedness of the temperaments, but also how these can degenerate in their one-sidedness? Are we not troubled about the child because we see that the choleric temperament can degenerate to malice, the sanguine to fickleness, the melancholic to gloom, etc.?

In the question of education in particular, and also in self-education, will not the knowledge and estimation of the temperaments be of essential value to the educator? We must not be misled into depreciating the value of the temperament because it is a one-sided characteristic. In education the important thing is not to equalize the temperaments, to level them, but to bring them into the right track. We must clearly understand that the temperament leads to one-sidedness, that the most radical phase of the melancholic temperament is madness; of the phlegmatic, imbecility; of the sanguine, insanity; of the choleric, all those explosions of diseased human nature which result in frenzy, and so forth. Much beautiful variety results from the temperaments, because opposites attract each other; nevertheless, the deification of the one-sidedness of temperament very easily causes harm between birth and death. In each temperament there exists a small and a great danger of degeneracy. With the choleric person there is the danger that in youth his ego will be determined by his irascibility, by his lack of self-control. That is the small danger. The great danger is the folly which wishes to pursue, from the impulse of his ego, some kind of individual goal. In the sanguine temperament the small danger is that the person will lapse into fickleness. The great danger is that the rising and falling tide of sensations may result in insanity. The small danger for the phlegmatic is lack of interest in the outer world; the great danger is stupidity or idiocy. The small danger in the melancholic is gloominess, the possibility that he may not be able to extricate himself from what rises up within him. The great danger is madness.

When we contemplate all that, we shall see that a tremendously significant task in practical life lies in the directing and guiding of the temperaments. It is important for the educator to be able to say to himself: What will you do, for example, in the case of a sanguine child? Here one must try to learn from the knowledge of the entire nature of the sanguine temperament how to proceed. If other points of view must be considered concerning the education of the child, it is also necessary that temperament, as a subject in itself, be taken into account. But in order to guide the temperaments the principle to be observed is that we must always reckon with what is there and not with what is not there.

We have a child of sanguine temperament before us, which could easily degenerate into fickleness, lack of interest in important things, and, instead, become quickly interested in other things. The sanguine child is the quickly comprehending, but also the quickly forgetting child, whose interest it is difficult to hold upon anything whatever, just because interest in one subject is quickly lost and passes over to another. This can grow into the most frightful one-sidedness, and it is possible to notice the danger if we look into the depths of human nature. In the case of such a child a material-minded person will immediately come forward with a prescription and say: If you have a sanguine child to bring up, you must bring it into reciprocal activity with other children. But a person who thinks realistically in the right sense says: If you begin with the sanguine child by working upon forces which it does not at all possess, you will accomplish nothing with it. You could exert your powers ever so seriously to develop the other members of human nature, but these simply do not predominate in this child. If a child has a sanguine temperament, we cannot help him along in development by trying to beat interests into him; we cannot pound in something different from what his sanguine temperament is. We should not ask, What does the child lack? What are we to beat into him? But we should ask, What as a rule does a sanguine child possess? And that is what we must reckon with. Then we shall say to ourselves: We do not alter these characteristics by trying to induce any sort of opposite quality in this child. With regard to these things which are rooted in the innermost nature of man we must take into consideration that we can only bend them. Thus we shall not be building upon what the child does not possess, but upon what he does possess. We shall build exactly upon that sanguine nature, upon that mobility of the astral body, and not try to beat into him what belongs to another member of human nature. With a sanguine child who has become one-sided we must just appeal to his sanguine temperament.

