The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The pictures we shall show today will enable us to give a kind of recapitulation of various things that came before our souls in former lectures. I shall draw attention today to further aspects, arising out of what we have said before. In the course of these studies, we have distinguished between the more Southern European and the Northern or Mid-European artistic streams and we have indicated characteristic aspects of these two. I do not wish to repeat what has already been set forth. Today we are able to show some further reproductions of pictures by Raphael, and I wish to say a few words about him, unfolding—if I may so describe it—a more special outcome of our ideas concerning the artistic genius of the South.

Anyone who lets Raphael's creations work upon his soul, will admit that in Raphael—with respect to certain artistic intentions—the highest ideal has been attained. When we let them work upon us and try to understand them, we ask ourselves again and again: What is it that comes to expression in his works, and how does it stand in relation to the World? Think for a moment from this aspect of the Madonna della Sedia,—how this picture is placed in a great world-perspective: It is so, indeed, in all directions. To begin with, you may consider the picture as an outcome of the Christian world-conception. So perfectly does it express this theme: The Birth of Christ Jesus in connection with the Madonna, that we must say, 'The ides, the meaning, the impulse, the world-historic significance which it is desired to express, has here been expressed by means that cannot ever be transcended.

From a certain point of view you cannot imagine a further enhancement of this theme—the Madonna with the Jesus Child—in its impression on the human soul. One of the ideas of the Christian conception of the world has come to expression here in the highest imaginable way, seen from a certain aspect.

1. Raphael. Madonna With Child.

And now let us look at the picture for a moment as though we knew nothing of the Christian world-conception. Let us consider it in the way Herman Grimm once spoke of it, simply as an expression of the deep mystery of the relation of the mother to the child. A mother with her child: Once more, the highest means of expression have been found by Raphael for one of the most mysterious themes in the whole Cosmos, as it lies before us human beings living in the Physical. Thus even if we take the pure picture of Nature—the mother and child—apart from the world-historic happenings, once more the thing is perfect in itself, the highest of its kind.

It is always so with Raphael. His themes are of universal significance, and perfectly expressed,—the means of expression proceeding from those streams and influences which we recognise as characteristic of the South. Always, however, his themes must be seen in the context of great universal meanings. We can regard them from a Christian aspect (and the above two points of view are by no means the only ones),—looking at it in a Christian way, the theme places itself at once in a great context of Nature. Again it rises free from the individually human; we seem to forget the human being that worked to create it—the human being, Raphael himself. Behind the artist stand great cosmic perspectives—world-conceptions coming to expression in him. This, indeed, is to characterise such an artist as Raphael, as the artist of an epoch that was drawing to it close: the Fourth Post Atlantean epoch. Such epochs, when they draw near their end—or when their inner essence reaches beyond the boundary of times, often bring forth their very highest.

We shall presently see how very different it is when we consider in this light, say, the personality of Albrecht Dürer. There it is altogether different. But you might also think of the Sistine Madonna, even as we have now spoken of the Madonna della Sedia. Again we should have to say: What is here placed before us interests us, above all, inasmuch as it stands out against the background of a great world-conception. Without this background of a great world-conception, the Sistine Madonna is, indeed, unthinkable.

2. Raphael. Sistine Madonna With Child

3. Raphael. Sistine Madonna With Child (detail)

Looking at some of Raphael's pictures today, let us bear in mind the aspect which has thus been characterised. For Raphael to create in this way—for his pictures to arise out of a mighty world-perspective—something of cosmic law and principle had to be working in his very soul. This is, indeed, the case. It comes to expression in the remarkable course of his life, which was already emphasized by Hermann Grimm. Raphael's work takes its course in regular cyclic periods. At the age of twenty-one he creates the Sposalize; four years later the Entombment; four years after this he completes the Frescoes of the Camera della Segnatura; four years later, once again, the Cartoons for the tapestries in the Vatican and the two Madonnas. And finally, four years after this, at the age of thirty-seven, he is working at the Transfiguration, which stands unfinished when he leaves this physical plane. In cyclic periods of four years, something of the nature of a cosmic principle works in Raphael. Truly, we here have something that proceeds from a great cosmic background. Hence Raphael's work is so strongly separated from his personality. Again and again the question comes to us: How is it that the themes—and they are world-historic themes—come to expression in his work so perfectly; so self-contained, so inwardly complete?

Down to this day, the study of Art derives—more than from any other source—from that great Art in the center of which is Raphael.

The study of Art in the exoteric life today is more or less of this kind. All its available ideas have been learned from the Art which finds its highest expression in Raphael—the Art of the Italian Renaissance. Thus in the outer life the concepts to express this Art are the most perfect, and all other Art is measured by this standard. The works of this Art are the ideal, and we have few words at our disposal, few concepts and ideas, even to speak of any other streams in Art, specifically different from this one. That is the unique thing.

And now we will let pass before our souls a number of pictures by Raphael, most of which we have not yet seen in these lectures.

4. Raphael. The Vision of Ezekiel. (Florence, Palazzo Pitti.)

4. Raphael. The Vision of Ezekiel. (detail) (Pitti. Florence.)

The ideas, the living conceptions, out of which such a picture proceeded even in Raphael's time, are naturally no longer near us today. To represent so truly this wandering of the soul in human form through the spiritual world, would no longer be attainable today for those who have not Spiritual Science. The animal nature below expressed what man has cast aside from himself, but it is still there, needless to say, even in his etheric body, and we find it there when the etheric is freed from the physical. The union of the soul with something childlike, as it is is represented by the angel figures here, is an absolutely true conception. The conception corresponds to a reality. We must consider man in his full being, such as he really is. In recent communications on the Guardian of the Threshold we had to speak of the Threefold being of Man. This threefold nature of man emerges everywhere, where reference is made to the Spiritual part of man emancipated from the Physical. We find this threefoldness in manifold forms—not symbolic, but corresponding to spiritual Realities. And so we find it here, in the full-grown Man related to the Child and the Beast.

5. Perugino. The Marriage of Maria. (Vienna, Albertina.)

Today we are able to show a study from the Sposalizo, the picture with which Raphael's great career as an artist properly begins. He did this at the age of twenty-one—at the beginning of the four-year period which dominated all his work.

6. Perugino. “Sposalizo”. (Caen.)

7. Raphael. “Sposalizo”. (Milan, Brera.)

8. Raphael. The Call of St. Peter. (London, Kensington Museum.)

9. Raphael. The Road to Calvary. (Madrid, Prado.)

10. Raphael. Sketch of the Mourning for Christ. (Louvre. Paris.)

11. Raphael. Sermon of St. Paul at Athens. (London, Kensington Museum.)

We will now show once more a reproduction of the so-called “Disputa,” with certain details.

12. Raphael. Disputa. (Vatican. Rome.)

13. Raphael. The Holy Trinity. (Perugia, San Severo.)

The Holy Trinity, as it is called.

14. Raphael. Sketch for the Disputa. (Windsor.)

15. Raphael. St. Cecilia. (Bologna.)

And now, as an example of Raphael's portraiture:—

16. Raphael. Cardinal Bihbiens. (Pitti. Florence.)

The next two are examples of his tapestries in the Vatican.

17. Raphael. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. (Tapestry in the Vatican.)

18. Raphael. The Healing of the Lame. (Tapestry in the Vatican.)

These are the things of which Goethe said that nothing he had known till then could compare with them in greatness.

Looking back once more over the pictures by Raphael which we have seen today, I beg you observe how we may recognise in them the echoing of a mighty tradition of great Art. Even the sketches which we have shown today reveal this most especially. Raphael's work is the last, the highest, the closing act in a great tradition. There is also another point I would ask you to consider. Think of the picture of the Sermon of St. Paul and others—the “Disputa,” for example. You may take any one of those that we have seen today. In every case, having distinguished the subject of the picture, you may naturally ask yourself about the event or personality represented. But it will never be sufficient to answer: The subject is such and such; it represents this or that. In Raphael's case you will have to ask: How is the artist contriving to express—whatever the subject is—in accordance with the ideas and canons of great Art? We cannot merely ask: How would St. Paul actually have lifted up his hand to speak? With Raphael we must ask: What angle will the arm have to make with the body according to aesthetic laws of balance and proportion? And so forth ... A magic breath is poured out over it all,—a magic breath of aesthetic traditions, of harmony and balance. Look at the boy who stands here, in this picture. It is not enough to ask: What is going on in the soul of the boy? Your question must, rather, be directed to these laws of artistic harmony. See how the line of the arm, reaching out on either side, is placed into the composition. In short, you can distinguish what is purely artistic from the underlying subject-matter. Here, however, the artist's power is so magnificent that it draws the subject-matter into its own sphere. With such an artist as Raphael, we may, indeed, pronounce the word, for it is literally true:—“Artistic truth makes all the rest true,—compels all the rest into its circle.”

You cannot apply this saying, in its present meaning, to the works we shall now let pass before our souls. We will begin with one by Martin Schongauer, who died in 1488.

19. Martin Schongauer. The Road to Calvary.

Here you see the very opposite. To begin with, the artist is simply concerned to express his subject. No longer is there poured out over it the magic breath of a peculiarly aesthetic truth, the climax of a great tradition. Here the effort is, to the best of the artist's technique and ability, with the artistic means at his disposal, to bring to expression what is there in the souls of men. Here the world speaks to us directly—not through the medium of a tradition of great Art.

We will now let work upon our souls the personality of Albrecht Dürer; showing a number of pictures which we did not see in the former lectures. In Albrecht Dürer, whom we may speak of as a contemporary of Raphael, we have before us an altogether different personality. It is impossible to think of Dürer's works in the same way as of Raphael's. In Dürer's case we shall not easily forget the personality, the human being. Not that we must always necessarily imagine him; but the pictures themselves are eloquent of all that is direct and intimate and near to the human soul, springing from the soul with elemental force. Raphael paints with the ever-present background of great world-perspectives. He is only conceivable if we imagine, as it were, the Genius of Christianity itself painting in the soul of Raphael. And, again, he is only conceivable as one who stands at the close of a great epoch, during which pupils were learning from their Masters many a tradition of aesthetic law, artistic harmony,—learning that certain things should be done in certain ways, to correspond with the canons of great Art.

In Raphael's works these things are always there before us. In Dürer's work, on the other hand, we feel in the background, as it were, the aura of the life of the time in Middle Europe,—the German towns and cities. Invisibly his pictures are pervaded by all that blossomed forth in the free life of the cities, working its way towards the Reformation. Nor does he stand before us with any cosmic perspectives in the background. It is, rather, the ordinary individual man's approach to the Bible and to his fellow-men, bringing his own soul to expression. The Human element can never be separated from his works. We cannot seek in Dürer for a cosmic principle working through his soul, as we can in Raphael. But we may look for something intimate and deep; deeply connected—we cannot say so too often—with the human soul, its feelings and its seeking, its longing and striving.

20. Dürer. The Four Witches. (Etching)

21. Dürer. Hercules.

22. Dürer. Melanchthon Etching.

Here we have a portrait of Melanchthon, the theological bearer of the Reformation, as against Luther, who was the “priestly” bearer.

23. Dürer. “Rosenkranzfest.” (Prague.)

This picture is now in the “Rudolfinum” at Prague. The Pope, the Emperor and representatives of Christianity are being crowned with roses by Mary, the Jesus Child and St. Dominic. The two figures against the tree trunk will be shown in detail in the next slide.

24. Dürer. Portrait of Himself and Pirkheimer. (Detail of the above.)

Further examples of Dürer's portraiture:—

25. Dürer. Portrait of his Father. (Uffizi. Florence.)

26. Dürer. Portrait. (Prado. Madrid.)

Looking at such a portrait, the whole life of the time comes vividly before you. Truly, in this sense Dürer is an historic figure of the very first rank. No historic document tells us so well, what the people of that time were like.

We shall now show some characteristic examples of Dürer's drawings—etchings and woodcuts. To begin with, from his cycle on the Apocalypse—fifteen leaves, done in 1498.

27. Dürer. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (1498.)

28. Dürer. The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Seven-headed Dragon (1498.)

29. Dürer. The Adoration of the Lamb and The Hymn of the Chosen. (1497).

30. Dürer. The Battle of the Angels. (1498.)

31. Dürer. Michael and the Dragon. (1493.)

And now we will show a number of pictures from the series of etchings of the Passion—known as the “Kupferstich-Passion.”

32. Dürer. The Kerchief of St. Veronica. (Etching)

Then the motif that occurs again and again in that time:—

33. Dürer. The Man of Sorrows. (Etching)

34. Dürer. The Scourging. (Etching)

35. Dürer. The Crowning with Thorns. (Etching)

36. Dürer. Ecce Homo. (Etching)

We will next show a number of pictures from the Holzschnitt-Passion—of thirty-six small woodcuts. They are extraordinarily tender and intimate. The first is the title-page:—

37. Dürer. Christ with the Crown of Thorns. (Woodcut)

38. Dürer. Saint Veronica. (Woodcut)

39. Dürer. The Last Supper. (Woodcut)

40. Dürer. The Scourging. (Woodcut)

41. Dürer. Ecce Homo. (Woodcut)

42. Dürer. The Way to Calvary. (Woodcut)

43. Dürer. Christ on the Cross. (Woodcut)

44. Dürer. Mourning for Christ. (Woodcut)

45. Dürer. The Resurrection. (Woodcut)

46. Dürer. The Ascension. (Woodcut)

We can also show two pictures by Hans Baldung, who worked for a certain time, at any rate—in Dürer's workshop. These pictures date from the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century.

47. Hans Baldung. The Three Fates.

48. Hans Baldung. Ecce Homo.

49. Hans Sebald Beham. The Man of Sorrows.

I would like to make the following remarks:—The transition from the Fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and all that is connected with it, finds expression—far more than we can realise from the ordinary textbooks of History—in the whole life of the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. We must remember that at such times, at the turning-point of one epoch and another, many things are perceptible in the life of the time, expressing the mighty transformation that is taking place. History, truly, does not take its course—though the text-books might lead one to suppose so—like a perpetual succession of causes and effects. At characteristic moments, at the turning-points of epochs, characteristic phenomena emerge, in the most varied spheres of life. Thus, at the transition from the age of the Intellectual Soul or Soul of the Higher Feelings to that of the Spiritual Soul, phenomena appear in all domains of life, revealing how men felt when the impulses of the Spiritual Soul were drawing near. The evolution of the Spiritual Soul involved the development of those relationships with the purely physical plane into which men had to enter during the fifth post-Atlantean age. To a high degree, man was about to be fettered to that physical plane. Naturally, this brought in its train all the phenomena of reaction—of opposition and revulsion at this process. Moreover, at the same time many things emerged out of the former epoch, reaching over with multitudinous ramifications into the new.

Among the many symptoms of that time we see, for instance, the intense preoccupation of man with the phenomenon of Death. In many different spheres—as we can easily convince ourselves—the thought of Death came very near to men. Death as a great mystery—the Mystery of Death—drew near to men at the very time when their Souls had to prepare to come out most of all on to the physical plane of existence.

Moreover. the things of the fourth epoch were reaching over into the Fifth. There were the excesses of the Papacy which had degenerated more and more into a pure impulse of might. There were the excesses connected with the old divisions—the riches of the higher orders, their overweening arrogance, their growing superficiality of life,—while the religious themes themselves were being made external, flat and superficial. Those human beings, on the other hand, who attained some inwardness of soul were pondering deeply on the penetration of the Spiritual world into the physical. Added to this, there was the absolute need to turn one's attention to the spiritual world; inasmuch as the seeds of decay and destruction were entering most terribly into the physical world just at that time. For in those centuries the plague was raging far and wide in Europe—truly, an awful death, Death, in the Plague, came face to face with men as a visible phenomenon in its most awful form.

In Art, too, we see this intensive study of the significance of Death. It comes before us especially in the famous Procession of Death on the cemetery wall at Pisa—one of the earliest appearances of this kind. Then we find many pictures of Death as it draws near to men under the inexorable laws of Fate—draws near to man of whatsoever rank or class. The “Dance of Death,” the “Wandering of Death through the World,” Death's entry into all human relationships—this becomes a very favorite theme. It was out of this mood and feeling that Holbein himself created his cycle on the Dance of Death, three examples of which we shall now show. In Holbein's Dance of Death the object was especially to show how Death approaches the rich man, for instance; approaches man of every social rank—from the highest in the land to the lowest. Moreover, the object was to show Death as a righteous judge. Holbein in his Dance of Death desired to show every conceivable circumstance under which Death draws near to human life.

44a. Holbein. Death and the King.

Here we see Death coming to the King, to tear him away from his royal life.

44b. Holbein. Death and the Monk.

The people of that time had great delight in pictures such as these. This was the time when the Reformation strove to put an end to all the growing worldliness and emptiness of the religious life—to the corruption of the Church and the religious orders.

45. Holbein. Death and the Rich Man.

Death draws near to the rich man, and finds him with his pile of money.

My dear friends, we have seen how the German Art came to expression in these great examples—and especially in the greatest, in Dürer,—at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. One question cannot but interest us again and again: How is it with the origin and evolution of this special stream of Art? In order to say a little more upon this subject, we shall presently show a few pictures revealing how the several factors stood at a characteristic moment. We can make very interesting studies on the evolution of the Mid-European or German Art—and notably the Southern German Art—at the beginning of the 15th century. True, the pictures of the period, which we shall show, give only the outcome of a long line of evolution. But this outcome appears in them strongly and characteristically. When we wish to characterise a great range of phenomena, we have to sum up many things in a few words; and if we desire to be true, it is by no means easy ... It may be that the characteristic pictures we choose does not fully represent all that is here intended. But if we take things on the whole, we shall find it is confirmed, undoubtedly.

The origin of the Mediaeval Art of the German people shows itself most characteristically on the slopes of the Alps reaching out into Southern Germany, into the regions of Southern Bavaria and Swabia. And we must realise that here was a flowing together of two factors. The one represented by all that was imported from the South along the paths of evolution of the Church—and notably the Roman Church system. We must decidedly imagine (though the historic documents contain little about it) that in artistic matters, too, many an impulse came through the Church and the clerical orders. This applies especially to the districts to which I have just referred. Undoubtedly, many priests and clerics also became painters—good and bad—and they, of course, were always in close connection with the whole system of the Church, working its way upwards with its Roman, Latin impulses from the South. They carried with them all that was living there as artistic tradition. Needless to say, this great tradition reached its eminence only in men of genius, but it existed and was taught as a tradition even among lesser men. Tradition was especially at home in Italy, and thence the priests and monks absorbed and carried it with them to the North.

With all the other things which they derived from the Roman Church, they also took with them these conceptions of how the artist should work, ideas of artistic harmony and balance: Of how one ought to group the persons in a picture, and how the lines should go, and so forth. All this that we see at its loftiest eminence, say in the works of Michelangelo and, above all, Raphael, too, did not create naively, but, as I said before, out of a far-reaching artistic tradition. These artists knew how the figures should be grouped, in the composition, how the single figures should be placed, and so forth. And as I mentioned recently, they had brought the laws of perspective to a high degree of perfection.

All this was taken Northward. Monks and Priests who had enjoyed artistic training would frequently discuss such things with those who showed signs of artistic talent. But it must be said that the people whose home was in the German-speaking districts of what is now called Austria or Southern Bavaria or Swabia absorbed these rules of Art only with great reluctance. There can be no doubt about it; they confronted many of these things without real understanding. They heard that a thing must be done so, and so; but it did not truly appeal to them, it did not strike home. They had not yet developed in themselves a vision for these things. For a period, from which little has been preserved, we must assume, proceeding from these districts, works of Art carrying forward in a very clumsy fashion whatever had to do with the great artistic tradition of the Latin, Roman South. They could not enter into it; they had very little talent for it. The talents of the people of these districts lay in another direction.

I have spoken of all that was carried Northward by the Roman priesthood. This, as I said, was the one factor. The other was what I would call the elemental originality of heart and mind of the human beings themselves who in these regions showed any kind of talent for the Art of painting. They had no talent to follow the rules which were considered the highest requirements of Art in the South. To begin with, they had no eye for perspective. That a picture must somewhat express the fact that one figure is standing more in the foreground and another towards the back,—this they could only understand with great difficulty. To the people of these districts in the first half of the 15th century the spatial conception was still well nigh a closed book. Yet these very districts are in many respects the source and fountainhead of German Art. They could not work their way through to feel the laws of perspective independently and of their own accord. At most, they felt that the things must somehow be expressed by overlapping. The figure that overlaps the other is in front, the other is behind. In this way they tried to bring some measure of spatial order into their pictures, and so they began to find their way into the laws of space.

Primitive as they still are, we see in these pictures—appearing so characteristically in the first half of the 15th century—how hard it is for that stream of evolution which tries to take shape out of the elemental forces of the human heart, to discover for itself the laws of artistic creation. We will now show some examples from the above-mentioned districts. We shall see that they had no real inner relation to the tradition that has been brought to them. They absorbed it, as it were, unwillingly, with reluctance. Nor had they yet the power to obey the laws of space out of their own understanding. To begin with, I will show you an artist of the first half of the 15th century: Lucas Moser.

46. Lucas Moser. The Voyage of Mary and Lazarus. (Altar-piece at Tiefenbronn.)

46. Lucas Moser. The Voyage of Mary and Lazarus. (detail)

Here you see how difficult, how well-nigh impossible the artist finds it to escape from the flat surface. He seems quite unable to obey any kind of perspective law. He creates out of the elemental forces of heart and mind, but his figures are in the flat—he can scarcely get out of the plane. It is, however, interesting for once to see something so primitive.

Lucas Moser was one of those artists, creating within a social order wherein undoubtedly some of the laws and canons of Art, that had been introduced from the South, were living. Some element of the Southern style undoubtedly plays into his works. At the same time he tries to contribute something of what he sees for himself. And the one thing does not quite agree with the other. For one does not actually see things in accordance with the laws of Art.

Look at this Voyage of the Saints across the Sea, as it is called. Look in the foreground (although one can scarcely speak of a “foreground” here),—see the water in which the ship is floating. The waves are merely indicated by the crests, painted in lighter color. If you try to imagine a visual point from which the whole picture might be seen, you will get into difficulties at once. We must imagine it high up so as to look down on the water. But that, again, will not agree with the aspect of the figures of the saints, below.

On the other hand, you see this artist is already striving towards what afterwards emerged—as their essential greatness—in the German artists of a later time, whom we have now considered. Look at the element of naturalism—the faithful portrayal of expression in the faces of these saints. And yet they are sitting on the very edge of the boat, so that they would certainly fall overboard at the least breath of wind. In spite of this, how intimate is the artist's observation; how delicately the souls are expressed. He makes an unskillful attempt to observe the laws of Art, and tries to be realistic at the same time, and the two things do not agree ... Needless to say, the face could not be in this position, in relation to the body (see the figure of the saint, with the mitre). There are countless faults of the same kind. It is all clue to the fact that the artist is striving on the one hand towards what afterwards became the real greatness of the German Art, while on the other hand he is impressed with certain rules. For instance: That there should be a full-face figure in the middle of the picture, and others in profile to contrast with it. He has been taught certain rules in arrangements of composition. All this he tries his best to observe. But he can only do so according to the measure of his own elementary conceptions. He has not yet worked his way through to any kind of perspective or observation of the laws of space.

Observe these little hills,—and yet the picture does not really recede towards the background. You will realise the immense progress that has been made by the time of Dürer and Holbein. And yet how short was the intervening time! This alter-piece was done in the first half of the 15th century. How strongly the forces must have worked, overcoming the artistic traditions imported from the South (for these they did not want) and bringing forth a new stream out of an independent elemental impulse. They rebelled against the Southern tradition and tended to overcome it, and to find for themselves what they required. And you have seen how far they got in a comparatively short time.

We will now show another picture by the same artist.

47. Lucas Moser. Saints Asleep. (Marseilles. From the Altar of Tiefenbronn.)

Look at this creation! It shows how the artist combines a clear vision of Nature with an absolute disregard of some of the simplest natural facts. The tiled roof and the church tower—the whole ensemble is such that the artist cannot possibly have seen it anywhere. He just puts it together, having learned certain rules about the distribution of figures in space. Yet look how he brings out the single items according to his own vision. There is a decided beginning of Naturalism. He tries to be naturalistic and yet to express what he feels should be. His subject is "Sleeping Saints," but he conceives that they must appear worthy and dignified. Look at the figure of St. Cedonius (?) here, with his mitre.

48. Lucas Moser. Saints Asleep. (Detail)

49. Lucas Moser. Self Portrait. (Detail)

Once more the whole thing seems on the flat. But you will already observe the first attempt to bring out of the spatial effects by the strong shadows thrown. His relations to the laws of perspective are very strained, to say the least. But he contrives to get the effect of space by the strong shadows, and altogether by the distribution of light and dark.

This, as we saw in former lectures, is a peculiar characteristic of the German stream,—to feel the quality of space by catching the light, using the spatial virtue of the light itself. Here we do not take our start from the laws of lineal perspective—laws of perspective drawing. We extend the surface forward and backward by discovering the hidden effects of light itself.

We can see this most significantly in another artist, who already seeks for truth of Nature, but can still be characterised fundamentally in the same way as the former one. I refer to Multscher.

50. Multscher. The Nativity. (Berlin.)

Here is a representation of the Birth of Christ. Once again there is really nothing of those Laws of Space that came from the South. But you see the beginnings of the spatial working of the light itself. Space is born, as it were, out of the activity of light, and in this element the artist works with keen attention. This picture dates from 1437.

In Moser's and Multscher's works we have a true artistic impulse, born out of the very nature of the German South. Here is the element that afterwards rose to its height in Dürer, Holbein and the rest, though the latter were also influenced from Flanders and the Netherlands. The Cologne Masters, too, are rooted in these same impulses. Again and again we see how wonderfully the characteristics emerge even at the very beginning of the evolution of such an impulse. Observe in this picture the striving to express the inner quality of soul of every single person. And yet the artist's relation to certain other truths of Nature is very strained; Imagine you were in this crowd of people standing in the background. Look at the faces. Considering how near some of them are, they could not be standing side by side in that way unless their arms were chopped off, right and left; the artist pays no heed to these elementary matters of spatial distribution. One person is dovetailed into the other. The next is another picture by Multscher.

51. Multscher. Christ in Gethsemane. (Town Hall. Sterzing.)

The artist tries to find his way into the representation of landscape. Note how deeply he has felt the three figures of the apostles, left behind. Yet how little he succeeds in making any real distinction between foreground and background. He seems almost unable to follow any of the laws of space. But he tries once more to express the spatial by the effects of light. Here once again we see the element which afterwards became so great in German Art.

52. Multscher. The Entombment. (Stuttgart. Museum.)

In Lucas Moser and in Multscher we see the actual beginnings of German Art. There are others, too, but very little has been preserved; most of it is to be found in the churches. With all their primitive unskilfulness, we have here the beginning of what emerged with real greatness in the pictures of a later date, that we have seen. They paint out of a primitive feeling, while they simply cannot find their way into the traditions that come to them from the South. Their inwardness is in opposition to these laws in which they are instructed. One more picture by Multscher.

53. Multscher. The Resurrection. (Berlin.)

All that we have said of the two artists comes out very prominently in this picture. If you look for a point from which these figures with the sarcophagus (for so we might call it) are seen, you have to look high up above. We are looking down on the whole scene. And yet if you look at the trees you will see, they are seen from a frontal aspect. There is no single visual point for the picture as a whole. The trees are seen from in front; the picture as a whole, from above. There is no single point of vision according to the laws of space. Indeed, whatever of perspective you do see in the pictures would largely be eliminated were it not for the strong differentiation of the space through the effects of the light itself. In this respect, our eyes will easily deceive us. You would look in vain for line perspective in this picture. You would find mistakes everywhere. I do not mean naturally admissible mistakes, but errors which by themselves would make the picture quite impossible. We see once more the striving to get beyond the mere linear perspective by means of a spatial depth and quality which the light itself begets.

We see how these artists of Middle Europe have to feel their own way towards a totality of composition. There is another interesting point,—less evident in these pictures, but you will find it in other works by Multscher belonging to the same altar-piece. His fine feeling for light enables him to bring out the facial expression beautifully. But he is scarcely able to do the eyes with artistic truth. You can see it here to some extent, though it is less evident than on other pictures. And as for the ears—he does them just as he has been taught. Here he does not yet possess a free and independent feeling. Thus on the one hand he observes what he has been told, but without much artistic understanding. The things he does according to tradition he does badly. On the other hand, we see in him, in a primitive form, what was only afterwards able to appear more perfectly in German Art.

It is, indeed, remarkable how all these things, which we find in the German Art, emerge already in a highly perfect form in the Hamburg Master, Meister Francke, who was practically a contemporary of Moser and Multscher.

54. Meister Francke. The Man of Sorrow. (Hamburg.)

In this Ecce Homo, this Man of Sorrows, you see how high a degree of perfection the expression of the Head of Christ, which was elaborated by and by in the course of time, had already reached. Compare this Head of Christ with the one by Multscher which we saw just now. You will recognise a great advance. Likewise, in the whole forming of the figures. Of course, the peculiar quality which afterwards came out through greater skill and variety of technique in Dürer's work,—in his paintings, etchings and woodcuts,—is lacking still.

55. Meister Francke. The Resurrection. (Schwerin.)

All in all, considering the artistic developments that are potentially there in these first beginnings, and that produced Dürer and Holbein and the others, we must admit that the thread is broken. For afterwards there came a break; they turned back again to the Roman, Latin principle. And in the 19th century, artistic evolution was decidedly on a retrogressive path. There can, however, be no doubt that this fact is connected with deep and significant laws of human evolution. This stream of evolution in Art works out of the element of light and dark, and discovers—as I tried to explain in the lecture on Rembrandt—the inner connection of the world of color with the light and dark. Through the historic necessity of the time, it could not but tend towards a certain Naturalism; but it can never find its culmination in Naturalism. For in this peculiar talent to perceive the inwardness of things, the possibility to paint, to represent the spiritual Mysteries, still lies inherent. When I say “inwardness of things,” I mean not merely inwardness of soul, but the inwardness of things themselves, expressed in the spatial laws of light and darkness which also contain the mysteries of color. Goethe, as you know, tried to express this systematically in his Theory of Color. This possibility, therefore, still lies open and unrealised in evolution. The possibility to paint the spiritual Mysteries out of the inner virtues of the world of color, out of the inner essence of the light and dark. And the possibilities in this direction can be extended also to the other Arts.

But such a thing can only be brought about through the inspiration of Spiritual Science, of the anthroposophical conception of the world. In the none too distant future, the possibilities that lie inherent in the beginnings of this stream of Art must all be brought together. To create out of the inner light—out of the forming and shaping power of the light—will at the same time be to create out of the inner source of being, and that, I need not say, can only be the Spiritual. In the portrayal of the sacred History, this stream in Art could not, in the nature of the case, attain the high perfection which Raphael attained, for instance. (Nevertheless, in some respects it attained a perfection of its own—notably in the great artists whose works we have seen again today.) But the Spiritual that pervades the works of this Art is still alive. We must only find the connection of what surges through these works of Art, with the underlying laws of the spiritual life. Then will spiritual Imagination and artistic fancy join together and create a true Imaginative Art.

To some extent, as a first beginning, this has been attempted in our (Goetheanum) Building. For this is, after all, a beginning of new artistic impulses. Naturally, there is something primitive about every new beginning; but we have ventured, none the less, to strive for something new and in a grander style. The time may come when people will understand what we have been striving for in this Building. Then it will be realised why certain occult impulses that came already to expression in this art which we have seen today and in the preceding and contemporary sculpture (examples of which we have also seen) remained to this day unrealised. It will be understood why a certain break was inevitable in the evolution of this art. How remote, after all, is that which emerges in the 19th century in the art of a Kaulbach or a Cornelius from what is living in this art which we have seen today! In Kaulbach, Cornelius, Overbeck and the rest, we see a mere repeat of the Southern element. In this art, on the other hand, we see on all hands a radical rebellion and revolution against the Latin and Roman.

He who is prepared to look more closely, will find still deeper connections. Think of the four pictures by Multscher which we have shown today. They represent, if I may say so, the native Swabian tendencies in the realm of Art. Here we find a certain native talent for a flat surface with the help of light. Anyone who has a feeling for finer, more intimate relationships will perceive a similar quality in the Philosophy of Hegel—likewise a product of the Swabian talent, and in that of Schelling, of whom the same thing may be said, and in the poetry of Holderlin.

This grasp of the flat surface, but working forth from the flat surface with the help of light,—we find it not only in the primitive beginnings of this art; we find it again even in Hegel's Philosophy. Hence Hegel's Philosophy, if I may say so, makes such a ‘flat’ impression on us. It is like a great canvas, like an ideal painting of the world. It works from the surface; and in its turn, after all, it can but be the philosophic beginnings of what will now work its way—not merely into this projection of Reality on the flat—but into the full Reality itself. And this “Reality,” I need not say, can be none other than the Spiritual.

These things are interrelated in all truth. What I have lately been trying to describe to you for other realms of life, with regard to the history and civilisation of Europe, is wonderfully confirmed, in all detail, in the sphere of Art. All that we recognised in the lecture the day before yesterday—the impulses working in the different regions of Europe—you can trace it again in the life of Art. Bring before your minds again the art of the Netherlands which we have seen,—coming from thence into Western Germany. Then consider what we have studied today—as something growing absolutely and originally out of the German spirit itself. For the country of which we have spoken today, the soil on which Lucas Moser and Multscher worked, is, after all, the central region of the German Spirit. It is here that the German Spirit has evolved most originally and most truly. Here, too, Christianity was inwardly absorbed, as though by an inner kinship with the spiritual nature of the German heart and mind. The absorption of Christianity was a far more inward process in these districts; and here the original and elemental gifts of the German nature came forth in the realms of Art. They did not accept what brought Christianity to them from the South in a form already marred by Rome; they tried to recreate Christianity themselves artistically out of their inner heart and feeling.

Such a thing could not emerge in the same measure in the more Northern regions of Germany without the coming of an impulse from the South. We see the same thing once more in the fact that Hegel's philosophy received its quickening from the Southern region, and Schelling's too; while, on the other hand, the philosophy of Kant reveals itself quite evidently as a North German product. The peculiar quality of the Kantian philosophy is not unconnected with the fact that the originally Prussian districts remained Heathen for comparatively long. They were brought over to Christianity at a later period and by a rather external process—a conversion far more external than in the Southern German districts. Prussia, properly speaking, remained Heathen till a very late period.

The things we otherwise recognise in historic evolution—we can find them confirmed in the evolution of Art and in the evolution of the life of Thought. For this very reason I wanted to place Moser and Multscher before you at the close of our considerations for today.

We have often approached the question that must interest us all: Where does it actually come from that relatively few people today still find access to the spiritual knowledge of the world order? This question can be answered from a wide variety of points of view. Today we want to consider a point of view that can then bring us certain thoughts that may be very important to take in, especially in the present time. When we consider man's relationship to the spiritual world, we are naturally interested in various things in this field. One that interests us most is the relationship that a person can have with those human souls who, from his own circle, from the circle with which he is connected karmically, have passed through the gates of death and are now in the spiritual realm. The relationship with the so-called dead will always be of the greatest interest for the relationship of the human being to the spiritual world. This relationship shows particularly how fundamentally different the view of the spiritual world approached man than the view of the physical-sensual world. I have often mentioned that when man confronts the spiritual world, it very often happens that he has to radically break with the ideas he has formed about physical existence. He has to break radically because the things and processes of the spiritual world often have to be grasped by concepts that are the opposite of those of the physical world. But one must not believe that one can come to a knowledge of the spiritual world by imagining, for example, that one simply has to turn the physical world upside down and reverse everything. That is not the case. Each one must be specially experienced, specially investigated. But just when it concerns the relation of man to the so-called dead, there it is indeed the case, at least for the time being, that we must acquire the ordinary concepts opposed to the physical ones.

The spiritual researcher can initially only relate how things are. What he has to say about the relationship to the so-called dead is more or less present in every person in reality, but only remains in the subconscious if the person is not a spiritual researcher. So I will tell you things that are present for all of you. I will speak about relationships to the so-called dead in which you all find yourselves. Only that this relationship is unconscious at first. Spiritual science has to bring these things into consciousness.

Let us assume that someone to whom the spiritual world has revealed itself is confronted with a particular dead person. It turns out that when we address the dead person in speech, we naturally do so not with physical words but in thought. When we turn to the dead person in thinking and speaking, then, if the relationship with the dead person is a real one, the feeling arises: What we ask the dead person or what we tell them comes from them. We are accustomed to imagining things differently in our physical lives: when we ask someone something or tell them something, we hear ourselves speaking and address the words to them. It is the other way around when we enter into a relationship with the dead. If we want to communicate something to him and the relationship is to be a real one, we have the feeling that we ourselves are inwardly at peace. For when what we have to ask or communicate really reaches him, it seems to us, in contemplation, as if the words, and thus the thoughts, come from him to us. He speaks to us. And what he says to us rises from the depths of our own soul as an answer or a message. The relationship that I have just described, which is quite the opposite of the relationship we have with a person in the physical world, is something that people do not easily notice in ordinary life because it is quite different from what they are used to. If it were not so extraordinarily difficult for people to get used to the unusual, many more people would be able to tell of their relationship with the dead.

Take a particular case. You are always in a relationship with some karmically connected dead person. If you want to make this relationship particularly intimate and particularly real, then you would do well to bear in mind an important rule: abstract thoughts and abstract ideas have the least significance for the spiritual world. Anything that remains abstract does not reach across into the spiritual world. So if you only think in abstracto, let us say, of the dead, if you - one can also say it that way - abstractly love the dead, not much comes across. On the other hand, if you strongly link this relationship to something concrete, then it comes across. I mean it like this: you remember, for example, a certain situation in which you were with the dead person when he was still alive. You imagine it very precisely: how he stood or sat opposite you, how you went for a walk with him. You imagine him in very specific situations, you imagine what it was like, what he said, what you said to him, you imagine the tone of his voice and try – which is the most difficult thing – to let the feelings you had for him become present in your soul again. You tie in with specific experiences you had with him. And then, starting from there, you try to say something to the dead person, something you would say if he were still alive in some situation, something you want to ask him, something you want to tell him. And you do this as if he were still there, again very specifically. That is enough to make the connection. In the moment when you have the feeling: I am now telling the dead person something – or: I am now asking the dead person something – the connection will not be made immediately. You have to allow time for this. Time is really something that has a completely different meaning for the spiritual life than it does for physical existence.

Even if you are not a spiritual scientist yourself, you can still establish a connection with the dead through what I have just characterized, so that it is a reality. But time itself will be waiting, so to speak, so that what you want to send to the dead person really does get through to him. For someone who is not consciously initiated, who does not consciously have a relationship with the spiritual world, the situation will usually be such that one moment seems particularly important for establishing this relationship with the dead: that is the moment of falling asleep. The moment of transition from waking to sleeping is at the same time the moment that usually carries what you have directed to the dead during the day, as I have described it, over to the dead. The path that leads you into the spiritual world when you fall asleep also leads what you have directed to the dead into the realm of the dead. Therefore, you must be careful when interpreting dreams. Dreams are very often only reminiscences, memories of daily life, but they do not have to be; they can also be reflections of realities. And in particular, dreams in which the dead are dreamt do not always, but very often, actually originate in connection with real dead people. But people usually believe what appears to them in the dream, what the dead person communicates to them, as being as direct a reality as it appears in the dream. It is not so, but what you wanted to communicate to the dead person when you fell asleep, that is received by the dead person, and what appears in the dream is how he receives it. So just when the dead person communicates something to you in a dream, it is intended to show you that you were able to communicate something to him. There you have what I characterized: You are much more likely to say, when the dead person appears to you in a dream and says something to you, than to believe that you dreamt of the dead person, that what you said to the dead person has really reached the dead person; by dreaming of him, he shows me that what I wanted to communicate to him has reached him.

For a message from the dead to come back – let's say a reply or something similar – the moment of waking up is again of particular importance. What is transmitted from the spiritual realms is what the dead person has to communicate to us living, as we say, at the moment of waking up. And then it comes up from the depths of one's own soul. It is peculiar to people that they do not like to pay attention to what comes up from the depths of their own soul. In our time, people do not have much sense of paying attention to what comes up from the depths of the soul. People prefer to be impressed only by the outside world, to absorb only what is outside; they would prefer to numb themselves to what rises from the depths of the soul. But when someone becomes aware that something is rising from the depths of the soul, a thought, an idea, they take it for inspiration. That satisfies vanity more. We consider all things that arise from the depths to be our inspiration. They may be, but mostly they are not. Most of the time, the things that arise from our soul as inspiration are the answers that the dead give us. For the dead live with us. What seems to come from you is actually what the dead say. It is only important that we interpret the experience in the right way. I have often mentioned what can be said in detail about our relationship with the dead: reading aloud and so on. The more vividly, the more emotionally, the more pictorially one lives in these things, the more meaningful the connection with the dead will be.

It is not meaningless to have these conditions clearly before one's soul. For our time has a great need to allow the truths that relate to such things as I have just mentioned to come closer together. We live in a time in which, for many long ages, the human organism has actually been in decline. We are all much more spiritual, much wiser than it appears because of the decline of our body. The Greek bodies were still better able to reflect what the person was in spirit. Actually, since the middle of the Atlantean period, the human being has been in decline in relation to his body, and in our age it is becoming particularly pronounced that the body can no longer reflect what the person actually is in spirit. Thus it happens almost incredibly often in our age that when we die - I would like to call it that - we are not yet finished with our development. If only people would understand that! We develop throughout our lives, but we can only become aware of this development to the extent that the body reflects it. We are sometimes so wise as people when we die – only our declining body is not able to bring these things out for us – that we could still do very important work for the earth, not only in the spiritual field, but could do great service to the earth through our insights if they could be applied. These services could be applied if people, as I have indicated, were to establish relationships with the dead. The dead still want to have an influence on physical life, but they can only do so indirectly through human souls, when human souls devote themselves to them in the appropriate way.

I have probably already mentioned here that I can actually express what is personally close to me on this very point: I have never believed that I only process in a literary-historical or historical way that which ties in with Goethe in the fields of world view, but I have always believed that I am not only dealing with the Goethe of 1832, but with the Goethe of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century: with the living Goethe. With the Goethe who in 1832 carried much out of the physical world, but which can still have an effect if one is only willing to grasp it. Therefore, what I have written has not been merely literary-historical research, but the communication of what he has told me. However, our so-called contemporary culture, our contemporary education, works radically against what I have just explained.

It is actually necessary that spiritual science always ties in with life and is made fruitful by life. In our time, I would say, there is an ideal that completely opposes what I have just expressed as a peculiarity of our time. This ideal can be characterized something like this: People are striving more and more to believe in life as little as possible. They actually only believe in life until their twenties. This can already be seen in the practical goals that people set. Even if we go to Greece, we see that people believed that when they got older, they would be wiser than when they were young. The older person can know better things about state and city institutions than a young person. This belief has been completely discarded, because the ideal of most people today is to set the age at which one can be elected to city or state parliaments as early as possible, because people only believe in life until their early twenties. But life really requires us to believe in it as a whole, to believe in the development of all life. Just think how our social life would change through moral impulses if we knew once more that all of life is developing around the human being. How young people would relate to the elderly if this were deeply rooted in the human soul! Imagine what a difference it makes to one's consciousness when one says to oneself again and again: Now I am just a young badger of thirty, thirty-five years old, but I will also get older one day, and growing older means hope for me, an expectation: there will be something that will come when I get older that cannot come while I am young. Do you realize how much joy and strength of life a human being has when he has this consciousness throughout his whole life until death and still says to himself before death: Yes, I cannot get so far as to reflect everything that life offers me into my consciousness; I will carry something through death; then people will believe in the dead and let the dead be co-advisors. Just think how foolish one would be considered if one were to express this, which must become a practical principle today, as such. I am quite serious when I say that our parliaments throughout the world would come up with better ideas than they do today if the dead were also consulted, if we were to ask today: What do not only the young badgers of thirty, thirty-five years say about this? – but: What does Goethe, for example, or what do other dead people say who are a hundred and so and so many years old? – This is something that must immediately become a practical reality for the future.

Today there are certain, well, let's say secret societies; they cultivate all kinds of old symbols. They would do better if they understood the times and made themselves into places where the counsel of the dead is explored. This is so infinitely significant! For humanity will not move forward if it does not imbue itself with the awareness that the divine-spiritual is at work in the development of our entire life; we are not finished in our twenties.

I have already drawn your attention to this here: in the early days of human development, it was the case that people felt their whole life developing, purely through their physical and bodily development, including emotionally and spiritually. Just as today people only feel their soul and spiritual life going along with their physical and bodily life during puberty or otherwise only into their twenties, so in ancient times people felt their soul and spiritual life going along with their physical and bodily life up to their forties or fifties. But from the age of thirty-five onwards, if one remains capable of development, precisely those spiritual powers develop, because the body then declines, which the human being does not come to if he does not allow them to sprout through spiritual science. In the past, people revered the elderly because they knew that something was revealed in them that cannot yet be revealed to young people. I have pointed out that humanity is getting younger and younger. If we go back to the original Indian culture, it was the case that at that time people remained capable of development until their fifties. In the original Persian culture, they remained capable of development until their forties, in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture until the second half of their thirties, and in the Greek-Latin culture until their thirty-fifth year. When Greco-Latin culture came to an end in the 15th century, people were only capable of development until the age of twenty-eight; today it is until the age of twenty-seven. Which person is therefore particularly characteristic of the present time, of this present age of materialistic development? You see, that would be a person who completely rejects being inspired by the soul for a spiritual development, who only absorbs what flows into him from outside, what the present itself offers.

Let us imagine, I would like to say, an idealized figure who is particularly characteristic of the present. It would be a personality who does not go through any of our intellectual high schools – because there one takes in the old, there one already stimulates the soul – but who only absorbs what comes to people from outside. A self-made man, a man who makes himself, who also absorbs everything else that one experiences in reality today in terms of feelings, sensations, emotions. So, from the age of seven, eight, nine, he grows up with a certain social aversion to the privileged classes, who does not tip his hat to anyone who has a title or power or the like, who then does not attend a Greek-Latin school, but learns by living life alone. He then enters a profession similar to that of a lawyer, not by studying law, but by going through the practical experience in a law firm and making his way through it; by the time he is twenty-seven, everything has come to him in this way, but not in the extraordinary way of repeating ancient culture, but what the present can bring to him. In the twenty-seventh year he should get himself elected to Parliament. Then he comes before his contemporaries, and as he has developed by himself until then, he presents himself to people, not believing in further development. One can become a minister from Parliament. Development is no longer good in the opinion of our contemporaries, otherwise people say that one contradicts oneself, one said something completely different earlier, and now one contradicts oneself. If you are elected to parliament, you can no longer say anything different. Is there such a person in the present? Do you know a particularly characteristic person who is the most concentrated expression of the present time? That is Lloyd George. You cannot understand the peculiarity of certain contemporaries today if you do not look at these things, do not really look at the peculiarity of the person in this way. Lloyd George is a self-made man. Up to the age of twenty-seven he has only taken in what the present itself offers; but because he has no inner drive of the soul, it stops at twenty-seven. He is then elected to parliament. Lloyd George is in Parliament, sitting there with his arms folded, his eyes turned inwards towards the axes, speaking aptly everywhere, watching for his opponents' weaknesses. Now came the Campbell-Bannerman Ministry. One wonders: what is to be done with Lloyd George? He criticizes everything the Ministry does! What is to be done? Well, he is taken into the ministry; inside he can do less opposition than outside. He becomes a minister. And it turns out that he quickly finds his feet in this situation too, because he is truly a representative of our time. Now, of course, people are asking themselves: Which portfolio should we give Lloyd George? After all, the important thing is that he is a capable person. So they agreed to give him the portfolio he didn't understand: public works. But lo and behold, in three months he had familiarized himself with the subject and achieved great things as a minister in precisely this field, which he had previously understood nothing about.

That is a characteristically modern figure. There are many of them in one sense or another. You only have to ask: what kind of people are they who, by the age of twenty-seven (which is the cut-off point today), have developed to such an extent that they have absorbed everything their environment has to offer, then immediately entered public life and no longer continued their development?

A personality who is somewhat closer to us is Matthias Erzberger. Study his biography and you will find the same if you look at it in this occult way. It is something that arises in the culture of our time in a very remarkable way. But to look a little into the human heart in an occult way is something that must be included in the history of the development of mankind. You see how the culture of our time reveals itself when we penetrate to its core in this way. Now, however, the culture of our time demands of us that we penetrate more deeply than we are accustomed to doing today. But this will only be possible if we become aware that the dead also have their say. Those who are truly characteristic representatives of our time will, of course, reject this in the most eminent sense.

If you want to study a person in whom you see the continuous striving for further development, this unconscious belief in the lasting reality of the divine-human in the human soul until death, it is Goethe. Goethe is much more characteristic in this respect than is usually thought. Goethe wanted to look back on the age, on the years of life in which he took in from the outside world what the outside world brings in, but he wanted to continue his development. He has described his youth in “Poetry and Truth”. It breaks off with his entry into Weimar. Born in 1749, he came to Weimar in 1775, and so he continued his life story, as he wanted to tell it, until the age of twenty-six. He ended it before the age of twenty-seven because he unconsciously knew that this was an especially significant moment. In the age of thirty-five, a person experiences a moment that today he usually sleeps through. It is the moment when the burgeoning, ascending life passes into the descending life in relation to the body. But then the spirit is driven to reveal itself, and to reveal itself more and more.

The thirty-fifth year of life is an important moment in human life. This is really something where man first truly gives birth to his soul in physical life. Ask yourself how this turns out for a person like Goethe, who remained capable of development throughout his entire life. In 1786, after the thirty-fifth year, just the important time from thirty-five to forty-two years, Goethe goes to Italy. If you look more closely at Goethe's biography, you will see what a turnaround this meant in his life. In an essay that will now appear in a small book, I have shown how Goethe actually personally relates to his Faust in “Goethe's Spiritual Nature as Revealed through his Faust and through the Fairy Tale of the Serpent and the Lily”. I have discussed it with a few hints at least. Precisely with regard to this, one is rather confused than enlightened by what is otherwise written. That is not particularly important, which is what people usually point out complacently, that Faust says right at the beginning:

I have now, alas, thoroughly studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
unfortunately! also theology
with great zeal.
There I stand, I poor fool

And I am no wiser than before... People are complacent and point out: He went through all four faculties and didn't get anywhere, doubts all knowledge. Especially the actors often feel that they have to despise the four faculties. But that is not the characteristic, that is not the specifically Goethean, what matters, that is just a prelude. Many people in Goethe's time said that. When the Goethean element in Faust comes into play, things change. It is when Faust picks up the book of Nostradamus and sees for the first time the sign of the macrocosm. This sign shows how man fits into the whole macrocosm. How his spirit is connected with the spirit of the world, his soul with the soul of the world, his physical body with the physical body of the world, all this is depicted in the great picture of the intermingling buckets of the world - planets and suns, with the hierarchies behind them. But Faust turns away with the words: “What a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle!” He sees images, a spectacle. Why? Because at this moment, in a moment, he would like to grasp the secret of the world. But this can only happen in the whole of human life, insofar as the physical world exists, the whole of evolution. Knowledge can only give images. Then he turns to the sign of the microcosm. There he does not have the spirit of the macrocosm, but only the spirit of the earth. The earth spirit gives what history, what is human on earth encompasses.

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!

Faust seeks self-knowledge through the earth spirit, he rejects world knowledge. That is the Goethean, that is where the Goethean begins. Before that, there is a prelude. In his youth, Goethe was indeed at a loss, and could say no more than: Everything that relates to the macrocosm gives me only images, we cannot penetrate it. Only from within can the riddle of life be solved. But this earth spirit, that is, the spirit of self-knowledge, said to him:

You resemble the spirit that you comprehend! Not me!

Faust falls to the ground. What spirit does he resemble? You see, here is an opportunity in 'Faust' to get to know a poet who does not theorize! There is nothing theoretical about it, but you have a poet who presents things in living artistic reality. Listen: “You resemble the spirit you comprehend! Not me!” There is a knock at the door: Wagner enters. That is the answer: you resemble Wagner, not me! - Here, we must change our thinking about this point in Faust. It must not be presented on the stage as it usually is: that Faust is only the ideal-striving man who wants to reach the heights of the spirit, who is absolutely right, and then Wagner limps along. I would, if I had to present it, present it in such a way that Wagner wears the mask of Faust, that both stand there in the same form, because Faust should be pointed out: Look at your own image, you are at a standstill! And what Wagner says is a conclusion in itself; what Faust says is actually all just stuff of longing. But the Faust expounders, and people in general, want to make things as comfortable as possible. People like to quote: “Feeling is everything, name is sound and smoke,” even though Faust coins this for a sixteen-year-old girl. So a teenage girl's wisdom is actually always dressed up as a philosopher's wisdom. Wagner confronts Faust with his self-awareness – as I said, I have expanded on this in the little book – but Faust has nevertheless been touched by the spirit. The earth spirit has appeared to him, he has come close to the spiritual world, he must go further and must make up for what he has neglected up to the age of forty. Faust is forty years old when he appears at the beginning of the poem. Yes, he must also make up for what he did not go through: the Bible. He begins a kind of retrospective view of the missed youth. Then another self-knowledge approaches him: Mephisto. After the self-knowledge through Wagner, another self-knowledge.

But now something strange happened. In the nineties, in 1797, Schiller became very urgent: Goethe was to continue his “Faust”. In 1797 Goethe was forty-eight years old. Another important point in time. Seven times seven is forty-nine; that is the point in time when a person comes out of the special development of the spirit self and into the spirit of life. Schiller urged him on. People have made it easy for themselves with the explanation. Minor, who wrote an interesting book about Goethe, says: Goethe is gripped by age, he is no longer really capable of poetry. But just think, if that were true, a “Faust” could never be written! It would be impossible to depict the life of a human being in old age, and Faust was indeed in old age! Goethe is now approaching the age at which the ancient Indians said: Now man enters the age when he can ascend into the realm of the fathers, can gradually ascend into the deeper secrets of spiritual life. - That is when Goethe encounters his Mephisto in a remarkable way.

