The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Let us take another step toward thinking. Until this point we have merely looked at the position thinking takes toward the rest of the world of experience. We have arrived at the view that it holds a very privileged position within this world, that it plays a central role. Let us disregard that now. Let us limit ourselves here to the inner nature of thinking. Let us investigate the thought-world's very own character, in order to experience how one thought depends upon the other and how the thoughts relate to each other. Only by this means will we first be able to gain enlightenment about the question: What is knowing activity? Or, in other words: What does it mean to make thoughts for oneself about reality; what does it mean to want to come to terms with the world through thinking?

[ 2 ] We must keep ourselves free of any preconceived notions. It would be just such a preconception, however, if we were to presuppose that the concept (thought) is a picture, within our consciousness, by which we gain enlightenment about an object lying outside our consciousness. We are not concerned here with this and similar presuppositions. We take thoughts as we find them. Whether they have a relationship to something else or other, and what this relationship might be, is precisely what we want to investigate. We should not therefore place these questions here as a starting point. Precisely the view indicated, about the relationship of concept and object, is a very common one. One often defines the concept, in fact, as the spiritual image of things, providing us with a faithful photograph of them. When one speaks of thinking, one often thinks only of this presupposed relationship. One scarcely ever seeks to travel through the realm of thoughts, for once, within its own region, in order to see what one might find there.

[ 3 ] Let us investigate this realm as though there were nothing else at all outside its boundaries, as though thinking were all of reality. For a time we will disregard all the rest of the world.

[ 4 ] The fact that one has failed to do this in the epistemological studies basing themselves on Kant has been disastrous for science. This failure has given a thrust to this science in a direction utterly antithetical to our own. By its whole nature, this trend in science can never understand Goethe. It is in the truest sense of the word un-Goethean for a person to take his start from a doctrine that he does not find in observation but that he himself inserts into what is observed. This occurs, however, if one places at the forefront of science the view that between thinking and reality, between idea and world, there exists the relationship just indicated. One acts as Goethe would only if one enters deeply into thinking's own nature itself and then observes the relationship that results when this thinking, known in its own being, is then brought into connection with experience.

[ 5 ] Goethe everywhere takes the route of experience in the strictest sense. He first of all takes the objects as they are and seeks, while keeping all subjective opinions completely at a distance, to penetrate their nature; he then sets up the conditions under which the objects can enter into mutual interaction and waits to see what will result. Goethe seeks to give nature the opportunity, in particularly characteristic situations that he establishes, to bring its lawfulness into play, to express its laws itself, as it were.

[ 6 ] How does our thinking manifest to us when looked at for itself? It is a multiplicity of thoughts woven together and organically connected in the most manifold ways. But when we have sufficiently penetrated this multiplicity from all directions, it simply constitutes a unity again, a harmony. All its parts relate to each other, are there for each other; one part modifies the other, restricts it, and so on. As soon as our spirit pictures two corresponding thoughts to itself, it notices at once that they actually flow together into one. Everywhere in our spirit's thought-realm it finds elements that belong together; this concept joins itself to that one, a third one elucidates or supports a fourth, and so on. Thus, for example, we find in our consciousness the thought-content “organism”; when we scan our world of mental pictures, we hit upon a second thought-content: “lawful development, growth.” It becomes clear to us at once that both these thought-contents belong together, that they merely represent two sides of one and the same thing. But this is how it is with our whole system of thoughts. All individual thoughts are parts of a great whole that we call our world of concepts.

[ 7 ] If any single thought appears in my consciousness, I am not satisfied until it has been brought into harmony with the rest of my thinking. A separate concept like this, set off from the rest of my spiritual world, is altogether unbearable to me. I am indeed conscious of the fact that there exists an inwardly established harmony between all thoughts, that the world of thoughts is a unified one. Therefore every such isolation is unnatural, untrue.

[ 8] If we have struggled through to where our whole thought-world bears a character of complete inner harmony, then through it the contentment our spirit demands becomes ours. Then we feel ourselves to be in possession of the truth.

[ 9 ] As a result of our seeing truth to be the thorough-going harmony of all the concepts we have at our command, the question forces itself upon us: Yes, but does thinking even have any content if you disregard all visible reality, if you disregard the sense-perceptible world of phenomena? Does there not remain a total void, a pure phantasm, if we think away all sense-perceptible content?

[ 10 ] That this is indeed the case could very well be a widespread opinion, so we must look at it a little more closely. As we have already noted above, many people think of the entire system of concepts as in fact only a photograph of the outer world. They do indeed hold onto the fact that our knowing develops in the form of thinking, but demand nevertheless that a “strictly objective science” take its content only from outside. According to them the outer world must provide the substance that flows into our concepts. Without the outer world, they maintain, these concepts are only empty schemata without any content. If this outer world fell away, concepts and ideas would no longer have any meaning, for they are there for the sake of the outer world. One could call this view the negation of the concept. For then the concept no longer has any significance at all for the objective world. It is something added onto the latter. The world would stand there in all its completeness even if there were no concepts. For they in fact bring nothing new to the world. They contain nothing that would not be there without them. They are there only because the knowing subject wants to make use of them in order to have, in a form appropriate to this subject, that which is otherwise already there. For this subject, they are only mediators of a content that is of a non-conceptual nature. This is the view presented.

[ 11 ] If it were justified, one of the following three presuppositions would have to be correct.

[ 12 ] 1. The world of concepts stands in a relationship to the outer world such that it only reproduces the entire content of this world in a different form. Here “outer world” means the sense world. If that were the case, one truly could not see why it would be necessary to lift oneself above the sense world at all. The entire whys and wherefores of knowing would after all already be given along with the sense world.

[ 13 ] 2. The world of concepts takes up, as its content, only a part of “what manifests to the senses.” Picture the matter something like this. We make a series of observations. We meet there with the most varied objects. In doing so we notice that certain characteristics we discover in an object have already been observed by us before. Our eye scans a series of objects \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\), etc. \(A\) has the characteristics \(p\), \(q\), \(a\), \(r\); \(B\): \(l\), \(m\), \(b\), \(n\); \(C\): \(k\), \(h\), \(c\), \(g\); and \(D\): \(p\), \(u\), \(a\), \(v\). In \(D\) we again meet the characteristics \(a\) and \(p\), which we have already encountered in \(A\). We designate these characteristics as essential. And insofar as \(A\) and \(D\) have the same essential characteristics, we say that they are of the same kind. Thus we bring \(A\) and \(D\) together by holding fast to their essential characteristics in thinking. There we have a thinking that does not entirely coincide with the sense world, a thinking that therefore cannot be accused of being superfluous as in the case of the first presupposition above; nevertheless it is still just as far from bringing anything new to the sense world. But one can certainly raise the objection to this that, in order to recognize which characteristics of a thing are essential, there must already be a certain norm making it possible to distinguish the essential from the inessential. This norm cannot lie in the object, for the object in fact contains both what is essential and inessential in undivided unity. Therefore this norm must after all be thinking's very own content.

[ 14 ] This objection, however, does not yet entirely overturn this view. One can say, namely, that it is an unjustified assumption to declare that this or that is more essential or less essential for a thing. We are also not concerned about this. It is merely a matter of our encountering certain characteristics that are the same in several things and of our then stating that these things are of the same kind. It is not at all a question of whether these characteristics, which are the same, are also essential. But this view presupposes something that absolutely does not fit the facts. Two things of the same kind really have nothing at all in common if a person remains only with sense experience. An example will make this clear. The simplest example is the best, because it is the most surveyable. Let us look at the following two triangles.

[ 15 ] What is really the same about them if we remain with sense experience? Nothing at all. What they have in common—namely, the law by which they are formed and which brings it about that both fall under the concept “triangle”—we can gain only when we go beyond sense experience. The concept “triangle” comprises all triangles. We do not arrive at it merely by looking at all the individual triangles. This concept always remains the same for me no matter how often I might picture it, whereas I will hardly ever view the same “triangle” twice. What makes an individual triangle into “this” particular one and no other has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept. A particular triangle is this particular one not through the fact that it corresponds to that concept but rather because of elements lying entirely outside the concept: the length of its sides, size of its angles, position, etc. But it is after all entirely inadmissible to maintain that the content of the concept “triangle” is drawn from the objective sense world, when one sees that its content is not contained at all in any sense-perceptible phenomenon.

[ 16 ] 3. Now there is yet a third possibility. The concept could in fact be the mediator for grasping entities that are not sense-perceptible but that still have a self-sustaining character. This latter would then be the non-conceptual content of the conceptual form of our thinking. Anyone who assumes such entities, existing beyond experience, and credits us with the possibility of knowing about them must then also necessarily see the concept as the interpreter of this knowing.

[ 17 ] We will demonstrate the inadequacy of this view more specifically later. Here we want only to note that it does not in any case speak against the fact that the world of concepts has content. For, if the objects about which one thinks lie beyond any experience and beyond thinking, then thinking would all the more have to have within itself the content upon which it finds its support. It could not, after all, think about objects for which no trace is to be found within the world of thoughts.

[ 18 ] It is in any case clear, therefore, that thinking is not an empty vessel; rather, taken purely for itself, it is full of content; and its content does not coincide with that of any other form of manifestation.

Dr. Steiner: We should talk about everything that has happened during this long period.

They discuss a letter to the Ministry of Education about the students who will take the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: Why was it necessary to add that it lies in the nature of block instruction that some subjects have not been taught? In such official things, the smartest thing to do is not to get people upset by telling them things they don’t want to hear. What still needs to be done in literature?

You need to proceed efficiently. Some of the things you want to teach should be taught, but for the examination you do not need to teach the students anything about Goethe as a natural scientist, nor will they be asked questions about his letters on aesthetic education. His poetry will cause them some pain because it is not so easy. Hauptmann’s Hannele is better than Die Weber. They don’t have any idea about Goethe as a natural scientist. For such examinations it would be a mistake to feel you need to set up such a curriculum. Those things are not expected even for someone who is working toward a doctorate. They cannot be done in two years in school. Look here, here we have Faust, Part I.

I would like to know how you could do all that in school. Do you think you will find some themes for German in them? You need to cover what will come up in written examinations.

If you go to the ministry too often, they will think you have a bad conscience, and will get the feeling that things are not going right here. You should not go into such things so much, but only answer when the ministry writes. We will see how things go, we can always withdraw.

In the last part of school, you need to be sure that the students write and answer as much as possible themselves. They need to be much more active individually. If a student does not already know something, you should not be so quick to help. They need to develop their will and find the answers themselves. This is much better than it was before, when the students had to do nothing more than listen. I need to go through all the classes again and will do so at the next opportunity.

They present a letter inviting the Waldorf School to present some student work in Berlin.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if we had more exact information. You need to find out what he wants. Exhibits of student work have a real purpose only when a course is being undertaken, that is, when the entire context and content of the Waldorf School are presented. But just displaying work? As long as people do not know exactly what the goals of the Waldorf School are, those who look at the work will not know what we expect of the students. It is the same as if we said we want to present only the pictures from an illustrated book of children’s tales. People will not understand anything. The people in Berlin need to say whether they will support the Waldorf School.

They discuss C.H. in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: His relationship to the class needs to come from his character. You should have him draw what is on the object, not the object itself. How light affects the object. The illuminated side and the shadow side. Not the table, but the light upon the table and the table’s shadow. He lacks a sense of perspective in painting. It is a clear defect, and it is good to work on his deficiencies. Let him try to draw a human face, but he should not draw a nose, only the light upon it and the shadows from it. You need to try to speak with him about things. He is disturbed. You need to make him imagine things sculpturally. He will be better in arithmetic than geometry, so you will need to make sure he understands geometry and isn’t just doing it from memory.

Cliques in the eleventh grade are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: Give them “Outsiders and Sociable People” as an essay topic, so that they have to think things through.

A teacher asks about eleventh-grade English. They have read Macaulay’s Warren Hastings.

Dr. Steiner: You could also read some English poetry, for example “The Sea School.” In addition, you could give them some characteristic prose, for example a chapter by Emerson such as the ones about Shakespeare and Goethe. Have them read that and then try to show the abrupt changes in the style of his thoughts. Discuss aphoristic and nonaphoristic styles and things in between, and show the relationships of those styles, how they arise. You should discuss that with the students and bring in a little psychology also. Emerson’s method of writing was to take all the books out of his library and spread them in front of himself. He then went around, walked around the room, read a sentence here or there, and wrote it down. He did the same thing again and then wrote down another sentence, independent of the first, and so forth. He found his inspiration in the library, and you can see the resulting jumps in his writing. Nietzsche wrote about the things he read by Emerson, for instance about Nature. In his own copy, Nietzsche circled certain things and then numbered them. Anyway, read poetry and Emerson.

A teacher: What should we read in tenth-grade French? Could we read Poincaré? A number of students want to leave.

Dr. Steiner: That is still a dangerous, a strange thing. In principle, you could do that, but not with Poincaré because there is so much untruth in it.

For those who want to leave, perhaps you should choose something that appears to be foreign to life, but actually leads to it. Something like Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril. That could be read in the tenth grade.

There is a collection of French essays by Hachette that contain essays by the other Poincaré, the mathematician. There is also a second part about technical thinking. That is something that might be useful.

For twelfth-grade English, you might also consider MacKenzie’s Humanism. We cannot go along with dropping French as they are doing in public schools.

A eurythmy teacher asks about difficulties with the upper grades. Some of the students want a different teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You need to treat that with some humor. Appear to agree and then develop it ad absurdum. There are always some students who want a different teacher. You need to be firm in your position and take it with some humor. You could perhaps ask, “What do you have against me? I am really a very nice lady; there is no reason for you to hate me.” Sometimes, you can quiet things in a couple of minutes that way.

A teacher asks about P.Z. in gymnastics class.

Dr. Steiner: He does not align the main direction of his body with gravity. You should try having him do exercises on the high bar so that he hangs. I mean that literally. Such an exercise would free his astral body. Sometimes you have children who look as though their astral body is too large, so that it is like a loose-fitting cloak around their I. Through such exercises, the astral body will become more firmly connected with the I. They feel good when their feet are off the floor, for instance, when they climb a ladder and sit there quietly. With such children, you will usually notice that they have something like oily or fatty skin when they hang their astral body. It will be like that in some way. Or, they may have wrinkled and loose skin.

Perhaps you can arrange gymnastics class so that groups of children do what is necessary according to their temperaments.

A teacher asks about the dramatic presentations done by the children at Miss MacMillan’s school.

Dr. Steiner: They do many things there that are not appropriate for the age of the children. It is impossible to put on dramas with children younger than ten, though afterward that goes quite well. It is not the method, but Miss MacMillan’s strength and spontaneity, that is effective. The method is strongly affected by the English tendency to do things too soon. That arises from the unusual relationship English people have to their experience of themselves as human beings. They want to be seen as human beings, and that is something taught them through such things. Such people have a strongly developed astral body, which limits their I to a certain level. That is not the case in other European countries. Spiritually, Englishmen look like human beings who go around not fully clothed, who do not have a collar. That is how their I lives within them and how they are in their surroundings. They have a certain human sociality in their character that makes up their national character. They like dramatic presentations of the human being, also Bernard Shaw. They want to do something that has validity, something others will recognize.

A teacher: S.T. in the ninth grade is very clumsy in his written expression. Should I have him do some extra work in writing essays?

Dr. Steiner: You should work with his handwriting, very basically, through exercises. As an extra task, you could have him write a quarter page while paying attention to how each letter is formed. If he would do that, if he would pay attention to forming each letter, it would affect his entire character.

Aside from that, his lines of vision converge at the wrong place. His eyes do not properly fix upon the object. We should correct that. Remind him often so that his eyes look in parallel. You can also have him read as though he were shortsighted, although he is not. His eyes droop just like he droops when he walks. He does not walk properly, he drags his feet. Have you ever noticed, for example, that when he is at the playground and wants to run from one place to another, he never does it in a straight line, but always in some kind of zigzag. You should also look at how his hair always falls across his forehead. He also has no sense of rhythm. If he has to read something rhythmic in class, he gets out of breath. In gymnastics, you could have him move firmly, stamp his steps along.

Karmically, it is as though he has two different incarnations mixed together. In his previous incarnation, his life was cut off forcefully. Now, he is living through the second part of that incarnation and the first part of the present incarnation at the same time. Nothing fits. He has already read Kant. He cannot do things any other child can do, but he asks very unusual questions that show he has a very highly developed soul life. Once, he asked me if it is true that the distance between the Sun and the Earth is continually decreasing. He asked whether the Sun was coming closer to us. He asked such questions without any real reason.

You need to show him other perspectives, and have him do odd things in a disciplined way, for instance, some mathematical things that pique his curiosity, that are not immediately clear to him. You could, for example, have him make knots with a closed loop. Oskar Simony discusses that in his paper on forming knots with closed loops.

Since this was unknown to most of the teachers, Dr. Steiner showed how a strip of paper pasted together to form a closed loop crossed itself in the middle when twisted one, two, or three times. One twist resulted in a large ring; two twists resulted in two rings, one within the other. With three twists, the result was a ring knotted in itself. While doing this Dr. Steiner discussed Oskar Simony in detail.

Dr. Steiner: Simony counted the prime numbers. He once said that in order to bear occult events, you need a great deal of humor. That is certainly true.

Simony was like S.T. He drags himself around, has little sense of rhythm and needs to learn to observe what he does. Everything he does that causes him to think about what he has done is good. St.B. should do eurythmy exercises in which he has to pay attention to forming the letters with his arms toward the rear. He should pay attention to doing the exercise without it becoming a habit. He cannot integrate his etheric body into the periphery of the astral body.

We cannot consider K.F. a Latin student. Perhaps it is quite good for him to sit there like a deserted island. Sitting there in isolation may not be bad at all. I just now am clear that it is good if he is isolated.

A report is given about L.K. in the first grade. She does not like fairy tales or poetry.

Dr. Steiner: She should make the letter i with her whole body, u with her ears and forefinger, and e with her hair, so that she does all three exercises with some sensitivity. She needs to awaken the sensitivity of her body, so she should do that for a longer period of time.

A teacher: S.J. in the seventh grade is doing better writing with her left hand than with her right.

Dr. Steiner: You should remind her that she should write only with her right hand. You could try having her lift her left leg so that she hops around on her right leg, that is, have her jump around on her right leg with her left leg drawn up close to her. She is ambidextrous.

If there are children who are clearly left-handed, you will need to decide. That is something you can observe. You need to look at the left hand. With real left-handed children the hands appear as though exchanged; the left hand looks like the right hand in that it has more lines than the right hand.

This could also be done through the eyes. You could have children who are really left-handed raise the right hand and look at it with both eyes. Observe how their eyes cross as they move their gaze up their arm until they reach the right hand and then move their gaze back. Then have them stretch their arm. Do that three times.

The different incarnations of the human individuality are a kind of swinging of the pendulum to and fro until the rhythm is brought to rest and the higher part of man has found in the physical a fitting expression, a suitable instrument. Approximately ever since human beings have reincarnated, the position of sun, moon and earth has existed as it is now. We must understand that man belongs to the great cosmic organism. In the times in which great changes take place in the life of humanity, mighty changes also occur in the cosmos. Earlier than this, before there was reincarnation, sun, moon and earth were not yet separated as now. Kant and Laplace made their observation from the physical plane only, and to this extent their theory is quite correct, but they did not know the connection with spiritual forces. When out of the primal fire-vapour sun, moon and earth came into existence as separate bodies, man also began to incarnate. When human incarnations will have come to an end, the sun also will be re-united with the earth. On the large scale as in the single details, one must bear in mind these relationships of man to the universe.

You will often have heard that man usually incarnates after a period of about two thousand years. One can investigate when people who are alive today had their earlier incarnation. The souls who are now incarnated, one finds as a rule about 300 to 400 years after the birth of Christ. In addition, however, one finds others who are incarnated at various times, some earlier, some later. But there is another way to determine incarnations, a way which leads more certainly to the goal. One can say: Were the human beings who die today to return in a short time they would meet almost the same conditions as now. But man ought to learn as much as possible on the Earth. This can only happen when in the next incarnation he finds something new which is essentially different from the earlier conditions.

Let us for instance imagine ourselves back into the time about 600 to 800 years before Christ; that is about the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey. With the advanced peoples of that time the conditions of life were quite different from what they are now. One would for instance be astonished to see with what curious implements people ate. At that time also people had not yet learnt to write. The great poems were transmitted by word of mouth. When a person of those times is reincarnated today he must as a child learn quite other things. As a child he must learn to write. The stream of culture has meanwhile progressed. One must distinguish between the stream of culture and the development of the individual soul. As a child one must catch up with the civilisation and for this reason one must be born again as a child.

Now we must ask: What causes such utterly different conditions on earth? This is connected with the progression of the spring equinox. About 800 years before Christ the sun in spring entered the constellation of Aries, of the Ram. Every year at the vernal point it shifts a little. Because of this the conditions on the earth are always slightly changing. Eight hundred years before Christ the sun stood in the constellation of Aries. Earlier it stood in the constellation of Taurus, still earlier in Gemini and still earlier in Cancer. Now already for some hundred of years it rises in the constellation of Pisces. After this comes Aquarius. The advance of civilisations is also connected with the progression of the sun from one constellation to the other.

At the time when the sun rose in the constellation of Cancer the ancient Vedic culture of the Indians, the culture of the Rishis reached its highest point. The Rishis, those still half-divine beings, were the teachers of men. The Atlantean civilisation had met its destruction; a new impulse broke in. In occultism this is called a ‘vortex’ (wirbel). This is also why, in the age in which the sun stood in the constellation of Cancer, the sign was made in this way:

Cancer signifies a breaking in of something new, a ‘vortex’ (a double spiral).

The second cultural epoch is named the constellation of the Twins. At that time the dual nature of the world was understood, the opposing forces of the world, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Good and Evil. Thus the Persians also speak of the Twins.

The third cultural epoch is that of the Sumerians in Asia Minor and of the Egyptians. The constellation of the Bull corresponds to this epoch. This is why in Asia the Bull was venerated and in Egypt, Apis. At that time in Babylon and Assyria the Sumerian language was the language of wisdom. Then the Bull fell into decadence and the Ram came into the ascendant. The first indication of this is the Saga of the Golden Fleece.

The fourth culture is that of the Ram, or Lamb; Christ stands in the sign of the Ram, or Lamb; hence he calls himself the Lamb of God.

As fifth culture the external materialistic civilisation follows, in the constellation of the Fishes. This developed principally from the 12th century onwards and reached its climax about the year 1800. This is the culture of the Fifth sub-race, the present time.

In the constellation of the Water-Man in the future, the new Christianity will be proclaimed. ‘Water-Man’ is also the one who will bring it, he who has already been here: John the Baptist. Later he will again be the forerunner of Christ, when the Sixth, the spiritual sub-race will be founded. The Theosophical Movement should be the preparation for that time.

In the New Testament the expression ‘on the mountain’ is used on various occasions. ‘On the mountain’ means: in the mystery, in the innermost, in the intimate. Even the Sermon on the Mount is not to be understood as a sermon for the people, but as an intimate teaching for the disciples. The Transfiguration on the Mountain has also to be understood in this sense. Jesus went up into the mountain with the three disciples, Peter, James and John. There, we are told, the disciples were caught up out of themselves; then Moses and Elias appeared on either side of Jesus. For a moment space and time were extinguished and the disciples found themselves with their consciousness on the mental plane. Those who were no longer physically present, Moses and Elias, appeared. In direct revelation they had before them: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ The way = Elias, Moses = the truth, Christ = the life. This appeared here to the disciples in actual form. Jesus once said to them: ‘Elias has come again;²⁹ John was Elias, he has only not been recognised.’ But he said further: ‘Tell it to no man until I come again.’ Christianity was not to teach reincarnation for two thousand years, not for any arbitrary reason, but on educational grounds. People were to know nothing of it for two thousand years. In the gospel of St. John there is an indication of this in the miracle of the wedding at Cana where water is turned into wine. In the old Mysteries only water was distributed, but in the Christian Mysteries wine. For in the priesthood, through the partaking of wine, knowledge of reincarnation was blotted out. Whoever partakes of wine cannot attain to any true knowledge of Manas, Buddhi and Atma. He can never comprehend reincarnation. By his coming again Christ means his reappearance in the Sixth sub-race when he will be proclaimed by the ‘Water-Man’. Theosophy actually carries out the testament of Christianity and works towards this epoch of time.