If we wish to have the right relation with this child, we must take special notice of something. For from the first it becomes evident to the expert that if the child is ever so sanguine, there is still something or other in which he is interested, that there is one interest, one genuine interest for each sanguine child. It will generally be easy to arouse interest in this or that subject, but it will quickly be lost again. There is one interest, however, which can be enduring even for the sanguine child. Experience shows this; only it must be discovered. And that which is found to hold a special interest must be kept in mind. And whatever it is that the child does not pass by with fickle interest we must try to bring before him as a special fact, so that his temperament extends to something which is not a matter of indifference to him. Whatever he delights in, we must try to place in a special light; the child must learn to use his sanguineness. We can work in such a way that we begin first of all with the one thing that can always be found, with the forces which the child has. He will not be able to become lastingly interested in anything through punishment and remonstrance. For things, subjects, events, he will not easily show anything but a passing, changeable interest; but for one personality, especially suited to a sanguine child—experience will show this—there will be a permanent, continuous interest, even though the child is ever so fickle. If only we are the right personality, or if we are able to bring him into association with the right personality, the interest will appear. It is only necessary to search in the right way. Only by the indirect way of love for one personality, is it possible for interest to appear in the sanguine child. But if that interest, love for one person, is kindled in him, then through this love straightway a miracle happens. This love can cure a child's one-sided temperament. More than any other temperament, the sanguine child needs love for one personality. Everything must be done to awaken love in such a child. Love is the magic word. All education of the sanguine child must take this indirect path of attachment to a certain personality. Therefore parents and teachers must heed the fact that an enduring interest in things cannot be awakened by drumming it into the sanguine child, but they must see to it that this interest is won by the roundabout way of attachment to a personality. The child must develop this personal attachment; one must make himself lovable to the child; that is one's duty to the sanguine child. It is the responsibility of the teacher that such a child shall learn to love the personality.

We can still further build up the education upon the child's sanguine nature itself. The sanguine nature reveals itself, you know, in the inability to find any interest which is lasting. We must observe what is there. We must see that all kinds of things are brought into the environment of the child in which he has shown more than the ordinary interest. We should keep the sanguine child busy at regular intervals with such subjects as warrant a passing interest, concerning which he is permitted to be sanguine, so to speak, subjects not worthy of sustained interest. These things must be permitted to affect the sanguine nature, permitted to work upon the child; then they must be removed so that he will desire them again, and they may again be given to him. We must cause these things to work upon the child as the objects of the ordinary world work upon the temperament. In other words, it is important to seek out for a sanguine child those objects toward which he is permitted to be sanguine.

If we thus appeal to what exists rather than to something which does not exist, we shall see—and practical experience will prove it—that as matter of fact the sanguine force, if it becomes one-sided, actually permits itself to be captured by serious subjects. That is attained as by an indirect path. It is good if the temperament is developed in the right way during childhood, but often the adult himself has to take his education in hand later in life. As long, indeed, as the temperaments are held in normal bounds, they represent that which makes life beautiful, varied, and great. How dull would life be if all people were alike with regard to temperament. But in order to equalize a one-sidedness of temperament, a man must often take his self-education in hand in later life. Here again one should not insist upon pounding into oneself, as it were, a lasting interest in any sort of thing; but he must say to himself: According to my nature I am sanguine; I will now seek subjects in life which my interest may pass over quickly, in which it is right that the interest should not be lasting, and I will just occupy myself with that in which I may with complete justification lose interest in the very next moment.

Let us suppose that a parent should fear that in his child the choleric temperament would express itself in a one-sided way. The same treatment cannot be prescribed as for the sanguine child; the choleric will not be able easily to acquire love for a personality. He must be reached through something else in the influence of person upon person. But in the case of the choleric child also there is an indirect way by which the development may always be guided. What will guide the education here with certainty is: Respect and esteem for an authority. For the choleric child one must be thoroughly worthy of esteem and respect in the highest sense of the word. Here it is not a question of making oneself loved through the personal qualities, as with the sanguine child, but the important thing is that the choleric child shall always have the belief that the teacher understands the matter in hand. The latter must show that he is well informed about the things that take place in the child's environment; he must not show a weak point. He must endeavor never to let the choleric child notice that he might be unable to give information or advice concerning what is to be done. The teacher must see to it that he holds the firm reins of authority in his hands, and never betray the fact that he is perhaps at his wits' end. The child must always keep the belief that the teacher knows. Otherwise he has lost the game. If love for the personality is the magic word for the sanguine child, then respect and esteem for the worth of a person is the magic word for the choleric.