You know that when one tries to get to know the powers that oppose man, there are two, Ahriman and Lucifer. Goethe has confounded the two, thrown them together. He did not feel this earlier, and so Mephisto has become a contradictory figure. You only need to consider a few aspects to see that Mephisto is not a unified figure: Goethe combined Lucifer and Ahriman. He realized this in 1797, which is why it became so difficult for him to continue Faust. The humanities had not yet reached the point where man's opponent could be split into two opponents; Goethe stopped at one. You can see Goethe's nature when you consider that he should have actually created two figures but threw them together into one. Goethe really went through something inwardly in that he felt Mephisto was a contradictory figure. That “Faust” was created after all and stands tall as a piece of poetry can, of course, be attributed to Goethe's great poetic power. But this, in turn, is something that Goethe found surging within him from the unconscious. You see, a person can be capable of development; in his soul, he can feel in a very elementary way that which works together with the spirit through the whole of life in us, not just into our twenties.

What you know as the “Prologue in Heaven” was not written by Goethe until 1798. What happened in Faust? He did not say it, but it is in his soul: he let Faust reach for the book again, and now he is face to face with the spirit! Now it is no longer a play. Here the spirits are weaving the spheres. Here Faust stands in the midst of the struggle between good and evil in the macrocosm. One should not view Faust from beginning to end in such a way that one sees everything as if it were the same. Goethe broke with the view of his youth and introduced Faust more and more into the spirit of the macrocosm. I just wanted to show you how regularly this developing Goethe life is shaped. In it one can show how the human developmental periods go from seven to seven years until death. One must lift the subconscious more and more into consciousness, according to the meaning and spirit of the present. There is much talk about the subconscious, but it is not viewed in the right way, not viewed deeply enough.

Today there is something called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. This is, as it were, brought to bear on the subconscious spiritual and soul life in the human being, but with inadequate means; for the adequate means are the spiritual-scientific ones. The classic example, which psychoanalysts cite over and over again, shows precisely how people work with inadequate means. Let us introduce an example from the soul that actually led to the development of psychoanalysis: there is a woman who knows a man. The man is married; she knows him in a way that may have been all right for the husband, but not for the husband's wife. Lo and behold, the husband's wife falls ill for various reasons, one of which may have been this lady herself. She becomes nervous. These days, people get nervous, neurasthenic, so there's no need to be surprised. She has to go to a spa for several months. She is supposed to leave one evening, but before that, supper is organized – a souper, as they say in German – to which the lady, who is well acquainted with the man and with the whole family, is also invited. The supper goes quite well. Then the lady of the house has to go to the train. The company also gradually disperses, as they say. A group of the party is walking on the street with this lady, who is well acquainted with the gentleman of the house. Now, as it happens here and there, not only late at night, people no longer walk on the sidewalk, but in the middle of the street. But lo and behold, a cab, not a car, but a cab, turns the corner, and that lady, who is a friend of the gentleman of the house, does not move aside like the others onto the sidewalk, but she runs in front of the horses. The driver curses, cracks the whip; but she runs in front of the horses, runs and runs until they come to a bridge. Then she has an idea: she must save herself. It is a dangerous situation. So she saves herself by jumping into the water. She is pulled out and saved, and society carries her into the house from which she has just come: into the home of the master of the house. She stays there for the night. The others go home again. And something has been achieved, which I will not characterize further now. The psychoanalyst now studies this case for hidden psychological motives: perhaps the lady has gone through something special with horses in the last seven or eight years, which resounds again from the soul, and at that moment she loses consciousness, it only comes up through the fear of horses. So one searches for “hidden provinces of the soul”. But that is not the truth. The truth is this: there is a subconscious in the soul of a person that can be smarter and more sophisticated than the conscious mind. This lady was a very decent lady, but she was in love with the master of the house. Her conscious mind would not have admitted: I want to stay in this house – but the subconscious does. It considers very carefully: If I run in front of the horses and jump into the water, then they will take me back! – That is what happened. In her conscious mind, the lady would never admit this, but in her subconscious she goes through these things, that is where it is present. Man carries within himself this subconscious, which is much wiser, much more cunning, for good or ill, than the conscious mind. As I said, the present time is becoming somewhat aware of this subconscious, but it seeks it with inadequate means. It must be clear that it can only be found by adequate means through spiritual science if one wants to show that, alongside the ego, which lives through the body, the eternal spiritual lives in us, which is not just an angel and can therefore also be refined, depending on its karma. What this subconscious always is in its revelation through man must be studied in a spiritual scientific way. We must realize that we have to get to know the truth, reality. Today the subconscious is knocking at the consciousness, and we can no longer cope in life if we ignore this, if we do not also follow with our consciousness the paths that the subconscious takes. Many people do not want that, so they do not want to approach spiritual science.

So on the one hand there are certain reasons for not being able to understand spiritual science: people do not want to understand that things are completely reversed when it comes to the dead. One must completely change one's way of thinking. While in ordinary life we are accustomed to our words coming out of our mouths when we speak or ask something, in our intercourse with the dead it is the case that what we say comes out of his soul, what he says comes up out of our own inner being. This is a natural thing.

The other is the antipathy that people have towards the spirit because they do not like to admit how this spiritual strikes at the door of consciousness. In many places one finds this spirit knocking at the door of consciousness. In people who, for example, have been somewhat abnormal in their lives, a loosening of the spiritual and mental in the physical and bodily today results in the subconscious making a more correct impact on the conscious than in those who have nothing loosened in them. It is by no means certain that relaxation should be aimed at, truly not, but in some people something is relaxed in a natural way, as for example in Otto Weininger. He was truly a talented person; he had completed his doctorate at the beginning of the 1920s, then formed the book “Sex and Character” out of the doctoral dissertation, which is quite amateurish and even trivial in many respects, but is nevertheless a remarkable phenomenon. Then he took a trip to Italy, kept a diary during which something quite remarkable happened. Certain spiritual-scientific insights are expressed as a caricature. This relaxed spiritual-soul-like already sees many things, but it caricatures them! The moral is also usually somewhat tainted. But Weininger was a genius. He then rented a room in the Beethoven House in his twenty-third year and shot himself inside. From this you can see that he was a very abnormal person. But I just want to mention: if you read his last book, you will also find a strange passage among all the other things. There he says: Why does man not remember his life before birth? Because the soul has brought itself so low that it wants to submerge itself in unconsciousness with regard to the previous life! - I mention this only - and I could multiply the example a thousandfold - to show: There are many people who are very close to spiritual science but cannot find it because the present time does not want to let people approach spiritual science at all. I mention this as an example because it can certainly be seen: Weininger comes to it by loosening the spiritual and soul, as a matter of course, to express that the human being connects with the physical and bodily. He expresses it as a matter of course, as many other people still do today, only in a very shamefaced way. But this is a fundamental demand of our time: that people really pluck up the courage, educate themselves in strength, to face the spiritual world in its concrete manifestations.

And one such concrete manifestation is precisely the one I particularly wanted to talk to you about: that people allow the dead to have a say; that people's social lives are again determined by feeling the differences between people and people according to age, but also by the fact that something becomes different, that people believe in their entire human life. God does not only reveal Himself up to the age of twenty. In the past He revealed Himself physically, but now He must be felt through spiritual science. But the human being must believe in the gifts of the divine spiritual world. Throughout his entire life he must have the encouraging, sustaining feeling that When I am fifteen years older, I will bring to the Divine-Spiritual what it can take up differently than before. Imagine how one can live into the future when one is so expectant! How this pours a different soul-spiritual aura over our entire social life! It must be known that people will need this aura as they develop towards the future. This is of infinite importance. Try to feel how many things must change! We live in an age in which many, many things must change. Above all, it must be so that certain things are no longer seen in a hypocritical way, but are seen in reality. It is of no use to tell lies to oneself about certain things. And I would like to discuss one such self-lie.

How many people are there today who say: I do not look up to the various hierarchies, to angels, archangels and so on, but I look up to “my God”. And how many continue to declaim what great progress it is that humanity has come to the one God, to monotheism. But one must ask the question: To whom do people actually turn when they seek to enter into a concrete relationship with the spiritual world and speak of “their God” in doing so? Whether one is Catholic or Protestant, when one speaks of one's God, one can only speak of that which really enters one's consciousness. This can only be one of two things: either it is the one angel that protects him, whom man then calls God, who is no higher god than an angel – and since every human being has an angel whose task it is to protect him, we are in a pluralism – or he means his own ego. But man is mistaken in that he has the same name for it, because everyone calls their particular angel by the same name “God”. In contrast to this, one should consider one thing, which is actually very instructive. There is a word whose origin people know nothing about, despite all their research: that is the word “God”. That is interesting and makes one think! Look it up in the various dictionaries in which the words are treated linguistically and philologically: there is complete uncertainty about the word “God”. People do not know what they are actually designating with God. And in our time, people either mean their angel, or, by speaking of their God, they become, so to speak, unconscious followers of our teaching: they speak namely of their own ego, as it has developed since the last death until this birth. That is the concrete thing they call God: either the angel that protects them intervenes – it is only the angel, they call it God – or it is only the individual ego. Whether one reinterprets this or not, it does not matter: it is the egoistic religious confession that is in many souls today, but one does not want to admit it to oneself. Only spiritual science will make people aware of it. Then people will hate spiritual science and will fight it more and more because it is so convenient for people to call their closest neighbor, who stands above them in the hierarchical order, their god. When people talk about God today, they mean either their own ego or the angel.

One can only get beyond such a view by entering into the concrete spiritual-scientific relationship. This is one of the points about which people will have to become more and more enlightened as the future approaches. And there must be truth among people. This will have to be a particular demand in the future, and truth is not very widespread in the present, not at all widespread. Particularly in learned circles, one sometimes encounters very strange ideas about what truth is. You will recall from my book 'Puzzles of the Soul' (if I may refer to it briefly) the peculiar way in which the remarkable man Max Dessoir dealt with the truth. What one reads in the last issue of the Kant journal is truly heartbreaking! I may mention this in particular because anthroposophy is not mentioned there; so this essay does not hurt in relation to its own cause. But in this “scholarly” journal one finds an essay that is not only the most banal in the anthroposophical field, but also, through and through, the most amateurish for anyone who understands the matter. But it is taken seriously.

You know from my book how one has no choice but to point out to Dessoir, in a schoolmasterly manner, that he has not read my books but distorts everything possible. I would like to mention just one of the most stupid distortions: Dessoir states in the first edition of his book 'Beyond the Soul' that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' was my first work. Now, this 'Philosophy of Freedom' was published in 1894, ten years after my first work; but he is so superficial about everything that he does not get it right. So the 'Philosophy of Freedom' was my first work. I also dared to say this about it among more important things to show him his nature. A second edition is being published. In the preface, he asserts all kinds of things that are precisely such that one can see from them what kind of person this university professor is. But now he has said in the first edition that the Philosophy of Freedom is my first literary work; now he says that he did not mean that, but that it is my “theosophical first work”. If you now take this together with the way in which the Philosophy of Freedom is again taken by others as something that would be denied by my “theosophy”: you will see a real quagmire! But it is very easy to see into the present through such things, and it is very important to get complete enlightenment about these matters. And this is possible only if one unreservedly arms oneself with the weapons of spiritual science.

Historical observation, too, will have to become something quite different under the influence of spiritual science than it has been up to now, because history, for the most part, is actually nothing other than a fable convenue, as it is offered. Where one really gets to the facts, one is led into something quite different from what popular history presents.

I will give you one example. You will see shortly what my point is in this consideration. We know that the fourth post-Atlantic period ended with the 15th century. That is the Greco-Latin period; in its last stages it extends into the 15th century. In 1413, the fifth post-Atlantic period begins, and a mighty upheaval occurs. If we bear this in mind, we may perhaps ask ourselves: how did this Roman Empire, into which everything that is Greek-Latin culture was finally drawn, come to its downfall? There are various causes, but one of the important ones is the following: the Romans waged great wars; these wars gradually expanded the territory beyond its borders. Many new border peoples emerged. This had a very specific consequence. Anyone who studies the time of the first Christian centuries will find that the peculiar nature of the Roman Empire, in its administration and internal social structure, with the border peoples and towards the Orient, has resulted in a continuous outflow of metal money from the Roman Empire to the Orient. And this is one of the most important events in the second, third and fourth centuries A.D., when the Roman Empire was gradually coming to an end: that metal money flows over to the neighboring peoples in the Orient. And the Roman Empire, despite having a complicated military administration, is becoming increasingly poorer in gold and money. This is the external expression, the image of the internal processes. I mention this external picture, the impoverishment of the Roman Empire in gold and money, because it is the external expression of the inner mood of the soul. What arose out of this inner mood of the soul? Of course, this inner mood has a definite significance in the whole sense of world-historical events. Something had to come out of this impoverishment of the Romans in metallic money. And what came of it? Individualism arose, which is the characteristic feature of our age. There was much talk of the art of making gold. How did this art come about? Because Europe became materially poor in gold, this external physical longing for making gold arose until America was discovered and gold came from there. These great connections must be grasped. What one comes to know by really studying the fall of the Roman Empire had an effect all the way into alchemy and thereby into the development of human souls: poverty of gold through the expansion of the social structure beyond the peripheral peoples into the Orient.

We now live in a time when people have to admit to themselves: the time of instinctive living is over. We cannot achieve social structures if we are unable to invigorate social thinking with thoughts that come from an understanding of the spiritual world. That is why the social sciences are so sterile and why humanity has brought itself into this catastrophic present, in which social structures create chaos throughout the world because people cannot let spiritual scientific thoughts flow into community life. These thoughts should flow from the impulses of human development into social thinking. There are spiritual causes for this catastrophic present. This is the rebellion of people against the influx of the spirit. That is the true origin of the present catastrophe. For people everywhere turn against the spirit that wants to come in.

I will give you an example that you might find characteristic. Let us suppose that someone is thinking today about the different world views that exist and, purely superficially, classifies them as: Catholicism, Protestantism, socialism, naturalism and so on. Take the cycle that I once gave in Berlin, where I built the world views more on inner categories, on the number twelve and on the number seven. You really do get seven world views: Gnosticism, Logism, Voluntarism, Empiricism, Mysticism, Transcendentalism, Occultism. Of course, anyone who just picks them up will not call them by these names. And yet the music of the spheres reigns everywhere! So just imagine someone who is nothing more than a materialistic observer, who reads the world views as they are accessible to him. How many would he have to find? He would have to find seven. He may call them something else, depending on how they present themselves externally, but they must appear in seven links. Read the current issue of the “Preußische Jahrbücher”. In the first essay you will find an observation according to which a person wanted to register the worldviews as they currently exist. He lists them. How many does he find? Seven: Catholicism, Protestantism, rationalism, humanism, idealism, socialism and personal individualism. There are indeed seven. The categories are only shifted, but one cannot find more than seven. There you have an example of how what we find as a sense of development overlaps with ordinary external development. People do not want to admit this, but it is necessary to acknowledge it in the present; that we should not ignore these things, but have the courage to face them.

What is actually happening in the present? In ancient times, in the third post-Atlantic cultural period, there was a far-reaching impulse from east to west, across the entire globe, an impulse that did not come merely from material life, as do today's impulses, but from the spiritual. In those days, spiritual impulses also intervened in social life. A certain impulse developed from the East to the West. It can be characterized by saying that some people at that time were striving to pass on to others what they had obtained from the spiritual world as enlightenment, what came to them more or less through their age or through initiation from good or bad mysteries; they wanted to impose what they had on others. In those days there was an impulse that went from the Orient to the West: a few spiritual powers in the sense of spreading progress to humanity, filling the earth with a few spiritual maxims, with powers that came from the fading mysteries. Even then, social life was based on this. It was in the third post-Atlantic period; historically, little is recorded. But the repetition of what happened then is happening now. Imagine what spread in those days as the urge from east to west, implemented purely materially in the fifth post-Atlantic period: in those days it was the atavistic-spiritual forces that brought about a social structure in which strong spiritual impulses were to be given to people; these were to be brought into humanity. Now imagine the opposite: some people want to conquer the material world of the earth of their own accord, to take it away from other people. At that time, the aim was to give spiritually, and that is precisely what caused the catastrophes that befell the Earth so many years after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the process, the Roman Empire fell. At that time, spiritual catastrophes befell the Earth, culminating in the fact that certain peoples from the East wanted to flood the Earth's countries with individual maxims. The same is now taking effect, in that the British-American people want to take the earth away from people. That is behind the whole thing. And it is exactly the same: it appears as a mirror image. What is happening in the present can only be understood by looking at the real course of human development, by replacing what is taught as history with the real history. For it is necessary that people be placed in full awareness in what is really happening, in the direction of the future. Today's economic life has long been a chaos, and this is how the catastrophe developed. Now you have two things that are having an effect. From west to east: the mirror image; from east to west: what has become old. There you still have the remnants of the old spiritual outlook of the entire Asian Orient, what it did to spread the spiritual and push the soul into the background. If you study the present catastrophe, you have a war of souls from the east, with souls fighting to assert the oriental-Slavic concepts; and from the west, a purely material war for sales territories. These things can only be understood if they are viewed from the great perspective of human development. But it would be necessary to be able to speak freely about these things for once. People should be allowed to be enlightened about what it actually is that they live in. This is of tremendous importance. What must stop, however, is people literally oversleeping what is happening. The most important things can happen without people being able to understand them. They can no longer grasp their significance because at present one can only do so if one is able to illuminate them with the light of spiritual-scientific knowledge. They cannot be illuminated in any other way.

But what is the attitude of the most learned people today towards spiritual-scientific knowledge? Yes, here we have a good example. In various places I have repeatedly mentioned the interesting fact that a book was written by a Haeckel student, Oscar Hertwig, an excellent book: “The Origin of Organisms, a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance.” In it, Oscar Hertwig pointed out the various downsides of Darwinism. I have praised this book highly. But in our spiritual scientific movement you will have to get used to there being no absolute authority. For a short time ago another book appeared by the same Oscar Hertwig: 'In Defense of Ethical, Social and Political Darwinism'. Now you must not say: Well, Steiner praised Hertwig, so we will now also study his latest book with this in mind, because then you will be in for a disappointment. The disappointment that I have to say: While the one book is an excellent book, this latest book is the most amateurish, most nonsensical thing one can possibly say about the chapters in question. If you just want to say: Steiner praised it, so we can accept it as gospel in turn, then you can never be sure that I will not be forced to give the opposite rating to something that is created on the same ground. Blind faith must not flourish in our ranks, only our own observations and our own opinions. But where does that come from? It stems from the fact that Daf Hertwig is an excellent naturalist; but the concepts of natural science must not be introduced into social life. If they are, then one finds everywhere only the dead, the dying of history, as for example with Gibbon, who wrote the excellent history of the decline of the Roman Empire. That is one secret – I have already presented this too – of historical development, that if you want to observe this historical development with the concepts that apply in science, you will never find that which grows and sprouts, but only that which turns into a corpse. You only encounter signs of decay in historical life if you want to use the concepts that are well applicable in science. People have suspected this from time to time. That is why Treitschke said that the driving forces in history are the passions and follies of men. It is not so. There are unconscious forces that descend in historical becoming. Therefore it is true that if you want to introduce decay into public life, and thus also into practical life, then you put scholars and theorists into parliaments. These people will concoct nothing but laws that lead to decadent phenomena, because with what is considered scientific today, only the decadent phenomena in history can be found. These things must enter into the consciousness of the people. This is far more necessary than most people realize, and it must be grasped if one is honest and sincere about what is to lead humanity out of the present catastrophic time. It is no longer acceptable to continue to oversleep the important events that unconsciously occur in human life, which people will not be able to cope with through their consciousness if they do not illuminate them with spiritual science. But the point is to grasp life in its reality, to really look into the true nature of life.

Here we must take into account the interaction of these three impulses: the normal human, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. For we must not treat these things in such a way that we say: I want to be a normal human being, and so I avoid everything Ahrimanic, everything Luciferic! Those who want to be really good and avoid everything that is Ahrimanic or Luciferic will flounder all the more into the Luciferic on one side and into the Ahrimanic on the other.

The point is not to avoid things, but to bring the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic into balance. The Luciferic is more characteristic of youth, the Ahrimanic of the age that is passing away. The Luciferic is more characteristic of woman, the Ahrimanic of man. When we look into the future, we look mainly into the Ahrimanic; when we look into the past, into that which is still to germinate, we look mainly into the Luciferic. If we look at the British Empire, we look into an Ahrimanic realm; in the case of oriental state institutions, we look into a Luciferic realm. The point is that we find these forces interfering with human life everywhere. We must not be blind to these things.

Take just one example: in the entire social structure of human life, the Luciferic has sometimes played a highly disastrous role because people did not know how to channel it into a right current, because they allowed the scales of Lucifer to swing too far. That is why Luciferic impulses have played a major role in the way the social structure has developed. Even at school, young children are accustomed to 'being first', 'being second', 'being third'. Think of the Luciferian ambition that has been at work when people want to be first! Then there are the titles and medals and everything that goes with them! Imagine how the social structure has been built up by the Luciferian! But this time is coming to an end; that too would be something to be recognized! The time is coming to an end, the Luciferic is dwindling more and more to its shadowy areas. That too would be a good thing if people were a little more vigilant with regard to the dwindling of the Luciferic - for the time being, for the near future. But they are unwary of something that is coming in again in a different way to do harm. This is: an Ahrimanic takes the place of the Luciferic. The slogan has been dropped: Free rein to the brave! - I have already said: What use is it to say “Free rein to the brave” and then still consider the nephew to be the bravest! No, it depends on looking into the concrete, looking into the real. But that is not what I mean now. What I do mean is that an entire Ahrimanic system is emerging, with very dangerous side effects. This Ahrimanic system is somewhat connected with the buzzword that is now used in the field of education and is called the gifted test. This gifted test is praised everywhere. People are possessed of it in a purely devilish way when they talk about it. From a number of hundred gifted boys and girls who have particularly good grades, the most gifted are to be selected, the best in terms of intellectuality, power of concentration, memory and so on. And so they are tested using the latest psychological methods. For example, intelligence is tested in a very peculiar way in experimental psychology. Three terms are presented to the children: murderer, mirror, rescue. Now they are supposed to find the connection through their intelligence. The one who merely finds the connection: the murderer sees himself in the mirror like the other people – he is merely stupid. But the one who finds the “most obvious” connection: the person looks in a mirror, sees the murderer who is just creeping up on him, and can save himself - that person is normal. A “gifted” person would be the one who says, for example, that the murderer creeps up to the mirror, sees his own face in the mirror, is frightened and desists from murder. Particularly clever would be the one who would say something like this: Near the one whose life is to be ended by the murderer, there is a mirror; in the darkness, the murderer bumps into the mirror, makes a sound and then desists from the murder. That is even cleverer! This is how you test cleverness! This is supposed to be something particularly great, whereas it is nothing more than the transfer of a purely Ahrimanic method, which applies to machines, to humans. The most terrible thing will come out of the mechanization of human life if one wants to find out about giftedness in this way. People need only reflect on what they themselves assumed until recently. I could show you the evidence of how nonsensically people talk when they carry out such tests. Take a whole series of people whom those people themselves also regard as important, very important people, who are now the spiritual heirs of the gifted test, let us say, for example, Helmholtz, the physicist, and others. If all of them had been tested using the gifted test method, many would have been shown to be untalented, including Helmholtz, for example. These things must all be taken much more seriously, because the salvation of the future depends on them. Nothing can be left to chance in this area. Today, events themselves teach an enormous amount.

Take the following: Imagine the period from 1930 to 1940. There could be certain people then in their forties or early fifties. Imagine you had had this thought in 1913, you would have thought: Of those living in 1913, a certain number will still be alive in 1930 and will be in leading positions; the social structure, and even the outer physical life in various areas of the earth, will depend on them. You can roughly imagine how things would have gone from 1930 to 1940 if the eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, the current young people, had then turned forty. Now take another thought and ask yourself: How many of those who would have done what you assumed for 1930 have now fallen on the battlefields and will no longer be able to physically participate in the management of physical earthly affairs? Others will take part! Imagine these two pictures side by side: the one picture: if this catastrophe of war had not occurred, then what would have been formed from the antecedents would have been in accordance with how you would have imagined the future at that time. And now the other picture that you must now imagine: How perhaps all those who could have had the most important positions have fallen on the battlefields! If you paint such a picture for yourself, you will come to a very tangible concept of the Maja, of the great deception of the outer physical plane. Is this physical plane in 1930 as it should have been if all those who were young in 1913 had lived? It would have become quite different. To think through such things is not without significance. But only spiritual science, by thinking through such things, can offer the possibility in the right sense of thinking realistically in the real world as well. Spiritual science leads you to such concepts that break away from the merely physical brain. Our present concepts are mainly bound to the physical brain, which is why the thinking of the present has a certain quality. It is precisely because the concepts of natural science, which are most closely bound to the brain, dominate the present, that our thinking in the present has a special quality: narrow-mindedness, limitation. For that is the most limited thinking, which is preferably bound to our brain. Spiritual science must tear thinking away from the brain, must set thoughts in motion. Today we have tried to present a whole series of thoughts before our soul, thoughts that are easy to move, that broaden the horizon.

But not only the horizon of thought must become broader, but also the horizon of feeling. How people became philistine because their thoughts were tied primarily to physical life! Besides narrow-mindedness, philistinism is the most important characteristic of our age. Narrow-mindedness! Men are interested in the narrowest circle. Spiritual science must lead men out again into the vastness of the universe, must unfold before them great fields of happenings, because the present can only be understood from them. Spiritual science must lead men out of narrow-mindedness. It must fight against narrow-mindedness and philistinism.

The will, too, has gradually acquired certain qualities. As a result of a certain social structure having grown out of materialistic culture, people have become unskillful. Ineptitude has arisen! People are pigeonholed into very specific subjects and actually know nothing but their subject, and are highly inept with regard to everything else. Today one meets men who, because they have not become tailors, cannot sew on a button. But spiritual science has the peculiarity of developing such concepts that are alive, that pass into the limbs, that also make man more skillful. The remedy for narrow-mindedness, for philistinism, for clumsiness is spiritual science. We need an age that leads people out of narrow-mindedness, out of narrow-mindedness, out of clumsiness, into wide horizons, into broad-mindedness, into skill. Spiritual science must be taken as full of life and with a sense of life. If we just look at the simplest concepts from spiritual science in relation to our time, we will see that the misfortune, suffering and pain of our time, which have not yet reached their peak, are intimately connected with humanity's resistance to the spirit. People have cut themselves off from the divine spiritual life, people must find the connection again with the divine spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to bring before your soul this time. Do you get more and more the feeling: the signs of the times speak clearly and audibly! But only those who have learned to read them with the means of spiritual science will find what they speak. No matter how far one goes, one can never find enough spiritual science as a vigorous and serious matter. One must always go further and further in penetrating life through that which spiritual science gives. People in our time have little courage to think through life through the forces that come from the spirit. This must be learned; that is what is mainly missing. If it is not learned, if it continues to be lacking, then what has befallen humanity as a catastrophe will last a long, long time. Therefore, one can say that one should seek a way out of the conflict of the present with spiritual science. Please take it very seriously and very deeply: then what we wanted to speak to each other about at this meeting will bear the right fruit in your hearts, in your souls.

Dear attendees! Every year I have had the privilege of speaking here in this city about topics in spiritual science. Our friends in the spiritual science movement here were of the opinion that this should also be done in these fateful days. Now it will seem understandable that these days of ours require a very special kind of consideration, even for those striving in spiritual science. After all, all our feelings and emotions are intimately connected with what is happening in the East and the West in these fateful days. We must look with heartfelt sympathy at those who are faithfully obeying the demands of duty, who are giving their all, body and soul, for what has become so deeply embedded in the course of European and indeed human development. In all our thoughts, in all our reflections, there must be a connection to the great arena in which decisions are not made and judgments are not passed in words, in concepts and ideas, but where decisions are made and judgments are passed through deeds, through life, through blood, through death.

What I would like to consider before you this evening, dear attendees, is said to be so connected with the great events of the times that the question is asked, as it were, from these events themselves: What impulses, what forces, what powers in the course of human development have led, could lead to the fact that the bearers of Central European culture, that the bearers of Central European spiritual life are now enclosed as in a mighty, enlarged fortress on all sides, have to defend themselves on all sides; not only have to defend themselves, but are burdened from all sides with all possible insults, yes, defamations. Perhaps spiritual scientific conceptions, perhaps perceptions that arise from spiritual scientific feeling, are suitable for characterizing, at least in some strokes, the larger connections that have led to our fate-shaking events in the world's development up to our time.

Among the things that the materialistic age has particularly laughed at can be mentioned the idea, the concept of the folk soul, which I tried to present in my book “Theosophy”. For the spiritual scientist, this folk soul is not just an abstract, empty concept, not just an abstract summary of the characteristics of some people. This folk soul is a living, real thing.

For spiritual science – as has often been emphasized here – the concept of reality, and also the concept of personal and individual reality, does not end with the visible. Behind the visible, everywhere, the invisible reigns. If we approach nature spiritually, then, behind what nature reveals to us externally, we find spiritual entities that are effective not only for a superstitious, traditional worldview, but for real spiritual scientific research. Behind all that we ourselves are, behind all that develops in us between birth and death, there reigns that eternal, immortal self, which, however, presents itself to man in forms and entities that he ignores in everyday life. The supersensible self rules in us, passing from birth to birth and from death to death on earth. And in all historical development, invisible, supersensible, but as real as the external beings of the animal and plant world, there are real, personal, individual beings. The spiritual researcher speaks of such real, ruling spiritual beings when he speaks of the soul of a nation. And he tries to grasp the nature of these folk souls on the basis of his knowledge; he tries to penetrate into what these folk souls are, in order to gain an understanding from this penetration of how the folk souls prevail in the folk souls, in the feelings and impulses of the folk souls, and how the folk souls relate to each other through this rule.

First of all, I would like to hint at how the spiritual researcher arrives at speaking of such higher spiritual beings, including in the sense of folk souls, which would be far too involved to explain in detail. In our material life, we relate to the things of the external world, to the things of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms; we look at what is around us within the horizon of these kingdoms; we form ideas and thoughts about them and absorb them. We know that our soul lives within us, and when we form thoughts, images and ideas, then these thoughts, images and ideas relate to beings outside of us.

What we can draw from the beings, we acquire, so to speak; we then carry this further into ourselves from the mineral, animal and plant world that extends around our senses. We form images, thoughts and ideas about the world that is below us as human beings. Spiritual research shows us – I can only hint at this today with a comparison; listeners who have heard me here often know that this is not just a comparison but a result of spiritual research – spiritual research shows us how we as human souls relate to external reality. Thus, in the invisible, there is a spiritual world above us; and what the things of the mineral, animal and plant worlds are for us, we ourselves are as souls for a spiritual world. We can say comparatively: just as the things of the sensory world become thoughts for us, so we become thoughts, so we become perceptions and ideas for the spiritual world. And the folk soul is one of the beings in the spiritual world that are closest to us. And just as we humans can relate to the external world by simply surrendering ourselves to it with our senses, giving it little thought and rarely rising to the realm of the ideal, so the folk soul can relate to the individual people of a nation by living itself out completely in the individuals, entirely [with its will impulses] – and with the folk soul it depends on will impulses – that it expresses itself entirely in the individuals, that this folk soul rises little into a spiritual realm, but rather submerges more and leads a life in the folk individuals themselves. From a spiritual-scientific point of view, we find such folk souls more among the western peoples of Europe. We find that folk souls there rise little into a spiritual realm; on the other hand, we find that they intervene decisively, tyrannically and dogmatically in the individual soul life of the members of the Western European peoples.

Another thing is conceivable and is actually in the character of the folk souls. This can be compared to when a person is more of a dreamer, when he has little eyes and little sense for the outer world; when things pass by him unnoticed, as it were, and he lives more in his own ideas. The behavior of the individual human soul towards external things can be compared to the Russian folk soul. It hovers, as it were, nebulously over the individual members of the people, does not enter into the individualities of the people; cares little about them; is only loosely connected with them.

Then there are people, and we have a representative person of this kind in the history of the development of Central Europe, who on the one hand lovingly contemplates the outside world with all his senses, but then again does not get stuck in this outside world, but develops a full ideal, spiritual-soul life, and with this spiritual-soul life plunges into what the senses around him offer and reveal. In the most eminent sense, Goethe is a representative of this kind of mind. Goethe, whose way of thinking has been called “a concrete thinking” by an important psychologist of his time, because this remarkable Goethe soul connects lovingly with everything outside through the senses, and at the same time rises so strongly to ideas. Schiller could not quite understand this in a conversation he had with Goethe, so that Goethe had to claim that he saw his ideas with his eyes. His intellectual and spiritual life was so highly developed, as was his life of the senses and outer life. The German national soul is a type of national soul that can be compared with this disposition of the individual human soul. The German national soul has proven itself as such over the centuries and millennia of German development in Central Europe.

This German national soul appears to us, on the one hand, as intimately and intimately concerned with the individual human being. On the other hand, we see how it was able to withdraw into the spiritual realms in order to open up new sources of spiritual life there, and then to go down again to the individual human beings in the German nation. A folk soul that lives in the spiritual and in the individual at the same time, that appears to us in the succession of time as if it were coming down among the people; [it appears as if it were coming down rhythmically], we see it in the decisions in which our ancestors assert themselves as opponents of the Roman development. We see how this folk soul, even then, was permeating the individual human personalities in Central Europe, how it imbued them with strength so that they could oppose in a very specific way what was intruding on them as Romanism. We then find how this folk soul withdraws, then breaks out again, submerging itself in the individual personalities, even producing a supreme one at the time of Walther von der Vogelweide [Wolfram von Eschenbach]. We find, as later when Germany was crushed from left and right, from north and south, during the Thirty Years War, this national soul gathers strength in the unseen, and then in a heyday of German spiritual development at the turn of the eighteenth, nineteenth century, it in turn submerges into the individuals.

If we observe history in its rhythmic course, we see it as alternating between the submergence of the national soul in the individualities and a return to the spiritual. And it is from this return to the spiritual that the rejuvenating forces of German development come.

If we consider the fundamental feature of this familiarity on the one hand and the soaring flight on the other of the German national soul, we understand how, within the development of German culture, what is produced as the highest , what reaches to the heights of art and intellectual life, is rooted in the simplest impulses, in the primitive of the national soul; how it was unthinkable in Germany from time immemorial that Germany's high culture was not at the same time popular culture.

And so, in these fateful times, I would like to invoke two personalities in their last moments, their dying moments, so to speak, and characterize something.

How did that which Schiller was able to be for his people settle into German hearts and minds? What worked in Schiller's mind itself? The rejuvenating powers of the German national soul! He knew himself connected to these deeper powers of the German national soul. Through one of his friends, Heinrich Voß, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, we are led into Schiller's death chamber, as it were, and get to know Schiller's last days and last moments. There we get to know him, this Schiller, as he, so to speak, already died physically in his last days, but as he, gathering all the powers of his soul, nevertheless took part in what surrounded him. There you can see how the spirit prevailed over the worn-out body, which showed a dried-up heart at the autopsy, but in which there was a warm glow. We see that this worn-out body was maintained solely by the strong soul forces that dwelled in it.

We are told how difficult Schiller's last moments were. It is touching to see how, in these last moments, he still made an effort to say this or that, which he believed he still had to communicate to those around him so that it could be passed on to posterity. We are told how Schiller had his last, his youngest child brought to his bedside, how he looked the child in the eye for a long, long time. How he then turned to the wall. And young Voß recounts that he believed – and rightly so – that Schiller looked at his child as if to say: Yes, it would be necessary for me to be your father for much longer, because I still have so much to tell you.

And it may be said that the entire German nation can imagine that the feelings that turned to the child in these last moments were turned to the entire German nation itself; as if the German nation must feel what Schiller still had to say to it. For in Schiller, the German nation can feel how he was carried in everything by the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

Let us recall the words that have been quoted frequently in recent times, which Schiller, so to speak, left as a legacy, and which show how he felt connected to the German people. These words only came to light long after his death. But they show us how Schiller himself felt carried by the forces of the German national spirit.

He who forms and rules the spirit

must ultimately gain mastery, for

finally, at the goal of time, if the

world has a plan, if human

life has any meaning, finally,

custom and reason must triumph,

the brute force of form must succumb

and the slowest nation will overtake

all the fast, fleeting ones.

[...]

Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the center of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the leaf.

He has been chosen by the world spirit, during
the battle of time
to work on the eternal construction of human education
and to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and kept it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times,
he has preserved,
it is not lost to him, the treasures of
centuries.
Not to shine in the moment and
play his role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the German is the harvest of
all time.

Thus Schiller knew himself connected with the power of the German national soul.

Now we turn our gaze to another German, to a German who has risen high, one might say, into the often seemingly cold philosophical regions; we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times, when Germany was depressed from the west, tried - as he himself put it - to hold his “Discourses to the German Nation” from the innermost “root of the stirrings of life” of his people. He, the philosopher, who perhaps put forward the most vigorously willed thoughts to humanity, he who shaped the sharpest thoughts, he knew himself as being connected to all the primitive sources of the German people, and it was out of this consciousness that he delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time. But he also felt connected to everything that came from the German people and determined Germany's fate. And again this shows itself to us – we can look at it without sentimentality – it shows itself symbolically in his last moments.

He often deliberated with himself, Fichte, whether he should personally go to war. Then he told himself that he had to work through the power of his mind. His wife worked as a nurse in a military hospital in Berlin. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but Fichte was infected by this fever. And in his last moments – and this was strangely characteristic of this seemingly abstract and at the same time most popular philosopher – in his last days, when his crystal-clear, life-energetic thoughts feverish fantasies, he was outside with the German armies, at Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, he took a faithful part in the fighting, and felt himself in the midst of the battle. Thus, even in the feverish fantasies of the dying philosopher, the strongest German philosophy led to intimate communion with the deeds of his people. His son offered him a medicine. He pushed it away with his hand and said, letting his thoughts wander from the most human philosophy to the way he felt on the battlefields, he said: “I do not need medicine because I feel I will recover.” He recovered to death.

Such examples, esteemed attendees, show us how the forces of the German national soul were at work, where the individual souls that belong to this nation are making the way that they must describe as the most humane, as the one leading to the highest goods of humanity.

And everywhere it is shown how this German national soul does not rule over the individual in a tyrannical way, how it does not pour some kind of collective, dogmatic world view into souls; how it is experienced in the individual souls, how the individual soul feels it as its own power. And how, nevertheless, the highest developments of the supersensible spiritual life are brought into these individual souls. And again and again we see the individual soul seized afresh in all that it has to accomplish on earth, carried down from the spiritual heights by the soul of the nation.

How did this Central European people once receive Christianity! So that it was felt like the most personal impulse. We read the retelling of the Gospel stories [in Heliand, the work of the Saxon monk], we read them as something that arose directly from the most personal spiritual life, but was nevertheless the revelation of a supreme being.

And we move on. We see how later on the individual German soul is seized; so seized is it by that which encompasses the whole soul of the people, that this German soul in German mysticism in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth century feels God so that this God lives directly in all that the individual can will, feel and love, what the individual soul feels directly within itself as the eternal-living. How the words of Master Eckhart resound in us: “If you love God, then you can do whatever you want, [for then you will only want the eternal and the one, which God also wills. I will not ask God to give himself, I will ask him to make me pure, then he will flow into me of his own accord. God is a pure good in Himself and therefore does not want to dwell anywhere, for He may pour Himself entirely into a pure soul. When it is so pure that it sees through itself, then it need not seek God in the form, but it sees Him in itself and enjoys all creatures in God and God in all creatures, and whatever it does, it does in God and] God does in you.” That is to say, they maintain a familiar dialogue not only with what they are as individuals, but also with what, as the soul of the people, whispers and rests through all the minds of the people.

And think of Angelus Silesius, who lived in the seventeenth century. How he empathizes with the individual soul of the human being with the whole soul of the people. How we read there - I will quote only one saying - how Silesius, the “Cherubic Wayfarer,” has made countless such sayings.

I neither live nor die. God himself dies in me, and what I am to live, he also lives for and for.

This means feeling at one with the spirit that lives and breathes in the world. At the same time, it means carrying within oneself a supreme consciousness of immortality. When a person feels connected in their soul to the divine source of existence, they say: “I neither die nor live. God himself dies in me.” There is the certainty that God does not die; but that it is God who goes with me through death. There I feel so connected with God that through this my immortality is granted. There you see the peculiarity, how intimately the soul of the people lives with the individual mind of the people.

When we look at the human soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, then we see – not by dividing it up in the abstract, but by looking at this soul in a truly scientific way, and this is not what science does today, but it is something that the science of the future will certainly do – we see that we can distinguish three soul elements, three soul expressions in the human soul. Just as one can distinguish the different color shades in the spectrum, so one can and must distinguish quite scientifically in the human soul: the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. And within each of these there is that which is called the human being's ego, the actual self of the human being. Just as light reigns in the reddish-yellow, greenish, and blue-violet parts of the rainbow, so the power of the self, of the ego of man, reigns through the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul.

Now the peculiar thing about trying to understand the peoples of Europe from a spiritual scientific point of view is that it shows that the soul of a nation, for example the Italian soul, relates primarily to the individual human being in such a way that the soul of the nation stimulates the sentient soul and works through the sentient soul. In the case of the French nation, the soul of the nation works through the intellectual or mind soul. In the British nation, the folk soul works through the consciousness soul. In the Russian nation, the folk soul hovers over the soul forces, leaving the soul forces in a kind of [anarchic] state. The German folk soul directly stimulates the I. It does not express itself in a particular part of the soul, but by taking hold of the whole soul; hence its rejuvenating power. Hence the possibility for the German, when seized by the power of his folk soul. [At a certain time, it lovingly seized what was offered in Italy, France, and England, but always rejuvenated it, elevating it within itself to an independent existence.] How lovingly did the German spirit of his time take hold of what was offered to humanity by Eckhart and Tauler! But how did it rejuvenate it by stimulating the whole self through the whole spectrum! How did it raise it to the most independent, personal and inward existence! How was he, with his ever-rejuvenating power of the I-seizing folk soul, how was the German in the present able to present that which encompasses the whole human being as the highest representative of humanity. No other nation could have produced a work of literature like Faust, because no other nation is so deeply moved in its immediate self by the national soul, through all the elements of the soul's spectrum. But that is also why this German essence is so little understood and so misunderstood in all directions.

If we look to the West, we see how everything that arises most deeply from the German soul, what is present there in a completely undogmatic way, always stimulating striving, is expressed in a crude way through language; how it is often not understood and is either rejected emotionally or critically. One is tempted to say: the best that the Central European folk soul instills in the people of Central Europe is “understood” in the West, even when it is tried to be understood, in such a way that precisely the immediate invigoration is lost. And this extends even to the contemplation of the figures.

We can learn a lot about the peculiarities of European cultures by considering how much is understood in the West when it is understood through the Western European strength of the national soul. Herman Grimm, the art historian, once said quite rightly [about a book about Goethe by the Englishman Lewes]: “A certain Mr. Lewes in England has written a book about a person who was born in August 1749 in Frankfurt, who died in March 1832 in Weimar, to whom Mr. Lewes attributes [“The Sorrows of Young Werther”, “Clavigo” and so on], such fates, which we know Goethe experienced. To whom he also attributes the writing of Goethe's works. But everything he describes about this man is only coincidentally connected to the man who was born in 1749 and died in 1832. For that which connects Goethe's work with the life of the Central European folk soul has not been transferred, not even in the slightest, into the book that Mr. Lewes has written about a certain Goethe, who is not, however, the creator of Faust for the Central European in reality. One can grasp the external, the coarse, that through which the other appears. But that which lives in the folk soul, animating the individual soul, is lost, one does not see it. This is perhaps a little too radically expressed in Herman Grimm. But it shows what it is about.

And so we must also find that in the way German essence is understood by French essence, there is something that proves to us that the French soul of the people is such that it enters into the soul of the mind, determining the mind's soul, directly tyrannizing the soul of the mind, so that the soul of the people thinks in the individual and radiates through the impulses of the will of the individual. While the German folk soul becomes the confidante of the individual human being.

And if we now look over to the East, to the Russian people. In Russia, much attention has been paid to Kant, to Hegel, Belinsky. But all this shows a very particular peculiarity: the thoughts of Central Europe become strangely ghostly in the East. They are felt and experienced not in the soul-elevating sensation, but like thought ghosts, conceptual ghosts; like what lives in the secular of the national groupings that lives above the individuals.

In saying this, I am expressing something that is just as much a part of the strict body of knowledge as the physical, chemical and biological truths are. Even though it is more difficult to talk about these things because people are indifferent to physical, chemical and biological truths, whereas the truths presented here are related to the fate and nature of man. But we live in a time in which the human soul must rise above that which impairs the human [...] and we live in a time in which such things must be spoken, in which we must gain understanding for the impulses that are going through the world and that have brought about what is now there.

It is rightly said that the two Central European peoples have been surrounded and enclosed in the last decades, as if with iron clamps, the Central European states. But for the spiritual researcher, this encirclement begins much earlier. And the outer, one might say materialistic encirclement, which had its main organizer in Edward VII, this materialistic encirclement is the last [representative] of an ancient encirclement that began in the year 860 of our era. These connections must be borne in mind. In 860, on the one hand, the Normans were standing outside Paris and, on the other hand, the Varangians came down [outside Novgorod and Kiev] and threatened Constantinople, and then, when they pushed into the Slavic area across Russia to Kiev, to Constantinople, on the other hand, parts of the Normans pushed in [into the Romance element], and we have a coiled snake in Central Europe. Those who remained Central Europeans were to be surrounded and encircled. And in the West, we have the nations pushing in and becoming permeated by a folk soul, pushing into the Romance element, which then, from south to northwest, becomes the substance of the folk soul's nature, so that thinking becomes dogmatic, so that on this side everything must be taken dogmatically, so that we see how what is directly human, what arises from the intimate contact of the human soul with the folk soul, is taken dogmatically in the West by the intellect soul, which is permeated by the traditional Romanism. [Thus Central Europe is isolated. This must be taken dogmatically. If the world is not taken in this way, the folk soul, which is permeated with the old Romanism, will not be individualized.]

On the other hand, in the East we see how a folk soul comes into being when the Varangians, who are related to the Normans, merge with the Slavs, are permeated by the Slavs, and are permeated racially by the Byzantines in religious terms. And we see that what arises there remains at the level of the racial personality, as something aloof and unapproachable, which never comes down. Thus in the East one is dealing with that which directly asserts the racial element. Towards the West, with that which is an ancient and renewed feeling, which dogmatizes the individual. They see that one can only understand what human souls produce by doing so.

In the center we see that which is encircled and enclosed from all sides, which always wants to bring forth something new and wants to offer on the altar of human development that which can arise from the intimate connections of the individual souls with the folk soul.

Thus we experience the remarkable phenomenon that to this day, even in our most painful days, what emerges in Central Europe is observed by the West, but in observing it, it must necessarily be misunderstood because it is measured not by human experience but by one's own dogma; by what the soul of the people tyrannically commands from the soul of reason. We are experiencing some very characteristic phenomena in this regard. On the surface, people want to acknowledge that the Germans have achieved a great deal, that they have attained a high level of culture in thought, in philosophy, in poetry, and in other branches of art; but then, when a man has sipped a little and even translates it quite ingeniously into the realm of Western popular culture, as Henri Bergson did, when a man surveys something ingeniously, it is still German conceived in the French manner, German translated into the way of the West. And now he feels compelled – we had to read this around Christmas, how he spoke in the so-called [Academy of Moral and Political Sciences], we had to read it, how he tries to characterize the German character. And this German essence appears to him as if it only wanted to be embodied in cannons and rifles, in what the silly chatter calls “German militarism”; that militarism to which Germany has been forced, not by itself, but by those who surrounded it. One would like to ask such a man what he actually expected Germany to put up against its enemies other than rifles and cannons. Did he perhaps imagine that Novalis or Schiller or Goethe would be recited to the armies of Germany?

The question is: What does the Central European have to defend? What he has to defend can be seen from a consideration of what the German national soul is to the individual German. But such considerations will only become important when they can take hold of and find an echo in the reasonable people of the world within a somewhat broader horizon. Today logic is not exactly what is being whispered throughout the world. We have even had to hear that when there was a manifestation from the German side, the response from the left and right in Europe was: We did not want this war. They did not want it. Yes, from a logical point of view; that is quite correct, from a logical point of view. You can believe it. It is just as right as when a number of people surround the house of another person. He sees that he is locked in his house. He goes out and beats those who surround him. And then they say: We did not want the beating. The logic is exactly the same in both cases. Logic does not whisper today through what is called the “intercourse of nations”, especially through the newspapers. It can be seen everywhere through facts: what the German national soul says to the individual German can be grasped in the West, it can be heard, but it cannot be effective for the reasons just given.

We are experiencing strange phenomena. This power of the German national soul - in enlightened minds, in minds that want to deal with it, something of it has come to light after all. It is not exactly pleasant to speak characteristically about the Central European people in the midst of them. And so I will choose a different approach. I would like to raise the question: Has this German character really always been misunderstood, as it is now, even outside the German-speaking areas? There is a man who certainly belongs to the most important minds of the nineteenth century. And I would like to read to you a passage from a book about Goethe, who appears to him as the representative of the German character, [Emerson]. He says, a man who lives far away from Central Europe, he says about Goethe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public.

- [A trait] is mentioned that Goethe shares with his entire nation:

that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are satisfied only when it works for or against a party in line with its convictions. In France, one is delighted to see brilliant ideas, wherever they may lead. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they write stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness, but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. There is intellectual activity, so what is it expressing? What are people's opinions? Where do they come from? Where do they get all these ideas?

The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

[We see that the rejuvenating effect of the German national soul has not always been recognized.

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, view their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something else in mind that is even better. [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from contact with the truth.

Thus, one felt what the German could achieve in contact with the truth, that is, in contact with his national soul, where one wanted to feel it.

Now one could say: That was a long time ago. And it has been said. The Germans have changed since then. Instead of poetry, they have made cannons. Now, so that this too can be countered, the saying of another man should be mentioned here, who in his way must have touched - we will soon see why - to the west that which is the German national character.

The source of the stream of

— Germany's —

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a large extent practical and material.

And elsewhere the same man says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of suspicion and free us from the need to prepare for attacks that no one really has in mind.

Who said that? Well, Lord Haldane said it. You may remember how he said some other things a few months ago! Not so long ago, just a few months before this war broke out, a lecture was given in Manchester by a few Englishmen who were supposed to educate English journalists about the German character. From the newspapers that are now appearing, one can see what fruit this has borne, what use it has been. But we will soon see what was said in Manchester, in England, about the German character.

Woods

- the Englishman –

essay was the forerunner of the even more epoch-making Homeric research of Wolf; and the Greek ideals of art and life became for Goethe and Schiller at Weimar, as in the case of Herder, the ideals of [primeval] song, the instruments on which the German spirit played itself up to a music that was new and yet at the same time, in the deepest sense, its own.

Now come some remarkable words:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

Spoken in Manchester to enlighten English journalists; that's why they are so enlightened now!

Imagination, feeling, will asserted their right to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was sought from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In Faust, at the end of his eventful life, we see a portrayal of present-day Germany, the Germany of restless, bold will and action, and we can understand all the better why the [great] citizen of the world, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable place as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

And now a very curious thing. The following was also said in the same lecture cycle in Manchester shortly before the outbreak of the war:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason.

So says an Englishman!

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. Because the events of the years 1866-1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war

- in this he was, however, mistaken -

which in earlier centuries had so often lured France onto the wrong track;

- that has been said, not in Berlin and not in Hanover, but in Manchester. -

they put the German people in a position to develop their previously stunted political abilities, and they helped to build a new European system on a secure foundation that preserved peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

This was said in Manchester, a year before the war. The matter speaks for itself, we hardly need to add anything.

We see, then, that people have sometimes known what the Central European nation has to contribute to the overall culture of humanity. Yes, sometimes they have even known it quite thoroughly. Here is another example of how thoroughly they have known it. There was a certain man, also over there in the West, who was closer to us than the others we have just spoken of; a certain man whom the world calls a mystic. The man has undoubtedly written very brilliant works. Once he expressed himself about where the deepest thoughts of his soul came from, and he cited three world-historical phenomena. The third is the German poet Novalis. When we hear his poetry, we have the immediate feeling that the rejuvenating power of the folk soul speaks intimately to his soul, so that it can express what the folk soul is telling him. Now, what does this man feel about Novalis? He says:

What people describe on earth, what poets say, a Sophocles, a Shakespeare, what these Desdemona, Ophelia, what Hamlet and so on experience, it all happens between people. But if a spirit from a different plane were to descend to earth, could this spirit of a different plane find something on earth that also interests him, the spirit who is not of the earth?

And the man now finds that what the German poet Novalis expressed could also interest a spirit who descends from another plane as a genius. He finds that Novalis touched on secrets of the human soul, which the soul must often keep silent about, because it can only find the right words in the solemn moments of life to express these secrets, these supersensible secrets of life. So says the man. And we want to write these words very deeply into our souls, for they are beautiful, these words that he says in reference to his experience of Novalis. He says:

On these heights alone are memories that the soul can form, and images that resemble it and are as compelling as itself. There, humanity ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the spiritual realm to the earth.

- and of those lights, says the man, Novalis has lit many. And he continues –

but in their works, the aforementioned people

- including Novalis -

left the little village of passions and said things that are also of value to those who are not of the earthly community.

Thus one speaks of one of the most German of Germans, Novalis. A man speaks thus, and we could assume that this man, who obviously loves the spiritual, would instruct all those who now speak of the German “barbarians” with the words: For these words, which I have now read, are also from the man of whom I will read something else:

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak, childlike voice amidst the useless cries that surround it.

Yes, it can be said that in the midst of the useless shouting that is now speaking of Germany's “barbarism,” such words as those of the man can hardly be heard. But who said all this? Maurice Maeterlinck. Well, you know how Maeterlinck himself has gone among the useless shouters in recent months. We don't need to add anything to that either.

But then, when we hear such voices, we say to ourselves: They are proof that what wells up from the German national soul into the individual German souls is already penetrating across the borders, but it cannot come into effect. And it cannot come into effect properly even where it seems ghostly. I have shown that it has a ghostly effect in the East. Yes, if one asks: What is it that people feel from this participation of the German national soul in German culture, even those who speak of Western European culture in the East? One can often hear something like the words I would like to read to you now. When Herman Grimm speaks of the alleged Goethe of Mr. Lewes in the way I have mentioned, we notice a coarsening in this Mr. Lewes; but how what one wants to absorb but cannot absorb becomes ghostly towards the East is shown to us by words that Mereschkowski spoke about Goethe. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled into a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German burgher and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.