Every time the sun progresses from one sign of the Zodiac to another incisive changes take place in civilisation. In between there elapses a period of about two thousand six hundred years.³⁰ If we take the moment of time when the sun entered the sign of the Ram or Lamb, about 800 years before Christ and 1800 years after Christ, then we have two thousand six hundred years. About the year 1800 we entered the sign of the Fishes. This is the time when materialistic culture reached its highest point. It was prepared for in the Middle Ages and has now begun to decline. About the year 4,400 mankind enters the sign of spiritual culture, that of the Water-Man. Preparation has also to be made for this.

Thus conditions change also with the constellation. With the progression from one sign to another new conditions also arise, so that rebirth has meaning. The human being is reborn approximately every two thousand six hundred years, but the experiences he makes as man and as woman are so radically different that two such incarnations, as man and as woman, are reckoned as one. About one thousand three hundred years elapse between two incarnations as man or as woman, and about two thousand six hundred years between such double incarnations if one reckons both as one. The human being is only man or woman in regard to the physical body. When the physical body is masculine the etheric body is feminine; and vice versa, when the physical body is feminine the etheric body is masculine. Only the astral body is at the same time masculine and feminine. The human being bears within him the opposite sex as etheric body. Thus in the etheric the man is feminine and in the etheric the woman masculine. The physical woman has therefore many concealed masculine qualities; the physical incarnation is present only exoterically. The human being therefore goes through a constellation every time as man and as woman. This is why the Master said to Sinnett that the human being is incarnated about twice in a sub-race. Occultly both incarnations are reckoned together as one. There must come a time in which the woman actually approaches the culture dominated by the man. The present woman's movement is to be recognized as the preparation for another later and quite different woman's movement. In the future, sex differentiation will be totally overcome.

There was a special reason why, for about two thousand years, the teaching of reincarnation was completely suppressed. The human being was to learn to know and value the importance of the one life. Every slave in Ancient Egypt was still convinced of the fact that he would return, that one day he would be master instead of slave, but that he had to pay his karmic debts. The single life was therefore not so important to him. But the lesson people now had to learn was to gain firm ground under their feet; thus during one life, reincarnation was to remain unknown. Christ therefore expressly forbade any teaching about reincarnation. But from 800 years before Christ until about 1800 years after Christ, the time had elapsed during which nearly everyone had gone through the one life without experiencing anything of reincarnation. The great Masters³¹ have the task not always to impart the whole truth at any one time, but only that part needed by man. This withholding of the consciousness of reincarnation came to poetic expression in this epoch in Dante's Divine Comedy. In monastic esotericism on the other hand, reincarnation was definitely taught when the occasion arose. The Trappists³² had to remain silent throughout one incarnation, so that in the next they might become eloquent speakers. They were intentionally trained in this way to become eloquent speakers, for of these the Church can make good use. When St. Augustine put forward the doctrine of predestination he was entirely consistent.³³ Because in the age of materialism reincarnation was not to be taught, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination had to make its appearance. Only in this way could the differences in people's circumstances be explained.

Connected with this is the deeply materialistic character of traditional Christianity, which lies in the fact that the Beyond is made dependent on one physical existence. This materialistic teaching of Christianity has, so to say, borne its fruit. Today there is no longer any consciousness of the Beyond. Social democracy is the ultimate consequence of traditional Christianity. But now a new impulse must come into the world. When one epoch comes to an end something new breaks in. Christianity worked towards the gradual dawning of the materialistic age. In order to bring about the materialistic civilisation, human beings for a period of one thousand three hundred years had to have such a teaching as was brought by Christianity; namely, that man should make the whole of eternity dependent upon one earthly life. Urban bourgeoisie then became the actual founder of the age of materialism. Already at the time of Christ the spiritual had to be betrayed by the purely material. Judas Iscariot had to betray Christ. One can however say: had there been no Judas there would also have been no Christianity. Judas is the first to attach prime importance to money, that is to say, to materialism. In Judas was incarnated the entire materialistic age. This materialistic age has obscured and darkened the spiritual. Through his death Christ becomes the Redeemer of materialism.

• 29. Matthew, Chapter 17. 12 – 13
• 30. Later Rudolf Steiner indicated these epochs more precisely. According to this the point at which the sun rises on the vernal equinox moves backwards through the 12 constellations of the Zodiac in 12 x 2160 = 25,920 years—the Platonic World Year—generally speaking, re-embodiments are connected with these epochs of 2160 years (though there are exceptions). See: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, Rhythms in the Cosmos and in the Human Being (Typescript) 20.25.28.7.1923
• 31. According to Rudolf Steiner these are beings of great significance for the evolution of mankind. ‘These lofty beings have already left behind them the path that the rest of mankind has yet to tread. They work now as the great Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling.’ (Letter to a member 2.1.1905.) See also lecture 13.10.1904.
• 32. Order founded in 1140 in the Cistercian monastery of La Trappe in France. The reform in 1665 imposed strict ascetic practices and silence.
• 33. The teaching of God's eternal decree which results in only a part of humanity being chosen for salvation while the other part is doomed to perdition. Compare lecture 7.10.1917 ‘The Crumbling of the Earth and the Souls and Bodies of Men’ Anthroposophical Quarterly Volume 19 No. 1.

Whether this applies to Romance and Germanic peoples is not necessary to discuss further here. It is a disaster for a people when those who are or are supposed to be leaders speak a different language and have different thoughts. Today there is one area where such a gap exists: it is the area of religious life. I will speak of the basis of this religious gap: the Bible.

Questions that occupy all people are: Where do people come from, what is the meaning, the goal of life, what is the essence and what is its form? Endless layers seek the solution to such questions in the Bible; but precisely what matters, the living feeling and attitude to the Bible, is lacking. There is a gulf between the theologians who study the Bible and the believers, and when someone says, “We want it to close,” for the time being it is only a wish. There are enough reasons, even without resorting to mysticism and occultism, to believe that the gulf is widening. There comes a time when teachers and believers no longer understand each other. People usually do not realize how great this gap is. Teachers of the past, who studied the Bible, based their teachings on the highest truths. There was a sense that what the Bible contains is something unspeakably high, that one is wise at the beginning, becomes wiser as one understands more and more. Teachers were formed through this wisdom-filled study of the Bible, and there were teachers. Those who listened, who listened intently, felt that this was where wisdom could be found. This is not to say that there are no such men today.

If we look back 150 years, there was still something of that feeling towards the Bible, a feeling of sacred awe, that such writing should be treated quite differently. Goethe was also familiar with this. Today, all this seems difficult to understand. We must realize that the spirit of materialism is not very intrusive where it appears as theoretical materialism. We see this in Haeckel's views. These are not the worst. The worst is the one that guides people to understand things materially and to see only what is tangible and to overlook the meaning behind it.

We want to touch on two things: biblical criticism and inspiration.

Tell a materialist about inspiration and he will laugh at you. Nevertheless, it is the current that we now call theosophical that is reawakening the dulled sense of the concept of inspiration. Inspiration, that is, inspiration from a higher world, would take a different position on what is in the Bible than on another book. The writer of those books was a point of passage, a conduit for the transmission of higher knowledge. This is a crude way of expressing the concept of inspiration, which is completely misunderstood, even in theology. Materialistic believers have suffered the greatest harm.

We will now only talk about what some Bible scholars say. Older and newer ones state that certain statements are made to us that prove that Moses could not have written the books in question, that passages must have been written centuries after Moses, that therefore the passages in question cannot be from him. I will mention one example that most likely makes people head shy. It is the twofold account of the creation of man. First it says: God created man male and female (Gen. 1:27). To make it quite clear: it does not say male and female. Then it says that God created man first and then the woman, his rib (Gen. 1:21-22). What is the basis for this? This is particularly characteristic. It was said that one and the same personality could not give rise to two different descriptions, so they must have been welded together.

So they searched the Bible for contradictions. Furthermore, they found certain differences in style and expression, so they concluded again that these are different sources and that some collector has combined both.

Let us take the six- or seven-day work. It presents in lofty thoughts the creation of the world from the first formation to the day on which God rested. It is a cosmic work that points out to us in vivid terms and intense images that we are dealing with an ancient document of inspiration. The creation of Adam, the leading to the animals, Eve's fall into sin, the snake as a symbol of sin (Genesis 3) led to the assumption that the six- or seven-day work came from a different source. Supercritical Bible researchers found the two designations: Elohists and Jahvehists; others found other discrepancies, so that finally it became clear what is now called the Rainbow Bible.

Thus the Bible work is fragmented. Now you may think that my word should be Bible criticism. That is not the case at all. I only know that in few areas so much diligence, ingenuity and intellect has been applied as to the fragmentation of the Bible. The original fervor, the devotion to this book, as inspiration from another world, has suffered. Now it is necessary to shine a light into this cleft in order to bring it back together again. It depends on the meaning behind it. I would like to use an example to illustrate the state of the art of this question. I will use a simple experience - I have experienced it - to explain. For many years I worked in the Goethe Archive in Weimar. In the records Goethe organized in the 1880s, there was a foreign transcript whose content he mistook for his own thoughts. However, he could not remember how he came to have this essay. When I came to Weimar in 1889, there were doubts that the essay was actually by Goethe. It was a scholarly question. I was able to prove that at that time Goethe had a man by the name of Tobler at his side, of whom Goethe said that he had an excellent memory. I thought that this settled the question; Goethe expressed the thoughts that Tobler wrote down, and so Goethe is the author. It is the passage that you find in the last Goethe volume: “Nature we are” and so on to the final sentence “Love is the crown”. A famous Goethe scholar – I won't mention any names, we owe him a great debt of gratitude – was keen to prove that the ink for these words had not flowed from Goethe's pen. It is not a sufficient comparison, but it is similar to biblical research. Efforts are made to prove when the content was created historically, factually, sensually, because thinking has a materialistic tendency. The sense of the spirit has been lost.

Now something else has to be added. Again, I can best make it clear with an example. Take geometry, this very ordinary school geometry. You can understand it from itself. You do not need to know how it came about. What does a schoolboy know about Euclid? What do we care who wrote it first? What matters is to explore it. When a learned house for all languages, which knows nothing about geometry, approaches Euclid, he is not yet explored by that. So something monstrous can come out at times. No philologist, no matter how famous, will understand Vedanta philosophy just because he is a philologist. If you know geometry, you know Euclid.

The question that now arises is: Is there any possibility at all of investigating the Bible? One must first know the worlds of which the Bible speaks, only then is one a qualified investigator. Is there access to the great riddles of existence? This is the path followed by the theosophical worldview. Just as there are ways to understand geometry, there are means and ways to penetrate into the spiritual world. A number of people are already walking these paths; they are seeking wisdom about the higher worlds. The result is that with each step one takes, the old religious documents arise before him in ever new forms. What does it matter from which sources, if we have the truth?

You know that for theosophical views, this world that we can see and touch is considered one world. This world would be different for us if we had other senses. Fichte once used the example: Imagine you are the only seeing person among blind people and enter the world of people who only grope around. You would be considered a fantasist if you still ascribed the quality of color to things. No one has the right to say that something is not. A person's perception depends on their organs, and how many of them they have.

Through the principle of initiation, an inner sense reveals itself to man, and with it the next world opens up to him, the imaginative or astral world, so called because it works in images. This pictorial consciousness can be tapped into. Those who apply the method described will enter this world. There is nothing, absolutely nothing of magic about it. The imaginative world presents itself as a flowing sea of light and color. These are not mere spots, but clearly defined forms, inwardly glowing and bright. So you rise to the world from which you come.

Develop these organs further and you will enter the world of inspiration. The School of Pythagoras called this world the harmony of the spheres. This is not an image, it is reality. It is not a sensual sound. Goethe and others point to this harmony of the spheres. Christianity calls it the Kingdom of Heaven or the Heavenly Kingdom. Goethe has his Faust say: “The sun resounds in the ancient way” and so on. That is not a poetic image. He knew that this was how to describe the characteristic. In the second part, Goethe says, “Sounds for spiritual ears” and so on, and by that he means the same thing.

This, then, is the world of inspiration, and beyond that is the world of intuition. There, there is an experience of the “thing in itself”, as our great philosopher Kant called it. There, love is something much higher, there is a merging with things.

Those who engage with the meaning of the concept of inspiration know what it means. In this way, a person can go through the world in his development. First, with the sensual eyes and the physical mind, the materialistic development of the human being begins. His astral development preceded this. Just as ice is related to water – water in another form – so your body is soul. Before it took on this form, it was merely soul. You lived in a world that can only be perceived by the imaginative senses. If you examine the world only with the outer senses, you can describe what Haeckel describes. It is all true, but only insofar as the ice remains only ice.

Go back even further, and the human soul was not yet condensed into the physical. The line does not end with imaginative knowledge. The soul has lived much earlier and comes to a point in its development that opens up the soul of man. Imagine this development in such a way that the soul lived separately because the physical world was not yet ready to offer it a suitable body. The world was a kind of stream in which the human being floated.

What enabled man to reclassify? A very specific organ, a kind of swim bladder was transformed into lungs. These were the times when the body became capable of being a condensed soul. In the Bible this is referred to as: “God breathed into the man the breath of life and he was a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) There is an even higher world than that of inspiration. If we go even further, man was spirit. The body is a condensed soul; the soul is a condensed spirit.

As soon as one enters inspiration from imagination, male and female disappear. The Bible says: God created man male and female – undifferentiated. (Genesis 1:27) They all were in the spiritual body. Even without taking the Bible into consideration, we can establish this. Anyone who approaches the Bible quite freely today will feel it literally.

There are four possible attitudes towards the Bible:

1. The naive person takes it as it is offered to him.
2. the enlightened person sees it as a childish folk fantasy. These are the freethinkers. But some of them, and one of their most important representatives, Bruno Wille, has come to a symbolic interpretation.
3. Those who are beyond cleverness find a mystical-symbolic meaning for the Bible.
4. The theosophist adopts a literal interpretation.

Then comes the time when the person says to himself, “Now you are beginning to understand some of it.” One comes to assume that where one cannot keep up, one just does not yet understand. The Bible is conquered in such a way that the gap is filled again, and those who create the means to do so are inspired men. Those who grasped this initially did so under the influence of inspiration. We are heading towards a new conquest of the Bible and a new relationship between wisdom and the Bible.

Automated Translation

Those who represent spiritual science in the truly scientific sense, as it is meant here, cannot be surprised at the numerous biased judgments and rejections that it still encounters from all sides today. For they are able to see the scope and scope of the scientific results of the present and the recent past, which many people assume contradict this spiritual-scientific world view. On the part of those who believe that they stand on firm ground in the results of present-day research and can form a world picture for themselves that does not take into account the ideas of spiritual science, it is understandable that they do not yet engage in a real examination of what spiritual science has to say about its results. And so it turns out that it can be shown that spiritual science not only harmonizes with all the justified scientific results of the present day, but that these scientific results, when looked at closely, confirm what spiritual science has to say; and yet, one must find opponents, which becomes even more understandable when one considers the methods of scientific research in more concrete, specific things.

Not so long ago, Professor Dewar gave a lecture at the Royal Institution in which he attempted to speak about a future end state of earthly existence based on the view he has gained from the scientific results of the present. Let us consider for a moment what ideas this physicist, whose physical research has my full and unstinting approval, has about a final state of earthly existence, a state in which the human inhabitants of the earth, who now walk this earth, can no longer exist. Professor Dewar tries to utilize the physical ideas that are available to him today and finds, with a certain one-sided justification, that one must assume, according to the processes that can be observed by the physicist, that the earth is cooling down. And he calculates an end state in which the earth will have cooled down to, say, minus 200 degrees Celsius. He suggests that the Earth is evolving towards this final state. He is clear about the fact that everything that is now water in the oceans will of course have long since solidified; that the air that makes up our atmosphere today will be liquid, and that at a height of ten meters the Earth will be covered by this liquid air, in the form of a sea. The cold that will then prevail, he believes, will make much of what is on the earth today appear different. Of course, not only the temperature will change and with it the aggregate states of the individual bodies, but also many other things in the appearance of what will then be found on earth. Thus Professor Dewar, again quite correctly starting from physical ideas, finds that milk, which of course will then be solid, will glow in blue light. I don't know how this solid milk will be produced, but according to physical ideas it will shine in blue light. And there's more: egg white will be so luminous that you can read a newspaper by this light, which you can produce by painting the walls of the room with this egg white. I don't know who will read newspapers then, since I suspect that people will have long since frozen to death, but Dewar still uses this argument to form an idea of the former state of our Earth according to his world view, and many other things. On the liquefied air, which will then be the sea, there will only be very gaseous light bodies, hydrogen, helium, neon, krypton. He describes very nicely how one will feel quite differently then, because of course the resistance of these light gases will not be as strong as the resistance of the air for the present organism.

One can, by following the ideas of today's physics, paint this final state of the earth in great detail, and such a lecture is of course in our present time by the “non-authoritarian” people - one must say that out of courtesy, because today, of course, no one believes in authority - be said, because today, of course, no one believes in authority — is accepted as something extraordinarily significant, which finally shows how the “exact physicist” has to think about a valid world view.

If you recall what I said about the most important conditions necessary for spiritual scientific research, it was that through the inner exercises that the soul has to go through, it gradually comes to what I have called, using Goethe's words, the beholding through the eyes of the soul; that it has to undergo, in particular, a life in conceptions that are modeled on outer moral thinking. Not that it is to be confused with this, but the whole soul mood that the spiritual researcher has to develop within himself must be such that his own self relates to the ideas saturated with reality, which he must strive for, in the same way that a person relates externally to things that he considers morally good and to things that he considers morally bad. Here one is not satisfied with the fact that certain things can be designated as morally good and others as morally bad, but one knows that when one's affect speaks of the good, one must follow the good impulses, and when one's affect speaks of evil, one must suppress it. And when a person's soul is fully developed, he will act accordingly in his outer life. In this way, the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his own conceptual world must become a living one, not just a logical one. And in the life of the idea, of the concept, it happens that one cherishes certain concepts because they are capable of penetrating into reality. While other ideas announce themselves in such a way that they can be compared to what is to be avoided in the realm of moral life; they must, as it were, be pushed away from the horizon of consciousness. In this inner life of the soul, the ascent of the spiritual worlds is revealed, which can then be contemplated.

People like Professor Dewar are led away from such a striving for reality-imbued ideas precisely by their prejudices or, better, “prejudices”. For the spiritual researcher, it then becomes clear where the error actually lies in the structure of such a world view. In the style of this world picture, one could draw a comparison with regard to the final state of the earth if someone, on the basis of quite correct physical, chemical and physiological premises, calculates the development of, let us say, certain metabolic phenomena in man. One could interpret certain metabolic phenomena in the human body and calculate future conditions on the assumption that this metabolic process occurs in time at a constant rate, let us say, between the 30th and 40th year of the person's life. One observes individual processes and then calculates how these must take shape in 150 years according to the very correct assumptions of science. The only objection is that after 150 years people will no longer be alive, that the state will have already been reached where the soul has left the body and the body no longer follows the laws that are imposed on it by being filled with a soul, but instead follows external physical and chemical laws of the earth's environment.

If you say something like that today, you may be accused of saying something quite grotesque, something quite foolish. Nevertheless, anyone who does not thoughtlessly follow the scientific research of the present day, but who engages with the way in which certain assumptions are used to draw conclusions, knows that what I have just mentioned as a comparison is deeply justified. For it is absolutely true that after the time when milk would shine so beautifully in a blue light, when you could paint the walls with egg white so that you could read newspapers while doing so, the earth would be just as absent as the human body is after 150 years.

Today, the opinion is widespread that spiritual science forms lightly-dressed ideas out of thin air. And because of this assumption, the comparison of spiritual science and natural science naturally turns out in such a way that one says: on the one hand there is natural science, which reaches its results in an exact, thorough way; and on the other hand there is spiritual research, which indeed claims to be in full agreement with natural science, but which obtains its concepts through some kind of fantasy! Prejudices of this kind must first be overcome if spiritual science is to be further recognized. And spiritual scientific results are not to be had for nothing. One can study the difficulties that stand in the way of real results in spiritual research by considering people of knowledge who dedicate their lives to the struggle for real knowledge, who do not merely repeat what the course of external research is today, but who, being familiar with all the details of modern research, also strive for knowledge of the spiritual conditions of the world.

Recently, we were reminded of such a personality of knowledge, as the psychologist of the soul, whom I mentioned here recently in a different context, Franz Brentano, died a few days ago. The honored audience, who are here often, know that I rarely speak about myself. But today I would like to make one comment: that I really followed Franz Brentano's, the soul researcher, research path from its beginnings to his later struggles. And with him in particular, one could see very clearly how, for someone striving for knowledge of the spiritual world, it is difficult in the present day to achieve full strength, insofar as this is possible in everyone, even in today's age, due to opposing prejudices. Many obstacles stood in the way of Franz Brentano, which arose precisely from the fact that he did not live in the scientific age, which would have been his good fortune, but in the prejudices of the scientific age. And so it came about that Brentano, after writing some brilliant, profound works on Aristotle, then published a “psychology” in 1874. It was intended as the first volume of a multi-volume work in which he sought to ascend to an understanding of the actual life of the mind and soul. He never got beyond the first volume, and only in smaller writings did Brentano go on to add, I would say, a few splinters of what he had to say.

To be sure, Brentano's outer life was full of changes; and if one regards things only superficially, one could perhaps say that this changing outer life prevented Franz Brentano from finding the composure necessary to complete his “Psychology.” But that is not the case; rather, it turned out that Brentano failed because of the riddles of the life of the soul itself. He began to present them in the first volume of his “Psychology” in such a way that the path would have led him precisely to the point where the spiritual science that is meant here stands. But he could not get through because of his adherence to scientific prejudices. And since he did not want to develop mere concepts, but concepts containing reality, he left the whole matter alone.

Now, even at the time when he wrote his Psychology, Brentano started from the principle that the inner mental life can admittedly be perceived but not observed. It is a saying that seems as well-founded as possible for the simple reason that we ourselves are the mental life that we develop. So one can say: When any representation arises, we must have it; we cannot confront it and observe it. When we observe it, it has already passed, and so it must first be brought up again from memory. These and other difficulties are present. Therefore Brentano thinks that one can perceive the mental life, but not observe it. But he has not seen that if one could observe as he means, namely that this observation would be completely in line with the model of natural science, then one would never arrive at a science of the mental. If one could observe in this way, that is, if one's soul life were at a standstill, one would perceive nothing in this soul life but mirror images, mirror images of a reality. From these mirror images, just as little could be found out about reality as one can grasp the images of a mirror or the like. One cannot observe the soul life at all if one only wants to observe it in the immediate present. That is why I had to say here a few weeks ago: What matters when observing the soul and spirit is not that you, so to speak, place yourself in opposition to this soul and spirit and then observe it like a scientific object, but what matters is that you bring about such inner processes as, for example, this is: one gives oneself, as one says, to a very specific idea in a meditative state, again and again, but one then also observes how this idea works without being present; one hands over, so to speak – there is no need to decide on this from the outset – what one imagines to the objective course of the world. Whether it is pushed down into the so-called subconscious or handed over to some other sphere of the world's existence will become apparent in the further course of the performance. One lets what one has called into consciousness take effect without being present. And if one has then performed the other amplifications of consciousness described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then one does indeed find that one cannot observe this soul-spiritual that reigns in oneself as Brentano wanted, but that one must observe it by considering it in its workings in time. The soul reveals itself only when we observe it in the course of a person's life; not by confronting it in the present, but by seeing how this soul works between birth and death. And this observation of the soul takes place with the same exactitude as external scientific research.