If we have a choleric child to train we must see to it before everything else that this child shall unfold, bring to development, his strong inner forces. It is necessary to acquaint him with what may present difficulties in the outer life. For the choleric child who threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness, it is especially necessary to introduce into the education that which is difficult to overcome, so as to call attention to the difficulties of life by producing serious obstacles for the child. Especially must such things be put in his way as will present opposition to him. Oppositions, difficulties, must be placed in the path of the choleric child. The effort must be put forth not to make life altogether easy for him. Hindrances must be created so that the choleric temperament is not repressed, but is obliged to come to expression through the very fact that certain difficulties are presented which the child must overcome. The teacher must not beat out, educate out, so to speak, a child's choleric temperament, but he must put before him just those things upon which he must use his strength, things in connection with which the choleric temperament is justified. The choleric child must of inner necessity learn to battle with the objective world. The teacher will therefore seek to arrange the environment in such a way that this choleric temperament can work itself out in overcoming obstacles; and it will be especially good if these obstacles pertain to little things, to trifles; if the child is made to do something on which he must expend tremendous strength, so that the choleric temperament is strongly expressed, but actually the facts are victorious, the strength employed is frittered away. In this way the child gains respect for the power of facts which oppose what is expressed in the choleric temperament.

Here again there is another indirect way in which the choleric temperament can be trained. Here it is necessary first of all to awaken reverence, the feeling of awe, to approach the child in such a way as actually to arouse such respect, by showing him that we can overcome difficulties which he himself cannot yet overcome; reverence, esteem, particularly for what the teacher can accomplish, for his ability to overcome objective difficulties. That is the proper means: Respect for the ability of the teacher is the way by which the choleric child in particular may be reached in education.

It is also very difficult to manage the melancholic child. What must we do if we fear the threatened one-sidedness of the melancholic temperament of the child, since we cannot cram in what he does not possess? We must reckon with the fact that it is just repressions and resistance that he has power within himself to cling to. If we wish to turn this peculiarity of his temperament in the right direction, we must divert this force from subjective to objective activity. Here it is of very special importance that we do not build upon the possibility, let us say, of being able to talk him out of his grief and pain, or otherwise educate them out of him; for the child has the tendency to this excessive reserve because the physical instrument presents hindrances. We must particularly build upon what is there, we must cultivate what exists. With the melancholic child it will be especially necessary for the teacher to attach great importance to showing him that there is suffering in the world. If we wish to approach this child as a teacher, we must find here also the point of contact. The melancholic child is capable of suffering, of moroseness; these qualities exist in him and we cannot flog them out, but we can divert them.

For this temperament too there is one important point: Above all we must show the melancholic child how people can suffer. We must cause him to experience justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that he may come to know that there are things concerning which he can experience pain. That is the important thing. If you try to entertain him, you drive him back into his own corner. Whatever you do, you must not think you have to entertain such a child, to try to cheer him up. You should not divert him; in that way you harden the gloominess, the inner pain. If you take him where he can find pleasure, he will only become more and more shut up within himself. It is always good if you try to cure the young melancholic, not by giving him gay companionship, but by causing him to experience justifiable pain. Divert his attention from himself by showing him that sorrow exists. He must see that there are things in life which cause suffering. Although it must not be carried too far, the important point is to arouse pain in connection with external things in order to divert him.

The melancholic child is not easy to guide; but here again there is a magic means. As with the sanguine child the magic word is love for a personality, with the choleric, esteem and respect for the worth of the teacher, so with the melancholic child the important thing is for the teachers to be personalities who in some way have been tried by life, who act and speak from a life of trial. The child must feel that the teacher has really experienced suffering. Bring to his attention in all the manifold occurrences of life the trials of your own destiny. Most fortunate is the melancholic child who can grow up beside a person who has much to give because of his own hard experiences; in such a case soul works upon soul in the most fortunate way. If therefore at the side of the melancholic child there stands a person who, in contrast to the child's merely subjective, sorrowful tendencies, knows how to tell in a legitimate way of pain and suffering that the outer world has brought him, then such a child is aroused by this shared experience, this sympathy with justified pain. A person who can show in the tone and feeling of his narration that he has been tried by destiny, is a blessing to such a melancholic child.

Even in arranging the melancholic child's environment, so to speak, we should not leave his predispositions unconsidered. Hence, it is even advantageous if—strange as it may sound—we build up for the child actual hindrances, obstructions, so that he can experience legitimate suffering and pain with regard to certain things. It is the best education for such a child if the existing tendency to subjective suffering and grief can be diverted by being directed to outer hindrances and obstructions. Then the child, the soul of the child, will gradually take a different direction.