Thus Mereschkowski speaks of the poet of Faust. Nor should one be deceived by the words which Mereschkowski says about Goethe in the final sentence of his essay. If one reads the foregoing, which is inspired throughout by the same spirit, one sees that Mereschkowski cannot rise up to Goethe, that he sees him only as a ghost. And much of this kind could be cited. But of course, when one of the leading spirits of the East, about Chekhov, Mereschkowski himself has to say:

No era, no people, as if in the midst of eternity there were only the end of the nineteenth century and in the world only Russia. Infinitely sharp-eyed and bright-eared [for] everything Russian and contemporary, he is almost blind and deaf to the foreign and the past. He saw Russia more clearly than anyone else, but overlooked Europe, overlooked the world.

One can find it understandable, must find it understandable, that Central Europe is currently only a specter for the East, which is transferred up into the national soul hovering over the individual. There is not enough time to prove this in detail, but it could be proven. On the other hand, it can truly be said that what can be called “the rejuvenating power of the German national soul” not only gives us insight into the nature of the German national soul in the past, but also gives us strength, faith and hope for the German national soul in the future.

Indeed, the German knows how to take Goethe somewhat differently than the others. And for this I may cite a saying that Herman Grimm in turn has done about Goethe. This saying has been done in lectures on Goethe, in lectures that speak differently than the one whom Herman Grimm himself has dismissed in the manner indicated, Lewes. Herman Grimm perceives Goethe as a confidant of the German people themselves; but also as an impulse, as a force that works and will continue to work within German culture, just as cosmic changes in the earth must work in relation to physical conditions. Herman Grimm says of Goethe:

Goethe has worked in the spiritual life of Germany as a powerful natural phenomenon would have worked in the physical. Our coal deposits tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew in our country. Our opening caves tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. Over vast periods of time, dramatic upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives such an appearance of eternal immutability. The comparison can be drawn that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was roughly equivalent to a telluric event, which increased our climatic warmth by so many degrees on average. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different operation of agriculture and with it a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

This is how Herman Grimm feels Goethe within German intellectual life. Gradually, a different intellectual vegetation, a different intellectual climate, will occur through Goethe, says Herman Grimm.

This same Herman Grimm, in a manner that brought out the whole character of the German spirit, spoke of how the German folk soul has worked in German culture to arrive at views that seek the universal in the particular national spirit. Thus Herman Grimm demonstrated the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul by showing how he himself was attuned to the course of the world spirit at the end of the nineteenth century. For in 1895 the beautiful words were spoken that express the mood of a German who knew himself to be one with the living and breathing German national soul. Herman Grimm said:

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people today is the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious endeavors of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national difference can be maintained in the face of the ethical worldview.

Herman Grimm continues:

We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,

he says, and then the significant words follow:

But to long for or to hasten the moment when this could happen through war, we are far removed. The assurance that peace is our most sacred desire is not a lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill to men” permeates us.

But the fact that Herman Grimm saw through his time, that he was not a dreamer, that he was able to grasp reality under the guidance of the German soul, is attested by what he now says:

As a totality, men acknowledge themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned as it were in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and to whose judicial procedure they seek to adapt their internal dissensions. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, and even the Germans themselves, recognize it.

You see, in 1895 Herman Grimm had a clear view of how things stand. Those who are accustomed to seeing things this way do not let themselves be called out: Who wanted the war!

Among the hundreds and hundreds of testimonies I could present, here is one more. A person who is not particularly fond of Germanic nature writes the following words:

As far as I am concerned, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. Since the Crimean War, a long time has passed and, it seems, it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again.

Yes, my dear attendees, these words were not spoken just a few months before the war. They were written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Even those who saw things clearly never realized that the nations pushed into the middle of Europe would be locked up like in a fortress by those who misunderstood and do not understand them on all sides.

It is curious when, in the face of such words, one tries to express the opinion that the Germans wanted this war. I would like to use the few moments remaining to me for this lecture to present something about this “the Germans wanted this war” that may speak volumes to anyone who wants to see clearly.

Let us assume that someone had observed what was going on in the weeks before the outbreak of war - in the spring of 1914, when the press was perhorresziert the political horizon - and he wanted to express that; what would he have had to say in 1914, after the events that took place? He would have had to say something like the following:

[One could see how a press campaign was gradually beginning in St. Petersburg, how strong pressure was being exerted on Austria that, if accepted, would have resulted in Austria and Germany becoming dependent on Russia. And yet one could not have contradicted the Russian friends when they said that there was no reason for a war between Russia and Germany.

Not true, in 1914, in July, it could have been expressed quite well, and it could have been applied to the immediate events of the present. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have not read you anything that was said in July 1914, but, with some modification, the words that [Bismarck spoke on February 6, 1888 in the Reichstag] to justify the military bill. And now I read his own words, so you can see that I have not only the words, but only the time somewhat rectihziert:

[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [through which German politics was attacked], I personally was suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year until 1879 to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this, because if we estranged ourselves from Austria, then we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: We have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our politics (for a certain time) to the Russian politics would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

However, if things are as they have been presented, if the national soul in the West and in the East must behave in relation to what the strength of the German national soul is, then it will be a mistake to believe that this war was wanted by Central Europe in 1914. For it has been clear for decades how everything has been done to bring about the current events.

Not only the subtle Herman Grimm spoke of the will for peace in Central Europe. It may also be recalled that not only where, like Herman Grimm, as a man ethically on the heights of his time, was in touch with the German national soul, but also where one was politically inspired by the German national soul, one spoke in a similar way.

In 1888, in Berlin, again Bismarck spoke in such a way that no desire for war was expressed. Bismarck said:

With the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be, one does not attack. If I were to stand before you today and tell you - if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are: We are seriously threatened by France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe it as a diplomat after military intelligence about this, it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today. Yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would have the confidence in me to grant it. I hope not!

One day, my dear audience, we will come to feel, not only from reason but also from our instincts, something of the real causes of this war and the driving forces that led to it. One will sense something of the will that concentrated against Central Europe in order to stop the eternally rejuvenating German national soul in its element.

The images that can be gained by surveying the workings and weavings of European national souls in recent decades show how the storm is looming. Can we not say the following: If one wanted to delve into the goings-on and workings of the German national soul as they were in the times before this war broke out, could one not come to the following thoughts? Allow me to read this to you as well. You will see in a moment that I also have a certain idea:

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. [...]

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

Across every border and across the water sit the adversaries, commercial and political, waiting anxiously for the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce and overwhelm, and Germany knows it.

[This is how Mrs. Wylie wrote in her book “Eight Years in Germany,” which was published about two years before the war. It is quite good when such people try to delve into the German national soul.

So, these are the things that are awakened as an echo when one tries to understand what the German seeks in intimate dialogue with his national soul. And what was it that the German always tried to find in his dialogue with his national soul? It was always that which should enable the individual human being, the individual human soul, the individual human spirit to find its way to the spiritual heights of the world, where all things have their source and origin, where the eternal part of the human soul itself also has its source and origin.

Spiritual science, precisely because of its sources, must believe in the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; believe because it is aware that in the course of world history this German national soul has always ascended to spiritual heights , descended to the human selves in order to convey to them the truth of their eternity. Spiritual science has its roots and its source in German idealism, and we can prove that spiritual science is closely related to this German idealism.

What does spiritual science say, not in the abstract but in concrete terms, about the future of the human soul? That in this body lives an immortal self that goes through births and deaths again and again; that when spiritual initiation is attained, when spiritual knowledge and spiritual reality are attained through research, the soul is grasped outside of the body; that it looks back at this body as if at an external object, so pre-sensing that which the human soul experiences when it has passed through the gate of death. Spiritual science does not speak in general terms that the human soul is eternal, but in such a way that it clearly points to what, after death, looks back on what lived in the body. Spiritual science describes this very specifically. And only today can it do so.

And true spiritual science, as we in Central Europe consider it to be, is aware that it owes the powers of research only to the connection of the German national soul with the German philosophers. If someone who professes spiritual science today wants to use a comparison in the truest sense of the word for something that has passed and must find its future, if someone who is a true believer in spiritual science wanted to say: I think something completely new must be introduced into humanity, something that is still met with many prejudices today; but to me, these prejudices seem like what the soul of the corpse feels when it looks back at the corpse after death.

One might think that only a spiritual researcher could make such a comparison, because only recently has spiritual research been able to confirm that the soul really does this after going through death. I will present such a comparison to you:

Time appears to me like a shadow that stands over its dead, from which an army of diseases has just driven it out, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed spirit has entered, have already taken her up and surround her with a warm breath of love; the secret voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within herself in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to grow; but it has as yet no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or, if it had, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with which it believes itself to have been lost at the same time.

Today, one really believes that only a spiritual researcher could speak in this way. It is Fichte who spoke in this way in his “Speeches to the German Nation”; addressing the corpse as he would a corpse in what he wants to replace the old German education with a new education.

Thus, whatever can be desired today is rooted in the germs that German idealism sought from the union with the German national soul, from these rejuvenating powers of the German national soul.

And if we want to have confidence that spiritual science can really unfold as a new fruit on the tree of German development, we need only look at what can be seen as the true essence of the German national soul, as the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. The true essence of the German national soul is precisely this ever-rejuvenating power.

And when we look at the fateful events of today, we feel them like a twilight. But we look into the future and want to understand that a horizon warmed and illuminated by the sun must arise from this twilight; that the German national soul will have the strength to rejuvenate German character and German striving. And whatever is undertaken against this German essence, against this German striving, will not be able to rob it of its breath of life, because that which is present as the highest life in the German essence is the ever-rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. If it has produced so many rungs in German culture, it must also produce new fruits. That is our hope, and that is not something vague, that is something well-founded! We look hopefully towards the horizon, which will show us precisely one of the fruits of German development: a spiritual-scientific worldview that will flow through all hearts and souls and will connect spirit and body. When people see the spiritual as a reality, when they know how the spiritual passes through the gate of death, when they look at the spiritual as science today looks at the external physical forces, when they know that nothing is lost, then they will know that the countless spiritual parts that now pass through the gate of death from young bodies cannot be lost. They, these soul-like human faculties, which could have continued to serve the body for decades to come, will not only be felt in the abstract sense as something eternal in the future, as was possible according to ancient knowledge, but they will be felt as something that lives on, that those who have followed the duties of the time through the gate of death or suffering have incorporated into the spiritual stream of existence.

And they will feel a concrete connection when times of peace come again out of this twilight of war. Those who have borne the best fruits of the German character will feel a special connection with all those who have gone through the gates of death.

So it can be said, summarizing what I have tried to express before you today: Yes, this German spirit has not yet fully accomplished what its mission in the world was. It is connected with the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. And if you look at the true nature of the German national soul, then you know: the driving forces are there, the invisible forces of German life are unchanged among us. And to all those who today speak of Germany's weakness or of a weakening or destruction of the German character, to them the one who objectively recognizes what the rejuvenating power of the German national soul whispers to individual Germans, to them he calls out into the world the meaning that he perceives from the work of the German national soul:

The German spirit has not completed

what it is to accomplish in the course of the world.

It lives in the future, hopeful,

It hopes for future deeds full of life;

In the depths of his being, he feels a mighty

secret that is still to take effect as it matures.

How can a mind, uncomprehending,

Wish for its end to come:

As long as life reveals itself to him,

Which holds him in the roots of creation?

Dear attendees, already in earlier years I was allowed to give lectures in this city on questions of world view, which are based on what I dare to call “spiritual science”. And also in this fateful time of ours, the friends of our spiritual scientific world view here in this city thought that it would be possible to talk about some things in the field of this spiritual science here. And that should be appropriate for this time as well; after all, what is called spiritual science here is about the deepest, most fateful things in human beings, about that which leads people to the bitterest disappointments of life, but also to those feelings that we see unfolding so powerfully in our time in terms of courage and willingness to make sacrifices.

Now, dear attendees, what is called spiritual science in the sense of tonight's reflections is by no means something that can find any approval or recognition in wide circles of our present time. And it must be said that precisely the person who is completely and with all his soul immersed in this spiritual-scientific world view will find it self-evident that precisely the most highly educated people in our time raise objections against what this spiritual science presents. And it will appear to them much more understandable when it is said that this spiritual science is a collection of dreams, fantasies or even worse, than when someone who is completely immersed in the thought patterns that completely immersed in the thought patterns that have emerged over the past few centuries, is immersed in a scientific training that is in line with the times, if he could immediately agree with this spiritual science at first hearing.

In particular, it is quite obvious and understandable that objections, perhaps even ridicule and scorn, will be raised against what this spiritual science has to say, especially from three sides. First of all, from those who believe that they are standing on the firm ground of a scientific worldview in the present day. They will have to say – and I say expressly – they will still have to say today that this spiritual science denies everything that the so admirable natural science has achieved for humanity in the course of the last three to four centuries in the most careful way, both theoretically and practically, in human development. And from another side, objection after objection will have to be raised against this spiritual science from the side that believes that everything possible from old superstition and old prejudices is to be listed by what this spiritual science has to bring forward.

And still a third may always arise against this spiritual science. It is the opinion that the most valuable, the most profoundly significant thing that the human soul can hold and carry in life, that the religious element could be endangered by what spiritual science has to say.

Now, esteemed attendees, I hope that even if I do not directly address the refutation of the objections from these various sides, this evening's remarks themselves will show how unfounded and based on misunderstandings what is being said against spiritual science is. Above all, what does this spiritual science want to be? It wants to be one for our time, one for the present path of development of humanity, appropriate continuation of that which the so admirable natural science has brought to humanity. Only, however, it wants to be that which natural science is for external life and external sense observation, it wants to be that for the observations, for the insights of the spiritual world. And precisely for this reason, because it wants to be the genuine, true successor of natural science in the field of spiritual science, it must, in a certain way, in order to be just as scientific as natural science is in its fields, take different paths and methods than natural science.

And to get straight to the point, I would like to discuss the relationship between what a spiritual researcher is, a researcher in the field of the spiritual worlds, in contrast to the natural scientist, who extends his sensory observations, his experiments, his thinking to that which is spread out in time and space. Particularly if spiritual science wants to be truly scientific, it must, in a sense, continue its research where natural science, where all the thinking and feeling and sensing of everyday life ends. And here we immediately come to what runs directly counter to the thinking habits of by far the largest circles of educated people in our society today.

When you are immersed in everyday life, when you let your senses roam over this everyday life, when you think, when you feel about this everyday life, then you are rightly satisfied when you think, feel, sense, imagine, and have ideas about what is out there in space and passing through time. And one recognizes, again with full justification, that one has knowledge, that one has something that can satisfy people, that one has, so to speak, images in concepts and ideas of what takes place in space and time. One remains, so to speak, with the concepts and ideas, one preserves them as that into which one has transformed the outer world.

As a spiritual researcher, one has to start at the point where one stops with one's perceptions and ideas in order to find one's way into the spiritual worlds. I would like to say: the spiritual researcher also has his laboratory and experimental methods, just like the natural scientist and the chemist. But his laboratory is situated entirely within the soul itself. His methods are not such as are used by the chemist, the physicist, the clinician, who carry out their work in space and time and whose work involves listening out for the laws of space and time. The work of the spiritual researcher involves intimate processes that take place entirely within the soul itself. While in everyday life, while in ordinary science, one stops at representations and concepts, in spiritual research one must begin with concepts, ideas and perceptions. And one must not store these perceptions, which one receives in the outer world, in the soul, but one must live intimately with what the soul develops in the life of perception and feeling, living together in a different way than one is accustomed to in the ordinary existence of the day. And since I do not want to talk in abstract terms, but really want to show what the spiritual research path is, I would like to get straight down to specifics.

A person's soul must become something quite different from what it is in everyday life if it wants to observe that which is in the spiritual world. And it can become so if it gets used to living inwardly with that which otherwise merely ... Let us assume that we place some arbitrary idea, a concept, from our own inner soul power into the center of our consciousness and now, instead of asking ourselves, as we do in everyday life, as we do in ordinary science, “What does this concept express to us?” Instead, as spiritual researchers, we try to live with the concept, the idea, the feeling, and also with the impulse of the will, to live in meditation; I mean to live for minutes or for half an hour. In doing so, it is even advantageous if we use not concepts and perceptions that depict something external for this, I would say, inner laboratory work of the soul, but if we use perceptions, ideas that are symbols that do not depict anything external.

What I mean is, take for example the idea: “In the light that permeates and governs the world, living wisdom lives.” Of course, someone might say: this idea does not depict anything real. It is purely the product of the imagination. That is not the point. The point is that we now place this idea at the center of our consciousness, that we now withdraw our attention from everything else that is around us in everyday life or that constitutes the subject of science. This means that all impressions of the senses, all representations that depict something external, memory images, emotions, must be forgotten in the moments when we place such a representation at the center of all our soul activities, as it has just been characterized. Then we gather together all the powers of our soul, which we otherwise distribute among external perceptions and external experiences; we concentrate them and fix them on this single idea. Now it does not depend on what we have in mind. That is why I said: such an idea can be better formed through the exercise of the will. It does not depend on what we imagine, but on the fact that we apply inwardly those strong forces that the soul must apply in order to concentrate everything that is in it through inner willpower in this inner work towards this one point. Doing this only once or twice has no influence at all on the human soul. But it is different when we make what has just been characterized the continued exercise of the soul. Depending on the disposition of the person, one person may have to concentrate their inner soul life on one point for only a few weeks, while another may have to do so for years, always for short periods of time. What matters is that we always repeat the same idea in the right way or also alternate it with other ideas.

Of course, I can only discuss the principles here; you can find more details in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and also in the second part of my “Occult Science”, where I discuss how to carry out this, I would like to say again and again, this laboratory work of the soul in detail. This is something that is easily described and of which one can also imagine that it proceeds easily in the soul; but I would like to apply the word used by Goethe to it: “Although it seems easy, yet the easy is difficult.” For the point is that the powers the soul applies in such tasks are completely untrained in ordinary life. So by distracting one's attention from all external and internal impressions and concentrating one's entire mental life through inner arbitrariness – these tasks are called “meditation” and “concentration” – an inner, intimate change takes place in the soul. This change does not occur immediately; nor can it be achieved by simply resolving: “I will now do a great deal and will then achieve what I set out to achieve.” That is not the case. Rather, the essential thing is that we do not use a concept, an idea, a feeling, or any other emotional impulse in the same way as we usually do, but that we live with them, that we give ourselves over to them completely.

Then we must wait, not for what we do with them, but for what they become as we give ourselves to them. Our inner soul is transformed as if we were spectators of what is happening within us, in that we completely identify with what we have placed at the center of our consciousness. Not much time is needed during the day. A few minutes are enough for some, half an hour for others during the day; but it must be done continuously for a long time, and again and again these otherwise hidden powers of the soul must be directed in such a way as I have just described. Then the one who devotes himself to such exercises, who really wants to become a spiritual researcher, notices that something is going on within him of which one has no concept in the outer life. Nor can one have any idea of how someone who has never heard of chemistry can imagine that hydrogen can be released from water through special chemical processes; hydrogen, which is a gas, which looks quite different from water, which burns while water extinguishes. Just as someone who has never heard of chemistry cannot have any idea of what can come out of water as hydrogen, so in ordinary life one cannot have any idea of what happens when the soul, with the expenditure of tremendous inner energy and perseverance, constantly concentrates forces that it otherwise does not apply on one point.

Then the soul gradually realizes that something is happening that does not occur in ordinary life. The soul experiences detachment from the physical body. It is one of the most harrowing experiences for the spiritual researcher to actually experience what is denied in everyday life or in external science. It cannot be said that the soul is already detached from ordinary life. No, it is connected to it. But as the spiritual researcher works in the way that has been characterized, the soul will gradually appear detached from the physical. He really experiences this detachment, before one can really say that the soul-spiritual slips out of the physical-bodily. He enters into a state in which he knows: You are no longer in the body with your thoughts and feelings, but you are outside the body. It is precisely this that must be experienced, which the most scientifically minded world view of the present denies, that there is a spiritual-soul life independent of the body.

What the spiritual researcher experiences next is surprising. At first, one feels how one lives more and more strongly and strongly within oneself in powers that one did not know before. Then there comes a moment when this inner, strong energy and power, in which one already feels, I might say, like in a kind of inner well-being, is dampened, that it is dampened down. And there comes a moment when one experiences something like darkness spreading over the consciousness that one has acquired outside of the body. One could also say: a kind of inner powerlessness, a disappearance and sinking into something that one has as an inner experience.

All that the spiritual researcher goes through is not as indifferent to the soul as the experiences that the ordinary scientist goes through. For this seizes him in his whole mind, it takes up all his attention, it pours out a wealth of initially harrowing experiences upon the soul. The experience one has when one advances in the indicated manner is something like destruction, like an enormous feeling of loneliness.

And there is something else that one experiences, which I will characterize by a comparison, but which should be more than a comparison: Suppose that the germ that develops in the plant could imagine something, could think. As the plant grows from the root to the individual leaves and to the flower, the germ prepares itself; within it are the forces that will later develop into a new plant. It can only develop by drawing its forces from the entire plant. Now, let us assume that it could empathize with the life of the plant – what would it have to feel? He would have to say to himself: As I become stronger and stronger, as I develop more and more, I do so at the expense of the plant on which I develop. I cause what is in the leaves and flowers to wither and fall off because the forces in me are growing strong. That must die. And so, too, he who advances in the manner described, through concentration, through meditation, to that which is indeed a real core, but a spiritual-soul core in the whole life of man — so he feels, really, so he feels and senses, as if he must feel this body itself, to the same extent that he develops, as withering, as melting away, in the whole universe. But anyone who wants to have real knowledge in the spiritual world must have this feeling.

Now you know that ordinary scientific philosophy speaks of the limits of knowledge, of the fact that human knowledge cannot penetrate beyond a certain point. Very many say that man cannot penetrate beyond what is given to the senses, which is grasped by the intellect, which is bound to the brain. Logical proofs are adduced to show that man cannot go beyond certain limits of knowledge. But these logical proofs are a very special matter. Something can be very well proved logically, but life, life in truth, overcomes that which is only logical proof. I will clarify what I actually want to say by means of a comparison, although this comparison is also intended to be more than just a comparison. Consider: in the days before the invention of the microscope, certain people sensed that the smallest cells and structures in plants could be discovered, but they said: the human senses are so arranged that such small cells cannot be seen. Therefore, even if they were present, they will never be seen. Such proof could be quite right. Nothing could be said against it. But life has gone beyond that: they found the microscope and discovered the small plant cells.

At some point, humanity of the present and the future will have to come to terms with the fact that evidence means nothing when it comes to knowledge. Something can be strictly proven and yet, life in truth can go beyond it. Someone may say: Here comes such a complicated spiritual researcher and talks about the fact that the human being, human knowledge, can grow into the spiritual world, while Kant and others have irrefutably proven that human knowledge has limits. The spiritual researcher does not want to touch such proofs at all. But they are no more valuable than the proof mentioned earlier. Life will go beyond it. But another question: how is it that there are philosophers at all who speak of the limits of knowledge, who say that one cannot penetrate into spiritual realms?

Now, what the spiritual researcher finds is not created by him, it is only recognized; by recognizing something, one does not change what is there. What the spiritual researcher experiences as an inner powerlessness of the soul, as an inner loneliness of the soul, is always spread out at the bottom of the soul. It lies down there in the soul, covered only by a veil of a merciful wisdom, and remains unconscious to the person. And now the philosopher comes; he works only with the consciousness that is bound to the brain. He does not know that down there in the soul there is secret fear and shyness of rising to the point where knowledge initially feels like a lonely powerlessness. He knows nothing of this, and unconsciously he shrinks back from it. He is only afraid to go further than the thinking that is bound to the brain. Now what I have described does not last - or at least it should not last beyond a certain time.

The human being must not only enter into the inner mood that I have just described, but, if he wants to become a true spiritual researcher, he must do a parallel exercise. He must do another exercise, which you will find described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Wherever spiritual research methods are properly practiced, the approach just described is not the only one recommended, but the other approach is also taught.

This other path – I can best make it understandable through the following – is connected with an understanding of what the word “fate” encompasses for human life, which is infinitely significant. What does the word “fate” encompass for human life! But how do those facts approach man that are usually referred to as fate? We live in the world. That which comes to us as suffering or joy, as pain or pleasure-inducing fate, is usually understood as coincidences that happen to people. And the course of our fate between birth and death is understood as a sum of events, in the context of which one does not look further than whether one finds one thing pleasant or another unpleasant. When a person faces their destiny in ordinary life, it is as if someone who has never heard of natural science faces the facts of the external world. The sun rises; the stars rise and set; wind and weather come and go, and so on. Someone who has never heard of natural science does not seek any connection in these facts; he does not seek the laws that govern them.

But just as someone who has not heard of natural science relates to a natural scientist, so man in ordinary life relates to the spiritual scientist, as the spiritual scientist now has to understand this fate. We start from something very ordinary, from the most everyday in this our human life. Let us ask ourselves without prejudice and with an open mind what we are in relation to our self at any given moment in our lives – let us speak only of the ordinary life between birth and death for the time being. Yes, that which we call our self, it consists in what we can do, what we are capable of, what our abilities are, how strongly or weakly we face life. But where does it come from?

If we look at life in this way, we will be able to see it when we look back from a later age to an earlier one, say the twenties, we will be able to see that we were confronted by these or those events, which we call coincidences of fate. Let us consider: What came to us through these events determines what we are capable of today. If it had not come to us, we would be quite a different person. We have become who we are through our experiences. What is meant here can be described as 'easy', but here too one can say: 'But the easy is difficult'. For the spiritual researcher is first led into spiritual science by looking at the destiny, as the blacksmith does of our self with all his skill, with all his abilities, and by making this looking an inner exercise, he becomes more and more aware that he is actually nothing other than what fate has forged out of him. Look at the stream of your destiny, then you will find that you let yourself go completely; you have to follow yourself as it flows in destiny. This must become a habit of feeling, awakening in the human being, so that he now really comes out of himself in this way and that he sees himself as his creator in the flowing stream of the experience of destiny. If this is repeated again and again, then something of our experience of fate falls away.

Earlier I said that in ordinary life we look at our fate in such a way that one thing is sympathetic and the other is antipathetic. This feeling of what is sympathetic and what is antipathetic ceases, must cease, when we look at fate as the creator of ourselves. And the more we overcome this sympathy and antipathy methodically within ourselves, in the innermost laboratory of the soul, the more we come to look up to fate and say: You have created me, I have emerged from you, the more this sense of identification with fate deepens. But much more happens with this. As this sensation arises more and more, voluntarily through inner meditation - now more through meditation of sensation and feeling - we become free in this sensation and feeling, free from our physical body. And we feel how we step out again from this physicality, but now not into an annihilation, but so that we, by going out of ourselves, as into the entire outer world, into the universe, into the cosmos, merge.

But not into that which we in that sense [gap in the text], but by our destiny being willed. We merge with our self into the element of will of higher spiritual beings, weaving and living through the world. We emerge from ourselves and we have the feeling: the eye on you is embedded in your organism, so you are woven into the whole cosmos. You are willed out of the cosmos, you are an act of will out of the cosmos.

And if one wants to characterize what one feels again in a shattering way – because everything that is a spiritual scientific method is at the same time, at least in its beginnings, interwoven with shattering events – if one wants to characterize that, one could express it with the following words: What you were or thought you were, this self with all its abilities, with all that you are, you have actually lost. This has first flowed out into the world of destiny, then into the general universe, and you have to receive yourself from the whole world in a new way, to face yourself. It becomes an experience in which you say to yourself: You are no longer what you used to be. But you encounter a higher self from the whole world, you look at yourself.

This feeling is in turn linked to something subconscious in the feeling that one does not know in ordinary life, over which in turn a veil is mercifully woven, with the feeling of fear, the fear of what one is in truth, when one finds oneself as the world wants one to be. And this fear must be overcome. You cannot come to a real self-knowledge unless you first overcome the fear of the self.

So you have to go through two experiences: a kind of feeling of powerlessness and a kind of feeling of fear. While you get to know loneliness through the first experience, you find yourself through the second experience, so that what you have lost earlier by going out of the body through meditation, concentration, what has passed into a kind of sense of annihilation, now appears to you again from the other side, by seeing how you are wanted by the universe. You are reflected by the universe.

Those who, in the course of human development, have had some knowledge of such truly profound experiences of knowledge have aptly described what could be experienced there: the spiritual researcher comes close to the gateway of death by having these experiences. And indeed, what was first described as a kind of unconsciousness, leads one to the vicinity of death. Let us now look at how the outer life presents itself in ordinary existence. Growing up in childhood, it presents itself to us in that our strength is growing stronger. But when life goes downhill again, we see how destruction takes hold of our lives. And that we are heading towards death is indicated to us by destruction. And all that man knows of death in ordinary life is nothing other than that death is the destruction of what man has become through birth. And because man clings to external destruction, death appears to him as the conclusion of external life.

When we have the first experience described, we realize that we actually owe our thinking, our soul life, to the very forces that have a destructive effect on the human body; that is what is so tragically shocking in the progression of knowledge. We see that our soul life is connected not with the forces of growth but precisely with the destructive forces, with the forces that in ordinary life work from birth towards death. And so we realize that with everything that begins at birth, life is given up to these destructive forces, in which our soul life is rooted by overcoming the external physical forces of growth.

We then experience that the human being needs the moment of death, the moment when the physical body falls away, and that this moment gives consciousness for life in the spiritual world just as much as the forces of birth give consciousness for ordinary life. We notice that death is the creator of consciousness after death, that we have death as the creator of post-mortal consciousness. And we perceive the significance of death for life; we perceive how death, always prevailing in us, leads us, as spiritual researchers, to recognize that we carry a core of being within us that, as a spiritual soul, goes out of us after death. Just as the plant germ emerges from the plant and brings forth a new plant, so this spiritual-soul core of our being passes through the gate of death into a spiritual world, where it then continues to develop. And just as we ourselves have developed out of the world, so it becomes clear to us through the other, how we have wanted out of life.

And when the spiritual researcher develops what has been described in two directions and the spiritual-soul aspect frees itself from the physical-bodily aspect, then the outer, physical-sensory world sinks away. The spiritual researcher knows that he has left it behind, but he enters into a spiritual world. He now knows that he is active in this spiritual world. He knows that he is an entity in there, because he has learned to observe how this entity can detach itself from the physical body. And by observing how one wants to escape from the world, one comes to completely different contents of the world. One gets a different awareness of a world that one did not know before, which is a real spiritual world. And now it really becomes an experience that behind the sensual-physical world there is a world of spiritual beings, that the physical world is a veil behind which the spiritual beings are. So when a person has found out for himself how he is willed out of the universe, he finds the spiritual world, a world of real beings, not just of concepts and ideas, as pantheism says. Yes, man finds much more. It is precisely by developing this element of feeling, this feeling that begins with identifying with fate, that man gradually enters the world in which people find themselves when they have passed through the gate of death.

I do not want to shy away from this, esteemed attendees, because I do not want to talk in the abstract alone, but rather show something concrete, and really cite something concrete: what happens in the spiritual world, one experiences it differently than one experiences things here in the physical-sensory world. Here the entities are outside of us, we stand before them, we perceive them, we understand them through the intellect. When we step out of our body in the way described, we are seized by the entities of the spiritual world. I would like to say: as if from the front, the entities and facts in the sensual world approach us. Taking us, as it were, from behind and placing us within themselves, we become aware of what is really there in the spiritual world as entities.

I would like to give you a single example today. I would like to say from the outset that I am well aware that, especially when one goes into such individual examples, what is said again and again arises: “All this is just a crazy fantasy!” And I find it quite understandable that the thought habits of the present speak in this way. But I will say in a moment what point of view the spiritual researcher must take on this point. Some time ago - forgive me for mentioning something personal, but the chemist must also mention this to show what he has discovered in his laboratory - some time ago I was obliged to follow the spiritual course of human development historically in a certain direction. It was when I was writing the introduction to my book 'Riddles of Philosophy'. In an introductory chapter, I wanted to present the major aspects that shaped the periods of philosophy in the development of humanity. I was able to discern that important impulses were present in Western intellectual life, particularly for the first few centuries of Christian development. But if one takes the study of intellectual life seriously, one will very soon have the opportunity to realize how modest one becomes with respect to what the human sense of inquiry can achieve in the depths of the world. And here I openly confess – and precisely from the openness with which I confess it, you will be able to sense something of the truth that permeates what is to be said – I openly confess that at first I found my own sense of research blunt precisely in the face of the philosophical peculiarity of the first Christian centuries. Now a friend of our spiritual movement had died some time before; and what was in the spiritual world as the soul of this friend of ours, I was able to feel as approaching me, as I searched for these peculiarities of philosophical development in the first Christian centuries. And since I knew that personality quite well here in the physical world, it was possible to recognize what now penetrated into my own feelings and thoughts - I mean this penetrating from behind - as coming from that personality. And very soon I was able to make the acquaintance of this soul, which had more accurate insight after death into the first Christian centuries; and in my own description of the peculiarity of the character of the first Christian centuries, there flowed in that which this soul inspired. And what I myself was able to do at that time, what I characterized in my “Mysteries of Philosophy” about this period, I owe to the spiritual union with this so-called dead soul, which had just entered the spiritual world some time before.

The spiritual researcher in particular will find it quite understandable in the present day when such things, when they are expressed, only meet with ridicule and scorn. However, ridicule and scorn and contradiction about the “fantasy” has already been raised, dear attendees, when something has come up that has contradicted people's thinking habits. I can well imagine that there are those who say: What he claims is completely contrary to the five senses! There was once a time when it was reasonable for the five senses to believe that the earth stood still and that the sun moved around the earth and the stars around the earth. That was entirely in line with the five senses. Then Copernicus came and explained that in reality it is quite different. And as people have become accustomed, very slowly becoming accustomed, to accepting as truth what contradicts the so-called five senses, so mankind will also become accustomed to accepting what seems to contradict the five senses with regard to what has been indicated here about penetrating into spiritual worlds.

Then, after Copernicus, it was Giordano Bruno who had to say, after he had absorbed the Copernican world view with all his soul: the development of your senses - and in those days it really did correspond to all healthy senses - makes you see the blue firmament up there. You take it for reality, but it is not there at all. Infinite worlds are embedded in infinite space, and only the limitations of your ability make it so that the blue firmament is up there. So this firmament was explained as a limitation of the human ability to see. But in this way, there is also a temporal firmament for materialistic thinking. This is limited on one side by birth and on the other by death. Just as the blue firmament of space is not there, so is not there that temporal firmament, that boundary of life that flows between birth and death, but life extends beyond birth and death into infinity. And embedded in that infinity is what true human life is.

It was, as is well known, the great thinker, the leading thinker of modern times, Lessing, who first spoke of the fact that the whole historical course of humanity has only one meaning if one imagines that people complete their lives in repeated lives on earth; so that the whole of human life proceeds in such a way that we live between birth and death, or for that matter between conception and death, then lead a spiritual life between death and a new birth, enter into an earthly life again through a new birth, and so on until conditions arise for which this no longer applies. Likewise, we can also look back into the past at repeated earth lives. I cannot go into what preceded as conditions before the repeated earth lives began. Lessing, so people say, Lessing has indeed created great things, but when he wrote 'The Education of the Human Race', he was already decrepit. Nevertheless, this is the most significant spiritual document that Lessing has given to mankind. In it, he was the first to draw attention to the connection between the past and the future of world development. Our souls themselves have lived in past epochs and carried the fruits of these lives over into our present; and what they are now living through, they will in turn carry into later epochs, applying them in later epochs.

It is like a powerful presentiment of what is experienced as reality by those who thus free the soul from the body, who truly penetrate to the spiritual and soul essence of the being in the manner described. When you see how you are wanted out of the universe, something in this wanted, what you are now yourself, in this fate that you have prepared for yourself in previous lives. You first have to ascend, as I have described, to encounter this higher self. Then you see this higher self throughout repeated lives on earth.

This is just as much a result of real science as the results of physics, astronomy and chemistry are. These things will be no different from what Copernicus and Giordano Bruno brought to mankind. Copernicus had his opponents who fought him fiercely. Giordano Bruno had a tragic fate, he was burned. Nowadays people are no longer burned, but they are laughed at. That is what happens to those who think outside the box in today's world. Those who want to bring what is necessary for the future for spiritual areas are today decried as fantasists, as dreamers, yes, as worse.

Of course, there will be people today who are very naive and who say: Yes, what Copernicus discovered are facts, whereas what spiritual research discovers are things that have been imagined! The people who speak in this way do not know how naive they are and how Copernicus did not observe facts; it was not the case that he took a chair and sat down in space, as children are shown at school; but all of this was only the result of calculations and nothing else; it was certainly not a fact that could be observed with the senses.

The spiritual researcher must, dear attendees, look at the course of spiritual development of humanity, then he will know, in the face of all contradiction, that today numerous souls long for a deeper knowledge of what lives in us and what conquers birth and death, what our eternal essence is, and that this can be explored.

Now it could be said: Yes, then only the spiritual researcher can know that there are spiritual worlds besides the material one, and that the human being belongs to the latter. That is not correct. Just as the chemist in his laboratory brings about certain results, which are then made practically useful, so the spiritual researcher in the spiritual laboratory brings about certain results. Just as one does not need to be a chemist to use what chemistry produces, so one does not need to be a spiritual researcher oneself to recognize in its truth what spiritual science is. I emphasize the difference very expressly: In chemistry one can establish the truth through practical use; in spiritual research it is a matter of the spiritual researcher being able to investigate that which can be investigated only by spiritual research. But when it is investigated, every soul can also see what the spiritual researcher has to say. If it is unable to do so, it is only because it has blocked its own path with prejudices formed over centuries from a purely scientific point of view. When people discard these prejudices, they will be able to absorb what the spiritual researcher has to say, even if they are not spiritual researchers themselves. In a sense, and to a certain degree, everyone today can become a spiritual researcher by observing the rules you can find in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”; although everyone today can become a spiritual researcher to the extent that he can see for himself through his inner development that every word the spiritual researcher says is true.

New truths always contradict old prejudices. It is most understandable that such new truths are initially only received with hostility. But now, when we look at what spiritual researchers are proclaiming – I could only sketch out the picture of spiritual research with a few strokes of the charcoal, so to speak; you can find everything else in books, in our literature – what does it actually bring into a person's life? I have emphasized it many times: what the spiritual researcher brings about first is knowledge. Just by looking at this room, nothing is changed, the room would be the same without my looking at it. By recognizing, the spiritual researcher does not create the spiritual essence, which comes from eternal elements. The spiritual researcher does nothing but recognize that which is in the soul, which remains only unconscious, which rumbles and weaves and exists down there. So when the spiritual researcher ascends, as described, it is the case that he must first fight his way through the feeling of loneliness and powerlessness. And the way he feels can only be compared to a single note from a sonata, which has its meaning in the whole sonata, getting lost. Just as this tone must feel, since it draws its entire meaning from the sonata, so does a person feel when they have been brought to a state of lonely powerlessness by the first exercise; they feel the eternal that is within them, but in isolation.

And through the other exercise, where the person overcomes inner fear, where he comes before himself, where the realization comes before his soul that he is going through repeated lives on earth, the sound enters the sonata again. That is what those who have sensed something of these things have called the music of the spheres. The music of the spheres is not a philosophical abstraction that people dream up as philosophers, but a reality, a truth. When you hear it – as a human soul, a sound itself in the other sounds – you do not hear the totality of the sounds, but you are a sound and experience yourself in the music of the spheres. But before you get to what spiritual reality is, what lives and weaves and flows and works, before you ascend to it, you have to distinguish between the one sensation where you feel like melting away - while becoming lonely yourself - that which is physical and physical; and on the other hand, one feels fear penetrating one, like that which wants to leave the world, the universe, showing itself, one would like to say, like striving for petrification, for fossilization. On the one hand, one feels as if the spiritual world is merging into annihilation – there are no other words to express it – flowing into the ocean of the world; on the other hand, one feels that which solidifies within oneself. This struggle is always taking place at the bottom of the soul. And what do we gain when spiritual science draws our attention to what it recognizes? We know that our everyday life, in which we think and feel and will, proceeds as we have it as our life heritage, but it could not proceed if it were not for what lies below, which would produce powerlessness and fear if it were not graciously covered by a veil and only uncovered by spiritual research. But this is how one feels about the insights of spiritual science, which remained hidden for centuries when humanity was not yet prepared, but were only accessible to a few individuals; this is how one feels about these spiritual-scientific results, which must now gradually and towards the future penetrate into the spiritual development of humanity.

As a result of these spiritual-scientific findings penetrating, it becomes clear what is at the bottom of the soul, what kind of struggle is taking place – struggles in fear and powerlessness – and how this everyday life can only be attained through a victory over subconscious powers. But this makes one feel like a human being in the world, on the foundation of a system of opposing forces, against which the human being, even if it only lives in everyday consciousness, is victorious. But this brings us strength, strength of soul, knowing that life is a victory; at the bottom of our soul, supersensible powers fight against each other in order to bring about, in the mutual play of their forces, what we are in everyday life. It is a great victory that which is most everyday for us; it is the fruit of victories, of the play of opposing forces and powers, supersensible forces and powers, which are constantly fighting at the bottom of our soul. The results of spiritual science will be able to infuse soul strength, soul firmness, and inner courage into human souls.

And so, if I have characterized the actual spiritual-scientific field according to its content and methods, then it may appear, if not outwardly rational, then at least intuitively correct, in our fateful time, when I say a few words about how these soul-strengthening forces must have a certain significance in our fateful time, when we live in a time of external struggles and opposing forces, in struggles in the outer, historical world, in such a way that we can really perceive in them an external physical image of what we have just been able to characterize, that we can say: It is being discovered, struggling in the subconscious of the soul, by spiritual science. Ordinary everyday life is built up as a life asset on powers that oppose each other. If we know that the individual human life is a victory over powers that oppose each other, then, especially in a time like today's, we gain courage and confidence that the struggles we are in can be compared to what is going on at the bottom of every human soul. And just as the fruit of the struggles in the depths of the soul appears as a victory in the most ordinary life, so we can turn our gaze to what will emerge as the effect, as the fruit, of the struggles of the powers that confront us in the outer world.

In another sense, too, spiritual science is basically only a continuation of natural science. It was Goethe who rebelled against the theory of purpose, against what one might call a causal theory. It was Goethe who emphasized that one will only come to a true science when one no longer looks at nature only for reasons of purpose, when one no longer asks: Why does the ox have horns? so that he can gore! — but that the ox gores because he has horns. Goethe said: this causal thinking is increasingly penetrating into the scientific world view. Spiritual science leads precisely to the spiritual causes. It thus continues the causal thinking even further to the causes that are inaccessible to external observation.

When the opinion is expressed, often even in a defamatory way, but also frequently in a well-intentioned way, that spiritual science is likely to expel all religious feeling, then it must be said that the spiritual researcher has a higher opinion of what religion is than someone who believes that spiritual science can somehow destroy a religion. Religion has not been destroyed by the scientific world view for anyone who can see through things. That which is religion is so strong for the one who sees through it that no science can destroy it. While, however, the scientific world view of some who feel free because they only understand a quarter or an eighth of science has alienated them from religion, people will be led back to religion through spiritual deepening, because through spiritual science they will get to know the real spiritual world and because they will learn that their souls are connected to it. This will deepen people's feelings to such an extent that even those who were already estranged from religion will return to it to an ever greater degree.

The other important thing is that, with regard to what is happening historically, what is around us, spiritual science will lead us to the effects, to that which is to be lived out. We look to the causes of what is there, not to what we are. But when we are confronted with facts in history, it is important that we understand the facts in such a way that we look at the effects above all. How, however, is today's discussion influenced by the materialistic worldview? How does it extend to the question of which nations wanted the war and which did not, and which caused this or that? Spiritual scientific observation leads, as it otherwise leads to the true causes, precisely to the effects. One looks at what must be achieved in opposing powers through the sacrifice of blood and life. We look at it as we look at the subconscious life of the soul; we see how the conscious life of the soul develops from it. We look at what surrounds us in our time, what moves us with pain but also gives us hope, and at what can arise as an effect.

And each of us must stand firmly on the ground on which fate has placed us. We are standing in Central European culture. Fate has placed us on this ground of Central European culture. Anyone who is familiar with this Central European culture, even those who have once recognized the workings and weaving of the spirit, will see that it is like the body of a spiritual soul that is active in it. I could now cite many things that appear in our time as the actual characteristic soul and spirit of Central European culture. I will give just one example, but I would like us to bear in mind that just as the hand cannot be thought of without it being thought of in connection with what the human being thinks and feels, so what European sons in the East and West, courageously accomplish in blood and sacrifice, what is fought for with blood and life, cannot be thought of differently than in the context of the entire Central European intellectual life, with what the best times of this intellectual life have produced as the blossoms of this intellectual life.

Just as what a person's soul has produced is connected with what his hands have produced, so what Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Hegel have produced is intimately connected with what warriors in the East and West have to accomplish as Central European beings. These things are one and the same. But we recognize things by their fruits. Therefore, we want to emphasize one – I will not even say one fruit, but one side of the fruits of this Central European spiritual life, to see if it has something particularly characteristic that is not peculiar to the others, who, as in a mighty fortress, enclose this Central European spiritual life today. But for that we have to go into specifics.

It was truly a momentous event when Goethe, this representative of German, Central European intellectual life, this spirit, who in the highest moments of his creativity was virtually able to hold an intimate dialogue with the German national spirit and produce what the German spirit of the German people has whispered throughout the ages when he wrote the words with which his “Faust” begins, those words that were written down as early as the 1770s as his own confession, which he put into the mouth of Faust. Goethe looked around at everything that the world of the senses and science can give. He longed for that which lies beyond the world of the senses, which he expresses in words that have almost become trivial today, but which, when felt in all their elemental power, appear as something quite powerful in the individual human experience:

Now, alas! I have studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately theology as well
with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool,
and am no wiser than before!

This is how Faust stands, according to Goethe's feelings in the seventies of the eighteenth century.

Then came that great period in German, Central European intellectual life, which is characterized not only by great musicians, great artists in other fields, but also by great idealistic philosophers of German life. Those philosophers – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – one need not agree with the content of their works; one need only look at how they tried to approach eternal truths to gain insight into Fichte's great and powerful saying: “What kind of philosopher you are depends on what kind of person you are.” He wanted to connect the whole person with what blossoms out of the human being as truth. Therefore, he was able to eavesdrop on the German national spirit, those deep, but also penetrating and inward words that he spoke in Germany's painful times in his “Speeches to the German Nation,” which have had such a great effect. What he lived, thought and philosophically strove for was so unified in him that when he fell ill – his wife brought home an illness from the hospital where she cared for sick warriors, which was passed on to him – when he fell ill with fever and faced death, there, in his final hours, his son was at his side. He tells us that even in the feverish dreams of this most German of philosophers, this world philosopher, he experienced at the same time – and his experience was so great – what was being experienced in Central Europe at the time, when he was already In his feverish dreams, Fichte felt he was part of the army at Blücher's crossing of the Rhine; and he was completely immersed in it, he, the philosopher, who strove throughout his life in the most sober, most detached, most crystal-clear thinking. His experience goes hand in hand with that of his people, even in their feverish dreams. This is a man of one piece.

Central European philosophers strove – one may think as one likes about the content – but one must see this striving as striving, as an expression of humanity. Then again, consider the wonderfully artistic world-building that Schelling erected, consider Hegel's magnificent logical image of the universe – how they all went through the first half of the new century, these great philosophical figures, and all that they brought into the world! And now suppose that Goethe had still been alive in 1840 and had rewritten the beginning of his Faust. The great philosophers have lived. Fichte wrote a “natural right”, Hegel wrote a “natural right”, they renewed jurisprudence, Schelling wrote about medicine, they all wanted to be theologians – they added a great deal to what was there before and about which Goethe said:

Alas, now I have studied philosophy,
jurisprudence and medicine,
and unfortunately theology as well
with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool,
and am no wiser than before!

Enormous things have flowed into German intellectual life through them. Can you therefore believe that if Goethe had begun his Faust in 1840, he would have begun:

Now, thank God, I have studied philosophy with Fichte,
natural law with Schelling,
and law and medicine.
So there I am, a wise man,
and wiser than ever before.

Goethe would never have written this as the beginning of “Faust”, but rather would have begun his Faust:

I now, alas! have studied philosophy,
jurisprudence and medicine,
and unfortunately also theology
with great zeal.
There I stand, I poor fool,
And all my wisdom is as much as before!

But this is the important thing, which expresses in a representative way how there is a certain striving, an eternal striving, in Central European intellectual life; and as soon as you have finished striving, you are back to striving again. This is how you stand in what you grasp as your own nationality. While one is Italian, British or French by virtue of being born into that nation, as a German or a Central European one must discover what nationality is, what the innermost essence of nationality is.

What you inherit from your fathers
you must always conquer to possess.

And as a people, Central Europe also had to conquer what - forgive me for again bringing up something personal - I would like to say: I may perhaps ascribe to myself a modest judgment of what is important for this forging of Central European nationality. I have lived half of my life, roughly from the 1960s to the 1980s, in my Austrian homeland, and the other half in Germany. I was still in that Austria where everything that happened in Germany was hated as an effect of 1866. And now one experiences this coming together, this being forged together into a great Central European, into a world cultural act, that is what it has become. And when we look at what this Central Europe, including all the other nationalities that belong to this great fortress, what it holds within itself, we must remember that it is like the soul of a human being, which conquers through its work, that it is thus related to what spiritual-scientific striving is. This must lead the soul beyond itself. But Central European striving is on this path to becoming spiritual-scientific striving. Therefore, one can imagine that what once was will emerge in the future as the flowering of the Central European essence, that it has its seeds in what Central European folklore holds and which is magnificently presented in Faust. The interweaving with the universe, the feeling of oneself in the universe, the going-through-fear that I have characterized when one wants to stand before the eternal - how beautifully did Goethe characterize it when he wrote in his later years:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious Nature for a kingdom,
Strength to feel her, to enjoy her. Not
Coldly marveling visit thou only allowest,
allow me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
before me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches and trunks, and the hill thunders hollowly with its fall, then you lead me to the safe cave, then you show me to myself, and to my own breast, the deep, secret wonders open up.

The intimate interweaving of what man is with what is outside - where everywhere in the underlying entities are brothers, that is, soul beings, just as the human being himself is a spirit-soul being - is already contained in what Goethe and the other geniuses have poetically established. Just as the stem and leaves, the blossoms and fruits develop from the plant's germ, so too must the highest spiritual fruit of Central European culture develop from that which is germinating. Those who immerse themselves in spiritual matters can recognize, not for external reasons but for internal ones, the vitality that lives in the striving of Central European culture towards the spirit. When we look at this Central European culture and see its striving towards spiritualism – not towards idealism, but towards spiritualism – we can say to ourselves: there are reasons for us to be confident, to look at the current hard struggle from the perspective of spiritual science and say to ourselves: just as the individual human life is built on the struggle and war of opposing forces – we see war and struggle in the subconscious, on which our life assets are built – so we are in the midst of struggle and war; but the historical life assets, the cultural assets, will emerge from these struggles. And insofar as we feel at one with Central European intellectual life, we say to ourselves: the idealism, the spirituality of this Central European intellectual life will have to develop out of our time, which, as one can feel, carries something very profound in its bosom.

Indeed, our materialistic age was also built on struggle. There is a nation in the northwest – no value judgments are to be made today, only characterizations – the British, who most loudly proclaim that they want to fight for freedom, that they must fight against Central European “barbarism,” that they did not want the war. We keep hearing in Central Europe, and hear in abusive words, that Central Europe wanted the war. Perhaps one may ask: Did the British people not wage war in the past, for example in the years when the deepest peace was desired in Central Europe for the sake of blessing and salvation? From 1856 to 1900, England waged 34 wars, conquered four million square miles of land for purely material culture, which it spread across the globe, and made 57 million people new British subjects. This is a material culture, dearest attendees, which is based on struggle. In fact, it can be seen that logic does not flourish in our materialistic culture, especially in the broadest sense. There is a French philosopher – yes, I don't know whether you have to call him “fils de montagne” now; he used to be called “Bergson”; now things are changing. Bergson, who has been much overestimated, but at least attempted a philosophy of life in the face of dead materialistic philosophy – last winter he gave a speech at the Academy of Sciences in Paris in which he characterized German intellectual life something like this: If you look at Germany today, all idealism has passed, we are only confronted with mechanisms, the whole culture has become mechanical. He points to the cannons and everything that has been set up as a mechanical aid to confront the West. Perhaps one may answer with a question to characterize how thought and logic are applied today: Did Bergson expect that when Central European culture was attacked, people would stand at the Rhine border and quote Schiller and Goethe to prove that Central European culture had remained spiritual?

But sometimes people want to go even deeper, and then they say, for example: We did not want this war! The real cause of this war lies in Central Europe! The logic that one applies to this, if one really sees through it – and spiritual science also teaches a certain flexibility of mind, it makes thoughts so fluid that poor logic causes pain – if one sees through it, then the logic that is often applied today is this: one could also say that yes, much, much of the mockery and scorn and insult has been heard from the West to Central Europe. Yes, none of this would have happened if the art of printing had not been invented. The Germans invented the art of printing, so they are to blame for these slanders. And there would be no shooting, neither from the air nor on the ground, if the Germans had not invented gunpowder. The Germans have already invented gunpowder once. Not true, you can't say that the French invented gunpowder. So it is the Germans' fault that nations are facing each other with cannons!

Now, as threadbare as this logic would be, so threadbare is today's logic, which is applied to that which really develops from Central European culture: genuine life that develops into the spiritual, before which one has a secret fear, as before a higher power. But if it has been said that the present war is being waged only for material interests, then this may be correct in a limited sense. Certainly, much of what can only be achieved through this war must be achieved for trade and industry, for the material culture of Central Europe. But it is certain that, if not by our fathers, who work as industrialists and step out into the world, then at least by our sons, what as the ethos of Central Europe, which has found its expression in Faust, which emerges from Wagner, Beethoven, Fichte and Schelling, will be carried out into all the world; and that will be a new element in all the world. And just as our ordinary, everyday life is built on a victory over opposing forces, so the Central European cultural heritage will build itself up as a victory over that which must be so ardently striven for.