As I said, if I may add a personal note, I may perhaps say that in the last two lectures here I spoke about the relationship of the soul to the nervous human being, to the breathing human being, to the metabolic human being, and I tried, in full harmony with science, to show a result that I believe can be of tremendous importance for understanding the interrelation of the world. I have not formulated what I said in the last two lectures in this way before, but it is now exactly thirty-five years since I, as a very young man in Vienna, began the research that could ultimately lead to expressing what I have in the last two lectures. And I have been unremitting in this research. I have tried to pursue this research as I have also described recently: by handing over the ideas to objectivity, to see what becomes of the ideas themselves when they work spiritually without one being present. One will just realize that spiritual research is just as exact as external scientific research. This may be necessary if the circle of those who see in this spiritual science what is necessary for the future development of humanity is to become larger. It turns out, however, that in the path of this spiritual research, the ideas in the soul do not proceed as abstractly as they do when one does external scientific research, or when one reflects in the way one is accustomed to with regard to the external life. Rather, I would say that on the other side, when we are no longer personally present, the images that are pursued in their own course connect with the spiritual life, with the spiritual events, through their own inner essence, in a way that is different from the way they connect with the external world of the senses. Only in full swing, when one participates, can the spiritual world be observed.

An observation, as I now want to cite it, will, if undertaken without the prerequisite of an inner schooling of spiritual research activity, lead to nothing right, just as when working in a chemical laboratory, for those who cannot handle things, they lead to nothing; only after one has created the inner experimental things does the matter show up in the right light. What appears in its true form is what some thinkers have suspected, although they have hardly progressed beyond mere suspicion. All the soul life that we develop by coming into contact with the outside world, whether inanimate or animate, all this soul life, which usually lies within our consciousness, is accompanied by another soul life. And anyone who has created the inner conditions to observe such things correctly inwardly can become aware of how the soul — Eduard von Hartmann would call it: in the unconscious, but this unconscious, which I mean here, differs from Hartmann's precisely in that it can become conscious — is constantly working in this unconscious. Alongside the currents of the conscious soul life, there is another that constantly flows along, which - if one can direct the soul's gaze at it - is not subject to the laws that govern the external soul life, and which naturally correspond to the course of natural events. This soul life is also subject to laws, but they do not correspond to the laws that prevail in the ordinary conscious soul life. For the spiritual researcher, this subconscious soul life comes to the surface. For ordinary life, it also comes to the surface, but one does not know that it is coming to the surface. For example, one often believes that one has formed a particular idea or thought, and assumes that the whole process lies in the ordinary conscious soul life. It does not, but emerges from the subconscious soul life. The spiritual researcher can now observe how these two currents of soul life work together. And basically, when one speaks of clairvoyance not in a superstitious or theoretically mystical sense, but in an exact sense, this clairvoyance is nothing other than the ability to truly raise this parallel soul life and to be able to convince oneself that it is indeed subject to its laws, but that these laws are different from those of the conscious soul life. He who rises in a healthy way to such observations, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, will not be driven into any kind of morbid or pathological states. On the contrary, what I indicated in the last lecture will happen here: he will make his soul life healthier and healthier if he proceeds correctly. But such a spiritual researcher will acquire a certain ability of the subconscious soul life to interact with the ordinary soul life. And while in ordinary life, for example when one listens when someone reads something to one, one believes that one is now completely absorbed in what is being read to one, as a truly trained spiritual researcher one no longer thinks so. One knows that the subconscious soul life runs away and often goes completely different ways than the ways of the ideas that are being read. And if one has sufficient skill not to become inattentive while listening, then between two words that one hears, things arise from the subconscious that are just as much the product of the soul as the things of the conscious soul life, but that run parallel to the stream of the conscious soul life; things of a completely different soul life. Certain thinkers have sensed this, for example by pointing out that a person not only dreams while sleeping, but that the dream life actually continues throughout the day while awake, only to be overshadowed by the ordinary conscious mental life. This is also true – and yet, again, it is not true. It is only something similar to the dream life. The dream life is only a chaotic shadow of what is going on. In the subconscious, there is a parallel current that is as fleeting for today's ordinary soul life as dreams are, and can therefore be compared to dreams, but which arises from a spiritual reality.

By observing these two currents — the soul-spiritual and the soul bound to external nature — in their interaction, one gradually learns to ascend to a conception that cannot be substantiated in this one lecture in its details, but which is to be presented according to its result. One learns to recognize that the ordinary life of the soul, as it is rightly described by the physiological psychologists of the present day, by the type of Theodor Ziehen, for example, whom I recently quoted, has as its necessary condition the outer physical life of the body. If we now pursue this outer physical life with the means of spiritual research, we find that this outer physical life and with it the soul experiences of ordinary consciousness bound up with it are connected with those effects that take place between Earth and Sun. These effects are only of a refined nature, but they are similar to the effects of the sun's surroundings, say, on the plant world and the like. We learn to recognize the real connection between the tools of our ordinary conscious soul life and the earth and sun, I could also say: of our whole world system, as astronomy or astrophysics speaks of this world system. But we also learn to recognize that the course of the other currents is fundamentally different from the laws that are implanted in the physical and thus also in the soul of the human being through the sun-earth life. In its own laws it is not connected with the laws of the processes of which the human being is conscious in body and soul. On the contrary, it often contradicts them. Whereas in the outer life of the soul the psychologist speaks of association, of the bringing together of ideas, here the inner subconscious life of the soul carries out a separation, and vice versa.

These are only hints at the far-reaching differences between external and internal experience. And if we recognize the connection between the soul and the body to a much greater extent, and again the connection between the human body and the whole solar-earthly existence, then we also get ideas about a final state of the earthly existence itself; ideas whose formation is difficult to describe even in today's language. I can only say: Everyone knows how the astronomer can calculate a future star constellation from a present one, how one can calculate future solar and lunar eclipses. What happens here through calculation happens when one finds the right relationship to what one learns about the two currents that I have indicated, in their relation to the final state of the earth. What is calculated there is seen inwardly here. We are not dealing with vague analogies in the sense intended by Fechner, but with a real inner vision of the final state of the earth. For one learns to recognize that something, which of course cannot be expounded in its details in a lecture, turns out to be a necessary result. I will lead up to this result by way of a comparison.

It is true that the way in which man as a physical being goes through the world is only possible because the soul — I do not want to say permeates him, lest one believe that I am making some kind of hypothesis — proves effective in him. If it can no longer prove itself effective, then this body follows different laws than those it follows between birth and death. It then follows the laws that it must follow because of its relationship to the external physical environment of the earth. It merges completely with its own laws into the surrounding laws of the earth. I would like to compare this with the result that emerges with regard to the life of our earth. Our Earth is progressing in its evolution, but in doing so it is undergoing inner transformations. These transformations cannot be known unless one is aware that the one real factor in the process of our Earth is what all spiritual beings perceive in their subconscious and develop in the manner indicated. Just as one cannot comprehend the development of a plant if one cannot form an idea of how the plant germ of the next year is prepared in the plant of this year in all its growth laws, if one does not see in all the shooting up of the leaves and so on the development of the fruit germ of the next plant, so one cannot comprehend our earth if one only applies the physical laws to it, as the geologist does. For what we experience in our subconscious manifests itself as something germinal in our earthly existence. If I may use an expression that is not quite correct, we will understand each other: it works and lives with us, but it is something that is not at all connected with the relationships of earth and sun. And so it turns out: just as a point in time occurs for the physical human being when his soul experience is separated from the physical, and the physical passes into the outer earthly environment, so a point in time occurs for the earth when the earth-sun effects cease. Just as the soul effects in the body cease from within, so the sun effects on the earth cease from without. Just as the body and soul, when separated, cannot be mixed, but dissolve, so from a certain point in time the Earth will become an impossible body in the universe. And just as the human body merges into its earthly environment, into its physical and chemical laws, so from a certain point in time the Earth will merge into the laws that we now follow in the indicated current.

As you can see, the reverse is the case with the earth and with man. The body of man passes over into the earthly environment. That which is earthly-solar in the earth passes over into the spiritual. Then, when this moment occurs, the lawfulness that we can perceive in the parallel current, which does not at all agree with the external laws of nature, prevails in this earthly body, which will then have died in the way I have described. And here the peculiarity comes to light, which today still looks like a crazy paradox: that the laws that we call natural laws today, are only valid until the end of the earth. And if someone tries, like Professor Dewar, to apply these laws beyond the end of the earth, he makes the same mistake as someone who calculates the laws of metabolism beyond physical death, for 150 years. The Earth will no longer exist at the point in time calculated by Professor Dewar because it will have been transformed into spiritual substance. And all spiritual and soul substance that can be observed in the second current, as I have described it, is absorbed into the spiritual and soul substance of the Earth, and lives within it, towards other formations of the world, towards future formations of the world that cannot be described at this time. But we are looking forward to a future final state of our earth, in which this earth will have gone through its death in such a way that it will have merged with a spiritual realm. Not even solidified milk will glow bluish, and egg white will serve as a candle, but everything that is now on earth under the law of the earth and sun, under what we today call natural laws, will one day live under completely different laws, under spiritual and soul laws, which will arise in the way I have described, from our own inner life. For we are already connected today, in a germinal way, with that which the earth is to become, through which the earth is immortal. Therefore, what lives down there in the soul life seems like a dream. It is precisely the germ of future worlds, and we are immortal because we live with this immortality of the general spirit.

In this way, one comes to a much more concrete view of the spiritual world than if one uses the abstract buzzwords of “mystical pantheism” and so on, which so many people still use so much today. In the spiritual science meant here, one should not seek a vague, nebulous pantheism, but concrete results based on exact spiritual and psychological observation.

The general thinking of our time is still averse to such reality-saturated conceptions, to which the spiritual researcher must advance in order to arrive at a world picture that encompasses all reality that we can attain, not just the outer physical. Anyone who has consciously followed the course of education in recent decades has been able to see how people basically do not love to immerse themselves in reality with their concepts. To grasp the living spiritual life by wanting to come to ideas that themselves live in a spiritual world - without being personally present, but only observing the inner life - is something that people in recent decades have not taken the time to do at all. Hence these numerous people, whom I would like to mention, the 'button counters' of spiritual science. I would like to call them button counters for the following reason: if you have consciously grown up with what many people have been concerned with as important concepts in recent decades, you can certainly understand that it has happened that way, but you also have to grasp it. For several centuries, certain people have repeatedly reflected on the social coexistence of people. Some have come to more individualistic concepts, others to more social concepts. Individualism and socialism have played a role in the most diverse variations in recent times when considering human coexistence, which must be thought of as imbued with the spirit. To those accustomed to concepts saturated with reality, this splashing about among all the socialists and individualists of recent times and down to our days, when one follows the lines of thought by which one became an individualist or a socialist, really does not appear to be based on deeper spiritual grounds, but rather as if one were counting at the buttons: Individualist-Socialist, Individualist-Socialist, and would have counted which button it stops at; only that it is not so noticeable when this button counting happens in thoughts. You splash around in such concepts that are not at all suitable for reaching into true reality, like these conceptual shadows that have been so idolized as individualism and socialism in recent decades.

But there is a very serious background to this, and it is connected with much that is already extraordinarily important for certain conditions in the present. For man does not always need to know how the general world picture, which arises from his ideas, feelings and will impulses, is connected with ordinary daily life, with social life. But he will cause tremendous harm if he, in particular, stands at an important point and proceeds from ideas and feelings that are not steeped in reality. When he theorizes about mere scientific concepts of a world view, as Professor Dewar does, these concepts appear to spiritual science as delusions, which he imposes on his listeners. It is one thing to view a world view from a scientific point of view, but if someone with the same spirit is involved in social work and transfers the same kind of spiritual to this external aspect, then it has a highly destructive effect, and often in life we look for what is actually missing in completely different places than where it should be sought. Because everything that happens on earth is connected. And just as a doctor sometimes has to diagnose an illness as something completely different from what one would initially believe after a superficial examination, so too does the person who has an overview of the situation sometimes have to look for the origins of some illnesses and some devastating effects in completely different places than what appears to be the case after a superficial examination. I would like to give an example of this, but how should I do it in this day and age, when, precisely with regard to this example, I could be seen to be allowing myself to be influenced in my judgment by the events of the times that affect us all so painfully? But precisely with regard to this example, I have a way of avoiding this appearance. In 1913, in Helsingfors, that is before the war, I gave a series of lectures on a completely different subject, but in the course of which, to mention just one example, I had to make an allusion to Wilson, and I will read out what I said about Wilson at the time in a different context. You will also see from what I said at the time that I certainly did not fail to recognize a certain significance, and also a certain spirit, that can be attributed to Wilson, but you will also see that it was not necessary, in order to form an opinion about this man, to first let the events of the last few years or weeks sink in – perhaps even – as was necessary with some people. I said at the time:

“There are some very remarkable essays that have appeared recently by the President of the United States of North America, Woodrow Wilson. There is an essay on the laws of human progress.”

Of course, Woodrow Wilson was already talking about the laws of true human progress back then.

"In it, he explains quite nicely and even ingeniously how people are actually influenced by the prevailing thinking of their age. And he explains very ingeniously how, in the age of Newton, when everything was full of thoughts about gravity, one felt the Newtonian theories, which in reality only applied to the heavenly bodies, to have an effect on social and even state concepts. One feels the after-effects of thoughts about gravity in particular in everything. This is really very ingenious, because one only needs to read up on Newtonism and one will see that words like attraction and repulsion, etc. are used everywhere. Wilson emphasizes this very ingeniously. He says how inadequate it is to apply purely mechanical concepts to human life, to apply concepts of celestial mechanics to human affairs, by showing how human life at that time was virtually embedded in these concepts, how these concepts influenced state and social life everywhere. Wilson rightly criticizes this application of purely mechanical laws in the age in which, so to speak, Newtonism has brought the whole of thought under its yoke. You have to think differently, says Wilson, and now constructs his concept of the state in such a way that, after he has demonstrated this from the age of Newtonism, Darwinism now peeps out everywhere.

What I wanted to say at the time was that Wilson now sees, by looking at a previous age: Newton was included in the concepts of the state, and people now followed that. What does he do? He now includes Darwinism because it is a comrade of the age of Darwin, just as people were contemporaries of Newton at the time. He is doing exactly the same thing, but he is naive enough not to notice it.

If all sorts of people have played with the concepts of individualism and socialism, and they have remained playing, well, that may be so; but if, with such defective thinking, as I wanted to say at the time, an important position is managed, then that has a completely different meaning. If you want to get to know our age, then you will have to get to know how to work with concepts that are divorced from reality, that are only shadows of something, where these concepts are justified, as in Wilson's case these social concepts, how to work with such shadowy, unrealistic concepts. One may still be quite far from such insight; but one will not understand reality and come to no conception of the world that corresponds to this reality, if one is not able to see through what kind of conceptual shells are used today in science and in the social fields. That is why people are least able to gain an insight when it comes to entering the real spiritual world and gaining a world view from it or through it. There are people who, whether through their own inner development or through external circumstances, are seized by the longing to know the spiritual. But where do they often look for it? They cannot bring themselves, because of a certain inner laziness of thought, to seek the spirit where it can really be found: on the path of the spirit itself. This is difficult, although, even if things have taken 35 years, it is entirely possible, when the results come to light, to find them immediately plausible. Above all, it requires that the inner soul be brought into such a mood and state that it is often not appreciated by exact researchers of the present day. This can be seen most clearly when an exact researcher who rightly has a reputation in the field of external natural science delves into the spiritual world.

Among the books that have caused the greatest sensation in the English-speaking world in recent months, apart from war literature, is the one that the naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge has written as his latest book. This book has a special reason. The reason for this is that the son of the naturalist Lodge, Raymond Lodge, was killed on the Western Front in August 1915. Now, Oliver Lodge always had a certain inclination towards the spiritual world. The death of his son added to his desire to penetrate into the spiritual world. And so it came about - I can only tell these things briefly, so some things will be inexplicable, but I still want to tell the case to confirm what is connected with the attracted train of thought - it came about like this: Even before the son fell, Sir Oliver Lodge had been made aware from America that something had happened to this son. When you read what was written to the Lodge family from America, indirectly through a medium – as these personalities are called – then a scientifically minded person – and Oliver Lodge is that, too – or let us say, a spiritually minded person , the impression is: Yes, what has been written to him could mean anything; at best, it can be interpreted to mean that Frederick Myers, the editor of a work on the scientific study of the soul's life, who died long ago, would take care of Sir Oliver Lodge's son. But the matter could be interpreted in one way or another. If Raymond Lodge had not fallen, it could be interpreted that Myers would protect him from death in battle; after death, it could be interpreted that he would be his helper and guide in the hereafter. I do not want to go into what is behind such things; they are not as harmless as one might think. Now Raymond Lodge fell. And Sir Oliver Lodge - who would completely refuse to intrude on the ways into the spiritual world to get to the immortal soul, which is represented in the spiritual science meant here - he came into contact with mediums that were, in his opinion, beyond reproach , and then it soon turned out for him that through these mediums the soul of Raymond Lodge communicated through the mediums, telling all kinds of things: how she was now living, what her wishes were with regard to the father, the family and so on. I would not mention this matter if I only wanted to relate what ordinary spiritualists report, because they lack objectivity; even where Lombroso and Richet are involved, objectivity still prevails. But Oliver Lodge is really a person who knows the exact methods, and who therefore also proceeds exactly in such a matter, so that also someone who has enjoyed an education in the methods of natural science in his scientific thinking and research, and who has learned to to develop real conscientiousness in natural science, which basically the spiritual researcher should also have, could have a certain respect for the exactness with which Oliver Lodge proceeds in describing the things he shares in his thick book. And while in the case of ordinary reports, it is of course always immediately apparent, if one is somehow even a little familiar with the things, where the observers have not seen anything, where the messages are missing about the arrangements and so on, with Sir Oliver Lodge one sees that a person is reporting who really knows how to handle and describe scientific methods.

Now, one thing that Sir Oliver Lodge states has made a particularly great and deep impression. I will not tell the other things, because they are, despite being stated exactly, according to the pattern of other sessions. But the one that made a particularly great impression is this: Sir Oliver Lodge relates that through the impeccable mediums – I can tell all this because you know I do not represent this direction – it has come out that Raymond Lodge had himself photographed with comrades before he was killed on the Western Front. And now Raymond Lodge's soul describes the picture through the medium, and in three photographs, as they are taken one after the other by the photographer, where, when one group is photographed, the same group sits, and only sometimes one, while in one shot he put his hands on his knees, then puts them on the chair or on the shoulder of the neighbor. With great accuracy, this medium describes, let us say, these photographs. While one – Oliver Lodge also admits this – could find some connections in the other things, so that some kind of quiet suggestion, as it usually is with such things, took place, or some other process that every spiritual researcher knows to transfer to the medium, what memories, reminiscences, especially subconscious reminiscences of the deceased Raymond Lodge came to life – while it went with everything else that was there, it did not go with this incident, because nobody could know about these photographs. These photographs were taken in the very last days before Raymond Lodge died, and had not yet arrived in England. Nobody knew anything about them, neither any of the family nor the medium. And indeed, a fortnight or three weeks later, the three photographs arrived, exactly as described by the medium. Now this naturally became an experimentum crucis for him, a proof of the cross, because here it was directly demonstrable: Nobody could know anything about it, it came from a world that is not the world in which Raymond Lodge used to live before he went through the gate of death.

This has not only had a great effect on Sir Oliver Lodge, who had a great affinity for such things, but it has made a great impression on the whole audience interested in such things. Oliver Lodge was indeed completely convinced and was also able to convince his family members who had previously been skeptical; the circle then expanded more and more. It is now strange how satisfying it is, especially today, not to have to face discomfort in order to penetrate into reality, how one can easily form ideas about the spiritual world in a light-hearted way.

The spiritual researcher knows that if something comes out in this way, it is certainly not a manifestation of a truly spiritual world. That is why in the last lecture I called what comes to light in this way the most soulless of all, the thing from which the spirit has been driven out completely, although it can sometimes imitate the spirit. When something comes out in this way, it is related to the spirit as the dead shell of a mussel is to the living oyster, when the oyster is outside. The shell comes out, the most material, the most sensual, the most sensual remnant, which sometimes reproduces the spiritual in its forms. For the spirit must be sought in a spiritual way. But how could Oliver Lodge, one may say this if one is familiar with real spiritual research, how could he yield to such dilettantism? Simply because he lacks the reality-saturated concepts to judge such things. If he had read just a little of the abundant German literature on these matters, which of course is also little considered today, but which is there, especially from the first half of the nineteenth century, is there in great numbers, then he would have known that, admittedly, he is not dealing with anything other than what was relegated to the field of deuteroscopy in German intellectual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. There have been reports of phenomena such as the often-cited case of someone who, through a particular state of mind — even Schopenhauer mentioned it — in a kind of dream consciousness, comes to the conclusion: Then and then you will have an accident here and here. Some somnambulists describe such accidents in the not-too-distant future so precisely that, for example, if they fall off a horse, they describe the scene in great detail. We are not dealing here with something that could expand human insight into the real spiritual world, but with a mere expansion of perception that relates to sensory reality. We are dealing with the transgression of the ordinary perception of space and time, which is entirely possible within certain limits. Now, in the case of Raymond Lodge, there was obviously nothing different than what happens in such cases. What did the medium tell Oliver Lodge? Nothing more than what happened afterwards. Although the photographs had not yet arrived at the time the medium described them, they did come later. Oliver Lodge and his family were waiting for them. There was an event that occurred; just as a somnambulist dreams, in a fortnight he will fall off a horse. So it is not something that would show someone who is truly a spiritual researcher the way into a real spiritual world, but rather something that relates to the real spiritual world as the oyster shell relates to the oyster. It reproduces it. But in what comes to light, can one suspect something, when one takes the things seriously? But because it is more comfortable than the actual entering into the spiritual world, many a person will love to investigate something of the spiritual world in this way. But one has to do with something much more belonging to materiality in a spiritualistic phantom than one has to do with the real bodily human being. This is precisely the peculiar thing about the way in which real spiritual research must become part of people's educational lives, that this spiritual research will deduce from the aberrations to which even great thinkers are exposed, people who are quite familiar with the exact methods of external research into nature.