In self-education also we can again use this method: we must always allow the existing tendencies, the forces present in us, to work themselves out, and not artificially repress them. If the choleric temperament, for example, expresses itself so strongly in us that it is a hindrance, we must permit this existing inner force to work itself out by seeking those things upon which we can in a certain sense shatter our force, dissipate our forces, preferably upon insignificant, unimportant things. If on the other hand we are melancholic, we shall do well to seek out justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that we may have opportunity to work out our melancholy in the external world; then we shall set ourselves right.

Let us pass on to the phlegmatic temperament. With the phlegmatic child it will be very difficult for us if his education presents us with the task of conducting ourselves in an appropriate way toward him. It is difficult to gain any influence over a phlegmatic person. But there is one way in which an indirect approach may be made. Here again it would be wrong, very wrong indeed, if we insisted upon shaking up a person so inwardly at ease, if we thought we could pound in some kind of interests then and there. Again we must take account of what he has.

There is something in each case which will hold the attention of the phlegmatic person, especially the phlegmatic child. If only through wise education we build up around him what he needs, we shall be able to accomplish much. It is necessary for the phlegmatic child to have much association with other children. If it is good for the others also to have playmates, it is especially so for the phlegmatic. He must have playmates with the most varied interests. There is nothing to appeal to in the phlegmatic child. He will not interest himself easily in objects and events. One must therefore bring this child into association with children of like age. He can be trained through the sharing of the interests—as many as possible—of other personalities. If he is indifferent to his environment, his interest can be kindled by the effect upon him of the interests of his playmates. Only by means of that peculiar suggestive effect, only through the interests of others, is it possible to arouse his interest. An awakening of the interest of the phlegmatic child will result through the incidental experiencing of the interest of others, the sharing of the interests of his playmates, just as sympathy, sharing of the experience of another human destiny, is effective for the melancholic. Once more: To be stimulated by the interest of others is the correct means of education for the phlegmatic. As the sanguine child must have attachment for one personality, so must the phlegmatic child have friendship, association with as many children as possible of his own age. That is the only way the slumbering force in him can be aroused. Things as such do not affect the phlegmatic. With a subject connected with the tasks of school and home you will not be able to interest the little phlegmatic; but indirectly, by way of the interests of other souls of similar age you can bring it about. If things are reflected in this way in others, these interests are reflected in the soul of the phlegmatic child.

Then also we should particularly see to it that we surround him with things and cause events to occur near him concerning which apathy is appropriate. One must direct the apathy to the right objects, those toward which one may rightly be phlegmatic. In this way quite wonderful things can sometimes be accomplished in the young child. But also one's self-education may be taken in hand in the same way in later life, if it is noticed that apathy tends to express itself in a one-sided way; that is, by trying to observe people and their interests. One thing more can also be done, so long as we are still in a position to employ intelligence and reason at all: we can seek out the very subjects and events which are of the greatest indifference to us, toward which it is justifiable for us to be phlegmatic.

We have now seen again how, in the methods of education based upon spiritual science, we build upon what one has and not upon what is lacking.

So we may say that it is best for the sanguine child if he may grow up guided by a firm hand, if some one can show him externally aspects of character through which he is able to develop personal love. Love for a personality is the best remedy for the sanguine child. Not merely love, but respect and esteem for what a personality can accomplish is the best for the choleric child. A melancholic child may be considered fortunate if he can grow up beside some one who has a bitter destiny. In the corresponding contrast produced by the new insight, by the sympathy which arises for the person of authority, and in the sharing of the justifiably painful destiny,—in this consists what the melancholic needs. They develop well if they can indulge less in attachment to a personality, less in respect and esteem for the accomplishment of a personality, but can reach out in sympathy with suffering and justifiably painful destinies. The phlegmatic is reached best if we produce in him an inclination towards the interests of other personalities, if he can be stirred by the interests of others.

The sanguine should be able to develop love and attachment for one personality.

The choleric should be able to develop esteem and respect for the accomplishments of the personality.

The melancholic should be able to develop a heartfelt sympathy with another's destiny.

The phlegmatic child should be led to the sharing of the interests of others.

Thus do we see in these principles of education how spiritual science goes right into the practical questions of life; and when we come to speak about the intimate aspects of life, spiritual science shows just in these very things how it works in practice, shows here its eminently practical side. Infinitely much could we possess of the art of living, if we would adopt this realistic knowledge of spiritual science. When it is a case of mastering life, we must listen for life's secrets, and these lie behind the sense perceptible. Only real spiritual science can explain such a thing as the human temperaments, and so thoroughly fathom them that we are able to make this spiritual science serve as a benefit and actual blessing of life, whether in youth or in age.