This is what really emerges as a strengthening power of the soul from the insights of spiritual science. Yes, opposing forces are now stirring around us in the world, just as the soul undercurrents stir within the individual human being. But just as the substance of life rises up from these soul foundations, so will the cultural heritage rise from what once had to be fought for. 34 nations - not counting smaller national differences - 34 nations are fighting with each other today; and we see how the fighting mood is spreading. But we look at what is happening by looking up at what must result as effects. And we in Central Europe, when we contemplate all this spiritually, we may say to ourselves: Just as the individual human being, in turn, has to build up his body in each individual embodiment and has to build it up again and again from seven to seven years — because after seven years the entire ingredients have changed, the body must be rebuilt several times, so must people go through struggles, so must humanity go through all the pain today in order to come to a higher life.

What Europe is now going through must stand as a warning in the higher sense. What is the body of Central Europe must be conquered anew against what is storming in from the east and the west. And it is not without reason that in the future what must arise from the great spiritual seeds that strive for inner development in Central Europe, that must develop after the soil around has been watered with the blood of our noblest, the air has been permeated with the sentiments that arise from the sacrifices that have become necessary in our time, when this air is heavy with the pain and suffering of those who, as brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, have lost their loved ones. Intuitively, I said, even if not intellectually, what I took the liberty of adding to the already lengthy lecture can be felt in connection with what has been said, because it should be shown how that which comes from spiritual science as a strengthening of the soul, really brings us together with what the eternal, death-conquering and all resistance-conquering immortal core of our being is in man, of which only a parable is the temporary dying.

And because, when we see that this treasure of life is based on victory, we can only have soul strengthening, not soul fainting as a result of spiritual science, so spiritual science brings us to what I would now like to summarize not in individual intellectual words, but in terms of feeling. The best thing that can come out of spiritual science is that it does not remain just a theory, just a body of knowledge, but that it pours out into our emotional life, that it becomes a power that strengthens our soul. For it shows us that the innermost being of man only begins where the impressions of the sense world end, where the intellect has nothing more to say. In conclusion, I would like to summarize with a few words, in an emotional and intuitive way, what can emerge from spiritual science as a feeling, as a basic mood of the soul, at any time and especially in our fateful time, which bears so much in its womb. This will conclude the lecture, with which I wanted to speak about the principles and prospects of spiritual science:

Where sense knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
The realities of life
To the soul's being opened.
The key is created by the soul,
When it grows strong in itself
In the struggle that world powers
On their own ground
With human powers lead,
When it drives away through itself
The sleep that envelops the powers of knowledge
At the boundaries of its senses
With a spiritual night.

In the last lecture I sought to show how in the spiritual culture of the present day, it is due to misunderstandings when there is so little understanding between those who direct their research to the soul and to the processes within the soul's realm and those who direct their attention to the material processes in the human organism which run their course—however one wishes to call it—as accompanying phenomena, or also, as materialism maintains, as the necessary causes of soul phenomena. And I sought to show what the causes are of such misunderstandings. Today I should, above all, like to draw attention to the fact that such misunderstandings—as well as misunderstandings in other regards—necessarily arise in the search for real, for genuine insight when one fails to take one aspect into consideration, in the cognitive process itself, an aspect which forcefully reveals itself to the spiritual investigator. This aspect reveals itself more and more as an immediate perception during the course of further, extensive spiritual-scientific research. This is something which at first appears very odd when one expresses it: In the sphere in which world conceptions arise, that is in the sphere of insight into spiritual reality, when, I would like to say, one ties oneself down to certain points of view, there necessarily arises a way of regarding the human soul which can both be unequivocally refuted and can just as well be proven correct.

Therefore, the spiritual-scientific researcher more and more tends to abandon the habit of reinforcing one or the other conception by bringing to bear what, in ordinary life would be called a proof, or a refutation. For, in this sphere, as has been said, everything can be proved with certain reasons and everything can, also with certain reasons, be contradicted. Materialism, in its totality, can indeed be strictly proved correct, and, when it addresses itself to single questions about life or about existence can also equally well be shown to be correct. And one will not necessarily find it easy to refute this or that argument which the materialist brings forward in support of his views by merely seeking to refute his conclusion by bringing forward opposing points of view. The same thing holds true for the one whose point of view is a spiritual view of existence. Therefore, the one who truly wishes to conduct research in spiritual fields must, in regard to any world conception know not only all that which speaks for the point of view, but also all that speaks against it. For the remarkable fact arises that the actual truth only becomes evident when one allows to work upon the soul that which speaks for a certain thing, as well as that which speaks against it. And the one who allows his spirit to stare in fixation upon any constellation of concepts or mental representations of a one-sided world view, such a one will always be closed to the fact that just the opposite can appear to be valid to the soul, indeed the opposite must appear to be correct up to a certain point. And such a person can be compared with someone who might insist that human life can only be sustained by breathing in. Breathing in assumes breathing out, both belong together. So also, our concepts, our representations, relate to one another in questions concerning world conceptions. We are able to put forward, in regard to any matter, a concept which confirms it and we are able to put forward a concept which refutes it; one way demands the other, just as inbreathing requires outbreathing, and vice versa. And thus, just as real life can only reveal itself through breathing out and breathing in—when both are present—so, also, the spiritual can only manifest itself within the soul when one is able to enter in an equally positive manner into the pro as well as the con of a particular matter. The supportive, confirming concept is like a breathing out, within the living wholeness of the soul, the reflecting, denying concept like a breathing in, and only in their living working together does that element reveal itself which is rooted in the spiritual reality. It is for this reason that spiritual science is not concerned to apply the methods, to which one is so accustomed in current literature, where this or that is proved or is refuted. The spiritual scientist realizes that that which is brought forward in a positive form concerning world conceptions, can always in a certain sense be justified, but, equally so, what appears to contradict it. When one moves forward in world conception questions to that immediate life which is present in positive and negative concepts, just as bodily life lives in outbreathing and breathing in, then one comes to concepts which truly are able to take in the spirit; one comes to concepts which are equal to reality. However, in doing so, one must often express oneself quite differently than when one expresses oneself according to the habits of thought of ordinary life. But the way in which one expresses oneself arises from the livingly active inner experience of the spirit. And the spirit can only be inwardly experienced, not, in the manner of material existence, be outwardly perceived.

Now, you know, that one of the principal world conception questions is that which I dealt with in the first lectures which I held here this winter, namely, the question concerning matter, concerning physical substance. And I shall touch on this question by way of introduction from the points of view which I have indicated.

One cannot come successfully to terms with the question about substance or about matter if one attempts, again and again, to form mental images or concepts about what matter actually is; when one tries to understand—in other words—what actually is matter, what is substance. One who has truly wrestled in his soul with such riddles—which are very far from the beaten track for many people—such a one knows what is involved in questions of this kind. For, if he has wrestled for a time without yielding to this or that prejudice, he comes to a very different point of view in relation to such a question. He comes to a point of view which allows him to consider as more important the inner attitude of the soul when one forms such a concept as the concept of matter. It is this wrestling of the soul itself which is raised to consciousness. And one then comes to a way of looking at these riddles, which I might characterize in the following way.

He who wishes to understand matter in the way in which it is usually conceived resembles a person who says; I now wish to form an impression of darkness, of a dark room. What does he do? He turns on the light and regards this as the correct method to gain an impression of a dark room. Now, you will agree, this is just the opposite of the right way to go about it. And, it is in the same way, the opposite of the right way—only one has to come to realize this through the inner wrestling which I have pointed to—if one believes that one will ever come to know the nature of matter in setting the spirit into motion in order to illuminate matter, to illuminate substance, by means of spirit. The one and only place where the spirit within the body can silence itself is where an outer process penetrates into our inner life, that is in sense perception, in sensation, where the life of representation, of forming mental images, ceases. It is just by letting the spirit come to silence and by our experiencing this silence of the spirit that we can allow matter, substance, truly to represent itself within our soul.

One does not come to such concepts through ordinary logic; or, I would say, if one does come to them through ordinary logic, then the concepts are much too thin to call forth a genuine power of conviction. Only when one wrestles within the soul with certain concepts, in the way which has been indicated, will they lead to the kind of result which I have pointed toward.

Now, the opposite is also the case. Let us assume, someone wants to comprehend spirit. If he seeks it, for example, in the purely material outward formation of the human body, he is similar to someone who extinguishes the light in order to comprehend it. For it is the secret in this matter, that outer, sense-perceptible nature contradicts the spirit, extinguishes the spirit. Nature builds the reflected image of the spirit, in the same way that an illuminated object throws back, reflects, the light. But nowhere can we find the spirit, in whatever material processes, if we do not grasp the spirit in living activity. Because that is just the essential nature of material processes that the spirit has transformed itself into them; that spirit has incorporated itself into them. And if we then try to come to know the spirit out of them, we misunderstand ourselves.

I wanted to give this as a preface, in order that ever greater clarity can be brought to bear on what the actual cognitive attitude of heart and mind of the spiritual researcher is, and how it is that he needs a certain width and mobility in his life of forming mental images, to be able to penetrate into those things which require penetration. With such concepts it then becomes possible to illuminate the important questions on which I touched last time and which I will briefly indicate in order to move on to our considerations for today.

I said: as things have developed in recent spiritual education and culture, one has come ever more and more to a one-sided way of looking at the relationships of the soul-spiritual to the bodily-physical; a way of looking which expresses itself in the fact that one actually only seeks for the soul- spiritual within that part of the human bodily constitution which lies in the nervous system, that is to say within the brain. One assigns the soul- spiritual exclusively to the brain and nervous system, and one regards the remaining organism, when one speaks of the soul-spiritual, more or less as a kind of incidental supplement to the brain and nervous system. Now, I tried to make clear the results of spiritual research in this field by drawing attention to the fact that one only comes to a true insight about the relationship of the human soul with the human body when one sees the relationship of the entire human soul to the entire bodily constitution. But there it became clear that the matter has yet a deeper background, that is the membering of the entirety of the human soul into the actual representational thought life, into the life of feeling and the life of will. For only the actual representational life of the soul is bound to the nervous organism in the way in which it is assumed by more recent physiological psychology. In contrast, the life of feeling—let it be rightly noted, not in so far as it is represented mentally, but in so far as it arises—is related with the human breathing organism, with everything which is breathing, and which is connected with breathing, as the life of mental representation is related with the nervous system. Thus, one must assign the life of feeling of the soul to the breathing organism. Then further: that which we designate as the life of will, is in a similar relationship with that which in the physical body we must designate as the metabolism, of course into its finest ramifications. And in as much as one takes into consideration that the single systems within the organism interact and interweave—metabolism, of course, also occurs in the nerves—they interpenetrate, I would say, the three systems interpenetrate at the outermost periphery. But a correct understanding, however, is only possible when one regards matters in such a way that one knows: will impulses belong with the metabolism in the same way that the experiences of forming mental images belong with the human nervous system, that is to say, with the brain.

Matters of this kind can, of course, only be indicated to begin with. And just for this reason, objection after objection is possible. But I know quite definitely: when one no longer approaches that which has just been presented out of merely partial aspects of today's natural scientific research but rather out of the whole spectrum of anatomical, physiological research, then the result will be a complete harmony between the assertions which I have made from the spiritual scientific point of view and the assertions of natural science. Regarded superficially—allow me to cite the following objection only as a characteristic example—objection after objection can be brought forward against so comprehensive a truth. Someone could say: Let us agree that certain feelings are connected with the breathing organism; for no one can really doubt that for certain feelings this can be very convincingly demonstrated. But someone could also say: Yes, but what do you have to say to the fact that we perceive certain melodies, that melodies arise in our consciousness; and the feeling of an aesthetic pleasure connects itself with melodies. Can one, in this case, speak of any kind of connection of the breathing organism to this which quite evidently arises in the head, and so obviously is connected with the nervous organism according to the results of physiological research? The moment one considers the matter rightly, the correctness of my assertion becomes evident with complete clarity. Namely, one must take into consideration that with every outbreath an important parallel process occurs in the brain: the brain would rise with the outbreath if it were not prevented from rising by top of the skull—the breathing carries forward into the brain—and in reverse, the brain sinks with the inbreath. And since it cannot rise or fall because of the skull, there arises, what is well known to physiology: there arises the change in the blood stream, there occurs what physiology knows as brain-breathing, that is to say, certain processes which occur in the surrounding of the nerves run parallel with the process of breathing. And in the meeting of the breathing process with that which lives in us as tone through the ear there occurs what points to the fact that feeling, also in this realm, is connected with the breathing organism, just as the life of mental representations is connected with the nervous organism.

I want to indicate this because it is a relatively remote example and can, therefore, provide a ready objection. If one could come to an understanding with someone concerning all the details given by physiological research, one would find that none of these details contradicts what was presented here last time and has been brought forward again today.

It should now be my task to extend our considerations in a similar way as was done in the last lecture. And, to do so, I must enter more closely into the manner in which the human being unfolds the life of sense perception, in order to show the actual relationship between the capacity for sense perception, which leads to representations, and the life of feeling and of will, indeed, altogether, the life of the human being as soul, as body, and as spirit.

Through our sense life we come into connection with the sense- perceptible environment. Within this sense-perceptible environment natural science distinguishes certain substances, let us rather say, substance-forms - - because it is on these that the matter depends; if I wished to discuss this with the physicist I would have to say aggregate-conditions—solid, fluid, gaseous. Now, however, as you all know, natural scientific research comes to assume—in addition to the above-mentioned form in which physical substance appears—also another condition. When natural science wants to explain light, it is not satisfied only to recognize the existence of these substance- forms, which I have just mentioned, but science reaches out to include that which at first appears to be finer than these sorts of substance; it reaches out to that which one usually calls ether. The idea of ether is an extraordinarily difficult one, and one can say: the various thoughts which have been developed about the ether, what can be said about it, are as different, as manifold as one can imagine. It is, of course, not possible to go into all these details. Attention should only be drawn to the fact that natural science feels impelled to postulate the concept of the ether, which means thinking about the world not only as filled with the immediate sense perception of the more solid substances, but to think of it as filled with ether. What is characteristic is that natural science with its current methods fails to ascend to an understanding of what the ether actually is. Natural research for its real activity always requires material bases. But the ether itself always escapes, in a certain sense, from the material foundations. The ether appears in union with material processes, it calls forth material processes; but it is not to be grasped, so to speak, with those means which are bound to the material foundations. There has, therefore, developed in recent times a strange ether-concept, which, basically, is extraordinarily interesting. The concept of the ether which one can already find today among physicists, goes in the direction of saying: the ether must be—whatever else it may be—something which at any rate has no attributes such as ordinary matter has. And in this way, natural scientific research points toward the recognition of something beyond its own material basis, when it says of the ether, it possesses aspects which research, with its methods, cannot find. Natural scientific research comes to the acceptance of an ether, but with its methods is unable to come to fill out this representation of the ether with any content.

Spiritual science yields the following. Natural scientific research proceeds from the material foundation; spiritual research from the spirit-soul basis. The spiritual researcher—if he does not arbitrarily remain within a certain limit—is also, like the natural scientist, driven to the concept of ether, only from the other side. The spiritual investigator attempts to come to know what is active and effective within the interior of the soul. If he were to remain standing at the point where he is able to experience inwardly only what takes place in the ordinary life of the soul, he would actually in this field not even advance as far as the natural scientist who postulates the concept of an ether. For the natural scientist at least forms the concept of an ether; he accepts it for consideration. The soul researcher, if he fails to come to a concept of ether, resembles a natural scientist who says: Why should I trouble myself about what else lives? I accept the three basic forms: solid, fluid, gaseous bodies; what is finer than that, about that I do not concern myself. This is, for the most part, just what the teachings of psychology in fact do.

However, not everyone who has been active in the realm of soul research acts in this way; and one finds especially within that extraordinarily significant scientific development which is based on the foundation laid in the first third of the nineteenth century by German Idealism—not in this Idealism itself, but in that which then evolved out of this Idealism—one finds the first beginnings leading toward the concept of the ether from the other side, from the spiritual-soul side, just as nature research ascends to the idea of ether from the material side. And, if one truly wishes to have the concept of the ether, one must approach it from two sides. Otherwise, one will not come rightly to terms with this concept. What is interesting is that the great German philosophical Idealists, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, despite their penetrating power of thinking—an ability which I have often characterized here—despite this, they did not form the concept of the ether. They were unable to so enstrengthen, to empower, their inner soul life in order to conceive of the ether. Instead, there arose within those who allowed themselves to be fructified by this Idealism, who, in a sense, allowed the thoughts which had been brought forth to work further within their souls - - despite the fact that they were not as great geniuses as their Idealist predecessors—this concept of the ether arose out of their research into the soul's realm. We first find this ether concept in the work of Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was also his father's pupil. He allowed that to continue to work within his soul which Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his successors, Schelling and Hegel, had accomplished. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, allowing this thought to become condensed to an even greater effectiveness within him, came to say: When one contemplates the life of soul and spirit, when one so to speak, traverses it in all directions, one comes to say: This soul-spiritual life must flow down into the ether, just as the solid, fluid, gaseous states flow up into the ether. So must, in a sense, the lowest element of the soul flow into the ether, just as the highest element of matter flows into the ether above. Characteristic also are certain thoughts which Immanuel Hermann Fichte formed about this matter, by means of which he, indeed, penetrated from the spirit- soul realm and came to the boundary of the ether. You will find this passage from his book Anthropology, 1860, quoted in my most recent book, Of the Human Riddle:

“One cannot find, within the material elements of substance ... that which truly endures, that uniting formative principle of the body, which reveals itself as operative during our entire life.” “Thus, we are directed to a second, essentially different causative principle in the body.” “Inasmuch” as this “contains that which actually persists, endures in the metabolism, it is the true, inner, invisible, but in all visible substantiality present body. That other, the outward manifestation of it, built up out of incessantly active metabolism, may from now on be designated ‘body,’ which is, in fact, not that which persists and is not the enduring whole, and which is the mere result or the after-image of that inner bodily presence, which casts him into the constantly changing world of substance, in a way similar to the way the magnetic force prepares an apparently solid body out of the particles of the iron filings, but which dissolves in all directions when the force which unites them is withdrawn.”

For I. H. Fichte there lived within the ordinary body, consisting of outer material substance, an invisible body, and this invisible body we might also call the etheric body; an etheric body which brings the single substantial particles of this visible body into their form, which sculpts them, forms them. And I. H. Fichte is so clear about the fact that this ether body, to which he descends out of the soul realm, is not subject to the processes of the physical body, that the insight into the existence of such an etheric body suffices to enable him to transcend the riddle of death. In this context I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“It is hardly necessary still to ask, how the human being finds himself in the process of death. The human being remains after this last, for us still visible act of the living process, he remains in his essential being entirely the same in spirit and in organizing power as he formerly was. His integrity is preserved; for he has indeed lost nothing of that which was his and belonged to his substance during his visible life. He only returns in death into the invisible world, or better said, as he never left this world, as it is that which actually endures within all that is visible—he has simply stripped off a particular form of the visible. ‘To be dead’ only signifies, to be no longer perceptible to the usual comprehension by the senses, just as in the same way, that which is actually real, the final ground of bodily manifestation is imperceptible to the senses.”

I have shown in the case of I. H. Fichte how he advances from the soul realm to such an invisible body. It is interesting to note that in a number of instances in the after-glow of the spiritual life of German Idealism, the same thing appears. Some time ago I also drew attention to a lonely thinker, who was a school director in Bromberg, who had occupied himself with the question of immortality, Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, who died in the sixties of the nineteenth century. At first, he concerned himself with the question of immortality as others had also done, seeking to penetrate the question of immortality through thoughts and concepts. But more resulted for him than for those who merely live in concepts. And it was there possible for the publisher of the treatise about immortality which J. H. Deinhardt had written to quote a passage from a letter which the author had written him, in which J. H. Deinhardt says, that, although he had not come so far as to publish it in a book, his inner research had, nevertheless, resulted clearly in the recognition that the human being, during his entire life between birth and death, works on the formation of an invisible body which is released into the spiritual world at death.

Thus, one could draw attention to a variety of other instances within German spiritual life of such a direction of research and of a way of seeing and comprehending the world. They would all show that in this direction of research there lay an urge not to remain limited by mere philosophical speculation, which results in a mere life in concepts, but rather to so enstrengthen the inner life of the soul that it presses forward to that degree of concentration that reaches through to the etheric.

Along the paths on which these researchers entered, the real riddle of the etheric cannot yet be resolved from within, but one can, in a certain sense say: these researchers are on the way to spiritual science. For this riddle concerning the etheric will be resolved when the human soul undergoes those inner processes of practical exercise which I have frequently characterized here, and which are described more exactly in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The human being, when he undergoes these inner soul processes, does indeed gradually attain to the etheric from within. Then the etheric will be directly present for him. Only then, however, is he really in the position to understand what a sense perception is, to understand what actually occurs in the perception by the senses.

In order to characterize this today, I must seek access to this question, in a certain sense, from another side. Let us approach that which actually occurs in the metabolic processes for the human being. Simply expressed, we can think of the metabolic processes in the human organism as occurring in such a way that, essentially, they have to do with the fluid material element. This can be easily understood if one acquaints oneself, even only to a limited extent, with the most easily accessible natural scientific ideas in this field. What constitutes a metabolic process lives, one can say, in the fluid element. That which is breathing lives in the airy, gaseous element; in breathing we have an interchange between inner and outer processes in the air, just as in the metabolism we have an interchange between substance processes which have occurred outside of our body, and such which occur within our body. What happens then when we perceive with our senses and then proceed to form mental representations? What corresponds to this actually? In just the same way that the fluid processes correspond to the metabolism, and the airy processes correspond to breathing—what corresponds to perception? What corresponds to perception are etheric processes. Just as we in a sense live with our metabolism in the fluid, and live with our breathing in the air, we live with our perceiving in the ether. And inner ether processes, inner etheric processes, which occur in the invisible body, about which we have just been speaking, occur, come into contact with external etheric processes in sense perception. When it is objected: Yes, but certain sense perceptions are self-evidently metabolic processes!—this is especially obvious for those sense perceptions which correspond with the so- called lower senses, smell, taste. A more accurate consideration shows that along with that which is substantial, that belongs directly to the metabolism, along with every such process, also with tasting, for example, an etheric process occurs, by means of which we enter into relation with the external ether, just as we enter into relation with the air with our physical body when we breathe. Without the understanding of the etheric world, an understanding of sense perception and sensation is impossible.

What is it that actually happens? Well, one can only really know what happens there when one has gone far enough in the inner soul process that the inner etheric-bodily element has become a reality for one. This will happen when one has achieved what I called imaginative thinking in lectures which I recently gave here. When one's thinking has been so strengthened, by means of the exercises given in the book already mentioned, that they are no longer abstract concepts, such as we normally have, but are thoughts and mental representations filled with life, then one can call them imaginations. When these representations have become so alive that they are, in fact, imaginations, then they live directly in the etheric, whereas, if they are abstract representations, they live only in the soul. They grasp the etheric. And then, if one has progressed far enough, one might say, in an inward experimentation that one experiences within oneself the ether as living reality, then one can know, through experience, what happens in sense perception, in sensation. Sensation as it arises through sense perception—1 can only present this today in the form of results—consists in the fact that the outer environment sends the etheric from the material surroundings into our sense organs, thus making those gulfs, about which I spoke the day before yesterday, so that that which is outside also becomes inward within the sphere of our senses. We have, for instance, a tone between the life of the senses and the outer world. As a result of the fact that the external ether penetrates into our sense organs, this external ether is deadened. And as the outer deadened ether enters our sense organs, it is brought to life again through the fact that the inner ether from the etheric body works towards the deadened etheric coming from outside. Herein we have the essential being of sense perception and sensation. Just as the death process and enlivening arise in the breathing process, when we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so also a process of exchange takes place between the dead ether and enlivened ether in our sense experience.

This is an extraordinarily important fact which can be found through spiritual science. For that which no philosophical speculations can find, and on which the philosophical speculation of the last centuries has ship-wrecked countless times, can only be found along the path of spiritual scientific research. Sense perception can thus be recognized to be a fine process of exchange between the outer and the inner ether; to be the enlivening of the ether that is deadened in the sense organ by the forces of the inner etheric body. So that that which the senses kill for us out of the environment, is inwardly made alive again through the etheric body, and we come, thereby, to that which is indeed the perception of the outer world.

This is extraordinarily important, because it shows how the human being when he devotes himself to the sensations arising from sense perception, does not only live in the physical organism, but rather in the supersensible etheric, and shows how the entire life within the senses is a living and weaving in the invisible etheric. It is this which, in the time mentioned above, the more deeply insightful researchers have always sensed, have inwardly divined, but which will be raised to certainty through spiritual science. Among those who recognized this significant truth, I would like still to mention the almost totally forgotten J. P. V. Troxler. I have mentioned him here in earlier lectures, in earlier years. He said in his Lectures about Philosophy:

“Already in earlier times the philosophers have differentiated a finer, purer soul organism from the coarser body. ... a soul, carrying a picture of the bodily organism, which they called Schema, and which was for them the higher, inner human being. ... In recent times, even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer, dreams earnestly, but jokingly, a whole inward soul man, who bears all the limbs of the outer body in his spirit body; Lavater composes poetically and thinks in a similar vein. …”

These investigators were also clear, however, that in the moment when one ascends out of the usual materialistic way of seeing things to the perception of this supersensible organism in us, one has to move from the usual anthropology to a way of recognition of such a kind that it achieves its results through an intensification of our inner capacities. It is, therefore, interesting how, for example, both I. H. Fichte as well as Troxler are clear that anthropology must ascend to something different, if it wishes to comprehend the whole human being. I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“Consciousness based in sense perception ... together with the whole, human life of the senses, has no other significance than to provide a place in which that supersensible life of the spirit occurs, by introducing—through a free, conscious deed of one's own—the spiritual content of the ideas (which lives beyond ordinary consciousness) into the world of the senses ... The fundamental comprehension of the being of man in this way thus raises ‘Anthropology’ in its final result to ‘Anthroposophy.’”

We see within this stream of German spiritual life which tends to drive idealism out of its abstraction toward reality, the premonition of Anthroposophy. And Troxler says, that one must assume a super-spiritual sense in union with a super-sensible spirit, and that, thereby, one can grasp the human being in such a way that one no longer has to do with a usual anthropology, but with something higher:

“If it is indeed highly welcome that the most recent philosophy, which ... in every Anthroposophy ... must reveal itself, climbs upward, it is, nevertheless, not to be overlooked that this idea cannot be the fruit of speculation, and the true ... individuality of the human being may not be confused, either with that which it postulates as subjective spirit or as finite I, nor confused also with that which it places in opposition with it as absolute spirit or as absolute personality.”

What is brought forward as Anthroposophy in no sense arises arbitrarily. Spiritual life leads to it with necessity, when concepts and mental pictures are not experienced as mere concepts and mental pictures, but rather are—I once again wish to use the expression—condensed to the point where they lead into reality, where they become saturated with reality.

One does not, however—and this is the weakness, the lack, in this research—if one merely raises oneself from the physical to the etheric body, one does not really find one's way; rather one comes to a certain boundary, which must, however, be transcended; for only beyond the etheric lies the soul-spiritual. And the essential thing is, that this soul-spiritual can only come into a relationship with the physical through the mediation of the etheric. We thus have to seek the actual soul element of the human being, working and impulsating within the etheric in a fully super-etheric way; working in such a way that the etheric, in its turn, forms the physical, just as it (the etheric) is itself formed, impulsated, enlivened by the element of the soul.

Let us now try to understand the human being from the other pole, the pole of will. We have said that the will-life is directly connected with the metabolism. In as much as the will impulse lives in the metabolism, it not only lives in the external, physical metabolic processes, but as the entire human being is everywhere present within the limits of his being, so the etheric also lives in that which is active as metabolism when an impulse of will occurs. Spiritual science shows that what lives in the will impulse is exactly the opposite of that which is present in sense perception. In the case of sense perception, the etheric outside of us is, in a certain sense, enlivened by the etheric within us. That is to say, the inner etheric pours itself into the dead etheric from outside. In the case of an impulse of will the situation is such that when the will impulse arises from the soul- spiritual, the etheric body is loosened, is expelled out of the physical body in those areas in which the metabolism occurs, through the activity of the metabolism and everything which is connected with it. As a result, we have here the exact opposite: the etheric body in a certain sense pulls back from the physical processes. And it is just in this that the essential element in will actions lies. In such actions of the will the etheric body draws back from the physical body.

Those among my audience who have heard the earlier lectures will remember that, in addition to imaginative cognition, I have also distinguished inspiration and, finally, actual intuitive cognition. Just as imaginative cognition is an intensification and a strengthening of the soul's life, which enables one to attain to the life of the etheric, in the way I have indicated, so is intuitive cognition achieved through the soul's learning by mighty impulses of will to participate—indeed, actually herself to call forth—what one can call: the pulling back, the withdrawing, of the etheric body from the physical processes. Thus, in this realm, the soul-spiritual penetrates into the bodily-physical. If an impulse of will arises originally from the soul-spiritual, it unites itself wit^h the etheric and the consequence is that this etheric is withdrawn, pulled back, from one or the other area of metabolic activity of the physical-bodily organism. And by means of this working of the soul-spiritual, through the etheric, upon the bodily organism, there arises that which one can designate as the transition of a will impulse into a bodily movement, into a bodily action. But it is just here, when in this way, one takes the whole human being into consideration, that one attains to one's actual immortal part. For as soon as one learns how the spirit-soul weaves in the etheric it becomes clear to one that this weaving of the spirit- soul in the etheric is independent also of those processes of the physical organism that are encompassed by birth, conception and death. Thus, along this path it becomes possible to truly raise oneself to the immortal in the human being, to raise oneself to that which unites itself with the body, received through the stream of inheritance, and which continues when one passes through the portal of death. For the eternal spirit is connected through the mediation of the etheric with that which is here born and dies.

The mental pictures, the ideas, to which spiritual science comes, are powerfully rejected by the habits of thought of the present day and human beings, as a result, have great difficulty in finding their way into an understanding of them. One can say that one of the hindrances which make it difficult to find one's way into this understanding—along with other difficulties—is that one makes so little effort to seek the real connection of the soul-spiritual with the bodily organism in the way which has been indicated. Most people long for something quite different from that which spiritual science can offer. What actually happens in the human being when he or she forms mental pictures, forms representations? An etheric process occurs, which only interacts with an external etheric process. What is necessary, however, in order that the human being remains healthy in soul and body in this regard, is that he or she becomes aware where the boundary lies in which the inner etheric and the outer etheric come into contact with each other. This occurs in most cases unconsciously. It becomes conscious when the human being ascends to imaginative cognition, when he inwardly experiences the stirring and the motion of the etheric and its encounter with the external ether, which dies into the sense organ. In this interaction between the inner and outer etheric, we have, in a sense, the furthest boundary of the effectiveness of the etheric on the human organism. For that which is at work in our etheric body affects the organism primarily, for example, in its growth. In growth it forms the organism from within. It gradually organizes our organism so that the organism adapts itself to the outer world, in the way in which we see it, as the child develops. But this inner formative grasping of the physical body by the etheric must come up against a certain limit or boundary. When it passes this boundary, as a result of some process of illness, the following occurs: that which lives and weaves within the etheric and which should remain contained within the etheric, overreaches and lays hold on the organism so that, as a result, the organism is permeated by that which ought to remain a movement within the etheric. What happens as a result? That which should only be experienced inwardly as mental representation now occurs as a process within the physical body. This is what one calls a hallucination. When the etheric activity crosses its boundary towards the bodily—because the body is unable to resist it in the right way, due to a condition of illness—then there arises what one calls a hallucination. Very many people who want to penetrate into the spiritual world wish, above all, to have hallucinations. This is, of course, something which the spiritual researcher cannot offer them; for a hallucination is nothing other than a reflection of a purely material process, of a process which from the viewpoint of the soul occurs beyond the boundary of the physical body, that is it occurs within the body. In contrast, what leads into the spiritual world consists in the fact that one turns back from this boundary, returning into the realm of the soul, attaining to imagination instead of to hallucination, and imagination is a pure soul experience. And inasmuch as it is a pure soul experience, the soul lives in imagination within the spiritual world. Thus, the soul penetrates the imagination in the fully conscious way. And it is important that one understands that imagination—that is the justified way to achieve spiritual cognition—and hallucinations are the direct opposite of each other, and, indeed destroy each other. He who experiences hallucinations, due to a condition of organic illness, puts obstacles in the way to achieving genuine imagination, and he who attains true imagination protects himself in the surest way from all hallucination. Hallucinations and imagination are mutually exclusive, destroy each other mutually.

The situation is similar also at the other pole of the human being. Just as the etheric body can overreach into the bodily organism, sinking its formative forces into the body, thereby calling forth hallucinations, that is calling forth purely organic processes, so, on the other side the etheric can be drawn out of the organism—as was characterized in relation with the action of the will—in an irregular way. This can happen as the result of certain pathological formations of the organism or also as a result of exhaustion or similar bodily conditions. Instead of the etheric being drawn out of the physical metabolism in a certain area of the body, as in a normal, healthy action of the will, it remains stuck within it and the physical metabolic activity in that area—as a purely physical activity—reaches into the etheric. In this case, the etheric becomes dependent on the physical, whereas in the normal unfolding of the will the physical is dependent on the etheric, which, in its turn, is determined by the soul- spiritual. Should this occur, as a result of such processes as I have indicated, there then arises—I would say, like the pathological counter picture of a hallucination—a compulsive action; which consists in the fact that the physical body, with its metabolic activities, penetrates into the etheric, more or less forces its way into the etheric. And if a compulsive action is called forth as a pathological manifestation, one can say: compulsive action excludes that which, in spiritual science, one calls intuition. Intuition and compulsive action are mutually exclusive, just as hallucination and imagination exclude each other. Therefore, there is nothing more empty of soul than—on the one hand—a hallucinating human being, for hallucinations are indications of bodily conditions which should not be; and, on the other hand, for instance, one can have the whirling dervishes. The dance of the dervish arises through the fact that the bodily-physical forces itself into the etheric so that the etheric is not effective out of its connection with the spiritual-soul element, but rather those characteristic compulsive actions occur. And he who believes that revelations of a soul nature manifest in the dance of the whirling dervish, such an one should consult spiritual science in order to become clear that the whirling dervish is evidence that the spirit, the spirit-soul, has left the body and he, therefore, dances in this way.

And, I should like to say, that for instance automatic writing, mediumistic writing, is only a somewhat more comprehensive example of the same phenomenon as that of the dervish dance. Mediumistic writing consists in nothing else than that the spirit-soul nature has been completely driven out of the human organism and that the physical body has been forced into the etheric body and has there been allowed to unfold; to unfold itself after being emptied of the inner etheric under the sway of the outer etheric which surrounds it. These realms lead away from spiritual science, they do not lead towards the science of the spirit, although no objection should certainly be raised from those points of view from which generally so many objections are raised against these things. Just in relation to the whirling dervish one can study what a truly artistic dance should be. The art of dance should consist just in the fact that every single movement corresponds to an impulse of will which can fully rise into the consciousness of the individual involved, so that she or he never is engaged in a mere intrusion of physical processes into processes of the etheric. Artistic dance is only achieved when it is spiritually permeated by mental pictures. The dance of the dervish is a denial of spirituality. Many, however, may object: But it just reveals the spirit!—That it does, but how? Well, you can study a mussel shell by taking up the living mussel and observing it; but you can also study it when the living mussel has left, and you study its shell: the form of the mussel is reproduced in the mussel shell, this form is born out of the life of the organism. Thus, one might say, one also has an after-image of the spirit, a dead after-image of the spirit, when one has to do with automatic writing or with the whirling dervish. For this reason, it resembles the spirit as closely as the mussel shell resembles the living mussel, and, therefore, can also so easily be confused with it. But only when one really penetrates inwardly into the genuine spirit, can one achieve a true understanding for these matters.

When we take our start from the bodily, ascend through sense perception and sensation to the activity of forming representations, to thinking, which then carries over into the soul-spiritual, we come along this path to the spiritual-scientific recognition that that which is stimulated through sense perception and sensation, at a certain point is brought to an end and becomes memory. Memory arises as the sense impression continues on its way into the body, so that the etheric is not only effective within the sense impressions themselves, but also engages itself with what is left behind in the body by the sense impression. Thus, that which has entered into memory is again called up out of memory.

It is of course not possible to go into more detail concerning these matters in an hour's lecture. But one will never come to a true understanding of the reality of mental representation and of memory and how they are related to the soul-spiritual if one does not proceed along the spiritual-scientific path here indicated.

At the other pole there is the whole stream which flows from the spirit- soul life of our will impulses into the bodily physical, as the result of which outer actions are brought about. In ordinary human life the situation is that the life of the senses goes as far as memory and comes to a halt with memory. Memory places itself, so to speak, in front of the spirit-soul so that spirit-soul is not aware of itself and how it works when it receives sense impressions. Only an indication, a confused indication that the soul weaves and lives in the etheric, arises when the soul—living and weaving in the etheric—is not yet so strongly impelled in its etheric weaving that all of this ether weaving breaks against the boundary of the bodily-physical. When the soul-spiritual weaves within the etheric in such a way that that which it forms within the etheric does not immediately break against the physical body, but rather so restrains itself in the etheric that it is as if it came to the boundary of the physical body, but remains perceptible in the etheric, there dream arises. When dream life is really studied it will prove itself to be the lowest form of supersensible experience for the human being. For the human being experiences in his dreams that his soul-spiritual cannot unfold itself as will impulses within that which appears as dream pictures because, within the dream life, it lacks strength and forcefulness in its working. And inasmuch as the will impulses are lacking, inasmuch as dreaming spirit and soul do not penetrate the etheric sufficiently for the soul herself to become aware of these will impulses, there arises this chaotic tapestry of dreams.

What on one hand the dreams are, on the other hand are those phenomena in which the will—which comes out of the spirit-soul realm—takes hold of the outer world through the etheric-bodily nature. But, in doing so, the will is as little aware of what actually is going on, as one is aware in the dream—because of the weak effect of the spirit-soul—that the human being weaves and lives in the spirit. Just as the dream is in a way the weakened sense perception, so something else occurs as the intensified effect of the spirit-soul element, the strengthened effect of the will impulses; and this is what we call destiny.

In destiny we have no insight into the connections, just as in the dream we have no insight into what actually weaves and lives there as reality. Just as material processes which flow up into the etheric are always present as the underlying ground in dreams so there storms up against the outer world the spirit-soul element which is anchored in the will. But the spirit-soul element in ordinary life is not so organized that it is possible to perceive the spirit in its effective working in what unfolds before us as the sequence of the so-called experiences of destiny. In the moment in which we grasp this sequence, we learn to know the fabric of destiny, we learn to know how, just as in ordinary life the soul conceals for itself the spirit through the mental representations, so also it conceals for itself the spirit active in destiny through the feelings, through the sympathy and antipathy with which it receives the events which approach it as the experiences of life. In the moment when one—with the help of spiritual scientific insight—sees through the veil of sympathy and antipathy, when one objectively takes hold of the course of life experiences with inner equanimity—in this moment one notices that everything which occurs as a matter of destiny in our life between birth and death is either the effect of earlier lives on earth or is the preparation for later earth lives. Just as, on one hand, outer natural science does not penetrate to spirit and soul, not even to the etheric, when it seeks for the connections between the material world and our mental representations, so also, in regard to the other pole, natural science today fails in its cognitive efforts. Just as, on one side, science remains bound to the material processes in the nervous organism in its attempts to explain the life of mental representations, so also, science remains caught at the other pole in unclarity, that, is, I would say, science teeters in a nebulous way between the physical and the realm of soul.

These are just the realms where one must become aware how concepts within world conceptions allow themselves to be proved as well as to be contradicted. And for the one who clings rigidly to the proof, the positive position has much to be said for it; but one must also—just as breathing in belongs necessarily with breathing out—be able to think one's way through to the experience of the negative. In recent times there arose what has come to be known as analytical psychology. This analytical psychology is, I would say, inspired by good intimations. For, what does she seek? This analytical psychology, or as it is generally known, psychoanalysis, seeks to descend from the ordinary level of the soul to that which is no longer contained in the generally present life of the soul, but which remains from the soul's earlier experiences. The psychoanalyst assumes that the soul's life is not exhausted with its present soul experiences, with that which is consciously experienced by the soul, but rather can dive down with consciousness into the subconscious. And in much that appears in the soul's life as disturbance, as confusion, as this or that one-sided lack, the psychoanalyst sees an effect of that which surges in the subconscious. But it is interesting to note what it is that the psychoanalyst sees in the subconscious. When one hears what he enumerates in this subconscious it is, to begin with, disappointed life expectations. The psychoanalyst encounters one or another human being who suffers from this or that depression. This depression need not have its origin in the current consciousness of the soul's life but may originate in the past. Something occurred in the soul's experience in this life. The human being has overcome the experience, but not completely; in the subconscious something is left over. For example, he or she has experienced disappointments. Through his education, or through other processes, he has transcended these disappointments in his conscious life of soul, but they live on in his subconsciousness. There these disappointments surge up, in a sense, to the boundary of consciousness. And there they then bring forth the indefinite soul depression. The psychoanalyst seeks, therefore, in all kinds of disappointments, in disappointed life hopes and expectations which have been drawn down into the subconsciousness, what determines conscious life in a dim, unclear way. He seeks this also in what colors the soul's life as temperament. In all of that which colors the soul's life out of certain rational impulses, the psychoanalyst seeks a subconsciousness which, in a certain sense, only strikes up against consciousness. But then he comes to a yet further realm—I am only reporting here—which the psychoanalyst seeks to grasp by saying: That which plays up into conscious life is the fundamental substratum, the primeval animalistic residual mud, of the soul. One can certainly not deny that this primeval mud is there. In these lectures I have already drawn attention to the fact that certain mystics have had experiences which result from the fact that certain things, for example, eroticism, are subtly refined and play up into consciousness in such a way that one believes that one has had especially lofty experiences, whereas actually only the erotic, “the primeval animalistic mud of the soul,” has surged up and has sometimes been interpreted in the sense of profound mysticism. One can document, even in the case of such a fine, poetic mystic as Mechthild von Magdeburg, how erotic sensibilities penetrate into even the single details of her mental representations, of her thoughts. One must grasp just these matters clearly, in order that one does not fall prey to errors in the sphere of spiritual scientific investigation. For it is just the one who wants to enter into the realm of the spirit for whom it is a special obligation to know all the possible paths of error—not in order to pursue them—but rather just in order to avoid them. But the one who speaks about this animalistic primeval mud of the soul, who only speaks about life's disappointed hopes and other similar matters, such a one does not go deep enough into the life of the soul; such a one is like a person who walks across a field in which there is nothing yet to be seen and believes that only the earth, or perhaps also the fertilizer is present in it, whereas this field already contains all the fruits which will soon spring forth from it as grain or as some other crop. When one speaks of the primeval mud of the soul, one should also speak of everything which is embedded in it. Certainly, there are disappointed hopes in this primeval mud; but in that which is embedded there is hidden also a germinating force which represents, at the same time, that which—when the human being will have passed through the gates of death into the life which runs its course between death and a new birth, and which then enters into a new life on earth—makes something very different out of the disappointed hopes than merely a depression. It makes something in the next life which leads, one might say, to an “appointment,” not to a “disappointment,” which leads to a strengthening of soul initiative. There lies in that which the psychoanalyst seeks in the disappointed life-hopes in the soul's deepest levels, there lies—if he only goes deeply enough into it—that which prepares itself in the present life to take hold in the next life according to the laws of destiny.

One thus finds everywhere, when one digs over the animalistic primeval mud—without thereby dirtying one's hands, as, regrettably so often happens with the psychoanalysts—the spiritual-soul weaving of destiny which extends beyond birth and death within the spiritual and psychic life of the soul. It is just in analytic psychology that we have a realm in which one can so well learn how everything can be right and everything can be wrong when it comes to questions of world conceptions, looked at from one point of view or from another. But there is a tremendous amount which can be brought forward in support of the one-sided assertions of the psychoanalysts, and, therefore, the disproving of these assertions will not greatly impress those who swear by these concepts. But if one learns to form one's judgments in accordance with the method of gaining knowledge which was characterized at the outset of this lecture, in which one recognizes both what speaks for a point of view and what speaks against it, then just out of this for and against the soul will experience what is truly at work. For, I would like to say, between that which one can only observe in the soul realm, as the psychologists do who only concern themselves with the conscious realm, and that which the psychoanalyst finds down below in the animalistic primeval mud of the soul, just between these two realms of research lies the sphere which belongs to the eternal spirit and soul and which goes through births and deaths.

The penetration of the whole human inner realm leads also to a right relationship with the outer world. More recent natural science not only speaks in vague, indefinite ways about the etheric, but also speaks about it in such a way that just the greatest world riddles lead one back to it. Out of etheric conditions there is thought to have formed itself what then took on fixed shapes and became planets, suns and moons, etc. That which occurs as the soul-spiritual in the human being is regarded, more or less, as a mere episode. Before and behind is dead ether. If one learns to know the ether only from one side then one can come to a hypothetical construction of world evolution about which the sensitive thinker Herman Grimm—I have frequently quoted his statement, but it is so significant that it may well be brought before the soul again and again—says the following. As he became acquainted with the train of thought which asserts that out of the dead cosmic etheric mist arose that wherein now life and spirit are unfolding, and as he measures this against Goethe's world conception, he comes to the following expression:

“Already in his (Goethe's) youth, the great Laplace-Kantian phantasy of the origin and the eventual destruction of the earth planet, had for a long time asserted itself. From the rotating cosmic mist—with which children already become familiar in school—the central gaseous drop forms itself, out of which the earth emerges, and undergoes, as a rigidifying sphere, in the course of unimaginable epochs of time, all those phases—including the episode of its habitation by the human race—in order, finally, to plunge back into the sun as a burned-out slag: a lengthy, but for the public in our (Goethe's) time an entirely comprehensible process, for whose origin no other outer intervention is needed than the effort of some external force, to maintain the sun at a steady temperature of heat. No more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than this which is to be forced upon us today in the expectation of its scientific inevitability. A bone of a carcass, around which even a hungry dog makes a detour, would be a refreshing, appetizing object in comparison with this ultimate excrement of creation, as which our earth would finally plunge back into the sun. The intellectual appetite with which our generation takes up something of this kind and feels impelled to believe it, is a sign of the sick phantasy, which learned scholars in future ages will need much cleverness to explain as an historical phenomenon of our time.”

What arises here once again within German spiritual life as a feeling born out of a healthy life of soul, just this is shown in a true light by spiritual science. For, if one learns to know how the dead etheric is enlivened through the soul element, through the living ether, then, through inner experience one distances oneself from the possibility that our universal structure could ever have arisen out of the dead etheric. And this world riddle takes quite another aspect if one becomes acquainted with the corresponding riddle of the soul. One comes to know the ether itself in its living form, one comes to know how the dead ether must first originate out of the living. Thus, as one returns to the origins of world evolution, one must return to the soul, and to the recognition that one must seek the origin of all that develops today in the realm of the spirit and the soul. The spiritual-soul will remain a mere hypothesis, something merely thought out, in relation with the outer world riddles as long as through spiritual science one does not learn to know the whole living and weaving of the etheric by experiencing how the living ether from within meets with the dead ether from without; only along the path of spiritual science the world mist itself will be recognized as being alive, as being of the nature of spirit and of soul.

So you see, also for the world riddles, a significant perspective is gained just through an understanding of the riddles of the soul. I must close today with this perspective. It is, you see, just through a genuine consideration of external and of inner life from the viewpoint of spiritual science that one is led by way of the etheric into the spirit and the soul, as well within the soul as within the outer world.

There stands in opposition to such a cognitive attitude of soul, indeed, the point of view expressed by a man to whom I referred last time and whom I named on that occasion. We can today at least have the feeling that from the way in which spiritual science thinks about the bodily nature of man, the bridge leads directly to the spirit-soul realm, in which ethics and morality are rooted and which stem from the spirit—just as the sense perceptible leads into the spirit. But in its preoccupation with the purely external material world, science has developed an attitude of mind which completely denies that ethics is anchored in the spirit. One still is embarrassed to deny ethics as such, but one today speaks about ethics in the following way, as it is expressed in the conclusion of the lecture by Jacques Loeb, which in reference to its beginning I brought forward last time. There he who comes through natural scientific research to a brutal disavowal of ethics says:

“If our existence depends on the blind play of forces and is only the work of chance; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms—how can there be for us an ethical reality? The answer to this is that our instincts form the roots of our ethical being, and our instincts are as subject to heredity as the constituent forms of our body. We eat and drink and reproduce ourselves, not because metaphysicians have attained the insight that this is desirable, but rather because we are mechanically predisposed to do so. We are active because we are forced mechanically to be so through the processes in our nervous system, and if human beings are not economic slaves, nevertheless it is instinct which determines the direction of their activity in regard to their successful triggering, or to their successful work. A mother loves her children and cares for them not because metaphysicians had the bright idea that this would be a lovely thing to do, but rather because the instinct to care for the offspring is as firmly implanted, presumably through the two sexual chromosomes, as is the morphological character of the female body. We enjoy the company of other human beings because we are compelled to do so by the conditions of our human inheritance. We fight for justice and truth, and are ready to make sacrifices for them, because, instinctively, we desire to see our fellow human beings happy. That we possess an ethical trait, for this we have solely to thank our instincts, which are determined for us chemically and through heredity in the same way as the form of our body.”

Ethical action leads us back to instinct! Instincts lead back to the effects of physical-chemical activity! This logic is indeed most threadbare. For, certainly as a matter of course, one can say, that one should not wait with ethical action for the metaphysicians, until they have spun out some metaphysical principles, but that is the same as if someone were to say: Should one wait with digestion until the metaphysicians or the physiologists have discovered the laws of digestion? I should once like to recommend to Professor Loeb that he not investigate the physiological laws of digestion as he storms with brutality against the metaphysical laws of ethical life. But one can say: One can be a significant investigator of nature today—but the habits of thought tend in the direction of cutting one off from all spiritual life, tend to prevent even a glance in the direction of the life of the spirit. But parallel with this there is always the fact that one can document a defect in thinking, so that one never has the full effectiveness which belongs to a thought.

One can have peculiar experiences in this regard. I recently brought forward such an experience; but I would like to present it once again because it links with the statements of a very significant natural scientist of the present time, who belongs with those whom I attack just because in one sphere I value them very highly. This natural scientist has earned great achievements in the field of astrophysics, as well as in certain other fields of natural scientific research. When, however, he came to write a comprehensive book about the present-day view of the universe and about the evolution of this world view, he comes, in his foreword, to a curious statement. He is, in a certain sense, delighted how wonderfully advanced we are in that we can now interpret all phenomena from a natural scientific perspective, and he points with a certain arrogance, as is customary in such circles, to earlier times, which had not yet advanced so far. And, in this regard, he calls upon Goethe, by saying: Whether one can truly say that we live in the best of times, that we cannot determine, but that we live in the best of times in regard to natural scientific knowledge in comparison with earlier times, in this regard we can call upon Goethe, who says:

Forgive! It does seem so sublime,
Entering into the spirit of the time
To see what wise men, who lived long ago, believed
Till we at last have all the highest aims achieved.
Faust, translated by Walter Kaufman

Therewith a distinguished natural scientist of the present day concludes his exposition by calling Goethe to witness. Only he forgot, in doing so, that it is Wagner who makes this assertion, and that Faust remarks to this assertion, after Wagner has left:

Hope never seems to leave those who affirm,
The shallow minds that stick to must and mold—
They dig with greedy hands for gold
And yet are happy if they find a worm.

To reflect on what Goethe actually says, the distinguished researcher neglected to do in the moment in which he called upon Wagner in order to lend expression to the thought of how splendidly advanced we are. In this, I should like to say, we can catch a glimpse of where it is that thinking fails in its pursuit of reality.

And we could cite many such examples if we were to explore, even a little, the scientific literature of the present day. It will surely not be held against me—as I have said that I greatly value the natural scientist whom I have just quoted—if, in relation with such natural scientific research, which prides itself on being able to impart information about the spirit, I seek to bring to expression the true Goethean attitude of mind and of heart. For, we can forgive one or another monistic thinker, when, out of the weakness of his thinking he fails to come to the spirit; it is dangerous, however, when the attitude of soul, which arises in Jacques Loeb and in the natural scientist just quoted, who presents himself as Wagner, while believing to characterize himself as Goethe, when this attitude of soul gains authority more and more in the uncritical acceptance of the widest circles. And this is what is happening. The one who penetrates into that which can arise as an attitude of mind and heart out of spiritual science, such a one, perhaps—even though it may not appear sufficiently respectful in the face of such a statement as that natural scientist made, in connection with Goethe—may come to the genuinely Goethean attitude, when he connects himself with those words of Goethe's which I would like to paraphrase in closing this lecture

Forgive! It is a shock indeed
Entering souls that in their greed
Cling to matter with all their might
And for the spirit have no sight.

Translated by Alice Wulsin

Anyone who follows the evolution of the human spirit over the course of centuries, or perhaps millennia, will come to feel that this human spirit moves on to ever new achievements in the realm of knowing and in the realm of doing. There is no need to place too much emphasis on the word progress, for in the dismal time that has now befallen humanity this might call forth bitter doubt in many. If we observe this evolution of the human spirit, however, something else makes a clear impression on us, namely, that the forms and configurations taken by man's striving spirit vary essentially from century to century. And since today in our studies we are chiefly concerned with a striving for knowledge that wishes to penetrate humanity's evolution in a new way, we need only bear in mind, by way of example, how such conceptions, which are to some extent in conflict with the old ones, have difficulty gaining access to evolving humanity.

We should continually recall, for example, how difficult it was to bring the Copernican world view into people's habits of thought, habits of feeling—indeed, in certain realms this took centuries. This Copernican world view had broken with what people for a long time believed necessary to maintain as the truth about the structure of the universe on the basis of their sense perception. Then came the time when a person could no longer rely on what the eye saw as the rising and setting of the sun, as the sun's movement. He had to accept that, contrary to the visual appearance, the sun in a certain way, at least in its relation to the earth, stands still. Human habits of thought and feeling did not easily accommodate themselves to such sudden reversals of knowledge.

In the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to which our considerations this evening are devoted, we have to do with an even greater reversal of this kind. Those who believe themselves convinced on firm scientific grounds of the content of this spiritual science also believe it necessary for it to have a decisive influence now and in the further evolution of human thinking, sensing, and feeling. It could also be said, if you will allow me these few introductory words, that the introduction of something like the Copernican world view was a matter of dealing with countless prejudices, with traditional opinions. People believed that if anything else were to supersede these it would upset all kinds of religious conceptions and things of that kind.