Now, just as one must say that the laws of nature, as we abstract them from natural phenomena and apply them to the world, are not applicable in the characterized way for the final state of the earth, since the earth will change with all human soul and spiritual life as it has been described, so one can also say that for the initial state. There one must indeed learn how memory - that is, the life of representations that already live in our soul by themselves, so that we are no longer present - actually relates to the bodily life. And if one studies this in the same way as I have indicated for the soul life that one needs for the final state on earth, then one finds that an initial state of the earth cannot be calculated in the same way as current geologists do, who simply take the physical laws and then calculate what the earth might have looked like according to these physical laws so many millions of years ago. You could also take the laws of digestion and calculate what a seven-year-old child might have looked like as a physical being forty years ago. In this case, one would use exactly the same method as the geologist uses when calculating the state of the earth millions of years ago. It is really the case that the calculation is completely correct, and that the physical methods are also correctly applied, when one calculates from the metabolism of a seven-year-old child what that child might have looked like forty years ago – only it was not yet alive at that time. And so it is just not right that for the point in time for which the geologist gives such beautiful things – as I mentioned earlier, that Professor Dewar gives for the final state of the earth – the earth was not yet there. It had not yet emerged from its different life in the sun, it had not yet emerged, it had not yet lifted itself out. And for the initial state of the earth – I can only give a brief description of this – the situation is as follows: As we have to do with the final state of the earth, with the rising of the material earth in the sun-earth-law into a spiritual-soul state, so that we carry our own immortal-supernatural with us through future world cycles, so at the beginning of the earth's development we have to do with a descent - if one wants to use the expression, which is not very beautiful, of a spiritual-soul-like one; but in such a way that it does not become more spiritual, but is taken up, as it were, by what comes from the solar, so that within the material the spiritual-soul-like comes to realization, one can already say: is embodied. Here we have to do with the reverse process: with the origin of a spiritual from a spiritual that surrounds itself, envelops — “wraps,” one might say, in contrast to “develops” — in a material from the world of space, from the world of time. And here again we notice that for the beginning of the evolution of the earth the laws hold good which I have already mentioned for the parallel currents of the subconscious, and that the ordinary laws of mathematics come to an end there. However grotesque it may sound, it is nevertheless true. And I would like to say: Kant grasped a quarter-truth about this, in that he showed in his antinomies how it can be conceived that for certain initial and final conditions, it is possible to think in such and such a way; but just because he found a quarter-truth, the whole thing had more of a paralyzing effect on the world picture of reality than that it could have been beneficial. For Kant would not only have had to believe that space and time are tied to the human faculty of perception, but he would have been able to recognize, if he had penetrated to the real spiritual research, how that which lives in man as spiritual-soul is closely connected with the spiritual spiritual-soul happenings of the entire outer existence, first of all of the earthly existence, and how a thorough study of the spiritual-soul life yields a truly spiritual-scientific picture of the world, so that one can say: our world of space and time is bound to man's intercourse with the earth. Therefore, what we can discern through them is only valid from the beginning of the earth to the end of the earth. And one must get to know the other laws that are in the other current if one wants to talk about the beginning and end of the earth in such a way that a true, real picture of the world emerges. Then one recognizes that the human soul is older than the earth; that the human soul was already present in that spiritual, which has wrapped itself up, involved itself in that law of the earth, which comes about in the intercourse of the earth with the life of the sun.

Spiritual science thus goes beyond the world view that I recently mentioned, which made such a repulsive impression on Herman Grimm, who of course did not know these connections. I have already shared Herman Grimm's words at the time, I have shared them many times before, but they are so interesting that one can always let them affect one's soul again. For in them we have words that prove how a healthy, sensitive soul must relate to such worldviews, as Professor Dewar has presented them to the world in the manner described, and how they are so firmly entrenched in the education of the present that one is naturally still considered a real crank today if one agrees with such words as Herman Grimm has expressed. Herman Grimm was forgiven for that. They would say: oh, he is an art historian, he is – well, he is not generally familiar with the rules of exact natural science and its results; it is of no consequence. That is a good reason. But the serious spiritual scientist will not be forgiven if he cites Grimm's words, which he said in connection with Goethe's world view:

How could the children not believe it, how could they not indulge in this scientific fantasy! It's so easy to show. One need only pose as a teacher, take a 'droplet' formed from a certain substance, take a piece of card and slide it into the equatorial plane of the droplet, stick a needle in at the top, place it on the water; then turn it and show how the little droplets are formed, how the little world systems are formed. How could anything be more conclusive than this, that the great cosmic structure also came into being according to the Kant-Laplace theory? Unfortunately, sometimes it is good to forget oneself, but in this case, when one is conducting scientific experiments, one must not forget oneself – namely, the teacher forgot himself. Because if he had not turned, then none of the world system would have come about. If he wanted to describe this process correctly, he would have to think of a giant professor standing in space.

In short, the fact that today, despite being generally accepted by the scientific community, Herman Grimm can say:

Thus spiritual science provides a different picture of the world, one that can incorporate the spiritual and soul into the beginning and end state of the earth in such a way that this incorporation is truly supported, like any other scientific fact. The only difference is that these things must be investigated from the spiritual-mental side, and cannot be worked out on the basis of what applies only to the material processes of the earth, as long as the earth is this material body that it is.

People today are not even aware of the conceptual shadows in which they actually live. Only sometimes does one think a little more sharply; he then does not come away from these conceptual shadows, but he thinks a little more sharply and sometimes comes to very strange assertions. For example, Eduard von Hartmann, who could not get away from physical ideas, but who could think. Hartmann came to think about physical ideas as well. He thought in terms of these physical ideas and had the courage to express what arose from them. Take a very nice saying:

“That there is a real nature, and that the laws established by physics apply in this real nature, is itself only a hypothesis.”

What is actually behind this? That is to say: physics establishes laws; if you really think about it, the whole of nature is only a hypothesis. It is really only a hypothesis, because with the physical concepts you cannot grasp reality. And if those who form a world picture out of physical concepts do not – thank God – see the real nature illuminated by the sun, it would remain a hypothesis for them. Only external reality counts for them.

In the spiritual realm, one must achieve reality by being fully active in penetrating it. This is not so comfortable. It does not present itself automatically, like external nature. But a saying such as Eduard von Hartmann's shows quite clearly that the concepts prevailing in the physical field are also powerless to reach real nature. For he who can really think, who knows that nature is out there, but what the physicist wants to absorb from it, that only gives a hypothetical nature.

It is a momentous thought that Hartmann expresses, although it is, of course, a completely insane thought. It will come about that spiritual science enters into the educational life of humanity because the conditions for it are present. But some things will have to be understood again that are no longer understood today, that are only taken in by the sound of the words.

I have often referred to the first step of the view that one can arrive at when observing this second current of human soul life, which can become conscious, as imaginative presentation. One must penetrate to this imaginative presentation, which is not a form of self-conceit but a life in spiritual reality, in order to grasp reality at all. We shall have to understand such ideas that can inwardly quicken this penetration into spiritual reality. We shall have to understand not merely the sound of the words, but their deeper inner value, such as can be found by the hundred in the fragments, thrown down just so, of a great spiritual man who died only young: Novalis. And from what has been said today about life, death and immortality in the universe, one will get an idea of the depth that lies, for example, in such a word of Novalis: “We will only become physicists when we make imaginative substances and forces the measure of natural substances and forces.” That is to say, when we can also recognize from the imaginative, when we approach external nature.

Of course, people's attention had to be diverted from the spiritual for a time so that great progress could be made in the external, natural sciences. But man must not cut himself off from the spiritual world. The connection to real spiritual research must be found again.

Now, one should not think that one must break with all reason, with all that is sound, if one does not give in to the ideas that arise from a false interpretation of physics, as given by a man like Professor Dewar. However, the matter also has a moral aspect in a sense. And with regard to much, a different scientific attitude will have to prevail than the one that often dominates scientific people today if one wants to approach the study of the spiritual worlds in the right way in order to find that inner peace of mind that makes it possible to experience the spiritual world in such a way that the spiritual world becomes objective, that the spiritual world is really there before the soul's eye, not as a vague pantheism or mysticism. One will also have to develop certain things with regard to the inner eye of the soul, above all a certain composure and humility with regard to inner experience. I do not mean it in the sentimental sense, as some who call themselves mystics do, because I think nothing of all these stereotyped labels. But one will have to acquire a certain mood. For the tendency of the times has also become similar to those concepts, which only cling to the surface, and people believe that they are developing particular idealism when they use the usual shadow concepts to do a little abstraction from external sensual reality. We shall have to develop a different attitude, for even the attitude of science has surrendered to mere clinging to the outer life, an attitude which I will now summarize in a few words at the end. Not my words, but the words that a sensible German personality used when she translated a spiritual-scientific book — the sensible Matthias Claudius. Let me conclude with his words, in which I would like to show, so to speak, the soul power that must enter into the inner mood as a soul attitude if one is to go beyond such scientific delusions, as I have also characterized them today. Matthias Claudius said on this occasion, when he translated a book from the field of spiritual science - as was appropriate for the time, not as it would be for the present time - he said in his preface:

“... whether a man is vain and foolish about a moustache or about metaphysics and Henriade, or hates and envies a man because of a larger pumpkin” — he means the head “or because of the invention of differential and integral calculus, in short, whether one lets oneself be held and hindered by one's five yoke oxen” – he means the five senses – ‘or by one's polyhistorey’ – that is, by one's external erudition – ‘on the rope, seems basically the same and not different.’

And since inner soul life is really very closely connected with the soul's attitude, it will be necessary to pour out a yearning for an exploration of the spiritual world, as expressed in these beautiful words of Matthias Claudius. For when a person has realized within himself what is implied in these words, then he really does have a relationship with the spiritual world through his feelings. And that is a preparation for clearing away all the mists that arise, especially in the spiritual world, when one allows all the different kinds of arrogance and pride to take effect, which are particularly present in the present state of spiritual development.

It has often been said that when Spiritual Science will spread, it should play its part as a true force of life. And this assertion may be strengthened by the most varied considerations of life's relations. By the very fact that we become more and more acquainted with the characteristics of that invisible world which is the foundation of the visible world, do perceptions, concepts take hold of our soul which in their turn become impulses toward quite definite actions, toward a quite definite attitude in life. Of special importance will be the attitude which may be initiated in regard to the so-called dead, concerning those who during our life span go through the time between death and a new birth. Just as man here in the physical body is, through his soul and body, related in the most varied ways with the physical world, and the spiritual nature underlying it, so does he also stand between death and a new birth in the most varied relations to the facts, happenings, and beings of the supersensible world. And just as human beings have an occupation, an activity, in the physical world between birth and death, so they also have activities, occupations, if you please, between death and a new birth. What we may learn about human life and human activity between death and a new birth will lead more and more to what is called the removal of the abyss which, especially in our materialistic age, opens up between those living on earth and the dead. Between the living and the so-called dead, an increasing mutual intercourse will be established.

Let us today call attention to details in this intercourse between the living and the dead, as well as to the occupations and ways of living of the souls who live between death and a new birth. Those who die before others with whom they had relations here on earth must naturally often look back from the spiritual world on the beings they loved, or who have otherwise remained in the life on earth. Now, the question is whether such souls existing between death and a new birth can perceive human beings living here between birth and death. If we have developed the faculties which enable us to penetrate into the life between death and a new birth, we have quite special, one might say, deeply moving experiences. For instance, one may find souls of the dead who sometimes say the following in the language which is possible between the departed souls and the seer, and which can only be understood by the latter who is able to look from our world into the world of the dead. In the following way, for instance, a soul was able to make itself known to the seer after death (it was a soul embodied in its last incarnation in a male body): “All my thoughts and memories go back to that person who was my faithful wife when I was below in the life on earth; she was, so to speak, the sunshine of my life. When, my business completed, I came home in the evening, my soul was refreshed by what she was able to be for me, by what then came into my soul from hers. A true spiritual bread of life she was for me, and longing for her has stayed with me. My spiritual eye is directed toward the earth and I cannot find her, she is not there. From all I have learned, I know that this soul must be on earth as she was before in a physical body, but for me she is as though extinguished, as though she were not there.”

This deeply moving experience one may often have with reference to souls who think back about those left behind and who feel as though fettered, so that they cannot get through, cannot look down on these earthly souls. They are fettered, not by their own essential being, but rather by the other soul left behind. And if one investigates the reason why the soul from the beyond cannot perceive the soul remaining on earth, then one learns that the soul who has remained on earth has not, on account of the existing circumstances of our age, been able to be inspired by, to be imbued with, any thoughts which might become visible, be perceptible, to a soul having gone through the portals of death. We might make another comparison. Souls who have gone through the portals of death and long for the sight of those remaining in physical bodies, such souls have a dim idea of the existence of others on the physical plane, but are unable to manifest themselves to them. Just as one who is dumb is unable to call attention to himself by means of language, therefore is inaudible to others, so does the entire soul remain mute to the disembodied soul who longs for it; it is in its spiritual nature inaudible to the one who has already passed the portals of death.

There is a great difference between one soul and another here on earth, depending on whether these souls have one content or another. Let us consider a soul who lives here in the physical body and from the time of awaking to the time of going to sleep is only concerned with thoughts taken from the material world; such a soul, filled entirely with thoughts, concepts, ideas, and sensations taken solely from the material world, cannot be perceived at all from the other world. No trace of such a soul can be found. A soul that is filled with spiritual ideas, as for instance those which Spiritual Science gives, and which is aglow with and irradiated by spiritual ideas—such a soul is perceptible from the beyond. Therefore, souls who have remained behind, however good they may be as human beings, are without reality and imperceptible to the world beyond if they are immersed in materialism. These are deeply shocking, terrible impressions for the seer who certainly has attained serenity. But these experiences, possible with reference to the world beyond, especially in our era, are numerous. In our era it is just as though every contact were cut off between souls who here are often so closely linked. This is frequently the case when a soul has gone through the portals of death; while it can always be found that the souls who live beyond, who have gone through the portals of death and look down on human beings harbouring spiritual thoughts, even though only now and then, and letting them permeate their soul, can then perceive these, so that these earthly souls remain real souls for them. Even more significant: what is touched upon here can become of practical import. The spiritual thoughts which souls harbour here can not only be perceived, they can be understood by the souls beyond. And in this way something can be brought about which may become of great importance for the intercourse between souls here and souls beyond, namely, that which may be called “Reading to the Dead.” And such “Reading to the Dead” is often extraordinarily important.

Here, too, the seer can have the experience that human beings who have entirely disregarded spiritual wisdom, now have a strong longing for spiritual wisdom and wish to hear about it after having passed through the portals of death. Then, if the souls that have remained behind make a clear mental image of the dead person and, at the same time, bring to mind an anthroposophical train of thought or open an anthroposophical book and in thought, not aloud, read to the dead whose spiritual image stands before them, the dead will become aware of it. It is in the anthroposophical movement that we have had, in this regard, the most excellent results, when still living anthroposophists read of their departed relatives. One can often see how these dead long to hear what penetrates to them from here. One thing is of especial importance during the time immediately after death in order that one may enter into a relationship with a soul. It is not possible without further ado to enter into relation with any supersensible being. There is often much deception, much illusion in this respect, it is not as easy as it seems. It is a grave error to think that a human being need only to die in order, so to speak, to come into contact with the whole spiritual world. On one occasion I met a man who was otherwise not really very smart, but who, nevertheless, talked incessantly about Kant, Schopenhauer, and so forth who even gave lectures on Kant and Schopenhauer. This man, when I lectured about the nature of immortality, answered me in a rather smug way. He said: “Here on earth we cannot know anything about immortality, since we do not experience it until we die.” One might say that, with his present equipment, he will not differ in his soul very much after death from what he is now. It is deep prejudice that believes the souls become quite wise as soon as they have passed through the portals of death. On the contrary, we cannot after death establish so easily connections with human beings, if we have not already established them before death. Connections that have been already established here are effective for a long time. It does not occur readily that a soul be instructed immediately by souls in the beyond, because it cannot have a connection with them. But the departed human being has connections with people on the earth, and they can bring him the food for which he is starving, they can bring him spiritual wisdom by reading to him and thus bring about immensely meritorious effects. The dead would not be helped if we read them external, materialistic science, perhaps chemistry or physics; that is a language they do not understand because these sciences are of value only for life on earth. But what is said about the spiritual worlds in the language of anthroposophy remains comprehensible to the dead. During the time immediately following death, one thing, however, has to be considered; during that period the souls retain an understanding for things communicated in the languages they usually spoke here on earth. Only after a time do the dead become independent of language; then one may read to them in any language and they will understand the thought content. During the time immediately following death, the departed is also more connected with the language he has last spoken, if he has exclusively spoken only one language. We should really consider the fact that during the time immediately following death we have to send our thoughts to the dead,—we must send our thoughts to them—in the language they were accustomed to. Here we have come to a point in our considerations which can teach us how the abyss may be bridged over by the fact that anthroposophy flows into our spiritual life in this world and in the other world, in the world in which we live between death and a new birth. While materialism only allows us to bring into life an intercourse between souls confined to their earthly existence, anthroposophy will open the way for a free communication, an intercourse between the souls on earth and the souls dwelling beyond in the other world. The dead will live with us. And truly, what we may call the passing through the portals of death will often after a time be felt merely as a change in the form of existence. And the entire change in the life of spirit and of soul, which will take place when such things have become common knowledge, is going to be of great significance.

We have just dealt with an example of the effect of the living on the dead. We may also form a conception of the way the dead in their turn affect the living. Several times I have ventured to mention—please excuse the personal reference—that in the past I had to instruct many children. I had to instruct several children in a family where only the mother was living; their father was dead and I felt it to be my task—this must be the task of any educator—to discover the potentialities and talents of these children in order as educator to guide and instruct them. Regarding these children of whom I am speaking, something remained incomprehensible; no matter what was tried they showed a certain behaviour that was not a consequence of their inherent qualities or of their surroundings. One could not quite manage them. In such cases one must call on everything for help; and spiritual research resulted in the following: the father had died, and in consequence of special circumstances, which had occurred among the relatives, he was not in accord with the way in which the children were being treated by the relatives nor with the things which happened within the intimate family circle—and, because of special circumstances, his influence had an effect on the children. And it was not until the moment I could take into consideration that there was something special which neither derived from potentialities nor from surroundings, but which came out of the supersensible world from the departed father who directed his forces into the souls of his children—it was not until then that I could be guided by it. Now I had to take into consideration what the father really wanted. And the very moment I investigated the will of the father who had passed through the portals of death, and considered him as a real person, like the other persons in physical existence who had their joint effect on the children—it was then that I succeeded in my task.

This is a case in which it was clearly shown that spiritual knowledge can tell us, indicate to us, the effect of the forces from the supersensible, spiritual world on this physical world. But in order to perceive such a thing one needs the right moment. One must try, for instance, to develop a kind of force which makes it possible to perceive, as it were, the raying in of the supersensible force—in this case that of the father—into the souls of the children. This is oftentimes difficult. It might be easy, for instance, to try to recognize how the dead father wants to implant this or that thought into the children's souls. But that often proves incorrect and, especially, it cannot always be repeated. It may then prove to be a good device to procure a picture giving the father's form, the way he looked at the last; if a distinct picture of his handwriting is held in memory and is kept there before the mind's eye, and we thus prepare ourselves for the kind of instruction meant here by concentrating on handwriting or picture, then we take into our own work the views, the intentions, the aims of the dead person. The time will come when we are going to take into account what the dead want for those left behind. Today we can only take into account the will of those who are on the physical plane. There will be a mutual, one might say a free intercourse between the living and the dead. We shall learn to investigate what the dead want for the physical plane. Just imagine the great upheaval, one might also say of the external factors of physical life, when the dead shall play a part and through the living have an effect on the physical plane. Spiritual Science, if it is rightly understood, and it always must be rightly understood, will not be a mere theory. Spiritual Science will become more and more an elixir of life which pervades all existence, transforming it the more it spreads. And it will surely accomplish this, for its effect will not be that of an abstract ideal which is preached, or which is “sold” by societies. It will, slowly but surely, take hold of the souls on earth and transform them.

There will be an enrichment of our conceptions in many other respects. In our existence our life with the dead shall change because we shall understand what the dead are doing. Many things now remain quite incomprehensible regarding the relations between the world here on earth, the physical plane, and the world which we experience between death and a new birth; for much that happens here in the physical world remains incomprehensible. And since all that happens here corresponds to what happens beyond, the relation of the world and humanity to the supersensible world remains incomprehensible. But if anthroposophy is rightly understood, comprehension will increasingly take the place of non-comprehension in this realm.

Now a relationship will be established which may show what strangely devious ways are taken by the beings who, so to speak, carry out the further development of world wisdom. Strangely devious ways are taken by these beings, but nevertheless, if we follow them, they show themselves full of wisdom in every respect. Let us consider various conditions. Let us first consider souls whom the eye of the seer may perceive in their occupation between death and a new birth. There we see—and again that is for the seer something deeply affecting—we see many souls who are condemned for a certain time between death and a new birth to be the slaves of the spirits who send sickness and death into physical life. Thus we see there souls between death and a new birth who are under the dominion of beings whom we call the Ahrimanic spirits, or the spirits of hindrance, of those who work at death in life, and of those who bring obstacles into life. And a hard lot it is which the seer observes, in some souls, when they have to submit in this manner to the slave yoke. If one traces back such souls to the life they led before they passed the portals of death, one finds that the souls who for a certain time after death must serve the spirits of resistance have prepared this for themselves by self-indulgence during life. And the slaves of the spirits of sickness and death have prepared this fate for themselves by having been unscrupulous before death. So there we see a certain relation of the souls of men to the evil spirits of sickness and death, and to the evil spirits of resistance. But now let us take a further look at the following, let us look at the souls who here on earth are subjected to that which such souls must do. Let us look at the souls who perish here on earth in the flower of their youth without reaching the death of old age. Let us look upon the souls who here on earth are subjected to sickness, who are pursued by misfortune, as obstacle upon obstacle arises before them. What does the seer observe when he considers souls who die early or are pursued by misfortune and then pass into the spiritual world? What does the seer notice about such souls? One may have strange experiences concerning human destinies on earth. We shall point to at least one example, to one of the very moving destinies on earth, and which may certainly happen.

A child (a little girl) is born; the mother dies at the birth of the child; the child is orphaned at birth with regard to the mother. The father, on the day the child is born, learns that his whole fortune which was tied up in a ship on the high seas is lost; he learns that the ship has been wrecked; because of this he becomes melancholic; he, too, dies, leaving the child completely orphaned. The little girl is adopted by a wealthy woman; she is very fond of the child and wills her large fortune to her. The woman dies while the child is still comparatively young. The will is probated and a technical error is found—the child does not get a penny of what was willed to her. For the second time she is cast out into the world penniless and must hire out as a servant, must do menial work. She meets a man who falls in love with her, but they cannot be united on account of the prejudices governing the community: they belong to different denominations. But the man loves her so very much that he promises to adopt her faith as soon as his father, already very old, dies. He goes abroad; there he learns that his father has fallen ill. His father dies; he adopts the girl's faith, and as he hurries to her side, she falls ill and dies. When he returns, she is dead. He feels the deepest pain and will not be satisfied until the grave is opened so that he can see her once more. And from the position of the corpse, it can be seen that the girl was buried alive. This is a legend—Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet, has retold it in his writings—it is a legend which is not reality, but it might occur in innumerable instances. We see that a human soul does not merely perish in the flower of her youth but we see her pursued by misfortune from the beginning of life in a certain way. In the working out of such conditions those souls cooperate who, on account of unscrupulousness, become the servants of the evil spirits of sickness, death and misfortune. Thus such unscrupulous souls must be active in the preparation of such hard fates; here is a relationship! To the seer this is especially evident in such happenings as, for instance, the catastrophe of the Titanic, by investigating the effect of the souls who for lack of conscience have become the servants of these spirits of sickness and misfortune. Karma must be carried out, these things are necessary; but it is an evil fate which engulfs the souls who, after death, are bowed down under such a yoke of slavery.

But let us ask further: What about the souls who here on earth suffer such a fate, who perish in the flower of their youth, who are destroyed early by epidemics? What about these souls, when they pass through the portal of death into the spiritual world before their time? We learn the fate of these souls when with the eye of the seer we penetrate, so to speak, into the occupation of the spirits who give a forward impulse to the evolution of the earth, or to all evolution. These beings of the Higher Hierarchies have certain forces, certain powers to further development; but they are in a certain way limited with regard to these forces and powers. Thus the following becomes manifest:

The completely materialistic souls, those who lose all sense of the supersensible world, are in fact already in this our era threatened by a kind of blight, a kind of cutting off from progressive development. And in a certain way already in our era the danger exists that a large portion of humanity may not be able to keep up with evolution, because they are, so to speak, bound to the earth by the heaviness of their own souls, being completely materialistic souls, so that they are not taken along for the next incarnation. But this danger is to be deflected according to the decision of the Higher Hierarchies. The truth is that the hour of decision for the souls who, having cut themselves off completely, are not carried along with the evolution, that the hour of decision does not come until the sixth period—actually, not until the Venus evolution. Souls must not fall prey to the downward pull of gravity to such an extent that they are compelled to remain behind. It is actually according to the decision of the Higher Hierarchies that this must not happen. But these beings of the Higher Hierarchies are in a certain way limited in their forces and capabilities. Nothing is unlimited, even among the beings of the Higher Hierarchies. And if it were only a question of the forces of these Higher Hierarchies, then completely materialistic souls, through themselves, would have to be already cut off in a certain way from progressive evolution. The beings of the Higher Hierarchies really cannot alone by themselves save these souls—so an expedient is used. Namely, the souls that die here an early death have, as souls, a possibility before them. Let us say they die through some catastrophe; for instance, they are run over by an express train—then indeed the bodily sheath is taken from such a soul; it is now free from its body, denuded of its body, but it still contains the forces which might be active in the body here on earth. By going into the spiritual world such souls carry up very special forces, which in fact still might have been effective here on earth, but which have been prematurely diverted. Forces, especially applicable in helping, are carried up by those who die early. And the beings of the Higher Hierarchies use these forces to save the souls whom they could not have saved by their own power.

Souls that are materialistically inclined are thus led away to better times and saved, since their strength is only sufficient for the regular course of mankind's evolution. Salvation is achieved by the fact that these beings of the Higher Hierarchies experience an increase of strength by such unused forces coming from the earth, which have still unused energy. These forces accrue to the beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Thus the souls who perish early help their fellowmen who otherwise would be submerged in the morass of materialism. Here we have what those souls must do who depart early. Strange interdependence, is it not, in the complicated ways of world wisdom! Thus the world wisdom permits, on one side, the sentencing of human souls for lack of conscience to cooperate in bringing sickness and early death into the world. The souls who suffer it are used by good beings of the Higher Hierarchies to help other men. In this manner happenings that seem evil outwardly in maya are often transformed into good, but in complicated ways. The ways of wisdom which are taken in the world are very complicated. It is only gradually that one learns to find one's way in these paths of wisdom. One might say: There, up above, the spirits of the Higher Hierarchies sit in council. Because men must be free, they are given the possibility of plunging into materialism, into evil. The Hierarchies give them so much freedom that these human souls, so to speak, escape them, these souls who could not, by their own strength, carry on up to a certain point of time. They need souls who develop on earth forces which retain their inner potential through the premature separation from the body when these souls have to return to the spiritual world in consequence of accident and an early death. This early death is brought about by the services of human souls who, in pursuance of their freedom, have fallen into unscrupulousness. A wonderful cyclic path is opened up here, we may say, a cyclic path of world wisdom. We should not believe at all that the so-called simple things are the universal ones. The world has become complicated. It really was a significant word of Nietzsche which was revealed to him as though by inspiration, when he said: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day had thought.” Those people are completely in error who think that everything may be grasped by the day-wisdom of the intellect. For the higher spiritual light is not that which shines into the wisdom of the day, but that which shines into the darkness. We must seek this light in order to find our way in the darkness in which, nevertheless, the world wisdom is at work.

If we accept such concepts, ideas and thoughts, my dear friends, then it may come about that we contemplate the world with other eyes than before. And it will become more and more necessary that we learn to contemplate the world with new eyes; for humanity has lost many things since ancient times. What it is we lost may be understood if we consider the following:

Still in the third post-Atlantean period there were intermediate states between sleeping and waking, in which souls looked up into the world of the stars and saw not merely physical stars, as is the case today, but the spiritual beings of the Higher Hierarchies; the directing and leading forces of stellar destiny and stellar movement were observed by them. And what existed as old stellar maps from immemorial times when all kinds of drawings were made of group souls, looking like animals without being animals, all this is not born out of fantasy, but is spiritually perceived. The souls perceived this in the realm of the spirit. They were able to carry this spiritual element through the portals of death. The soul has now lost this vision of the supersensible world. Today when the souls are born, they confront the physical world with the bodily sense organs and see nothing but the external physical world. They no longer can see that which surrounds the external physical world as the world of spirit and of soul, the world of the Higher Hierarchies, and so forth. But what is the nature of the souls who appear in the bodies of today? All the souls of persons sitting here were incarnated in former times, and the great majority were incarnated in Egypto-Chaldaic bodies and through those bodies they looked out into the world in which they also had spiritual perception. This spiritual experience they took into themselves, it exists in them today. Not in all the souls; but the souls who today no longer see anything but physical facts, they once lived in contemplation of the spiritual world, they lived a completely perceptive life of the spiritual world. How do these souls live now? They live exactly as though they had totally forgotten this spiritual world. They have forgotten the spiritual perceptions they once absorbed. But what we have forgotten is merely forgotten for our present consciousness; it still lives in the deepest recesses of our souls. Thus the peculiar situation exists: the souls living today have around them, consciously, nothing but a physical sense image of the world; but in their inner being the perceptions which once they received as true spiritual vision are still living unconsciously in the depths of their souls. Of these perceptions the souls know nothing; they only show peculiar conceptions which burrow in the depths of the soul, but which do not rise into consciousness; these conceptions have a paralyzing, deadening effect. And thus something actually arises in the human beings of today which exists in them as a deadening element.

If as a seer one contemplates the human being of today as he is anatomically constructed, one finds in this human being, especially in the nervous system, certain currents, certain forces which are forces of death and which stem from conceptions that were alive in former incarnations. These spiritual conceptions which he has now forgotten have a consuming quality. This would show itself more and more, the farther man advances toward the future, if there were not something present which counteracts it. What could this be? Nothing but bringing up into consciousness that which was forgotten. One must remind the souls of that which they have forgotten. That is what Spiritual Science does, fundamentally it does nothing but remind the souls of the conceptions they have absorbed. Spiritual Science lifts these conceptions into consciousness. In this way it gives again to men the possibility of enlivening what would otherwise be like a dead impulse in life.

Now note these two things which you received in the course of today's consideration. On the one hand the seer perceives human souls who have passed through the portal of death, who long for the souls left behind, whom they cannot perceive, because in these souls there exist only materialistic images of the world, though they may perhaps belong to quite good men. For the seer, though he may have achieved calmness of soul, it is deeply moving to perceive these starving souls. On the other hand, the seer looks into a future of humanity which will contain more and more dead matter, if it does not revivify the conceptions which it once received and which will kill it, if they are not raised into consciousness. The seer would have to look into a future when people, through all kinds of hereditary traits would show signs of old age much earlier than is the case today. Just as one may see today examples of infantile old age, even senility, so people would then show, soon after being born, wrinkles and other indications of old age, if through lack of spiritual knowledge forces did not appear which are memories of conceptions once received in a natural way. In order to provide the dying human race with a life-giving elixir, in order to give the dead the possibilities of coming into contact with the relatives they have left behind on earth—in order to accomplish this, the seer, conscious of this fact, searches for a language which is not only understood here on earth by the souls incarnated in a physical body, but which is spoken in common by the souls living here between birth and death and those souls living beyond between death and a new birth—a language common to the living and the dead.

And truly, it is not that one feels mere sympathy for what is a Spiritual Science—a theoretical sympathy as for other things—truly, this is not what should prompt us; but he who really understands, he who looks into the world, feels that this Spiritual Science has a world-mission. He says to himself: the necessity exists to find the common language, to find the elixir of life which keeps men from becoming arid regarding the various conceptions we mentioned. That is the mission of Spiritual Science for the spiritual worlds themselves. One feels this mission as a high and sacred duty, as something very serious and significant. And we must not merely find pleasure in the ideas which Spiritual Science can give us for our theoretical satisfaction, but we must feel the spiritual power which it must derive from the necessities of the development of humanity and of the world. Then we shall have the right feeling for the reason, for the existence of Spiritual Science, why it has to be implanted into the spiritual life of humanity. It is this feeling which we must actually achieve and we must be permeated by it. This feeling has a highly curative power, it is one which brings to the human soul a real harmony of its forces. This is a fact. The more we allow our souls to be permeated with that which belongs to the world of supersensible truths, the more our feelings will become inwardly able to direct us in our lives, the more essential will these feelings become. The man who is merely pleased with Spiritual Science, who embraces it out of curiosity, or for some similar reason, that man will perhaps make a very bad use of it in his life. But he who is permeated by the feeling we characterized above, by that sacred feeling that comes to us because we know that Spiritual Science must exist out of inner necessity, he will take his place in life with the right attitude toward this Science. He will be able to find his way through Spiritual Science, at least inwardly, even in the most difficult situations; he will perhaps find it especially when outwardly the greatest difficulties arise. For Spiritual Science is an affair of the future, it has entered into the world today because it must serve mankind in the most comprehensive sense, in the most comprehensive manner. But the result of this is that those who in a way have a fear of the spiritual worlds in the depths of their souls manifest this fear in their consciousness as hatred.

Many human feelings are related to each other; ambition and vanity, for instance, are related to fear. And in a complicated manner all kinds of feelings are related to each other. Why is man ambitious, vain? What does it mean to be ambitious, vain? To be ambitious, vain, means wanting to be valued in the opinion of one's environment, and to take pleasure in the value one gains in the opinion of one's environment, to take intense pleasure in that opinion. Why does one want that? One may want it for a number of reasons. But today is the time when men, if we look into the depths of their souls, reveal themselves as particular cowards. Some of them who appear to be quite robust in their outward consciousness are cowards in the depths of their soul. And they seek all kinds of narcotics when they have such fear of the supersensible worlds. That is, because some people are afraid of losing their foothold when they gain access to the spiritual worlds, fear overcomes them; but they want to stifle this fear, sometimes because they are afraid of the earnest and solemn strength which they must use in order to enter into the spiritual worlds. We have seen many a man who believed he could be in the spiritual world at the end of four weeks, but there are—oh, the most terrible of terrors—hindrances: it proves impossible for this man to become in this incarnation, on the basis of spiritual knowledge, that which he would like so much to be—a famous man. Many a man then loses his joy, that is what he is afraid of, and he wants to stifle this fear; and so he creates against this Spiritual Science an antipathy permeated by hatred and vanity.

This mood will spread farther and farther in the present, for the inwardly cowardly, outwardly vain souls will become more and more prevalent in the world. And it may well come to pass that much more hatred, many more attacks will be launched against Spiritual Science than has been the case so far. Thus, there is certainly sufficient reason to see quite clearly, to feel quite clearly in all these things; in spite of the characterized feelings, we should have harmony, even though outwardly it may often seem that everything may go awry. To see clearly and distinctly, that will be necessary if one wants to stand firm on the ground of spiritual knowledge. For in our times those who most intensely believe they are qualified to criticize often do not know at all what they are talking about. There are people who, let us say, begin to write articles about Spiritual Science, who criticize terribly the “fantasies” of the spiritual researcher. Then, in the second half of the article there appears all kind of information about the author, which is entirely false, which is not true. A wild fantasy governs these descriptions. No one who ascends to the supersensible worlds could think up such fantasies as the person who in the first part of his article has criticized the “fantastic” Spiritual Science. Thus things are turned around in the human soul. Those who think they can tell the truth very clearly and who are gifted with a certain impure imagination about the facts of the physical plane partially stupefy themselves by holding forth against that which is supersensibly perceived. Thus humanity seeks oblivion not merely by means of alcohol, but by all kinds of other means. In many things we must see clearly, and the spiritual conception of life will give us the guidance to clear seeing. The most varied narcotics are sought and also found, and they are found for the reason that demonic beings are increasingly active in the hidden depths of the souls of men. These demonic beings will certainly be released by degrees against that which is to fructify humanity from the spiritual side.

This is something, my dear friends, which I wanted to paint before your souls just at this time as a kind of picture of the future, because it is well that we remind ourselves in our time of the way we shall have to take a firm and secure stand on the ground of this Spiritual Science by creating the right feelings toward it and its mission, if we really recognize this Science and its mission. From this ground we can tranquilly watch in our innermost being the development into the future, even though perhaps we may be brought outwardly more and more into disharmony, even though we may more and more be put in the wrong.

We have often spoken of that period of human evolution that has passed since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have dealt with the various epochs of this evolution—the original Indian, original Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin—and then with our own, the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation. We have also shown that two further epochs will pass, before the coming of another great catastrophe, so that we have to reckon in all seven such epochs of earthly humanity.

It is comprehensible that these epochs should be described differently. For as men of the present day we desire to find how we stand as regards our own mission, we can only gain some idea of what lies before us in the future when we know how far we have participated in these different epochs in the past.

I have often explained how we can distinguish between the separate human being, the little world, or microcosm, and the great world, or macrocosm; I have shown how man, the little cosmos, is a copy of the great world or macrocosm. Though this is a truth, yet it is a very abstract truth, and as generally stated does not mean very much. You will therefore find it helpful if we go into particulars regarding this, and show how certain things met with in mankind have really to be accepted as a little world, and can be compared with another, a greater world.

The man of the present day really belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch. We have passed through all the earlier ages in former incarnations, and will pass through all the later ages in later ones. In each incarnation we receive what the age in question has to give. Because we receive this we bear within us, in a certain sense, the fruits of former evolutions, and the most intimate things within us are really those we have acquired during the ages mentioned. What each of us has acquired in the course of these ages is more or less within human consciousness to-day; while what we acquired generally in our Atlantean incarnations, when the state of consciousness was very different, has sunk more or less into our sub-consciousness, and no longer reverberates within us as that does which we have acquired in post-Atlantean times. In Atlantean times man was more shielded from having his evolution injured in one way or another, because his consciousness was not then so awake as it was in post-Atlantean times. For this reason all we bear within us as the fruits of our Atlantean evolution is more in accordance with the ordering of the world than is that which had its origin in an age when we were already capable of bringing certain things in us into disorder. Ahrimanic and Luciferic Beings certainly influenced man in Atlantean times, but they then worked quite differently, for man was not then capable of shielding himself from them.

That men grew ever more and more conscious is the most important fact of post-Atlantean culture. In this respect human evolution from the Atlantean catastrophe until the next great catastrophe is macrocosmic. Humanity evolves like one great man throughout the seven post-Atlantean periods; and the most important things that were to arise in human consciousness during these seven periods resemble what a single individual experiences in the seven periods of his individual life.

The different ages in the life of a man have been described as follows:—The first seven years, from birth to the change of teeth, is described as the first age. In it man's physical body receives its form, is endowed with it as a gift. With the coming of the second teeth this form, in all its essentials, is fixed. The man then continues to grow within this form, which has received its essential direction. What is accomplished during the first seven years is the construction of the form. This period has to be understood from all sides. We must, for instance, distinguish the first teeth which the child develops early and which fall out, from the second teeth which replace them. These two kinds of teeth, with respect to the laws of the body, are quite different—the first are inherited, they appear as the fruits of the organisms of the man's ancestors, but the second teeth appear as the outcome of the laws of the man's own physical Being! This has to be realised. It is only when we go into such particulars that we observe this difference. We receive our first teeth, because our ancestors pass them on to us with our organism, we acquire our second teeth because our own physical organism is so constituted that we acquire them through it. In the first period the teeth are directly bequeathed, in the second the physical organism is bequeathed, and it produces the second teeth.

After this we distinguish a second period of life, that from the change of teeth until puberty, to about the 14th or 15th year. What is significant in it is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the 21st year, represents the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the ego, and this progresses from the development of the sentient soul to that of the rational soul and on to the consciousness soul. It is thus we distinguish the different ages in the life of a man. In this life, as you know well, only that period is really ordered and regulated, which falls within the first seven years. This is, and must be so, as regards the man of the present day. Such regular differentiations as we find in the first three periods of a man's life do not occur later; neither is the time they last so clearly defined. If we enquire into the causes of this we have to understand that in the evolution of the world a middle period always comes after the first three of any seven periods.

We are living at present in the post-Atlantean age, we have already within us the fruits of the first three periods, and of the fourth, for we are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, and are living on towards the sixth.

We are entirely justified in finding a resemblance between the evolution of the various post-Atlantean periods and that of the ages in the life of separate individuals, so that here also it is possible to distinguish between what is macrocosmic and what is microcosmic.

Let us take that which is most characteristic of the first post-Atlantean period, the one we call the Old-Indian; for in this the character of the post-Atlantean evolution was most strongly expressed. In this first period an exalted and most clearly differentiated wisdom existed, a primeval wisdom. What was taught in India by the Seven Holy Rischis was in principle the same as was actually beheld in the spiritual world by natural seers, and also by a large part of the people at that time. This ancient wisdom was present in the first Indian period as an inheritance. It was experienced clairvoyantly in Atlantean times, but now it had become more of an inherited primeval wisdom, preserved and given out again by those who, like the Rischis, had risen to spiritual worlds by initiation. What had entered thus into human consciousness was essentially and absolutely an inheritance. It was therefore entirely different in character from present day wisdom. People make a great mistake when they try to express the important matters given out by the Holy Rischis in the first post-Atlantean period in forms similar to those employed by the science of to-day. This is hardly possible. The scientific forms in use to-day appeared first in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge of the Ancient Rischis was of a very different kind. Those who communicated it, felt how it worked in them, how it rose within them on the instant. If we are to understand what knowledge was at that time, we must realise that its most marked characteristic was that it did not spring in any way from memory. Memory played no part as yet in knowledge. I pray you to keep this in mind. To-day memory plays a main part in the passing on of knowledge. When a university professor mounts the platform, or a public speaker addresses an audience, he must be careful to consider beforehand what he is to speak about, and retain it in his memory. Certainly, there are people who say they do not require to do this, they follow their genius; but this does not take them very far. At the present day the passing on of knowledge depends really very largely on memory.

We gain a correct perception of how knowledge was communicated in the ancient Indian epoch if we grant that knowledge first rose in the head of him who communicated it at the moment he passed it on to others. In former times knowledge was not prepared before-hand as it is to-day. The Rischis did not prepare what they had to say, so that their memory might retain it. They prepared themselves by attuning themselves to what they were about to communicate. They said:—“This knowledge (Wissen) is not built on memory in any way. Memory has no part in it, my soul must first enter into a holy atmosphere, it must be attuned to piety!” They prepared this atmosphere, this feeling, but not what they were to say. At the moment of communication it resembled rather a reading aloud from an invisible script. Listeners who took down in writing what was said would have been unthinkable at that time. This would have been an impossibility, anything preserved by such means would have been regarded at that time as worthless. Only those things were considered of value which a man preserved within his soul, and which his soul then moved him to reproduce and impart to others in the same way as he had received them. It would have been regarded as desecration to write down these communications. Why? Because in the opinion of that day it was thought that what was written on paper could not be the same as what was communicated by word of mouth.

This tradition endured for a long time, for such things are retained far longer in the feelings than in the understanding of men, and when in the middle ages the art of printing was added to that of writing many people regarded it for long as a black art. The old feeling survived, that what passed in a living way from one soul to another should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane way as was the case when black printer's ink traced spoken words on a white page, thus changing them into something lifeless, in order that later they might be revived in a way perhaps that was far from edifying. We must therefore regard the direct outpouring (Strömung) from soul to soul as a characteristic feature of the time we are considering. This was an outstanding tendency of the first post-Atlantean epoch, and must be realised if we are to understand, for instance, the old Grecian and Germanic rhapsodists, who moved from place to place reciting their very long poems. If they had employed memory they could never have recited these poems again and again in the same way. It was a soul-force, a soul-attribute far more living than memory, that lay behind these long recitations. To-day if anyone recites a poem he must have learnt it beforehand, but these people experienced what they recited, it was as if newly created at the moment. This was strengthened by the fact that in quite other ways than is the case to-day, the soul-element was then more in evidence. In our day, with some justification, everything of a soul nature is more suppressed. When recitations or lectures are given to-day what matters is the meaning; care is taken as to the meaning of the words. This was not the case when in the middle ages a minstrel recited the Nibelungenlied for example. He had still a certain feeling for the inner rhythm, he even stamped with his foot as he marked its rise and fall. These things were but the echoes of what existed in more ancient times. But you would form no true picture of the Rischis of India and their pupils if you thought they did not communicate the ancient knowledge of Atlantis faithfully. The high school pupil of to-day, even if he wrote out the whole lecture, would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rischis reproduced the ancient knowledge in their day.

The characteristic feature of the ages that followed is that Atlantean knowledge had ceased to affect them. Up to the decline of the first period, that of ancient Indian culture, the legacy of knowledge man had received continued. Knowledge continued to increase. This came to an end, however, with the first post-Atlantean period, and afterwards hardly anything new came forth from human nature. Increase in knowledge was therefore only possible in the first period, the early Indian, after that it ceased. In the Persian period among those who were influenced by the teaching of Zarathustra, what we can compare with the second age of development in the life of a man began, and it is best understood when so compared. The first period of Indian culture can well he likened to the first part of the life of a man—that from birth to the seventh year—when everything of the nature of form receives its shape, later there is only growth within the established form. Thus it was with the spirit in the first post-Atlantean epoch. What follows later, how man develops the teaching that comes to him in the second part of his life, can be likened to the first period of ancient Persian development and with the instruction then received, only we must be clear as to who the scholars were and who the teachers. I would like to point out something here. Does it not strike you as strange how very differently Zarathustra, the leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, comes before us to the way, for instance, the Indian Rischis do? While the Rischis appear like holy initiated persons of a far distant age, into whom all the knowledge of ancient Atlantis had poured, Zarathustra comes before us as the first initiate of post-Atlantean times. Something new enters with him. Zarathustra is actually the first historical personality of post-Atlantean times to be initiated into that form of Mystery-knowledge (truly post-Atlantean) in which knowledge was presented in such a way that it was actually comprehensible to the rational understanding of man. What pupils received in those early days in the schools of Zarathustra was pre-eminently a super-sensible knowledge, but it dawned in them so that for the first time it took the form of human conceptions. While it is not possible to reproduce the knowledge of the ancient Rischis in the forms of modern science, this is possible with the knowledge of Zarathustra. Certainly this is a purely super-sensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the super-sensible worlds, but it is clothed in conceptions similar to the conceptions and ideas of post-Atlantean times. Among the followers of Zarathustra a teaching arose of which we can say:—“It was constructed systematically in accordance with the rational conceptions of man.” This means it sprang from the ancient holy treasures of wisdom which evolved up to the end of the Indian period, and continued from generation to generation; no new thing was later added to this, but the old was elaborated further. The mission of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean period can be realised through a comparison; we can compare it with the publishing of some occult hook. Any book that is the result of investigations into higher world can be clothed in a logical arrangement, thus bringing it down to the physical plane. It is possible to do this. But if my “Outline of Occult Science” had been treated in this way a hook of fifty volumes would have resulted, each as large as the hook itself. If this had been done, each section would have been presented in strictly logical form, this is in the book, and it might have been treated in this way. But it is also possible to proceed otherwise. One can, for instance, leave something to the reader; leave him to think matters out for himself. People must try to do this to-day otherwise the work of occultism could not progress.

Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, with his acquired powers of forming conceptions, it is possible for man to approach occult knowledge and to increase it, but at the time of Zarathustra, thoughts had first to be discovered capable of dealing with these facts. At that time knowledge such as we have to-day did not exist. Something there was that had remained over like an echo from the time of the Rischis, and to this was added what was capable of being clothed in human thoughts. But human conceptions had first to be found, and into them super-sensible facts had to be poured. Different degrees in power to grasp what was super-sensible then first made its appearance. We may say:—The Rischis still spoke absolutely in the way men had always spoken, in a pictorial language, an imaginative language. They passed on the knowledge they possessed from soul to soul when speaking in this vital picture-language which came whenever they had any kind of super-sensible knowledge to transmit. With “cause and effect” and the other ideas we have to-day with logic in any form—men did not concern themselves in the least. All that arose later. Then in the second post-Atlantean period they began to be interested in super-sensible knowledge. They then felt for the first time the opposition, as it were, of the physical plane; they felt the necessity of giving expression to what was super-sensible so that it might assume forms that thought could grasp on the physical plane. This was the essential mission of the first period of Persian civilisation.

Then followed the third period, the period of Egyptian culture. People now had super-sensible ideas. This is difficult for the men of to-day. Try and picture conditions as they were at that time; there was as yet no physical science, but people had ideas that had been gained concerning super-sensible worlds, and they could speak of them in the thought-forms of the physical plane.

In the third epoch people began to direct what they had learnt from super-sensible worlds to the physical world. This can again be compared with the third life-period of a man. While in the second life-period he learns; he then goes on to employ what he has learnt. In the third period of their lives most people feel constrained to direct their learning to the physical plane.

The pupils of the heavenly knowledge were those who, in the second epoch, had been pupils of Zarathustra, but they now began to direct what they had learnt to the physical plane. Put into modern language we can say—men now learnt that all they beheld through super-sensible vision could only be understood if expressed by a triangle; if they used the triangle as an image to express the super-sensible, they learnt that the super-sensible part of human nature which permeates the physical part can be grasped as a triad. Other conceptions had come to man so that he now applied physical things to what was non-physical. Geometry, for example, was first learnt so that it was accepted as symbolic of ideas. Men had this and made use of it—the Egyptians in the art of surveying and agriculture, the Chaldeans in the study of the stars and the founding of astrology and astronomy. What formerly was held to be only super-sensible was now applied to things seen physically. People began to use what had been born in them as super-sensible wisdom on the physical plane. This was first done in the third cultural period.

In the fourth period, the Greco-Latin, this became a fact of outstanding importance. Up to that time men possessed super-sensible knowledge, but did not use it as described. It was not necessary for the Holy Rischis to use it in this way, for knowledge flowed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the time of Zarathustra people had only to ponder over spiritual knowledge, and they knew exactly the form this knowledge would take.

In the Egypto-Chaldean age they clothed conceptions from spiritual worlds in what they had gained in physical existence, and in the fourth period they said:—Is it right that what is acquired from the spiritual world should be applied to physical things? Are the things gained in this way really suited to physical conditions?

These questions were only put by man to himself in the fourth period after he had used this knowledge innocently, and applied it to his physical requirements for a long time. He then became more self-conscious and asked:—“What right have I to apply spiritual knowledge to physical uses?”

Now it always happens that, in an age when any important task has to be carried out, some person appears who can fulfil this task. It was such a person to whom it first occurred to ask the question:—“Have I the right to apply my super-sensible ideas to physical facts?” You can see how what I am trying to indicate developed. You can see, for example, how vital Plato's link still was with the ancient world, how he still used ideas in the ancient form, applying them to physical conditions. It was his pupil, Aristotle, who asked the question—“Ought one to do this?” For this reason he is regarded as the founder of logic.

Those who do not concern themselves in any way with spiritual science might ask:—Why did logic arise first in the fourth epoch? Was there not some reason, seeing that evolution had gone on indefinitely, for man to ask himself this question at a specified time?

When conditions are really studied, important turning points in evolution are seen to occur at certain times. One such important turning point in evolution occurred between the time of Plato and Aristotle. In this age there was still, in a certain sense, something of the old connection with the spiritual world, as this existed in Atlantean times. Living knowledge certainly died in the Indian epoch; but it was replaced by something new that came from above. Man now became critical and asked:—How can I apply what is super-sensible to physical things? This means: he was then first aware that he could himself accomplish something; observing the world around him he realised that he could bring something down into this world. This was a most important age.

We divine (spüren) that conceptions and ideas are super-sensible things when from their nature we begin to perceive in them a guarantee for the super-sensible world. But very few people do perceive this. For most people the fabric of conceptions and ideas is worn very thin and threadbare. Although they may divine that something lives in these which can give them proof of human immortality, conviction is not reached, because the conceptions and ideas concerning the solid reality for which man craves are of such a thin-spun consistency. For most people the fabric they have spun from conceptions and ideas is very thin and worn; though something lives in it which can give them consciousness of immortality, they are incapable of full conviction. But at a time when humanity had sunk to the final—hardly any longer believed in—shreds of that fabric of ideas which it had spun from higher worlds, a mighty new impulse came from the spiritual world and entered into it—this was the Christ-Impulse. The greatest spiritual Reality entered humanity in our post-Atlantean age at a time when man was least spiritually gifted, when all that remained to him was the spiritual gift of ideas.

For anyone who studies human development in a wide sense, it is a most interesting consideration, apart from the fact that it affects the soul so overwhelmingly, it is most interesting (even scientifically), to compare the infinite spirituality of that essence which entered human evolution with the Christ Principle, with that which, like a last thin-spun thread from spiritual realms, caused man to ask shortly before: in what way this thread connected him with spirituality. In other words: when we place Aristotelean logic, this weaving of abstract conceptions to which mankind had at last attained, along-side that great Spiritual Outpouring. We can think of no greater disparity than between the spirituality that came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ, and that which man had preserved for himself. You can therefore understand that in the early Christian centuries it was quite impossible for men to grasp the spiritual nature of Christ with the thin thread of ideas spun from Aristotelean philosophy. Gradually the endeavour arose to grasp the facts of human and world-events in a way conformable to Aristotelean logic. This was the task that faced the philosophy of the middle ages.

It is important for us now to compare the fourth post-Atlantean epoch with the fourth period in the life of a man—that period in which the ego develops—to see how the “I am” of all humanity entered human evolution at a time when humanity as a whole was really furthest withdrawn from the spiritual world. This is why man was at first quite incapable of comprehending Christ except through faith; why Christianity had at first to be a matter of faith; only later, and by degrees, was it to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge; but we have only now begun to enter with understanding into the study of the Gospels. For hundreds and hundreds of years Christianity was only a matter of faith, and had to be so, because than had descended furthest from the spiritual world.

As this was man's position in the fourth post-Atlantean period, it was necessary after so deep a descent that he should begin to rise once more. The fourth period brought him furthest on the downward path, but also gave him the first great impulse upwards. Naturally this spiritual impulse could not be understood at first, only in the periods that follow will it be possible for him to understand it. But now we can at least recognise the task before us:—We have to refill our ideas with spirit from within.

The evolution of the world is not simple. When, for instance, a ball starts rolling in one direction its momentum tends to make it continue rolling in the same direction. If this is to be changed another impulse must come to give the thrust necessary to a change of direction.

Pre-Christian culture had the tendency to continue the downward plunge into the physical world, and has continued to do so to our day. The upward tendency is only beginning, hence the need of a constant incentive to this upward direction. We can see this downward tendency more especially in men's thoughts. The greater part of what is called philosophy to-day is nothing more than the continued downward roll of the ball. Aristotle divined something of this; he grasped the fact that there was a spiritual reality in the fabric of human thoughts. But a couple of centuries after his day, men were no longer capable of realising that the content of the human head was connected with reality. The driest, most desiccated ideas of the old philosophy are those of Kant and everything associated with Kantism. Kant's philosophy puts the main question in such a way that he cuts every link between what man evolves as ideas, between perceptions as an inner life, and that which ideas really are. All this is old and dead, and is therefore not fitted to give any vital uplift for the future. You will now no longer wonder that the conclusion of my lectures on psychology had a theosophical background. I explained that in all we strive for, more especially as regards knowledge of the soul, our task must be to allow ourselves to be so stimulated by this knowledge, given to us formerly by the Gods and brought down by us to earth, that we can offer it up again on the altars of the Gods.: We have only to make the ideas that come to us froth the spiritual world, once more our own.

It is not from any want of modesty that I say:—Teaching regarding the soul must of necessity be a scientific teaching, that it must rise again from the frozen state into which it has fallen. There have been many psychologists in the past and there are many still to-day, but the ideas they use are void of spiritual life. It is a significant sign that a man like Franz Brentano be allowed the first volume of his book on Psychology to appear in 1874. Though much it contains is distorted, it is on the whole correct. The second volume was ready, and was to have been published that year, but he was unable to complete it, he stuck in it. He still could give an outline of his teaching, but the spiritual impulse necessary if the work was to be brought to a conclusion was wanting.

Such psychologists as we have to-day, Von Wundt and Lipps for example, are not really psychologists for they work only with preconceived ideas; from the first they were incapable of producing anything. Brentano's psychology was fitted to do this, but it remained incomplete. This is the fate of all knowledge that is dying. Death does not enter the domain of natural science so quickly. Here people can work with ideas, for the facts they have accumulated speak for themselves. In the Science of Spirit this does not happen so easily. The whole substratum is immediately lost if people employ ordinary ideas. The muscles of the heart do not immediately cease to beat even if analysed like a mineral product without any recognition of their true nature; but the soul cannot be analysed in this way.

Thus science dies from above downwards, and men will gradually reach a point where they will certainly be able to appreciate natural laws, but in a way entirely independent of science. The construction of machines, instruments, telephones and the like, is something very different from understanding science in the right way or carrying it a step further. Anyone can make use of an electric apparatus without necessarily understanding it. True science is gradually dying. We have now reached a point where external science must receive new life from spiritual science. Our fifth period of culture is that in which the ball of science rolls slowly downhill.

When it can roll no further its activity will cease, as in the case of Brentano. At the same time the upward progress of humanity must receive ever more life. And it will receive it. This can only happen when efforts are made by which knowledge, even if this has been gained outwardly, becomes fruitful through what occult investigation has to give. Our age, the fifth period, will increasingly assume a character which will show that the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch is repeated in it; as yet we have not gone very far with this repetition, it is only beginning. That this is the case can be gathered from what occurred at our annual general meeting. On that occasion Herr Seiler spoke about “Astrology” showing, that as spiritual scientists you were in a position to connect certain conceptions with astrological ideas, whereas this was not possible with the ideas of modern astronomy. Modern astronomy would consider these ideas to be nonsense. This is not because of what astronomical science is in itself, for this science has a better opportunity than any other of being led back to what is spiritual; but because men's thoughts are far removed from any return to spirituality. There is a means, through what astronomy has to offer, by which such a return might easily be made to the fundamental truths of Astrology so undervalued to-day. But some time must elapse before a bridge can he formed between these two. During this time all kinds of theories will be devised, theories by which the movements of the planets, for instance, will be explained in a purely materialistic way. Things will be still more difficult in the domain of chemistry, and in everything connected with life. Here it will he still more difficult to build the bridge. It will he done most easily in the domain of soul-knowledge. To do so it is necessary that people should understand what was stated at the conclusion of my lecture on “Psychology.” There I showed that the stream of soul-life does not only flow from the past towards the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two time-streams—the etheric part of the life of the soul goes towards the future, the astral part of us on the other hand flows back towards the past. (There is probably no one on the earth to-day who is conscious of this unless he has an impulse towards what is spiritual.) We are first able to form a conception of the life of the soul, when we realise that something comes continually to meet us out of the future. Otherwise this is quite impossible. We must be able to form such a conception, and for this, when speaking of cause and effect, we must break with those ordinary methods of thought which deal mainly with the past. We must not only reckon with the past in such connections, but must speak of the future as something real; something that comes towards us in just as real a way as the past slips from us. But it will be a long time yet before such ideas become prevalent, and till they do there will be no psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a smart idea—“Psychology without souls.” People were very proud of this idea, and with it they declared:—“We simply study the revelations of the human soul, but do not concern ourselves with the soul that is the cause of these!”

A Soul-teaching without Souls! This can be carried further; but what results (to use a common comparison), is nothing else than a meal time without food. Such is psychology! Now people are of course not satisfied when dinner time comes and the plates are empty; but the science of the nineteenth century was strangely satisfied with the psychology put before it, which was in no way concerned with the soul. This began comparatively early, but into every part of it spiritual life must flow.

Therefore we have to record the beginning among us of an entirely new life. The old in a certain sense is finished and a new life must begin. We must feel this. We must feel that a primeval wisdom came to us from ancient Atlantean times, that this gradually declined, and we are now faced with the task of beginning in our present incarnation to gather more and more new wisdom which will be the wisdom of the men of a later day. The coming of the Christ-Impulse made this possible. It will continually develop a living activity, and from it men will perhaps be able best to evolve towards the real, historic Christ, when all tradition concerning Him and all that is outwardly connected with these traditions has died away.

From what has been said you can see how the post-Atlantean evolution can actually be compared with the life of a single man; how it is indeed a kind of macrocosm facing man—the microcosm. But the individual man is in a very strange position. What is left to him for the second half of his life of all he acquired in the first half, which when used up is followed by death?

The spirit alone can conquer death and carry on to a new incarnation that which gradually begins to decay when we have passed the first half of our life. Our evolution advances until our thirty-fifth year, then it begins to decline. But the spirit then first begins truly to rise! What it is unable to develop further in the second half of life within the body, it brings to completion in a succeeding incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually decline, but the spirit blossom more and more.

The macrocosm reveals a picture similar to that of man:—Up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch we have a youthful upward striving cultural development; from then onwards a real decline; death everywhere as regards the development of human consciousness; but at the same time the dawn of a new spiritual life. The spiritual life of man will be born again in the age following our present one. But he will have to work with full consciousness on what is to be reincarnated. When this happens the other must die, truly die. We gaze prophetically into the future; many sciences have arisen and will arise for the benefit of post-Atlantean civilisation, they, however, belong to what is dying. The life that streamed directly into human life along with the Impulse of Christ will in future rise (ausleben) in man in the same way as Atlantean knowledge rose within the holy Rischis.

What ordinary science knows of Copernicus to-day is but the external part of his knowledge, the part belonging to decline. That which will live on, that will be fruitful, not only the part through which he has already worked for four centuries, this part man must win for himself. The teaching of Copernicus as given to-day is not so very true, its truth will first be revealed by spiritual science.

So it is as regards much that is held to be most true in astronomy, and so it will be with everything else which men value as knowledge to-day. Certainly, what science discovers to-day is profitable. Therein lies its usefulness. In so far as the science of to-day is technical it is justified; but in so far as it has something to con-tribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for trade, but for that no spiritual content is required. In so far as it seeks to discover anything concerning the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to declining civilisation. In order to enrich our knowledge of the secrets of the universe, external science must super-impose on all it has to offer, the wisdom derived from spiritual science.

What I have said to-day can form an introduction to our studies on the Gospel of Mark, which are about to begin. But first I had to speak of the necessity for the entrance into humanity of the greatest Spiritual Impulse of all time at a moment when only the last faint shreds of spirituality remained to it.

At the conclusion of what was said yesterday on the subject of the deeper mystical path, it was necessary to speak of the chief danger encountered on this path by anyone who attempted to tread it without a leader in times before the methods of Initiation now available, were in existence. In order to indicate still more explicitly how great these difficulties were, I want to add the following.-

We have heard that the difficulties are mainly due to the fact that on descending into his inner being, a man becomes almost entirely filled by his egoistic impulses. The Ego awakens with a strength that would place everything in its service; everything would be viewed in accordance with the colouring given it by this reinforced Ego. For this reason it was essential in the process of the ancient Initiation that the strength of the, Ego-feeling, the Ego-consciousness, should be subdued. The Ego had as it were to be given over to the spiritual leader or teacher. This subjugation of the Ego was effected in such a way that through the power emanating from the spiritual leader, the Ego-consciousness of the candidate for Initiation was reduced, to begin with, to one-third of its ordinary strength. That is a very considerable reduction, for it can be said, broadly speaking, that with the exception of the very deepest stage of all, our consciousness in sleep is reduced to about one-third. But in the ancient Mysteries the process was carried further than that; the consciousness was reduced to a quarter of a third (that is, to one-twelfth), so that finally the candidate was actually in a condition resembling death. To outer observation he was exactly like a dead man.

But I must emphasise that this Ego-consciousness did not fade away into nothingness. That was not the case. On the contrary, only then was it possible to realise through spiritual perception the intense strength of human egoism; for even when Ego-consciousness was reduced to one-twelfth, a powerful force of egoism still came forth spiritually from the individual. And strange as it may sound, in order to hold in check this outpouring egoism, to keep a spiritual hold on the man whose Ego was thus subdued, twelve helpers were needed for the teacher or leader.—That is one of the so-called secrets of higher Initiation in certain ancient Mysteries. It has been mentioned here only in order that a man may know what is found when he descends into his own inner being. Left to his own resources he would develop traits twelve times worse than those he possessed in ordinary life. These traits were held in check in the ancient Mysteries by the twelve helpers of the priest of Hermes.—This is said merely to supplement the references made at the end of the lecture yesterday.

Today we will turn our minds to the other path that a man may take, not by descending into his inner self at the moment of waking, but by consciously experiencing the moment of going to sleep, consciously experiencing the condition during which he is given over to sleep. We have heard how man has then expanded as it were into the Macrocosm, whereas in his waking state he has plunged into his own being, into the Microcosm. We also heard that what a man would experience if his Ego were to pour consciously into the Macrocosm, would be so dazzling, so shattering, that it must be regarded as a wise dispensation that at the moment of going to sleep man forgets his existence altogether and consciousness ceases.

What man can experience in the Macrocosm opening out before him, provided he retains a certain degree of consciousness, was described as a state of ecstasy. But it was said at the same time that in ecstasy the Ego is like a tiny drop mingling in a large volume of water and disappearing in it. Man is in the state of being outside himself, outside his ordinary nature; he lets his Ego flow out of him. Ecstasy, therefore, can by no means be considered a desirable way of passing into the Macrocosm, for a man would lose hold of himself and the Ego would cease to control him. Nevertheless in bygone times, particularly in certain parts of Europe, a candidate who was to be initiated into the mysteries of the Macrocosm was put into a condition comparable with ecstasy. This is no longer part of the modern methods for attaining Initiation, but in olden times, especially in the Northern and Western regions of Europe, including our own, it was entirely in keeping with the development of the peoples living there that they should be led to the secrets of the Macrocosm through a form of ecstasy. Thereby they were also exposed to what might be described as the loss of the Ego, but this condition was less perilous in those times because men were still imbued with a certain healthy, elemental strength; unlike people today their soul-forces had not been enfeebled by the effects of highly developed intellectuality. They were able to experience with far greater intensity all the hopefulness connected with Spring, the exultation of Summer, the melancholy of Autumn, the death-shudder of Winter, while still retaining something of their Ego—although not for long. In the case of those who were to become initiates and teachers of men, provision had to be made for this introduction to the Macrocosm to take place in a different way. The reason for this will be evident when it is remembered that the main feature in this process was the loss of the Ego. The Ego became progressively weaker, until finally man reached the state when he lost himself as a human being.

How could this be prevented? The force that became weaker in the candidate's own soul, the Ego-force, had to be brought to him from outside. In the Northern Mysteries this was achieved by the candidate being given the support of helpers who in their turn supported the officiating initiator. The presence of a spiritual initiator was essential, but helpers were necessary as well. These helpers were prepared in the following way.—

Through a special kind of training, one individual underwent with particular intensity the experiences arising from inner surrender, for example to the budding life of nature in Spring. Certainly, any human being can have something of the same feeling, but not with the necessary intensity. Therefore individuals were specially trained to place all their forces of soul in the service of the Northern Mysteries, to forgo all the experiences connected with Summer, Autumn and Winter, and to concentrate their whole life of feeling on the budding life of Spring. Others again were trained to experience the exuberant life of Summer, others the life characteristic of Autumn, others that of Winter. The experiences which a single human being can have through the course of the year were distributed among a number, so that individuals were available who in very different ways had strengthened one aspect of their Ego. Because they had cultivated one force in particular to the exclusion of all the rest, they had within them a superfluity of Ego-force, and now, in accordance with certain rules, they were brought into contact with the candidate for Initiation in such a way that their superfluity of Ego-force was transmitted to him. His own Ego-force would otherwise have become progressively weaker. Thus the one who in the process of Initiation was to experience the whole cycle of the year, lived through all the seasons with equal intensity; the Ego-force of these helpers of the initiating priest streamed into him so effectively that he was led on to a stage where certain higher truths connected with the Macrocosm were revealed to him. What the others were able to impart poured into the soul of the candidate for Initiation.

To understand such a process we must be able to form an idea of the intense devotion and self-sacrifice with which men worked in the Mysteries in those olden times. The exoteric world today has very little conception of such fervent self-sacrifice. In earlier times there were individuals who willingly developed one side of their Ego with the object of placing it at the service of the candidate for Initiation and thus being able eventually to hear from him a description of what he had experienced in a condition that was not ecstasy in the usual sense, but—because extraneous Ego-force had poured into him—a conscious ascent into the Macrocosm.

Twelve individuals-three Spring-helpers, three Summer-helpers, three Autumn helpers and three Winter-helpers were necessary; they transmitted their specialised Ego-forces to the candidate for Initiation and he, when he had risen into higher worlds, was able to give information about those worlds from his own experience. A team or ‘college’ of twelve men worked together in the Mysteries in order to help a candidate for Initiation to rise into the Macrocosm. A reminiscence of this has been preserved in certain societies existing today, but in an entirely decadent form. As a rule in such societies special functions are also carried out by twelve members; but this is only a last and moreover entirely misunderstood echo of acts once performed in the Northern Mysteries for the purposes of Initiation.

If, then, a man endowed with an Ego-force artificially maintained in him, penetrated into the Macrocosm, he actually ascended through worlds. [* See Note on terminology (at the end of this work) with reference to the different terminology employed for these worlds.] The first world through which he passed was the one that would be revealed to him if he did not lose consciousness on going to sleep. We will therefore now turn our attention to this moment of going to sleep as we did previously to that of waking.

The process of going to sleep is in very truth an ascent into the Macrocosm. Even in normal human consciousness it is sometimes possible, through particularly abnormal conditions, to become conscious to a certain extent of the processes connected with going to sleep. This happens in the following way.—The man feels a kind of bliss and can distinguish this consciousness of bliss quite clearly from the ordinary waking consciousness. It is as though he became lighter, as though he were growing out beyond himself. Then this experience is connected with a certain feeling of being tortured by remembrance of the personal faults inhering in the character during life. What arises here as a painful remembrance of personal faults is a very faint reflection of the feeling a man has when he passes the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold and can perceive how imperfect he is and how trivial in face of the great realities and Beings of the Macrocosm. This experience is followed by a kind of convulsion—indicating that the inner man is passing out into the Macrocosm. Such experiences are unusual but known to many people when they were more or less conscious at the moment of going to sleep. But a person who has only the ordinary, normal consciousness loses it at the moment of going to sleep. All the impressions of the day—colours, light, sounds, and so on—vanish, and the man is surrounded by dense darkness instead of the colours and other impressions of daily life. If he were able to maintain his consciousness—as the trained Initiate can do—at the moment when the impressions of the day vanish, he would perceive what is called in spiritual science the Elementary or Elemental World, the World of the Elements.

This World of the Elements is, to begin with, hidden from man while he is in process of going to sleep. Just as man's inner being is hidden on waking through his attention being diverted to the impressions of the outer world, so, when he goes to sleep, the nearest world to which he belongs, the first stage of the Macrocosm, the Elementary World, is hidden from his perception. He can learn to gaze into it when he actually ascends into the Macrocosm in the way indicated. To begin with, this Elementary World makes him conscious that everything in his environment, all sense-perceptions and impressions, are an emanation, a manifestation of the spiritual, that the spiritual lies behind everything material. When a man on the way to Initiation—not, therefore, losing consciousness while passing into sleep—perceives this world, no doubt any longer exists for him that spiritual Beings and spiritual realities lie behind the physical world. Only as long as he is aware of nothing except the physical world does he imagine that behind this world there exist all kinds of conjectured material phenomena—such as atoms and the like. For the man who penetrates into the Elementary World there can no longer be any question of whirling, clustering atoms of matter. He knows that what lies behind colours, sounds and so forth is not material but the spiritual. Certainly, at this first stage of the World of the Elements the spiritual does not yet reveal itself in its true form as spirit. Man has before him impressions which, although in a different form from those known in waking consciousness, are not yet the spiritual facts themselves. It is not yet anything that could be called a true spiritual manifestation but to a considerable degree it is something that might be described as a kind of new veil over the spiritual Beings and facts.

The form in which this world reveals itself is such that the designations, the names, which since olden times have been used for the Elements are applicable to it. We can describe what is there seen by choosing words used for qualities otherwise perceived in the physical world: solid, liquid or fluid, airy or aeriform, or warmth; or: earth, water, air, fire. These expressions are taken from the physical world for which they are coined. Our language is after all a means of expression for the physical world. If therefore the spiritual scientist has to describe the higher worlds, he must borrow the words from the language that was coined for the things of ordinary life. He can speak only in similes, endeavouring so to choose the words that little by little an idea is evoked of what is perceived by spiritual vision. In depicting the Elementary World we must not take the terms and expressions that are used for circumscribed objects in the physical world but those used for certain qualities common to a category of objects. Otherwise we shall lose our bearings. Things in the physical world reveal themselves to us in certain states which we call solid, liquid, aeriform; and in addition there is also what we become aware of when we touch the surfaces of objects or feel a current of air which we call warmth.

Things in the everyday world are revealed to us in these states or conditions: solid, liquid, aecriform or gaseous, or as warmth. These, however, are always qualities of some external body, for an external body may be solid in the form of ice or also be liquid or gaseous when the ice melts. Warmth permeates all three states. So it is in the case of everything existing in the outer world of the senses.

The fact is there are not objects in the Elementary World such as are found in the physical world, but in the Elementary World we find as realities what in the physical world are merely qualities. We perceive something there that we feel we cannot approach. The feeling might be described as follows: I have before me something—either an entity or an object of the Elementary World—which I can observe only by going round it; it has an inner and an outer side. Such an entity of the Elementary World is called ‘earth’. Then too there are things and entities which may be described as ‘liquid’ or ‘fluid’. In the Elementary World we can see through them, we can penetrate into them, we have a sensation similar to the sensation in the physical world of dipping the hand into water. We can plunge into them, whereas what is called ‘earth’ is something that offers resistance, like a hard object. The second state is described in the Elementary World as ‘water’. Whenever mention is made of ‘earth’ and ‘water’ in books on spiritual science, this is what is meant; physical water is only an external simile for what is seen at this stage of development. ‘Water’ is something that pours through the Elementary World, not, of course, perceptible to the physical senses, but intelligible to the higher senses, to the faculty of spiritual perception, of the Initiate.

Then there is something in the Elementary World comparable with what we call ‘airy’ or ‘aeriform’ in the physical world. This is designated as ‘air’ in the Elementary World. Then, further, there is ‘fire’ or ‘warmth’, but it must be realised that what is called ‘fire’ in the physical world is only a simile. ‘Fire’ as it is in the Elementary World is easier to describe than the other three states for these can really only be described by saying that water, air and earth are similes of them. The ‘fire’ of the Elementary World is easier to describe because everyone has a conception of warmth of soul as it is called, of the warmth that is felt, for example, when we are together with someone we love. What then suffuses the soul and is called warmth, or fire of excitement, must naturally be distinguished from ordinary physical fire which will burn the fingers if they come into contact with it. In daily life, too, man feels that physical fire is a kind of symbol of the fire of soul which, when it lays hold of us, kindles enthusiasm. By thinking of something midway between an outer, physical fire that burns our fingers, and fire of soul, we reach an approximate idea of what is called ‘elemental fire’. When in the process of Initiation a man rises into the Elementary World, he feels as if from certain places something were flowing towards him that pervades him inwardly with warmth, while at another place this is less the case. An added complication is that he feels as if he were within the being who is transmitting the warmth to him. He is united with this elementary being and accordingly feels its fire. Such a man is entering a higher world which gives him impressions hitherto unknown to him in the world of the senses.

When a man with normal consciousness goes to sleep his whole being flows out into the Elementary World. He is within everything in that world; but he takes his own nature, what he is as man, into it. He loses his Ego as it pours forth, but what is not Ego—his astral qualities, his desires and passions, his sense of truth or the reverse—all this is carried into the Elementary World. He loses his Ego which in everyday life keeps him in check, which brings order and harmony into the astral body. When he loses the Ego, disorder prevails among the impulses and cravings in his soul and they make their way into the Elementary World together with him; he carries into that world everything that is in his soul. If he has some bad quality, he transmits it to a being in the Elementary World who feels drawn towards this bad quality. Thus with the loss of his Ego he would, on penetrating into the Macrocosm, transmit his whole astral nature to evil beings who pervade the Elementary World. Because he contacts these beings who have strong Egos, while he himself, having lost his Ego, is weaker than they, the consequence is that they will reward him in the negative sense for the sustenance with which he supplies them from his astral nature. When he returns into the physical world they transmit to him, for his Ego, qualities they have received from him and made particularly their own; in other words they strengthen his propensity for evil.

So we see that it is a wise dispensation for man to lose consciousness when he enters the Elementary World and to be safeguarded from passing with his Ego into that world. Therefore one who in the ancient Mysteries was to be led into the Elementary World had to be carefully prepared before forces were poured into him by the helpers of the Initiator. This preparation consisted in the imposition of rigorous tests whereby the candidate acquired a stronger moral power of self-conquest. Special value was attached to this attribute. In the case of a mystic, different attributes—humility, for example—were considered particularly valuable.

Accordingly upon a man who was to be admitted to an Initiation in these Mysteries, tests were imposed which helped him to rise above disasters of every kind even in physical existence. Formidable dangers were laid along his path. But by overcoming these dangers his soul was to be so strengthened that he was duly prepared when beings confronted him in the Elementary World; he was then strong enough not to succumb to any of their temptations, not to let them get the better of him but to repel them. Those who were to be admitted into the Mysteries were trained in fearlessness and in the power of self-conquest.

Once again let it be said at this point that no one need feel alarmed by the description of these Mysteries, for nowadays such tests are no longer imposed, nor are they necessary, because other paths are available. But we shall understand the import of the modern method of Initiation better if we study the experiences undergone in the past by very many human beings in order to achieve Initiation into the secrets of the Mysteries.

When the candidate in those ancient Mysteries, after long experiences connected with the Elementary World, had become capable of realizing that ‘earth’, ‘water’, ‘air’, ‘fire’—everything he perceives in the material world—are the revelations of spiritual beings, when he had learned to discriminate between them and to find his bearings in the Elementary World, he could be led a stage further to what is called the World of Spirit behind the Elementary World. Those who were initiates—and this can only be described as a communication of what they experienced—now realised that in very truth there are beings behind the Physical and the Elementary Worlds. But these beings have no resemblance at all to men. Whereas men on the Earth live together in a social order, in certain forms of society, under definite social conditions, whether satisfactory or the reverse, the candidate for Initiation passes into a world in which there are spiritual beings—beings who naturally have no external body but who are related to each other in such a way that order and harmony prevail. It is now revealed to him that he can understand the order and harmony he perceives in that world only by realising that what these spiritual beings do is an external expression of the heavenly bodies in the solar system, of the relationship between the Sun and the planets in their movements and positions. Thereby these heavenly bodies give expression to what the beings of the spiritual world are doing.

It has already been said that our solar system may be conceived as a great cosmic clock or timepiece. Just as we infer from the position of the hands of a clock that something is happening, we can do the same from the relative positions of the heavenly bodies. Anyone looking at a clock is naturally not interested in the hands or their position per se, but in what this indicates in the outer world. The hands of a clock indicate, for example, what is happening here in Vienna or somewhere in the world at this moment. A man who has to go to his daily work looks at the clock to see if it is time to start. The position of the hands is therefore the expression of something lying behind. And so it is in the case of the solar system. This great cosmic clock can be regarded as the expression of spiritual happenings and of the activity of spiritual beings behind it.

At this stage the candidate for the Initiation we have been describing comes to know the spiritual beings and facts. He comes to know the World of Spirit and realises that this World of Spirit can best be understood by applying to it the designations used in connection with our solar system; for there we have an outer symbol of this World of Spirit. For the Elementary World the similes are taken from the qualities of earthly things—solid, liquid, airy, fiery. But for the World of Spirit other similes must be used, similes drawn from the starry heavens.

And now we can realise that the comparison with a clock is by no means far fetched. We relate the heavenly bodies of our solar system to the twelve constellations of the Zodiac, and we can find our bearings in the World of Spirit only by viewing it in such a way as to be able to assert that spiritual Beings and events are realities; we compare the facts with the courses of the planets but the spiritual Beings with the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. If we contemplate the planets in space and the zodiacal constellations, if we conceive the movements and relative positions of the planets in front of the various constellations to be manifestations of the activities of the spiritual Beings and the twelve constellations of the Zodiac as the spiritual Beings themselves, then it is possible to express by such an analogy what is happening in the World of Spirit.

We distinguish seven planets moving and performing deeds, and twelve zodiacal constellations at rest behind them. We conceive that the spiritual facts—the courses of the planets—are brought about by twelve Beings. Only in this way is it possible to speak truly of the World of Spirit lying behind the Elementary World. We must picture not merely twelve zodiacal constellations, but Beings, actually categories of Beings, and not merely seven planets, but spiritual facts.

Twelve Beings are acting, are entering into relationship with one another and if we describe their actions this will show what is coming to pass in the World of Spirit. Accordingly, whatever has reference to the Beings must be related in some way to the number twelve; whatever hag reference to the facts must be related to the number seven. Only instead of the names of the zodiacal constellations we need to have the names of the corresponding Beings. In Spiritual Science these names have always been known. At the beginning of the Christian era there was an esoteric School which adopted the following names for the Spiritual Beings corresponding to the zodiacal constellations: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Kyriotetes, Dynameis, Exusiai, then Archai (Primal Beginnings or Spirits of Personality), then Archangels and Angels. The tenth category is Man himself at his present stage of evolution. These names denote ten ranks. Man, however, develops onwards and subsequently reaches stages already attained by other Beings. Therefore one day he will also be instrumental in forming an eleventh and a twelfth category. In this sense we must think of twelve spiritual Beings.

If we wanted to describe the World of Spirit we should have to attribute the origin of the spiritual universe to the co-operation among these twelve categories of Beings. Any description of what they do would have to deal with the planetary bodies and their movements. Let us assume that the Spirits of Will (the Thrones) co-operate with the Spirits of Personality (Archai) or with other Beings—and Old Saturn comes into existence. Through the co-operation of other Spirits the planetary bodies we call Old Sun and Old Moon come into existence.

We are speaking here of the deeds of these spiritual Beings. A description of the World of Spirit must include the Elementary World, for that is the last manifestation before the physical world; fire, air, water, earth, must also be considered. On Old Saturn, everything was fire or warmth; during the Old Sun evolution, air was added; during the Old Moon evolution, water. In describing the World of Spirit we must begin with the Beings. We call them the Hierarchies and pass on to their deeds which come to expression through the planets in their courses. And to have a picture of how all this manifests in the Elementary World we must describe it by using terms derived from this world. Only in this way is it possible to give a picture of the World of Spirit lying behind the Elementary World and our physical world of sense.

The Beings, the spiritual Hierarchies, their correspondences with the zodiacal constellations, the planetary embodiments of our Earth described by using expressions connected with the Elementary World-all this is presented in detail in the chapter on the evolution of the world in the book Occult Science—an Outline,¹ and we can now understand the deeper reasons for that chapter having been written in the way it has. It describes the Macrocosm as it should be described. Any real description must go back to the spiritual Beings. I tried in the book Occult Science to give guiding lines for the right kind of description of the World of Spirit—the world entered when there has been an actual ascent into the Macrocosm.

This ascent into the Macrocosm can of course proceed to still higher stages, for the Macrocosm has by no means been exhaustively portrayed by what has here been said. Man can ascend into even higher worlds; but it becomes more and more difficult to convey any idea of these worlds. The higher the ascent, the more difficult this becomes. If we want to give an idea of a still higher world it must be done rather differently. An impression of the world that is reached after passing beyond the World of Spirit may be obtained in the following way.—In describing man as he stands before us we may say that his existence was only made possible through the existence of these higher worlds. Man has become the being he is because he has evolved out of the physical world but above all out of the higher, spiritual worlds. Only a fantasy-ridden, materialistic mind can believe that it would be possible for a man to originate from the nebula described by the Kant-Laplace theory. Such a nebula could have produced only an automaton—never a man!

Around us, we have, firstly, the physical world. The physical body of man belongs to the world we perceive with our senses. With ordinary consciousness we perceive it only from outside. To what world do the more deeply lying, invisible members of man's nature belong? They all belong to the higher worlds. Just as with physical eyes we see only the material aspect of man, so too we see of the great outer world only what the senses perceive; we do not see those super-sensible worlds of which two—the Elementary World and the World of Spirit—have been described. But man, with his inner constitution, has issued from these higher worlds. The whole of man's being, his external, bodily nature too, has become possible only because certain invisible spiritual Beings have worked on him. If the etheric body alone had worked on man, he would be like a plant, for a plant has a physical and an etheric body. Man has in addition the astral body; but so too has the animal. If man had only these three members (physical body, etheric body, astral body) he would be an animal. It is because man has his Ego as well that he towers above these lower creatures of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of nature. All the higher members of man work on his physical body; the physical body could not be what it is unless man also possessed these higher members. A plant would be a mineral if it had no etheric body. Man would have no nervous system if he had no astral body; he would not have his present structure, his upright gait, his over-arching brow, if he had not an Ego. If he had not his invisible members in higher worlds, he could not confront us as the figure he is.

Now these different members of man's organism and constitution have been formed out of different spiritual worlds. To understand this we shall do well to remind ourselves of a beautiful, profoundly wise saying of Goethe: “The eye is formed by the light for the light.” [* See Goethe's Studies in Natural Science. (Kürschner, Nationalliteratur, Vol. 35, p. 88). “The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so the eye is formed by the light for the light so that the inner light may meet the outer.”] Schopenhauer, and Kant too, want to present the whole world as man's idea; this philosophy seeks to emphasise that without an eye we should perceive no light, that without an eye there would be darkness around us. That, of course, is true, but the point is that it is a one-sided truth. Unless the other side is added a one-sided truth is being regarded as the whole truth—than which there is nothing more pernicious. To say something that is incorrect is not the worst thing that can happen, for the world itself will soon put one right about it; but it is really serious to regard a one-sided truth as the absolute truth and to persist in so regarding it. That without the eye we could see no light is a one-sided truth. But if the world had remained forever filled with darkness, we should have had no eyes. When animals have lived for long ages in dark caves they lose their sight and their eyes go to ruin. On the one side it is true that without eyes we could gee no light, but on the other side it is equally true that the eyes have been formed by the light, for the light. It is always essential to look at truths not only from the one side but also from the other. The fault of most philosophers is not that they say what is false—in many cases their assertions cannot be refuted because they do state truths—but that they make statements which are due to things having been viewed from one side only. If you take in the right sense the saying that “the eye is formed by the light, for the light”, you will be able to say to yourselves that there must be something in the light that admittedly we do not see with our eyes but that has developed the eyes out of an organism which at first had no eyes. Behind the light there is something hidden. Let us say here: The eye-forming power is contained in every ray of sunlight. From this we can realise that everything round about us contains the forces which have created us. Just as our eyes are created by something within the light, all our organs have been formed by something that underlies everything we see in the world outside as external surfaces only.

Now man also has intellect, intelligence. In physical life he is able to use his intelligence because he has an instrument for it. Remember, we are speaking now of the physical world, not of what becomes of our thinking when we are free of the body after death, but of how we think through the instrument of the brain when we have wakened from sleep in the morning; after waking we see light through the eyes. In the light there is something that has formed the eye. We think through the instrument of the brain; thus there must be something in the world that has formed the brain in such a way that it could become an instrument of thinking suitable for the physical world. The brain has been made into an organ of thinking for the physical world by the power which manifests externally in our intelligence. Just as the light we perceive with the eye is an eye-forming power, our brain is the surface manifestation of a brain-forming power or force. Our brain is formed from out of the World of Spirit.

One who has attained Initiation recognises that if only the Elementary World and the World of Spirit existed, man's organ of intelligence could never have come into being. The World of the Spirit is indeed a lofty world but the forces which have formed the physical organ of thinking must have streamed into man from a yet higher world in order that intelligence might manifest outwardly, in the physical world.

Spiritual science has not without reason figuratively expressed this frontier of the world we have described as the world of the Hierarchies, by the word “Zodiac.” Man would be at the level of the animal if only the two worlds that have been described were in existence. In order that man could become a being able to walk upright, to think by means of the brain and to develop intelligence, an in-streaming of even higher forces was necessary, forces from a world above the World of Spirit. Here we come to a world designated by a word that is totally misused today because of the prevailing materialism. But in a past by no means very distant the word still conveyed its original meaning. The faculty man unfolds here in the physical world when he thinks, was called ‘Intelligence’ in the spiritual science of that earlier period. It is from a world lying beyond both the World of Spirit and the Elementary World that forces stream down through these two worlds to build our brain. Spiritual Science has also called it the World of Reason (Vernunftwelt). It is the world in which there are spiritual Beings who are able to send down their power into the physical world in order that a shadow-image of the Spiritual may be produced in the physical world in man's intellectual activity. Before the age of materialism no one would have used the word “reason” for thinking; thinking would have been called intellect, intelligence. “Reason” (Vernunft) would have been spoken of when those who were initiates had risen into a world even higher than the World of Spirit and had direct perception there. In the German language “reason” is connected with perception (Vernehmen), with what is directly apprehended, perceived as coming from a world still higher than the one denoted as the World of Spirit. A faint image of this world exists in the shadowy human intellect. The architects and builders of our organ of intellect must be sought in the World of Reason.

It is only possible to describe a still higher world by developing a spiritual faculty transcending the physical intellect. There is a higher form of consciousness, namely, clairvoyant consciousness. If we ask: how is the organ evolved which enables us to have clairvoyant consciousness?—the answer is that there must be worlds from which emanate the forces necessary for the development of this clairvoyant consciousness. Like everything else, it must be formed from a higher world. The first kind of clairvoyant consciousness to develop is a picture-consciousness, Imaginative Consciousness. This Imaginative Consciousness remains mere phantasy only for as long as the organ for it is not formed by forces from a world lying beyond even the World of Reason. As soon as we admit the existence of clairvoyant consciousness we must also admit the existence of a world from which emanate the forces enabling the organ for it to develop. This is the World of Archetypal Images (Urbilderwelt). Whatever can arise as true Imagination is a reflection of the World of Archetypal Images.

Thus we rise into the Macrocosm through four higher worlds: the Elementary World, the World of Spirit, the World of Reason and the World of Archetypal Images. In the next lectures I will deal with the World of Reason and the World of Archetypal Images and then describe the methods by which, in line with modern culture, the forces from the World of Archetypal Images can be brought down in order to make possible the development of clairvoyant consciousness.

• 1. Chapter IV, Man and the Evolution of the World, pp. 102-221 in the 1962-3 edition.

From our last lectures you will have seen how man comes to a kind of illusory idea of the outer world; but as a matter of fact, what are usually understood as the connections of nature are inwardly dependent on humanity itself; and we can only gain a true view of the world when we consider the earth and indeed the universe, in its entirety—which means when we regard man as being part of the world—and visualise the interchange, the inter-relation between man and the world. Otherwise we always come to an unreal, a mere abstract grasp of the mineral kingdom; at most understanding something of the plant and animal worlds, which no longer play any strong part in the present concept of nature.

When one speaks of the connections of nature, it is, as a rule, merely the mineral connections in nature to which one refers. To these, if one so desires, that short episode which one calls History, is added; but as a truth of quite a different nature.

From this view, which does not extend to man in his real being, humanity in our present age has to come right away. From diverse points of view we have brought forward the reason why humanity must abandon this view of things, a view which, as you know, has in a sense been necessarily developed in the last three or four centuries.

To-day I will only mention that human beings, with reference to their external knowledge, their external cognition, will become more and more dependent on the physical body with its necessities, unless they can rise in their own evolution to the production of a higher knowledge, through the very effort of their own Will. And in the future it is a question of this:- either humanity will simply succumb to a view of the world gained by remaining just as one was at birth, acquiring no other concepts than those one has already through being placed on the earth through birth, and by means of the ordinary education customary to-day.

That is the one possibility. The other is this: That humanity will cease to believe that, simply from being Born as human beings on earth, they can judge of everything real; and they will then be able to build up a real evolution of man, such as is indicated by Spiritual Science. That is the other path; humanity will have to traverse this latter path, otherwise the earth simply faces its downfall.

What I have just said, can also be observed geographically, when it acquires a quite special significance for the present.

If we only go far enough back in the evolution of the earth, we find man is not rooted in earthly existence itself; for before the evolution of the earth, he had already undergone a long previous development. You find this evolution described In my Outline of Occult Science. You know that man was, in a sense taken back again into a pure Spiritual existence, and from this pure Spiritual existence, he has descended to earthly existence. Now it is a fact that, because of this descent of man into earthly existence, there has been taken away from humanity, a comprehensive, one might call it—an inherited Wisdom—a primeval Wisdom, which was of such a nature that it was one and the same, uniform, for the whole of humanity. You will find such things described in more detail in those lectures which I have called The Folk-Souls, a course given in Christiania. So this inherited Wisdom was a uniform thing. When I naw speak of knowledge, I mean not merely that which is usually called knowledge in Science to-day, but everything which man can absorb in his soul life as a view of his cosmic environment and of his own life.

Now this primeval knowledge specialised itself in such a way that it became different according to the different territories of the earth. You will see this better if you go into those chapters in Occult Science dealing with this matter. But even externally, if you just look at what we call the civilisation of the different earthly races, you may say: That what the human beings of the different races upon earth have known, differed from the beginning. One can distinguish an Indian civilisation, a Chinese civilisation, a Japanese civilisation, a European civilisation. And again, in this European civilisation there is a special culture of its own for each of the various European territories. Then we have an American civilisation and so on. But if we ask: How it it that this primeval or inherited wisdom became specialised, how did it become ever more and more differentiated? We must answer: The inner relationships, the inner dispositions of these races were to blame for this. Indeed we find that there is always an adaptation of the inner relationship of the different races to the external conditions of the earth. We can to some extent get an idea of this differentiation if we try to find out the connection between, let us say, what forms the Indian civilisation and the climatic geographical conditions of the land of India. In the same way we can get an idea of the special nature of the Russian culture, if we consider the relationship between the Russian and his earth. Now we must say, in reference to these relationships, that humanity to-day—as indeed in many other connections—has arrived at a kind of crisis. This dependence of man on his territory gradually, in the course of the 19th century, increased to the utmost conceivable extent. Of course, it is true that human beings have emancipated themselves from their territories. That is true. they consciously have emancipated themselves from their territories; but they are nevertheless dependent in a certain way upon these territories. Te can see that if we compare, let us say, the attitude of a Greek to ancient Greece, and say that of a modern Englishman or German to their countries. The Greeks still had much of the ancient wisdom in their civilisation and education, they were perhaps more physically dependent upon their land of Greece than the modern human being on his country. But this stronger dependence was modified, because the Greeks were inwardly filled with this ancient wisdom. This wisdom has however gradually faded away from humanity, and we can point almost exactly to the time in the middle of the 15th century when the direct understanding for certain treasures of wisdom ceases, and how even the traditions of such treasures gradually faded away in the 19th century. Artificially, as I might say, like plants in a forcing house, certain of these treasures were still preserved in all sorts of secret societies, which sometimes pursued very evil practices with them. But such societies still preserved a primeval wisdom even in the 19th century. (In the 19th century it was somewhat different), but in the 19th century they still preserved some things of which one can say: They are like plants in a forcing house. What have the symbols of the Freemasons to do with the ancient wisdom from which they originated? They are like plants raised in the forcing house, compared with plants growing freely in nature. Not even so much likeness still remains between the masonic symbols and that ancient wisdom!