We can also take self-education in hand here; for when it is a question of self-education, the temperaments can be particularly useful to us. We become aware with our intellect that our sanguineness is playing us all kinds of tricks, and threatens to degenerate to an unstable way of life; we hurry from subject to subject. This condition can be countered if only we go about it in the right way. The sanguine person will not, however, reach his goal by saying to himself: You have a sanguine temperament and you must break yourself of it. The intellect applied directly is often a hindrance in this realm. On the other hand, used indirectly it can accomplish much. Here the intellect is the weakest soul-force of all. In presence of the stronger soul-forces, such as the temperaments, the intellect can do very little; it can work only indirectly. If some one exhorts himself ever so often: “For once now hold fast to one thing”—then the sanguine temperament will again and again play him bad tricks. He can reckon only with a force which he has. Behind the intellect there must be other forces. Can a sanguine person count upon anything at all but his sanguine temperament? And in self-education too it is necessary to try to do also what the intellect can do directly. A man must reckon with his sanguineness; self-exhortations are fruitless. The important thing is to show sanguineness in the right place. One must try to have no interest in certain things in which he is interested. We can with the intellect provide experiences for which the brief interest of the sanguine person is justified. Let him try to place himself artificially in such situations; to put in his way as much as possible what is of no interest to him. If then we bring about such situations in ever such small matters, concerning which a brief interest is warranted, it will call forth what is necessary. Then it will be noticed, if only one works at it long enough, that this temperament develops the force to change itself.

The choleric can likewise cure himself in a particular way, if we consider the matter from the point of view of spiritual science. For the choleric temperament it is good to choose such subjects, to bring about through the intellect such conditions as are not changed if we rage, conditions in which we reduce ourselves ad absurdum by our raging. When the choleric notices that his fuming inner being wishes to express itself, he must try to find as many things as possible which require little force to be overcome; he must try to bring about easily superable outer facts, and must always try to bring his force to expression in the strongest way upon insignificant events and facts. If he thus seeks out insignificant things which offer him no resistance, then he will bring his one-sided choleric temperament again into the right course.

If it is noticed that melancholia is producing one-sidedness, one must try directly to create for himself legitimate outer obstacles, and then will to examine these legitimate outer obstacles in their entire aspect, so that what one possesses of pain and the capacity for suffering is diverted to outer objects. The intellect can accomplish this. Thus the melancholic temperament must not pass by the pain and suffering of life, but must actually seek them, must experience sympathy, in order that his pain may be diverted to the right objects and events.

If we are phlegmatic, have no interests, then it is good for us to occupy ourselves as much as possible with quite uninteresting things, to surround ourselves with many sources of ennui, so that we are thoroughly bored. Then we shall completely cure ourselves of our apathy, completely break ourselves of it. The phlegmatic person therefore does well to decide with his intellect that he must take interest in a certain thing, that he must search for things which are really only worthy to be ignored. He must seek occupations in which apathy is justified, in which he can work out his apathy. In this way he conquers it, even when it threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness.

Thus we reckon with what is there and not with what is lacking. Those however who call themselves realists believe, for example, that the best thing for a melancholic is to produce conditions that are opposed to his temperament. But anyone who actually thinks realistically will appeal to what is already in him.

So you see spiritual science does not divert us from reality and from actual life; but it will illuminate every step of the way to the truth; and it can also guide us everywhere in life to take reality into consideration. For those people are deluded who think they can stick to external sense appearance. We must go deeper if we wish to enter into this reality; and we shall acquire an understanding for the variety of life if we engage in such considerations.