Many other objections concerning what we are to discuss this evening get in the way. Here the problem is not simply the prejudices such as those that confronted the Copernican theory, for example. In this case there is also the problem that in our time many people, indeed the majority of those considering themselves enlightened and cultured, not only bring with them their prejudices and preconceptions; they are actually ashamed of having to take seriously the realm about which anthroposophy has to speak. Such an individual feels he has to apologize not only to the world in general but to himself if he admits that it is possible to know about the things that are to be spoken of today in as thoroughly scientific a way as about the outer structure of nature. He believes that he has to regard himself as foolish or childish.

These things must be considered if we are to speak today about an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Anyone speaking out of knowledge of this science knows the objections that must arise today by the hundreds and thousands. He already knows these objections, because doubt is felt today not only concerning the specific truths and results of this spiritual science; there is also doubt that knowledge of any kind can be acquired concerning the realm with which anthroposophy occupies itself. The possibility of developing conceptual beliefs in the soul, general conceptual beliefs about the realm of the eternal, is certainly still acknowledged as justified by many today; but it is generally considered something dreamy or sentimental to believe that a really factual knowledge can be developed about the facts that can be drawn from the sense world concerning the immortal and eternal in the nature of the human being. This is particularly the case among those who believe themselves to be forming their judgments out of the presently recognized mode of scientific conception.

This evening we will have nothing to do with the dreamy and sentimental. We will rather be dealing with a realm in which you could say that the student, particularly the scientific student, shrinks from its first conditions. I would like to touch very briefly on the fact that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has no wish to be sectarian. It is completely misunderstood by anyone who believes that it wishes to arise in the way some new kind of religious faith is founded. It has no such wish. It wishes to arise today as a necessary result of the world view brought by natural scientific development, a general, publicly accepted conception among the widest circles of humanity. This natural scientific development today supplies so many concepts, which are in their turn the source of feelings and sensations. It provides the concepts for the most widely held world view. This natural scientific mode of observation sets itself the task of examining and explaining what is yielded to the outer senses, of examining what is accessible to human understanding by way of the natural laws about facts given to the outer senses.

If only one takes a quick look at what is living, it is possible to see how everywhere today natural science must consider origins, going back to what the construction of the seed reveals concerning growing, becoming, flourishing. (Though this is more prevalent in other realms, it is most clearly apparent in the realm of the living.) If the natural scientist wishes to explain animal life or human life in this sense, he goes back to birth, he studies embryology, he studies that from which growing and becoming evolve. The natural scientist returns to birth, to the beginning of what unfolds before the senses. And when natural science seeks an explanation for the world, it goes back with various hypotheses—with the foundations laid by geology, paleontology, with what the individual branches of natural science can reveal—forming conceptions out of this about the birth of the universe's structure, you could say. Even if one or another may have doubts about the justification for such a way of thinking, it is always being striven for.

The thoughts are well known that people have presented in order to fathom, if not the beginning of earthly evolution, at least far distant epochs (those epochs, for example, before the human being walked the earth) in order to explain in some way out of what went before, out of what lay in a germinal state, what follows, the consequences that the human being takes in of his surroundings through his senses. The whole Darwinian theory, or, if one wishes to leave that aside, the theory of evolution, is based on the search for origins, looking for the emergence of something out of something else, I would say that everywhere we find this thought of going back to youth and birth for explanations.

Spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense finds itself in another position. And by its point of departure it calls forth a vague opposition. Opposition without people being conscious of it; one could say that it calls forth an unconscious opposition, an instinctive opposition. Such opposition is often much more effective than the opposition that is clearly recognized, clearly thought through. In order to arrive at conceptions at all, an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must not begin now with general, hazy concepts of spirit; to arrive at spiritual facts, it must make death its starting point. It thereby stands from the outset, you could say, in fundamental opposition to what is preferred today, namely to proceeding from birth, youth, growth, and the progress of development. Death encroaches upon life. And if you keep in touch with contemporary scientific literature, you can find everywhere that the conscientious scientist holds the view that death as such cannot be inserted in the series of natural scientific concepts in the same sense as other concepts.

The spiritual scientist must make death his actual starting point, death, the cessation, actually the opposite of birth. How death and all that is related to it encroaches upon life in the widest sense is the basic question. Death terminates what is perceptible to the senses; death dissolves what is becoming, what is developing before the senses. By the way that death encroaches on life, it can be conceived of as having no part in what is working and flourishing here in the sense world, springing forth and producing life. This is what yields the opinion that nothing can be known about what is concealed by death, as it were, cloaked by death. (Within certain limits this opinion is perfectly comprehensible, though totally unjustifiable.) And it is actually from this corner of human feeling that the objections rear up their heads, objections that obviously can be brought up against things that are the results of a science still in its youth today. For spiritual science is young, and for precisely these reasons just referred to, the spiritual scientist is in quite a different position from that of the natural scientist, even when speaking about things in the sphere of his own research. The spiritual scientist cannot proceed in exactly the same way as the natural scientist, who poses some fact and then proves it on grounds by which everyone is convinced: that it can be seen. The spiritual scientist, however, speaks about what cannot be perceived by the senses. Hence, in speaking about the results of his research, he is always obliged to indicate how such results can be reached.

There is a rich literature concerning the realm about which I will be speaking with you this evening. Believing themselves called upon to do so, critics constantly raise the objection when reading my writings, for example, that the spiritual scientist maintains such and such a thing but gives no proof, although this actually shows only how superficially things are read! He does offer proof, but in a different way. To begin with, he tells how he arrived at his results; he must first indicate the path into the realm of facts. This path is generally unknown, because it is not the customary one for today's habits of thinking and feeling. It must first be said that the spiritual investigator is forced by his investigation to conclude that with the methods and procedures by which the ordinary scientist comes to his brilliant results (not rejected by the spiritual scientist but admired) we do not arrive at the super-sensible. It is precisely this experience, namely, the very limitations of the methods of natural scientific thinking, from which the spiritual scientist makes his start. This is not done, however, in the way so prevalent today, which is to declare that certain things, beyond which the ordinary scientist does not go, are the limits of human cognition. No, it is done in such a way that an attempt is made to come to definite experiences that can be attained only at these limits. I have spoken about these boundaries to human cognition particularly in my most recent written work, Riddles of the Soul.

Those people who have not taken knowledge as something that falls into their laps from outside, those who have wrestled with knowledge, wrestled with truth, have always at least certain experiences at these limits of human cognition. Here it must be noted that times change, that the evolution of humanity undergoes changes. Not so very long ago, the most outstanding thinkers and those struggling for knowledge, when they stood before boundaries of this kind, thought that one cannot go beyond these boundaries, that one must remain there. Those of you in the audience who have often heard me speak here know how little it is my habit to touch on personal matters. When the personal has a connection in any way with the question under consideration, however, one may venture to refer to it briefly. I may say that what I have to say about experiences of this sort at the boundaries of cognition is the result of more than thirty years of spiritual research. And it was more than thirty years ago that these very problems, these tasks, these riddles that arise at the boundaries of cognition, made a significant impression on me.

From the many examples that can be cited about such boundaries, I would like to take one that has been referred to by a real wrestler with knowledge, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the famous aesthetician who was also a philosopher of distinction, though perhaps little known during his lifetime and soon forgotten. A decade or so ago Friedrich Theodor Vischer wrote a very interesting treatise about a book, also very interesting, written by Volkelt concerning dream fantasies. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, in the course of this treatise, touched on a variety of subjects of no further interest to us here. But I would like to quote one sentence, a sentence that may perhaps be passed over in reading but a sentence that can pierce like lightning into the human heart and soul when these are permeated by a striving for knowledge, a true inner striving for knowledge. It is the sentence that burst upon Vischer when he was reflecting, meditating upon the nature of the human soul. Out of what he had gleaned about the human being from contemporary natural science, he deduced that the human soul cannot be merely in the body; this much is clear; but it is just as clear that it cannot be outside the body.

Here we have a complete contradiction, a contradiction that cannot easily be resolved. It is a contradiction that poses itself with immutable necessity if an individual is wrestling for knowledge in all earnest. Vischer was not yet able for the time was not sufficiently ripe—to press on from what we might call his position in knowledge, at these boundaries of knowledge, to press on from cognition in the ordinary sense of the word to inward experience of a contradiction of this kind. Yet from all directions today, from the most knowledgeable people, we hear a particular conclusion when they come up against such a contradiction. (There are indeed hundreds and hundreds of such contradictions du Bois-Reymond a physiologist of great intelligence, has spoken about only seven world riddles, but these seven can be multiplied by hundreds.) Our contemporary man of knowledge says that from this point on human cognition is able to go no further. He says this for the simple reason that at the boundaries of human cognition he cannot determine to go on from mere thinking, from mere mental activity, to experience.

It is necessary to begin at a place where such a contradiction obstructs the way, a contradiction not ingeniously thought out but one that is revealed by the riddle of the world; we must seek to live with such a contradiction again and again, to wrestle with it in everyday life, to immerse the soul in it entirely. We must have no fear while immersing ourselves in this contradiction (and a certain inner courage of thought is part of this), we must have no fear that this contradiction will be able to split asunder the conceptual powers of the soul, or that the soul will not be able to penetrate through it, and so on. I have described this very struggle at such boundaries in detail in my book, Riddles of the Soul.

When an individual comes to such a boundary with his whole soul, instead of with mere mental images, with mere clever thinking and mental strategies, he progresses further. He does not go further on a purely logical path, however, but on the path of living knowledge. I would like to describe what he experiences by means of a comparison, for the paths of the spiritual investigator are really experiences of knowledge, facts of knowledge. Language today has not yet acquired many words for these things, because words have been coined for what is acquired by outer sense perception. Hence what stands clearly before the eye of the spirit can often be expressed only by means of comparison. When we live into such contradictions, we feel as if we were at the border where the spiritual world breaks in; this is not to be found in sense-perceptible reality, where indeed it breaks in but does so from outside, as it were.

Now, whether or not this image is well-founded from a natural scientific point of view is not important here, for it can still be used by way of comparison. It is as if one of the lower forms of life had not yet developed the sense of touch but experienced only inwardly, experienced itself inwardly in constant stirrings of movement, in this way experiencing the borders of the physical world, the surfaces of single objects. A being that has not yet developed the sense of touch and experiences only the surfaces of sense-perceptible objects remains entirely shut within itself, unable as yet to feel, to touch, what is there outside it by way of sense impressions.

In the same way, a person struggling with knowledge feels himself purely soul-spiritually (we should not think here of anything material) when he comes to the kind of place I have just described. In the case of our rudimentary animal, the organism breaks through to the outer, sense-perceptible world by its impact with it, differentiating itself through the sense of touch, by which surfaces are touched and knowledge gained as to their roughness or smoothness, their warmth or cold. In the same way, when what has lived only inwardly opens itself to what is outside, the possibility is acquired to break through, as it were, just at the places we have described and to acquire a spiritual sense of touch. Only when a person has wrestled perhaps for years at these boundaries of cognition, struggling to break through into the spiritual world, can he first acquire real spiritual organs. I am speaking only in an elementary way of how this sense of touch is developed. To use these terms in a more definite way, however, we can say that by ever greater application of inner work, working away from being enclosed within oneself, spiritual eyes, spiritual ears develop. To many people today it still seems absurd to say that at first the soul is just as undifferentiated an organ as the organism of a lower animal, forming its senses out of its own substance and out of this substance developing soul concepts, spiritual organs differentiated as to their soul qualities, which then bring an individual face to face with the spiritual world.

It may be said that a systematically presented spiritual science, which is fully entitled to be called scientific, is something new in the progress of knowledge in human evolution. It is not new, however, in every respect. The struggle for it, the striving after it, is to be seen in the outstanding individuals of knowledge from the past. I have referred to one of these when I mentioned Friedrich Theodor Vischer. I would like to show from his own comments how he stood at such a border of knowledge, how he remained there, never making the transition from being inwardly stirred to actually breaking through the boundary to the spiritual sense of touch. Here I would simply like to read you a passage from Friedrich Theodor Vischer's works, in which he describes how he came to such a boundary where the spirit breaks through into the human soul in the course of his wrestling with natural scientific knowledge. This was at the time in which materialistically directed natural science posed many riddles for those struggling for knowledge in real earnest. Countless people claimed that the soul cannot be said to be anything but a product of material activity.

Here are his words: “No spirit where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain—so say our opponents. We reply: There would be no nerve center, no brain had they not been prepared for by countless stages from below upward; it is easy to speak mockingly of those who say that there is an echo of the spirit in granite and limestone. This is no harder than it would be for us to ask sarcastically how the protein in the brain rises to the level of ideas. Human knowledge cannot discriminate between stages. It will remain a mystery how it comes about that nature, beneath which the spirit must be slumbering, stands there as such a perfect counter-blow of the spirit that we bruise ourselves against it.”

Please take note of how this wrestler for knowledge describes how we bruise ourselves! Here you have the inner experience of bumping against something by one who wrestles for knowledge: “It is a forcible separation with the appearance of such absoluteness that with Hegel's ‘differentiation’ and ‘non-differentiation’ (ingenious as this formula is, though it says as good as nothing) the steepness of the apparent dividing wall is concealed. One finds the right appreciation of the cutting edge and the impact of this counter-blow in Fichte, but no explanation for it,”

Here we have a man's description of his struggle for knowledge in the time before there could be a decision, a spiritual scientific decision, not merely to come to this blow and counter-blow but to break through the dividing wall into the spiritual world. I can speak about these things only in principle here; you will find them described in detail in my books. Particularly in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, you will find all the details concerning what the soul must take upon itself in the way of inner activity and inner exercise (if I may use the expression) in order really to transform what is undifferentiated in the soul into spiritual organs able to behold the spiritual world.

A great deal is necessary, however, if an individual really wishes to make investigations on this path. So much is necessary just because in our age, due to the habits cultivated in the natural scientific sphere, in the sphere of the natural scientific world view, habits that are perfectly justified in their own field, a particular way of thinking has taken root in human life, a way that is opposed to the one leading to the spiritual world. Thus it goes without saying that from the side of natural science things are heard that demonstrate an utter lack of desire to know the actual facts about the spiritual world.

I will give just one example (as I have said, you can find more exact information in the books I have mentioned) of how the human being has to make every effort to acquire a totally different way of conceiving things. In ordinary life people are satisfied with concepts, with mental images of which it may be said that these concepts, these mental images are such that they offer a likeness to some external fact or object. This cannot satisfy the spiritual investigator. Even mental images, concepts, become something totally different in his soul from what they are due to modern habits of thinking. If I may use another comparison, I would like to show how the spiritual investigator stands today in relation to the world. Those who are materialists, spiritualists, pantheists, individualists, or monadists, and so on, all believe that in some way they can penetrate the world riddle. They try with definite mental images, concepts, to reach a picture of world processes. The spiritual investigator is totally unable to look on concepts in this way; his attitude toward them must be such that he is always clearly conscious of how, in a concept, in a mental image, he has nothing beyond what can be had in the outer sense world when, for example, one particular side of a tree or some other object is photographed and then another picture is taken from another side, from a third side, a fourth side, and so on. The pictures are different from one another. If combined mentally, they together present the tree as a formed mental image. But it can easily be said that one picture contradicts another.

Just consider how completely different an object looks when photographed from one side or another. The spiritual I investigator looks at the conceptions of pantheism, monadism, and so on as if they were simply different ways of looking at reality. Spiritual reality does not actually reveal itself at all to the life of mental images, the life of concepts, in such a way that it is possible to say that any one concept is a faithful image. We must always go all around the matter, forming manifold concepts from various sides. By this means we become capable of developing a much more flexible inner soul life than we are accustomed to when regarding the outer sense world. By doing this it becomes necessary to make our concepts far more alive. They are no longer simply images, but by being experienced they become much more alive than they are in ordinary life and for the things of ordinary life.

Perhaps you will understand me better if I describe it in the following way. Suppose you have a rose cut from the rose bush; you form your mental image of it. You are able to form this mental image yourself. You will often have the feeling about this mental image that it expresses something real for you, that the rose is something real. The spiritual investigator can never make any progress if he is satisfied with the mental image that the rose is something real. Pictured as a blossom on a short stalk, the rose is not real in itself. It can be real only when on the rose bush. The rose bush is something real. And the spiritual investigator must accustom himself to regarding every individual thing, to remaining conscious in what limited sense an issue is something real. People form mental images of these things, believing them to be something real. When the rose is in front of him on its stalk, the spiritual investigator must feel that it is not real; he must have a feeling for, an experience of, the degree of unreality contained in this rose as mere blossom.

By extending this to our observation of the whole world, however, the conceptual life itself is renewed, and we do not thereby get the crippled, dead mental images with which the modern natural scientific world view is satisfied; we get mental images that are living with the objects. It is true that in proceeding from the present habits of thinking, we at first experience a great deal of disappointment, disappointment that arises because what is experienced in this way differs a great deal from present habits of thinking. When speaking out of knowledge acquired in the spiritual world, much has to be said that seems paradoxical when compared with what is generally said and believed today.

A person today may be very learned in the sphere of physics, let us say; he may be an exceptionally learned person who quite rightly excites admiration by his erudition; but such an individual may work with clear concepts that have not been produced nor worked upon in accordance with what I have described, that is, without endowing the conceptual world with life. I have said something quite elementary, but this elementary statement must in the case of the spiritual investigator be extended over the whole observation of the world. I will offer an example. At the beginning of the century, Professor Dewar delivered a very important lecture in London. This lecture could be said to show in every sentence the great modern scholar who was as well acquainted with the conceptions of physics as a modern physicist can be. From his modern conceptions of physics, this scholar seeks to speak about the final condition of the Earth and about some future condition in which much of what is present with us today will have died away. He describes this correctly, because he bases his lecture on really well-founded hypotheses: he describes how one day after millions of years a condition of the earth will have to arise in which a great drop in temperature will occur; this can be well calculated, and this drop in temperature will bring about changes in certain substances. This can be calculated, and he describes how milk, for example, will not be able to maintain its fluid condition but will become solid; how the white of an egg smeared on a wall will become so luminous that people will be able to read a newspaper by its light alone, since so much light will come from the white of an egg; and many other such details are described. The consistency of things that can sustain hardly any weight today will be materially strengthened so that hundreds of pounds will be able to be supported by them. In short, Professor Dewar gives an imposing picture of the future condition of the earth. From the standpoint of physics there is nothing at all to be said against it, but for anyone who has taken living thinking into his soul, the matter has another aspect. When he turns to the conceptual forms of the kind given by the Professor, an example enters his mind that in its methods and manner of approach is very similar to the Professor's deductions and way of thinking.

Suppose, for example, we were to take a man of twenty-five and observe exactly how certain organs, the stomach for example, change from year to year in the course of two, three, four, five years (today such an observation can be managed; I need only remind you of X-rays). They take on different configurations. We can describe this in the same way that the physicist does when he compares successive conditions of the earth and then calculates what the earth will look like after millions of years. This can also be done in the case of the human being. The changes in the stomach or heart, for example, are observed, and a calculation then made of how this man will look after perhaps 200 years according to these alterations. We get just as well-founded a result if it is calculated what this man will look like after 200 years by taking into account all the individual perceptions. The only thing is that the man will have died long before this! He will no longer be there.

You see what I mean. What is important here is that in a particular case we know from direct experience that calculations of this kind do not correspond with reality, because, when 200 years have passed, the human body with its transformations will no longer be there; yet this same kind of calculation is made in connection with the earth. No heed is paid to the fact that after two million years the earth as a physical being will have been dead for a long time, will no longer be there. Thus the whole learned calculation about this condition has no value at all as a reality, because the reality it is applied to will no longer be there.

These matters are very far-reaching. In the case of the human being you can just as well calculate backward as forward; you might, in accordance with the small changes taking place in two years, calculate how a man looked 200 years ago, but he was not there then either! With this same method, however, the Kant-LaPlace theory was formulated. This theory assumes that there was once a condition of fog, a calculation that was based on our present condition. The calculation is entirely correct, the perceptions are good enough; it is just that the spiritual investigator becomes aware that at the time this primeval fog was supposed to be there, the earth was not yet born. The entire solar system did not yet exist.

I wanted to bring these calculations to your notice to show you how the entire inner life of soul must be raised out of abstractions, how it must immerse itself in a living reality, how mental images themselves must be living. In my book, The Riddle of Human Being, I have made a distinction between conceptions corresponding to reality and those corresponding to unreality. To put the matter briefly, the spiritual investigator must point out that his path is such that the means of knowledge that he uses must first be awakened, that he must transform his soul before being able to look into the spiritual world. Then the results take on a form enabling one to see that the spiritual investigator is not speculating as to the immortality of the soul or whether the soul goes through birth and death. His path of investigation leads him to the eternal in the human soul, to what goes through birth and death; the path shows him what lives as the eternal in the human being. He therefore seeks out the object, the thing, the being itself. If we reach the being, we can recognize its characteristics just as we recognize the color of a rose.

Hence it often appears as if the spiritual investigator were asserting that such-and-such is so. For when he presents evidence he must always indicate by what path he arrived at these things. He has to begin where the other science ends. Then, however, a real penetration is possible into spheres that may be said to take death as their starting point, just as natural scientific spheres take their start from birth and youth. We must simply be clear that this death is in no way merely the final event, as it is ordinarily regarded from the viewpoint of outer sense perception. It is rather something that has its part in existence in the same way that the forces called into life with birth have their part in existence. We do not meet death only through its taking hold of us as a one-time event; we carry the forces of death in us—destructive forces, forces that are continually destroying—just as we carry in us the forces of birth, the constructive forces that are given to us at birth.

To have real insight into this we have to be able to pursue research at a boundary between natural science and spiritual science. Today I am only able to cite the results of such research, of course; I only wish to arouse your interest. Were I to go into all the details of what I am suggesting, I would have to offer many lectures. If an individual is to pursue what has been suggested here, he must approach a boundary between natural science and spiritual science. It is widely believed today, and has been believed for some time, that the human nervous system, the human nerve apparatus, is simply an instrument of thinking, feeling, and willing, in short, an instrument for soul experiences, (Science today has for the most part gone beyond this belief, but the world view of the general public usually remains at the standpoint abandoned by science some decades before.) An individual who develops the soul organs—the eyes of the spirit, the ears of the spirit—as I have described at least in principle, comes to recognize the life of the soul.

Whoever really discovers this soul life knows that to call the brain an instrument of our thinking is much the same as to maintain the following. Let us say that I am walking over ground that has become sodden, and in it I leave my footprints. These footprints are found by someone else, who then wishes to explain them. How does he do this? He assumes that underneath in the earth all kinds of forces are surging up and down, and because they surge in this way they produce these footprints. Of course the forces in the earth have nothing to do with the fact that these footprints have been produced, for I myself left them there, but the traces I left can now be reflected upon. This is the way that physiologists today explain what goes on in the brain, what originates in the brain, because all thinking, all mental activity and feeling correspond to something in the nervous system. Just as my tracks correspond with my footsteps, so something actually in the brain corresponds with the impressions of the soul; but the soul has first to leave its imprint there. The earth is just as little an organ for my walking or footprints as the brain is the organ for processes of thinking or mental activity. And just as I cannot walk around without firm ground (I cannot walk on air, I need ground if I want to walk) so the brain is necessary; this is not, however, because it calls forth the soul element but because the soul element needs ground and footing upon which it expresses itself during the time that the human being is living in the body between birth and death. It therefore has nothing to do with all that.

The brilliantly intellectual natural science of today will come to full clarity when this revolution in thinking comes about to which I have referred here. This revolution is more radical than the transition to the Copernican world view from the world view held previously. In face of the real world view, however, it is as justifiable as the Copernican world view was in relation to what preceded it. When we have pressed forward on the path of investigation of the soul, we will find that the processes in the brain, in the nervous system, that correspond to the soul life are not constructive. They are not there so that the productive, growing, flourishing activity is present in the nervous system as it is in the rest of the organism. No! What the soul brings about in the nervous system is a destructive activity. During our waking consciousness outside sleep it is a destructive activity.

Only by virtue of the fact that our nervous system is inserted within us in such a way that it receives constant refreshment from the rest of the organism can there be constant compensation for the destructive, dissolving, disintegrating activity introduced into our nervous system by thinking. Destructive activity is there, activity qualitatively of the same nature as what the human being goes through when he dies, when the organism is completely dissolved. In our mental activity death is living in us continually. You might say that death lives in us continually, distributed atomistically, and that the one-time death that lays hold of us at the end of life is only the summation of what is continually working in us destructively. It is true that this is compensated for, but the compensation is such that in the end spontaneous death is evoked.

We must understand death as a force working in the organism, just as we understand the life forces. Look today at natural science, so thoroughly justified in its own sphere, and you will find that it looks only for the constructive forces; what is destructive eludes it. Hence external natural science is unable to observe what arises anew out of the destruction, not in this case of the body, for the bodily nature is destroyed, but of a soul and spiritual nature, now constructive. This aspect is always lost to observation, being accessible only to the kind of observation I have previously described. Then it becomes evident that, having meanwhile brought our life to this point, the whole activity of our soul does not work only in conjunction with the ground on which it has to develop and which, indeed, it acts upon destructively (in so far as the soul forms mental images, in so far as it is active); instead, the whole of our soul activity is attuned to a spiritual world always around us, in which we stand with our soul-spiritual element just as we stand in the physical, sense-perceptible world with our physical body. Spiritual science is thus striving for a real connection of the human being to the spiritual world that permeates everything physical to the actual, concrete, real spiritual world.

Then the possibility truly arises for a more far-reaching observation of how what is working and weaving within us as soul, working destructively within the limits I described, is a homogeneous whole. What I have called the development of the soul presses on from ordinary consciousness to clairvoyant consciousness. I have spoken about this in my book, The Riddle of Human Being. This clairvoyant consciousness creates the possibility of possessing Imaginative knowledge. This Imaginative knowledge does not yield what belongs to the outwardly perceptible; it yields to the human being himself (I would like to look away from the other world for the moment) what is not perceptible to his senses. To avoid misunderstanding I recently called what can be perceived at first by an awakened knowledge of this kind the body of formative forces. This is the super-sensible body of the human being, which is active throughout the whole course of our life, from birth, or let us say, conception, until our physical death. It also bears our memories, yet it stands in connection with a super-sensible entity, with a super-sensible outer world.

Thus, our sense life with the rest of its consciousness is there as a mere island, but around this island and even permeating it we have the relationship of the human body of formative forces to the super-sensible outer world. Here, it is true, we reach the point of bringing the whole conceptual world (not any different now from the way I have described it) into connection with the physical brain that provides the ground for all this; but we arrive at the insight that the body of formative forces is the carrier of human thoughts, that thoughts develop in this body of formative forces and that in thinking the human being lives in this body of formative forces.

It is different if we go on to another experience of the soul, namely to feeling. Our feeling, our emotions, our passions, stand in a different relationship to our life of soul from that of our thinking. The spiritual investigator finds that the thoughts we usually have are bound up with the body of formative forces. This does not apply, however, to our feelings, our emotions. Feelings and emotions live in us in a much more subconscious way. Thus they are connected with something far more all-encompassing than our life between birth and death. It is not as though the human being is without thoughts in the part of his life about which I am now speaking; all feelings are permeated by thoughts. But the thoughts by which feelings are permeated do not, as a rule, enter man's ordinary consciousness. They remain beneath the threshold of this consciousness. What surges up as feeling is penetrated by thoughts, but these thoughts are more far-reaching, for they are found only when an individual progresses in clairvoyant cognition, when he progresses to what I call the Inspired consciousness (I am not thinking of superstitious conceptions here). You may study the particulars of this in my books.

If we go deeply into what is actually sleeping in regard to ordinary Consciousness (in the same way that from going to sleep to awaking a person sleeps in regard to the ordinary images of the senses) we see that it surges up just as dreams surge up into our sleep. Feelings actually surge up from the innermost depths of the soul; it sounds strange, but it is so. But this deeper region of the soul that is accessible to Inspired knowledge is what lives between death and a new birth. It is what enters into connection with the physical through our being conceived or born, what goes through the portal of death and has a spiritual existence among other conditions until the human being is reborn. Whoever really looks into what is living in the world of feeling with Inspired knowledge sees the human being not only between birth and death but also during the time the soul undergoes between death and a new birth.

The matter is not quite so simple as this, however; it is indeed like this, but it is also shown how forces arise in the soul that make it possible to look upon the feelings, emotions, passions, that make it possible to live in them. Just as in the plant we see what has arisen through the forces of the seed, so we see something that has not arisen with our birth or conception but that has emerged from a spiritual world.

I know very well how many objections can be made to a conception of this kind by those who accept the natural scientific world view. Those who are familiar with this world view will find it easy to say, “Here he comes and like a dilettante describes how the aspects of the soul he wishes to encompass come from a spiritual world; he even describes their special configurations, the colors of the feelings and so on, as if, on the one hand, there were hints in these feelings concerning our life before birth and, on the other hand, something in these feelings that is like the seed of the plant, which will become the plant of the next year. Doesn't this man know,” people will say, “about the wonderful laws of heredity presented by natural science? Is he ignorant of everything that those who created the science of hereditary characteristics have brought about?”

Even if the facts indicated by natural science are entirely correct, it is nevertheless the case that concealed in the emergence of heredity are the forces through which we have been preparing ourselves for centuries and which we ourselves send down. From grandparents and parents, constellations are built up that finally lead to the material result with which we then sheathe ourselves when we leave the spiritual world to descend into the physical. Whoever really keeps in mind the wonderful results of modern research into heredity will find that what spiritual science finds out about the soul (yet in a quite different way, it might be said, in the entirely opposite way) will be fully confirmed by natural science, whereas what natural science itself says is definitely not confirmed in the least by natural science. I can only suggest this here. When we then enter the sphere referred to as that of the will, this totally eludes the contents of man's ordinary consciousness. What does a person know about the processes going on in him when the thought, I want something, shapes itself into a movement of the hand? The actual process of willing is asleep in the human being. Regarding the feelings and emotions it could at least be said that the human being dreams within the human being. This is the reason that the question of freedom is so difficult, because the will is sleeping in relation to the higher consciousness. We come to knowledge about what is going on in the will in clairvoyant consciousness only by reaching the stage of actual Intuitive consciousness. By this I do not mean the vague, everyday consciousness called intuitive, but rather what I refer to in my writings as one of the three stages: Imaginative, Inspired, and Intuitive cognition.

Here we come into the sphere of the will, into the realm that is supposed to live and work within us. This must first be drawn out of the deep regions of the soul. Then we find, however, that this element of the will is also permeated by thoughts, by the spiritual (in addition, the ordinary thought stands by itself). But in bearing the will within us, there works into this will something in addition to what we have experienced in the spiritual world in our feelings, working between death and a new birth. Something is active there that we have experienced in the preceding life on earth. The impulses of earlier earthly lives work into the will nature of the human being. In what we develop or what we cultivate in our present willing live the impulses for our lives on earth to come. For real spiritual science, then, the whole of human life separates into the lives lying between birth and death and those which, because all physical existence has to be built up out of the world, are experienced in far longer periods in the spiritual world. Out of such lives, out of repeated earthly lives, repeated spiritual lives, the complete human life is composed. This is not some fantasy, it is not a capricious thought, but rather something we find when we learn to turn the eye of the spirit to the eternal, the imperishable, in the human soul.

These things do not preclude human freedom. If I build a house this year in which I will live for the next two years, I will be a free man in this house despite having built it for myself. Human freedom is not precluded by this. One earthly life determines the other that follows. Only through a lack of understanding could this be represented as an infringement on the idea of human freedom.

Thus, in spiritual investigation by making death our point of departure, we gradually arrive at the spiritual facts. If in spiritual investigation one makes death the foundation, just as physical investigation is based on birth and embryonic life, this observation reveals the most varied things in individual detail. I will point to something specific here, because I would not like to remain with the indefinite but rather to quote concrete results of anthroposophical research. In the ordinary life of the spirit we are able to differentiate between the forcible entry of death due to an external cause and death that comes from within through illness or by reason of old age. We are therefore able to distinguish two different kinds of death.

Spiritual investigation that goes concretely into the nature of death discovers the following. Let us take as an example the entrance into life of violent death, be it through accident or some other cause. The entrance of such an event brings about an end to life in this earthly existence. The development of spirit consciousness for the spiritual world after death depends on this one-time entrance of death, just as the consciousness we are able to develop in life depends on the forces given us at birth (in the way that I have described). The Consciousness we develop after death is of a different kind. The consciousness developed here on earth stands on the ground of the nervous system, just as when I walk around on the ground my foundation is the ground. In the spiritual world the consciousness after death has different foundations, but it is definitely a consciousness. If a man dies a violent death this is not something that merely lays hold of his mental images. The mental activity of ordinary consciousness ceases with death, and another Consciousness begins, but this lays hold of his will which, as we have seen, passes over into the next earthly life. The spiritual investigator possesses the means to investigate what can arise in an earthly life if, in a previous earthly life, there has been a violent death.

Now when we speak of such things today, people will obviously condemn this way of speaking as foolish, childish, fantastic. Yet the results are attained just as scientifically (and it is only such results that I present) as the results of natural science. If a violent death intervenes in a life, it shows itself in the following life on earth, where its effect produces some kind of change of direction at a definite period in that life. Research is now being done concerning the soul life, but as a rule only the most external things are taken into consideration. In many human lives, at a particular moment, something enters that changes a person's whole destiny, bringing him into a different path in life in response to inner demands. In America they call these things “conversions,” wanting to have a name for such events, but we do not always need to think in terms of religion. A person on another path of life may be forced into a permanent change of the direction of his will. Such a radical change of the direction of his will has its origin in the violent death of his previous life. Concrete investigation reveals the tremendous importance of what happens at death for the middle of the next life. If death comes spontaneously from within through illness or old age, then it has more significance for the life between death and a new birth than for the next earthly life.

I would like to offer the following example so that you may see that I am not speaking about anything vague here. In fact, I am speaking about details arising in life's conditions that can be gained by definite perceptions. Spiritual investigation, which is something new even for those convinced of the immortality of the human soul, makes us aware that we must not speak in merely a general way about immortality. Instead, by grasping the eternal in the human soul, human life as such becomes comprehensible. All the strange processes that are observable if we have a sense for the course taken by the soul life, for the course of the soul life in the human being, all the wonderful events find their place if we know we are dealing with repeated earthly lives and repeated spiritual lives. In the spiritual world (I say this merely parenthetically) the human being lives with spiritual beings—not only other human beings who are closely connected with him by destiny and have also passed through the portal of death, but with other spiritual beings to whom he is related in the same way that on earth the human being is related to three kingdoms: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. The spiritual investigator speaks of particular individual spirits, particular individual spiritual beings, belonging to a concrete, individualized spiritual world, just as here we speak of individualized plant beings, animal beings, and human beings, in so far as they are physical beings between birth and death. It can be shattering to people when knowledge itself approaches the human soul in a totally different way. It is difficult to speak about these things so that they arise out of the dim depths of the spirit in a new way.

From what I have said you will have seen that knowledge about the spiritual world can be acquired. This knowledge has profound significance for the human soul; it makes the soul something different, as it were. It lays hold of the life of the soul, regardless of whether one is a spiritual investigator or has merely heard and understood the results of spiritual investigation and has absorbed them. It is of no importance whether or not one does the research oneself; the result can be comprehensible just the same. Everything can be understood if we penetrate it with sufficient depth. We only need to have absorbed it. Then, however, when we have grasped it in its full essence, it enters the human soul life in such a way that one day it becomes more significant than all the other events of life.

A person may have difficulties, sorrows, that have shattered him, or joy that has elevated him, or some truly sublime experience. It is not necessary to be indifferent to such experiences to be a spiritual investigator, someone who knows the spirit; one can participate as fully with the feelings as other people do who are not investigators of the spirit. But when someone penetrates with his essential being into what is given the soul by spirit knowledge, and when he becomes capable of answering the question, “What are the effects upon the soul of these spiritual results?”—when a full answer is given to the question of what the soul has become through this spiritual knowledge, then this event becomes more important than anything else in destiny, more important than any of the other experiences of destiny that approach the human being. Not that the others become less significant, but this one becomes greater than the others. Knowledge itself then enters through the human soul life in accordance with destiny. If knowledge thus enters through the human soul life, he begins to understand human destiny as such. From this knowledge comes the light that illumines human destiny.

From this moment on, an individual can say this: that if one has this experience of destiny so purely in the spiritual in this way, it becomes clear how one is placed into life in accordance with destiny, how our destiny hangs on threads spun out of previous lives, previous earthly lives and lives between death and a new birth, which again spin themselves out of this life and into a following life. Such an individual goes on to say that ordinary consciousness only dreams through its destiny; ordinary consciousness endures its destiny without understanding it, just as one endures a dream. Clairvoyant consciousness to which one awakes, just as we awake from a dream to ordinary consciousness, acquires a new relationship to destiny. Destiny is recognized as taking part in all that our life embraces, in the life that goes through all our births and deaths.

This matter should not be grasped in a trivial way, as if the spiritual investigator were to say, “You yourself are the cause of your own misfortune.” That would simply betray a misunderstanding and would even be a slander of spiritual investigation. A misfortune may not have its source at all in the previous life. It may arise spontaneously and have its consequences only in the life to follow and also in the life between earthly lives. We can see again and again that out of misfortune, out of pain and suffering, emerges a consciousness of a very different form in the spiritual world, Meaning enters the whole of our life, however, when we learn to understand our destiny, which otherwise we only dream our way through.

One thing particularly stands out when we bear in mind this knowledge of the spirit. We can no longer say, “If, after death, the soul enters another life, we can wait until this happens. Here we take life as it is offered us in the physical body; we can wait for what comes after death.” The matter is a question of consciousness. We may be sure that what happens after death is connected with the life we undergo in the body. Just as in a certain sense we have the Consciousness of our ordinary waking condition by means of our body, so after death we have a Consciousness that is no longer spatial, no longer built up out of the nervous system, but built up out of what has to do with time, built up out of looking backward.

Just as our nervous system in a way is the buttress and counterpart to our ordinary consciousness between birth and death, so our consciousness in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is founded on what takes place here in our consciousness. Just as here we have the world around us, so when we are dead we have before us our life as the significant organ. Hence, a great deal depends upon our consciousness in the physical body, which is able to extend into the consciousness we have after death. An individual may be occupied exclusively with physical conceptions grasped by the senses, as often happens in the habitual thinking of the present time; he may take into his consciousness and also in his capacity of memory, in everything playing itself out in his soul, concerns exclusively having to do with ordinary life. Such an individual, however, is also building up a world for himself after death! The environment there is built out of what a person is inwardly. A person born physically in Europe cannot see America around him, and just as he receives what he is born into physically as his environment, so to a certain extent he determines the environment, the place of his existence, through what he has built up in his body.

Let us take an extreme case, though one unlikely to happen. Let us take the case of someone who fights against all super-sensible conceptions, who has become an atheist, someone who doesn't even have any inclination to occupy himself with religion. Now I know that I am saying something paradoxical here, but it is based on good foundations anthroposophically: such an individual condemns himself to remaining in the earthly sphere with his consciousness, whereas another individual who has absorbed spiritual conceptions is transposed to a spiritual environment. The one who has absorbed only sense-perceptible conceptions condemns himself to remaining in the sense-perceptible environment.

Now we can work properly in the physical body because our physical body is, as it were, a sheath protecting us against the environment. And though we can thus work properly in the physical body when we are present in the physical world, we cannot do so if we hold to the physical world after death. We become destructive if we have physical conceptions in our consciousness after death. In speaking of the problem of heredity, I intimated how, when the human being is in the spiritual world, his forces lay hold of the physical world. Whoever condemns himself, by reason of his merely physical consciousness, to hold to the physical world becomes the center of destructive forces that lay hold of what is happening in human life and in the rest of universal life. As long as we are in the body, we are only able to have thoughts based on the sense-perceptible, we are able to have only materialistic thoughts: the body is a defense.

But how much greater a defense than we imagine! It seems strange, but to anyone who perceives the spiritual world in all its connections, one thing is clear: if an individual were not shut off from the surrounding world by his senses, if the senses were not curbed so that in ordinary consciousness he is incapable of taking up living concepts but takes up only those that are lifeless and designed to prevent him from penetrating into the spiritual environment, if an individual were able to make his conceptions active directly and did not have them merely within him after things have already passed through the senses, then even here in the physical world, if he were to develop his conceptual life, his conceptions would have crippling, deadening effects. For these conceptions are in a certain way destructive of everything they lay hold of. Only because they are held back in us are those conceptions kept from being destructive. They destroy only when they come to expression in machines, in tools, which are also something dead taken from living nature. This indeed is only a picture, but one corresponding with a reality. If an individual enters the spiritual world with merely physical conceptions, he becomes a center of destruction.

Thus I have to bring a conception to your attention as an example of many others: we should not say that we can wait until after death, because it depends on a person's nature whether he develops conceptions of the sense world or of the super-sensible world, whether he prepares for his next life in this way or that. The next life is indeed a very different one, but it is evolved from our life here. This is the essential thing that has to be comprehended. In spiritual science, we encounter something different from what is surmised. For this reason I must still make a few remarks in closing.

The belief might easily arise that anyone now entering the spiritual world must unconditionally become a spiritual investigator himself. This is not necessarily so, although in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have described much of how the soul must transform itself in order really to be able to enter. And to a certain degree, everyone is able to do this today, but it need not be everyone. What a person develops regarding the soul element is a purely intimate concern; what arises from it, however, is the formation of concepts of the investigated truths. What the spiritual investigator can give is clothed in conceptions such as I have developed today. Then it can be shared. For what a person needs, it is quite immaterial whether things are investigated by himself or whether he accepts them from some other credible source. I am speaking here from a law of spiritual investigation. It is not important to investigate the things oneself. What is important is for us to have them within us, for us to have developed them within. Hence, we are in error if we believe that everyone has to become a spiritual investigator.

Today, however, the spiritual investigator has the obligation (as I myself have had the obligation) to render an account, as it were, of his path of research. This is due not only to the fact that everyone today can, to a certain extent, follow the path I have described without harm, but it is also because everyone is justified in asking, “How have you arrived at these results?” This is why I have described these things. I believe that even those who have no wish to become spiritual investigators will at least want to be convinced of how spiritual investigators arrive at the results that everyone needs today, the results of those who wish to lay the foundation for the life which must develop in human souls for human evolution today.

The time is now over during which, in ancient times, so much was held back regarding spiritual research that brought about the evolution of the soul. In those ancient times, to impart what was hidden was strictly forbidden. Even today, those who know of these mysteries of life (of which there are not just a few) still hold these things back. Whoever has learned about these things merely as a student from another teacher does not under any circumstances do well to pass them on. Today it is advisable to pass on only what an individual himself has discovered, the results only of his own investigations. These, however, can and must be put at the service of the rest of humanity.

Already from the few brief indications I was able to give today it can become evident what spiritual investigation can mean for the individual human being, but it is not only significant for the individual. And in order to address this other aspect in closing with at least a few words I would like to point to something that is taken into consideration only a little today. There is a curious phenomenon to which I would like to direct your attention in the following way. In the second half of the nineteenth century we have seen the rise of a certain natural scientific orientation: the explanation of living beings connected with the name Darwin. Enthusiastic scholarly investigators, enthusiastic students have carried these things through the second half of the nineteenth century. Maybe I have already remarked upon the occurrence of a curious fact. Already in the 1860's, under the guidance of Haeckel, there developed a powerful movement based on a world view. This movement wanted to overthrow everything old and to restructure the entire world view in accordance with Darwinistic concepts. Today there are still numerous people who emphasize how great and significant it would be if there were no longer a wisdom-filled world-guidance but instead if the evolution of everything could be explained out of mechanical forces in the sense of Darwinism.

In 1867 Eduard von Hartmann published his Philosophy of the Unconscious (Philosophie des Unbewussten) and turned against the purely external view of the world represented by Darwinism. He pointed to the necessity of inner forces, although he did so in an inadequate way, in a philosophical way (he did not yet have spiritual science). Naturally those who were enthusiastic about the rise of Darwinism were ready to say, “That philosopher is simply a dilettante; we don't need to pay any attention to him.” Counterattacks appeared in which the “dilettante” Eduard von Hartmann was ridiculed and which asserted that the true, educated natural scientist need not pay any attention to such things.

Then there appeared a publication by Anonymous, which brilliantly argued against the publication of Eduard von Hartmann. The natural scientists who all thought as they did were in full agreement with this publication because Eduard von Hartmann was completely contradicted in it. Everything that could possibly be gathered from the basis of natural science was there used by the anonymous author against Eduard von Hartmann just as today so much is brought up against spiritual science. This publication was received very favorably. Haeckel said, “For once a real natural scientist has written against this dilettante, Eduard von Hartmann; here one can see what a natural scientist is able to do. I myself could write no better. Let him identify himself and we will consider him as one of us.” To state it briefly, the natural scientists spread a lot of propaganda in relation to this publication, which they welcomed highly because it solidified their position. The publication was very soon sold out, and a second edition became necessary. There the author revealed himself: it was Eduard von Hartmann!

In that instance someone taught the world a necessary lesson. Whoever writes about spiritual science today and reads what is written against it could without much effort invent everything that is brought against spiritual science. Eduard von Hartmann was able himself to make all the objections that the natural scientists made against him—and he did so.

But I mention this only in introduction to my main point. Oskar Hertwig is one of the most important students of Haeckel who entered upon the industrious, reliable, and great path of natural scientific investigation. Last year Hertwig published a very beautiful book, The Evolution of the Organism. A Rebuttal to Darwin's Theory of Chance (Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheorie). In this book he points to issues that were already raised by Eduard von Hartmann. Such a matter is pretty much without precedent: already the generation immediately following, which still grew up under the master, had to get away from something that had been believed could build a whole world view; it had even been believed that it could provide elucidation of the spiritual world. A good Darwinist contradicts Darwinism! But he does still more, and that is what is actually important to me.

Oskar Hertwig writes at the conclusion of his superb and beautiful book that the kind of world view that Darwinism represented does not stand there merely as a theoretical edifice; rather it intervenes in the totality of life, encompassing also what people do, will, feel, and think. He says, “The interpretation of Darwin's teaching, which because of its vagueness can have such varied meanings, permitted also a very varied application to other realms of economic, social, and political life. It was possible, just as it was from the Delphic Oracles, to use what was said as desired for specific applications to social, political, health-related, medical, and other questions and to support one's own assertions by basing them on the Darwinistically restructured biology with its immutable natural laws. If these supposed laws are not actually laws, however, could there not exist social dangers—because of their many-sided application in other realms? We had better not believe that human society can for centuries use expressions like, ‘a struggle for existence,’ ‘survival of the fittest,’ ‘the most suitable,’ ‘the most useful,’ ‘perfection by selection,’ etc., applying them to the most varied realms of life, using these expressions like daily bread, without influencing in a deep and lasting way the entire direction of idea formation! The proof for this assertion could easily be demonstrated in many contemporary phenomena. For this very reason the decision concerning the truth or error of Darwinism reaches far beyond the confines of the biological sciences.”

What arises in such a theory shows itself everywhere in life. Then a question arises from the realm of spiritual science that also intervenes in life. We live today in a sad time, in a tragic time for humanity. It is a time that has developed out of human conceptions, out of human ideas. Whoever studies interrelationships with the help of spiritual science knows about the connection of what we encounter externally today with what humanity is now tragically experiencing. A great deal is being experienced; people believe that they can encompass reality with their concepts, but they do not encompass it. And because they do not encompass it, because with natural scientific concepts reality can never be encompassed, reality grows over their head and shows them that human beings can take part in such events but that the result is the chaos by which we are surrounded today.

Spiritual science does not arise only through an inner necessity, though this is also true. It would have arisen through this inner necessity even if the outer events did not stand there as a mighty, powerful sign. Such signs are there, however, from the other side: that the old world views are great in the natural sciences but can never intervene formatively in the social, legislative, political spheres in the world, that reality grows beyond human beings, if that is what they want. These mighty signs point to the need for spiritual science, which seeks concepts that correspond with reality, concepts derived from reality and that are therefore also capable of carrying the world in the social and political realms. No matter how much one believes that the concepts customary outside spiritual science today will enable us to emerge out of the chaos, it will not happen; for within the reality the spirit prevails. And because the human being himself intervenes with his actions in this reality, in the social, in the political life, he requires the conceptions, the feelings, the will impulses that are drawn from the spirit in order to come to fruitful concepts in these realms. In the future politics and social science will need something for which only spiritual science can provide the foundation. This is what is particularly important for contemporary history.

In this lecture, which has already been long enough, I can only hope to offer a few impulses. I only wish to point out that what appears today as spiritual science in a systematic order is wanted by the best. If it were only up to me, I would not give a special name to this spiritual science. For more than thirty years I have been working on the greater and greater elaboration of the conceptions regarding reality that Goethe acquired in his magnificent theory of metamorphosis, in which he had already attempted to make the concept living as opposed to dead. At that time this was only possible in an elementary way. If one does not consider Goethe simply as a historical figure, however, if one considers him still as a contemporary, then today the Goethean teaching of metamorphosis transforms itself into what I call living concepts, which then find their way into spiritual science. Goetheanism is the term I would most like to use for what I mean by spiritual scientific investigation, because it is based on sound foundations of a grasp of reality as Goethe wanted it.

And the building in Dornach that is to be dedicated to this spiritual investigation, and through which this spiritual investigation has become more well known than it would have without the building, I would like most to call the Goetheanum, so that one would see that what arises as spiritual investigation today stands fully in the midst of the healthy process of the evolution of humanity. Certainly many today who wish to acknowledge the Goethean way of looking at the world will still say that Goethe was one who recognized nature as the highest above all and who also permitted the spirit to emerge out of nature. Already as a very young man, Goethe said, “Gedacht hat sie und sinnt beständig” (“She did think and ponders incessantly”), ponders incessantly although not as man but as nature. Even if one is a spiritual investigator one can agree with the kind of naturalism that, like Goethe, thinks of nature as permeated by spirit. And those who always believe that one must stop at the boundaries of knowledge, that one can't get any further there, can be repudiated with Goethe's words. Permit me, therefore, as I conclude here, to add the words that Goethe used concerning another accomplished investigator who represented the later Kantian view:

Into the inner being of nature—
No created spirit penetrates.
Blissful those to whom she only
Reveals the outer shell!

Ins Innere der Natur—
Dringt kein erschaffner Geist
Glueckselig, wem sie nur
Die aeussere Schale weist!

Next to these words Goethe placed others that show how well Goethe knew that when the human being awakes the spirit within himself, he also finds the spirit in the world and himself as spirit:

Into the inner being of nature—
No created spirit penetrates.
Blissful those to whom she only
Reveals the outer shell!
This I hear repeated for sixty years
And damn it but secretly—
Nature has neither core nor shell,
She is everything at once.
Above all simply examine yourself
To see whether you yourself are core or shell!

Ins Innere der Natur—
Dringt kein erschaffner Geist.
Glueckselig, wem sie nur
Die aeussere Schale weist!—
So hoer ich schon an die sechzig Jahre wiederholen
Und fluche darauf—aber verstojileri,—
Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale,
A lies ist sie mit einemmale,
Dich pruefe du nur zu allermeist,
Ob du selbst Kern oder Schale seist!

Spiritual science wishes to work toward the human being learning to examine himself as to whether he is core or shell. And he is core if he grasps himself in his full reality. If he grasps himself as core, then he also penetrates to the spirit of nature. Then in the evolution of humanity in relation to spiritual science something occurs that is similar to when Copernicus pointed from the visible to the invisible, even of this visible itself.

For the super-sensible, however, humanity will have to stir itself to grasp this super-sensible within itself. To do this one does not need to become a spiritual investigator. One needs, however, to remove all prejudices that place themselves before the soul if one wishes to understand what spiritual science intends to say out of such a Goethean attitude.

I wished to offer today only a few impulses to stimulate you further. From this point of view it is always possible at least to stimulate something, but if one wanted to go into all the details, many lectures would be needed. But I believe these few comments will have sufficed to show that something needs to be drawn out of the evolutionary process of humanity, something that will first awaken the soul to full life. No one needs to believe that this will shrivel the soul, that it will kill off anything, not even the religious life. As Goethe said:

Whoever possesses Science and Art,
Has also Religion,
Whoever possesses neither of the two,
Had better have Religion!

Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt
Hat auch Religion,
Werjene beiden nicht besitzt,
Der habe Religion!

So one can say, as the modern way of thinking is evolving, whoever finds spiritual scientific paths will also find the way to true religious life; whoever does not find the spiritual scientific path will be in danger of losing also the religious path so necessary for the future of humanity!

Consider what is to be the subject of today's lecture only as an insertion into the series of lectures this winter. It is perhaps justified precisely by our fateful time, in which the two Central European empires, so closely connected with each other, must approach the great demands of historical becoming in our present and for the future. I also believe I am justified in saying something about the intellectual life of Austria, since I lived in Austria until I was almost thirty years old and had not only the opportunity but also the necessity from a wide variety of perspectives to become fully immersed in Austrian intellectual life. On the other hand, it may be said that this Austrian intellectual life is particularly, I might say, difficult for the outsider to grasp in terms of ideas, concepts, and representations, and that perhaps our time will make it increasingly necessary for the peculiarities of this Austrian intellectual life to be brought before the mind's eye of a wider circle. But because of the shortness of the time at my disposal I shall be unable to give anything but, I might say, incoherent pictures, unpretentious pictures of the Austrian intellectual life of the most diverse classes; pictures which do not claim to give a complete picture, but which are intended to form one or other idea which might seek understanding for what is going on in the intellectual life beyond the Inn and the Erz Mountains.

In 1861, a philosopher who was rarely mentioned outside his homeland and who was closely connected to Austrian intellectual life, Robert Zimmermann, took up his teaching post at the University of Vienna, which he then held until the 1890s. He not only awakened many people spiritually, guiding them through philosophy on their spiritual path, but he also influenced the souls of those who taught in Austria, as he chaired the Real- und Gymnasialschul-Prüfungskommission (examination commission for secondary modern and grammar schools). And he was effective above all because he had a kind and loving heart for all that was present in emerging personalities; that he had an understanding approach for everything that asserted itself in the spiritual life at all. When Robert Zimmermann took up his post as a philosophy lecturer at the University of Vienna in 1861, he spoke words in his inaugural academic address that provide a retrospective of the development of worldviews in Austria in the nineteenth century. They show very succinctly what made it difficult for Austrians to arrive at a self-sustaining worldview during this century.