Just because humanity is losing that inner permeation with this old wisdom, men are really becoming all the more dependent upon their territories and unless they can again acquire a treasure of Spiritual Science which can develop freely, they will be differentiated all over the earth according to their territories.

As a matter of fact, we can distinguish three types which we have studied already from other points of view. To-day we can say that unless the impulses of Spiritual Science are spread abroad in the world, from the West there will come none but economic truths, which can indeed produce many other things out of their bosom; none but economic thought and ideas would prevail in the West. From the East there would come over what once were essentially Spiritual truths; Asia,, even if in very decadent ways, would confine itself more and more to Spiritual truths.

Central Europe would cultivate the more intellectual sphere; and this would make itself specially felt in the uniting of something of the traditions of ancient times with what streams over from the West as economic truths, and with what streams over from the East as Spiritual truths. Human beings living in these three main types of earthly division, would specialise more and more in this direction.

The tendency of our present age tends absolutely towards making this specialisation of humanity a really dominant principle. We can say, my dear friends—and I beg you to take this very seriously, that unless a Spiritual Scientific impulse permeates the world, the East will gradually become absolutely incapable of managing its own Economic Life, of developing its own economic thinking. The East would come into a position of being able to produce only; that means, of actually cultivating the soil, of working upon the immediate products of nature with the instruments transmitted from the West. But all that has to be administered by human reason, would develop in the West.

From this point of view the catastrophe of the World War which has just run its course, is nothing but the beginning of the tendency: (I will express it in popular phraseology)—to permeate the East by the West in an economic way. That means making the East a sphere in which people work, and the West a sphere in which economic use is made of what is derived from nature in the East. The boundary between the East and the West need not be a fixed one; it is moveable.

If this tendency which is dominant to-day, goes further, if it is not permeated Spiritually, then without any doubt at all the following would have to arise. One need simply utter it hypothetically. The entire East would economically be an object of booty for the West; and man would regard this course of development as the proper course laid down for earthly humanity. It would be regarded as quite justifiable and obvious. There exists no other means of introducing into this tendency that which does not make half of humanity slaves and the other half employers of these slaves, than by permeating the earth with a common Spirituality which man must acquire once more.

If one utters these things to-day most people prefer to reject them. The man of to-day is only too inclined to wave these things aside with a movement of his hand, for the simple reason that it is externally uncomfortable for him to face the true reality. He says to himself: “Well, even if this economic permeation of the East does come about, it will not take place yet awhile, not in my lifetime.” Certainly those who have children, do think a little more earnestly, because of their children; but then they like to fog themselves a little in the hope that better times may come, and so forth.

But to realise in their inner being that there exists no other means of fashioning the future of humanity into a form worthy of human beings, than by not permeating merely the earth economically, but also Spiritually is a thought very few people pursue for themselves to-day, because of a certain love of ease.

We may say that humanity has received the present configuration of its life of civilisation from three sides, and it is extremely interesting to fix one's mind on these three sides of this earthly life of civilisation, especially for the task we have set ourselves in these lectures.

If one surveys the whole earth-sphere from East to West, one must say: “Everything which man possesses in the way of ethical truths, of moral truths, has come from the East”. One can say that the form in which the East, with its general view of the Cosmos, has developed its ethical truths, the form of its general cosmology, and so on, has now been lost; but certain Ethics have remained over as relics of oriental thought and feeling.

It is infinitely interesting from this point of view to read the speeches which Rabindranath Tagore held, which are collected under the title of Nationalism. You will see if you read these speeches that there is hardly anything now to be found in them of that great Cosmic Wisdom teaching, which at one time, lived in the feelings of men in the East. But one who can read with understanding these speeches of Tagore collected under the title Nationalism will say: the moral pathos which lives in them and which indeed is the chief essence of these speeches, the ethical will which lives in them, that bitter moral criticism which exercised against the individual mechanism of the West, and against all the still more evil political mechanism of the West, lives as Ethos in these speeches of Tagore, could not have been uttered unless there stood behind them the ancient primeval wisdom of Asia; even though it no longer lives externally in men's consciousness. With that wisdom, created out of the stars, the moral truths were permeated which resound from out of the East, and this comes to us when such people as Rabindranath Tagore speak.

If, without prejudice, one investigates everything which has developed in this way of culture in the West, in Central Europe, one must say: What lives there, whether it be in philosophers or non-philosophers, in the simple or most educated—that which ethically and morally permeates the humanity of the West has all trickled over from the East, from Asia. The East is the real home of Ethos, of ethics.

If we now Look towards the West, the civilisation of which has transpired before the eye of history, we see how muck enters into the consideration of the reasoning, intellectual working-man, of world phenomena. There what rests an the principle of utility comes into consideration.

There is a great contrast, of which humanity should become aware, between what lives as pathos in the speeches of Tagore, and everything which develops in the West as the stand-point of utility.

To speak radically, one might say, that the sort of thing we meet with in philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, or in national economists such as Adam Smith or intellectual philosophers such as Bergson, anything of this nature remains for the Asiatic, even if he tries to understand it, something which lies completely outside his being. He can grasp as an interesting fact that such things are said by human beings, but he will never be tempted to produce things which relate simply to external human utility, from out of his own nature.

The Asiatic thoroughly despises the European and American nature, because it always refers him to the standpoint of utility, which can only be dominated with the intellect, with the understanding. So it has come about that this way of thinking, which is connected with the idea of utility, is above all the product of the West.

As I have previously drawn your attention to the fact that over the earth the ancient wisdom, has specialised itself according to Races, so we can now distinguish these great types. The ethical type in the Orient, in the East; the intellectual utilitarian type in the West, the Occident, while in between there is, always trying to press forward, what I want to call the third type, the Aesthetic, which is just as much characteristic of Central Europe, as the ethical type is of the East and the utilitarian type of the West.

We need merely remind ourselves of a certain phenomenon, in order to be able to bring forward a proof drawn from external facts: how it is that just in Central Europe this Aesthetic type seeks to make itself felt. While in the West the French Revolution partially raged and partially bore its consequences, and the East was still immersed in Spiritual dreams, we see e.g. Schiller writing his letters concerning the aesthetic education of man. These are directly concerned with the French Revolution, but they seek to solve the problem thrown up politically by the French Revolution, they seek to solve it humanistically, in a purely human way. They seek to make man inwardly a free human being. It is interesting to note that the whole method of observation of Schiller in those Aesthetic letters rests an this: that on the one side he rejects the pure utilitarian intellectual standpoint, and an the other he rejects the merely ethical standpoint. You see, this ethical standpoint had once already been rationalised, intellectualised. Everything in the world goes through different metamorphosis and then reappears in another form. And so although this ethical standpoint of the East is certainly not intellectual, yet one can grasp it with one's intellect, one can intellectualise it, one can (Königsbergerise) it, and it then becomes Kantian. That happened; and from Kant there comes this beautiful saying: “Duty, thou mighty, exalted name, thou hast nothing within thee of an attractive or insinuating nature, but requirest solely and simply the subjection of man to morality”.

Schiller an the other hand, said, “I gladly serve my friends, yet unfortunately I do so with inclination. Therefore I reproach myself that I am not virtuous”. Schiller as a real Central-European man, could not take into himself this Kantian, this Königsbergian intellectualising of ethics. For him no man was a complete human being who had first to subject himself to duty in order to fulfil his duty. For Schiller a man was only a complete human being who felt in himself the desire to do what was of moral value. Therefore Schiller rejected the ethical rigourism of a Kant. But he also rejected the purely intellectual principle of authority, and he saw in the production and enjoyment of Beauty, (thus in the Aesthetic behavior of man), the highest, free expression of human nature. He wrote his Aesthetic letters, one might say, as a personal description of Goethe. Schiller had only with difficulty struggled to acquire an appreciation of Goethe. He had started with jealousy, with inner antipathy to Goethe; and one may say that there was a time in Schiller's youth when any talk of Goethe left a bitter taste in his mouth. Then they became acquainted; and they learnt not only to honour each other, but to understand each other. Then Schiller wrote one might say as a kind of Spiritual biography, a Spiritual description of Goethe, his letters upon the Aesthetic education of man. Nothing which stands in these Aesthetic letters could have been written unless Goethe had previously lived a life which was to Schiller an example of what stands in them. Schiller wrote a letter to Goethe at the beginning of their friendship which I have often quoted: “For a long time I have followed the path of your life, although from a far distance.” And now he described Goethe, according to his spirit, which was really that of a reincarnated Greek; and we see how the first dawn of the Aesthetic spirit of Central Europe is united with Greece.

And now as regards Goethe, we see how he works his way up from an intellectual element, to a recognition of truth, which can be just as well understood through art as through science. If you follow how Goethe with Herder studied the Ethics of Spinoza, how Goethe then went to Italy and wrote home that, in the works of art which he sees proceeding out of the Greek spirit, he sees Necessity, he sees God.—then one must say, the intellectualism of Spinoza becomes Aesthetic in Goethe, on his Italian journey, in the contemplation of those works of art. Goethe bears testimony that the Greeks created their works of art according to the same laws which nature herself follows, laws which Goethe believed he was now on the track of. That means, Goethe is not of the opinion that when a man creates a work of art he is merely creating a thing of phantasy. Science is strictly true. No, Goethe was of the opinion that what lies in a true work of art absolutely gives the deeper, true, content of the life of Nature. Now that is an Aesthetic view of the world, and so we must say: Occident, West—intellectualistic utilitarian; Central earth-regions—Aesthetic; the East—ethical, moral. It is absolutely true, my dear friends, that wherever it be, whether in the past or in the Centre or in the lest, wherever ethical truths have appeared—they have originally sprung up from the East. It is no matter whether utilitarian truths spring up in the Centre, or in the East they all originally spring from the West. Beauty arises from the Central region.

One can follow everywhere the path of these three elements in the life of man in this way, down to the very details.

You see, my dear friends, when through one's karma one is destined to found Anthroposophy in Central Europe, then in this Anthroposophy something must live of that Goethe-faith, which is after all, the same element that lives in art; that is, the element of truth. That same element which is expressed in painting, in sculpture, and even in architecture must live also in the thought structure of truth. One must come to say, what I attempted to say in the first chapter of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—that the philosopher, the man who founds a World-conception, must be an artist in ideas. One usually rejects the concepts of an artist of ideas. In that book I had to accept it; it all sprang from one and the same spirit.

When one produces something of this kind, all the ideas one expresses have a definite character, which bear the colourings of what I have just described. Books are written, form instance, much as that bit Aime Blech, which recently appeared as a Pamphlet, containing all kinds of evil, consciously evil calumnies. Books are written in which, for instance, it is stated that in what is brought forward from this side as Anthroposophy, there are, of course many beautiful things, but they are opposed to the clarity of the French mind!

Certainly Anthroposophy contradicts intellectuality, the barren, rhetorical grasp of ideas; such minds would much prefer the coarse, material ideas which can be grasped in sharp outlines, so as one can follow these things down to the minutest details. I could bring forward many an example, entering into details which would make clear what I have shown you in general outline; but I will rest content with the example I have already given you, which is a very interesting one.

Now the point in question is that we should clearly realise that e.g. in the West morality, art and intellectualism are simply not being produced. No! Art, is taken over from the Central regions, and Ethics, from the East; and they are then inserted into the intellectual-utility-element, just as in the Centre a kind of ethical element is cultivated, and everything which has been taken up, especially in the 19th century into the Aesthetic element has come over from the West. It would be interesting to follow for once the path of biology from this point of view. If you read Goethe's Theory of Metamorphosis to-day, you can find in that a grand theory of evolution, but the West would always consider that theory spoilt by its Aestheticism. In the 19th century, over the entire earth which is dependent an the West, the Darwinistic element penetrated into the theory of evolution, and brought in the Utilitarian-standpoint, the doctrine of purpose, of aim. You find that doctrine of “purpose” entirely excluded in Goethe, because he is everywhere permeated by Aestheticism.

It must not be the case in the future, that men are thus economically differentiated, as it were, to such an extreme degree that they will not learn from each other. Because that would mean that there would gradually spread over Asia a certain Ethos, such as one finds advocated in the fire-sounding words of Rabindranath Tagore. In Central Europe there would sp read in another form—that which certain Nietzsche-fops have already advocated—a certain “Beyond-ness” of good and evil, a certain Aestheticism, even in moral ideas. We see here the triumphant march of this Aestheticising making itself felt, especially towards the end of the 19th century. And then the merely utilitarian standpoint would pour out over the West, cleverness in the utilitarian standpoint, a caricature of the Spiritual element from the utilitarian standpoint, etc., etc.

The permeation of humanity by a real Spiritual element can alone help mankind. We assume, of course, that this Spiritual element shall be taken in full earnestness—that men shall develop the will to regard things as they present themselves to-day to one who is really prepared to be unprejudiced. This War-Catastrophe has brought many extraordinary things to the surface, amongst which are phenomena, which are in part uncomfortable to the highest degree, but which can teach us much, I will mention one such phenomenon.

In the German literature of the day there appear—one simply cannot keep pace with what comes out in this way—but almost every week there appear slimy excretions, as I must call them—the explanations of different men concerning their share in the course of the War and of political events—and we can read what such heads—I say expressly such heads—as Iagow Bethmann (Michaelis has, I think, still spared us), Tirpitz, Ludendorf, and a whole row of others which one can name. It is unpleasant, in one way,to read this stuff, but from another point of view, it is interesting to the highest degree.

You see, one can read such books as those written by Bethmann or Tirpitz, from quite opposite points of view. But their points of view depend very often an whether the author has been treated with the toe or the heel of the boot for a certain time. Bethmann was favoured for a time by the “All Highest”, whereas Tirpitz was treated with the heel of the boot. Hence their different points of view!

And so we will enter further into the view-point; it is not so much a question of that, but of seeing what spirit lives in the writings.

Now one can experience the following: I once made the following experiment. After allowing myself to be saturated with the dreamy writings of Bethmann and Tirpitz, I turned back to certain utterances (very dear to me;, of Herman Grimm, which indeed have been found chauvinistic by non-Germans. But again that is just a point of view. It is simply a question with me of the spirit which lives in them.

At the first view one can put this question: How does the spirit, the way of thinking, the inner soul-constitution of the Bethmann and Tirpitz writings compare with what lives in Herman Grimm's political observations? Here we must say: Herman Grimm felt that Goethe had lived and had not lived in vain; to him he was a living presence. To, Bethmann and Tirpitz Goethe was not there. I will not say they had not read him, it might have been better if they had left him unread; but as far as they were concerned he was not there. And at first I had to say to myself; what stands in these books sounds as if it were written by a medieval serf—with the logic of a medieval Serf.

Especially interesting, for instance, is the logic of Ludendorf. He is the one who was so greatly praised for the idea of having Lenin transported in a sealed wagon, through Germany to Russia! Ludendorf is the real importer of Bolehevism into Russia! Now he simply had not the cheek to deny that in his book, although he had cheek enough for many things. So he says, that to send Lenin to Russia was a military necessity, and that the political government should have avoided the evil consequences, but did not do so. Such is the logic of these gentlemen. But I do not wish to assert that Clemenceau has better logic; and I beg you not to think that I take sides with any Party. Neither Lloyd George nor Wilson have any better logic. This, however, is not so easy to substantiate.

One may say that at first sight, but the matter goes further. One finds on comparing things that one must go further back still. An extraordinary similarity exists between the Tirpitz and Ludendorf way of thinking, and those human beings who guided the so-called civilisation of Rome in the 1st and 2nd pre-Christian centuries. And if we wish to establish an intimate community of soul between these, we may say that it is as if the old method of thought of the ancient pre-Christian Rome again appeared, and as if everything which has happened since then, including Christianity itself, (even if these gentlemen externally speak of Christ, and so on), had never taken place.

You see, it is often supposed, when one says of the Luciferic that it remained behind in humanity—that one means something only external to the world. But this principle of remaining behind, expresses itself quite strongly within the world. One can say the pre-Caesar greatness of old Rome has re-arisen in such people, and everything which has happened in Europe since that time is really non-existent for them.

My dear friends, this phenomenon must be observed in an unprejudiced way to-day. It must be kept in mind; because only by so doing can one win a strong standpoint for judging the present. This present age makes great demands on man's capacity for judgment. All this must be said, if one speaks of how necessary it is that the present age should be permeated by Spiritual impulses. Superficially considered it is easy to say the present age must be permeated Spiritually; but, my dear friends, the matter is not quite so simple as this. You need only investigate where Spiritual Impulses found their way to some extent into humanity to see whether they have always borne the right fruit. One must in conclusion also say the following. Let us consider certain brochures, certain pamphlets which have been written, some written indeed by members of long standing. There are such written, wherein what figures here as Spiritual Science, is really placed before the world, but inverted, turned upside down, as it were. These are plants which have grown on the soil on which we attempt to give Spiritual treasure to humanity to-day. And anyone who thinks that this process, has run its course—of our so-called followers into its opposite what is transmitted as Spiritual Science to-day, must be a simpleton. For it most certainly is not yet finished. It is by no means so easy to reckon with this fact, that Spiritual truths must be brought to humanity, because as humanity is to-day it tends above all to differentiate into the three types which I have characterised: the Ethical, the Aesthetic, the intellectual; and further differentiations again within these.

Now Spiritual truths are not adapted to be taken up in their purity by human beings who approach them with such differentiations. Just think how on all sides to-day human beings tend to shut themselves off in their national chauvinism, and if you try to take up generally human and spiritual truths with national chauvinism, you transform them thereby into the opposite. It is impossible simply to impart what is now desirable from a certain point of view, for human beings tend to such differentiations as I have described. Therefore it is necessary above all that the interest of man should be awakened from the side which already exists. It is necessary that, in a certain sense, one should link on to what is already there, continually bearing in mind the tendency men have to turn away from that ancient treasure of wisdom and put nothing else in its place except the territorial differentiation on this earth. It does not do to spread Spiritual truths among humanity, without also spreading a certain Ethos.

Many people have read How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. These books have been read considerably for some time. They have objected that the first counsels given there are ethical, and that they must be in ethical agreement with them. They are right. right The first counsels given must be ethical and form an extract of the best Ethos of earthly civilisation. But, on the other hand, it is also necessary to cultivate a certain artistic element, and that has made quite special difficulties in the Anthroposophical Movement; for without the Anthroposophical Movement there existed a certain disinclination at first towards artistic things. An abstract, Aesthetically indifferent, symbolism was striven for. There still exists to-day, movements which call themselves Theosophical which rejects everything artistic. Therefore it was a good fate, a good Karma, of our Movement that we were able to make artistic experiments here in Dornach, and that we could work them out away from the abstract symbolic element. Perhaps if things had gone according to the desires of many, we should see many a black cross with red roses or something like roses, as the deep symbol of our building. We have of course, to beware of this symbolism, and strive to create from out of the artistic element. That had to be linked an to the best traditions, of human civilisation—if I may call impulses traditions. Above all one thing must be considered, that these are deep and earnest truths, and they must run somewhat as follows: whoever wishes to attain true knowledge must cultivate in himself a sense for truth! When one speaks radically about this question, my dear friends, one comes in touch with something which sounds repellent to many to-day, because this rigorous striving everywhere for the truth is something which is extraordinarily unpleasant to many people to-day, truth being something which they want at least to touch-up in life. But untruth, even if untrue from sentimentality, does not go with that strong sense for truth, demanded e.g. by a real devotion to these truths which Anthroposophy wishes
to place in the world.

My dear friends, in this connection the religious confessions have sinned especially, because they have inserted something which can no longer be united with a pure sense for truth. Certain kinds of piety are carried out into the world which satisfy human egoism far more than human feeling for truth. Therefore it is quite specially necessary that real attention should be paid to the cultivation of inner truthfulness, as is so often pointed out in our Anthroposophical writings. As you know, life itself demands from human beings to-day many untrue things, and we may say there exists to-day two distinct tendencies, which evoke in man a certain disinclination to look at facts in their true light. To-day the tendency exists to characterise things from personal preference and not according to the facts. To-day a man is called practical who is in a certain sense a man of routine; one who with a certain brute force works within his own sphere regardless of any consideration, and puts aside everything which does not serve to promote his own particular objects. From this standpoint one distinguishes “practical” men and “visionaries”; and with a certain world-historic untruth, the consequences of these things have shown themselves in a terrible way, in the course of the 19th century, and up to our own day. Indeed it was difficult before this great testing came over humanity through the catastrophe of the World War, to say something of what ruthlessly characterises these things. I am shortly publishing a collection of a few of my more important early writings—articles written in the eighties and nineties, in order to show how, as it were through small slits, I even then attempted to utter many truths. Among these articles there is one on Bismarck, the Man of Political Successes, in which I attempted to show that the success of this personality depended upon the fact that he could never see much further than his nose! But, as you know, it is no use to cast these things in the face of the world if no one is there who can take them up. Now, however, we must start from this basis, that the World-War Catastrophe can teach us many things. Of course, for most men, nothing is to be learnt from these facts. They have a certain fund of opinions, and do not alter them. They are not able to understand what underlies the statement that we must learn from the facts.

I always tell each person whom I conduct round the Goetheanum, that if I had to design such a building a second time, I would do so quite differently. I would certainly never make it in the same way again. There is nothing, of course, against the present building, but I myself would not make it in the same way again, because obviously, one has learnt something from what one has made, and which stands there as an accomplished fact.

To-day I read with astonishment that Field-Marshal Hindenburg said, if he had to conduct the World-War over again he would do it in exactly the same way.

Indeed these things are read, but they are read carelessly; and people do not notice that one must gain an understanding of the age from the teachings which are given in such a bitter way through this world catastrophe. Whatever one reads and what constantly resounds in one's ears from the world to-day, should be taken with the corresponding background, and one should always be able to say: In important things a revision of judgment is essentially and constantly necessary. It was right as far as could be seen externally, to call Bismarck a practical man, until the World-Catastrophe came. Hermann Grimm regarded Bismarck as a tower of practical excellence. But the World War catastrophe has taught us that Bismarck was a visionary, and the opinions of his judgment have had to be altered; for his idea of the creation of an Empire was naturally only a phantasy.

You see, I just want to make you see clearly that it is life itself, and must be life, which teaches us to discover illusions, even in the sphere of moral history. I have shown you how one must substantiate these illusions in the sphere of natural connections, noting how in nature things stand side by side, and that is how natural investigators describe them. Thus we must say that humanity shares in the occurrences of nature, and that what natural science says about this is simply a web of illusions.

To-day I wanted to make comprehensible to you how we must learn the very facts of history and of life to correct things; because, often for long periods, they only show themselves outwardly as illusion. Men who were naturally regarded by many as practical, must now of necessity be regarded as visionaries. One must accustom oneself to-day to revise one's judgment in this manner. At each step in life, there is not only opportunity enough but also a necessity for revising one's judgment. And one is only in the right mood, the mood the Anthroposophical Movement seeks to acquire, when one says to oneself: “I must revise my opinions, perhaps even about the most important things in life.” Opinions about natural connections, can as a rule, be revised through the study of Spiritual Science. Judgments about life one can only revise when one really develops in oneself the mood necessary for the Anthroposophical Movement.