Our sense for the practical will become more and more individual if we are not impelled to apply a general prescription: namely, you must not drive out fickleness with seriousness, but see what kind of characteristics the person has which are to be stimulated. If then man is life's greatest riddle, and if we have hope that this riddle will be solved for us, we must turn to this spiritual science, which alone can solve it for us. Not only is man in general a riddle to us, but each single person who confronts us in life, each new individuality, presents a new riddle, which of course we cannot fathom by considering it with the intellect. We must penetrate to the individuality. And here too we can allow spiritual science to work out of the innermost center of our being; we can make spiritual science the greatest impulse of life. So long as it remains only theory, it is worthless. It must be applied in the life of the human being. The way to this goal is possible, but it is long. It becomes illuminated for us if it leads to reality. Then we become aware that our views are transformed. Knowledge is transformed. It is prejudice to believe that knowledge must remain abstract; on the contrary, when it enters the spiritual realm it permeates our whole life's work; our entire life becomes permeated by it. Then we face life in such a way that we have discernment for the individuality, which enters even into feeling and sensation and expresses itself in these, and which possesses great reverence and esteem. Patterns are easy to recognize; and to wish to govern life according to patterns is easy; but life does not permit itself to be treated as a pattern. Only insight will suffice, insight which is transformed into a feeling one must have toward the individuality of man, toward the individuality in the whole of life. Then will our conscientious spiritual knowledge flow into our feeling, so to speak, in such a way that we shall be able to estimate correctly the riddle which confronts us in each separate human being.

How do we solve the riddle which each individual presents to us? We solve it by approaching each person in such a way that harmony results between him and us. If we thus permeate ourselves with life's wisdom, we shall be able to solve the fundamental riddle of life which is the individual man. It is not solved by setting up abstract ideas and concepts. The general human riddle can be solved in pictures; this individual riddle, however, is not to be solved by this setting up of abstract ideas and concepts; but rather must we approach each individual person in such a way that we bring to him direct understanding.

That is possible, however, only when we know what lies in the depths of the soul. Spiritual science is something which slowly and gradually pours itself into our entire soul so that it renders the soul receptive not only to the large relations but also to the finer details. In spiritual science it is a fact that, when one soul approaches another, and this other requires love, love is given. If it requires something else, that will be given. Thus by means of such true life wisdom we create social foundations, and that means at each moment to solve a riddle. Anthroposophy works not by means of preaching, exhortation, harping on morals, but by creating a social basis on which one man is able to understand another.

Spiritual science is thus the sub-soil of life, and love is the blossom and fruit of such a life, stimulated by spiritual science. Therefore spiritual science may claim that it is establishing something which will provide a base for the most beautiful goal of the mission of man: genuine, true, human love. In our sympathy, in our love, in the manner in which we approach the individual human being, in our conduct, we should learn the art of living through spiritual science. If we would permit life and love to stream into feeling and sensibility, human life would be a beautiful expression of the fruit of this spiritual science.

We learn to know the individual human being in every respect when we perceive him in the light of spiritual science. We learn to perceive even the child in this way; we learn little by little to respect, to value, in the child the peculiarity, the enigmatic quality of the individuality, and we learn also how we must treat this individual in life, because spiritual science gives to us, so to speak, not merely general, theoretical directions, but it guides us in our relation to the individual in the solving of the riddles which are there to be solved: namely, to love him as we must love him if we not merely fathom him with the mind, but let him work upon us completely, let our spiritual scientific insight give wings to our feelings, our love. That is the only proper soil which can yield true, fruitful, genuine human love; and this is the basis from which we discover what we have to seek as the innermost essential kernel in each individual. And if we permeate ourselves thus with spiritual knowledge, our social life will be regulated in such a way that each single person, when he approaches any other in esteem and respect and understanding of the riddle “man,” will learn how to find and to regulate his relation to the individual. Only one who lives in abstractions as a matter of course can speak from prosaic concepts, but he who strives for genuine knowledge will find it, and will find the way to other people; he will find the solution of the riddle of the other person in his own attitude, in his own conduct.

Thus we solve the individual riddle according as we relate ourselves to others. We find the essential being of another only with a view of life which comes from the spirit. Spiritual science must be a life-practice, a spiritual life-factor, entirely practical, entirely living, and not vague theory.

This is knowledge which can work into all the fibers of man's being, which can rule each single act in life. Thus only does spiritual science become the true art of living—and that could be particularly shown in the consideration of those intimate peculiarities of man, the temperaments. Thus the finest relation is engendered between man and man when we look a person in the face and understand not only how to fathom the riddle, but how to love, that is, to let love flow from individuality to individuality. Spiritual science needs no theoretical proofs; life brings the proofs. Spiritual science knows that something can be said “for” and “against” everything, but the true proofs are those which life brings; and only step by step can life show the truth of what we think when we consider the human being in the light of spiritual-scientific knowledge; for this truth exists as a harmonious, life-inspired insight which penetrates into the deepest mysteries of life.