Zimmermann says: “For centuries in this country, the oppressive spell that lay on the minds was more than the lack of original disposition capable of holding back not only an independent flourishing of philosophy but also the active connection to the endeavors of other Germans. As long as the Viennese university was largely in the hands of the religious orders, medieval scholasticism prevailed in its philosophy lecture halls. When, with the dawn of an enlightened era, it passed into secular management around the middle of the last century, the top-down system of teachers, teachings and textbooks, which was ordered from above, made the independent development of a free train of thought impossible. The philosophy of Wolff – which in the rest of Germany had been overcome by Kant – in the diluted version of Feder, with a smattering of English skepticism, became the intellectual nourishment of the young Austrians thirsting for knowledge. Those who, like the highly educated monk of St. Michael's in Vienna, longed for something higher had no choice but to secretly seek the way across the border to Wieland's hospitable sanctuary after discarding the monastic robe. This Barnabite monk, whom the world knows by his secular name of Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and the Klagenfurt native Herbert, Schiller's former housemate, are the only public witnesses to the involvement of the closed spiritual world on this side of the Inn and the Erz mountains in the powerful change that took hold of the spirits of the otherworldly Germany towards the end of the past, the philosophical century."

One can understand that a man speaks in this way who had participated in the 1848 movement out of an enthusiastic sense of freedom, and who then thought in a completely independent way about fulfilling his philosophical teaching. But one can also ask oneself: Is not this picture, which the philosopher draws almost in the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps tinged with some pessimism, some pessimism? It is easy for an Austrian to see things in black and white when judging his own country, given the tasks that have fallen to Austria due to the historical necessities – I say expressly: the historical necessities – that the empire, composed of a diverse, multilingual mixture of peoples, had to find its tasks within this multilingual mixture of peoples. And when one asks such a question, perhaps precisely out of good Austrian consciousness, all sorts of other ideas come to mind.

For example, one can think of a German Austrian poet who is truly a child of the Austrian, even the southern Austrian mountains; a child of the Carinthian region, born high up in the Carinthian mountains and who, through an inner spiritual urge, felt compelled to descend to the educational institutions. I am referring to the extraordinarily important poet Fercher von Steinwand.

Among Fercher von Steinwand's poems, there are some very remarkable presentations. I would like to present just one example to your souls as a picture of this Austrian intellectual life, as a picture that can immediately evoke something of how the Austrian, out of his innermost, most original, most elementary intellectual urge, can be connected with certain ideas of the time. Fercher von Steinwand, who knew how to write such wonderful “German Sounds from Austria” and who was able to shape everything that moves and can move human souls from such an intimate mind, also knew how to rise with his poetry to the heights where the human spirit tries to grasp what lives and works in the innermost weaving of the world. For example, in a long poem, of which I will read only the beginning, called “Chor der Urtriebe” (Choir of Primeval Instincts).

In the boundless expanse
of our ancient mother Night,
hark! there seems to be a struggle
of the most mysterious power!
Do we hear foreboding stride?
Has longing awakened?
Has a flash of inspiration ignited?
Do dreams glide through the vastness?
How the forces of the forces intoxicate each other,
blissful exchange!
Sudden hurrying,
quiet lingering,
revelatory listening
alternates with waving
Amazed fear!
The charm of attainment
Rises, to sink,
Sinks, to hate,
White with the pale
Image of the embrace
Hatred not to grasp.
Dark ramifications
Sprouting affections
Seek for tendrils.
Heavy thoughts
Dawn and falter
Over the expanses,
Seem to guess
Or to guide.
What they prepare
Are they the seeds
Of mighty deeds,
Radiant times?
Who felt the stirred up
Creatively!
Who wandered through it,
Blissfully enjoying,
Or untangled it,
Opening up great things!
Up there it moves like a ghostly embrace,
We in warmth,
We also gain,
search and ponder,
see ourselves lifted,
highest endeavor
happily interwoven.
That blows around us,
arises in us:
“It is you, ideas! -—"

The poet sees how, as he seeks to delve into the “choir of primal urges” that are world-creative, ideas come to him. He seeks to rise up to that world that lived in the minds of the philosophers I had the honor of speaking of last week: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. But we may ask ourselves how it was possible for that intimate bond to be woven in Fercher von Steinwand's soul, which must have connected him – and it really connected him – between the urge of his soul, which awakened in the simple peasant boy from the Carinthian mountains, and between what the greatest idealistic philosophers in the flowering of German world view development sought to strive for from their point of view. And so we ask: Where could Fercher von Steinwand find this, since, according to Robert Zimmermann's words, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel were not presented in Austria during Fercher von Steinwand's youth – he was born in 1828 – since they were forbidden fruit during his youth there? But the truth always comes out. When Fercher von Steinwand had graduated from high school and, equipped with his high school diploma, went to Graz to attend the University of Graz, he enrolled in lectures. And there was a lecture that the lecturer reading it on natural law was reading. He enrolled in natural law and could naturally hope that he would hear a lot of all kinds of concepts and ideas about the rights that man has by nature, and so on. But lo and behold! Under the unassuming title “Natural Law,” good Edlauer, the Graz university professor, the lawyer, spoke of nothing but Fichte, Schelling and Hegel for the entire semester. And so Fercher von Steinwand took his course in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel during this time, quite independently of what might have been considered forbidden, and perhaps really was forbidden, according to an external view of Austrian intellectual life. Quite independently of what was going on at the surface, a personality who was seeking a path into the spiritual worlds was therefore immersing himself in this context with the highest intellectual endeavor.

Now, when one sets out to follow such a path into the spiritual worlds through Austrian life, one must bear in mind – as I said, I do not want to justify anything, but only give pictures – that the whole nature of this Austrian spiritual life offers many, many puzzles to those – yes, I cannot say otherwise – who are looking for a solution to puzzles. But anyone who likes to observe the juxtaposition of contradictions in human souls will find much of extraordinary significance in the soul of the Austrian. It is more difficult for the Austrian German to work his way up than in other areas, for example in German, I would say, not so much in education, but in the use of education, in participating in education. It may look pedantic, but I have to say it: it is difficult for the Austrian to participate in the use of his intellectual life simply because of the language. For it is extremely difficult for the Austrian to speak in the way that, say, the Germans of the Reich speak. He will very easily be tempted to say all short vowels long and all long vowels short. He will very often find himself saying “Son” and “Sohne” instead of “Son” and “Sonne”. Where does something like that come from? It is due to the fact that Austrian intellectual life makes it necessary – it is not to be criticized, but only described – that anyone who, I might say, works their way up from the soil of the folk life into a certain sphere of education and intellect has to take a leap over an abyss – out of the language of their people and into the language of the educated world. And of course only school gives them the tools to do so. The vernacular is correct everywhere; the vernacular will say nothing other than: “Suun”, quite long, for “Sohn”, “D'Sun”, very short, for “Sonne”. But at school it becomes difficult to find one's way into the language, which, in order to handle education, must be learned. And this leap across the abyss is what gives rise to a special language of instruction. It is this school language, not some kind of dialect, that leads people everywhere to pronounce long vowels as short vowels and short vowels as long vowels. From this you can see that, if you are part of the intellectual life, you have a gulf between you and the national character everywhere. But this national character is rooted so deeply and meaningfully, not so much perhaps in the consciousness of each individual as, one might say, in each person's blood, that the power I have hinted at is experienced inwardly, and can even be experienced in a way that cuts deep into the soul. And then phenomena come to light that are particularly important for anyone who wants to consider the place of Austrian higher intellectual life in the intellectual life of Austrian nationality and the connection between the two. As the Austrian works his way up into the sphere of education, I would say that he is also lifted into a sphere, in terms of some coinage of thought, some coinage of ideas, so that there really is a gulf to the people. And then it comes about that more than is otherwise the case, something arises in the Austrian who has found his way into intellectual life, something that draws him to his nationality. It is not a home for something that one has left only a short time ago, but rather a homesickness for something from which one is separated by a gulf in certain respects, but in relation to which one cannot, for reasons of blood, create it, find one's way into it.

And now let us imagine, for example, a mind – and it can be quite typical of Austrian intellectual life – that has undergone what an Austrian scientific education could offer it. It now lives within it. In a certain way, it is separated from its own nationality by this scientific education, which it cannot achieve with ordinary homesickness, but with a much deeper sense of homesickness. Then, under certain circumstances, something like an inner experience of the soul occurs, in which this soul says to itself: I have immersed myself in something that I can look at with concepts and ideas, that from the point of view of intelligence certainly leads me here or there to understand the world and life in connection with the world; but on the other side of an abyss there is something like a folk philosophy. What is this folk philosophy like? How does it live in those who know nothing and have no desire to know anything of what I have grown accustomed to? What does it look like over there, on the other side of the abyss? — An Austrian in whom this homesickness has become so vivid, which is much deeper than it can usually occur, this homesickness for the source of nationality, from which one has grown out, such an Austrian is Joseph Misson.

Misson, who entered a religious order in his youth, absorbed the education that Robert Zimmermann pointed out, lived in this education and was also active in this education; he was a teacher at the grammar schools in Horn, Krems and Vienna. But in the midst of this application of education, the philosophy of his simple farming people of Lower Austria, from which he had grown out, arose in him, as in an inner image of the soul, through his deep love of his homeland. And this Joseph Misson in the religious habit, the grammar school teacher who had to teach Latin and Greek, immersed himself so deeply in his people, as if from memory, that this folklore revealed itself poetically in him in a living way, so that one of the most beautiful, most magnificent dialect poems in existence was created. I will just, to paint a picture for you, recite a small piece from this dialect poetry, which was only partially published in 1850 – it was then not completed – just the piece in which Joseph Misson so truly presents the philosophy of life of the Lower Austrian farmer. The poem is called: “Da Naaz,” - Ignaz - “a Lower Austrian farmer's boy, goes abroad”. So, Naaz has grown up in the Lower Austrian farmhouse, and he has now reached the point where he has to make his way into the world. He must leave his father and mother, the parental home. There he is given the teachings that now truly represent a philosophy of life. One must not take the individual principles that the father says to the boy, but one must take them in their spiritual context; how it is spoken about the way one has to behave towards luck when it comes, towards fate ; how one should behave when this or that happens to one; how one should behave when someone does one good; how one should behave towards kind people and how towards those who do one harm. And I would like to say: to someone who has undergone his philosophical studies to the extent that he has become a theologian, this peasant philosophy now makes sense. So the father says to the Naaz when the Naaz goes out:

From the first song.
Teach your children on the road.

Naaz, iazn loos, töös, wos a ta so, töös sockt ta tai Voda.
Gootsnom, wails scho soo iis! und probiast tai Glück ö da Waiden.
Muis a da sogn töös, wo a da so, töös los der aa gsackt sai.
I and my mother were dreaming and dreaming, as you know, seeing nothing else.
What we see, work and worry about,
We do it for the children, what we don't do, is not good enough! —
If we are once a little pressed for time and are short of hands, take it easy, but find us a few decent places for the children, preferably under the shade of trees, where the fish spawn. —
If your luck turns around, so live not all the days,
Stay even, in the middle of the river, don't cut the rope too short.
Luck is round and round, so roll it back again soon.
If good luck and misfortune happen, it doesn't lie in sorrows.
Don't let anything get you down, don't let it get to the clouds.
If we're down, we'll pull through, I hope so, he'll do it again!
Mocka'r and hocka'r and pfnotten and trenzen with the kimt nix außa.
Kopfhängad, grod ols won amt' Heana s Prot häden gfressa:
Töös mochts schlimmi nöd guit, gidanka'r ös Guidi no pessa!
Look at the situation we are in, think about the future!
If you give us something, don't be stingy, take this and that: it's good!
Look, my dear, we realize: a little courtesy is not too much to ask for! —
It's getting more chivalrous, foreign people, it's a saying, a word of honor.
Don't be too proud, don't be afraid of a fool.
Don't open your coat, don't let your luck run out.
There are two weeks below and one above, so give an old one. If no one chips what is also often there, give a groden. Look after your health, health is allways good for the soul. What have we, who have everything in this world, if we are not healthy? Our friends and our comrades in arms! Olli, they may know us – and fools, fools is the best!

Translation:

A lesson from my father for the journey

Ignaz, now listen, what I say to you, your father says to you.
In God's name, because it has to be so, and you should seek your fortune in the wide world,
That is why I have to tell you this, and take to heart what I say to you.
I and your mother are old and have stayed at home; you know that you can't make anything out of that.
You slave away, toil, work hard and weaken yourself with worry. You do this for the sake of your children; what wouldn't you do to keep them from going astray. If you have grown weak and sickly later in life, and hard times come, they will also jump in lovingly, but you can find this in proper, righteous children, helping to provide the things that the state and life demand so that we can have some relief.
If you should ever be lucky, don't live like a cavalier.
Stay as you were, in the golden mean of the middle road, don't stray from the right path in life.
Luck is round like a ball; it rolls away from us just as easily as it comes to us. If something doesn't work out or you experience misfortune, don't talk about it to people. Stay calm; don't let anything show on your face; don't be timid; complain about everything to God only; ask him; I tell you, he makes everything better again! Acting sad, withdrawing, making sour faces, being whiny: none of this achieves anything. |
Hanging your head as if the chickens had eaten your bread:
This does not improve anything bad, let alone make the good even better!
Keep the possessions you take with you; plan for the future a little.
If someone gives you something, accept it without being ungracious and say, “May God reward you!” —
Pay attention, Ignaz; and remember this well: no one has ever been punished for being polite! —
Don't be contrary; being away from home makes people modest; that's a saying and it's true.
Don't be tempted into gambling; don't pay too much attention to the dance floor.
Don't have your cards read; and don't seek your destiny in the dream book.
If two paths go in different directions, and one of them is new, then go the old one.
If one of them is uneven, which is often the case, then go the even one.
Guard your health; of all goods, health is the better one.
Admit it: what in the world do you really possess if you don't have your health?
-----
If you come home one day and no longer find us old people in this little room,
then we will be where your grandfather and grandmother are joyfully awaiting us,
where our benefactors will find us and our deceased relatives. Everyone will recognize us immediately – and this, Ignaz, is a very beautiful thing. Now it says:

From the second song.
How the girl leaves her father's house and gives her father's home sorrow and tears.

Vodar and Muidar said: “Good luck for all we hope for,
We wish you a long life and good health!”
“As you wish,” said Muida and wiped the tears from my eyes,
“If you want respect and honor in this world, that's how we pray."
“People set it up earlier and people later,
I and your dad, we pray, child, that no misfortune befalls you.
Go to your niece and nephew and bring them to the Moata; stop by in Piasenrait, don't stay at the Moam's, you'll find a welcome, see everything beautiful, Naaz, and say hello a lot; When you come, we will be very happy to see you, when you come home!"
The old woman cries and gives him a Guglhupf cake, a soapbox and
, in addition, a white, newly washed cloth.
Hoamlih gives him three more in a paper bag.
The Vada gives him an extra two guilders, more can't be given.
“Money, Naaz, is a piglet that won't be viable at will, Naaz."
The door opens, and Naaz looks around the room,
“Main!” says Muida, ‘that's a terrible thing to say!’
He points to the gun rack hanging just inside the door:
“Gootsnom!” Muida says, makes a cross on his forehead with a damar – and then
-----
“I'm serious, Naaz, now goodbye, take care that all is well, Naaz!
Come on, let's go to the barn, so that we know right away
Where or when or what or said that something has fallen. If you come across the Graanitz, don't take a smudge pot full of ears
Drink from a watered well, it helps for the Hungarian crown!»
Godspeed once more and once more and go out into the world with trepidation.
Hunotmal doesn't ring, they look around and beckon to their father. “Look at your sign,” cries the father of the wide world, ‘it's not valid!” “Go to the Moam,’ cries the old mother, ‘we greet you, don't forget us.’

Narration:
How Ignaz leaves his father's house and his parents see him off.

Father and mother, I bid you farewell and God bless you for all the kindness you have shown me.
I hope with all my heart that you live a long life and stay healthy.
As God wills, says the mother and wipes her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief,
If the Lord calls us from the world, we are prepared for it.
For some people it is given up earlier and for some later.
I and your father pray, Ignaz, that no misfortune befalls you.
We will walk with you for a bit and accompany you to the image of the Mother of God.
Once you are in Piasenrait, stop by at your aunt's. You will be welcomed there.
Tell her all the nice things, Ignaz, and give her our warmest regards.
If she can come, we would be very happy if she visited us.
So speaks the old mother and wraps him a crumpet, a pastry, and also a piece of white bread in a freshly washed 'cloth'. She secretly gives him three shiny new twenties, wrapped in paper. The father gives him a two-guilder piece, more he cannot give. We don't have much money, Ignaz, take what you can with good will.
Before the door opens, Ignaz looks around and takes one last look at the room.
“Oh dear,” says his mother, ‘that's a bad sign, as if you'll never see it again,’
and she dips two fingers into the holy water font hanging next to the door.
In God's name, says the mother, and makes a cross on his forehead with his thumb – and they leave. Now it's getting serious, Ignaz, now God keep you, be well, Ignaz, Let us hear from you from time to time so that we always know how you are doing or if you are sick. When you come to Graanitz, take a handful of earth beforehand,
Austrian for: border. Drink it in diluted wine, it helps against fever.
They say goodbye to you, once and again, and part sadly.
A hundred times is not enough for them to look around and wave their hands.
“Mind your ID,” the father calls from afar, ‘don't lose it.” “Go to your aunt,’ the old woman calls, ‘we send her our regards, don't forget that.’

The entire philosophy of the farming community emerges before the friar, and so vividly that one sees how intimately he has grown with it. But he is also connected to something else: to that which is so fundamentally connected to the Austrian character, to the character of the Austro-German peasantry in the Alps: to the direct, unspoilt view of nature that arises from the most direct coexistence with nature. The description of a thunderstorm is owed to what comes to life again in Joseph Misson. It vividly describes how the Naaz now travels and how he comes to a place where heath sheep graze, which a shepherd, called a Holdar there, knows how to observe closely: how they behave when a thunderstorm is coming. Now he tells himself what he sees there:

When a cloud appears in the west and it doesn't come from below, it means a thunderstorm.
“One,” he thinks, ‘is coming, the other is going, now you have to decide which way you're going.’
Get on a donkey and look – now it thunders!
Immediately again – and how it rumbles over the Beringer!
It roars and rushes powerfully into the wood, that it is completely out!
“Oh, where this breaks out, our heaven be gracious!"
Then the Holdar, takes off his hat and ‘if only,’
he looks at the Guirkan, ‘if only it doesn't scare someone!’
“Just as we are,” he says, ‘two thunderstorms are coming together.’ (This convergence of two thunderstorms is now vividly described.)
And the dog sticks its snout up in the air and sniffs the air.
He points to a swallow, which flies quietly to the barn and drinks.
Then it is quiet and sultry and the air thickens.
The birds fall asleep in the nests and the sheep bow their heads.

Reproduction:
How Ignaz gets caught in the weather and doesn't know whether to

Listen, he says to himself, sit down for a moment and think about which way you will go.
He goes to the heath and looks around – suddenly there is a clap of thunder,
followed by another, and how it rumbles over the mountains!
It creaks and hisses mightily in the wood, as if it were completely dead. Well, may the Lord have mercy on anyone this happens to, says the lad to himself, taking off his coat, saying, looking at the clouds, just hoping it doesn't start raining. It seems to me, he says, like two thunderstorms mixed together. And the dog lifts its muzzle to sniff the air, then, sensing no danger, draws its tail between its legs, goes over to the lad and lies down beside him. Now it is quiet and sultry, and the leaves tremble in the trees, the birds sleep in their nests, and the sheep put their heads together.

The good Naaz is aware of all this, and then the poet, who has meanwhile described how the Naaz entered “a Lucka” - a rock cave, a stone cave - waits there until the worst is over. Then he hangs his boots on the other shoulder and continues on his way. But the adventure with the weather is not over yet. Naaz comes to a little stream; which has of course swelled due to the weather. Naaz sees that:

"Look, the stream is so big, now I can't go around! —
Töös owa», sockt a, «wiat toh wos sain? iozt kan ik nid umi!»
He looks like a fool, the stream is too big, now he cannot cross it.
But something like that, he says, what could it be? Now I cannot cross it!

Now, in such a way, Misson, this man who really created from the depths of the folk tradition, wanted to embody the figure of Naaz. When one takes on such a figure, one sees how deeply, deeply in the subconscious soul, I could say, Austrian nationality sits with those souls who have also worked their way up into a high sphere of education. And one sees from such an example what remains of nationality for the soul in the higher sphere of education when one looks at this Austrian nationality.

One must say: mystics, in the sense that the human soul really delves into its inner life, really tries to understand what lives and moves within man, such mystics are not really found in Austria. Mystics who deal a lot with the human ego cannot flourish there. On the other hand, to feel the mysterious forces of nature in a certain way, more than just poetically, I would say, to feel the gnomes, the goblins, the spirits of nature in their liveliness, also with a certain humor, so that at the right moment you do not feel compelled to admit the full reality, but to feel in the co-experience of nature that which lives and moves in nature as a higher spiritual being – that is Austrian again. Therefore, within the Austro-German national character, it is not easy to find mystics who could be successors of Eckhart, Johannes Tauler.

On the other hand, the remarkable peasant philosopher Conrad Deubler is a truly Austrian figure. He was born in 1814 in Goisern, in the middle of the mountains, and died there in 1884 as an innkeeper. He was and remained a true farmer; but a man who so he has grasped it vividly, has penetrated it with his peasant wisdom, with a certain, I would say, curt peasant wisdom, — Conrad Deubler, such a philosopher could flourish; a philosopher who did not get involved in lengthy justifications, but liked this doctrine, and now he took from the Austrian mind everything to make this teaching appear plausible. From a primitive, elementary, rustic understanding he brought about, I might say, a Darwinian conception adapted to the Austrian peasant, by means of which he was able to carry on a copious correspondence with the great theologian and writer David Friedrich Strauss, with Feuerbach, with Ernst Haeckel, and so on. To grasp the whole expanse of nature with the intellect is more to the taste of the Austrian soul than to mystically immerse oneself in it. Therefore, one finds individual people among Austrian farmers who know every little herb in the mountains, who are also spiritually connected to the inner workings of each little herb, who, for example, engage with philosophers such as Ennemoser and Eckartshausen, who want to give a certain deeper picture of nature in its entirety, and who also want to place the human being in this picture of nature. But within this Austrian peasantry and that which arises from this peasantry, one will not easily find a pure mystic who engages in the contemplation of the human soul, averting his gaze from the external world of the senses. For it is the direct connection with that which makes an impression on the senses that characterizes the Austrian mind in the broadest sense for anyone who sees it – the seeing of more than the sensual, but the direct seeing – the seeing that does not need to reflect, that seeing that, I might say, sometimes skips the mind and goes directly to the heart.

Therefore, it can be said that in Austrian poetry, the soul and the landscape resonate with each other directly, sometimes in a way that is so moving, as in the case of Lena; but in general, this absorption of the whole soul in what can be done directly by a person, what can be accomplished by him without it being related to immediate usefulness, - that is something that belongs to the emotional qualities of the Austrian.

I would like to say, on the one hand, on this side of the Leitha, in the Austrian mountains, in the Austrian regions, there is something that can be depicted in a picture, as I attempted with Joseph Misson. On the other side of the Leitha, you are immediately in touch with the wide-open spaces of the Hungarian steppes; but you also live with what resounds in the sensual, I would say, spiritually, which the sensual tries to exhaust spiritually as much as it can be exhausted. Anyone who has ever crossed over to Hungary and listened to a Hungarian band, with all that these people put of their souls into their simple and wonderful playing, in which pain rages demonically, the lust and the exuberance of life at the same time, understands a poem like that of the Hungarian Szäz, which refers to this direct coexistence with the sensual, but which is felt spiritually, deeply spiritually and emotionally:

Listen, oh listen to the violin's song.
How it laments and how it weeps;
So much sorrow in four strings,
So much pain and grief combined!

Like the nightingales' flutes
In the silent, shadowy forest,
How the sobs of the abandoned orphan

That is lament, that is sorrow,
Which oppresses and yet uplifts,
Which weeps for the past, yet hopefully
Lives for a beautiful future.

Listen, a curse is heard – and swords
Mix clashing into the But a little fiddle bow.

Hear, oh hear the violin sounds,
How it spurs and laughs and cries,
In four strings such feeling,
So much joy and pain combined! —

You have to look very closely to understand the relevant things, you have to look very closely at the intimate interweaving of the senses with the outside world, so that the senses, in their interweaving with the outside world within the sensual, can more easily see the spiritual than when this spiritual awakens intellectually in the mind. It can be said that when it comes to making a judgment directly from the heart, to criticizing or approving the world, the Austrian will, under certain circumstances, have a little confidence in himself. He will also, especially if he has learned something, like to move in abstract terms, he will like to give something to the culture of the head, but above all want to be rooted in the culture of the heart. But the way from the head to the heart, the way from the heart to the head, is just so long, and it is so difficult to find! Often one easily stops in the middle!

It is, in a sense, quite characteristic of what, for example, a good connoisseur of Austrian culture, a contemporary, said about an Austrian personality, the former director of the Burgtheater in Vienna, Max Burckhard: that despite all his energy, the most characteristic thing about this quintessentially Austrian man, Max Burckhard, was that he never really wanted to undergo the transition from feeling to understanding or from understanding to feeling. He wanted to keep them both separate. While Max Burckhard was director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Hermann Bahr recounts, and Wilbrandt's play 'The Master of Palmyra' was to be performed at the Burgtheater, a play that is considered by many to be particularly significant and that for many is something tremendously high-minded, Burckhard did not want to stage the play. He could not understand why something so significant was seen in it; he always rejected it. So it was that well-meaning people, that is, people who meant well by Wilbrandt and the “Master of Palmyra,” managed to at least get Burckhard to attend a lecture on the “Master of Palmyra” in a really high-level society. He knew the piece, of course, but it was not to be read to him, but all the beautiful, aesthetic passages, the treatises were to have an effect on him, which the invited real professors and asthetics had to present about the mastery of this piece. Well, Burckhard was really a very clever man who, when it came down to it, was able to dialectically stand his ground and get into the spiritual ideas. He listened to the lecture. He did not just listen to the lectures of the aesthetes and professors, who said that something had been created “from the depths of human nature that points to the highest regions of spiritual life”. He also listened to how the beautiful characteristics are to be understood according to all chapters of aesthetics. He was silent. He did not allow himself to follow these trains of thought in any way. He could understand them, of course. It would have been easy for him to refute the matter from his point of view, to get involved in it. On another occasion, he might have done so, getting involved in long-winded discussions about the matter. He remained silent, he said nothing. Then ladies, especially the lady of the house, approached him: didn't he at least want to say how he related to all the witty remarks about one of the most witty plays ever written. Was it not the duty of the Burgtheater to perform the epoch-making play? But he did not engage in a discussion. He said: “I'm not putting it on!” And why? Why? They wanted to hear from him, the witty man, how he related to all the things that had been discussed wittily for hours. He just said: “Because it's a Holler!” — “A Holler” is something that means the same in Austria as “quatsch” in Berlin. But he did not engage in a discussion. That is to be taken as characteristic. He relied on his immediate judgment of the heart, on what his mind told him, and he did not find it necessary to engage in discussions of dialectics and so on; his whole criticism was that it is a “Holler”.

And so it is interesting to see, actually, how at a time when the most wonderful and glorious discussions were being held within the rest of the German-speaking world about the significance, nature and essence of drama, discussions in which Goethe and Schiller participated in such a profound way – I am referring in particular to the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century – how in this period a discussion of aesthetics, of the meaning and essence of drama, was also ignited in Austria. But how was the discussion of drama ignited there in Austria? In a very strange way, everything that was presented there for and against this way of thinking ignited in Austria; what was discussed in such a well-known profound way within the Schiller-Goethe circle and the broader circles of the whole of German intellectual life, all of this ignited in Austria in a very peculiar way, namely through dance. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, two types of dance were the subject of a very energetic and significant discussion there. At the turn of the century, Noverre was the master of dance; and his student was then Muzzarelli. Muzzarelli represented a dance, a style of dance, in which the main thing was to make beautiful movements, artificial movements, to intertwine artificial movements through their lines, where the external spatial image of presenting oneself was taken into account. Now, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an opponent of this 'dance form' emerged in the person of Salvatore Vigano. And for this dance form of Salvatore Vigano, whose wife in particular danced the dance form he represented in a masterly fashion, whole texts were written, which did not apply to any other dance form. Whole stories, whole narratives were clothed in the dance form, so that the situations, the gestures, the form of expression, the events, the content to be told, were expressed. And now one should just delve into the far-reaching, passion-stirring discussions that have arisen about which dance is artistically the right one.

There was the Austrian playwright Ayrenhoff, who had already grown old at the time, the author of a large number of plays, who was completely on the side of the Muzzarelli dance, who spoke out most negatively against Salvatore Vigano and against the impossibility of expressing inner feelings through dance in such an unchaste way. Ayrenhoff could not understand that they even wanted to dance entire pieces, such as 'Richard the Lionheart' or 'The Daughter of the Air'. Ayrenhoff had been educated in the appreciation of beautiful form, of the sweep of lines, and his dramas were also constructed in this way. The sweep of lines in the portrayal of characters, seeing how some situation dissolves into a joke, or the transition of a situation into a joke, that was what mattered. These extraordinary forms were what mattered. He saw this in Muzzarelli's dance as well. And he was an important poet for Austria at that time. His importance can be seen from the fact that he received extraordinary recognition from Frederick the Great, who otherwise had no interest in German literature of the time. And “The Stagecoach”, a comedy by Ayrenhoff, Frederick the Great called “the best comedy that is written at all except the comedies of Moliere”. Yes, Frederick the Great went so far as to once show himself at a parade of the field marshal lieutenant - because that was Ayrenhoff and at the same time a poet - because he, Frederick the Great, was so interested in him.

On the other side, on Viganos' side, was Heinrich Joseph von Collin, who came from Belgium; but in a sense, Belgium belonged to Austria at that time. He had written the tragedy “Regulus,” but also other plays. Collin now advocated expression in dance with great enthusiasm. And he now staged his dramas in such a way that they expressed inwardness in what was being portrayed; that it was not so much about the way situations and jokes followed one another, about the external forms, but rather that the inner nature of the human being was expressed in what happened on stage. And Robert Zimmermann, who is deeply rooted in Austrian intellectual life, has spoken very beautifully of this Heinrich Collin, showing that this Heinrich Collin, who is basically also completely forgotten in Austria, but who But who can lead us deep into the course of Austrian intellectual life, who knew nothing of Fichte, and in his dramas revived the same kind of soul-feeling that lay in Fichte's philosophical representations. To make matters worse, Heinrich Collin's brother, Matthäus von Collin, has explicitly shown how Heinrich Collin knew nothing of Fichte, how he arrived at Fichteanism, but in a poetic way, in his Austrian way, entirely out of a strange parallelism of intellectual life, in the way that I have just described.

Without reflecting on the intuition, without merging into the intuition, Fichte comes back to what I described eight days ago. He says: The outer sense world, that which man lives out in the sensual, outer existence, is the sensualized material of our duty. Now that duty confronts him in such a deeply objective way and at the same time becomes related to the divine weaving and being that permeates the world, Fichte comes to say: one must not think in such a way that external sensual happiness could be bestowed on the one who faithfully fulfills his duty, but — even if this is somewhat one-sided, in the way it is presented, the energy of a certain striving of German idealism expresses itself in it; things must not be taken dogmatically – but what Fichte says is: the one who is completely absorbed in his duty must not claim that the reward for it will somehow be found in the external world of the senses. Therefore, the truly tragic – and this was Fichte's conviction – will appear when duty does not find any reward, but rather finds misfortune in the external world.

Heinrich Collin presents the same tendency in his plays. He wants to embody in a dramatic way the human soul that is built upon itself, that can live within itself without combining the happiness of the sensual world with duty. And so a deeply ethical trait emerges, but one that is intimately connected with the direct contemplation of the world as it presents itself to the senses; one that has even emerged from an aesthetics that has been formed through dance.

This close connection with observation, this life in direct perception and also the placing of what the heart experiences in direct perception, the reluctance to seek the way from the head to the heart, must be seen as one of the characteristics that are really deeply connected with this Austrian intellectual life.

And so many things in this Austrian spiritual life appear to us in such a way that contradictions are present in it, but contradictions that, if one lets them take effect in the right way, seem understandable in people who, within Europe, are placed in difficult tasks, in the mediation of the West with the East, and, I would like to say, must feel this placing in every detail of their way of life.

One can say: Wherever we touch this Austrian intellectual life, it appears to us as follows: the innermost is directly fanned in the outer world, without the mediation of a mystical dialectic. And from this underground, a phenomenon as likeable as the Austrian philosopher Bartholomäus von Carneri can be explained – as I said, I only want to present images. He was born in Trento in 1821, the son of an Austrian civil servant; deformed from birth (he was a twin), he already went through a difficult, painful youth, and then, after he had familiarized himself with the diversity of Austrian intellectual life, he became acquainted with Darwinism. For Carneri, Darwinism is not something that he simply accepts, but rather, for him, Darwinism becomes a life riddle itself. That the world, in the sense of Darwinism, can be explained by the externally observable development, is understandable to him, despite the fact that he has immersed himself deeply in German idealism. But in a certain respect, Darwinism becomes a life riddle for Carneri, the Austrian philosopher: If Darwinism is correct, what about human morality, human ethics? And so Bartholomew of Carneri becomes, one might say, the greatest ethicist, the greatest moral teacher of Darwinism. He interprets Darwinism in such a way that he seeks within the purely natural development, how the forces of nature complicate up to man, so that he still sees a spiritualization in this complication of the forces of nature, as they configure themselves. He does not want a rift between nature and spirit, but he does not want to stop at nature. He wants to chase the spirit out of itself in the configuration of the forces of nature. At the same time, he wants to find the connection between human ethics and human moral life and the explanation of nature in terms of Darwinism. Thus, for Carneri, the necessity to create an ethic arises directly from the world that appears vivid to him through Darwinism. I would like to say that what the human heart wants and needs to set before itself must be directly connected to the secrets and mysteries of nature. And it is particularly interesting to see in Bartholomäus von Carneri how he now strives for a unified world view, for a world view that fully embraces Darwinism in the spirit of the times, in the spirit of nineteenth-century materialism, but can only embrace it if if spirituality springs and can spring everywhere in nature itself, but a spirituality that is grasped directly in feeling, that is not first brought down from some transcendental spheres, as with Fichte, but that appears to him directly during the experience of sensuality. It is remarkable how the characteristic of Austrianism appears precisely in such a personality, in a personality like Carneri, who, however, also wants to place himself uniformly in the world in a different way, who everywhere sets out to show how, on the one hand, nature reaches up to the spirit, and on the other hand, the spirit works down to nature, how a unity lives in everything. Carneri also sought to depict this unity in life. He sought to bring it into life. And so one of the personalities arises, who appeared in particular in the 1860s and 1870s in Austria as fine minds, one of the personalities who were then also politically active. Carneri was on the side of the intellectual Austrian politicians of the 1870s, Plener, Beer, Herbst, Berger and so on. But wherever he spoke – and he often spoke – his words were imbued with a lofty idealism, but precisely with an idealism rooted in Darwinism, which was aware of its roots in Darwinism: I may be an idealist because my ideals come to me directly when I immerse myself in the development of nature.

It is the same spirit, in another field, that then again held sway in Robert Hamerling. In Robert Hamerling, in whom, I might say, the Austrian German found expression in the fact that Hamerling's motto was: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland,” which combined good Austrian-ness with good German-ness. In this Hamerling everything that can be called the interpenetration of idealism with direct feeling and with intuition found direct expression. Even in Austria, where people might have been better able to understand it, Hamerling's vividly sensual images, I would say sensually imbued images, were often condemned, for example in his “Ahasver,” also in “Aspasia” and in “King of Sion.” But they did not understand that it was precisely Hamerling's idealism, which I would call Austrian idealism, that needed the sensory image to visualize itself in, so as not to suffer from the division of the world into the sensual on the other. And so for Hamerling the spiritualized sensual, the aesthetic idealism, became the goal toward which he directed his whole feeling, his whole perception and his whole thinking as a vision of the future. And in many respects it is precisely in the case of such intellectuals as Carneri and Hamerling that the difficulties of Austrian intellectual life come to light, difficulties which consist in the fact that one is placed in a multiform surging mass of humanity and has to find one's way. Hence the phenomena that so often occur within Austrian intellectual life, where a clear view of this or that remains with mere description and does not somehow find its way into action and then peter out in a certain pessimism. Hence certain phenomena are only possible in Austrian intellectual life.

Is it not really somewhat strange that there was an Austrian in the first half of the nineteenth century who was born near Znaim, who bore the typically Austrian name Karl Postl, who also became a clergyman at his mother's request, but then, like the Barnabite monk Karl Leonhard Reinhold, also cast off the robe of the order and disappeared? He has disappeared. Then a book appears: “Austria as it Is,” from America; it describes Austrian views. That was in 1828. Then, from this same Karl Postl, who called himself not Karl Postl but Charles Sealsfield, appear, for example, descriptions of the decline of the Native Americans, from which one can see how fundamentally sound this man's direct view of nature is. No one at that time had any idea that the simple Karl Postl from Austria was hidden in this Charles Sealsfield. All the stories that otherwise appear on similar subjects – just see for yourself – are written, so to speak, from the point of view of a certain education, written in a certain way, so that you notice the theory. These Postl stories are written in such a way that the eye immediately grows into what it sees; the whole soul grows together with direct perception. He then spends his lifetime from the age of thirty to the age of sixty in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland, where he is also buried. He returns and describes the life of Germans in America in such a vivid way that it should still have a significant effect on the soul today, if only it were read.

A specifically Austrian phenomenon is also a personality, whom not only the younger, but perhaps the older members of the audience gathered here have met, those books that are written, as is modestly stated on the title page, “for maidens”; “Weihgeschenk für Jungfrauen” it says. A story, a wonderfully vivid story, steeped in a Goethean, one might almost say, Greek spirit. On the title page it says: “Weihgeschenk für Jungfrauen” by Christian Oeser, “Letters on the Main Subjects of Aesthetics.” Published in the first half of the nineteenth century in the first edition, these books experienced many editions. Those who read them today still get something from them that can expand the heart, that can warm the soul. Christian Oeser - yes, who is Christian Oeser? This Christian Oeser is the same man who, for example, had a drama published in Pressburg in 1839 that nobody knew the author of – “Life and Deeds of Emerich Tököly” “by A. Z.”, that is, from A to Z, so that all the letters between A and Z are included. Those who understood something about dramatic characterization saw in the figure of Tököly a Hungarian Götz. It is a portrayal that can be directly compared to Goethe's “Götz von Berlichingen”, which was born out of the struggles that took place in Hungary shortly before the drama was written and that moved many, many souls and the world. The drama went out into the world, and so did several others by the same author. No one knew who it was from. That remained so. In 1869, the German Schiller Foundation took a decision to pay the then support allowance to a Mrs. Therese Schröer in Vienna. The document with which the allowance was paid stated that it had been learned that the widow of one of the most worthy German writers was not living in circumstances befitting her and his merits, and that she was therefore being paid this annual allowance. It was the widow of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, the author of many plays, who had to remain unnamed, the author also of that “Weihgeschenkes für Jungfrauen”, which is imbued with the spirit of Goethe; a quiet man who was a secondary school teacher in Preßburg, but who, as such, wrestled with the highest problems of human life, who was poor and whom no one knew. Even in his own town no one could or might know that this man was the author of these dramas.

Many similar phenomena could be cited. They show that in order to get to know Austrian intellectual life, one must not consider it in terms of what, I mean, goes as a more or less Catholic, as a more or less Protestant current through the development of the times but how one must grasp this Austrian intellectual life where it works out of the root of the people and where it can appear directly in its great significance. One must not look at Austrian intellectual life through the lens of the fact that Austria is a more Catholic country. On the one hand, this Austrian intellectual life works its way to the roots of the nation, as we have seen with Misson; on the other hand, however, it works its way up to great heights in a remarkable way. Consider, for example, the following phenomena: When the Protestant pedagogue Friedrich Dittes, who was brought from Germany during the so-called Liberal Era of Austrian development and placed at the head of the K.K. When the Protestant pedagogue, who had been brought from Germany during the so-called Liberal Era of Austrian development, looked around for important pedagogues of the immediate past, he, the Protestant pedagogue who had been brought from Germany, found the Austrian Vincenz Eduard Milde to be one of the most important pedagogues of the immediate past. In 1811, Milde published an “educational theory”. In Misson, we have come to know a mind that, clothed in the robes of a religious order, worked its way up to what I would call the management of educational life, and then worked its way back down to the roots of folklore, creating his “Naaz”: peasant philosophy! In Milde we see another priest, a good Catholic; a Catholic in whom Friedrich Dittes, the Protestant pedagogue, finds one of his most important pedagogical predecessors. Spiritual life reaches out across the differences of confession in a wonderful way. Instead of a long further description, I would like to read you just one passage from Milde's theory of education, so that you can see how, in this book, published in 1811, educational work is understood in a soul-drenched way; how, in contrast to on, who worked his way down into the people, to the highest views, the most ideal views of general human activity through pedagogy, the Catholic priest Milde works his way up, how seriously, how dignified, how tremendously deep he takes the pedagogical profession. He describes how the teacher should behave in order to gain the right relationship with the pupil; first:

"1. Through diligent study of anthropology; 2. through reading well-written biographies and truthfully portrayed educational histories; 3. through thoughtful interaction with children, through unnoticed, quiet observation of them, especially of their behavior towards other children; 4. by remembering his own youth, by reflecting on the course, the reasons, the means and obstacles his own education, on the difference between his present and former way of thinking and feeling; 5. by reflecting on the success and failure of his efforts in educating the pupil; 6. by observing the methods of other educators and the success of their way of treating the children”; - finally - ‘7. by observing the course of development of nature left to itself.’

The meaning of life should be built on a healthy anthropology, that is, the study of man. Then the teacher should constantly consult with himself, as it were, meditating, in order to always find the way to the child's soul. A truly soul-filled educational vision is also poured out on this quite remarkable work, which arose, so to speak, in the quiet of Austrian intellectual life through a man who was a clergyman in the outer life, who rose to become Archbishop of Vienna and who, in his way, truly represents that Austrian intellectual life to which one attaches such great importance and to which one must attach such great importance; that Austrian intellectual life that is directed towards the general human and basically maintains the connection with the roots of the people everywhere. Yes, I say, in 1811 a leading work on education appeared in Austria that had a great impact and was also highly praised by the Protestant pedagogue Dittes in the 1860s and 1870s. It was published again very recently by the Austrian pedagogue Franz Tomberger in a short outline. One must only consider what that means. In 1811, it had only been a short time since teachers in very, very remote areas of the Austrian lands, namely the German-Austrian lands, had a very strange position, not only in the village but also in the city. Not only did the teacher not have a school building – in many areas, shortly before this “Erziehungslehre” was published, a school building was a rarity; the students gathered around the teacher, the teacher went from house to house, sometimes he was there, sometimes in the next house; wherever there was space, he taught. But that was not the only thing. For example, paying the teacher a salary, yes, that would not have been understood; that is something that must be given freely! But the teacher only needed to teach the students in winter; in summer, the children were needed outside in the fields anyway. Well, so that he doesn't starve, he is granted the right to herd cows during the summer, to be a “Holdar”. But that did not prevent all that I have just described from happening. And that did not prevent a work on the art of education from appearing after such a relatively short time in Austrian intellectual life that it was not only exemplary but also epoch-making. One has to familiarize oneself with this juxtaposition of contradictions that arise from the difficulties of Austrian life.

But this is also why the Austrian needs what appeared in the most diverse forms in Viennese life in the course of the nineteenth century. Actually, a piece of Viennese life is also what you were able to get to know here in Berlin some time ago, although it had been quite “de-Viennified” to a certain extent, as connoisseurs generally admitted – what you were able to get to know through the performance of “Alpenkönig und Menschenfeind” by Ferdinand Raimund, with the character of Rappelkopf, and, what is also well known from the same author, “Verschwender”. I do not want to speak of a well-known matter, but rather show how Austrian intellectual life can be illustrated here and there, as it were, by the splashing of a wave that makes visible in pictures what lives in Austria. Therefore, I want to speak less about Ferdinand Raimund than about the man who replaced him in the hearts of the Viennese in the 1830s and 1840s, when Raimund had become very much a part of their lives: Nestroy. And Johann Nestroy, as a folk dramatist, is, I would say, truly an Austrian product. Indeed, one has even had to hear from some clever people of the present day that Nestroy is even characterized by his fellow countrymen as not being a real Viennese, because in the early days of his career, in particular, he only told the Viennese rough truths, not only created folk plays where honest people are always right, but where he could really, forgive the harsh expression, give the people a piece of his mind. Plays like these made up the content of his first theatrical career. He actually created a great deal; in thirteen years, he wrote around seventy such farces. But they truly contain that Austrian spirit that those who know it recognize as being truly embodied in Nestroy. It is not true that the Austrians of that time wanted to hear honest portrayals of characters from the theater, of people who recognize the simplicity of life. No, that was then and Nestroy grew out of it – what was demanded was that one could say: Now he has given them what for again, that is, he has really given them a telling-off. And with such a scolding, Nestroy, himself playing at the Vienna Karl Theater, actually entertained the Viennese so much that one can say: one sees in the spirit that lives in these Nestroy folk farces, one might say folk city farces, the Austrian spirit that needs to, in the criticism of life as well as in the jokes about life, in the humor of life, to overcome many a difficulty; who needed to let his soul feel at ease after hard work in a light way, and yet in a way that was not entirely free of sympathy and antipathy. And so Nestroy is truly a typical figure of Austrian urban popular theater around the mid-nineteenth century. He had his view of life and of the events of life expressed by a character in the following manner: “I believe the worst of everyone, even of myself, and I have seldom been mistaken!” With this view of life, he, who was personally kind and loving, and who in personal dealings actually had only kind and loving words, really created character figures that easily illustrate the view of life of the Austrians in Vienna at that time , that Austrianness that wanted to be hard at work, but that wanted to build a philosophy of life from the heart, without much dialectic, that also had to have humor, that also should not exaggerate the seriousness of life too much. There was a lot in the way of facing life. So Nestroy created a character that kept reappearing under this name or under a different name; once he called him “Schnofer!” And this Schnoferl also had an attitude towards life. For example, he once talks about how he fared in life with love: “With love, things went splendidly for me, it was all right, but with dislike, things are always bad!” This same Schnoferl, who, as I said, cannot see the funny side of life, once said about what he saw in his own heart: “The pragmatic story of my heart falls into three miserable chapters: futile musings, failed attempts and worthless triumphs.” Those are the three miserable chapters. Nestroy portrayed such characters with great acuity, so much so that an important Viennese critic once said: “In Nestroy, you could see the demonic expression that could intensify to the point of being devilish when he let his eyes play from the stage into the audience.” And so Nestroy expressed well a certain Austrian view of life in need of humor in the years before 1848, or even from the beginning of the forties.

Then came a time when one could not bear this outpouring of good and evil, this Nestroyan world beyond good and evil, of good, over-good and evil people, for a while. One wanted more honest figures, one wanted to be moved more and sworn at less. One had had enough of swearing for a while, one wanted to be moved. Nestroy didn't really like that, and so he said: Yes, in the past people still knew something about what a life story is; in modern times, if you go by those who now create life stories for the stage, if there are only three jokes in it - in Nestroy's plays there was one joke after another - there are only corpses in their blood, gravediggers and blubberers. He didn't really want to go along with that. But then again, he was able to keep up with the times. And so Nestroy found a peculiar, I would even say humanly free point of view, especially during the difficult year of 1848. He was a liberal man, he was a man who was thoroughly on the side of the progressives, who did not depend on anyone in any direction, but at the same time he found the right words for many a cry for freedom, for those who only go so far. And so he managed to maintain Austrian humor even in these difficult times. Just look at this: in a play that was written during one of Austria's most difficult times, “Freedom in Krähwinkel” – he also played in this play himself – this Austrian describes how the mayor of Krähwinkel imagines freedom. He has the constable Klaus express it: “Freedom is something terrible. The Lord Mayor always says: the ruler is the father, the subject is a little child, and freedom is a sharp knife.” And one of those who, in a Nestroyesque way, understands this a little, who also understands the people of Krähwinkel in their pursuit of freedom, characterizes them in the same way: ”No, I know the people of Krähwinkel. I know the Krähwinkler, you just have to let them run riot; once the rapture is over, we'll catch them with our hand in it, and then we'll really tweak the people's nose.” In the role that Nestroy himself played, to which he gave the name ‘Ultra’, a freedom fighter now appears who is really portrayed in such a way that humor can once again take hold of him. Nestroy spoke the following through the Ultra: “Now that the fight that had broken out has ended happily, he proclaims freedom: 'I proclaim freedom of speech, of the press and other freedoms for Crowwinkel, indifference of all classes, free speech, free elections according to previous opinion, an infinitely broad basis, which will gradually extend in length, and in order to avoid all disputes in this matter, no system at all.” Then Ultra comes – one must always imagine him as presented by Nestroy himself – to an opinion about what reaction actually is. What is reaction? “Well,” says Ultra, ‘as it was on a large scale, so we have had it here on a small scale. Reaction is a spectre, but spectres only exist for the timid: so don't be afraid of it, then there will be no reaction at all.’

But in Nestroy's personality itself there is something like a thoroughly correct placing of his own personality in life. A person like Nestroy was thoroughly a personality who was accessible to the depths of the soul. But what he created, he wanted to create from direct life and for direct life. And so Nestroy is not at all inclined to reflect on the ego. Once, he came into contact with the profound, inestimably esteemed poet Friedrich Hebbel, the great poet Hebbel. But Hebbel and Nestroy were like the north and south poles. Friedrich Hebbel, outwardly impeccable in his suit, correct in every gesture, Nestroy naughty in every gesture, with a rustic suit that he wore with particular dignity! Now Nestroy became acquainted with a play like “Judith and Holofernes”, a play in which Hebbel has actually exhausted the infinite depths of the human soul and embodied them in dramatic form so that one must say: It is truly a wonderful struggle with the existential problems of life, reaching the heights of the human spirit, but not for Nestroy, one might be tempted to say, because it cannot be readily and directly taken humorously. But he took it humorously, precisely as a taunt, saying, “No, that's nothing!” He also thought, “That's a nonstarter!” I'll do a Holofernes now, Judith and Holofernes, that must be the right thing; that's not something that Hebbel did.” But now he wanted to create a character in Holofernes who was so completely turned inward, to his human ego. Nestroy was very good at creating a character who acted entirely out of the abundance of the soul's will and wanted something. But he only wanted into this ego in a genuinely Austrian way, so to speak. Yes, not through speculation, not through dialectics, not even through dramatic dialectics! So he presents himself as a figure of Holofernes, full of ego, full of the power of personality, so strong that he wants to see who is stronger, “I” – or, as he said – “I or I!” – so that he feels doubly. So he wants to wrestle with himself, so that he sees who is stronger, I or I. That becomes Nestroy's Holofernes. But he knows how to position himself in life just right. And when he hears that people say that he denies a purely artistic principle with his plays that are directly inspired by folklore, well, he says that he will not allow such an accusation, because people should consider what it actually means to write folk plays. Anyone who writes popular plays and even wants to compare himself to Goethe is just like someone who makes a Zwetschkenkrampus and wants to act as a rival to Canova. A Zwetschkenkrampus is a figure made out of dried plums on St. Nicholas' Day to look like a clown or Santa Claus.

We also need to be thoroughly familiar with this side of Austrian identity. Because it is deeply, deeply interwoven with what the Austrian soul seeks in a certain view of life, which I would characterize in the following way: Because of the difficulties of his life, the Austrian feels the need to rest in a view of life that makes one forget the seriousness of life and yet, in turn, brings strength in the subconscious soul to be prepared for life. Nestroy is certainly deeper than those who took over from him at the end of the nineteenth century. You cannot compare Nestroy's farces with those of Berg, who certainly wrote more in the same period, but had sunk to a much lower level. But this peculiar view of life, which in turn goes back to a general human one, is part of the overall shaping of this Austrian's soul. And this view of life also shows that in Austria something comes from much deeper human sources and shapes the life of the soul than all that which is usually conceived of as ideas that draw together human development. One must not think of the Austrian as being wrapped up in this or that prejudice, but to get to know him, one must consider Austrian national character. |

I have only been able to present it to your minds in a few images today; I have not really chosen them with the aim of making the Austrian lovable, but simply to describe him as he is. I did not want to summarize anything special, but only to show individual traits, of course very individual lost traits, but which can nevertheless illustrate this or that, illustrate above all how a special note, a special tone, lives in this Austrian character, over the whole of this Austrian culture, from such figures as I have described to you today, to the Magyar Emmerich Madách, the man who created the well-known “Tragedy of Man”. Out of a life of suffering, and truly out of a life of suffering, Madách rose to create a form of human philosophy that suited him. He shows the creation of man, Adam and Eve. He shows how Adam and Eve are placed in the world by the divine creator, perceiving this world as a mystery. Now Lucifer shows them what will follow. Adam is shown how he will live again, how he will return in Egyptian times, how he will live as an Egyptian, as a pharaoh; how Eve will be his slave. The Egyptian culture with all that it can trigger in the soul of the re-embodied Adam is presented by the poet. And further, we are led into the Roman period; Adam is reborn in the time of the Roman Empire. In the time of Christianity, in turn, in the time of the Franco-English culture, in the time of the German culture; at the end of the earth time, he is placed in an embodiment. The whole of human life is led past him.

As one can see, there are many paths that lead up from the depths of joy and suffering that can arise in the Austrian soul, up to the peaks of human world and life views. And it is a special note that one must say: It is precisely through the contemplation of this special note, this special 'tone in Austrian folklore that it already corresponds to an inner necessity that, for example, the German-Austrians were separated for a time from the general German intellectual life. It was precisely through this separation that they developed their innermost selves properly, that they emphasized what was truly their own in the right way. But such a separation does not destroy what connects the peoples. And what we see today, this interaction of the two Central European empires into a great overall concept of Central Europe, into an overall being of Central Europe, is firmly anchored in both the inhabitants of the one and the inhabitants of the other empire, if one looks straight into the depths of the soul. This can be seen in the depths of the national character, for example, where the will of Austria is realized, and again in the heights of Austrian achievement. When, as it seemed, a deep rift had opened up in 1866 between the hearts of the great German Empire and the hearts of the best Austrians, there was not a mood at the height of humanity after that year 1866 that cried out for revenge. There was not a mood that was later in other places, after a people had been defeated, where it was said that one must always and again and again bring the thought of revenge to life in one's soul. No, but an 'Address was delivered to the throne immediately after 1866 in Austria, which contained the words; 'It is not the secret thought of retaliation that guides our steps; a nobler satisfaction is granted to us if we succeed more and more in transforming disfavor and enmity into respect and affection through what we achieve and what we create.

These words also express the bond between the Austrian and German hearts that has been so beautifully realized today. That bond, which is expressed so beautifully in a poem by von Hamerling that truly springs from the Austrian soul: Germany is my fatherland, but in Austria I feel my motherland. I feel a sense of belonging to my mother country. This sense of belonging was so vividly experienced that it can be expressed in a few words that originated in Austria. These are strange words, perhaps not in a completely satisfactory form, but they are words that may be read aloud, especially in our time. I will say afterwards in which period these words were written. In a poem entitled “Austria and Germany” it says:

Let Russia and England prudently confer,
Perhaps not even unhappily find it,
If we here engage in a little battle,
If they try to take away our just rights!

You, German brothers, will not advise here –
The enemy's attack will only unite us
And among us every ambition will fade
Before the: One people in word and deed.

And if one among us has failed,
If discord has existed anywhere in German hearts,
There is only one thing that now inspires us:

What we have in common, our joys and our sorrows!
So let us also have in common:
A German war, if not a German peace!

They could be words written in our time. But they were written in April 1859 by the son of that Tobias Gottfried Schröer I mentioned, by Karl Julius Schröer, who worked in Vienna, having come from Zisleithania, in Austria. He worked in a way that can be said to have been suitable for, on the one hand, connecting the soul with what lives and weaves in the people and, on the other hand, carrying the souls up to the heights of spiritual life – Karl Julius Schröer, who first developed a beneficial activity as director of the Viennese Protestant schools and then as professor of German literature at the Technical University. I myself feel — please excuse this personal remark — deeply connected with this activity, because Karl Julius Schröer was once my dear teacher. This Karl Julius Schröer, on the one hand, he carried his popular research into the really deep foundations of folklore. First of all, he had Christmas plays printed that were performed among the farmers during the Christmas season but that had emerged from the people themselves. Then he was a dialect researcher, a researcher who studied the peculiarities of the Austrian dialect in the Gottschee region in Carniola, among the Germans of Spiš in Slovakia, among the so-called Heanz in western Hungary, who also researched the dialect of Lower Austria and everywhere pointed out the close connection between all Austrian intellectual life and its roots in the folk tradition; and who, on the other hand, carried the soul up to the heights of Goethe's world view through research into Faust, and in this sense again had a beneficial effect on his students. In 1859 this man expressed Austria's unity with Germany in this way. I have quoted his words to show how the Austrian national character leads to that beautiful and glorious ideal towards which we must strive today and which must develop out of the great demands and devoted deeds of our time: a Central Europe in which everything that has long been working together in our hearts will finally be united. And especially by considering the special tone that prevails in Austrian nationality and Austrian intellectual life, one can say that what should be achieved there in separation will be able to combine with the wider Germanic character in a more intimate way for the benefit and blessing of Central European development. And so we see, I would say, even if we look with an understanding of the essence of nationality at what is developing out of blood and suffering and pain in our time as a future ideal for Central Europe, we see that something is developing that must be created by the devoted and courageous deeds of arms, but which is firmly rooted, so firmly rooted that the guarantee of its durability can be seen in the hearts and souls of those who are drawing closer together and have joined forces for common action.

In conclusion, let me say: what is now coming together historically is not only coming together through external necessity, it is coming together through the inner bonds of the souls, the hearts of the peoples of Central Europe.

The situation of someone who wants to say something about the nature of the soul on a spiritual scientific basis, insofar as it can be described as immortal, is perhaps characterized for a very long time by the fact that I am talking about the publication of a book as an introduction. This book is entitled “Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul”.

I would like to make it clear, so as not to be misunderstood, that today's spiritual research cannot consider this book as written in the spirit of this spiritual research. Spiritual research in the modern sense did not yet exist at that time, as I was able to sufficiently demonstrate in many lectures that I have given here. However, I would like to say that, in view of the fate that has befallen all those long-standing disputes that push towards what today wants to develop into spiritual science, I believe that what happened with the publication of this book is not without significance. So in 1827 a book entitled 'Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul' was published. The person who published this book wrote a remarkable introduction to it, a remarkable preface, as they say. He writes that he was with a dying person and found the manuscript of this book at his bedside, that he then took over this manuscript with the consent of the dying man, that it could no longer be said to him exactly how the dying man came by this book, which apparently had a great, profound significance for his soul in the last days of his life. Then the person who publishes the book waited because the content seemed so significant to him, seemed to contain such important information about the soul's life after the detachment of the physical body that he could not imagine that this book would not be destined to make its content accessible to wider circles. But since he had waited long enough and had not seen the content published anywhere, he decided to publish the book himself.

What can legitimate research into the origin of this book tell us? There is the strange fact that the person who published this book, with this preface in which he recounts the book's remarkable fate, wrote this book himself, from beginning to end and published it without his name; that he only found it necessary, if one may say so – it is meant in the very best sense of the word – to invent a fairy tale about the book, as it has just been mentioned. It becomes somewhat more understandable why the writer of this book resorted to this fairy tale when one knows that he was a well-known personality in the broadest philosophical circles of his time, a philosopher who dealt with the most profound questions of philosophical thought : the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who had a large number of students, students who worked for many decades at Austrian universities, who always confessed what a profound influence they had drawn from Bolzano's teachings. So, a famous, influential philosopher, Bernard Bolzano, publishes a book in which he discusses the reasons for the immortality of the human soul, and in this book he has to present himself to the public in the manner described. Why did he do this? Well, the reasons are very obvious. In this book it is not merely stated, as it is so often the case in philosophical writings, that the human soul is immortal for these or those reasons that are derived from human logic. Rather, this book speaks of how man finds within himself a being that can perfect itself between birth and death, perfecting itself in terms of its thinking, perfecting itself in terms of its feeling , perfects itself in relation to its volitions; how this being, when it is rightly grasped by man, shows, however, that it not only bears within itself the powers that lead to its perfection up to death, but that it bears within itself powers that further perfect this soul-being, further develop it, that can be further filled with content even after the human being has passed through the gate of death. This book then explains how one must imagine, when one grasps the human soul, that the human soul must live in a certain environment when it has passed through the gate of death. It also indicates how this human soul, after its death, associates with other spiritual entities, which cannot be perceived as long as the human being dwells in the body. It is hinted at what relationship the human soul, after passing through the gate of death, can have with the relatives and friends left behind, with the souls attached to it in love. As already mentioned, all these details of the soul that has passed through the gate of death are not spoken of from the standpoint of today's spiritual science, but with fine, delicate reasons that a philosopher has developed who not only philosophizes with abstract concepts, but who is involved with his whole soul, with his whole human being, when he develops thoughts, especially the thoughts about that weaving and being in the human being himself, which we call the soul. But Bolzano knew only too well that as long as one remains a logician and discusses how one concept is linked to another, what logical reasons there are for the truth or probability of a judgment, as long as one discusses how attention in the human soul, possibly even the reasons for memory and for the will; in short, as long as one expresses everything that the soul performs while it dwells in the body, one can have the reputation of a scientific philosopher. But if one speaks about the human soul as Bolzano did in his Athanasia, then one's reputation as a philosopher is ruined. Then one is an unscientific person. Then you are a person who talks nonsense and can no longer be taken seriously by those who understand how to think scientifically. Even those who have not learned to think scientifically but swear by the authority of those whom they have heard of or of whom it has been publicly stated that they can think scientifically believe that they can thoroughly dispute the scientific value of such a personality. If Bolzano wanted to save his reputation as a philosopher, he had to resort to the maneuver described above, and then leave it to later researchers to recognize that the book was written by him. And no Bolzano expert today doubts, for the very best reasons that can be proven scientifically and historically, that the book in question is by Bolzano himself. This shows something that was true then and is true today: if you want to openly and frankly advocate something that does not belong to the physical-sensory world or cannot be said about the physical-sensory world, you have to expose yourself to being seen as a completely unscientific person. And as a rule, the 'fact' does not apply either, that one could recognize from the way such things are spoken about, that the person speaking is not an unscientific person.

And yet, just as spiritual science has to speak about the question of immortality today, so this speaking, as I have often emphasized here, is in the fullest sense a continuation of that human spiritual work which, especially in the field of natural science, has led to such great results of human life and striving, which are fully recognized by spiritual science.

Therefore, today I would like to begin by hinting at some of the things that can show how the study of immortality is approached from the point of view of spiritual research, so that everything that can be called spiritual research in this sense today is in fact the direct, immediate continuation of what scientific thinking has contributed to a world view in the course of the nineteenth century and up to the present.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” you will find a chapter entitled “The World as Illusion”. This chapter is not intended to show that the world as it presents itself to the outer senses and to human thinking, which is connected to the brain, should be seen as an illusion, but it does show how many thinkers of the nineteenth century have come to the conclusion that everything perceived by the senses, and also what thinking has to say about the perceptions of the senses, does not flow into the human soul from the outside, but is, as it were, first constructed within the human soul. As far as it can be done in a popular way, I would like to touch on these thoughts in my introduction, even though they may be far removed from many of the esteemed listeners.

We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, we perceive the world with our sense organs in general. Now, someone who is grounded in the latest natural science and physiological research says that what the senses perceive actually arises only through an interaction of the senses with something completely unknown in the external world. The researcher says: When the eye perceives a color, when the eye receives some impression of light, one must consider that what acts on the eye from the outside remains completely unknown to perception. With his soul, the human being experiences only the effect that the external world has on his soul. That is why, when we go through the world in our ordinary lives, we see things in color, as an expression of their light effects. But if, for example, we strike the eye, we may also have an impression of light in the eye, even if it is vague. Or if we can somehow otherwise evoke that which can occur internally in the eye, say, somehow with an electrical device, then we also get a light impression. That is to say, the eye responds to everything that acts on it from the outside with a light impression. So whatever happens out there, if it somehow acts on the eye, a light impression arises in the eye. The eye creates the impression of light from the effect of a completely unknown external world. It is the same with the ear. It is the same with the other senses. Therefore, for example, the philosopher Lotze, an outstanding philosopher of the nineteenth century, is in complete agreement with Schopenhauer when he says: Everything that we perceive as the effect of light, as color, has actually only come into being in our eye through the effect of an unknown world. What we hear as sounds is created by the effect of an unknown world in the ear. If there were no people with eyes and ears, the world would be dark and silent, and one could never say that something similar to what eyes see and ears hear prevails in this dark and silent, unknown world.

In other words: In the nineteenth century, under the influence of Kant's philosophy, it was concluded that in order for man to gain knowledge and perceptions of this environment, he must engage in an inner activity, and that only through this inner activity does that which he calls his environment come into being in his mind. In reality, one can say that for these people, who are genuine thinkers grounded in natural science, the world is like an illusion. For if out there, where we see pillars and all kinds of pictures on the walls, there is something completely unknown that affects the eye and from which the eye creates colors and shapes, then one can only say that what appears to us as our environment is an image created out of man's own being. And what is behind it can only be constructed by hypothesis, as modern physics does, which assumes all kinds of vibrations in the ether and the like behind our perceptions. So that man, as he goes through the world, in interaction with an unknown external world, simply by the nature of his being, builds up what he calls his world.

Taken as it has just been explained, there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to be said against this line of thought. This train of thought is completely in line with everything that scientific research has delivered in the nineteenth century. One can say: Such a statement as that made by Hermann Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, is perfectly understandable: by perceiving an external world, man does not perceive what is, what is really happening, but only perceives signs. Not even images, says Helmholtz, are perceived of what really is, but only signs. For what our eyes and ears create of the external world are only signs for the external world. As I said, there is nothing to be said against the seriousness and logic of this line of thought. Taken directly, as they present themselves, that is so.

You have to go much, much deeper into the nature of man if you want to know what is actually behind this train of thought. I have tried to show the philosophical world what is behind this train of thought and how it offers the possibility of finding one's way with it in relation to the human concept of reality. I have attempted to show the way to do this in a lecture I gave at the last philosophers' congress. But these arguments today only lead to general misunderstandings, if not to something much worse. The one who has the task of finding his way in the train of thought just outlined must indeed advance to spiritual science. And then it certainly becomes apparent that one can truly say: The human soul creates by perceiving through the senses that which it must initially call its world. It creates this. It really does create it. But why does it create it, despite the fact that creation prevails in the real? Well, it creates it for the reason that the human soul, that which is the human soul, is not connected to the human being in such a way that one can say: There is the human body, and in this human body the immortal soul dwells within, just as any person dwells in his dwelling and influences the outside world in some way from his dwelling or looks at the outside world through windows. The connection of the human soul with the human body must be imagined quite differently. It must be imagined in such a way that the body itself, as it were, holds the soul in itself through a process of knowledge. In the sense that colors and light, like sounds, are outside of us, in the same sense the human soul itself is outside of the body, and in that the reality carries colors and sounds in through the senses, in the same sense the contents of the soul live, as it were, on the wings of sensory perception. The soul must not be imagined as just a finer physical being that dwells in the coarser outer body, but as a being that is so connected to the body that the body exercises the same activity that we otherwise exercise in cognition when holding on to the soul. Only when we understand how, in a certain sense, that which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-awareness, is outside the body in the same way as sound or color, only then do we understand the relationship between the human soul and the human body. By pronouncing “I”, the human being, as a bodily human being, perceives this “I” from the same side of reality from which it perceives colors and sounds. And the nature of the body consists in being able to perceive precisely this I, that is, the soul's own nature. In order to fully experience the reality of what has just been said, it is necessary for the human being to carry out the exercises that have often been discussed here, that is, to perform inner acts with his soul.

Today, too, I will not repeat what I have said so often, since everyone can read it in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science,” or in the brief sketch at the end of “Theosophy.” Today, too, I shall not describe these inner soul-searchings in detail, but rather I should like to give again certain points of view which can show what man arrives at when he, in the sense often described here and in the books concerned, undertakes inner work with his soul , so that what otherwise takes place in the soul as thinking, feeling and willing develops further through inner impulses given by the soul in the meditative life; that it becomes something other than what is in the ordinary life of the body.

When a person undertakes the mental processes – this too has already been discussed in the last lectures – that lead thinking beyond the kind of thought life that one has to have in ordinary life and also in ordinary science, then one comes to think, that is, to perform the inner activity of thinking, but no longer to have a specific thought. Meditation consists in the fact that, while one otherwise thinks, as it were, under the influence of the external world and reflects on things, one evokes thinking as an inner arbitrary activity of the soul, that one does not direct one's attention to what is being thought, but to the activity of thinking, to that fine activity of the will that is exercised in thinking. I have already described this in the last lecture. In a sense, one thinks with a thought-content that one has moved into one's consciousness, into one's soul, through one's own will. One thinks so intensely, so strongly, so powerfully inwardly that one really achieves what one does not want to achieve at first, but what is achieved under the influence of such inner thought-work: thoughts fall away and one lives only in the inner weaving and working of an - well, let the expression be used - an ethereal world. The word “ethereal” is used here in a different way than modern physics uses the term. One lives in a weaving, in a pulsating, and one knows, if one has pursued this experience long enough: What one has discovered in one's thinking, what one has detached from one's thinking, just as the chemist separates hydrogen from water so that he can show the properties of hydrogen that cannot be shown while the hydrogen is still in the water, - one knows, when one has detached the activity of thinking from thinking, that one is now really in an experience outside the body. By continuing such inner soul work, one must then become clearer and clearer about what the experience actually is that one has evoked in this way in the soul. When we perceive colors and sounds in our ordinary life — as I said, this can already be considered a result of natural science — then we know through natural science: an unconscious activity is carried out in our human being; because the fact that the world of color and sound is evoked through the eye and the ear is an unconscious activity. An unconscious activity is carried out through which something that is outside speaks into the soul and reveals itself to the soul. What one experiences in the inner grasping of thinking when one does the corresponding soul exercises is not experienced in the same way as if it were rising up from our muscles, from our blood, but it is experienced as if it were coming in from the whole surrounding cosmic space , as if it were a spirit-being entering us and having a certain attraction to our body, so that it recognizes our body as the vehicle through which it wants to reveal itself to the sensory world. By meditating as described, one steps into the external world itself. One immerses oneself in this external world, from which colors and sounds come to us. That is to say, one frees one's experience from the body. This freedom of experience from the body must be inwardly experienced, must be lived. Through soul exercises, the human being must come to know that he is living and pulsating in an element that is not bound to his body as an instrument. But will, inner arbitrariness, is now present in everything, which thus leads the human being to freedom from the body – inner activity, but inner activity on a higher level. Let us just consider for a moment what it would mean for the human being: suppose – assuming the truth of what I have presented to you as a result of more recent physiology, of more recent natural science – the human being were aware: there must be something unknown, a silent, dark world. I stand in it, I open my eyes. Through my eyes I create color, through my ears I create sound. I place the sounds and the colors into the world. What would a person have to say? He would say: Well, then the whole world is a dream, of course it is a dream. Then nothing of what I see and hear is real. Only because this inner activity, which is there, remains unconscious, because one does not know that one does it — evoke colors through the eye, evoke sounds through the ear — only because of that, one is at all undisturbed in one's outer experience. For if human beings were always aware that they do what recent natural science ascribes to them, then they would certainly speak about the whole world of the senses in exactly the same way as they now speak about what way, and what human thinking, trained in this way, experiences through a world that is just as real as the sense world, but which must be voluntarily placed before ourselves through the effort of free will born of thinking. One might say that it is good for most people that they are blessed with not knowing how they create colors and sounds for themselves, otherwise they would already be able to speak about this colored and sounding world exactly as they speak about the world that the spiritual researcher presents to them. For that is indeed the characteristic of the world that the spiritual researcher presents to the soul: that one now exercises the activity, which one otherwise performs unconsciously for the sensual world, consciously, fully consciously, on this higher level of the act of will, which is detached from thinking. Otherwise, however, there is no difference at all in relation to the sense world. But people are not strong enough to hold to that, to have confidence in that which they must first call into existence inwardly. One would like to say that it is good that a kind God has withheld from people the knowledge that they create the light of the sun for themselves, otherwise they would deny it, as they deny the essence of the spiritual world. People depend on the outside world, on the authority of the outside world, to dictate what is, what is inherent in being. If they are to do something to allow this being to come to the fore, then they are not strong enough, not trusting enough in this inner activity of theirs to allow what they now have to co-create themselves to be recognized as a reality, as a truth.

When, through the indicated exercises of thinking, one has truly grasped the will in thinking, that reality which does not express itself in thoughts of a sense world, then at first – and this too has often been hinted at from a different point of view – — one does not have a spiritual reality before one, but one has only an experience that consists of a weaving and being and becoming; one has, so to speak, an expanded self before one, a self that now knows itself connected to the whole world, from which sounds and colors otherwise reveal themselves to it. But one weaves and lives in this becoming. One only knows that the way one lives in this becoming is reality, spiritual reality, spiritual reality free from the body.

One cannot be careful enough in describing such things, because it can, of course, be objected lightly by someone who believes they are allowed to think they are very scientific: So the spiritual researcher claims that he is immersed in the world through the result of this one exercise; he must actually know everything when he lives in that weaving element. Now, what works from within instead of approaching the person from the outside does not have to reveal all the secrets it contains. One can say that it can be compared to the fact that a person also eats and drinks and yet truly does not know the processes that take place in his body. One gets to know another world in its nature and essence, but naturally one does not get to know all the secrets of that world, which in turn must first be explored in detail, a research that requires exactly the same care and seriousness as the exploration of the physical-sensual world, yes, more. But this experience of living in a weaving world can be compared to when a physical person in the body has acquired the ability to grasp all kinds of things, but cannot grasp anything when he reaches out. In that case, one would know that one has organs to grasp, to make grasping movements, but one does not grasp anything. One would be in this situation if one only had the practice results that have just been described. One would live and weave inwardly in the spiritual element, but one would feel as if one were stretching out the spiritual organs in all directions, and it would be certain: you have grasped yourself in the spirit — but one would still perceive nothing of a spiritual environment. It would only be a general living and weaving and becoming of one's own self in the spirit. A tremendous loneliness, even a sense of apprehension, could seize a person if he only came to these conclusions. Therefore, the exercises that the soul performs when they are taken from true spiritual research are designed not only to develop the life of the mind, leading to such experiences as have been described, but also to develop the life of the will. And this training of the life of the will is something that arises in the most natural way from the ordinary life of the will in man. You can find more details in the books mentioned. But I will again characterize the effect, the results of the exercises of the will, which are already interwoven into meditation in proper meditation, from a certain point of view. Exercises of the will lead a person to the point where he can observe his own volition. Ordinary self-observation, even that which is called self-observation in trivial mysticism, does not yet lead to the point where one really observes the content of one's own volition as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena. It certainly does not lead to the point where one could, as it were, become one's own spectator. But the real exercises that spiritual research can indicate allow the human being to see what otherwise takes place as will in his life and flows into actions or even just lives in desires as otherwise things and processes around us can be observed; that man can truly put himself outside of himself, that he observes himself by wanting this or that, by setting goals in life. One only acquires this ability – and this, of course, cannot fill the whole life, but only claim very short, snatched moments of meditation on life – by so directing one's volition – and every true meditator already directs the volition by doing the right meditations – by so directing one's volition that one does not merely will as one wills in ordinary life. In ordinary life some desire arises. It is prompted by some inner bodily disposition, or it is prompted by an external impression, or the will performs this or that action, and thereby something is brought about in the external world. This volition that lives there can indeed be observed, but observation is made easier if one tries to will that – and as I said, it is willed in meditation – which advances the soul itself; if one makes oneself, so to speak, the object of one's volition, if one want something so that, through what one does in the soul, one gradually becomes a different person; that the soul is organized more finely, that the soul becomes more receptive when one carries out acts of will in such a way that one develops, that one consciously advances in life. Anyone who does meditation exercises knows how, after years of doing meditation exercises, the whole way he thinks about the world becomes different from what it used to be. He knows how he connects passion with desires, and these in turn with thoughts, and so on. He knows that he has become a different being, albeit in a more subtle way, and that this must be perceived. Otherwise, the I is always the center of will. The rays of will emanate from the I, as it were, and pour into the feelings and into the actions. In this kind of willing, the person effectively places himself outside of his ego and advances the ego itself through willing. Therefore, true meditation is particularly suitable for becoming the spectator of one's own willing, for knowing how to place oneself outside of one's own will and, just as one learns to observe natural processes, to observe one's own willing with composure. Otherwise, one is completely absorbed in one's desires, with all one's passions, all one's wishes, all one's emotions. One overcomes this for certain moments in life, and one learns to become a spectator of one's desires.

Let us just consider: when we want something else, we are present in what we want, we are so immersed in it that we instinctively defend it, at least inwardly, as our own. In any case, we do not look at wanting in the same way as we look at, say, the formation of a rainbow. But this is the path that the soul can follow: to observe the activity of the will, as one observes the formation of a rainbow or the rising of the sun; to become so objective, so calm. At first, one strives out of oneself in thought – for at first it is a mental striving out of oneself – in order to become a spectator.

But then one makes a discovery that one must take into account if one wants to become immersed in the reality of these things. One makes the remarkable discovery that although one must strive for what one strives for, one achieves something completely different. And with that I characterize an essential aspect of the spiritual research path in general. On the path of spiritual research, one must, if I may say so, set out on the path. One sets out on the path with the first exercises that I have described by meditating, by putting thoughts into the soul. But if one were to believe that holding on to these thoughts, drilling oneself into these thoughts, is also the goal, then that would be wrong. For the goal consists precisely in overcoming what one has initially undertaken: that thoughts cease to be thoughts in the strict sense, that the activity of thinking, free of the thought, now takes hold of us in becoming and weaving. That is the characteristic of the spiritual research path: that something must be undertaken and something else comes out. And precisely because something is undertaken, something else comes out.

And so it is with this second one I have to describe. You make an effort in the way described—but as I said, you can find details in the books mentioned—you make an effort to become your own spectator, that is, to step out of yourself in your imagination and watch your own volition as you would watch external natural phenomena. But the result of these exercises is different from what it would be if you were to follow a straight line. One might think that one would now become such a being by making a being out of oneself that looks at its currents of will. This is not the case. Rather, the result is that the more one goes out of oneself in this way, the more that which goes out disappears within oneself. In the development of thinking, one becomes more and more inwardly absorbed. The self expands, becomes more intense, more powerful. In the process I have just described, one does not enter into oneself, but one's own self is, in a sense, laid aside. Instead, however, a will remains in the spiritual field of vision, an act of the will. And as it were, out of the plane of these acts of the will, rising up from below, through the acts of the will, there rises a real being, which is a higher human being in the human being. That which one has always carried within oneself through one's whole life, but has not carried in consciousness, that rises through the will, that breaks through it. Just as the depths of the sea would appear if they were to break over the surface, so now a being appears, a conscious being, a being of higher consciousness, which is an objective spectator of all our acts of will, a real being that always lives in us and that breaks through the will in this way. And this being, which one discovers in the currents of will, this being connects with what one has made out of thinking. These two beings, which one has found in oneself, unite with each other. And through this one is now not only in a working and weaving, but in a real spiritual world with real spiritual entities and facts. In it now stands one's own being, which is also born out of the will - but in the company of other spiritual beings - and which goes through birth and death. The human being who, through birth or conception, has connected himself with what materially descends from father and mother, the human being who sustains himself when he steps through the portal of death, is discovered in such a way that what lives and works in us is brought to life in himself from two sides.

In the thinking that one gradually develops, the main thing is that in this thinking we really develop something different from what lives in our ordinary soul, and that is precisely what is difficult. Man is so attached to the habits that he has acquired in his soul through his dealings with the sensual world. Therefore, all these qualities that he acquires through this spiritual path, as it has been described, actually initially unsettle him. A sense of apprehension, loneliness, and restlessness can come over him. If everything is done correctly, as indicated by true spiritual science, this does not happen. I spoke about this a few weeks ago in the lecture I mentioned, 'A Healthy Soul Life and Spirit Research'. But everyone knows that when you enter into the spiritual world in the way I have described, a certain restlessness can arise, a certain inner anxiety, and even distinct feelings of fear towards the spiritual world that want to overwhelm you. And to avoid this, there are already enough clues in true meditation. But if someone expects that what his soul then does in these newly evoked abilities is directly similar to what the soul does in relation to the external physical world, which it must have around it all day, then he is subject to the most severe deceptions and also disappointments. Then he becomes restless because he says to himself: “I am living in something indefinite and unfamiliar. I have always thought in a different way. My thinking was so secure in the other way; it clung to a certain being that was given to me. Now my thinking is supposed to live in a becoming and not, so to speak, forget itself.

But in the true spiritual path this is avoided by the fact that this true spiritual path brings with it — it brings it with it quite naturally when it is followed in the right way — that what we can call interest, inner soul interest, manifests itself for the human being in a completely different way than the soul interest usually manifests itself in the physical world. It is really true: one acquires a new interest, a quite new kind of interest, when one leads a meditative life. It must be emphasized again and again: one does not want success for the inner life alone. Those spiritual exercises are of no value from the start and must be decidedly rejected, which make man unfit for the outer life. A person who practises true spiritual exercises remains as firmly rooted in the outer life as he was before. No, he will become even more firmly rooted in this outer life. If he has to pursue a particular occupation wherever fate has placed him, he will fulfil this occupation no worse than before if he has true spiritual science. And one can be sure – forgive the trivial expression – that the person who gets all kinds of raisins into his head by going through spiritual exercises, and then thinks he is too good for what he was before, is most certainly on the wrong track. But through that in the soul which is the actual spiritual research activity, one acquires new interests, which take the soul in a different direction, in addition to the old interests, which become even more intense for the outer world.

I will give an example of what it is like for someone who is a philosopher. Perhaps it is useful to give this example for the very reason that most philosophers believe from the outset – well, that they can judge everything from spiritual science much better than the spiritual researcher himself. But those who are not philosophers themselves become restless when faced with the many philosophies that exist. Isn't it true that one should just take a look at all the “ians” (Kantian, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, Hartmannian) just once, all of them, and then one will see, even if one adds others to that, that one should not allow oneself to be unsettled: Well, everyone thought differently, but I want something certain in my thinking! This tendency will then take on a different expression in the philosopher. The philosopher who wants to be a “ianer” himself now develops a certain train of thought; he then swears by it, and the others are of course all fools, whom he can refute, or at least people who are going astray. But the person who has developed his thinking in the way described, who has included the process of thinking in thinking, reads Hartmann with the same interest as Schopenhauer, as Hegel, as Schelling, as Heraclitus. He does not even get around to refuting one and becoming a follower of the other, because he takes a certain interest in the movement of thinking, in being inside thinking itself, because he takes a certain joy, a certain pleasure simply in the act of thinking and because he knows that this thinking does not lead to reality in such a way as is usually believed — that thoughts can simply be reflections of reality — but that one only comes into a life and weaving in the work of thinking. Yes, when one can do this, then one can take the standpoint: Certainly, the one philosopher has viewed the world from one point of view, the other from another! And the philosophical world view that one then gets cannot be seen any differently than a tree that has been photographed from different sides, where one also does not say: I declare the one photograph to be wrong, that is not at all true with the other, that is a completely different tree! Because it is only a different tree because it has been photographed from a different side. If you look at the activity of photographing, and not at the abstract reproduction, then you will see for yourself what is right. And so it is with thinking. You become interested in the mobility of thinking, and you know that you live in spiritual reality when you live and move in thinking itself. And there is something else that is introduced into your development through the exercises of the will, and this goes much deeper. It can disturb many people, and would even appear very disturbing if you were not sufficiently prepared, as is the case in every true schooling of the spirit. I would like to say again: for ordinary life, people are familiar with the fact that what lies within their will actually only appears to them in such a way that when they have done something they call good, they rub their hands together; then they are very satisfied with themselves. If they have done something they call bad in some way, they reproach themselves. But it remains with these inner soul processes. Man oscillates back and forth between rubbing his hands together out of satisfaction with what he has done and blaming himself. But when the volition is trained in such a way that the inner spectator emerges, then a greater seriousness permeates the matter. Then it is no longer just reproaches or inner satisfaction that arise, but you get to know a very real being in what permeates the will as a spectator and shoots up through its surface. You get to know: That which otherwise appears to you as reproach and as inner satisfaction is a real power. This real power is there in the world, it will continue to have an effect. In the further course one learns to recognize how this power develops into a further destiny and influences the next life on earth as a fact, after one has passed through the life between birth and death. What one experiences there as will, would follow the one who is not well prepared like a shadow, like something one always drags along, like one's shadow, like a real being. Everything depends on whether one also learns to understand the full significance of these things; that one learns, for example, to recognize: what follows one around as a shadow need not lead one to hypochondria, but one must look at it calmly. For it is not at all what has significance for the present life, but what passes through the gate of death with us, what is among the forces that will help determine the configuration, the nature, of our next life.

In short, the interests associated with these developed inner soul activities are different from the interests of the outer life, but they do not detract from these interests of the outer life at all. They merely put everything in its proper place, so to speak. When someone comes to an awareness of what goes through birth and death, what is immortal about the soul, as I have described it, then he will not become less interested in the external physical facts that directly surround him, but rather he will come to the conclusion that there is a spiritual world. In this spiritual world there are just as many concrete spiritual processes and entities as there are in the physical world, and he can see them. But that which exists as a physical world can only be seen in the physical world. What surrounds us as a physical world naturally ceases to exist after death. Only because we carry an immortal being within us, which is a reality in itself and belongs to a reality that goes beyond the physical, do we carry something through the gate of death, enter into a spiritual world, into a world that we live through between death and a new birth, and then enter into yet another earthly life.

Especially when one knows, not in the abstract but in a living sense – and it is only through spiritual research that one really gets to know this – that one can only get to know this sensual world in its full inner essence through one's senses and through the mind that is connected to the brain – then, under this life-filled self-development — not through some theory, but through what life absorbs, under the influence of the exercises that awaken our lively interest in everything that is obvious; the interest for the smallest details in the world is increased. Only one particular interest, and this we must take with us, grows ever smaller and smaller: the interest in that which is already able to appear in the sense world as so-called 'spiritual' and to reveal spiritual reality in and out of the phenomenon itself. It is known that spiritual things can be grasped when the organs, the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, are developed first, to use Goethe's expression. It is known that one must rise to the spiritual world, and it is known that in the world of the senses, this world of the senses must be grasped out of itself, that it stands as that which must be grasped through the world of the senses. Therefore one loses interest in all those events that seek the spiritual out of the world of the senses itself. And while interest in everything that takes place in the spiritual world increases, especially in true spiritual research, interest in the sense in which it exists for many in the spiritual world is purely sensational and all kinds of superstitions and belief in miracles disappears completely. Interest, let us say, in spiritualistic events, in mediumistic performances, completely fades away. The spiritual researcher is not interested because he knows that only something abnormal can come to light in these things, which is indeed based in the sense world, but which cannot lead beyond the sense world into the true spiritual world. Of course, he can take an interest in it, as one takes an interest in some theatrical performance, in some experiment that otherwise appears in the world. Nothing should be said against such events, provided, of course, that they are not frauds, in that they allow a variety of otherwise inexpressible natural connections to be expressed. But they are natural phenomena, and we know that we do not live in these things in any other way than we live and move with our ordinary senses, however abnormal it may seem. For everything that belongs to this area, which I have just touched upon, interest wanes, as I said. It becomes a mere witnessing — well, of all sorts of events. And it is the duty of every true spiritual researcher not to allow superstition to grow in him, but to uproot superstition completely.

It would be very easy to believe – and because it is possible, it must be emphasized – that a person who experiences spiritually what I have indicated, and who basically experiences nothing less than what he can call his immortal soul, and that he is actually experiencing life after death; that he is already experiencing what will be experienced after death. In this abstract form it is not the case, and one must think very carefully about these things if one wants to get an idea of them. What the soul experiences after death, or let us say, from death until birth, is experienced in much the same way as a plant would consciously experience everything that is in its germ, which represents all the forces for the new plant. One experiences everything that must necessarily be gone through in the spiritual world after death in order to prepare one's entire life with the new body and the new experiences as a new destiny in the coming earthly existence. It is the germinal being in us that is suited to experience in the spiritual world between death and new birth that which then prepares a new life on earth, so that we then have the body that we need to have the abilities that we have previously prepared within us, so that we put ourselves in the position in which we need to be when our destiny is to be fulfilled according to our previous life on earth. That this potential lies within us, we experience that. But to have this experience before us, to have the spiritual world before our own soul, for that it is necessary, of course, to go through the experiences ourselves between death and a new birth, which one can at most look at and develop in knowledge, but in a living knowledge that is an inner reality, while the knowledge of the external world, of the physical external world, is only mental images.

You see, I would of course need a great deal of time to discuss in more detail what I have only touched upon. This will be possible in the coming lectures. But, as you can see, there is a certain path that can be described as the path of spiritual research, which leads to the development of a life that is inwardly different from the life of the soul in the external, sensual reality. And in this experience, the soul takes hold of itself in such a way that it lives and breathes in the inner power that passes through the gate of death.

Fichte only sensed the truth when he said: Immortality is not only there when we have passed through the gate of death, but it is there when we are still living in the body. For the being that passes through death can be attained by human knowledge while it is still alive in the body. How is it attained? In a remarkable way, we have to form ideas ourselves from spiritual science as to how it is attained.

You may well ask how can a person achieve all that has been described as a result of soul exercises? How can soul exercises lead to something like this? You see, people very often complain – especially when they have a keen cognitive drive – that you can't really see through reality, that there are limits to knowledge. How often have I pointed out in these lectures the famous Ignorabimus of Da Bois-Reymond, where it is said that man can indeed come to an observation of the processes of the world and their limits, but cannot penetrate into the interior of matter; that he cannot, as it were, submerge himself in the interior of matter with his thinking. It is said of all knowledge that all these powers of knowledge are actually insufficient to fully penetrate nature.

When one begins to strengthen the soul inwardly as it has been described, one notices something very definite. One notices how tremendously good it is that there are such limits to external knowledge. For if the powers that one has for external knowledge were to make one see through all nature through themselves, these powers would prevent one from attaining spiritual knowledge. Only because one cannot use everything that is in the soul for external knowledge is something left that can be developed in the way I have explained it. Only because the full, immortal soul does not enter into bodily life, but still retains something, whereby not everything is transparent in the outer bodily life, are inner forces preserved, which can then be developed in the way described. By connecting ourselves with the physical material given by our ancestors through birth or, let us say, through conception, we retain so much of the immortal soul that, on the one hand, we are prevented from seeing through the full nature in the bodily life, and have to make hypotheses and all sorts of things about what lives in nature. But as a result we have in the background of our being forces that we can develop within us and that allow us to enter into a spiritual world in a spiritual way. The immortal soul lives in man. In order for it to live, some things must be taken away from man in a sensual way. This, in turn, is such an important connection that one must look at it.

There is therefore a spiritual research that introduces us directly to the immortal being of man. This spiritual research is different from the external research. In the external research, one can remain as one is. That is exactly what suits people. The same abilities that they have acquired once, they retain when they go into the laboratory, when they do experiments, and can learn something about the external nature. And then these people also demand that the spirit should be explored in the same way, by retaining the same abilities. One cannot approach the spirit without first making oneself spiritual, that is, seeking out that which is in every human soul but which must first be raised to consciousness in the manner described. But there is much, much that, I might say, still thwarts people's paths to spiritual science in the present time. That is why the chapter 'immortality question and spiritual research' is still so little recognized today, one that people are so reluctant to get involved in.

You can already see from what I have said that it is necessary for man to learn to think and live in a subtle inner way. That is to say, when he becomes a spiritual researcher, he must not become a lesser thinker than those who believe, let us say, that they have mastered thinking, who claim that they stand on the firm ground of external natural science, which is not to be challenged in the slightest. They do not love that in the present. In the present, one loves to develop, I might say, that very tangible thinking that does not even broach the subject of the finer things that live and move in the world.

I do not like to do this: to make personal references. Those of you who have been to these lectures often will know that I actually avoid going into all the opposition from the outside world and all the misunderstandings regarding what I am presenting here as spiritual science. I would prefer to ignore it and not talk about it at all. But when things keep coming up that do have an effect and are believed, they do harm to the cause. Personally I would prefer not to talk about these things at all, but harm is done to the cause because printed paper still has tremendous authority today, because it still has a tremendous effect. And so, for the sake of the cause, one must sometimes, when occasion is offered by some topic, go into what stands in opposition to spiritual science. If coarse thinking is opposed to it, which, because it cannot engage in the finer weaving in the life of thought, can see nothing but fantasy, nothing but a form of madness in what spiritual science indicates as the right path for spiritual research. Let me give you an example. And, as I said, please excuse me if it is a personal example, but I only mention it in so far as it is opposed to spiritual science, which is expressed in it as a typical phenomenon.

I gave a lecture in a certain city about the relationships that prevail in the nature of the individual European peoples, relationships that, as many listeners know, I had already presented long before this war gave rise to talk about them; insights that were found quite independently of this war, but which, as they are presented, should actually be obvious. For when it is said in the course of the lectures, which are now often combined with the lectures on spiritual science, that the peoples of the West, the peoples of the European center, the peoples of the East differ in this or that, one should believe that no reasonable person could actually be led to say anything other than: Well, yes, he may be mistaken about individual characteristics, but there really are differences. There really are different character traits, different ones in the Germans, different ones in the Russians. To deny this can only arise from the crudest thinking. And yet, as I said, I also gave a lecture on this in a certain city. In a daily paper of the town in question, this was discussed and said in the most derogatory way, that these differences were constructed only out of the war, as it were. But one could ignore that, following the example I gave recently, for what is being achieved in this area. But now think, that was not enough for one man, but the man even turned to a magazine, and in a magazine what appeared in the newspaper at the time was printed, and the following nice comment was attached to it: “The accusation of the speaker” - that is, the critic of the Tagblatt of the city in question - “of having reconstructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers, rightly applies to Steiner. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive, as Steiner does, a difference in essence between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture. In my opinion, European culture is completely the same in essence.” And so it continues. This appeared in a Central European journal. You can see from it what a crude thinking is confronted with spiritual science as such. For what I have read to you here is further developed in a detailed article that extends over several issues. The thought — well, I need only hint at it, then you will see how crude such a person's thinking is: “Intellectual life, too, has developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European cultured man for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all, were individuals not forced into iron state forms.” So this crude thinking does not even notice how these ‘iron state forms’ are initially more involved in what is happening in this war. It is thinking like this that one has to deal with. Such thinking is in contrast to what must be demanded in the light of an understanding of such a question, and so also of the question of the immortality of the soul. And such a thing does not appear in a materialistic magazine, but in a magazine - it even bears the heading “42nd year” - that calls itself “Psychical Studies”. That I am not speaking out of personal resentment, I can prove to you from the magazine itself. You know, or at least many people know, that I have dealt with the main ideas which this gentleman here attacks in such a way in a small pamphlet. This pamphlet is called “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this pamphlet, though perhaps in a popular way, are exactly the same thoughts, written at least from the same spirit, from the same attitude. In the same issue as the article from which I have just read the characteristic passages, there is a review of this work, “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this review, the work is highly praised and it is shown how meritorious it is to express such thoughts. It goes without saying that I am just as indifferent to being praised as I am to being criticized. But I must characterize what already lives in the formation of the times, so that it is not believed again and again when diatribes appear here and there, simply through the suggestive power of what is daubed with printing ink on dirty paper, since that always forms a kind of obstacle for those who might otherwise find their way to spiritual research. One must point out the grotesque nature of the experience that can be had in our time in such a way. And it is only for this reason that spiritual science must be kept free, so to speak, in the context in which it is found, in the light in which it must appear as true, genuine, honest spiritual science. In order to keep it free in this light, I must also touch on other matters.

I have already pointed out in the lecture before last, where I spoke about misunderstandings regarding spiritual science, also in the lecture “Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research”, that spiritual research is not only opposed by what comes from the more or less materialistically minded side. On this side it is extremely difficult to achieve something for the reason that the things that are put forward from this side are so terribly plausible. When I have to characterize something, such as this magazine, I do it reluctantly. When I seriously oppose something, I turn to those whom I actually hold in high esteem. So I also hold in high esteem the actual father, I might say, of modern materialism, Lamettrie. He is an astute man, and his reasons are plausible. But one can acknowledge the plausibility of these reasons, one can assert them and one should still, when the spiritual research path is asserted alongside them, acknowledge the significance and essence of this spiritual research path alongside the validity of what comes from the materialistic side. Lamettrie is, as I said, an astute man, and in his book 'Man a Machine' he has put together everything that can prove how man is dependent on his physicality. Now it might seem as if spiritual science would have every reason to contradict such things. No, it agrees with everything, as I even proved in my last lecture, in a more forceful sense than materialism itself. For it is indeed easy to understand and irrefutable when Lamettrie points out how man's mental state depends on what he is. Of course it is very easy to prove, because it is so terribly obvious that man depends on whether he likes something or whether something agrees with him. Think of the mood of the soul that results from it. Lamettrie describes all this, and in doing so, he basically anticipated everything that can be said about this matter. Isn't it extremely interesting – especially in this day and age – to read what Lamettrie said in his book 'Man a Machine', because if you read it somewhere else, it would not make a good impression. But here in Central Europe, this passage can perhaps be read with greater composure than in Western Europe. Lamettrie wants to prove what man actually is - really prove how man, in terms of his mental state, indeed in terms of his character, in terms of what lives in him in terms of soul, depends on what he eats, what his food is. And there Lamettrie says – but as I said, it was more than a century ago since it was said – in his book 'Man a Machine', Lamettrie says: 'Raw meat makes animals wild; humans would become wild from the same food. How true this is,” says Lamettrie, the Frenchman, ”can be seen from the fact that the English nation, who eat meat less cooked than we do, eat it entirely raw and bloody, and show a wildness that is partly brought about by these foods, but partly also by other causes, which only education can suppress. This savagery engenders in the soul arrogance, hatred, contempt for other nations, unruliness and other feelings that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind, whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness.” It is perhaps not uninteresting, especially in Central Europe, to hear the judgment of a Frenchman, even if it is more than a hundred years old, about the English, so that one can see how circumstances change and how people have not always felt and thought in the same way from one place to another and from there to there. This same Lamettrie also says other things that are quite natural, for example, he says - and he believes that this is enough to refute everything that can be said from the spirit about the spirit - he says, for example: “A small fiber would have made two fools out of Erasmus and Fontenelle.” One can, of course, admit this and still stand on the ground of spiritual science, as it has been characterized today. For there is much more that can be admitted and that will not shake spiritual research. Let us assume, for example, that if only a small fiber were different in the case of Erasmus, then, from the point of view of pure materialism, this would mean that his life would perhaps have become that of a drip instead of that of a genius. But now, if it had happened that the mother, before he was born, had been murdered by a bandit and Erasmus had been killed before he was born, what would have become of Erasmus' soul? Only a true spiritual researcher is able to see through such things. For it seems even more compelling that man is dependent on matter; for it would only have been necessary for him to have died as a small boy, then he would not have been there.

That spiritual research has anything to deny that comes from this side should not be believed by those who, with their blunt considerations, want to stand in the way of spiritual research. But even today, on this ground, one still sees much that is unclear and imprecise. The characterized coarse thinking is primarily to blame for this; but there is more to it than that: spiritual science has to suffer not only from those who oppose it, but it also has to suffer from those who often want to be seen as adherents of a certain spiritual-scientific direction and who, in turn, are connected with all kinds of strange social elements of the present day. And as a result, spiritual science is lumped together with all kinds of stuff by those who do not know how to distinguish — I have already pointed this out, but I have to go into it in more detail today with reference to something else. Spiritual science does not build — as you can see from a characteristic of my lectures, which is often criticized, namely that they are too difficult — spiritual science does not build on the gullible crowd, does not build on those who, in a comfortable frame of mind, want to gain some kind of conviction, does not build on those people who, as if in a 'dream, go through life and believe everything that is conveyed to them through their certainly subjective power of persuasion. Spiritual science does not build on that which lives in the world of superstition, and because certain things are rightly discussed in public on the materialistic side as nonsense, a sharp line must also be drawn in spiritual science itself between honest, true spiritual research, which follows only the truth, and that which so often likes to its coattails and what comes from a side where one counts on the superstition of mankind, which is present as well as insisting on one's own judgment; where one pretends to people all sorts of things, because even today one finds enough people who believe everything possible, if it is only proclaimed to them from an alleged spiritual world - unknown whence. What can be confused with spiritual science from this side – as I said, it must be pointed out in order to shake it off – true science, and that is spiritual science, has little to do with it.

I will only point out a few things, because these things are now being discussed publicly on the materialistic side and, certainly under the influence of the serious and serious events of the times, there will be more and more discussion. I want to show how wrong those are who associate spiritual science with some form of ordinary or higher superstition, that higher superstition that pursues all kinds of goals in the world and actually only works in such a way that it first puts people into the world who are said to have higher abilities, a clairvoyant gift. True clairvoyance consists in what has often been described and is again described today. But what people call clairvoyance today is actually subconscious, but is often also just a fraud. But we are not reckoning with what is in the subconscious, but with the effect. Therefore, one must reckon with what the fraudulent clairvoyance is able to do with superstition. And there it is possible that all kinds of dishonest endeavors and currents arise, where one wants to achieve something completely different from what lies in the realm of truth. What people need to know, what is achieved by this, is that first of all — allow me to use a harsh expression — people are made stupid, befogged, by showing them all kinds of occultism, which has an effect on their superstition, and then, with the people made stupid, all kinds of things are carried out that do not belong in the realm of sincerity and honesty. Spiritual science has the same duty and necessity to point out these excesses of modern life as materialism does. And if it proves materialism right in its field in such cases, as I have shown with Lamettrie, then it may also prove it right when it turns against all excesses of an apparent spiritual experience, which is nothing more than life in blind superstition.

In 1912, an almanac was published, a yearbook, edited by a personality who is revered in a city in the West as a higher clairvoyant by many who are clouded in the way just described. This yearbook appeared in 1912 for 1913, in advance. In it, the following note appears about Austria: “The one who is destined to govern in Austria will not govern. A young man who has not yet been appointed to the government will govern.”

And with even greater clarity, the almanac for 1914, which was published in 1913, returns to this matter. There may be gullible people who believe nothing more and nothing less than that a great prophecy has been fulfilled, and it is impossible to make clear to them in their blind faith that dishonest currents living in the European world have been at work here, using superstition and all kinds of dark occultism to bring something into the world. How this is connected with all kinds of underground currents can be seen by considering that a Parisian newspaper, “Paris at Noon,” long, long before the current turmoil and at about the same time as the appearance of the aforementioned note in the aforementioned almanac of an alleged clairvoyant in – a Parisian newspaper that makes no claim to be occult in any way, but can be compared to other newspapers that appear at noon – that this newspaper also expressed its wish long months before that the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be murdered. One can see certain underground connections. And this same paper wrote at the time of the three-year anniversary of his term of office: “Among the very first to be murdered if mobilization occurs will be Jaurès.

The same personality who publishes this almanac travelled to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people who are open to such influence, in a direction that I will not say is linked to the main causes of Italy's position, but which had already taken effect in this matter.

I only discuss these things because they are discussed by others, from a materialistic point of view. But they must be discussed so that it can be seen that true spiritual science has nothing to do with such things, with superstition in general that relies on the credulity of the masses, and with what is done under the guise of superstition, both in large and small matters. Spiritual science will only appear as a real science that can be placed alongside other sciences when it is kept free from everything that can still be easily confused with it today and that is often confused with it, not only under the influence of limited judgment, which simply cannot distinguish, but also out of ill will. And in the literature that is thrown at spiritual science, a lot of work is done precisely with the fact that what one has to lie about when one wants to characterize spiritual science is so lied about that spiritual science is thereby put on the same ground as those things that spiritual science must of course fight as fiercely as they are fought by materialistic science.

But just as we recognize such things, spiritual science will emerge ever more clearly in its purity in what it can be for the human soul. Does not the latest book by Ernst Haeckel, that is, by a serious researcher, “Thoughts on Eternity”, shows how utterly at a loss mere natural science is in the face of such great events that have such a profound impact on the development of humanity, since it knows of nothing better to say than this:

Not that such a time would provide the reasons for spiritual science, but one must recognize what spiritual science can become for human life in the spiritual realm: that which sustains the human being, which holds the human being, because it makes him acquainted with that with which no natural science makes him acquainted. Natural science can only make man acquainted with that through which his body is connected with the sensual universe. Spiritual science makes man familiar with this through the fact that it shows him, by means of research, that he has an immortal soul, so that one can know: This soul of man is connected with eternal becoming. Man is anchored in eternity through his soul and spirit, as he is anchored in temporality through his body.

If one asks whether man needs something like this, it must be said that there can be no proof for it, any more than there can be for the fact that he needs to eat and drink. But just as man experiences through hunger and thirst that he must eat and drink, so he experiences over and over again in his soul that he must know. And the more one demands knowledge and not mere belief, one will recognize that he must know about the immortality of his soul. One can deny that man demands this knowledge, but the denial is only a theoretical one. The time will come more and more – and we are already at its beginning – when, just as hunger asserts itself in the healthy human body, the thirst for knowledge of the spiritual world, for knowledge of the immortal character of the soul itself, will assert itself in the human being who lives beyond himself into the time that begins with the present. And it will be an unquenched thirst if there is no spiritual science. This will show in the effects. Theoretically it will be possible to deny it – but it will show in the effects. It will show in the fact that people will find themselves desolate in their souls, will not know what to do with their lives, that they will perform their external tasks but will not know what the meaning of life is, and that they will thirst for this unraveling of the meaning of life. Little by little it will extend to the intellect; little by little it will show how man's thinking becomes coarser and coarser. We have already found enough coarseness in one example today. In short, the development of man would experience a descent if it could not be fertilized by spiritual science.

May the times we are living through today, which call upon man to be earnest in so many fields, also be a sign that the time is beginning when people must have knowledge of immortality and that spiritual research is the way to achieve it. The spiritual researcher himself knows that he is in harmony with all those who, even if they have not yet done spiritual research, have nevertheless been living and breathing in the spiritual world through the very nature of their soul activity. The spiritual researcher knows himself to be in harmony with those who simply knew what it means to live in the spiritual world. When Goethe was asked why he wanted to recognize the plant through ideas, since ideas are something abstract, he said: “Then my ideas, which I believe I experience within myself, are direct reality, because I do see my ideas within reality.” Therefore it was Goethe who, even when he had not yet spiritual science, knew what to say in a poetic but accurate way about the character of the spiritual world, where he was spiritually and soulfully transported by the poetic genius.

Today we have to say: the person who, through the development of his thinking, lives into the spiritual world, lives and moves in the emerging soul entities. And when man is freed from the body, he is also a spiritual-soul entity that lives in the becoming. That which has become, that which is solid, exists only in the outer sensual world in which man lives as long as he is in the body and then only when he perceives through the body. As soon as man ascends to the spiritual being, he is seized by the becoming. Goethe knows this. He also knows that just as man, through his own feeling, lives into his inner well-being, he can also live into a feeling that may well be called love. That is the surprising thing and always will be when one comes to spiritual people, that they even know how to say the right thing with the right word from their life in the spiritual world. That is why Goethe also says: one lives in the becoming. And when one develops oneself into this becoming, then the thoughts live in this becoming itself. Not the ordinary thoughts — these must first be overcome, they can only be incorporated into the world of becoming as something lasting, something enduring. Only when that which can be grasped in the process of becoming is held fast in thought, can the thought become fixed and we can carry it with our immortal soul through the portal of death. That is why, towards the end of his prologue in Heaven, written at the height of his life, Goethe speaks the beautiful words with which I want to conclude these reflections today, because in them, in a time that lies before the development of spiritual research as we understand it today , a poet speaks of the spiritual world out of poetic genius in a way that one must speak of it out of realization, by first pointing, or having the Lord point, to that which man needs as long as he lives in the sensual body. So that he does not degenerate into comfort and convenience, the Lord points out to Mephisto those who are spirit beings. And when free of the body, the human being is such a spiritual being. Goethe points out the peculiarity of the spiritual world with words that are sure to hit the mark. For you will recognize in these words what I myself had to recognize in them. After I had developed everything that I have presented today, I was surprised by the wonderful correspondence of these Goethean words, which I had not recognized before, the wonderful correspondence of these few Goethean words with the fundamental character the world to which the immortal human soul belongs: “But you, the true sons of the gods” - spiritual beings are meant, just as man is a spiritual being as an immortal soul -,

“But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich beauty!
Embrace with love's sweet barriers what is becoming, what lives and works eternally,
And what floats in a wavering appearance,
Secure with lasting thoughts.”

Attention is drawn to that which lives in the pure spirit as its very own, but which is recognized in the human soul as its immortal part. In these words, which are directly a characteristic of that which can be grasped in the human soul, even when it is still living in the body, as the immortal, and of which one can know that it passes through the gate of death, when it enters the realm of the developing and takes with it to the pure realm of the spirit that which it has experienced here in a fluctuating appearance, in order to transform it into thoughts that can then become permanent and be taken through the gate of death. And what lives in fluctuating appearance affirms the soul, which passes through the gate of death, as an immortal, as an eternal being, in lasting thoughts, which henceforth make up its life in the same way that the body makes up the soul's life in the physical world.

Dear attendees! As a continuation of the spiritual-scientific considerations that were presented here the day before yesterday, today I would like to give a continuation of what was suggested, a continuation that is intended to apply the gained perspectives to the significant question of human destiny.

In the lecture the day before yesterday, dear attendees, it was pointed out that spiritual science is entirely based on the inner work of the human soul, and I would like to briefly reiterate a few thoughts from the day before yesterday's lecture. The point of spiritual research is never, as in the other sciences that extend to the outer life and to the outer world of facts, to cultivate outwardly perceptible activities for the senses, never to carry out the outer world in any way at all, but the path into the spiritual world is an intimate path of the human soul. And one link in this path of the human soul, by which this soul prepares itself to enter the spiritual world, as was already indicated the day before yesterday, is a special way of treating what we call human imagination, human thinking.

I said: By allowing us to look into his inner spiritual laboratory, as it were, the spiritual researcher must point out that the human soul's imagining and thinking must be treated in a completely different way than they are treated in everyday life or in external science. In external science, we consider the thought, the idea, the concept that we have acquired on the basis of sensory observation or on the basis of experiment or in some other way; we consider the concept as that which we have acquired, as that which reflects the external world to us. And in that it depicts, be it processes in the external world, be it laws, natural laws or the like in the external world, we are satisfied when we have, so to speak, arrived at the thought, when we have arrived at the idea of what is going on outside, or how the external processes are connected in a lawful way.

But this is where spiritual scientific research begins, where the work of the mind, the life of the mind in everyday life or in external science ends. The point of spiritual scientific research is not to have a thought, not a thought as a reflection of the external world, but to live with the thought, with the idea in the inner soul. So that, as I have already mentioned, in this inner exercise, in this inner work of the spiritual world, it does not matter at all whether we are in the thought, in the idea, through which we practice the soul, through which we advance the soul, as it were, in higher self-education, whether we depict something external in the thought, in the imagination, whether in the ordinary sense of external science or of external life these thoughts are images of something in the external world; they can be symbols, as I mentioned. What matters is that we sink a thought into the soul, that we become completely one with that thought, that we divert all attention from what otherwise occupies us in the world, and, as it were, fix all the powers of the soul within us on this one thought.

And now we must immediately recognize, by doing this, that we are carrying out a completely different task than the tasks of ordinary science. In the tasks of ordinary, external science, we can stop when we have the thought, we can be satisfied when we have the thought. And we are convinced in ordinary science when the thought logically satisfies us, when the thought corresponds to our sense of truth; then we can stop our research work for the time being. This is not the case with the way one does spiritual research. It is never the case that you stop when you have the thought, which you place at the center of your consciousness through arbitrariness, through an inner will initiative; you basically have nothing when you have placed the thought at the center of your consciousness and directed the attention of all the powers concentrated in the soul to it. Just as one has very little when one has sunk the seed of a plant into the earth, so one has very little when one has fixed the thought in the soul. One must wait until the forces from the air, the forces from the earth, the forces from the sun and so on interact to develop the plant germ into a plant - one must wait and see what is not done by us, what is done by the cosmos, what is done by the outer world.

In exactly the same way, we as spiritual researchers must treat a thought. We must, as it were, sink it into the soil of the entire soul life and then wait and see what it becomes in it. We cannot help ourselves other than by repeating the same process of looking at a thought every day. It does not take long, minutes are enough every day, but it must be repeated every day; and it takes a long, long time. And all we can do is wait and see what becomes of this thought by devoting all the powers of the soul to it and looking at nothing else, feeling nothing else, sensing nothing else but this thought. The important thing in spiritual research is to watch something growing within ourselves. While in other research it is important to carry out a certain task and to explore the lawful connection through thought, that is, while it is about doing something that has, I would say, a beginning and an end through our own will, in spiritual research we have to watch what becomes of the growing, sprouting thought in us.

And then the time comes – earlier for some, later for others, depending on how their destiny is laid out – then the time comes when forces hidden in the soul become active and more and more active, and by applying that inner energy, which we otherwise cannot summon up in our everyday life and in ordinary science, we really bring about what can be said to truly tear our soul-spiritual out of the physical-bodily, and it leaves the physical-bodily. By expressing this thought and calling attention to the fact that it is a spiritual-scientific method, one immediately touches something in this spiritual-scientific method that completely contradicts the thinking habits of the present time. . By expressing this thought and calling attention to what spiritual-scientific method is, one immediately touches something in this spiritual-scientific method that completely contradicts the thinking habits of the present time. These thought habits of the present time cannot imagine that it is really possible for a person to find such inner strength in his soul, that his spiritual and mental self is so torn from the physical and bodily as the hydrogen is torn from the water by the procedures used by the chemist. But everything depends on whether the human being, by continuing to do what has just been described at its most elementary level, really comes to perceive another person living within him, another person who underlies our existence and who does not need to use the external senses to have a world around him, who does not need to use the mind, which is connected to the brain or the nervous system, to have an external world around him.

The world view, esteemed attendees, which corresponds to today's thinking and which often emphasizes that it stands on the solid ground of the so admirable natural science, this world view often speaks of the limits of human knowledge, it speaks of it in such a way that it says : Yes, there may be a spiritual world, a supersensible world that underlies the sensual facts and everything that can be known through the intellect, which is connected to the brain, but humans are not designed to penetrate this world. And we know that there have been philosophies over and over again in the course of human development, philosophies that have endeavored to determine the limits of human knowledge.

Basically, these limits of knowledge are only the limits of those insights that are bound to the physical and bodily. And why this is so can also be seen by the spiritual researcher if he really applies the methods described in a few strokes to his soul life. For a very peculiar phenomenon occurs when one endeavors, through ever more energetic and energetic concentration of the soul power in the indicated sense, to become, as it were, completely one with that which one has placed at the center of one's perception, one's thinking, one's entire consciousness. After a time, one notices how something really does grow inwardly, something really does contract inwardly, namely our soul-spiritual nature, which is dependent on the body. But after some time one notices that one is heading straight for the opposite extreme. Not only do all kinds of other thoughts keep coming into one's attentive consciousness and confusing one on the path one is seeking with one's soul life, but this is something that can be overcome relatively quickly. However, what the spiritual researcher encounters when he tries to develop his soul is that, while he first experiences an increase of the forces that otherwise underlie thinking - [at a certain point there occurs what could be called “a darkening, a weakening” of this inner soul force], and that which the soul experiences there is, basically, quite harrowing. For one experiences nothing less than a feeling of approaching powerlessness, a powerlessness that says to oneself: Alas, these soul powers are not sufficient to penetrate the whole extent of the spiritual world! It comes over the consciousness like a terribly paralyzing sleep. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what those philosophers do not allow themselves to approach when they speak of the limits of knowledge, but what the soul, I would say unconsciously feels when it philosophizes.

For not only that lives in the depths of the soul, of which the soul is aware in ordinary life, but down there in the depths of the soul, in the hidden depths of the soul, there lives so much that is not in everyday consciousness. And the fact that we know nothing about it does not mean that what is down there in consciousness is not effective. There, in the unconscious, is something that the spiritual researcher experiences at the moment when he has this feeling of powerlessness, of which I have just spoken. The spiritual researcher notices: there is an unconscious fear in the soul, a fear of losing the ability to perceive and understand the world. And there is no other way to overcome this fear, as soon as it becomes conscious, than to intensify the already described efforts of concentrating the soul life more and more. Then, I would say, into the empty space of consciousness, in which the power that otherwise underlies thinking and feeling had already been paralyzed, there enters that which can enter through the increased strength and inner energy of the soul life.

It was a hidden fear, one that had not come to consciousness, when Kant spoke of the limits of human knowledge. He felt that knowledge in which the body helps us cannot go beyond the realm of sensory life and the laws of sensory life. He did not want to make use of the spiritual scientific method. He called it, although he sensed that there was something like a development of the soul towards independence from the physical body, he called it: “an adventure of reason”. And Goethe gave the great, one may say the powerful answer, that one must dare to pass this adventure of reason.

Powerlessness is what one really has at the bottom of one's soul, what is always at the bottom of one's soul. And one would like to say, honored attendees, that this powerlessness at the bottom of the human soul is fully justified. For if this powerlessness were not there, then the urge of man would be invincible to use the soul-spiritual powers forever for that which leads beyond the sensory world. But the fact that we feel, perceive and recognize the world of the senses is based on the fact that we, I would say, become accustomed to our physical body, to the physical-bodily, and that we regard it as a necessity to live in relation to the world in this physical-bodily. Just as one carries out a chemical experiment in such a way that it leads to the abnormality of external nature and thereby unravels nature, so one must develop something abnormal in the soul, something abnormal for everyday life, in order to truly look into the spiritual world, I would say through inner chemistry.

And by living in the spiritual world, one certainly gets a different idea of this newly acquired knowledge than one had of all knowledge before. Yes, knowledge is something that so many people associate with the idea that one actually recognizes best when one limits oneself to the intellect and the outer senses, which basically leave us sober and cold, and which occupy only a part of our life. The moment the spiritual researcher truly enters the spiritual world in the manner described, the moment he has torn his soul and spirit away from the physical body, he is surrounded by a spiritual world just as he is surrounded by a sense world within the body. In the same moment in which the spiritual researcher truly enters this world of the spiritual, in that same moment he feels as though he has awakened in this spiritual realm. But at the same time he feels that he can no longer be with the world with only a part of his soul life, as in outer knowledge, but that he must immerse his entire being in what presents itself to him as the spiritual world.

Just as abstract, I would even say sober and dry, as the world is that only animates and occupies part of our soul as the world of ordinary knowledge, the connection with the spiritual world is just as intensely effective in our soul. One can say: in the ordinary sense of the word, intellectual knowledge of the external world cannot hurt or cause us pain. In the moment when we enter the spiritual world in the way described, we must immerse ourselves with our whole soul in the beings that belong to the world into which we are entering. Everything we recognize there makes the deepest, most intense impression on our sense of pleasure or pain, on our sense of sublimity or on our sense of oppression. Our whole being is immersed. With our whole being, we have to live with the world in which we live, whether it be full of sorrow or joy. And again, it is fear, but a secretly felt fear that does not come to consciousness, which prevents the ordinary consciousness from immersing itself in this world. Truly, one does not become poorer in world content when one approaches this spiritual world. On the contrary, honored attendees, one becomes richer in world content, because one realizes what this fear of a subconscious powerlessness is actually based on. It is based on the fact that the world is much richer, infinitely richer in its glory, in its greatness, in its inner lawfulness, than what we are only able to think when we make use of the powers that are bound to our body.

And the riches of the world are what immediately arise before the soul in an overwhelming and numbing manner when it confronts the spiritual world through inner strength. But the soul, which is bound to the physical with its consciousness, feels, despite knowing nothing about it, it feels powerless, and it wants to avoid this powerlessness out of fear, the powerlessness that exists in the face of the spiritual world. Therefore, we see how, on the one hand, people shrink back and delude themselves about the limits of knowledge, so that they say that knowledge cannot penetrate into the spiritual world at all, or, on the other hand, when they have a deep yearning for the spiritual world, they satisfy it in a completely different way than the one described. The way described is that of genuine, true spiritual research. But the way described presupposes that one is serious about freeing oneself from the physical body. This can only be achieved through increased inner soul activity, this can only be achieved through the application of an energy that is never necessary for us as inner energy in everyday life or in everyday science.

But people want to apply the very thing they are accustomed to in everyday life when they approach the higher worlds. Human consciousness, after all, feels precisely the powerlessness described, and, I might say, in a way that is quite understandable, this consciousness feels this powerlessness described precisely when it wants to confront the more intense, the richer, the more exalted world of the spirit. Therefore, man would prefer to eliminate what dwells in his body rather than exerting himself to a greater extent in order to recognize the spiritual world. The feeling of hidden powerlessness makes him come to the conclusion that precisely because he is powerless in the face of spiritual life, he must eliminate the means by which he recognizes in ordinary life; instead of developing it, he wants to eliminate it. Then he does not approach to recognize the spiritual world, to develop his inner being, but then he approaches and seeks either through some external events or by using, as one says, a medium in whom precisely the spiritual, instead of being developed, is asleep, he tries to gain knowledge of the spiritual world through the automatism of the bodily life of the medium, without his inner involvement. There is only the fearful shrinking from reliving the experience of unconsciousness. For this feeling of unconsciousness must be experienced; only by overcoming it, by consciously experiencing it, does man advance in knowledge. But in the secret feeling of this feeling of unconsciousness, it is precisely that which man wants to shut out, that which leads him to spiritual knowledge. That is why so many seek through mediums or spiritists to communicate with them from the spiritual world. It is easy to see that this search through mediums or spiritists is the extreme, the ultimate expression of the feeling of powerlessness in the face of the spiritual world.

But our time, honored attendees, needs strength, needs power, because as the outer life becomes more and more complicated and complicated by the wonderfully developing natural science, especially in its social ramifications, man, in wanting to penetrate the spiritual world, must develop ever stronger and stronger powers. That which appeals to weakness, to the exclusion of the spiritual and soul, can never have a future; it can lull and lull man to sleep in the face of what is to be brought out of the hidden depths of the soul.

Now one can imagine how much what has been said is rejected as – let me say it again – a mental laboratory process of the thought habits of our present time, how much it is rejected, one can imagine when one sees that just the opposite extreme of what has been described has become the ideal for a large part of the educated people of today. For where is the spiritual researcher led when he enters the spiritual world by the method just described? He is led to say to himself: Not only does the world of sense live in your surroundings, but a spiritual world also lives in your surroundings! And he recognizes: This spiritual world contains the causes, the foundations for the existence of the world of sense. But the ideal of very many who truly believe that, as trained and educated people, they stand on the firm ground of natural science, with which, as I mentioned the day before yesterday, spiritual science is in fact completely in harmony. But most of those people, whose nature has been indicated, who believe that they see the ideal in eliminating everything that is found in the characterized way, believe that the ideal of knowing nature is to see only mechanically interacting causes and facts everywhere, to eliminate everything spiritual from external natural processes. That is the ideal of very many who have the thinking habits of the present day.

And it is basically considered a remnant of old superstition to see anything in nature or behind nature that is spiritual; [rather, one wants to] explain as much of nature as possible only by facts that are built according to the pattern of what can be observed by the senses. In this way one wants to comprehend external physics, biology, physiology and even the processes of the soul. I hinted at this the day before yesterday.

The ideal of a knowledge that excludes everything that the spiritual researcher comes to when he applies spiritual scientific methods is the ideal of the most educated people, many of the most educated people of today. So one might say: mechanical natural order is what is taken as the basis of nature. And the counterpart to this, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the observation of human life. Once we have become accustomed to seeing nothing but mechanical order in nature, we then become accustomed to rejecting precisely what the spiritual researcher must come to. And a sum of coincidences is basically what people see in what befalls them in their lives between birth and death, in the physical life of the body.

So how does a person relate to what happens in this life between birth and death? When something happens to him that he regards as a stroke of fate, for better or for worse, his initial response to this stroke of fate is what can be called the sympathy and antipathy of the mind. Just as a person searches for causes and effects in nature outside, he basically leaves what plays a role in his destiny as a mere series, as a mere sequence of coincidences.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, since we can say that the spiritual-soul content awakened in the spiritual researcher actually slumbers in the human being in ordinary life, it must be said that even in the fully waking life, when a person is engaged in action, when a person acts in such a way that he uses his outer body and the outer sense world to carry out actions, something in the person also sleeps. And what sleeps there prevents him from seeing a connection in the process that is unfolding, in the coincidences of life. Basically, what happens to man in the context of life is the same as what happens to many people in the course of history and still does today in the face of natural facts. A person who does not study natural science sees the sun rise and set; he observes the individual positions of the sun; for him, external facts exist that occur over time and in space. Then he, with his thinking, with his science, with his methods, approaches what are otherwise external facts, and he brings coherence into this world of external facts by replacing mere staring at the facts with the coherence that is expressed in the laws of nature. Man does not bring such a connection into what he calls external life coincidences, initially, because the forces within him that mean the same for this area as the forces of cognition mean for the facts of external nature, remain dormant for ordinary life. We must apply our knowledge to the facts of external nature in order to see laws in external nature. According to ordinary habits of thinking, man is not inclined to apply to that which takes place as his fate between birth and death such inner processes as he applies to the facts of external nature. And I will now indicate the path that arises for spiritual research in order to bring a similar law into the sequence of events of fate, as external thinking brings it into the sequence of natural facts.

What we call fate, I would like to say, let us look at it only - not to say anything special about it now, but only to illustrate what I want to say later - let us look at what we call fate, first of all for the life between birth and death, for the outer life that always surrounds us, in which we are always wrapped up and which our fate imposes on us.

We can say that when we look at ourselves in any particular phase of our lives: What are we actually in this phase of our lives? Yes, we say: we are a self, we are an I; we have a certain inner soul life. But certain things in this inner soul life that lie on the surface, we learn to understand and look at quite differently when we look back at earlier phases of our lives. If, for example, after we have turned fifty or forty-five or forty years old, we allow ourselves to look back – say, to the time we went through between the tenth and the eighteenth or twentieth year – when we look back at the so-called coincidences of fate that occurred in our lives at that time, yes, when we fully realize what lies in these coincidences of fate, then we will very soon be able to say the following to ourselves: You can do something now. You are able to think in this or that way, to act in this or that way. Basically, you are nothing other than this ability, this ability to understand, this ability to act. That you understand something more or less spiritually, that you act in one way or another, that is basically what you are. Why is it you? Just think how you would be different, how you would really be a completely different inner self if the events had not occurred that you can look back on between the tenth and twentieth year. They forged you into what you became; what you became there is concentrated in your self. These events now act out of you in many ways. They have concentrated you in essence; they have formed your self. And when we study our self at a particular moment in our life, we find it, I might say, put together like the sum of an addition from the addends. One can now survey one's life in this way. It is not a matter of finding all kinds of interesting things in one's life. What in ordinary life we call self-observation does not actually lead the soul very far beyond itself. But there is a special way of developing one's soul life when one really comes to look at the experiences of fate one has with sympathy or antipathy, but when one looks at them in such a way that they are the basis for what one actually is.

It is not this insight that is important in spiritual research, but the feeling that You have found yourself as a result, as a product of your destiny! This feeling can be increasingly awakened in oneself. And now two things can come together: what one has previously awakened as a spiritual researcher through the concentration of thought, of feeling, as it has been described, what one has experienced as the emergence of the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, and the development of this feeling. They can meet in the soul, these feelings, just as in ordinary life between birth and death one is actually the result of fate.

And when one meditates in this way, when one develops this coloring, this nuance of feeling in the soul, when one concentrates more and more on how, as it were, the inner self of the human being flows out completely and into the current of our destiny, when one makes these ideas completely alive within oneself, when one comes to literally see: Yes, what you are in your inner being, as your self, you see flowing into your destiny. When this becomes very much alive, when it is repeated again and again, so that it becomes a habitual inner experience, then we indeed experience a transformation, a transformation of our soul life. We experience such a transformation, such a transformation of our soul life, that only now is it experienced as a fulfilled, complete whole, which can be called the spiritual-soul that is free from the body.

And this soul-life, this spiritual-soul life, which is free from the body, shows itself to us, honored attendees, when we continue the spiritual scientific methods, as they have been described, and shows itself to us as that which underlies our life between birth and death. It does not reveal itself by logical deduction, but by developing such an inner life as has been described, the soul, as it were, opens a spiritual eye, to use this expression of Goethe's; as if the eye had not yet developed and only developed in the course of life and then our vision opened, it is like this when we work on our inner being, that a new person arises in our inner being, a person who now stands before us in such a way that he is now not just the result of fate, as it has been stated in a trivial way for the time between birth and death, but that he really grows together with his fate.

And now something new arises; so if one has developed the soul, something arises again that can be called: the perception of a secret fear otherwise hidden in the soul. So when you let the soul, as it were by seeing it in the river of fate, snatch itself from the body, then, then you discover - not what you are as a bodily human being - but then you discover within the spiritual world, which you have already conquered in the way described, you now discover yourself. Now you discover what you never knew about yourself before, now you discover the true human being. Now you discover the human being that underlies the ordinary human being who lives between birth and death – or, for that matter, between conception and death. Now we discover the human being who descends from a spiritual world as the true cause of physical human existence, who has an attraction to what can be given to him through the ancestral line, through parents and pre-parents, who brings down the forces from the spiritual world that only form themselves through what can be given to him materially through parents and pre-parents. And now, honored attendees, a fact to which, I would say, the great modern thinker Lessing pointed with deep inner truth, now a truth becomes the realization that what is at work in our body is the result of previous lives on earth. And that what works hidden in our body, without us being able to sense it in our ordinary life, that this is like a germ that after death first enters a spiritual world and, after it has developed in this spiritual world in such a way as the plant germ must develop, it pulls itself together again, so to speak, for a new life on earth. The realization that the whole of human life proceeds in such a way that there are repeated earthly lives for man, this realization must be acquired by the soul's distinguishing itself from the physical body.

In the ordinary experience, honored attendees, one basically has only a single reference to what lives in us as a human core, which goes from life to life and always stays in a spiritual world between death and a new birth. In spiritual knowledge, one lives in this core of life, in this essence of the human being. In ordinary life, we only have a certain point of reference for this when a person falls asleep at night. Spiritual scientific observation shows that falling asleep is conditioned by the fact that what is the core of a person's soul and spirit really lifts itself out of the physical body. But because the powers are not developed, as has been mentioned today, this spiritual-soul core of being remains unconscious from falling asleep until waking up. But very often, as everyone knows, something emerges from this unconsciousness of ordinary sleep life: the chaotic, but often also very interesting, structures of the dream.

What presents itself to a person in a dream is very often observed incorrectly. Among the many dream images – I cannot, of course, go into great detail about what a dream presents, although it would be very interesting to see what one can experience there – the most interesting dreams are probably those in which someone in later life, for the dream life, the dream consciousness, sees some scene in which people appear with whom he may not have had any contact for a long time, many of whom may have died, people with whom he now enters into relationships in his dream consciousness. Whole stories can unfold. If you look at such a dream in the sense of an ordinary memory activity, you are very much mistaken. It would take too long to explain this sentence in more detail, although it can be explained in more detail.

If you want to properly assess the events of a dream that take place in the unconscious mind, you don't have to look at the content at all. These images, everything that takes place, is basically only as significant for the essence of the dream as it would be if one were to say: 'There is a sheet of paper, on it I find a vertical line, a line that goes askew from right to left, one that goes askew from left to right, and so on. In this way he would describe all the letters that are on the paper. But it is not the person who describes the letters on the sheet of paper who is relating to the paper in the right way. Rather, the only person who relates to it in the right way is the person who, having learned to read, deciphers the meaning of what the letters, combined into words, express, without even bringing into his consciousness what the letters look like. What the dream presents is, in relation to what it is in essence, really nothing but letters, which, however, are not as exact as the letters of our ordinary writing, but change with each dream. And it is a deeper realization that can look at the dream and decipher it, just as we remain unconscious of the unconscious when we read the forms of the individual letters and words; that is what is actually contained in the processes of the dream, it is more the character of the human soul core that conjures up these images.

For example, we dream that a person who has long since died tells us this or that, that he does this or that with us. We do not dream it because this image of the dream wants to tell us something special, but we dream it because our soul essence has an inner quality, an inner power, which can best be visualized in this way, can best be visualized by putting itself into a relationship, symbolically into a relationship with a person, with this person whom one has encountered in life. That which is not expressed in the dream at all, which is at the bottom of the soul as the inner strength of the soul, as the character of the soul, that is the essential thing. And if one engages in the scientific recognition of the dream experience, precisely through the method of spiritual research that has been mentioned, by perfecting it in this way, if one engages not in interpretation but in the scientific recognition of the dream experience, then one also finds in the dream experiences that something that is in a person is shaped by special circumstances - which could also be described, but which the short time available today does not allow - into such images. And spiritual research shows us that what a person has acquired in the time between death and a new birth has matured in him a life core, a life germ.

We act and think in the life between birth and death, but what we think and how we act always expresses only a part of what we are, namely the part that lives through the fact that we are in a body. Just as the essence of the other person, who has been described and discovered through spiritual science, is hidden in the everyday life of the person, so this core of being is hidden in the human being. Only through those special occasions in our particular life, in our dream life for example, does the human soul core, which is free of the body when we fall asleep or awaken and is not yet completely at one with the bodily life, reveal itself. how it is mirrored in the bodily life, with which it is still imperfectly united, and what has passed through the human being in every action, but has been stored away, what has remained, what we have not fully lived out, what we have incorporated into our inner self. In dreams, that which passes through the gate of death reveals itself, that which passes through a spiritual world to reappear in a new life on earth. However, one can only recognize it through the dream if spiritual research has preceded all of this, honored attendees!

Thus we see how, in the course of spiritual research, man not only has to experience the unconsciousness of which we have spoken, and how, in overcoming this unconsciousness, he has to find his way into the spiritual world, but we also see how man has to discover his true self first.

Now, before this discovery, man has a secret fear. For the process is the process of losing ourselves in the body as human beings, while discovering ourselves as true human beings who go from life to life. As a spiritual researcher, the human being must first get used to looking at himself outside of himself in the world; he must first get used to discovering himself in his fateful work, and by mustering the courage to overcome the fear and shyness one has of oneself, one discovers oneself in one's true self. And now you discover that this true self is the forge of that which otherwise appears to us as the result of the coincidences of life. You now discover yourself in your destiny. And a completely new feeling, a completely new experience, interweaves and surges through the soul.

We are confronted by a heavy blow of fate, a blow of fate that we otherwise only face when it causes us bitterness and suffering, when it shakes our mind and we feel unhappy under its influence. If, as a spiritual researcher, you have discovered your higher self in the way described, you say to yourself: You have gone through many earthly lives with this higher self of yours. You have lived, thought and acted in these earthly lives in such a way that you have brought with you a certain quality in your soul from previous lives. This quality of the soul adheres to you just as the magnetic force is in the magnet. This quality, this power, exerts a secret attraction on the event that has entered your life as a misfortune, just as a magnet attracts iron filings. You have sought out this misfortune for yourself!

Do we not see in life what can be, once we have gained this point of view, honored attendees? We go through life. Much, much passes our eyes, ears, minds, feelings and wills. We meet many people. Among many and many people there is one whom we, as it were, feel attracted to by mysterious forces of our being, with whom we enter into a life partnership in friendship or otherwise. Why did we do that? Because the forces that we brought with us from previous lives were seated within us, and because these forces were attracted to what lives in this person's soul, just as a magnet is attracted to iron filings. This force passed by the other person. But through this we shape for ourselves everything that we now experience together with this person as fate.

In the same way, however, we also shape our destiny by descending from the spiritual world in which we live between death and new birth to the new birth. In our physical existence on earth, there are those forces that our ancestors can give us through inheritance. We are drawn to those forces that we need according to the qualities of our soul, and we connect with them. We notice the secret bond that exists between us – long before birth, before conception – and that which can be given to us by the hereditary powers of our ancestors. Indeed, more exact spiritual research even shows us, honored attendees, that this bond has been forming long before there can be any talk of our birth or our conception.

Once logic takes the place of what is currently believed to be logic, but is in fact pure illogic, a completely different way of thinking will take hold. Today, many people say: You can see that a person who displays certain qualities in life must have inherited these qualities from his or her parents or ancestors. Spiritual science wants to come and show that the human being, as a core, so to speak, envelops the inherited qualities he has chosen for himself. According to today's thinking, we should be glad that external science has brought it to recognize how the qualities of ancestors revive in descendants, as ordinary physiology can explain.

And particularly the core of this logic is what people want to play out when they say: you can see that in genius. If you observe genius, you can see that the qualities that are concentrated in genius can be found in the parents, grandparents and so on and so forth. Genius usually occurs at the end of a developmental series. Nice logic, that! Because it is quite similar to when someone finds it particularly helpful to explain that they are wet when they have fallen into water and are being pulled out. Of course, if you are at the end of a line of inheritance, you must bear the qualities that surrounded you in the body through that line of inheritance, just as water surrounds you when you fall into a stream. But there would be real logic in the matter if one could show that what lived in the ancestors as qualities of genius would live in the descendants. Not by looking up from the genius to the ancestors, but by descending from the genius to the descendants, that would be real logic. You don't even realize how you are contradicting all logic when you proceed in this way, when you judge as it happens. Because you will stay pretty, that you always look for the qualities of genius in the descendants. One need only point out great geniuses and then show how it sometimes looks, especially with their descendants! Here one will soon find that what a person has worked for himself, what he is inside, that this is what provides the attractive force for events, for all the processes of outer life that converge in his destiny.

Thus we will be able to say: From birth to death, we bring order into the succession of our other coincidences of fate when we recognize ourselves, when we overcome our fear of ourselves and recognize ourselves in our true humanity. Because then we also recognize that we have brought misfortune upon ourselves because we want to steel ourselves against this misfortune, because we lacked a strength and the lack of this strength evoked an attribute in us that forms an attraction for precisely this misfortune.

In addition to such a worldview, which thus discovers the actual human being in destiny, comes the realization that the only reason the human being does not want to discover himself in his destiny is because he is afraid of arriving at this view. This is difficult, honored attendees, but once the truths of spiritual research have been discovered, then one does not need to be a spiritual researcher – although, as I explained the day before yesterday, to a certain extent everyone today can become a spiritual researcher by observing the rules written in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. To a certain extent, I said – but one does not need to be. Once the truths of spiritual research have been expressed, they can be understood and recognized by the sense of truth that exists in everyone, provided it is unbiased.

Just as one does not need to be a chemist to benefit from everything a chemist produces – here one does not need to understand it, only to benefit from it – so one does not need to be a spiritual scientist to find truth, because, to use a trivial word, to find truth is the benefit of spiritual scientific discoveries. Just as one can apply chemical products in life, so can one apply that which spiritual research brings, because it is there and one only needs to approach it without the prejudices that come from ordinary habits of thought, which have been sufficiently described, if one only does not approach it, it will have an effect on the natural person.

The spiritual researcher relies on nothing else, on no authority, he relies on nothing else but the fact that he discovers and explores nothing but what lives in every soul. Through his knowledge, nothing is added to reality; what he discovers lives in every soul. Therefore, it only needs to be expressed, therefore what lives in the depths of every human soul must profess what the spiritual researcher has to say.

Even if this is not yet the case today, yes, if it must seem understandable, as I said the day before yesterday, that today much more opposition, disregard, scorn and ridicule is being expressed towards what the spiritual researcher has to say, it is still true that the development in the next future will proceed in such a way that people will just be willing to acknowledge that human life in truth continues through many earthly lives, that fate becomes understandable to us when we see the higher human being prevailing even in the indicated way, in this fate. Thus men will be willing to recognize this, as they have been willing to recognize that which, as it was said at the time, “contradicts the healthy five senses,” namely, that it is not the earth that stands still and the sun that moves around and the stars that move around, but that it is the other way around, that the earth moves around the sun.

Those who come today and say, “What the spiritual researcher has to say contradicts the healthy five senses!” are on the same ground as those people who came at the time of Copernicus and said, “Well, that the sun should stand still, that contradicts the healthy five senses!” No healthy, thinking person can acknowledge that. As in those days – I have already said this here in earlier years – as in those days, when Copernicus's new teaching was accepted, Giordano Bruno came and said: Our five senses have taught us that up there is the blue firmament and under this firmament the stars revolve. But the truth is that there is no blue firmament up there, but that only the limitations of human perception set the firmament - the firmament feigns to you - while the universe goes out into infinity and embedded in the universe are the innumerable stars. Just as Giordano Bruno had to reveal the spatial firmament as a mere appearance, which is evoked by the limitations of human perception, so spiritual science must, I would say, reveal the temporal firmament of the human soul life, which is limited by birth or, let us say, conception and death. Just as there is no firmament above, there are no limits where birth or conception and death are concerned. Only human observation and human thinking in ordinary life are limited there; and this one life is embedded in the whole stream of time.

Today, esteemed attendees, we stand at precisely the same turning point in spiritual knowledge as the world stood in relation to natural knowledge when Giordano Bruno had to step forward and emphasize the deception of the outer space firmament, just as we today must emphasize the deception of the time firmament, of birth and death. But when people will understand, even without becoming spiritual researchers - because just as there are individual chemists, individual astronomers, there will always be individual spiritual researchers in the future - when people have put aside all prejudices against spiritual research, just as they have put aside all prejudices against the scientific world view, then, just as the scientific world view has flowed into the activities of our outer life, how it has, I might say, built up everything around us in our outer life in the modern world, so too will spiritual science, in relation to the life of the soul, into which we live as human beings by living towards the future, that is, into what the spiritual-scientific ideas are.

And above all, it should be noted that these spiritual scientific ideas are incorporated into our feelings and perceptions. And how different these feelings and perceptions become when they are permeated, imbued and suffused with spiritual scientific ideas, for example when we ask ourselves the question of fate. We will find fate intimately linked to what the higher part of ourselves, the actual spiritual soul that goes from birth to birth, accomplishes. Just as we see the laws of nature in the external nature as the connection of the external natural facts, so we will see our higher self, ruling in our destiny.

Of course, the question can always be raised, I just want to say that as an interjection, dear ladies and gentlemen, whether this will always continue in this way for all eternity with earthly life. Well, only as long as the earth is under the same conditions as it is now, will earthly life continue in this way. Spiritual science leads us straight back – you can read more about this in my 'Occult Science' – to very different conditions on Earth. There, the human being has also developed out of very different conditions into a life that leads him through repeated lives on Earth. And when the Earth has taken on completely different forms, there will also be completely different conditions on Earth, as physics already teaches us, then the human being will also take on completely different forms. This life on earth is an intermediate state, from one birth to the next. But as we now live this life on earth, spiritual science is what brings coherence to all our coincidences of fate, what allows us to grow together with our destiny. And it is certainly the case in our time, and I do not want it to be felt as out of place, when it is said that the difficult time that we are going through in these days, weeks and months must particularly direct our souls to such an understanding of human destiny. We see – as I mentioned the day before yesterday – how, in countless sufferings, but also in countless acts of courageous bravery, in admirable acts of sacrifice, what must be lived out in the course of history is being lived out precisely through today's events.

And how can a person who finds himself in these events feel a sense of belonging to these events, how can he feel a sense of belonging to these fateful events of our time, if he can feel how the secret bond of attraction, which has been said to emanate from his being and to prepare his destiny, has placed him precisely in this fateful time? How does one feel, growing together with such a difficult time, when one feels the growing together between the human being in the higher sense and destiny in the sense of spiritual science? And how does that trust grow, which we must have in events, when one sees the connection between the human being and his destiny? On the one hand, we see how we, with our higher self, have chosen this time as our appropriate lifetime, as the lifetime that most closely corresponds to the qualities that we have hidden in our core being, and how we have placed ourselves in this time. In this way we also gain confidence: we will have the strength to truly fulfill the demands that this time must place on us. Not through mere admonitions, not through mere coaxing, not in some sentimental way do we want to be prompted by spiritual science to have confidence, but by saying to ourselves: one thing always demands another. The qualities in our soul that have brought us into this time are connected with others that will also enable us to lead what our time lets us experience to such ends as were presented in the lecture the day before yesterday as arising from the demands of our time.

We do not rely on admonitions, not on sentimental coaxing, but on the knowledge that we can have of the forces that are there to overcome, after the forces were there that led us into the time. For man gains, when he really immerses himself in spiritual science with his soul, honored attendees, that he gains a full awareness of it: Yes, down there in your depths, there are soul forces that you know nothing about, but that can come up from these depths! Above all, man gains trust in himself, trust in the forces that are in him, in the depths of his soul. This is what lies in spiritual science itself as a strengthening soul force. And if we again take up the thread of what I allowed myself to take up the day before yesterday, of Central European culture, how it is, one might say, enclosed by its enemies as if in a great fortress, we can say: this trust is strengthened in us in yet another way.

The day before yesterday, I pointed out how this Central European culture is truly called upon to develop a very special spiritual life, and how this spiritual life can be characterized by saying that the members of other nationalities are born into their nationality; as they are born, so to speak, people stand within their nation, and when you see [how other nations emphasize the national principle], you always find it traced back to the fact that the person was born into that nation. That is precisely what is peculiar about the Central European people, that they are becoming. To use Goethe's words: “Whosoever strives, we can redeem him” — that is the motto of the Central European. To discover what one is, that is the essential thing. To discover during one's lifetime what one is as a Central European cultural being, that is the peculiarity of the Central European, the seeking, the striving.

And so we find, when we look, I would say, properly at the folk spirits of the Central European people, we find, as germinally predisposed, everywhere, the very thing that spiritual science wants to express as its innermost lifeblood, which it hopes will increasingly incorporate itself into culture. And there we see that the germs appear everywhere in the Central European cultural soul, just as it is true that the germs, if cultivated in the right way, must develop into flowers and fruits, so it is true that we may trust that will bear blossoms and fruits and that it will not be possible to prevent this Central European spiritual life from bearing these blossoms and fruits, no matter how many enemies arise against it in the east and west and north and south. For the forces lie within it, the forces do not lie in anything that comes from outside this Central European spiritual life.

So we see, to pick just a few examples, how there are people within Central European intellectual life who are completely immersed in it with all its soul forces and who, I would like to suggest, are pointing to what spiritual science in its full light wants to present to humanity. In this connection I would like to draw attention to a spirit who, especially under the present conditions, has had even less influence on Central European intellectual life, but who is truly completely immersed in it and is characteristic of this Central European intellectual life in the deepest sense: one could call him 'Goethe's deputy'. I am talking about Herman Grimm, the great art historian of the second half of the nineteenth century. I do not want to go into the peculiarities of Herman Grimm's art research, which is so misunderstood by many, today. But I would like to point out that Herman Grimm wrote wonderful novellas and also an extraordinarily significant novel, “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces) is the title.

I would like to draw attention to something in this work of art – which has not been recognized, which is contained in this work of art and which we recognize as characteristic of Central European intellectual life – in just a few strokes. I would like to highlight a few characteristic features. Herman Grimm attempts to depict the fate of people, but everywhere he feels the need to work as an artist towards what spiritual science should bring to the living scientific life of humanity, namely: to link human fate not only to what can be presented externally as events that can be pursued by the mind, but to what stands behind these events.

He has written a novella, 'The Songstress', a very remarkable novella. I mention this novella not because I want to prove something about spiritual science through a work of art, but for the opposite reason, because I want to show how someone who has immersed themselves in spiritual science can find that here an artist describes something in such a way that the spiritual researcher feels: he does not describe certain spiritual processes in a dilettantish way, but he describes spiritual processes in such a way that they correspond to what the spiritual researcher must gradually discover. In this singer, we find a portrayal of how a somewhat flirtatious but nevertheless spiritually advanced lady exerts a great attraction on a person who has to face her in life. But the lady attracts him, the one who loves her so much, and repels him again. And now the novella is constructed in such a way that the one who writes it, who gives the story of himself, is not the lover, but someone else who takes part in telling it in the first person. He says that he has become acquainted with the lady's lover, that he has seen how the lover is drawn to and then repelled by the lady, and how the lover finally comes to be completely ostracized by the lady, and how he comes to lose all comfort and all hope and all security in life. Now we see how the other man, who is his friend, later meets him on a journey, after he has already lost all confidence in life, how he takes him to his house, how he finds out about him, how he is so saddened to death that he really no longer wants to live. So this friend brings the singer herself; she is to come to the house so that the two can meet again. Meanwhile, however, the lover has arranged it so that when the two, the friend and the singer, arrive at the friend's home, the shot is fired and the lover ends his life by suicide upon their arrival. And now we see, as described in a wonderful way by Herman Grimm, how this lady is in the friend's house in the next few nights and how she experiences - after the lover has killed himself - how she experiences, in spirit form, what has passed through the gateway of death from her lover. And Herman Grimm lets us sense that what has gone out through death is actually the determining factor of fate. It is so much a part of this that precisely through the effect that emanates from the appearance of the dead person, I would say the ghostly apparition, the lady herself wastes away and finally dies.

Again, just as with the dream, I do not want to place too much emphasis on the content that is presented, but rather on the fact that here we have an artist who does not stop at the mere one-sided reality of the external sensory world and in the mere summary of the external coincidences of fate, as one says, but who tries to see the chains of human destiny in their connection with what passes through the gateway of death and also to represent it artistically.

Herman Grimm does this not only once, as he shows with his great novel “Unüberwindliche Mächte”. He shows this by letting the novel's heroine, young Emmy, experience how the one who has become the most precious thing in the world to her is murdered. He does not end up by suicide, he is murdered. She is already ill, the heroine, but with the death of her lover she now wastes away. And now Herman Grimm vividly describes how very peculiar death is, how what has passed through the gate of death plays a role in the case of the person who has been shot – he has been shot, has not ended his life by suicide – how this is still connected with the soul of the living, how it affects the living, how it forms a mysterious bond and actually causes the infirmity in this being, Emmy. And now Herman Grimm describes even that which only the spiritual researcher can understand in its full significance: he describes how the spirit form, which passes through death into the spiritual world, really rises. Herman Grimm wonderfully describes how, still in the physical body, I would say imitating head and hands and the whole figure, the spirit rises and passes into the spiritual world, in order to unite as a spirit, as the spirit of Emmy, with the spirit of her beloved friend. Here, too, Herman Grimm shows that he seeks the forces that actually play out human destiny in the spiritual world. Thus we see in this artist how the germ of spiritual-scientific deepening is present in Central European intellectual culture.

Sometimes this germ in the Central European spiritual culture comes to the fore in a very peculiar way. Just to mention one example out of the hundreds and hundreds that could be mentioned, I would like to highlight that of a German schoolmaster who once wrote a treatise on the immortality of the soul. He wanted to publish the second edition of this treatise. A friend of his published it in the posthumous writings. Strangely enough, this friend of the school director, Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, makes a very interesting interpretation in a note. He says that the school director wrote to him before his death saying that if he himself were to publish a second edition of this essay, he would have to describe what he had come up with, namely that in the life between birth and death, a spirit soul being is built up through what the person has worked for, and this passes through the gateway of death into the spiritual world.

When one sees how the way in which Central European intellectual life forms thoughts and feelings, how it tends, how it points everywhere to what spiritual science wants, how the germ points to the blossoms and the fruits, all this points to spiritual science.

And again I would like to say: This too becomes clear to us, especially when we look at the Austrian part of Central European intellectual life and cite some examples, and this too becomes clear to us, as was touched on the day before yesterday, that at the bottom of the soul there is pain and suffering and struggle and that only by conquering pain and suffering and struggle and, as we have seen today, by overcoming fear and powerlessness, is it possible for the human being to develop his life's treasure. This, too, presents itself to us in the outer life, in the whole way of striving, and this now especially, I would like to say, in the Austrian part of Central European intellectual life.

There is a spirit, a wonderfully attractive Austrian spirit, Bartholomäus Carneri. When Darwinism entered modern intellectual life, other spirits developed it in such a way that they drew the logical consequences and formed a one-sided world view, the one-sided world view of materialism. Bartholomäus Carneri wrote books such as the wonderful 'Morality and Darwinism'. Even if one does not agree with the content - because, of course, Carneri only came to a beginning and did not know spiritual science - if one goes into such a book as he wrote in the last period of his life, the book 'Modern Man', then one sees how this man, who was so rooted in Austrian Central European intellectual life, could not help but grasp Darwinism not only intellectually, but also in terms of what man carries in his mind as a moral force. And so Bartholomäus Carneri drew emotional and moral consequences from Darwinism and founded an idealism in a wonderful way based on Darwinism. One may consider this to be wrong, but this peculiar idealism of Bartholomäus Carneri is characteristic of Central European intellectual life.

And we can look at another mind that is truly characteristic, I would say, precisely for a certain state of development of Central European intellectual life, at the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, who at the same time, as his book “The Atomism of the Will, shows that he was also a great philosopher who, in his last years, prophetically presented the mechanization of human life in his “FHomunkulus” and pointed out the necessity to overcome this mechanization of life.

However, esteemed attendees, we have not yet found the inner strength to fully feel everything that had a vital, spiritual effect in spirits such as the aforementioned Herman Grimm, Bartholomäus Carneri, and Robert Hamerling. Those who often dominate literature today have had completely different things to do. But our great fateful time will show where the great nerves of Central European cultural life lie.

There have been people who could not sufficiently delve into the greatness that lies in the characterization, but who have instead admired the greatness of a spirit that is supposed to be particularly outstanding, that has been particularly admired in recent years, and that was met with astonishment when he, as a Frenchman, spoke out so hatefully against Central European intellectual culture. I am referring to Romain Rolland, the author of the novel 'Jean-Christophe'. It is fair to say, esteemed attendees, that just as Robert Hamerling and Herman Grimm had a deep sense of reality, in that they knew that they had to seek reality in its fullness even where the senses no longer reach, as true as it is in Romain Rolland, in his “Jean-Christophe”, one might almost say hatred of reality, a tendency to grotesquely distort reality because it only wants to be looked at externally. And the much-admired novel, which in the eyes of many is supposed to be one of the greatest, “Jean-Christophe”, is, in the eyes of anyone who can feel this, who can feel the roundness and essence of a being, this novel is, in its creation of the hero, Jean-Christophe, a chaotic mishmash, mixed together from the characteristics of Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.

Just as the elements of these four greats could never be combined in a person by nature, so too can this chaos never come together in a healthy artistic nature. Those who knew what Romain Rolland and his real art were like were really not surprised that this Romain Rolland so grotesquely misjudged Central European intellectual life after the war broke out. If only we could really get to the bottom of things, then many things would be understandable, especially in the present.

However, all this cannot make us despondent. It was said the day before yesterday and was also referred to again in today's lecture: that which is built on the surface of human life over an underground, over the struggle and war of opposing powers, contains fear and powerlessness, but something is built over it that must nevertheless be the courage to face life and the development of life; and so it is in the outer world as well. And it is perhaps no coincidence that the peculiarity that strikes us with such wonderful sympathy in Bartholomäus Carneri's philosophical writings has arisen in a life that has been physically and bodily heavily burdened in a paralyzed body; in a body that was paralyzed for a long time, Carneri has struggled to the insights of his noble idealism. There we see how treasures of the mind are wrested from the body. And Robert Hamerling, he lay for decades prostrate with a serious illness. Born of suffering is that which elevates people after it has been born! That which arises from suffering can be precisely that which permeates life with the highest delight and the highest joy.

When one peers into the secrets of life and discovers such peculiarities – the latter is only, I might say, particularly emphasized because it does not appear to be a coincidence – when one discovers such peculiarities, then one will find all the more in this Central European intellectual life the character that it yearns everywhere for such a deepening of the spirit as the future must demand of people. Everywhere minds are at work to find that which Goethe did not write into his “Faust” in his youth, but only later, after Goethe himself had matured, incorporated into his Faust.

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, [gavest me] everything,
Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
The power to feel and enjoy it. Not
Coldly marveling visitors you only allow,
allow me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches and trunks, and the hill thunders hollowly as it falls. Then you lead me to the safe cave,then you show me myself, and my own heart is opened to its deep, secret wonders.

There we see, I would say, the whole gamut of human experience; already we see, in a foreboding way, the whole gamut of human experience, as it is to be opened up by what spiritual science is to explore for the human being of the future. But precisely because this Central European spiritual life has the character of striving, the character of becoming, it will strive more and more to see the related everywhere, to see a related everywhere, to also live in a related in outer nature. The spirit within man will find the spirit outside, truly recognize the brothers in the forest and meadow and in all that is alive. That is to say, the human self will expand and merge with and become immersed in the whole universe. And man will be led to the secure cave, and the mysterious wonders of the spirit's becoming and essence will open up – when he overcomes his fear through spiritual science, to find his true self in the great stream of destiny.

Oh, the forces that are set against this Central European spiritual life feeling like a single, great spiritual organism are also part of this Central European spiritual life. If I may again draw attention to something personal, not to bring up something personal, but only to clarify something, I would like to say: It is difficult for the people of Central Europe to really achieve what they have been predestined to achieve, to achieve, to grow together into a whole, because they have to achieve it through life – not through what they themselves do not strive for, through physical birth, but through the life they choose for themselves in their destiny. That is why it made a significant impression on me – and I am allowed to mention this personal thing, because I really spent half of my life in my Austrian homeland, and the other half of my life in the German Reich, and therefore, putting both on the same scale, I was really able to compare them well. I am allowed to mention such things because I have not only But I can say this because I have not only acquired intellectual but also sensitive judgment in the course of my life. It made a harrowing impression on me when I was sitting in a hotel in Weimar with Herman Grimm and the conversation, which at the time Herman Grimm directed to various really urgent and interesting things, then also came to the Austrian poet Grillparzer, this quintessentially Austrian poet. Herman Grimm said to me at the time: “Grillparzer, I can't understand him; I've been told that Grillparzer is also supposed to be a great German poet. I once passed through Munich, stayed there for a few days, and had some volumes of Grillparzer's dramas sent to me from the library. I tried – says Herman Grimm – to see if I could feel what people say, that Grillparzer is also a great poet. But it seemed to me as if Grillparzer were not a German poet at all, but as if what is in his dramas were translations from a completely foreign language. Thus spoke the honored guest, whom I myself had to describe today as a characteristic spirit, as one of the deepest and most meaningful spirits of Central European intellectual life. Therefore, he may be cited for the fact of how strong the sense of individuality is in the individual members of this Central European cultural humanity.

Even if these people of Central European civilization did not belong to different nationalities, even if they all belonged to one nation, like Grillparzer and Herman Grimm, they are so individually constituted that they can only find each other after great difficulties. This is connected with the opposing forces that are present. But the greater these opposing forces are, the greater must be the forces that are applied to shape the whole into a unified, organic whole. Then it will be in that, as in a cultural current bed, that deepening for the spiritual life can and must be found that can only be truly found within Central Europe, because this Central European spiritual life tends towards the spiritual deepening that I have taken the liberty of indicating today with a few very inadequate, but still a few strokes as the goals of spiritual science. This Central European spiritual life cannot rest until it has developed the blossoms and fruits of what lies within it as a germ.

And anyone who has learned to rely on the driving and sustaining power of inner spiritual forces knows from this inner knowledge that this Central European spiritual life, however besieged and threatened it may be and however fought and waged against it may be by its enemies, will not disappear from history until it has incorporated everything that it has to give to world culture.

And this, esteemed attendees, is still a great and mighty undertaking, for we recognize this spiritual life of Central Europe not yet as blossoms and fruits, but as a germ that must develop. And it is on the driving force of the germ that those who today seek courage and strength for our fateful days from spiritual knowledge itself build. This Central European spiritual life will not let go of what is inherent in it through minds like Goethe and all the others. Goethe has spoken a great and powerful word with regard to the unified recognition of the world as spirit and as outer physicality for those who shrink back in fear of self-knowledge and in the powerlessness to recognize the world. For them, Goethe has also spoken the right words, always finding the right words from his, I would say instinctive, spirit of knowledge, by saying, picking up on a word spoken by another, one of the fainthearted: “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature!”

No, says Goethe, what is in man is capable, if only it is properly developed, of penetrating into the innermost part of nature and into the inner nerve of the world. Therefore, Goethe says in his powerful language, rejecting Haller's “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature”:

I have been hearing this repeated for almost sixty years.
And I curse it, but furtively.

Haller continues:

Happy the man to whom she
Only shows the outer shell.

- namely, nature - and Goethe then says:

Nature has neither core
nor shell,
All at once it is everything.
You alone are tested most of all,
Whether you yourself are core or shell.

Central European intellectual life, however, has the task of developing the kernel into the shell in its soul everywhere. And so today, in a few words, let me summarize in a way that is in keeping with my feelings what I wanted to illustrate in today's and also in yesterday's lecture, to the effect that man is truly created not only to interior of nature, to penetrate the spirituality that permeates nature, but is also created to recognize itself in the flow of its destiny, to be reconciled with this destiny and to understand why it has grown together with the destiny of its time.

Goethe points to the same sentiment with meaningful, though simple words. He points out that what man seeks in spiritual development is indeed a mystery, but a mystery that can be fathomed. Goethe knew that the world is overwhelming, which can already justify the powerlessness of knowledge, but he also knew that this powerlessness can be overcome, that man can penetrate the veil of nature. That is why we want to conclude this reflection with Goethe's words, because they truly and sensitively summarize what is the attitude of spiritual science, what spiritual science wants to illustrate:

When observing nature, you must
always consider everything as one;
nothing is inside, nothing is outside.

Goethe says that what is hidden deep within us we find on the outside, and what we recognize as external, including the outer courses of fate - as spiritual science says - we recognize as the fates of the higher human being.

For what is within is without.
So seize without delay
Sacred public secret.

That, most honored attendees, is Goethe's attitude, that, in full development, will be the attitude of spiritual science and will be able to underlie that soul mood, that soul strengthening, which can arise from spiritual science, in difficult times, but also in such fateful times as we are experiencing today, as we are experiencing them again in our present.

Dear Attendees!

Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science.

And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate.

Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture.

This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people.

From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality.

And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people.

Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again.

Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is.

It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will.

The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving.

And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning.

For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time!

And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul.

These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas.

And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls.

We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed!

This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life.

There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is.

Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time!

In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom.

In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie.

And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine.

Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well.

De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following: