The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements needed for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is because of our organization that full, total reality, including our own subject, appears to us at first as a duality. The activity of knowing overcomes this duality inasmuch as, out of the two elements of reality—i.e., out of the perception and out of the concept produced by thinking—it joins together the complete thing. Let us call the way in which the world approaches us, before it has gained its rightful form through out knowing activity, “the world of appearance” in contrast to the entity composed, in a unified way, of perception and concept. Then we may say that the world is given us as a duality (dualistic), and our activity of knowing elaborates it into a unity (monistic.) A philosophy which takes its starting point from this basic principle may be designated as a monistic philosophy or monism. Confronting this view there stands the two-world theory or dualism. This latter assumes, not just two sides of one unified reality, merely kept part by our organization, but rather two worlds absolutely different from each other. It then seeks principles of explanation for one of these worlds within the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism is based on an incorrect understanding of what we call knowledge. It separates the whole of existence into two regions, each of which has its own laws, and lets these regions stand over against one another outwardly.

[ 3 ] Out of such a dualism has sprung the differentiation between the object of perception and the “thing-in-itself” which, through Kant, has been introduced into science and to the present day has not been expelled from it. According to our expositions, it lies in the nature of our spiritual organization that a particular thing can be given only as a perception. Our thinking then overcomes the separateness of the thing by assigning to each perception its lawful place within the world whole. As long as the separated parts of the world whole are designated as perceptions, we are simply following, in this separating out, a law of our subjectivity. But if we consider the sum total of all perceptions to be one part, and then place over against this part a second one in the “things-in-themselves,” we are philosophizing off into the blue. Then we are merely playing with concepts. We are constructing an artificial polarity, but cannot gain any content for the second part of it, because such a content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.

[ 4 ] Any kind of existence which is assumed outside the region of perception and concept is to be assigned to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The “thing-in-itself” belongs in this category. It is of course completely natural that the dualistic thinker cannot find the connection between his hypothetically assumed world principle and what is given in an experienceable way. A content for his hypothetical world principle can be gained only if one borrows it from the world of experience and deceives oneself about so doing. Otherwise his hypothetical world principle remains a concept devoid of any content, a non-concept which only has the form of a concept. The dualistic thinker usually asserts then that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge; we can only know that such a content is present, not what is present. In both cases the overcoming of dualism is impossible. If one brings a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible, in spite of this, to reduce the rich concrete life of experience down to a few characteristics which themselves are only taken from this perception. Du Bois-Reymond thinks that the unperceivable atoms of matter, through their position and motion, produce sensation and feeling, and then comes to the conclusion that we can never arrive at a satisfactory explanation as to how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for “it is, indeed, thoroughly and forever incomprehensible that it should not be a matter of indifference to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how will lie and move. There is no way to understand how consciousness could arise out of their interaction.” This conclusion is characteristic for this whole trend of thought. Out of the rich world of perceptions are isolated: position and motion. These are carried over and applied to the imagined world of atoms. Then astonishment sets in about the fact that one cannot unfold concrete life out of his principle, which one has made oneself and which is borrowed from the world of perception.

[ 5 ] That the dualist, working with a concept which is completely devoid of any content, of “in-itself,” can come to no elucidation of the world, follows already from the definition of his principle presented above.

[ 6 ] In any case, the dualist sees himself compelled to set insurmountable barriers before our ability to know. The adherent of a monistic world view knows that everything he needs to explain any given phenomenon of the world must lie within the sphere of this phenomenon given him. What might hinder him from attaining this explanation can only be barrier or shortcomings of his organization which chance to be there because of his time or place. And these are, in fact, not barriers and shortcomings of the human organization in general, but only of his particular individual one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of the activity of knowing, as we have determined this concept to be, that limits to knowledge cannot be spoken of. The activity of knowing is not a general concern of the world, but rather is a business which the human being has to settle with himself. Things demand no explanation. They exist and affect each other according to the laws which are discoverable through thinking. They exist in inseparable oneness with these laws. Our selfhood approaches the things then, and at first grasps only that part of them which we have called perception. But within the inner being of this selfhood, the power is to be found with which to find also the other part of reality. Only when my selfhood has united, also for itself, the two elements of reality which in the world are inseparably joined, is the satisfaction of knowledge then present: the “I” has attained reality again.

[ 8 ] The preconditions for the coming into existence of the activity of knowing are therefore through and for the “I.” The latter poses for itself the questions of knowing activity. And my “I” takes them, in fact, from the element of thinking, which is entirely clear and transparent in itself. If we pose ourselves questions which we cannot answer, then the content of the question must not be clear and definite in all its parts. It is not the world which poses us questions, but rather we ourselves who pose them.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that I would lack any possibility of answering a question that I found written down somewhere, without knowing from which sphere the content of the question has been taken.

[ 10 ] Our knowledge is concerned with questions that are posed us through the fact that, over against a sphere of perception which is determined by place, time, and my subjective organization, there stands a conceptual sphere which points to the totality of the world. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, both well known to me, with each other. A limit to knowledge cannot be spoken of here. This or that can at some time or other remain unexplained because we are hindered by our place in life from perceiving the things that are at work there. What is not found today, however, can be found tomorrow. The barriers erected in this way are only transitory ones which, with the progress of perception and thinking, can be overcome.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of object and subject, which has significance only within the realm of perception onto purely imaginary entities outside the realm of perception. But since the things, which are separated within the horizon of perception, are separate from each other only as long as the perceiving person refrains from thinking, which removes all separation and lets it be known as a merely subjectively determined one, the dualist transfers onto entities behind our perceptions characteristics which, even for these perceptions, have no absolute validity, but only a relative one. He thereby divides the two factors which come into consideration for the process of knowledge, perception and concept, into four: 1. the object-in-itself; 2. the perception which the subject has of the objects; 3, the subject; 4. the concept which relates the perception to the object-in-itself. The relation between the object and the subject is a real one; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. The real process is said not to fall within our consciousness. This real process, however, is said to evoke in the subject a counter-effect to the effect coming from the object. The result of this counter-effect is said to be the perception. This is what first falls within our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception is subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to relate the subject to the object. This latter relation is said to be an ideal one. Dualism thus splits the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, creation of the object of perception out of the “thing-in-itself,” dualism lets take place outside our consciousness; the other part, connection of the perception with the concept and the relation of the concept to the object, dualism lets take place inside our consciousness. With these presuppositions it is clear that the dualist believes he can gain in his concepts only subjective representations of what lies in front of his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, through which the perception comes about, and all the more so, the objective interrelationships of the “things-in-themselves,” remain unknowable in any direct way for such a dualist; in his opinion the human being can only create for himself conceptual representations of what is objectively real. The bond of unity among things, which joins these things with one another and objectively with our individual spirit (as “thing-in-itself”), lies beyond our consciousness in an existence-in-itself of which we would likewise only be able to have a conceptual representation within our consciousness.

[ 12 ] Dualism believes it would rarify the whole world into an abstract conceptual pattern if it did not affirm, besides the conceptual relationships of objects, real relationships as well. In other words, the ideal principles to be found through thinking appear to the dualist to be too airy, and he seek in addition to them real principles by which they can be supported.

[ 13 ] Let us take a closer look at these real principles. The naive person (naive realist) regards the objects of outer experiences are realities. The fact that he can grasp these things with his hands and see them with his eyes, is for him valid proof of their reality. “Nothing exists the one cannot perceive,” is to be regarded as precisely the first axiom of the naive person, and it is accepted just as much in its reverse form: “Everything that can be perceived, exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive person's believe in immortality and spirits. He pictures the soul to himself as fine physical matter, which under particular conditions can become visible, even to the ordinary person (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] Compared to his real world, everything else for the naive realist, particularly the world of ideas, is unreal, “merely ideal.” What we bring to the objects in thinking, that is mere thought about things. Our thought adds nothing real to our perception.

[ 15 ] However, not only with respect to the existence of things does the naive person consider sense perception to be the only testimony of reality, but also with respect to processes. A thing can, in his view, only work upon another when a force present to sense perception goes forth from the one thing that lays hold of the other. Earlier physics believed that extremely fine substances stream out of material bodies and penetrate through out sense organs into the soul. The actual seeing of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our senses compared with the fineness of these substances. In principle one granted reality to these substances for the same reason one grants it to the objects of the sense world, namely, because of their form of existence which was thought to be analogous to that of sense-perceptible reality.

[ 16 ] The self-sustained being of what is ideally experienceable is not regarded by the naive consciousness as real in the same sense as what is experienceable by the senses. An object grasped in a “mere idea” is regarded as a mere chimera until conviction as to its reality can be given through sense perception. The naive person demands, to put it briefly, in addition to the ideal testimony of his thinking, the real testimony of his senses as well. In this need of the naive person lies the basis for the rise of the primitive forms of belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking remains, to the naive consciousness, always a God who is only “thought.” The naive consciousness demands a manifestation through means which are accessible to sense perception. God must appear in bodily form, and one wants to attach little value to the testimony of thinking but only to such things as proof of divinity through changing water into wine, which is verifiable by sense perception.

[ 17 ] The naive person also pictures the activity of knowing as an occurrence analogous to the sense process. The things make an impression in the soul, or they send out pictures which penetrate through the senses, and so on.

[ 18 ] That which the naive person can perceive with his senses, he regards as real, and that of which he has no perception (God, soul, knowing, etc.) he pictures to himself as analogous to what is perceived.

[ 19 ] If naive realism wants to found a science, it can view such a science only as the exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are for it only means to an end. They are there in order to create ideal reflections of our perceptions. For the things themselves they mean nothing. Then naive realist regards as real only the individual tulips which are seen, or can be seen; he regards the one idea of tulip as an abstraction, as the unreal thought pictures which the soul has composed for itself out of the features which all tulips have in common.

[ 20 ] Experience, which teaches us that the content of our perceptions is of a transitory nature, refutes naive realism and its basic principle that everything which is perceived is real. The tulip that I see is real today; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What has maintained itself is the species tulip. But this species, for naive realism is “only” an idea, not a reality. Thus this world view finds itself in the situation of seeing its realities come and then vanish, while what it holds to be unreal maintains itself in the face of what is real. Therefore the naive realist must also allow, besides his perceptions, something else of an ideal nature to play its part. He must take up into himself entities which he cannot perceive with his senses. He comes to terms with this in that he thinks the form of existence of these entities to be analogous to that of sense objects. Such hypothetically assumed realities are the invisible forces through which sense-perceptible things act upon each other. One such thing is heredity, which transcends the individual, and which is the reason why, out of one individual, a new one develops, similar to it, through which the species maintains itself. Another such thing is the life principle permeating the bodily organism; another is the soul, for which the person of naive consciousness always finds a concept analogous to sense realities; and still another, finally, is the Divine Being of the naive person. This Divine Being is thought to be active in a way that corresponds exactly to what can be perceived of how the human being himself is active; anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern physics traces sense impressions back to processes of the smallest parts of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, of ether, or to something similar. What we, for example, experience as warmth is the motion of a body's parts within the space taken up by the body causing the warmth. Here also something unperceivable is again thought of an analogous to what is perceivable. The sense-perceptible analogy to the concept “body” is in this sense something like the interior of space enclosed on all sides, within which elastic balls are moving in all direction, striking each other, bouncing on and off the walls and so on.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions the world would disintegrate for naive realism into an incoherent aggregate of perceptions without mutual relationships, that comes together in no kind of unity. It is clear, however, that naive realism can only come to this assumption through an inconsistency. If it wants to remain true to its basic principle that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not, after all, assume something real where it perceives nothing. The unperceivable forces which emanate from perceivable things are actually unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism. And because it knows of no other realities, it endows its hypothetical forces with perceptible content. It therefore applies one form of being (that of perceptible existence) to a region where it lacks the means which alone has anything to say about this form of being: sense perception.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory world view leads to metaphysical realism. This constructs, besides perceivable reality, still another unperceivable one, which it thinks of as analogous to the first. Metaphysical realism is therefore necessarily dualism.

[ 24 ] Wherever metaphysical realism notices a relationship between perceivable things (movement toward something, becoming aware of something objective, and so on), there it postulates a reality. But the relationship which it notices, it can express only through thinking; it cannot perceive the relationship. The ideal relationship is arbitrarily made into something similar to what is perceivable. So for this trend of thought, the real world is composed of the objects of perception, which are in eternal becoming, which come and then vanish, and of the unperceivable forces by which the objects of perception are brought forth and which are what endure.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are unperceivable entities with the qualities of perceptions. It has decided—besides the region of the world for whose form of existence it has a means of knowledge in perception—to allow yet another region to exist, where this means fails, and which can be discovered only by means of thinking. But metaphysical realism cannot at the same time bring itself also to acknowledge the form of being which thinking communicates to it, the concept (the idea), as an equally valid factor along with perception. If one wants to avoid the contradiction of the unperceivable perception, one must acknowledge that, for the relationship between perceptions which is communicated through thinking, there is no other form of existence for us than that of the concept. When one throws out the unjustified part of metaphysical realism, the world presents itself as the sum total of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) relationships. Then metaphysical realism flows over into a world view which demands, for perception, the principle of perceivability, and for the interrelationships among perceptions, thinkability. This world view can grant no credibility to a third region of the world—besides the perceptual world and the conceptual one—for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, have validity at the same time.

[ 26 ] When metaphysical realism asserts that, besides the ideal relationship between the object of perception and in perceiving subject, there must exist in addition a real relationship between the “thing-in-itself” of the perception and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceivable subject (of the so-called individual spirit), then this assertion rests upon the incorrect assumption of an unperceivable real process analogous to the processes of the sense world. When metaphysical realism states further that I come into a consciously ideal relationship with my world of perception, but that I can only come into a dynamic (force) relationship with the real world—then one commits no less the error already criticized. One can speak of a relationship between forces only within the world of perception (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside it.

[ 27 ] We shall call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism finally flows when it strips of its contradictory elements, monism, because this world view joins one-sided realism with idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For naive realism the real world is a sum of objects of perception; for metaphysical realism, reality is also ascribed to the unperceivable forces, as well as to perceptions; monism replace the forces with the ideal connections which it gains through thinking. Such connections, however, are the laws of nature. A law of nature is indeed nothing more than the conceptual expression for the connection between certain perceptions.

[ 29 ] Monism is never put in the position of asking for other principles of explanation for reality besides perception and concept. It knows that within the entire domain of reality there is no cause to do so. It sees in the world of perception, as this is directly present to perception, something half real; in uniting the world of perception with the conceptual world it finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist may object to the adherent of monism: It might be the case that for your organization your knowledge is complete in itself, that no part is mission; but you do not know how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from yours. Monism's answer would be: If there are intelligences other than human ones, and if their perceptions have another form than ours do, then only that has significance for me which reaches me from them through perception and concept. Through my perception, and indeed through my specifically human perception, I am placed as subject over against the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject re-establishes this connection through thinking. It has thereby united itself again with the world whole. Since it is only by our subject that this whole seems to be split at a place between our perception and our concept, so it is that in the reuniting of these two true knowledge is also given. For beings with a different world of perception (for example, with twice our number of sense organs) the connection would appear to be broken at a different place, and its re-establishment would accordingly also have to take a form specific to those beings. Only for naive and metaphysical realism, which both see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world, does the question of a limit to knowledge arise. For them, what is outside the subject is something absolute, something self-contained, and the content of the subject is a picture of it and stands totally outside this absolute. The completeness of one's knowledge depends upon the greater or lesser similarity of one's picture to the absolute object. A being whose number of senses is smaller than man's will perceive less of the world; a being with a larger number, more of it. The former accordingly will have a less complete knowledge than the latter.

[ 30 ] Monism sees the matter differently. Through the organization of the perceiving entity, the form is determined as to where the coherency of the world appears torn apart into subject and object. The object is not something absolute, but only something relative with respect to this particular subject. Therefore the bridging over of this antithesis can again only happen in the very specific way precisely characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the “I,” which is separated off from the world in perception, joins itself back into coherency with the world again in thinking contemplation, then all further questioning, which was only a consequence of the separation, ceases.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our knowledge suffices to answer the questions posed by our own being.

[ 32 ] Metaphysical realism must ask, by what means is what is given as perception given; by what means is the subject affected?

[ 33 ] For monism, perception is determined through the subject. But at the same time, the subject has in thinking the means by which to dispel this self-evoked determination again.

[ 34 ] Metaphysical realism confronts a further difficulty when it wants to explain the similarity of the world pictures of different human individuals. It must ask itself how it comes about that the picture of the world, which I construct out of my subjectively determined perception and my concepts, is equivalent to the picture which another individual constructs out of the same two subjective factors. How can I, out of my subjective world picture, draw any conclusions at all about that of another person? From the fact that people manage to deal with each other in actual practice, the metaphysical realist believes himself able to infer the similarity of their subjective pictures of the world. From the similarity of these world pictures he then goes on to infer the likeness existing between the individual spirits underlying the single human subjects of perception, or rather between the “I's-in-themselves” underlying the subjects.

[ 35 ] This inference is therefore of a kind in which, from a sum of effects, the character of their underlying causes is inferred. We believe, from a sufficiently large number of instances, that we recognize the state of affairs well enough to know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. We call such an inference an inductive inference. We will see ourselves obliged to modify the results of an inference, if a further observation yields something unexpected, because the character of the result is after all determined only by the individual form of the observations already made. The metaphysical realist claims, however, that this conditional knowledge of the causes is altogether sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] The inductive inference is the methodological basis of modern metaphysical realism. There was a time when one believed one could unfold something out of concepts which was no longer a concept. One believed that, out of concepts, one could know the metaphysical real beings which metaphysical realism after all needs. This kind of philosophizing has been overcome and is obsolete today. Instead of this, however, one believes that one can infer, from a large enough number of perceptible facts, the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Just as formerly from the concept, so today one seeks from our perceptions to be able to unfold the metaphysical. Since one has concepts before oneself in transparent clarity, one believed that one could also derive the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. Perceptions do not lie before us with the same transparent clarity. Each successive one presents something different again from earlier ones of the same kind. Basically, therefore, what has been inferred from earlier perceptions is somewhat modified by each succeeding one. The form which one wins in this way for the metaphysical must therefore be called only a relatively true one; it is subject to correction through future instances. Eduard von Hartmann's metaphysics has a character determined by this basic, methodological principle; he set as motto on the title page of his first major work: “Speculative results arrived at by the inductive scientific method.”

[ 37 ] The form which the metaphysical realist today gives to his things-in-themselves is won through inductive inferences. Through his deliberations on the process of knowledge he is convinced of the existence of an objective real coherency of the world alongside the “subjective” coherency knowable through perception and concept. He believes that he can determine, through inductive inferences drawn from his perceptions, how this objective reality is constituted.

Addendum to the Revised Edition of 1918

[ 38 ] For the unprejudiced observation of our experience in perception and concept—the description of which has been attempted in the foregoing considerations—certain mental pictures that arise in the field of nature study will again and again be troublesome. One says to oneself, standing in this field, that colors in the light spectrum from red to violet are perceived through the eye. But beyond violet there lie forces within the spectrum's sphere of radiation for which there is no corresponding color perception of the eye, but for which there is definitely a corresponding chemical effect; in the same way, beyond the boundary of red effects, there lie radiations which have only warmth effects. Through consideration of this and similar phenomena, one comes to the view that the scope of the human world of perception is determined by the scope of the human senses, and that man would have a completely different world before him, if he had, in addition to his own senses, still others, or if he had altogether different ones. A person who likes to go off into extravagant fantasies (to which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research give a quite enticing stimulus) may very well conclude that into man's field of observation can come only what can act upon those senses which have emerged out of his organization. Man has no right to regard these perceptions, which are limited by his organization, as being in any way conclusive for reality. Every new sense would have to place him before a different picture of reality.—All this is, within appropriate bounds, an altogether justified opinion. But if someone allows this opinion to confuse him in his unprejudiced observation of the relationship between perception and concept which our expositions establish as valid, then he blocks his way to a knowledge of the world and of man that is rooted in reality. The experience of the being of thinking, that is, active working with the world of concepts, is something altogether different from the experience of what is perceivable through the senses. Whatever senses man might ever have in addition to his present ones, not one of them would give him a reality if he did not, in thinking, permeate with concepts the perceptions communicated by it; and every sense, whatever its nature, thus permeated, gives man the possibility of living within reality. Fantasies about the completely different perceptual picture possible with other senses have nothing to do with the question of how the human being stands within the real world. One has to recognize, in fact, that every perceptual picture receives its form from the organization of the perceiving entity, but that the perceptual picture, which is permeated by the experience of thinking contemplation, leads the human being into reality. Fantastic depictions of how differently a world would have to appear to other than human senses cannot motivate the human being to seek knowledge about his relationship to the world, but only the insight can do so, that each perception gives only a part of the reality contained within it, that it leads, therefore, away from its own reality. The other insight then takes its place beside the first, that thinking leads into that part of reality which is present in, but hidden by, the perception itself. It can also be disturbing for the unprejudiced observation of the relationship presented here between perception and concept worked out by thinking, when the necessity arises in the realm of physical experience of speaking, not at all about elements which are directly visible to perception, but rather about invisible magnitudes such as electrical or magnetic lines of forces, and so on. It can seem as though the elements of reality about which physics speaks had nothing to do either with what is perceivable, nor with the concept worked out in active thinking. But such an opinion would rest on a self-deception. In the first place it comes down to the fact that everything which is worked out by physics, insofar as it does not represent unjustified hypotheses which should be excluded, is won through perception and concept. What seems to be an invisible content is placed, by the physicist's correct instinct, for knowledge, totally into the realm in which perceptions lie, and is thought about in concepts with which one is active in this realm. The strengths of electrical and magnetic fields and so on are essentially not found through any process of knowledge other than that which occurs between perception and concept.—Increasing the number, or changing the form, of our human senses would result in a changed perceptual picture, in an enrichment or different form of human experience; but even with respect to this experience, a real knowledge would have to be attained through the interaction of concept and perception. Any deepening of knowledge depends upon the powers of intuition that live in thinking (see pages 71–72). This intuition can, within that experience which takes shape and is elaborated in thinking, delve down into greater or lesser depth of reality. The broadening of one's perceptual picture can be a stimulus to this delving down and in this way indirectly promote it. But this delving into the depths should never, in its attainment of reality, be confused with whether one stands before a broader or more narrow perceptual picture, in which always is present only half of reality because of conditions placed on it by the knowing organization. Whoever is not lost in abstractions will see how there is relevance for our knowledge of man's nature in the fact that physics must infer elements within the realm of perception, to which no sense is directly attuned the way there is to color or tone. The concrete nature of man is not only determined by what, through his organization, he places before himself as direct perception, but also through the exclusion of other things from this direct perception. Just as, besides our conscious waking state, the unconscious sleeping state is necessary to life, so, besides the circumference of our sense perception, there is necessary for man's experience of himself, a circumference—much greater in fact—of non-sense-perceptible elements within the realm from which our sense perceptions originate. All this has already been indirectly expressed in the original text of this book. The author adds these amplifications to the content of his book, because it has been his experience that many readers have not read carefully enough.—Attention should also be paid to the fact that the idea of perception, as developed in this book, should not be confused with the idea of outer sense perception, which is only a specific instance of the idea of perception. One will see, from the foregoing considerations, but even more from the following ones, that here, everything which approaches man sense-perceptibly and spiritually, is regarded as perception, before it is grasped by the actively elaborated concept. In order to have perceptions of a soul or spiritual nature, senses of the kind usually meant are not necessary. One might say that broadening our present use of language in this way is not permissible. But this broadening is absolutely necessary, if one does not want to be fettered in certain areas by just such current usage in broadening our knowledge. A person who speaks of perception only in the sense of sense perception will also fail to arrive at a concept, adequate for knowledge, concerning this sense perception. One must oftentimes broaden a concept so that, in a narrower realm, it will gain the meaning appropriate to it. One must also sometimes add something to what was at first meant by a certain concept so that what was thus meant finds its justification or even its correction. Thus, on page 96 of this book, one finds it stated that, “The mental picture is therefore an individualized concept.” The objection was made to me that this is an unusual use of language. But this use of language is necessary, if one wants to get behind what a mental picture really is. What would become of our progress in knowledge if the objection were made to everyone who is obliged to set a concept right, that: “That is an unusual use of language?”

If you reflect on what has been presented here in the last few reflections, it will be clear to you that the evolution of modern humanity contains within itself two, one might say, opposing impulses for its further development, two opposing impulses which, in a certain way, must be avoided by what spiritual science is to bring into this evolution. We have contrasted the two impulses in the most diverse ways. We have shown how one impulse, after having been prepared for a long time by various forces that we have shown and that are rooted in the supersensible or subsensible worlds, has united for human thinking and striving in what can be called the physical relationship of beings and forces – we said kinship – and that which is joined to this thinking and striving for the kinship of beings, especially for the consideration of human existence, if one uses the word as we have used it, is birth. As a kind of social ideal, so to speak, what we have called bliss stands alongside this sense and striving for physical kinship and physical origin of beings, which in the 19th century in particular has developed into the principle of mere utility. On the other hand, we have seen that this is countered by another impulse, which is less directed towards how man comes into existence through birth than towards pondering the problem: how does man go through the gate of death? So instead of birth, there is contemplation and striving for an understanding of death. Instead of the physical kinship of forces and beings, there is the contemplation of evil, pain, and suffering in the world. And as a kind of social ideal, this is joined by what we can call the redemption from or in existence, liberation, and so on.

We have seen that the culture of the West strives more for what is indicated on the left (see diagram on page 238), while the culture of the East strives more for what is indicated on the right, insofar as these cultures do not feel fertilized by the general human sense and aspiration, by the general human ideal, but abandon themselves to what, as it were, befits them by virtue of their national and climatic and other local peculiarities. We have seen how, under the influence of these general impulses, individual concepts and ideas also take on a certain coloration, nuance. We have seen how what can be called the struggle for existence, the selection of the fittest, and so on, fits so well into the main impulses that are preparing in Western culture, and how this has been opposed in the East, and in no less scientific a way than the struggle for existence emerged in the West, by what can be called the mutual assistance of beings. And I have explained to you how what was to be achieved in the West through the one-sided principle of the struggle for existence, which is based on the principles that I explained to you last time, should lead to an understanding of the development of living beings. It was said that what best exists in the struggle for existence lives on, what exists worst perishes, so that, as it were, what exists better, that is, what is relatively perfect, develops out of what is imperfect. What the struggle for existence means is mutual assistance, according to those Eastern sciences whose truly significant results Kropotkin summarized in the book I mentioned to you the other day. They believe that the best chances for development towards perfection are found in those animal species in which the principle of mutual assistance is most widespread.

And so we could cite many things that would testify to the way in which these two polar impulses have really come into humanity's evolution today, so to speak. This is what we must, I would say, look at with seeing eyes; for if spiritual science is to fulfill its task, then it is essential that both one-sidedness and both polarities be avoided and that they work together to form a wholeness. What I am going to draw today and tomorrow — today in preparation, tomorrow we will then move on to the consequences — will not be drawn in the sense that it must, under all circumstances, be placed in the world as if by mechanical necessity. Rather, it is meant that evolution tends towards these things, and that we must avoid what the one-sided development of these two poles could bring. If we do not recognize what, so to speak, if the word is not pressed, wants to come into existence, then we cannot find the right way to bring the synthesis, the summary, into life, which alone can be achieved through spiritual science.

If we first consider everything that is, as it were, carried by these abstractions here (see diagram on page 238), we have to say: that (on the left) is a spiritual cultural impulse that wants to come to life and that has its full justification in the one tendency of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch. I have shown you how this fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch has developed human beings in such a way that, on the one hand, they must strive for what Goethe calls the archetypal phenomenon, the pure, hypothesis-free, un-fantastic observation of what external natural phenomena present to the senses: the archetypal phenomena. That is one thing. The other (on the right) is an ever-increasing number of imaginations emerging from the depths of the human soul and freely shaped by that human soul. These imaginations will, one might say, arise with inner soul necessity in certain people of our fifth post-Atlantic period. Just as people in this fifth post-Atlantic period will be increasingly inclined, on the one hand, to observe nature and its phenomena impartially, to search for archetypal phenomena instead of hypotheses, so, on the other hand, people will be particularly inclined to allow imaginations to arise from their souls that can lead deeper into the spiritual world.

Today we have no idea where humanity is heading in this respect. One can oppose the direction in which we are heading, but this will not stop it and prevent its coming into existence. More and more people will stop inventing all kinds of hypotheses about natural phenomena; they will truly devote themselves purely to what is a spiritual representation of the phenomena, as Goethe did in his physical considerations. Goethe once said so beautifully: One does not make hypotheses about natural phenomena; the blueness of the sky itself is the theory; one should not look for anything behind the phenomena when they are purely understood. All the pondering over all kinds of atomic configurations, over atomic constructions, will cease; the senses will be directed purely at the phenomena and will only put them together, these phenomena, in such a way that they explain themselves. Today, this is only just beginning, but it will continue to develop further and further. Today it is in its infancy, and those who, for example, have studied chemistry in recent decades know what atomic constructions have been built, purely hypothetically. Such things are often bandied about to people by all kinds of monistic and other lay associations long after they have been overcome by science. There is a wide-ranging discussion, especially with regard to the hypothesis about atomic structures, and it is not uninteresting to take a good look at what has been discussed. For most people still get a slight shudder at the success of science in this field when they hear about the atom of this substance looking like this, the atom of that substance looking like that, and so on. People do not then consider that these are pure hypotheses, pure figments of the imagination, which are being bandied about. In particular, van't Hoff was one of those chemists who recently constructed bold stereometric forms in order to understand the atom. And we know – at least most of us will know – that theosophists of a certain orientation have also been very much involved in this nonsense about the structure of the atom. A crazy science, which can never be a science, the so-called occult chemistry, has been built up and has indeed found particular favor among those who want to approach it from theosophy or the like. But van't Hoff has not remained unchallenged. Chemists with good insight, such as Kolbe, have spoken out against what Kolbe calls van't Hoff's hallucinations.

From this you can see, by the way, that not only the spiritual is referred to as hallucinations, but that natural scientists themselves also sometimes apply this term to each other's findings. Yes, Kolbe, who wants to stop at pure phenomena in chemistry, even used the beautiful saying and said: Van't Hoff rides the chemical Pegasus, which he will have borrowed as a naturalist from the veterinary school of pharmacy that is friendly with his laboratory, and in this riding of the chemical Pegasus he finds all kinds of bold stereometric forms. One can only hint at the inner workings of science. It would take many, many lectures to show the assumptions on which what is presented to laymen today as a certainty is based. All these things, these speculations, with which the second half of the 19th century in particular has experimented with regard to the natural world, will gradually have to be left out, because science will become more and more science will become more and more convinced that these speculations are nowhere justified by the sequence of phenomena, that one can always put forward the most diverse hypotheses, and that just as much can be said for or against each of them. On the one hand, the pure recording of phenomena will be a justified impulse.

On the other hand, however, in this fifth post-Atlantic period, which, as we have heard, will last for many centuries, the human soul will be just as likely to be inclined to form imaginations. Many will consider these imaginations to be mere fantasy, mere figments of the imagination. But these imaginations will be created by the human soul to gradually lead this human soul into the realm of the spiritual world. That this consists in the fifth post-Atlantean time is based on a certain fact, on a fact that can be seen through by spiritual science, which is still far from being based on external physiology, but which can already be envisaged by spiritual science. The entire human constitution of the organism has truly become different compared to the overall constitution of the Greco-Latin period, which began in the 8th century BC and ended in the 15th century AD. Today, this can only be recognized through the observing consciousness; but it can be recognized.

Man consists essentially of the same earth-like, water-like, air-like, warmth-like elements as outer nature. He is likewise permeated by the light-like, he is permeated by the chemical-legal, he is permeated by the living like the outer nature. Thus man is permeated by the coarse physical as well as by the etheric; only subtle differences emerge in the human constitution in the successive periods of human development. Although people today generally believe in evolution in nature, they are not inclined to go into the finer details of evolution. The human body in connection with soul and spirit was quite different in the Greco-Latin period than it is during our present fifth post-Atlantic period. The main difference lies in the fact that during the Greco-Latin period, that which can be described as an earthy element, that is, that which, in contrast to the watery element, has an earthy constitution, a firm cohesion, insofar as this is present in the human organism, was closely bound to that which can be called the life ether. So that one can say, if one retains the old - today disputed, but what does that matter to us? - designation of earth and life ether: there was a close interaction of the life ether with the earth-like, thus with the solid element in man during the Greek-Latin development up to the 15th century. And the peculiarity of the present human being is that there is a loosening between the ether of life and the earth-like element. So there is a loosening. The ether of life in today's human being is no longer as firmly connected to the earth-like element as it was during the Greco-Latin cultural epoch.

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These are things that can be established. Today, however, I would like to direct your thoughts to a different area and come back to this tomorrow to give you some reasons for the fact that I have just mentioned: that what a person experiences in his whole organism experiences because of the life ether within him, is, in our time, much more separated from what is experienced as a result of the earth-like element than it was in Greco-Latin times. But this means that the experiences due to the earth-like element require a pure looking at the outer world. Precisely because the earth-like element is loosened up, it becomes possible to look at the archetypal phenomena unclouded by hypothesis. And because the life ether is separated, it becomes possible to experience in this separated life ether that which permeates human beings with imaginations rooted in the supersensible world. It is precisely through this loosening that this is the case.

Now, in those cultures that are dominated by Western ideas (see diagram on page 252), the human organization, because it always develops one-sidedly, tends to draw attention to what is experienced in man by virtue of the earth-like element. In cultures that are inclined towards evil, death, liberation and mutual assistance, nature tends to focus more on what can be experienced as a result of the life ether. These are the two one-sidednesses: the one-sidedness of the West, which is experienced more as a result of the earthly, earth-like element in man, the one-sidedness of the East, which is experienced more as a result of the one-sided experience in the life ether.

These considerations lead us into the deepest secrets of evolution in our time. And they must be clearly envisaged, for otherwise humanity is threatened, as it were, by the one-sided assertion of polar opposing impulses. Today this evolution, of the one and the other, has not yet progressed very far, but for those who do not want to play the ostrich in the face of life, who want to numb themselves to the sight of reality, it is already clearly perceptible, if only they have the concepts to master the things. On the one hand, there is an ever-increasing urge to accept only what is sensually real, and on the other hand, an urge to accept only what comes from the imaginative world as the justified, not only in knowledge – perhaps even least of all there – but in everything that permeates and shapes life, which one wants to push into social life. These things develop within it. For one group, the one on the left (page 252), this can already be clearly seen; for the other group, we are only at the very beginning of a different insight. One impulse is to fight imaginative life, at least for the sake of knowledge, and to accept only the mere phenomenon. You see this tendency purely expressed when you consider all that Darwin himself has written. For it was Haeckelian doctrine that first introduced hypotheses and theories into Darwinism. In the work of Darwin we always find the desire to describe the phenomena. He only draws the broad lines from the presuppositions to which I recently drew your attention, and he draws the broad lines from what life strives for within this cultural community, now in turn only to accept the external physical and to focus more and more only on the external physical, to fight the imaginative world, to eradicate the imaginative world, even from social life. And so, I would say, a very specific human ideal arises from this complex of concepts: a human ideal that eats into everything and wants to permeate everything, that wants to make man a knower in a certain way, a knower who overlooks the external physical world but is dismissive of everything that leads to the spiritual world. Sometimes he deceives himself about the fact that he actually behaves negatively, by coining all kinds of words for strange concepts that are supposed to be spiritual, often even mystical, but which in reality amount to nothing more than what I have now characterized.

This is the case, for example, with Bergsonian philosophy. Of course, many people today believe that Bergson's philosophy is a kind of mysticism and that it intervenes in contemporary life as a kind of mysticism. But what matters is not what people think about something, but what emerges in reality. And yet this supposed mysticism will lead not to a refutation, but to a support for a merely positivistic world view.

Of course, this cultural impulse contains all the elements needed to bring about the primal phenomenal; but it also prepares the way for the one-sidedness of labeling everything imaginative as a product of fantasy and expunging it from the so-called scientific, and that with regard to man as a cognizer.

With regard to the human being as an agent, as a social being, it was also preparing itself for the fact that more and more the principle of the mere usefulness of experience and action in what is externally perceptible, what is externally there , what has value for man between birth and death, comes to the fore, and everything else is, as it were, only there to be harnessed in the right way into a blissful world or into a utilitarian world, which is there in the sensory world. Laws and ideals are made in order to be able to enjoy the sensual-real better, so to speak. This tendency can be clearly perceived in both the utopians and the socialists of the West. It is everywhere, I might say from Moras to Comte, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, it appears everywhere in theory. But it also appears in the habits of life, it permeates social feeling, social thinking, but also social action. And one can say: the ideal of man that develops under the influence of these impulses, which are here only roughly indicated by a few abstractions, that is the specter, one could say, of the bourgeois, who, like a kind of ideal, haunts everywhere where the characterized one-sided impulse wants to drive itself one-sidedly into existence. It is only a deception about the most essential if today the socialist often thinks that he is no longer dominated by the bourgeois ideal. He often strives all the more for the bourgeois ideal, in that he also wants for himself, little by little, what was granted to the bourgeois through the time in which the bourgeois just emerged. The bourgeois recognizes the sensual world and regards that which is valid for him. Concepts and ideas are only there to hold the sensual world together with brackets. The bourgeois experiences himself in that which is essential for the time between birth and death, and regards everything else that can be thought up in terms of social institutions and social ideals, insofar as it can further that which is included between birth and death.

Many who are today deeply immersed in these bourgeois ideals will fiercely resist them in their consciousness. But the same applies to them, perhaps only in a different way, as Mephisto says: “The little people never feel the devil, even when he has them by the collar.” So people often do not notice the things that influence them most.

Well, I characterized to you last time how the spiritual, if one had achieved what certain circles wanted with Blavatsky, but which was then thwarted, as well as how the spiritual should have been placed in the service of the purest bourgeois ideal: Information centers should have been set up where the media would have been used to obtain many a stock market secret and other secrets for life “through the power of the mind and the mouth”. That this urge is not without resonance in the hearts of contemporary people can be seen from much documentary evidence; for it is not so rare that letters come to me from people who write again and again that they have lost their fortune and that I should tell them for this or that kind of lottery, out of communications from the spiritual world, which number will be drawn, and similar things. You laugh about it, but these things are not so very rare, and especially from such circles of society that you would often be amazed if you were to be told the titles of the people who write such and similar things.

So also the spiritual, the power to look into the spiritual world, is not envisaged by this one-sided impulse in such a way that one should enter into the spiritual world, but that, if such powers already exist, one should grasp them in the physical world in order to further the physical world with regard to the principle of usefulness. That is one-sidedness. Today I will describe it in abstract terms, tomorrow it will be more concrete.

The other one-sidedness that threatens the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantic period is that which is influenced by those concepts and ideas in a one-sided way, where the great achievements of the phenomenal world are more rejected, but instead the cultivation of imaginations is envisaged above all. This is even more in its infancy than the other one-sidedness. But anyone who is familiar with the development of Russian intellectual life is also familiar with the many one-sided tendencies in this area. For within some Eastern circles, the tendency towards significant imaginations is becoming more and more pronounced. Anyone who is interested can see for themselves what form these imaginations take by reading the first volume of Solovyov's translation, which I would recommend. In the “Three Conversations” at the end of the volume, you will find how this most important of Russian philosophers develops truly significant , significant imaginations arise in this intellectual world, this penetration into the spiritual world, even if it is often one-sided, even if it is often wrong — that is not the point now, but the point is that this develops as a certain disposition. This is characteristic of the other one-sided impulse of our evolution of the fifth post-Atlantic period. A life will develop that attaches little importance to world phenomena, but more and more importance to the imaginations that a person brings forth from himself, imaginations that can often intensify to a visionary life. A special preference for such a visionarily shaped life will develop with all that it entails.

That which is under the western impulse, disregards the spiritual connections, goes to the physical-sensual; what is there the individual must therefore include the spiritual connections, because they are only to appear physically, in the physical forces, that is, it must flow into the power organization of social life as much as possible. Therefore this one-sided organization of power strives for great empires, for mighty organizations that destroy the individual. If such things are only just beginning today and therefore cannot be seen by those who do not want to see them, this does not do anything for the recognition of the truth. In the East, on the other hand, the spiritual is directly present in the individual human being. It is only in his individuality that man can make the spiritual real here in the physical world. Therefore, everything that is influenced by these impulses strives for the dissolution of external power organizations, for the dissolution of everything that seeks to hold people together through treaties, laws, state organizations, and so on. Such things often conceal themselves. But when great power structures and organizations arise in the East today, it is initially only a reaction against the very principle of the East, namely, forming nothing but small communities with a sectarian character, not only in the field of religious life, but also in the field of social life, of views on the most ordinary, everyday coexistence. All this strives for the dissolution of the imperialist. And the ideal of humanity that is developing is that of a person who wants to go through life to free themselves from life, to go through death as strong as possible, to overcome the impulses of evil as strongly as possible, to seek liberation from what is only valid between birth and death. This is the goal within these cultural communities: to go through life in such a way that the human being can focus entirely on the imaginative world wrestling within him, developing a kind of cosmos, a soul cosmos within himself, unconcerned with external connections. While, on the one hand, external connections will become more and more important and more and more important, while people will dream more and more of external connections and seek bliss more and more in external connections, on the other hand, there will always be the “desire to break free” in human life. While in the West the ideal of humanity is the bourgeois, in the East the ideal of humanity is – I cannot find a better word at the moment – the pilgrim, as one says in some German dialects: the 'Bilcher', who and who basically continues on this pilgrimage until he passes through the gate of death, in order to enter into the true liberation with a strong soul that has borne all experiences. If this impulse develops one-sidedly, it will deny the firm standing in the other impulse.

These are the two one-sidedness: on the one hand, the mere life in the phenomenon, in the appearances, on the other hand, the mere life in the imaginations that do not want to tie in with the outer life. And what threatens, because everything in the world must collide, is that these two one-sided impulses enter into conflict with each other, more and more into the fight. This struggle will be one of the hallmarks of the fifth post-Atlantic period. On the one hand, there will be ever-increasing efforts to create coercive organizations, and on the other hand, efforts to dissolve them. The matter is not yet so obvious, because there is always the idea that what is unfolding today, for example, in the Russian East as a seemingly great empire, is a reality. But with such things, one encounters much more slogans and false ideas than what really exists. There are no greater contradictions in reality than between what is preparing in the imperialism of the European and American West and what is preparing in the East, even as far as the East of Asia. These are complete contradictions. And what is reviving the West in many respects, what is called the national principle there, is regarded today as something the same or similar to what is called Pan-Slavism in the East. There is no greater nonsense than this; for Pan-Slavism is anything but something national. It is only seemingly characterized by the slogans of the West as something national for the Pan-Slavists themselves; in reality it is that which is about to dissolve the national. However paradoxical these things may still appear today, because what is totally different from each other is often referred to today as something the same, however paradoxical what I have to say seems, it is deeply rooted in the really moving forces. [Written on the blackboard: ]

Thus we see how two one-sided impulses threaten synthetic evolution and must be clearly understood, because all knowledge and ideas and ideals, whether based on knowledge or in the social sphere, can only be properly established for the future, if one is truly aware of these impulses, if one knows that when one reflects on law or morality or religion or any natural phenomenon, these two concepts from the subconscious of the human soul always strive to emerge and want to shape the concepts. If we consider the development from the fourth post-Atlantic period, the Greco-Latin period, up to our fifth post-Atlantic period, we can see how what I will present to you as a fact tomorrow must necessarily come to the fore in culture and set the tone. If we consider characteristic phenomena, we can see this. Take, for example, a phenomenon such as a drama by Calderon, who died in 1681 but whose work represents the after-effects of the fourth post-Atlantic period, the Greco-Latin period. Let us consider, for example, the following representation of Calderon: The hero of this representation, Cyprianus, is a pagan magician with a thirst for knowledge, who has studied everything that a pagan magician of his time can study. So this drama, written at the beginning of the 17th century, presents us with this Cyprianus, but still entirely in the sense of the fourth post-Atlantic culture, as a pagan magician who has studied everything “with great zeal” and who is now thinking deeply about religious and epistemological questions, who wants to know “what holds the world together at its core”. And while he is striving for such knowledge, an evil demon appears to him in both a spiritual and physical sense, promising to truly introduce him to the world he seeks, to let him find “what holds the world together at its This evil demon, who appears to him in human form, causes Cyprianus to also feel love, which he had not known before, love longing. The evil demon also kindles this love yearning in a young girl in order to bring about a collision with Cyprian's love yearning. And so in the drama we are led to Justine, who is a true Christian. But the demon gets to her and wants to bring her together with Faust, that is, with Cyprianus. She resists, and the demon has no power over her. That is in Calderon's mind, because she is a Christian. Then the demon seizes an opportunity. He cannot bring Justine – Gretchen – herself to Cyprianus; so he takes a phantom out of her. He separates this out, and he now brings this phantom in human form to Cyprianus, who now believes he has Justine in his arms. But she soon reveals herself as a ghost. Now Cyprian addresses the evil demon in a similar way: “Evil figure, leave me or transform this ghost into a human being of flesh and blood!” But the evil demon has no power over her, not only because Justine has just been to confession, but because she is a Christian. And when Cyprianus sees this, he also decides to long for Christianity – he is a pagan magician until now – and the demon cannot prevent him from doing so. After he has undergone long trials, has learned the secrets of nature and the spirit in nature over the course of a year, but has also accepted the Christian principle, the Christian impulse, he appears at the same time that Justine's father and Justine have been sentenced to death as Christians. And he now appears to them and demands to become a Christian. They also die together. And the demon appears, riding on a snake, and proclaims how the one who can thus receive the Christ impulse within himself can be redeemed.

Of course, I need not say, for I have already indicated it many times by misspelling, that in this Calderon's Cyprianus we have a true forerunner of Faust. But there is a characteristic difference, and we want to consider this characteristic difference. We do not want to dwell on what some particularly clever-thinking aesthetes have said about this drama: that it insults the modern aesthetic sense when Calderon, after the death of Justine and Cyprian, because it is enough to have seen him appear in the interplay of passion, all the way to tragedy, to the purely human. There is no need for the demon to appear and seal it. One can leave that to the very clever people of the present day, who just don't know that the people of the past, including Calderon, were interested in what the evil demon himself then experiences. But as I said, I don't want to get into that, I want to draw attention to another difference that really comes into consideration. If you experience Justine, with the differences that naturally arise, because one is a 17th-century Spanish drama and the other is Goethe's Faust, and if you look at things and see certain similarities – with differences – between Justine and Gretchen, for example, then one is bound to say: this figure of Gretchen is very similar to the figure of Justine in her artistic disposition, in everything. But in the overall development of the drama, there is a significant and important difference. Cyprian and Justine experience physical death, physical martyrdom, together, and with that, Calderon's drama concludes. Then there is only the demon, riding on the snake, who seals this, who pronounces the meaning of it.

With Goethe, we see something quite different. If we take the whole of “Faust” now, with its first and second parts, during the course of the drama at the end of the first part, Gretchen goes through the gate of death, and Faust develops further. And at the end, we see how Faust and Gretchen are brought together. But Gretchen, who has long been in the spiritual world above as a soul, is introduced to Faust. That is the bold, great, and powerful thing about Goethe: even at the end of Faust, he still brings Faust and Gretchen together, but Gretchen as a soul that passed through the gate of death long ago. The man, the poet of the fifth post-Atlantic age in the form of Goethe is much more spiritual than the poet in Calderon, who still represents the echo of the fourth post-Atlantic age. Of course, Calderon was better at looking into the spiritual world than Goethe. Therefore, on the one hand, there are Justine and Cyprian, both passing through the gate of death as physical human beings, and on the other hand, there is the spiritual world: the demon riding the snake and other spiritual events. But I would like to say that the two are clearly separated. And that is the important thing: in the fourth post-Atlantean period, when there is a close connection between the life ether and the earthly, the spiritual and physical worlds are strictly separated. Now the two views diverge, that which is experienced between birth and death, and that which is experienced in the spiritual world. But the relationship, the connection, must also be sought for this. This is expressed so wonderfully and powerfully in the fact that Faust and Gretchen do not die at the same time, and yet the end of the second part of Faust brings them together: the spiritual and physical worlds are poetically interwoven. In this Faust creation, you have one of the first great attempts at connecting the two things with each other for the fifth post-Atlantic period: the physical world of phenomena, of appearances, and the spiritual world of imaginations. And that was precisely the difficulty for Goethe - one can see this from his conversations with Eckermann - to present the powerful final Imagination that brings Gretchen, who has long since passed through the gateway of death, together with Faust again, and thus makes the whole world that Faust experiences after the death of Gretchen, this world of physical experiences that Faust has experienced after her death, meaningful for Gretchen as well. Of course, Faust is also dead when he meets Gretchen, but it can be seen that Gretchen's effect is intended in connection with Faust, while all of Faust's experiences from the beginning of the second part to the death that he himself undergoes at the end are intended in connection with what is mentioned above in the spiritual world, where Gretchen is already present.

Thus Goethe himself first presented a spirit that attempts to combine the two one-sided views and to create a synthesis. And it is precisely this that one can find so consciously in Goethe. Just imagine how Goethe, for his part, also strove for an understanding of the relationship between living beings, but not by seeking a merely physical order, but by trying to fertilize these relationships through the imagination, which arose in him through contemplation. This is beautifully expressed in Faust, where we see Goethe poetically expressing what he had already understood about the connection between living beings, which Faust expresses in the beautiful words in “Forest and Cave”, which I have often quoted:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
Why I asked for. You did not turn your face to me in vain
In the fire.
You gave me the magnificent nature for my kingdom,
Strength to feel and enjoy it. Not
You only allow cold, astonished visitors,
Grant me to look into their deep chests
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living Before me, and teach me my brothers In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, falling, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks, sweeps down,
And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall,
Then you lead me to the secure cave, show
Then myself, and my own breast
Secret, deep wonders open up.

Here we see the world of phenomena understood purely, but as a gift from that exalted spirit whom Faust wants to approach. Humanity must become more and more aware that external nature must not be speculated upon, for if it is speculated upon, senseless theories will gain more and more ground; that external nature must rather be observed purely, but that the secrets of this external nature will reveal themselves to men of the fifth post-Atlantean age, through imaginations arising from the soul, which will reveal the spirit of nature. Man will come to know that which forms his cognition, his knowledge and his social life from two sides: on the one hand, from an ever-widening and deepening knowledge of the outer connections of the immediate sensory world, and on the other hand, from the grasping of real imaginations originating in the spiritual world. We will continue these reflections tomorrow. Today, I wanted to provide preparatory ideas, and tomorrow we will then move more into the specifics of spiritual life.

This lecture is the third lecture in the lecture series entitled, The Karma of Human Vocation as related to Goethe's Life. It was later published in the lecture series, The Karma of Human Vocation.

All of these lectures are tending more or less to the central question of man's calling or profession. Some people may think that the study of this question from the spiritual-scientific point of view is one of the least interesting subjects. But it is not so,—especially not in this present period, the 5th post-Atlantean. For in this period all the conditions in which men live will very largely be changed, as against the conditions that obtained in former periods on Earth. And for this change, man himself, out of his freedom, will have to bring with him more than he brought with him in former times, when his allotted task in earthly evolution worked itself out more or less instinctively, and the direction he had to take in one respect or another was suggested to him, as it were, from a higher source.

Let us look back for instance to the Egypto-Chaldean civilization, or any other civilization of former times. As to the forming of his outer destiny, not nearly so much was left in man's own hands as is the case to-day (and it will be more and more so in the future). In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch each man had his station—his rank in life—and was fastened in it (albeit not so firmly), much like an animal is fixed within its species. Thus many things that come within the scope of human freedom to-day did not do so in the past. There was, however, a certain counterpoise to this restriction of man's freedom in olden times. Our external historians think in a very short-sighted way. People often imagine that it was in olden times as it is to-day; that the leaders of human affairs were inspired by mere human impulses like the leading personalities of our day and generation. But you must remember that in the Mysteries of olden time there were quite definite procedures whereby the leaders informed themselves of the will and intention—not of earthly Beings, but of the Beings who guide this earthly life from realms beyond the Earth. I have told you how the high priest's conducted certain ceremonies of the Mysteries at certain seasons—we need not describe them again in detail now. The purport of the ceremony was, as it were, to place into connection with the Cosmos—with processes beyond the Earth—chosen individuals within the temple-service. For then, into the consciousness of these chosen individuals—who were especially suited to receive Their influence—Beings who guided the Earth from regions far beyond, could work. What the priests thus received of the will of the guiding spiritual Beings, this they accepted as instruction for the measures which they had to take. We may illustrate it by a hypothetical assumption,—though of cour.se in our time things are not done in this way. Let us suppose that our Christmas festival did not take its course as it does to-day, where it remains for most people a more or less external festivity. Let us suppose we were aware throughout the Christmas festival: ‘During the Christmas Season, our Earth as a living Being is peculiarly adapted to receive into its aura Ideas which cannot enter the Earth's aura at other seasons—in summer time for instance.’ I have explained how the Earth is awake during the winter season. One of the brightest points of this awakeness is the time of Christmas. At this time the aura of the Earth is woven through and through with Thoughts. At this time the Earth is meditating on the surrounding Universe, just as we human beings in our day-waking Life meditate in thought upon the things that surround us. In summer the Earth is asleep. In summer, therefore, certain Thoughts cannot be found in the Earth. In winter it is awake,—and most radiantly of all at the time of Christmas. For then the aura of the Earth is woven through and through with Thoughts, and in these Thoughts we may read what the Cosmos requires of our earthly happenings.

Certain human beings had to undergo an individual training, so as to become sensitive and receptive to what was living in the Earth's aura. The priests of the sacrifice who trained them were then able, as it were, at certain moments to connect them in the temples with these Thoughts of the Earth, which voiced the cosmic Will. So were the priests enabled to find out the cosmic Will. According to what they thus discovered as the ‘Will of Heaven,’ they could then determine who was to remain within a certain tribe, or who should be received within the Mysteries, thereafter to assume a leading place in statecraft or priesthood.

Mankind has grown out of all these things. Mankind, in a certain sense, is handed over to chaos in this respect. Of that we must be well aware. The transition from these old and definite conditions, when men discovered from the Will of Gods what should take place here on the Earth, took place throughout the fourth post-Atlantean period. For in that period the human individuality was emancipating itself, so to speak, from the cosmic Will, and the old customs gradually passed over into our present, somewhat chaotic conditions. Everything is tending to be placed more into the hands of man. But it is all the more necessary for the Will of the Cosmos to enter into our earthly conditions in a new way. Even in the Egyptian and Babylonian period of civilization (the 3rd post-Atlantean), that which works and weaves into the earthly realm out of the several human trades and callings was to a high degree an image of the cosmic will. It would take us a long time to explain this, but we might well do so. It was brought about in the way above described. But in the course of the 4th post-Atlantean time, all this was growing vague and confused, and it became utterly so during the present time (the 5th post-Atlantean) which, as you know, began about the 15th century. It is a pity the people of to-day do not observe what really happens. It is a pity they dish up a fable convenue in place of real History. If they were more observant they would recognize, even from the outer facts, to how large an extent everything has changed since the 14th and 15th centuries in the living-together of men in their several callings. And from the present conditions they would then perceive how increasingly different these things will become in future. Truly a kind of anarchy would overwhelm the human race if there were no-one to perceive these deeper relationships, and communicate to the spiritual life of man on Earth ideas which can reckon with these changes. For the changes are inherent in the very course of evolution.

Anyone who has a real feeling for human life would be astonished to discover all that is observable even in outer History, in the rise of the modern life of callings and vocations, since the 15th century. Anyone who really let work upon him what is quite recognisable even in this way, would assuredly reproach himself with having lived so sleepily, without giving a thought to what is connected so profoundly with the evolving destinies of mankind.

Now as I pointed out in our last lecture, the life of human callings and professions is by no means without meaning for the cosmic whole, though at first sight if might appear so. We human beings, as I said, have undergone successively the Saturn evolution (when the first plan of the physical human body was prepared), the Sun epoch (when the etheric man was prepared), the Moon epoch (when the astral man was prepared), and we are now undergoing the Earth epoch, during which the Ego is growing and developing. These will be followed by others—the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan epochs. And we may say: As the Earth is the fourth stage from Saturn, so is Vulcan the fourth stage from Earth. Earth is, in a manner speaking, the Saturn of Vulcan. The processes that took place on old Saturn are intimately connected with our evolution, for we owe to them the first plan and beginning of our physical body, which is still working in us. So likewise on the present Earth, something must take place, which, working on in evolution, will attain on Vulcan a fourth stage of development, even as the processes on Saturn have attained a fourth stage of development during the Earth epoch. Moreover, as I showed you, these processes which will correspond on Vulcan to what we have on Earth from Saturn evolution, are none other than what lives and works in the varied callings which men take up upon Earth. Men upon Earth are working at their several callings, and as they do so there evolves on Earth, within their work, something which is a first beginning for Vulcan, just as the Saturn activity was a first beginning for the physical human body of to-day.

Consider now in this connection the tremendous change which the life of callings and professions has undergone since the fifth post-Atlantean age began. Then you will realise how increasingly necessary it will be to place the life of human callings into the whole course of cosmic evolution, thinking of it from the points of view which spiritual science can evolve. We must first acquaint ourselves with the objective aspects of the vocational life of man. Only then can we arrive at true conceptions of the Karma of vocation. And we must be still more interested in the present tendencies of evolution in this respect. For the tendencies which are at work will give us a clearer idea than the actual conditions which prevail to-day.

Further developments in this respect will lead to the several callings growing more and more specialised and differentiated. This we can easily recognise, if only we look out into the world to-day with common sense. People to-day sometimes speak critically of this increasing specialisation of callings and occupations in modern time. But there is little wisdom in such criticism. ‘Not many centuries ago,’ they say, ‘man at his daily work was still able to see the connection of the thing he made with its use and meaning for the world. He had an intimate vision of what would become of his product in the lives of men.’ So indeed it was in former times, while to-day, for the majority of men, it is no longer so.

Take a radical instance. Destiny places a man into a factory. Maybe he does not even make a nail, but only part of a nail, which another man will then piece together with a different part. He cannot develop any real interest in the way in which, what he has manufactured from early morning till late evening, will place itself into the whole nexus of human life. Compare the former handicrafts with the present factory system. There is a radical difference between what now obtains and what existed not so very long ago. Moreover, what has already taken place to a high degree in certain branches of work will take place more and more. Increasing specialization and differentiation will inevitably come into the life and work of men. Really it is not very wise to criticise the fact. It is a necessity of evolution and it will come about, more and more. There is no escaping it.

What sort of a prospect does this open up? This prospect, we might imagine: Men would increasingly lose interest in that which occupies the greater part of their lives. They would be more or less mechanically given up to their work in the external world. And yet, that is not even the most important aspect. For it goes without saying that the outer habit of man's life must affect his inner being—and that is far more important. Study once more the historic evolution of mankind and you will find to what a degree men have become the impress of their several occupations during the 5th post-Atlantean age. Man's occupation works its way down into his inner soul. The human beings themselves grow specialised. You must not adopt as your standard the majority of those who are now living in the Anthroposophical Society. For many of these are in the happy position to be able to sever themselves from the whole complex of modern life. In the happy position, did I say? ... I might equally well have said, in the unhappy position. For to a large extent it is happiness only for our subjective, selfish human feeling; not for the World at large. The World will more and more require men to do good work in special spheres. The World itself will require men to specialise. More and more, therefore, this will be the question: What is to happen alongside of the specialising of men? They will specialize; the necessities of World-evolution will see to that, quickly enough. But what must happen in addition?

In a none too distant future this will become one of the most important ‘family questions,’ and people will need an understanding of it if they want to educate their children. They will need to place themselves intelligently into the whole course and trend of human evolution when the question comes before them: How shall I place my child into this human evolution? It will depend on their large-minded understanding of this question. Today, out of a certain sloppiness of thought, it may still be possible to adhere to the old phrases which are a mere relic of former times and will soon reveal their emptiness—pretty phrases, which so many people still admire: ‘Observe the child's predisposition. Let him take up what accords with his native talents.’ This above all will soon be proved—an empty phrase. For in the first place, as we shall presently see, those who are born into the world henceforth will be related to their former incarnations in a far more complicated way than in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The whole system of predispositions will be of a complexity hitherto unknown.

Predispositions were simpler in former times. We shall live and learn, ... and as to those who think themselves peculiarly wise in examining the talents and predispositions of adolescent children and declaring them fit for this or that calling, we shall soon discover that such insight is often no more than the fantastic imaginings of men who think themselves too clever. And apart from that, the life of men will in the none too distant future grow so complicated that the word ‘calling’ will assume quite another meaning. To-day, when we speak of ‘calling,’ or ‘vocation,’ we still often think of something inwardly determined; But in reality most people's ‘calling’ is no longer so. We speak of ‘calling’; we imagine: ‘That to which the man is called by virtue of his inner qualities.’ Well, let us inquire objectively, especially in the towns and cities. How many people will answer, I am in my calling because I recognise that this is the only one which answers to my talents and predispositions from a child. Of the town populations, at any rate, a very small proportion will reply that they are in the very calling which answers to their talents. I think, from your own observations of life, you will scarcely believe that it is otherwise. To-day already, in a high degree, our ‘calling’ is that to which we are called by the objective course of evolution of the World. It will be more and more so in future. Outside, in the outer World, is the organism, the complex, or if you will, the machine,—it matters not how you name it—which makes its demands on man, i.e., which ‘calls’ him.

All this will become more and more intensified. Nevertheless, in this very process, what mankind achieves in vocational work is loosed from the man himself and grows more objective. And precisely inasmuch as it is thus severed from man, it will increasingly become what in the further development through Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan will undergo a similar process to what was undergone for the Earth through Saturn, Sun and Moon.

It is strange. When as a spiritual scientist one speaks of things that touch the life of man so nearly, one cannot generally speak so as to please. Spiritual Science will be less and less exposed to the danger of speaking after the pattern of that ‘wisdom’ which is expressed in the quotation: ‘At most a deed of State with excellent pragmatic maxims, suitable for puppets to declaim.’ On the contrary, Spiritual Science will often be obliged to declare great and fraught with meaning for World-evolution, precisely the things which human beings would not gladly have. Many a person of today—who thinks himself a man of genius because his head is filled with modern, Philistine ideas,—may say of these things, ‘How prosaic and external!’ To a true Spiritual Science the vocational life of man appears in quite a different light. Spiritual Science must say: The vocational life is necessary for the development of relationships which have a cosmic meaning, precisely inasmuch as it is in a certain measure loosed and separated from human interest.

Some will say, perhaps: ‘What a sad perspective for the future! Man is having to enter the treadmill of life more and more; and not even Spiritual Science can give him comfort at this prospect.’ But to draw this conclusion would again be a great mistake. For in the Universe it is so: things work themselves out through a balancing of polar opposites. You need only think how it forces itself on your attention everywhere. Positive and negative electricity produce their effects in the balancing-out of their mutual relation; they are necessary one to another. The male and female are necessary for the propagation of the human race. In World-evolution the totality evolves out of one-sidednesses.

And this, too, underlies the matter we have just explained. In the vocational work which is severed from the human being, we have to create the first cosmic beginnings of a far-reaching World-evolution. All that happens in World-evolution stands in relation to the spiritual; and in all that we do in trades and callings and professions—whether by manual or by so-called mental work—there lies as it were the starting-point for the incorporation of spiritual beings. Now, during earthly time, the.se beings are still of an elemental kind—we might call them elemental of the fourth degree. But when the Jupiter evolution has arrived, they will be elementals of the third degree, ... and so on. The work we do, precisely in the objective process of our callings, is severed from us and becomes the outer garment, the outer vehicle, for elemental beings who will develop on through cosmic evolution. Yet this will happen only under one condition. On the one hand we must say: We are only beginning to understand the meaning of what is so often maligned as the mere prosaic life. Yet at the same time we must realise that the meaning of it will not be fully unveiled till we understand it as a whole, in the great World-connection. What we create in our daily occupations can indeed gain significance for Vulcan evolution. But to this end another thing is necessary. As positive electricity is needed for negative, and male for female, so, too, an opposite pole is needed, to add to these occupational activities which will more and more be loosed and severed from mankind. Such polarity, depending upon contrasts, existed already in former evolutionary epochs of mankind. It is not altogether new, needless to say; something not unlike it was already there before. But as you look back on former periods of culture—even a few centuries ago—you will find things very different. For with his feelings, even his passions—his whole emotional life, in a word,—man was far more engaged in his daily occupation than he can be to-day. Compare the many joys a man could have in his calling-, even a hundred years ago, with all the unhappy drudgery which many a one to-day already has to undergo if he has nothing else in life beside his calling. Then you will gain an idea of what I mean. Such things are far too little considered nowadays, and for a simple reason: Those who do most of the talking about vocations—about the different kinds and characters and choices of vocation—are generally people for whom it is easy enough to talk: schoolmasters, litterateurs and parsons, people who experience least of all the disadvantages of modern vocational life. To hear people talk in the usual literature of to-day (not excluding that on education) one generally feels, they are like blind people talking about colours. For a man of to-day, who with a certain social background went to public school, and then, maybe, looked around him a little at some University, it is easy enough to¹ feel very clever when he sets himself up as a reformer of mankind and knows how all things should be done. For he has absorbed all manner of ideas. There are many such reformers; but to anyone who sees through life, these people who tell us how things should be done generally appear the most foolish of all. Their foolishness only passes unobserved, because, for the moment, there is still a great respect for those who have undergone such education. The time is yet to come, when it will rather be the prevailing feeling that a litterateur, a journalist, a schoolmaster—trained in the way schoolmasters generally are nowadays—understands least of all of the real facts of life. This, too, must gradually become the prevailing judgment.

The point is now, that we should see more clearly: The vocational life of former times was connected with the emotional life of men, and it is of the very essence of evolution in this respect that the vocational life has grown out of the human life of emotions and will do so more and more in future. Hence, too, the opposite pole, which the vocational life requires, must become different from what it was before. What was it in former times? You have it before you still when you observe with sympathy what has to-day become a more or less outer husk of culture (and will inevitably become so more and more). There are the houses in the village, wherein the several trades and callings are pursued, gathered around the Church. The Church in the centre. Six days of the week are devoted to trade and craft and calling, and Sunday to what the human being shall receive only for his soul. Such were the two poles before: the vocational life and the life in religious thoughts.

It would be the greatest possible mistake to suppose that this other pole can remain to-day as the religious societies and sects imagine. It cannot remain as it now is, for it is altogether adapted to a kind of vocational life which is bound up with the human emotions. All human life would be parched and stunted if an insight into these matters did not now arise. The old religious ideas were to some extent sufficient so long as the elemental spirituality which man created at his calling—for he did create elemental spirituality in the above-described sense—did not sever itself from man. To-day, they are no longer sufficient, and they will be less and less so the farther we go on into the future. What is necessary now is the very thing which is most attacked in certain quarters. There must now enter into human evolution the other pole which will consist in this: Men must be able to form clear and detailed ideas about the Spiritual Worlds.

The existing representatives of religious faiths will often say, ‘There goes Spiritual Science, talking of many Spirits, many Gods. One God is all that matters. Is not one God enough?’ To-day one can still make a certain impression by telling people of the great advantage of reaching out to the one God—especially if one does so at the family tea party, pouring derision on ‘these modern movements,’ and putting the thing forward in a more than usually Philistine and self-sufficient way. Nevertheless, it is essential that the points of view of men grow wider. Humanity must learn to know not only that everything is permeated by one Divine Spirituality (conceived as vaguely as possible), but that Spirituality is everywhere—concrete, detailed Spirituality. The workman who stands at the lathe will have to know: As the sparks fly out, so too are the elemental spirits created, who then pass out into the World-process and have their significance in the World-process. Some who believe themselves unduly clever may reply: ‘That is unwise; the elemental spirits will arise, even if one who has no notion of it is standing at the lathe.’ They will arise, no doubt. But the point is, that they should arise in the right way. The point is not that they must arise at all, but that they should arise in the right way. For there may either arise elemental spirits who disturb the cosmic process, or who serve it.

You will best see what I mean if you consider it in one especial sphere. In all these matters, we are now at the beginning of an evolution which stands directly at our doors. Many a man is beginning already now to divine something of it. If it were translated into reality without passing over at once into spiritual-scientific strivings, it would be the worst thing that could happen to the Earth. For what has chiefly happened during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is this: Man has been loosed, to begin with, from the outer inorganic world which he embodies in his tools. He will be brought together again with what he embodies in his tools. Nowadays, many machines are constructed. It goes without saying, the machines today are objective. There is little of the human element in them as yet. But it will not always be so. The tendency of World-evolution is for a connection to arise between what a man is and what he creates—what he produces. This connection will become more and more intimate. It will emerge to begin with in those spheres on which a closer relationship between man and man is founded—in the treatment of chemical substances for instance, when they are worked up into medicines. People today may still believe that a substance consists of sulphur and oxygen and hydrogen and what-not besides; and that the product of combination will only contain the effects that proceed from the several substances combined. To-day, to a large extent, this is still true; but the tendency of World-evolution is in another direction altogether. Intimate pulsations which are inherent in man's life of will and feeling, will more and more be woven and incorporated in that which he produces. It will no longer be a matter of indifference whether we receive a preparation from one man or another.

Even the coldest and most external technical developments are tending in a very definite direction. He to-day who can divine with his imagination future technical developments, is well aware that in the time to come whole factories will work in an individual way according to the manager. The spirit, the mood and outlook of the man will go into the factory and be transmitted to the way in which the machines work. Thus man will grow together with the objective things. All that we touch will by and by bear the impress of human being. Humanity will learn, however foolish it may yet appear to the clever people. (Did not St. Paul already say, What men hold wise is often foolish before God?) The times are coming when a machine will stand there and remain at rest. A human being will approach it, knowing that he must make one movement of the hand in this way, another in a definite relation to it, and a third again; and through the pulsations in the air which thus arise out of a certain sign, the motor, being attuned to this particular sign, will be set in motion.

Then the development of economic life will assume an aspect such that external patents and the like will be out of the question; for the effect of these things will be replaced by what I have just explained. Moreover, anything that has no relation at all to human nature will be excluded, and a quite definite result will be made possible. Imagine at some future time a really good man, highly evolved in his whole mood and outlook. He will be able to construct machines and to determine signs for them—signs which can only be made by men of a like spirit, men who are also good like himself. While all who are evilly disposed will, if they try to use the sign, create a quite different pulsation and the machine will not work.

It was not for nothing that I told you how certain people can see flames dance under the influence of certain notes. If further researches are made in this direction, the way will presently be found to what I have just indicated. Or, as we might also put it, the way will be found again to those old times when the one alchemist, who only wanted money for his purse, could attain nothing, where, with the very same process, another one who did not want to put money in his purse but desired to enact a sacrament in honour of the Gods and for the healing of Mankind, succeeded.

So long as the product of the daily work of men carried the aura of their emotions—of the joy and gladness which they put into their work—it was inaccessible to the kind of influence which I have just described. But now that the work done by the labour of men at their several vocations can no longer be produced with special enthusiasm, what thus goes out from men will be able to become a motive force—and in like measure. In a certain sense, man is giving back, to the world of machines which proceed from his labour or which serve his labour, its chastity and purity, inasmuch as he can no longer connect it with his emotions. In future it will no longer be possible, so to speak, from the glowing hearth of joyful work at one's vocation to endow the things one makes with one's own human warmth. But on the other hand one will place them into the world more chastely, and thereby also make them more receptive to the motor force, which, as above described—proceeding from man himself—will be destined by man for the several objects. But to give human evolution this direction, detailed knowledge is necessary of the spiritual forces which can be investigated only by Spiritual Science. Only in this way can it come about. For such a thing to happen as we have just described, depends upon a larger number of people in the world finding increasingly the other pole. For in this they will find their way to one another—from man to man—in those interests which, though they go beyond our daily work, our callings, can nevertheless illumine and penetrate them through and through. Life in the spiritual-scientific movement can lay the foundations of a united human life which will lead all the vocations together. Purely external progress in the development of the vocations would soon lead to the dissolution of all bonds of humanity. Men would understand one another less and less; they could unfold less and less of those relations that accord with the true human nature. Increasingly, they would pass one another by, seeking no longer any more than their advantage. They would come into no other relation to one another than that of competition. This must not be allowed to happen, for otherwise the human race would fall into utter decadence. Spiritual Science must be spread in order that this may not be so.

But there is the possibility to describe in the right way what many people—though they may deny it—are striving for unconsciously to-day. You know how many there are nowadays who say, ‘To talk of the spiritual—what antiquated nonsense! We will develop the purely physical sciences in all domains. That is the real advancement of mankind. Once men grow beyond the stage of talking antiquated nonsense about spiritual things, then there will be as it were the Paradise on Earth.’ But it would not be Paradise, it would be Hell on Earth if the human race were dominated by no more than competition and the acquisitive impulse, with this as the balancing and equalising principle. After all, if things are to go on at all, there must be another pole; and if people refuse to look for the spiritual pole, then perforce they must have an Ahrimanic one. When human occupations grow more and more specialised, we might, after all, still have this unifying principle. We could say, ‘The one man is this, the other that, but they all have this much in common; each one desires through his calling to earn, to gain as much as possible. That is what makes all people equal.’ No doubt! But it is purely Ahrimanic principle.

To imagine that the world can manage with a one-sided development, advancing purely on external lines as we have here described it, would be precisely the same in this sphere as if someone were to declare (for let us assume that there was such a queer crank—or shall we say, for politeness, ‘lady-crank’): ‘Men have become worse and worse and worse; they are quite impossible people; they ought to be exterminated. Then only shall we have the right kind of evolution on the physical plane.’ She would be a queer crank, would she not, who imagined this, for nothing at all would be the result if all the men were exterminated. Because it is in the world of the senses, people understand this. In the Spiritual World they fail to understand the corresponding ‘crankiness.’ And yet, for spiritual things it is precisely the same when anyone imagines that external evolution can go forward by itself. It cannot.

Just as the former periods of evolution demanded the abstract religions, so does the evolution of modern time demand the more concrete spiritual knowledge which we are striving after in the spiritual-scientific movement. Born of the occupational work of man which is now severed from the man himself, the elemental spirits will have to be fertilised by the human soul, through what the human soul receives from the impulses that rise to spiritual regions. Not that this is the only task of Spiritual Science. But it is its task in face of the developing and changing life of human callings. Demanded as it is by World-evolution itself upon the Earth, this insight must come into the hearts of men, in like measure as their occupations mechanise the human being. This counter-pole must become more and more active, precisely for the human beings of to-day who are becoming specialised and mechanised. The counter-pole is this: Man must be able to fill his soul with that which brings him near to every other human soul, no matter in what direction specialised.

And this will lead us to far more ... Our time, with the indifference and solitude and separation which it often involves for specialists and workers, must give way to quite another age, when men will work inspired once more by very different impulses. These will truly be no worse than the good old impulses of trade and craft and calling; but the latter cannot ever be renewed. They must be replaced by others. In this respect, we to-day can no longer merely indicate in abstract terms a human ideal which Spiritual Science wishes to unfold. In all detail, we must point to an ideal which will shew what the callings and professions too can become for man when he has the understanding rightly to perceive the signs of the time.

Of all these things, and their significance for human individuality and karma, we shall continue to speak in the next lecture.

When I tried in the last lecture to explain the influence exercised on man by the part of the Earth on which he as physical man develops, I had chiefly in mind to point out very distinctly that the whole Earth is an organism, an ensouled organism, permeated by spirit. For, as an organism has its separate, distinct differentiated members, each of which has a special task,—the arms have not the task of the legs, nor the heart that of the brain, and so on, if we consider the Earth as one whole, as an ensouled organism permeated by spirit, each part of the Earth has its own special task. The special task of the separate human organic members is perceptible in the form of these separate members. The arms are formed differently from the legs, the heart from the brain. This difference is not so marked as regards the Earth with respect to the physical. To an external materialistic geographer, who observes the separate continents or any other parts of the Earth arranged according to this or that point of view, it does not occur straight away that these different parts of the Earth have different sorts of activity; that only occurs to one who can, to a certain extent, grasp the nature of the psychic and spiritual element of the Earth. To understand this, really signifies rising concretely to the perception that the Earth is an ensouled, spiritual organism, and that man, living on Earth as physical man, is a member of this organism. All kinds of questions arise if one takes this into account, and he looks at the life of man as if it only ran its course once between birth and death, will not come to any very reasonable conclusions about them. For man, as physical man, can indeed only become a member of a particular part of the Earth. He would therefore be condemned to be quite specialized and differentiated by this particular part of the Earth, and would in a sense not be able to be in any way a complete whole, but only a part of the Earth's organism. On the other hand an important discovery results from this insight into the ensouled spiritualized part of the Earth; the discovery that the real deeper being of man, to which he says “I,” can in the real sense, only be connected indirectly with this differentiation of man over the Earth, that's the psycho-spiritual kernel of man's being in a sense only dwells in what is in us specialized through the peculiarity of the Earth. Thus man can obtain, from this very circumstance, the knowledge that his spiritual-psychic kernel cannot subsist in what immediately confronts us in man; that with which, in a sense, man confronts us, can only be the “dwelling place,” the dwelling place of man determined by virtue of the special circumstances of the Earth. I do not mention this because it might appear to those already acquainted with spiritual science as a very weighty truth; of course it cannot be that. But it is to show that a real searching into and pondering over the relationships of the Earth can lead man to build himself up in spiritual science, by this means, in a purely logical manner. For the belief that Spiritual Science can only be comprehensible to one who sees into the spiritual world, must be swept away as one of the most fatal prejudices. This is a prejudice which has over and over again to be taken into account. I might say, for the satisfaction of all the comfort-loving ones who, because they like to believe that they could never acquire clairvoyant cognition, would like to represent Spiritual Science chiefly as a kind of provisional arrangement, or as something which does not concern mankind at all, that in truth, comprehensive, penetrating thought can really understand the spiritually scientific. Only the thought must be really accurate and comprehensive! It must be prepared to relate the phenomena of life to what Spiritual Science confirms. He who brings what is within his grasp in the way of knowledge of the characteristic traits of the different nations of the Earth, and of the different inhabitants of the Earth, to bear upon what Spiritual Science says, will soon acknowledge that what was here explained in the last lecture is verified. We must really relate what life offers to this knowledge; we must be ready to test, free from prejudice, the teachings of Spiritual Science by the experience of life; then a reasonable penetration of the matter will lead to the acknowledgment of Spiritual Science.

It is very important to emphasize this at the present day. For we may say that traditions, containing many of the truths of Spiritual Science, are far more numerous than is usually believed. There is a certain opinion, however, which was fully justified up to the approach of the recent historical age—but which has also been propagated in our own times by many who possess Spiritual Scientific knowledge—the opinion that one should not communicate publicly certain deeper knowledge about life. I have often explained the reasons which people who know something of these things have, for thus withholding these communications, and I have also pointed out why these reasons no longer hold good at the present day. In a certain respect however these facts present a difficulty. For not only have we the opposition to Spiritual Science of by far the greatest part of mankind to contend with, but we also have to contend with the opinion of those who do know something;—the opinion that one who gives publicity to things which come from the fountain of Spiritual Science as one gives publicity to other truths, is wrong. Those who believe that the veil of secrecy over certain things must not be raised, will be healed of this error when they recognize the importance of what has been said, certainly in a somewhat scientific form, but clearly enough, it seems to me, in the foreword and introduction to my book “Riddles of Man.”

It is necessary to comprehend that the conception of truth and righteousness which most men still have today, will indeed have to be overcome. Most men have the idea: One thing is right—and another is wrong. But I must emphasize the fact over and over again, and have also done so more particularly in the preface to “Riddles of Man,” the man's separate view of things from one particular side is like a photograph of an object from one side only. If one photographs a tree, first from the one side and then another, the second picture is still a picture of the same tree, only it looks different. Now today, when men have become so very abstract, when they have become so accustomed to the theoretical, in spite of believing themselves to be men of reality, one view of a thing is reckoned as all-comprehensive, as comprising the whole reality. People believe that it is possible to express reality in thoughts—or in something else. They are particularly arrogant in this belief of being able to express the reality by means of thought. I mean the “arrogant” somewhat in the following sense. People say, “We today have the Copernican world-conception ... but with regard to the men who lived before Copernicus (this is not expressed so abruptly, but still they think it) they were all children (indeed we might say ‘duffers’), for they did not yet have the Copernican world-conception. That alone is correct, all the other world-conceptions are false.” This is an attitude which must be overcome. Even the Copernican world-conception is just one view, it is one definite way of making pictures, thoughts and ideas of things. Certainly there are men to-day, who oppose Spiritual Science as soon as they observe that it gives one a view, a real and regular view of a thing, by placing something else in opposition to it. No one will contest this who knows that there are different points of view about a thing. Today, however, many people wish for something else, something quite special, which may be compared somewhat to the person in the room saying: “When we have lighted up the room from one point and look at it from there, this gives only the view in perspective; it is not the reality; let us turn out the light and make the room quite dark and touch everything separately, then all who have thus touched the things will have the same opinion.” We all know that when we look at the room in the light, one who stands there has this view, and another who stands somewhere else has that view and so on. So today certain ideal of natural science would be to turn out the light and only ‘touch’ everything. Spiritual Science must certainly “turn the light” on to that. Thus the different points of view implies something surveyed from different places.

Now more especially by us should the effort be made to go about trying to form opinions from different points of view. This has already been striven after for many years. Many might object that the one contradicts the other, but that is precisely the essential thing, that in the above-mentioned sense one view should contradict another; for thereby we get an all-round view of a thing, which is what we want. But this is not at all easy, or people would prefer to have a little book, as slender as possible, in which a whole world-philosophy is tabulated. Or, if they wish to have world-philosophies discussed, they would like to have the same thing reeled off, over and over again. Of course this cannot be. Our printed cycles are increasing, are becoming more and more numerous, so that things may be illuminated from different sides, that we may obtain concepts and views from various sides, which only then give a complete picture of reality. We must certainly offend people in a certain respect (and what has just been said will make this comprehensible to you) if we have to repudiate more and more the accepted prejudices, by the truths of Spiritual Science. But chiefly when we thus ‘sin’ against the demand of certain occultists not to communicate important things publicly, we must speak about things which shock people, perhaps even anger and excite them; for these things, like many others, give offense for instance to all those who say that things can only be ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect.’ Rather must we acquire the view that in the successive stages of the evolution of mankind there can never be a condition in which one can really say: “Now we have the absolute truth in regard to any particular matter for thought,” or: “We now know, what is absolute untruth.” There cannot be absolute truth or absolute truth. Searching great conceptions of life do not originate in order at last to give men what is ‘correct,’ so that they may now look arrogantly upon their forefathers as upon children; they spring up from very different reasons.

Let us call to mind something we all know. In the 15th century of our era, mankind entered the fifth cultural epoch of the Post-Atlantean development, which we call that of the “development of the human Consciousness or Spiritual Soul.” What especially appeared in the fifth cultural epoch began with the 15th century A.D. Till then it was the Intellectual or Rational Soul which, in the course of the cultural development of mankind was specially developed. In order then that the Spiritual Soul might arise, certain thoughts, certain kinds of concepts, took on a quite distinct character. Not because the Copernican world-philosophy is the absolutely correct one—I have affirmed often enough that it had to appear; and that in a certain respect it is the right one for us in accordance with the times. I shall declare again and again—not because it is the absolutely correct one did it appear, but because it serves the evolution of man, in that he can best attain the development of the Spiritual Soul if he allows the Copernican world-philosophy to enter his flesh and blood, if he reaches the point of being able to calculate certain constellations of stars through the Copernican world-philosophy, as has been done in more recent times.

What is then really good in the Copernican world-philosophy? Not that at last it has told us the truth in contradistinction to the ‘untruth’ of former centuries, but that it erected a spiritual wall between Earth and Heaven, between the physical world and the spiritual world. Of course this appears frightfully paradoxical, something which excites opposition as a matter of course among those who have the above-mentioned prejudices. But it is true that man has begun to conceive the circumference, a cosmic circumference of the Earth in the Copernican manner, in that by transferring the Copernican conceptions into the circumference of the Earth, he has constructed this spiritual wall which he cannot get through. He is cut off from the spiritual thereby, and can remain with his concepts limited to the environs of the Earth, and there he develops the Spiritual Soul. Thus, in order that man should limit himself as ‘egotistically’ as possible to what is earthly, the Copernican world-philosophy, which erects its virtual wall around the Earth, fell to his lot. The more completely the Copernican world-philosophy is developed, the more certain is it that, through external perception, man is cut off from the spiritual world; but it also becomes the more necessary that he should again through inner perception, and by animating his inner life, find the connection with the spiritual. Remarkable things, very remarkable things run parallel. When such things are uttered, it is rather difficult to follow them, but if in the whole wide world there are none but the anthroposophists to understand them, they must take all the more trouble to do so.

There exists today a something like a “Theory of Knowledge;” that particular philosophical science which is based on Kant is called “Theory of Knowledge.” Yet this theory of knowledge is really—one might say—a nail in the coffin of human knowledge. Take a main thought about the ordinary theory of knowledge which as a rule runs in the minds of people today. It is said: Over there is an object: but what is out there is really only the vibration of ether, it has nothing to do with color or sound but is the movement of the smallest particles in space. The air moves out there, soundless; these concussions of the air approach our ear,—Schopenhauer spoke somewhat disrespectfully of the theory of knowledge, he said that these concussions ‘drum’ on the ear—and afterwards become what we call ‘sound.’ All is silent without, there are merely ‘concussions’ in the air. Then there are waves of ether outside. They strike upon the eye. But the matter does not end there; the waves strike upon the eye and the image is produced on the retina. Man knows nothing of this image, however, until it is investigated by science. The processes continue further with the optic nerve. These can only be of a material nature however; they go as far as the membrane covering the brain and there a quite mysterious process takes place. Then the soul comes in to make a concept of what is outside, of what is ‘dark and silent,’ a shining and colored concept, a warm and cold concept and so on; it creates the objects there within itself, and ‘dreams’ the whole world.

It is very remarkable that that is the road along which the Theory of Knowledge would penetrate from the external material world to the human spirit. But what is really the substance of this Theory of Knowledge? It is strange: if one remains at the things which have sound and color (the Theory of Knowledge calls what uneducated people believe ‘simple realism’), then at least one has a resounding and a colored world. But now, through the Theory of Knowledge, one brings this world for example before one's eyes. One has the image on the retina; within one has only the continuation of the image in the workings on the optic nerve; in the cerebrum there is nothing of the outer world, but the inner being charms forth the whole world again from the ‘vibrations.’ This makes one feel it is Baron Münchhausen again drawing himself up by his own tuft of hair! First, everything is eliminated and one has nothing left but brain-vibrations; and afterwards the soul recreates the outer world which has first been put away; then like Münchhausen, one lays hold of oneself by one's own tuft of hair and draws oneself up. But this is ‘basic philosophical knowledge,’ anyone who has not this, does not stand at the height of present-day knowledge.

If we try to follow up the whole diversified world as far as man himself, what have we finally? The processes in the membrane covering the cerebrum are not nearly as complicated as those in the optic nerve; they are the simplest of all. If we investigate how the world is in man we come to something extremely simple. We look for the spirit, but yet only come to a spirit which ‘dreams’ the world. There we must make a leap for so far no one has succeeded in distilling the spirit. In the quest of the spirit we come first to the brain vibrations, and we must then make something, which is nothing. This is the method science has followed in order to get to the spirit from the external sense-world.

On the earth we have many different conditions of life, and of life-influences, before the manifold variety of which we stand in respect and awe. Then we observe the difference in human beings in the different parts of the world—no matter whether the individual human characters are sympathetic or unsympathetic to us—if we consider the differentiations in mankind, we find that it is really as diversified as the sense-world outside is in its relation to man. In that bygone period in which the so-called childish ‘duffers’ lived, men try to understand the multiplicity of the Earth by rising to Heaven, by rising from the sensible to the spiritual. This they no longer do today. As we ascend farther and farther away from the diversified Earth, we have the same feeling as if we were coming from the external sense-world to the human Spirit through the eye and the brain; we come to what Copernicanism represents to us as the great Spiritual Cosmos. Just as the physiological theory of knowledge adopted the method of erecting a barrier in the vibrations of the brain in order to avoid coming to the human soul by way of the outer world, so in the same way does Copernicanism board up the world spiritually in the direction of the spiritual world. If we wish to realize the value of a world-conception we must know the point of view from which it is conceived. The point of view of Copernicanism does not pretend to place the true in the place of the false, once and for all; but it ‘boards up the world with planks’ so that man shall cultivate his consciousness soul within this ‘earthly tenement.’ This is the secret of the matter. We must look at these things in cold blood and with energy. We must first be able to shatter in our own selves that on which the easy-going people, who accept the world-philosophies of today, believe themselves to stand so firmly. As long as we are not able to shatter this in ourselves, as long as we are not able to see that really through Copernicanism the world is ‘boarded up with planks’—so long shall we not reach the point of acquiring a relationship to Spiritual Science, for which many things are necessary.

Just imagine for a moment what the Cosmos consists of, apart from the Earth. According to the Copernican world-conception, it is a calculation! It can never be that to Spiritual Science but something that presents itself to spiritual cognition. Why have we a geology which believes that the Earth has only evolved from the purely mineral world? Because the Copernican world-conception has to produce the present-day materialistic geology. For it has nothing in itself which could prove that the Earth, from the point of view of the Cosmos or spiritual world, might be conceived as an ensouled, spiritualized being. A universe as conceived by Copernicus could only be a dead Earth! An animated ensouled and spiritualized Earth must be conceived as coming from a different Cosmos, really from quite another Cosmos from that of Copernicus. But of course one can only mention a few features of the Earth's being, as it appears when viewed from the Cosmos

Is it a quite unreal conception to imagine the Earth's being as coming from the Cosmos? It is no unreal conception, it is a very ‘real’ one. A conception which, for example, once existed in the imagination of Herman Grimm, but he excused himself immediately after having written it. In an essay written in 1858 he says: “One might imagine—(but he immediately adds: I am not presenting an article of faith, this is only a fancy picture)—that when the soul of man is freed from the body it moves around the Earth freely in the Cosmos and that in this free movement it would observe the Earth from the outside; what happens on the Earth would then appear to man in quite another light.” That was the fancy of Hermann Grimm.‘Man would become acquainted with all occurrences from a different point of view. For instance he would look into the human heart “as into a glass beehive.’ The thoughts arising in the human heart would spring up as from a glass bee-hive!” That is a fine picture. And he pictured further that this man who had hovered around the Earth for a time, and had looked at it from the outside, now reincarnated on the Earth. He would have a Father and Mother, a Fatherland and everything usual on the Earth, and would have to forget everything he had experienced from another point of view. And if he were perhaps an historian in the sense of today (Hermann Grimm is here describing from a subjective point of view) he could not then do otherwise then forget what went before, for one cannot write history with the other concepts.

This is a fancy which comes very close to the truth. For it is absolutely true that the human soul between death and rebirth is, as it were, floating around the Earth, and—as I have often depicted—conditioned by karmic relations, it looks down upon the Earth. The soul that has altogether the feeling that this Earth is an ensouled and spiritualized organism—and the prejudice that considers it as something without soul, something purely geological, ceases. And then the Earth becomes very greatly differentiated; to man's perception between death and rebirth it becomes so differentiated that in fact the East looks different from the American West. It is not possible to speak about the Earth to the dead, as one would to geologists; for the dead do not understand the geological conceptions. But they know that looking down from cosmic space at the East—from Asia across into Russia—the Earth appears as if covered with a bluey sheen; blue or bluish-mauve. Thus does that side of the Earth appear, seen from cosmic space. When we come towards the Western Hemisphere, to the American side, it then appears as more or less a fiery red. There we have a polarity of the Earth, as seen from the Cosmos. Of course the Copernican world-conception cannot of itself give this; but it is another perception, from a different point of view. It will be comprehensible to anyone who has this point of view, that this Earth, this ensouled Earth-organism, appears different in its Eeastern half from its Western half, when viewed from outside. In its Eastern half it has a blue covering, in its Western it has something like a flashing-forth from within outwards; hence the fiery red seen externally. Here you have one example by which man between death and rebirth can direct himself by what he then learns. He learns to know the configuration of the Earth, it's a different appearance when seen from the Cosmos and the spiritual world; he learns to realize that on one side it is bluish-violet, on the other fiery red. And in accordance always with the spiritual needs which he will develop from his karma, this knowledge decides for him where he will reincarnate. Of course one must imagine things as being much more complicated than this; but from such conditions does man between death and rebirth, develop the forces which occasion him to reincarnate in a child body having a certain inheritance.

I have only mentioned two modifications of color, but there are of course other modifications besides those of color, many others. For the present I will only mention that in the center between the East and the West, for example, in our regions, the Earth is more of a green shade when seen from outside. So that this gives us a three-foldness which can throw a deal of light on the way in which man can determine, by what he beholds between death and rebirth, whether he is to appear in the East or West or elsewhere on the Earth.

If we bear this in mind we shall gradually gain the idea that in the relations between the man incarnated here in the physical body and the discarnate man, certain things come into play which, for the most part, are not taken into consideration at all. If we go into a foreign land and wish to understand the people, we must learn their language. If we wish to understand the dead you must gradually acquire the language of the dead. But this is at the same time the language of Spiritual Science, for it is spoken by all the so-called living and all of the so-called dead. It is this which passes to and fro between us and the beyond. It is particularly important to acquire pictures such as these of the universe, and not mere abstract concepts. We get a picture of the Earth if we imagine a sphere hovering in space, on the one side glowing bluish-mauve, on the other burning a flashing reddish-yellow, and between these a green zone. Pictorial representations gradually carry man over into the spiritual world. That is the point. One is of course obliged to set up pictorial representations when speaking seriously of the spiritual world, and it is further necessary not merely to think of such pictorial representations as a sort of fiction, but to make something out of them. Let us once again recall the bluish-violet glimmering Orient and the reddish-yellow flashing Occident. Here various differentiations come in. When a dead person in our present era observe certain places, then from the place which here on Earth is known as Palestine, as Jerusalem, something with a golden form, a golden crystal form, is to be seen in the middle of the bluish-mauve color and this becomes animated. That is the Jerusalem as seen from the spirit! This it is which also in the Apocalypse (speaking of imaginative conceptions) figures as the heavenly Jerusalem. These are not ‘thought-out’ things, they are things which can be observed, seen spiritually. The Mystery of Golgotha appeared like what physical observation precedes when the astronomer directs his telescope to space and beholds something which fills him with wonder like, for example the flashing-up of new stars. Seen spiritually, from the Universe, the Event of Golgotha was the flashing-up of a star of gold in the blue aura of the Eastern half of the Earth. Here you have the Imagination for what I developed at the close of my lecture the day before yesterday. It is really a question of acquiring, by means of such Imaginations, ideas of the Universe which bring the human soul into union with the Spirit of the Universe.

Try to think with someone who has passed over, of the crystal form of the heavenly Jerusalem building itself up into golden splendor in the bluish-violet aura of the Earth, and that will bring you near to him; for that is something which belongs to the realm of the Imaginations into which she entered at death: “Out of God we are born, and in Christ we die.”

There are means by which we can shut ourselves off from the spiritual reality and there are means by which we can draw near to it. We can shut ourselves off from spiritual reality by trying to ‘calculate’ it. Certainly mathematics do belong to the realm of the spirit, pure spirit; but in their application to physical reality they are the means of cutting us off from the spiritual. In so far as you calculate, just so far do you cut yourself off from the spirit. Kant once said: “There is just the same amount of science in the world as there is mathematics.” But one might also say, from the other point of view, which is equally justifiable, that there is darkness in the world to the same degree as man has succeeded in judging the world by means of calculation. We approached the spiritual life when we press on from external perception, and particularly from abstract concepts, towards Imaginations, to pictorial ideas. Copernicus has led man to calculate the universe; the opposite perception must lead men once more again to picture the universe, to imagine a universe with which the human soul can identify itself, so that the Earth appears as an organism shining into the universe, blue-violet, with the heavenly Jerusalem radiating golden light on the one side, and the yellowish-red flashing on the other side.

Whence comes the blue-violet on the one side of the Earth-aura? When one sees this side of the Earth-sphere, the physical part of the Earth disappears from external view, the aura of light becomes transparent, and the dark part of the Earth disappears. This creates the blue which penetrates through. You can explain the phenomenon from Goethe's theory of color. But because in the Western Hemisphere the inner part of the Earth flashes up—flashes up anyway which verifies what I described the day before yesterday: namely, that in America man is determined by the subterranean element, by what is under the Earth—for that reason the inner part of the Earth rays out and flashes like a red-yellow shimmer, like a reddish-yellow sparkling fire radiating into the Cosmos. This is only meant to be a picture sketched in quite fine outlines, but it should show you that it is indeed possible to speak, not merely in ordinary abstract thoughts, but in very, very concrete concepts about the world in which we live between death and rebirth. Finally, all this is adapted to prepare our souls to obtain a connection with the spiritual world, with the higher Hierarchies; with that world in which man lives between death and rebirth. But I intend to speak specially about this tomorrow; today I should only like to mention just one other thing.

The present era of human evolution, the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, which exists for the development of the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul, contains manifold secrets. One of these is especially well guarded by those who believe that such truths should not yet be communicated to the humanity of to-day. This again is somewhat difficult. But since in the whole wide world there is no one else inclined to receive such things, you must really condescend to recognize them. In the course of this culture epoch, which began in the 15th century of our era, a remarkable longing began to make itself felt in men, along which lives chiefly in the subconsciousness, but must ever more and more be brought up into consciousness. This longing proceeds from a very definite cause.

I have often said that man is a twofold being. He is a being composed of many more than two parts; but particularly he is a twofold being, and consists as such as head and the rest of the body. The head is in particular that to which we should apply the Darwinian theory, the head is that which can be traced back to animal forms. During the Old Moon period man had animal forms, not those of the present animal kingdom, but a more spiritual, etherical animal form. This has hardened into the human head, and now, when animals on the Earth are developing as they are, man is not developing under the same conditions as were suitable for the head, for that he has inherited; but, according to the requirements of the rest of his body. This however does not descend from the animals. The head descends from the animals, but only from the etheric animals. We therefore carry an animal nature in our head, but it is an etheric animality. That entered men's unconscious nature in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They noticed more and more that there is something of the animal in man, but they could no longer think of it as anything spiritual. They got it into their heads that man must have ‘animal’ feelings, and this culminated in the Darwinian theory of the descent of man from the animal. This was not only expressed in the Darwinian doctrine of descent. The animal has a different perception from man; it stands in a more intimate connection with things than does man. Man is the superior being of the Earth just because he has cut himself off from the things so as to be obliged to build a bridge again from himself to them. The animal experiences the outer world much more inwardly than does man; if it were philosophically inclined it would not speak of ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ because there are no boundaries to knowledge for the animal such as those of which man speaks; these only exist because of the higher organization of man. The animal feels in a sense the whole universe within it through its group-soul; it has no boundaries of knowledge, knows nothing of them. Man began to feel more and more that he carries an animal within him. He did not wish to conceive this relation spiritually, supersensibly, etherically; he thought man was related to the animals physically. He then wanted to have a knowledge subconsciously, such as the animal has. He was however obliged to prove that he could not have that. The animal lives with the ‘thing in itself.’ The ‘thing in itself’ is unknown to man, when he says: “I should really like to be an animal, I should like to be as well off as the animal, but I cannot be as well off.” To affirm a ‘thing in itself’ which limits our knowledge, proceeds from the longing of man to feel himself animal, while he yet knows that he cannot have such a knowledge as the animal. This is the secret of Kantism. What can be said of the boundaries of knowledge is intimately connected with the impulse of modern humanity towards the consciousness of the animal. The Ancients knew that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge; for that reason they considered it good fortune to understand, for example, the language of the animals. You all know the fable connected with this.

That is one thing which the Ancients knew: that the animal has no boundaries of knowledge, in the sense in which man has them in modern times. But they knew something else as well: they knew that the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels are free beings, beings with freedom of will. And they knew that man is on the way to become an Angel. When the Earth shall have completed the Jupiter-stage man will have reached the stage of the Angel. He is now on the way to freedom. Freedom is developing within him. But what is left for the epoch which is gradually appearing with the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, if mankind turns away from his evolution to the stage of the Angels? There remains only the thought: freedom is an illusion! Man, in respect to his activity, is subject to the necessities of nature. To the degree in which boundaries of knowledge are erected does man turn away from his development to freedom. This is intimately connected with what has appeared—only in a coarser way—in the declaration of the descent of man from the animals; whereas in reality man has a very complicated descent, as I have often explained.

Today I have burdened you with some of the more difficult concepts. But they were necessary, and tomorrow we shall be able to speak principally on the connection between the present earthly life in the physical body and the life between death and rebirth, from a certain point of view. The concepts will then not be so difficult; but what you were so good as to listen to today in respect to more difficult concepts will help you tomorrow in regard to others.

In the last lecture I tried to point out how by means of the kind of knowledge cultivated by Anthroposophy, man may be seen in his whole nature—consisting of body, soul and spirit. I tried to show also how an inner knowledge of the conditions of health and disease can only be arrived at when the entire nature of man can be perceived in this way; and how in learning to know the true connections between the things which take place within man and the external processes and conditions of substances in Nature, we also succeed in establishing a connecting link between pathology and therapy.

Our next task will be to explain in detail what was only given in general outline in the first lecture. And for this it will above all be necessary to observe how disintegration is proceeding in the human organism and how, on the other hand, there is a constant process of integration. Man has, to begin with, an external physical organisation which is perceptible by means of the outer senses, and whose manifestations can be comprehended by the reason. Besides this physical body there is also the first super-sensible body of the human being: the ether body, or life body. These two principles of the constitution of man serve to build up (integrate) the human organisation. The physical body is continually renewed as it casts off its substance. The ether body—which contains the forces of growth and of assimilation—is, in the entirety of its constitution, something of which we can gain a conception when we behold the growing and blossoming plant-kingdom in the spring; for the plants, as well as human beings, have an ether, or life body. In these two members of the human organisation we have a progressive, constructive evolution.

In so far as man is a sentient being, he bears within himself the next member, the astral body. (We need not feel that such terms are objectionable; we should perceive what they reveal to us). The astral body is essentially the mediator of sensation, the bearer of the inner life of feeling. The astral body contains not only the upbuilding forces but also the forces of destruction. Just as the ether body makes the being of man bud and sprout, as it were, so all these processes of budding are continually being disintegrated again by the astral body; and just because of this, just because the physical and etheric bodies are continually being disintegrated, there exists in the human organisation an activity of soul-and-spirit.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that the soul-and-spirit in man's nature inhere in the upbuilding process and that this process at last reaches a certain point—let us say in the nervous system—where it can become the bearer of soul-and-spirit. That is not the case. When eventually (and everything points to this being soon), our very admirable modern scientific research has made further progress, it will become apparent that an anabolic, a constructive process in the nervous system is not the essential thing; it is present in the nervous organisation merely in order that the nerves may, in fact, exist. But the nerve-process is in a continual, though slow state of dissolution; and because it is so, because the physical is always being dissolved, a place is set free for the spirit-and-soul.

In a still higher degree is this the case as regards the actual Ego-organisation, by means of which man is raised above all the other beings of Nature surrounding him on the Earth. The Ego-organisation is essentially bound up with katabolism; it is of greatest moment in those parts of the human being that are in a state of disintegration.

So when we look into this wonderful form of the human organism, we see that in every single organ there is construction, integration (whereby the organ ministers to growth and progressive development), and also destruction, whereby it ministers to retrogressive physical development, and by so doing gives foothold for the soul-and-spirit. I said in the last lecture that the state of balance between integration and disintegration which is present in a particular way in every human organ, can be disturbed. The upbuilding process can become rampant; in that case we have to do with an unhealthy condition. When we look in this way into the nature of the human being (to begin with I can only state these things rather abstractly; they will be expressed more concretely presently), when we proceed conscientiously, with a sense of scientific responsibility and do not talk in generalisations about the presence of integration and disintegration, but really study each individual organ as conscientiously as we have learnt to do in scientific observations to-day—then we shall be able to penetrate into this condition of balance that is necessary for the single organs and so find it possible to obtain a conception of the human being in health. If in either direction, either with respect to constructive or with respect to destructive processes, the balance of an organ is upset, then we have to do with something that is unhealthy in the human organism.

Now, however, we must discover how this human organism stands in relation to the three kingdoms of Nature in the outer world—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—from which we have of course to extract our remedies. When we have studied this inner state of balance in the manner described, we shall see how everything that is present in the three kingdoms of Nature outside man is, in every direction, being overcome within the human organism.

Let us take the simplest example:—the condition of warmth in man. Nothing of the outer conditions of warmth must be carried on unchanged when it is once within the human organism. When we investigate the manifestations of warmth outside in Nature, we know that warmth raises the temperature of things in the outer world. We say that warmth penetrates into things. If we, in our organisation, were to be penetrated in the same way by warmth we should be made ill by it. It is only when, through the forces and quality of our organisation we are able to receive this warmth-process which is being exercised upon us, into our organism and immediately transform it into an inner process, that our organisation is in a state of health. We are harmed by either heat or cold directly we are not in a position to receive it into our organisation and transform it.

In respect of warmth or cold, everyone can see this quite easily for himself. Moreover the same holds good for all other Nature processes. Only careful study, sharpened by spiritual perception, can lead to the recognition that every process taking place in Nature is transformed, metamorphosed, when it occurs within the human organism. We are indeed incessantly overcoming what lives in our earthly environment.

If we now consider the whole internal organisation of man we must say that if the inner force of the human being which inwardly transforms the external events and processes that are always working in upon him—for example, when he is taking nourishment—if this force were removed, then all that enters man from outside would work as a foreign process, and in a sense—if I were to express it crudely or trivially—man would be filled with foreign bodies or foreign processes. On the other hand, if the higher members of man's being, the astral body and the Ego-organisation develop excessive strength, then he does not only so transform the outer processes of his environment that enter into him as they should be transformed, but he does so more rampantly. Then there is a speeding-up of the processes which penetrate him. External Nature is driven out beyond the human—becomes in a certain sense, over-spiritualised; and we are faced with a disturbance of the health.

What has thus been indicated as an abstract principle is really present in every human organ and must be studied individually in the case of them all. Moreover the human being is related in a highly complicated manner, to all the different ways in which he transforms the external processes.

He who strives to get beyond the undisputed testimony of up-to-date anatomy and physiology, who tries to develop his understanding so that he can transform the conception of the human organism yielded by a study of the corpse or pathological conditions, observing them not merely in regard to their “dead” structures but according to their living nature, will find himself faced with endless enigmas of the human organism. For the more exact and the more living our knowledge becomes, the more complicated does it appear. There are, however, certain guiding lines which enable us to find our way through the labyrinth. And if I may be allowed to make a personal observation here, it is that the discovery of such guiding lines was a matter with which I occupied myself for thirty years before I began to speak about it openly—which was about the year 1917. As a comparatively young man, in the early twenties, I asked myself whether there was any possibility of research into this complicated human organisation. Were there certain fundamental principles which would enable one to arrive at a comprehensive understanding? And this led me—(I have just said that the study took me thirty years)—to the fact that one can regard the human organisation from three different aspects: the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system.

What we can call the organisation of nerves and senses predominates over all the others. It is, moreover, the bearer of all that can be described as the life of concepts. On the other hand, what we describe as the rhythmic organisation is, in a certain respect, self-contained. There is the rhythm of the breath, the rhythm of the circulation, the rhythm manifested in sleeping and waking, and countless other rhythmic processes. It was by making a practical and accurate distinction between the rhythmic organisation and the nerves-and-senses organisation that I first discovered how one could distinguish between the different constituent parts of the human being. I was compelled to ask myself the question—it is now nearly forty years ago, and to-day human hearts are more than ever burdened with baffling physiological problems—I was compelled to ask myself whether on this basis it is really possible to say that the whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is bound up with the system of nerves and senses. At the same time I felt that there was a contradiction: how can thinking, feeling and willing be bound up with the nerves and senses? Naturally I cannot go into all this detail to-day, I can only indicate it; but when we come to consider the domain of therapeutics much will be explained. For instance, direction: the nervous system and the metabolic system are polarically opposite. As the metabolic-limb-system builds up, so the system of nerves and senses destroys and vice versa. This and many other things demonstrate the polarity. Everything that constitutes the Ego-organisation is intimately bound up with the system of nerves and senses; everything that constitutes the ether body is intimately bound up with the metabolic and limb system; everything that constitutes the astral body is bound up with the rhythmic system; the physical body permeates the whole, but is continually overcome by the three other members of the human organisation. Only when we observe the human organism in this way can we learn to penetrate into the so-called normal or abnormal processes.

Let us take first the organisation of nerves and senses. But first, so that I may not be misunderstood, I would like to make a short digression. A very sceptical naturalist who had heard in quite a superficial way about these members which I posit as the basis of man's nature, said that I had attempted to distinguish between ‘head-organisation,’ ‘chest-organisation,’ and ‘abdominal organisation’; thus that I had in a sense located the system of nerves and senses only in the head, the rhythmic organisation in the chest, and the metabolic-limb system in the abdomen. But that is a very unjust statement. For without separating the systems spatially, the nerves and senses may be said to be organised principally in the head, but they are also to be found in the other two systems. The rhythmic system is principally located in the middle organisation; but it again is spread over the whole man; similarly the metabolic organisation. It is not a question of making a spatial separation between the organs, but of understanding their qualitative aspect and what is living in and permeating the single organs.

When we study the system of nerves and senses from this standpoint, we find that it spreads throughout the whole organism. The eye or the ear, for example, are organised in such a way that they pre-eminently contain the nerves and senses, in a lesser degree the rhythmic, and in a still less degree the metabolic system. An organ like the kidney, for instance, does not contain so much of the nerves-and-senses system as of the rhythmic or metabolic organisation, yet it contains something of all three. We do not understand the human being if we say: here are sense-organs, or there are digestive organs. In reality it is quite different. A sense-organ is only principally sense-organ; every sense-organ is also in a certain way a digestive and a rhythmic organ. The kidneys or the liver are to be understood as being principally assimilatory or excretory organs. In a lesser degree they are organs of nerves and senses. If, then, we study the whole organisation of man with its single organs from the point of view of the system of nerves-and-senses (in its reality, and not according to the fantastic concepts often formed by physiology), we find that man ‘perceives’ by means of his separate senses—sight, hearing and so on; but we also find that he is entirely permeated by the sense-organisation. The kidney, for instance, is a sense-organ which has a delicate perception of what is taking place in the digestive and excretory processes. The liver too, is—under certain conditions—a sense-organ. The heart is in a high degree an inner sense-organ and can only be understood if it is conceived of as such.

Do not imagine that I have any intention of criticising the science of to-day; I know its worth and my desire is that our view of these things shall be firmly grounded upon it. But we must nevertheless be clear that our science is, at present, not able to penetrate fully and with exactitude into the being of man. If it could, it would not relate the animal organisation so closely to the human in the way it does in our time. In respect of the life of sense, the animal stands at a lower level than the human organisation. The human nerves-and-senses organisation is yoked to the Ego-organisation; in the animal it is yoked to the astral body. The sense-life of man is entirely different from that of the animal. When the animal perceives something with its eyes—and this can be shown by a closer study of the structure of the eye—something takes place in the animal which, so to say, goes through the whole of its body. It does not happen like that in man. In man, sense-perception remains far more at the periphery, is concentrated far more on the surface. You can understand from this that there are delicate organisations present in animals which, in the case of the higher species, are only to be found in etheric form. But in certain of the lower animals you find, for instance, the xiphoid process which is also present in higher animals but in their case it is etheric; or you may find the pecten or choroid process in the eye. The way in which these organs are permeated by the blood, shows that the eye shares in the whole organisation of the animal and is the mediator to it of a life in the circumference of its environment. Man, on the other hand, is connected with his system of nerves-and-senses quite differently and therefore lives, in a far higher sense than the animal, in his outer world, whereas the animal lives more within itself. But everything which is communicated through the higher spiritual members of the human being, which lives itself out through the Ego-organisation by way of the nerves and senses, requires—just because it is present within the domain of the physical body—to receive its material influences from out of the physical world.

Now if we closely study the system of nerves-and-senses at a time when it is functioning perfectly healthily, we find that its working depends on a certain substance, and on the processes that take place in that substance. Matter is something which is never at rest; it merely represents what is, actually, a ‘process.’ (A crystal of quartz, for instance, is only a self-contained, definitely shaped thing to us because we never perceive that it is a ‘process,’ though indeed it is one which is taking place extremely slowly.) We must penetrate further and further into the human organism and learn to understand its transformative activity. That which enters into the organism as external physical substance has to be taken up by it and overcome, in the way described in the introductory lecture.

Now it is especially interesting that when the system of nerves-and-senses is in a normal, i.e., a healthy state (which must of course be understood relatively), it is dependent upon a delicate process which takes place under the influence of the silicic acid which enters the organism. Silicic acid, which in the outer realm of Nature forms itself into beautiful quartz-crystals, has this peculiarity:

when it penetrates into the human organism it is taken up by the processes of the nerves and senses; so that if we look at the system of nerves-and-senses with spiritual sight, we see a wonderfully delicate process going on in which silicic acid is active. But if we look at the other side of the question—as when I said that man has senses everywhere—then we shall notice that it is only in the periphery, that is, where the senses are especially concentrated, that the silicic acid process is intensified; when we turn to the more inner parts of the organism, to the lungs, liver or kidneys, it is far less strong, it is ‘thinner;’ while in the bones it is again stronger. In this way we discover that man has a remarkable constitution.

We have, so to say, a periphery and a circumference where the senses are concentrated; then we have that which fills out the limbs and which carries the skeleton; between these we have the muscles, the glands and so on.

In that which I have described as the ‘circumference’ and the ‘centralised,’ we have the strongest silicic acid processes; we can follow them into the organs that lie between these two, and there we find that they have their own specific silicic acid processes but weaker than those in the circumference. Thus in respect of the outer parts, where man extends in an outgoing direction from the nerves into the senses, he needs more and more silicic acid; in the centre of his system he requires comparatively little; but where his skeleton lies, at the basis of the motor system, there again he requires more silicic acid. Directly we perceive this fact we recognize the inexactitude of many assertions of modern physiology. (And again let me emphasise that I do not wish to criticise them, but merely to make certain statements.) For instance, if we study the life of the human being according to modern physiology, we are directed to the breathing-process. In certain respects this is a complex process, but—speaking generally—it consists in taking in oxygen out of the air, and breathing out carbonic acid. That is the rhythmical process which is essentially the basis of organic life. We say that oxygen is breathed in, that it goes through certain processes described by physiology, within the organism; that it combines with carbon in the blood, and is then ejected on the breath as carbonic acid. This is perfectly correct according to a purely external method of observation. This process is, however, connected with another. We do not merely breathe in oxygen and combine it with carbon. Primarily, that is done with that portion of the oxygen which is spread over the lower part of the body; that is what we unite with the carbon and breathe out as carbonic acid.

There is another and a more delicate process behind this rhythmical occurrence. That portion of the oxygen which, in the human organisation, rises towards the head and therefore (in the particular sense which was mentioned previously) to the system of nerves-and-senses, unites itself with the substance we call silica, and forms silicic acid. And whereas in man the important thing for the metabolic system is the production of carbonic acid, so the important thing for the nerves-and-senses system is the production of silicic acid. The latter is a finer process which we are not able to verify with the coarse instruments at our disposal, though all the means are there by which it can be verified. Thus we have the coarser process on the one hand, and on the other the finer process where the oxygen combines with the silica to form silicic acid, and as such, is secreted inwardly in the human organisation.

Through this secretion of silicic acid the whole organism becomes a sense-organ—more so in the periphery, less so in the separate organs.

If we look at it this way, we can perceive the more delicate intimate structure of the human organism, and see how every organ contains, of necessity, processes related to substances each in its own distinct degree.

If we are now to grasp what health and illness really are, we must understand how these processes take place in any one organ. Suppose we take the kidney, for sake of example. Through some particular condition or other—some symptomatic complication, let us say—our diagnosis leads us to assume that the cause of an illness lies in the kidneys. If we call Spiritual Science to the aid of our diagnosis, we find that the kidney is acting too little as a sense-organ for the surrounding digestive and excretory processes; it is acting too strongly as an organ of metabolism; hence the balance is upset.

In such a case we have above all to ask: how are we to restore to it in a greater degree the character of sense-organ? We can say that because the kidney proves to be an insufficient sense-organ for the digestive and excretory processes, then we must see that it receives the necessary supply of silicic acid.

Now in the anthroposophical sense, there are three ways of administering substances that are required by a healthy human organism. The first is to give the patient a remedy by mouth. But in that case we must be guided by whether the whole digestive organism is so constituted that it can transmit the substances exactly to that spot where they are to be effective. We must know how a substance works—whether on the heart, or the lungs, and so forth, when we administer it by mouth and it passes into the digestive tract. The second way is by injections. By this means we introduce a substance directly into the rhythmic system. There, it works more as a ‘process;’ there, that which in the metabolism is a substantial organisation, is transformed at once into a rhythmic activity and we directly affect the rhythmic system. Or again, we try the third way: we prepare a substance as an ointment to be applied at the right place, or administer it in a bath; in short we apply our remedy in an external form. There are, of course, a great many different methods of doing this.

We have these three ways of applying remedies. But now let us observe the kidneys which our diagnosis reveals as having a diminished capacity as a sense-organ. We have to administer the right kind of silicic acid process. Therefore we have to be attentive, because, in the breathing process as described just now, where the oxygen combines with silica and then disperses silicic acid throughout the body, and because during that process too little silicic acid has reached the kidneys, we must do something which will attract a stronger silicic acid process to them. So we must know how to come to the assistance of the organism which has failed to do this for itself; and for this we must discover what there is externally which is the result of a process such as is wanting in the kidneys. We must search for it. How can we find ways and means to introduce just this silicic acid process into the kidneys?

And now we find that the function of the kidneys, especially as it is a sense-function, is dependent upon the astral body. The astral body is at the basis of the excretory processes and of this particular form of them. Therefore we must stimulate the astral body and moreover in such a way that it will somehow carry the silicic acid process which is administered from outside, to an organ such as the kidney. We need a remedy that, firstly, will stimulate the silicic-acid process, and, secondly, which will stimulate it precisely in the kidneys. If we seek for it in the surrounding plant world, we come upon the plant Equisetum arvense, the ordinary field ‘horsetail.’ The peculiar feature of this plant is that it contains a great deal of silicic acid. If we were to give silicic acid alone it would, however, not reach the kidneys. Equisetum also contains sulphurous acid salts. Sulphurous acid salts alone work on the rhythmic system, on the excretory organs and on the kidneys in particular. When they are intimately combined as they are in Equisetum arvense (we can administer it by mouth, or if that is not suitable, in either of the other ways)—then the sulphurous acid salts enable the silicic acid to find its way to the kidneys.

Here we have touched upon a single instance—a pathological condition of the kidneys. We have approached it quite methodically; we have discerned what can supply what is lacking in the kidneys; and we have erected a bridge that can be followed step by step, from pathology to therapy.

Now let us take another case. Suppose we have to do with some disturbance of the digestive system—such as we usually include under the word ‘dyspepsia.’ If we again proceed according to Spiritual Science, we shall discover that here we have to do principally with a faulty and inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Why is the Ego-organisation not acting strongly enough? That is the question. And we must search somewhere in the functional regions of the human organism for what it is that is causing this weakness of the Ego-organisation. In certain cases we find that the fault lies in the gall-bladder secretions. If that is so, then we must come to the assistance of the Ego-organisation (just as we came to the assistance of the kidneys with the equisetum) by administering something which, if it reaches the required spot by being prepared in a certain way, will there strengthen the inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Thus, even as we find that the silicic acid process (which lies at the root of the nerves-and-senses system) when introduced in the right way to the kidneys enhances their sense-faculty, so we now find that such a process as the gall-bladder secretions (which corresponds primarily with the Ego-organisation) is really connected in quite a special manner (also in relation to other things) with the action of carbon. Now a remarkable thing to be observed is that if we wish to introduce carbon into the organism in the correct way for treating dyspepsia, we find that carbon—(though it is contained in every plant)—is contained in Cichorium intybus (chicory) in a form that directly affects the gall-bladder. When we know how to make the correct preparation from Cichorium intybus, we can lead it over into the functions of this organ as a certain form of carbon-process, in the same way as is done with regard to the silicic-acid process and the kidneys.

With these simple examples—which are applicable either to slight or in certain circumstances to very severe cases of illness—I have tried to indicate how, by a spiritual-scientific observation of the human organism on the one hand, and on the other of the different natural creations and their respective interchanges with each other, there can be brought about, firstly, an understanding of the processes of illness, and secondly an understanding of what is required in order to reverse the direction of those processes. Healing becomes thereby a penetrating Art. This is what can be achieved for the art of Medicine, the art of Healing, by the kind of scientific research that is called Anthroposophy. There is nothing of the nature of fantasy about it. It is that which will bring research to the point of extreme exactitude with regard to the observation of the whole human being, both physically, psychically and spiritually. The condition of illness in man depends upon the respective activity of the physical, the psychic and the spiritual. And because man's constitution consists of nerves-and-senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic-and-limb system, we are enabled also to penetrate into the different processes and their degrees of activity. We learn to know how a sense-function is present in the kidneys as soon as we direct our attention to the essential nature of sense-functions; otherwise, we only seek to discover sense-functions under their cruder aspect as they appear in the senses themselves. Now however, we become able to comprehend illness as such.

I have already said that in the metabolic-and-limb system, processes take place which are the opposite of those that take place in the system of nerves-and-senses. But it can happen that processes which primarily are also nerves and senses processes, and are, for instance, proper to the nerves of the head where they are ‘normal’—It can happen that these processes can in a certain sense become dislodged by the metabolic-and-limb system; that through an abnormality of the astral body and Ego-organisation in the metabolic-limb-system something can happen which would be ‘correct’ or ‘normal’ only if taking place in the system of nerves-and-senses. That is to say, what is right for one system can be in another system productive of metamorphosis or disease. So that a process which properly belongs, for instance, to the system of nerves-and-senses makes its appearance in another system, and is then a process of disease. An example of this is found in typhoid fever. Typhoid represents a process which belongs properly to the nervous system. While it should play its part there in the physical organisation, it plays its part as a matter of fact in the region of the metabolic system within the etheric organisation—within the ether body—works over into the physical body and appears there as typhoid. Here we see into the nature of the onset of illness. Or it can also happen that the dynamic force, or those forces which are active in a sense-organ (and must be active there in a certain degree in order that a sense-organ as such may arise)—become active somewhere where they should not. That which works in a sense-organ can be in some way or another transformed in its activity elsewhere. Let us take the activity of the ear. Instead of remaining in the system of nerves-and-senses, it obtrudes itself (and this under circumstances which can also be described) in another place—for example in the metabolic system where this is connected with the rhythmic system. Then there arises, in the wrong place, an abnormal tendency to produce a sense-organ; and this manifests itself as carcinoma—as a cancerous growth. It is only when we can look in this way into the human organism that we can perceive that carcinoma represents a certain tendency, displaced in respect of the systems, to the formation of a sense organ.

When we speak of the fertilisation of Medicine through Anthroposophy, it is a question of learning how abnormal conditions in the human organism arise from the fact that what is normal to one system transplants itself into another. And only by perceiving the matter thus is one in a position really to understand the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, and so to make the bridge from pathology to therapy, from observation of the patient to healing the patient.

When these things are represented as a connected whole, it will be seen how nothing that is said from this standpoint can in any way contradict modern medicine. As a first step in this direction I hope that very soon now the book [‘Fundamentals of Therapy,’ by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman.] will be published that has been written by me in collaboration with Dr. Wegman, the Director of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim. This book will present what can be given from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, not as a contradiction of modern medicine but as an extension of it. People will then be able to convince themselves that it has nothing to do with the kind of superficiality which is so prevalent to-day. This book will show, in a way that will be justified by modern science, the fruitfulness that can enter into the art of Healing by means of spiritual scientific investigation. Precisely when these things can be followed up more and more in detail and with scientific conscientiousness, will those efforts be acknowledged which are being made by such an Institution as the International Laboratories of Arlesheim, [Now “Weleda,” A. G., Arlesheim.] where a whole range of new remedies is being prepared in accordance with the principles here set forth.

In the third lecture it will be my endeavour to consolidate still further (in so far as that can be done here in a popular manner), what has already been indicated as a rational therapy, by citing certain special cases of illness and the way in which they can be cured. Anyone who can really perceive what is meant will certainly not have any fear that the things stated cannot be subjected to serious test. We know that it will be the same in this as in all other domains of Anthroposophy; to begin with, there will be rebuffs, abuse and criticism by those who do not know it in detail. But those who do learn to know it in detail will stop their abuse. Therefore, in my third lecture I will go more into the particulars which will show that we are not evading modern science but are in full agreement with it, and that we proceed from the desire to enlarge the boundaries of Science by spiritual knowledge in the sphere of anthroposophical medicine.

Only when this is understood will the art of Healing stand upon its true foundations. For the art of Healing concerns man. Man is a being of body, soul and spirit. A real medicine can therefore only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces man in respect of all three—in respect of body, soul and spirit.

My dear Friends,

After the words which have just been read out, some of which were written over 30 years ago, I would like to say that in the short time at our disposal I shall at most be able to contribute a few side-lights which may help you in forming your outlook upon Nature. I hope that in no very distant future we shall be able to continue. On this occasion, as you must also realize, I was only told that this lecture-course was hoped-for after my arrival here. What I can therefore give during these days will be no more than an episode.

What I am hoping to contribute may well be of use to those of you who are teachers and educators—not to apply directly in your lessons, but as a fundamental trend and tendency in Science, which should permeate your teaching. In view of all the aberrations to which the Science of Nature in our time has been subject, for the teacher and educator it is of great importance to have the right direction of ideas, at any rate in the background.

To the words which our friend Dr. Stein has kindly been recalling, I may add one more. It was in the early nineties. The Frankfurter Freier Hochstift had invited me to speak on Goethe's work in Science. I then said in introduction that I should mainly confine myself to his work in the organic Sciences. For to carry Goethe's world-conception into our physical and chemical ideas, was as yet quite impossible. Through all that lives and works in the Physics and Chemistry of today, our scientists are fated in regard, whatever takes its start from Goethe in this realm, as being almost unintelligible from their point of view. Thus, I opined, we shall have to wait till physicists and chemists will have witnessed—by their own researches—a kind of “reductio ad absurdum” of the existing theoretic structure of their Science. Then and then only will Goethe's outlook come into its own, also in this domain.

I shall attempt in these lectures to establish a certain harmony between what we may call the experimental side of Science and what concerns the outlook, the idea, the fundamental views which we can gain on the results of experiment. Today, by way of introduction,—and, as the saying goes, “theoretically”—I will put forward certain aspects that shall help our understanding. In today's lecture it will be my specific aim to help you understand that contrast between the current, customary science and the kind of scientific outlook which can be derived from Goethe's general world-outlook. We must begin by reflecting, perhaps a little theoretically, upon the premisses of present-day scientific thinking altogether. The scientists who think of Nature in the customary manner of our time, generally have no very clear idea of what constitutes the field of their researches. “Nature” has grown to be a rather vague and undefined conception. Therefore we will not take our start from the prevailing idea of what Nature is, but from the way in which the scientist of modern time will generally work. Admittedly, this way of working is already undergoing transformation, and there are signs which we may read as the first dawning of a new world-outlook. Yet on the whole, what I shall characterize (though in a very brief introductory outline) may still be said to be prevailing.

The scientist today seeks to approach Nature from three vantage-points. In the first place he is at pains to observe Nature in such a way that from her several creatures and phenomena he may form concepts of species, kind and genus. He sub-divides and classifies the beings and phenomena of Nature. You need only recall how in external, sensory experience so many single wolves, single hyenas, single phenomena of warmth, single phenomena of electricity are given to the human being, who thereupon attempts to gather up the single phenomena into kinds and species. So then he speaks of the species “wolf” or “hyena”, likewise he classifies the phenomena into species, thus grouping and comprising what is given, to begin with, in many single experiences. Now we may say, this first important activity is already taken more or less unconsciously for granted. Scientists in our time do not reflect that they should really examine how these “universals”, these general ideas, are related to the single data.

The second thing, done by the man of today in scientific research, is that he tries by experiment, or by conceptual elaboration of the results of experiment, to arrive at what he calls the “causes” of phenomena. Speaking of causes, our scientists will have in mind forces or substances or even more universal entities. They speak for instance of the force of electricity, the force of magnetism, the force of heat or warmth, and so on. They speak of an unknown “ether” or the like, as underlying the phenomena of light and electricity. From the results of experiment they try to arrive at the properties of this ether. Now you are well aware how very controversial is all that can be said about the “ether” of Physics. There is one thing however to which we may draw attention even at this stage. In trying, as they put it, to go back to the causes of phenomena, the scientists are always wanting to find their way from what is known into some unknown realm. They scarcely ever ask if it is really justified thus to proceed from the known to the unknown. They scarcely trouble, for example, to consider if it is justified to say that when we perceive a phenomenon of light or colour, what we subjectively describe as the quality of colour is the effect on us, upon our soul, our nervous apparatus, of an objective process that is taking place in the universal ether—say a wave-movement in the ether. They do not pause to think, whether it is justified thus to distinguish (what is what they really do) between the “subjective” event and the “objective”, the latter being the supposed wave-movement in the ether, or else the interaction thereof with processes in ponderable matter.

Shaken though it now is to some extent, this kind of scientific outlook was predominant in the 19th century, and we still find it on all hands in the whole way the phenomena are spoken of; it still undoubtedly prevails in scientific literature to this day.

Now there is also a third way in which the scientist tries to get at the configuration of Nature. He takes the phenomena to begin with—say, such a simple phenomenon as that a stone, let go, will fall to earth, or if suspended by a string, will pull vertically down towards the earth. Phenomena like this the scientist sums up and so arrives at what he calls a “Law of Nature”. This statement for example would be regarded as a simple “Law of Nature”: “Every celestial body attracts to itself the bodies that are upon it”. We call the force of attraction Gravity or Gravitation and then express how it works in certain “Laws”. Another classical example are the three statements known as “Kepler's Laws”.

It is in these three ways that “scientific research” tries to get near to Nature. Now I will emphasize at the very outset that the Goethean outlook upon Nature strives for the very opposite in all three respects. In the first place, when he began to study natural phenomena, the classification into species and genera, whether of the creatures or of the facts and events of Nature, at once became problematical for Goethe. He did not like to see the many concrete entities and facts of Nature reduced to all these rigid concepts of species, family and genus; what he desired was to observe the gradual transition of one phenomenon into another, or of one form of manifestation of an entity into another. He felt concerned, not with the subdivision and classification into genera, but with the metamorphosis both of phenomena and of the several creatures. Also the quest of so-called “causes” in Nature, which Science has gone on pursuing ever since his time, was not according to Goethe's way of thinking. In this respect it is especially important for us to realize the fundamental difference between natural science and research as pursued today and on the other hand the Goethean approach to Nature.

The Science of our time makes experiments; having thus studied the phenomena, it then tries to form ideas about the so-called causes that are supposed to be there behind them;—behind the subjective phenomenon of light or colour for example, the objective wave-movement in the ether. Not in this style did Goethe apply scientific thinking. In his researches into Nature he does not try to proceed from the so-called “known” to the so-called “unknown”. He always wants to stay within the sphere of what is known, nor in the first place is he concerned to enquire whether the latter is merely subjective, or objective. Goethe does not entertain such concepts as of the “subjective” phenomena of colour and the “objective” wave-movements in outer space. What he beholds spread out in space and going on in time is for him one, a single undivided whole. He does not face it with the question, subjective or objective? His use of scientific thinking and scientific method is not to draw conclusions from the known to the unknown; he will apply all thinking and all available methods to put the phenomena themselves together till in the last resort he gets the kind of phenomena which he calls archetypal,—the Ur-phenomena. These archetypal phenomena—once more, regardless of “subjective or objective”—bring to expression what Goethe feels is fundamental to a true outlook upon Nature and the World. Goethe therefore remains amid the sequence of actual phenomena; he only sifts and simplifies them and then calls “Ur-phenomenon” the simplified and clarified phenomenon, ideally transparent and comprehensive.

Thus Goethe looks upon the whole of scientific method—so to call it—purely and simply as a means of grouping the phenomena. Staying amid the actual phenomena, he wants to group them in such a way that they themselves express their secrets. He nowhere seeks to recur from the so-called “known” to an “unknown” of any kind. Hence too for Goethe in the last resort there are not what may properly be called “Laws of Nature”. He is not looking for such Laws. What he puts down as the quintessence of his researches are simple facts—the fact, for instance, of how light will interact with matter that is in its path. Goethe puts into words how light and matter interact. That is no “law”; it is a pure and simple fact. And upon facts like this he seeks to base his contemplation, his whole outlook upon Nature. What he desires, fundamentally, is a rational description of Nature. Only for him there is a difference between the mere crude description of a phenomenon as it may first present itself, where it is complicated still and untransparent, and the description which emerges when one has sifted it, so that the simple essentials and they alone stand out. This then—the Urphenomenon—is what Goethe takes to be fundamental, in place of the unknown entities or the conceptually defined “Laws” of customary Science.

One fact may throw considerable light on what is seeking to come into our Science by way of Goetheanism, and on what now obtains in Science. It is remarkable: few men have ever had so clear an understanding of the relation of the phenomena of Nature to mathematical thinking as Goethe had. Goethe himself not having been much of a mathematician, this is disputed no doubt. Some people think he had no clear idea of the relation of natural phenomena to those mathematical formulations which have grown ever more beloved in Science, so much so that in our time they are felt to be the one and only firm foundation. Increasingly in modern time, the mathematical way of studying the phenomena of Nature—I do not say directly, the mathematical study of Nature; it would not be right to put it in these words, but the study of natural phenomena in terms of mathematical formulae—has grown to be the determining factor in the way we think even of Nature herself.

Concerning these things we really must reach clarity. You see, dear Friends, along the accustomed way of approach to Nature we have three things to begin with—things that are really exercised by man before he actually reaches Nature. The first is common or garden Arithmetic. In studying Nature nowadays we do a lot of arithmetic—counting and calculating. Arithmetic—we must be clear on this—is something man understands on its own ground, in and by itself. When we are counting it makes no difference what we count. Learning arithmetic, we receive something which, to begin with, has no reference to the outer world. We may count peas as well as electrons. The way we recognize that our methods of counting and calculating are correct is altogether different from the way we contemplate and form conclusions about the outer processes to which our arithmetic is then applied.

The second of the three to which I have referred is again a thing we do before we come to outer Nature. I mean Geometry,—all that is known by means of pure Geometry. What a cube or an octahedron is, and the relations of their angles,—all these are things which we determine without looking into outer Nature. We spin and weave them out of ourselves. We may make outer drawings on them, but this is only to serve mental convenience, not to say inertia. Whatever we may illustrate by outer drawings, we might equally well imagine purely in the mind. Indeed it is very good for us to imagine more of these things purely in the mind, using the crutches of outer illustration rather less. Thus, what we have to say concerning geometrical form is derived from a realm which, to begin with, is quite away from outer Nature. We know what we have to say about a cube without first having had to read it in a cube of rock-salt. Yet in the latter we must find it. So we ourselves do something quite apart from Nature and then apply it to the latter.

And then there is the third thing which we do, still before reaching outer Nature. I am referring to what we do in “Phoronomy” so-called, or Kinematics, i.e. the science of Movement. Now it is very important for you to be clear on this point,—to realize that Kinematics too is, fundamentally speaking, still remote from what we call the “real” phenomena of Nature. Say I imagine an object to be moving from the point \(a\) to the point \(b\) (Figure 1a). I am not looking at any moving object; I just imagine it. Then I can always imagine this movement from \(a\) to \(b\), indicated by an arrow in the figure, to be compounded of two distinct movements. Think of it thus: the point \(a\) is ultimately to get to \(b\), but we suppose it does not go there at once. It sets out in this other direction and reaches \(c\). If it then subsequently moves from \(c\) to \(b\), it does eventually get to \(b\). Thus I can also imagine the movement from \(a\) to \(b\) so that it does not go along the line \(ab\) but along the line, or the two lines, \(ac\) and \(cb\). The movement \(ab\) is then compounded of the movements \(ac\) and \(cb\), i.e. of two distinct movements. You need not observe any process in outer Nature; you can simply think it—picture it to yourself in thought—how that the movement from \(a\) to \(b\) is composed of the two other movements. That is to say, in place of the one movement the two other movements might be carried out with the same ultimate effect. And when in thinking I picture this. The thought—the mental picture—is spun out of myself. I need have made no outer drawing; I could simply have instructed you in thought to form the mental picture; you could not but have found it valid. Yet if in outer Nature there is really something like the point \(a\)—perhaps a little ball, a grain of shot—which in one instance moves from \(a\) to \(b\) and in another from \(a\) to \(c\) and then from \(c\) to \(b\), what I have pictured to myself in thought will really happen. So then it is in kinematics, in the science of movement also; I think the movements to myself, yet what I think proves applicable to the phenomena of Nature and must indeed hold good among them.

Thus we may truly say: In Arithmetic, in Geometry and in Phoronomy or Kinematics we have the three preliminary steps that go before the actual study of Nature. Spun as they are purely out of ourselves, the concepts which we gain in all these three are none the less valid for what takes place in real Nature.

And now I beg you to remember the so-called Parallelogram of forces, (Figure 1b). This time, the point a will signify a material thing—some little grain of material substance. I exert a force to draw it on from \(a\) to \(b\). Mark the difference between the way I am now speaking and the way I spoke before. Before, I spoke of movement as such; now I am saying that a force draws the little ball from \(a\) to \(b\). Suppose the measure of this force, pulling from \(a\) to \(b\), to be five grammes; you can denote it by a corresponding length in this direction. With a force of five grammes I am pulling the little ball from \(a\) to \(b\). Now I might also do it differently. Namely I might first pull with a certain force from \(a\) to \(c\). Pulling from \(a\) to \(c\) (with a force denoted by this length) I need a different force than when I pulled direct from \(a\) to \(b\). Then I might add a second pull, in the direction of the line from \(c\) to \(b\), and with a force denoted by the length of this line. Having pulled in the first instance from a towards \(b\) with a force of five grammes, I should have to calculate from this figure, how big the pull \(ac\) and also how big the pull \(cd\) would have to be. Then if I pulled simultaneously with forces represented by the lines \(ac\) and \(ad\) of the parallelogram, I should be pulling the object along in such a way that it eventually got to \(b\); thus I can calculate how strongly I must pull towards \(c\) and \(d\) respectively. Yet I cannot calculate this in the same way as I did the displacements in our previous example. What I found previously (as to the movement pure and simple), that I could calculate, purely in thought. Not so when a real pull, a real force is exercised. Here I must somehow measure the force; I must approach Nature herself; I must go on from thought to the world of facts. If once you realize this difference between the Parallelogram of Movements and that of Forces, you have a clear and sharp formulation of the essential difference between all those things that can be determined within the realm of thought, and those that lie beyond the range of thoughts and mental pictures. You can reach movements but not forces with your mental activity. Forces you have to measure in the outer world. The fact that when two pulls come into play—the one from \(a\) to \(c\), the other from \(a\) to \(d\),—the thing is actually pulled from \(a\) to \(b\) according to the Parallelogram of Forces, this you cannot make sure of in any other way than by an outer experiment. There is no proof by dint of thought, as for the Parallelogram of Movements. It must be measured and ascertained externally. Thus in conclusion we may say: while we derive the parallelogram of movements by pure reasoning, the parallelogram of forces must be derived empirically, by dint of outer experience. Distinguishing the parallelogram of movements and that of forces, you have the difference—clear and keen—between Phoronomy and Mechanics, or Kinematics and Mechanics. Mechanics has to do with forces, no mere movements; it is already a Natural Science. Mechanics is concerned with the way forces work in space and time. Arithmetic, Geometry and Kinematics are not yet Natural Sciences in the proper sense. To reach the first of the Natural Sciences, which is Mechanics, we have to go beyond the life of ideas and mental pictures.

Even at this stage our contemporaries fail to think clearly enough. I will explain by an example, how great is the leap from kinematics into mechanics. The kinematical phenomena can still take place entirely within a space of our own thinking; mechanical phenomena on the other hand must first be tried and tested by us in the outer world. Our scientists however do not envisage the distinction clearly. They always tend rather to confuse what can still be seen in purely mathematical ways, and what involves realities of the outer world. What, in effect, must be there, before we can speak of a parallelogram of forces? So long as we are only speaking of the parallelogram of movements, no actual body need be there; we need only have one in our thought. For the parallelogram of forces on the other hand there must be a mass—a mass, that possesses weight among other things. This you must not forget. There must be a mass at the point a, to begin with. Now we may well feel driven to enquire: What then is a mass? What is it really? And we shall have to admit: Here we already get stuck! The moment we take leave of things which we can settle purely in the world of thought so that they then hold good in outer Nature, we get into difficult and uncertain regions. You are of course aware how scientists proceed. Equipped with arithmetic, geometry and kinematics, to which they also add a little dose of mechanics, they try to work out a mechanics of molecules and atoms; for they imagine what is called matter to be thus sub-divided, In terms of this molecular mechanics they then try to conceive the phenomena of Nature, which, in the form in which they first present themselves, they regard as our own subjective experience.

We take hold of a warm object, for example. The scientist will tell us: What you are calling the heat or warmth is the effect on your own nerves. Objectively, there is the movement of molecules and atoms. These you can study, after the laws of mechanics. So then they study the laws of mechanics, of atoms and molecules; indeed, for a long time they imagined that by so doing they would at last contrive to explain all the phenomena of Nature. Today, of course, this hope is rather shaken. But even if we do press forward to the atom with our thinking, even then we shall have to ask—and seek the answer by experiment—How are the forces in the atom? How does the mass reveal itself in its effects,—how does it work? And if you put this question, you must ask again: How will you recognize it? You can only recognize the mass by its effects.

The customary way is to recognize the smallest unit bearer of mechanical force by its effect, in answering this question: If such a particle brings another minute particle—say, a minute particle of matter weighing one gramme—into movement, there must be some force proceeding from the matter in the one, which brings the other into movement. If then the given mass brings the other mass, weighing one gramme, into movement in such a way that the latter goes a centimetre a second faster in each successive second, the former mass will have exerted a certain force. This force we are accustomed to regard as a kind of universal unit. If we are then able to say of some force that it is so many times greater than the force needed to make a gramme go a centimetre a second quicker every second, we know the ratio between the force in question and the chosen universal unit. If we express it as a weight, it is 0.001019 grammes' weight. Indeed, to express what this kind of force involves, we must have recourse to the balance—the weighing-machine. The unit force is equivalent to the downward thrust that comes into play when 0.001019 grammes are being weighed. So then I have to express myself in terms of something very outwardly real if I want to approach what is called “mass” in this Universe. Howsoever I may think it out, I can only express the concept “mass” by introducing what I get to know in quite external ways, namely a weight. In the last resort, it is by a weight that I express the mass, and even if I then go on to atomize it, I still express it by a weight.

I have reminded you of all this, in order clearly to describe the point at which we pass, from what can still be determined “a priori”, into the realm of real Nature. We need to be very clear on this point. The truths of arithmetic, geometry and kinematics,—these we undoubtedly determine apart from external Nature. But we must also be clear, to what extent these truths are applicable to that which meets us, in effect, from quite another side—and, to begin with, in mechanics. Not till we get to mechanics, have we the content of what we call “phenomenon of Nature”.

All this was clear to Goethe. Only where we pass on from kinematics to mechanics can we begin to speak at all of natural phenomena. Aware as he was of this, he knew what is the only possible relation of Mathematics to Natural Science, though Mathematics be ever so idolized even for this domain of knowledge.

To bring this home, I will adduce one more example. Even as we may think of the unit element, for the effects of Force in Nature, as a minute atom-like body which would be able to impart an acceleration of a centimetre per second per second to a gramme-weight, so too with every manifestation of Force, we shall be able to say that the force proceeds from one direction and works towards another. Thus we may well grow accustomed—for all the workings of Nature—always to look for the points from which the forces proceed. Precisely this has grown habitual, nay dominant, in Science. Indeed in many instances we really find it so. There are whole fields of phenomena which we can thus refer to the points from which the forces, dominating the phenomena, proceed. We therefore call such forces “centric forces”, inasmuch as they always issue from point-centres. It is indeed right to think of centric forces wherever we can find so many single points from which quite definite forces, dominating a given field of phenomena, proceed. Nor need the forces always come into play. It may well be that the point-centre in question only bears in it the possibility, the potentiality as it were, for such a play of forces to arise, whereas the forces do not actually come into play until the requisite conditions are fulfilled in the surrounding sphere. We shall have instances of this during the next few days. It is as though forces were concentrated at the points in question,—forces however that are not yet in action. Only when we bring about the necessary conditions, will they call forth actual phenomena in their surroundings. Yet we must recognize that in such point or space forces are concentrated, able potentially to work on their environment.

This in effect is what we always look for, when speaking of the World in terms of Physics. All physical research amounts to this: we follow up the centric forces to their centres; we try to find the points from which effects can issue, For this kind of effect in Nature, we are obliged to assume that there are centres, charged as it were with possibilities of action in certain directions. And we have sundry means of measuring these possibilities of action; we can express in stated measures, how strongly such a point or centre has the potentiality of working. Speaking in general terms, we call the measure of a force thus centred and concentrated a “potential” or “potential force”. In studying these effects of Nature we then have to trace the potentials of the centric forces,—so we may formulate it. We look for centres which we then investigate as sources of potential forces.

Such, in effect, is the line taken by that school of Science which is at pains to express everything in mechanical terms. It looks for centric forces and their potentials. In this respect our need will be to take one essential step—out into actual Nature—whereby we shall grow fully conscious of the fact: You cannot possibly understand any phenomenon in which Life plays a part if you restrict yourself to this method, looking only for the potentials of centric forces. Say you were studying the play of forces in an animal or vegetable embryo or germ-cell; with this method you would never find your way. No doubt it seems an ultimate ideal to the Science of today, to understand even organic phenomena in terms of potentials, of centric forces of some kind. It will be the dawn of a new world-conception in this realm when it is recognized that the thing cannot be done in this way, Phenomena in which Life is working can never be understood in terms of centric forces. Why, in effect,—why not? Diagrammatically, let us here imagine that we are setting out to study transient, living phenomena of Nature in terms of Physics. We look for centres,—to study the potential effects that may go out from such centres. Suppose we find the effect. If I now calculate the potentials, say for the three points \(a\), \(b\) and \(c\), I find that \(a\) will work thus and thus on \(A\), \(B\) and \(C\), or \(c\) on \(A'\), \(B'\) and \(C'\); and so on. I should thus get a notion of how the integral effects will be, in a certain sphere, subject to the potentials of such and such centric forces. Yet in this way I could never explain any process involving Life. In effect, the forces that are essential to a living thing have no potential; they are not centric forces. If at a given point \(d\) you tried to trace the physical effects due to the influences of \(a\), \(b\) and \(c\), you would indeed be referring to the effects to centric forces, and you could do so. But if you want to study the effects of Life you can never do this. For these effects, there are no centres such as \(a\) or \(b\) or \(c\). Here you will only take the right direction with your thinking when you speak thus: Say that at \(d\) there is something alive. I look for the forces to which the life is subject. I shall not find them in \(a\), nor in \(b\), nor in \(c\), nor when I go still farther out. I only find them when as it were I go to the very ends of the world—and, what is more, to the entire circumference at once. Taking my start from \(d\), I should have to go to the outermost ends of the Universe and imagine forces to the working inward from the spherical circumference from all sides, forces which in their interplay unite in \(d\). It is the very opposite of the centric forces with their potentials. How to calculate a potential for what works inward from all sides, from the infinitudes of space? In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World:—the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.

Once more, you have the leap—the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation,—where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.

Now in this explanation I have been neatly dividing all that refers to potentials and centric forces and on the other hand all that leads out into the cosmic forces. Yet in the Nature that surrounds us they are not thus apart. You may put the question: Where can I find an object where only centric forces work with their potentials, and on the other hand where is the realm where cosmic forces work, which do not let you calculate potentials? An answer can indeed be given, and it is such as to reveal the very great importance of what is here involved. For we may truly say: All that Man makes by way of machines—all that is pieced together by Man from elements supplied by Nature—herein we find the purely centric forces working, working according to their potentials. What is existing in Nature outside us on the other hand—even in inorganic Nature—can never be referred exclusively to centric forces. In Nature there is no such thing; it never works completely in that way: Save in the things made artificially by Man, the workings of centric forces and cosmic are always flowing together in their effects. In the whole realm of so-called Nature there is nothing in the proper sense un-living. The one exception is what Man makes artificially; man-made machines and mechanical devices.

The truth of this was profoundly clear to Goethe. In him, it was a Nature-given instinct, and his whole outlook upon Nature was built upon this basis. Herein we have the quintessence of the contrast between Goethe and the modern Scientist as represented by Newton. The scientists of modern time have only looked in one direction, always observing external Nature in such a way as to refer all things to centric forces,—as it were to expunge all that in Nature which cannot be defined in terms of centric forces and their potentials. Goethe could not make do with such an outlook. What was called “Nature” under this influence seemed to him a void abstraction. There is reality for him only where centric forces and peripheric or cosmic forces are alike concerned,—where there is interplay between the two. On this polarity, in the last resort, his Theory of Colour is also founded, of which we shall be speaking in more detail in the next few days.

All this, dear Friends, I have been saying to the end that we may understand how the relation is even of Man himself to all his study and contemplation of Nature.—We must be willing to bethink ourselves in this way, the more so as the time has come at last when the impossibility of the existing view of Nature is beginning to be felt—subconsciously, at least. In some respects there is at least a dawning insight that these things must change. People begin to see that the old view will serve no longer. No doubt they are still laughed at when they say so, but the time is not so distant when this derision too will cease. The time is not so very distant when even Physics will be such as to enable one to speak in Goethe's sense. Men will perhaps begin to speak of Colour, for example, more in Goethe's spirit when another rampart has been shaken, which, though reputed impregnable, is none the less beginning to be undermined. I mean the theory of Gravitation. Ideas are now emerging almost every year, shaking the old Newtonian conceptions about Gravitation, and bearing witness how impossible it is to make do with these old conceptions, built as they are on the exclusive mechanism of centric forces.

Today, I think, both teachers who instruct the young, and altogether those who want to play an active, helpful part in the development of culture, must seek a clearer picture of Man's relation to Nature and how it needs to be.

My dear Friends,

Yesterday I was saying how in our study of Nature we have upon the one hand the purely kinematical, geometrical and arithmetical truths,—truths we are able to gain simply from our own life of thought. We form our thoughts about all that, which in the physical processes around us can be counted, or which is spatial and kinematical in form and movement. This we can spin, as it were, out of our own life of thought. We derive mathematical formulae concerning all that can be counted and computed or that is spatial in form and movement, and it is surely significant that all the truths we thus derive by thought also prove applicable to the processes of Nature. Yet on the other hand it is no less significant that we must have recourse to quite external experiences the moment we go beyond what can be counted and computed or what is purely spatial or kinematical. Indeed we need only go on to the realm of Mass, for it to be so.

In yesterday's lecture we made this clear to ourselves. While in phoronomy we can construct Nature's processes in our own inner life, we now have to leap across into the realm of outer, empirical, purely physical experience. We saw this pretty clearly in yesterday's lecture, and it emerged that modern Physics does not really understand what this leap involves. Till we take steps to understand it, it will however be quite impossible ever to gain valid ideas of what is meant or should be meant by the word “Ether” in Physics. As I said yesterday, present-day Physics (though now a little less sure in this respect) still mostly goes on speaking for example of the phenomena of light and colour rather as follows:—We ourselves are affected, say, by an impression of light or colour—we, that is, as beings of sense and nerve, or even beings of soul. This effect however is subjective. The objective process, going on outside in space and time, is a movement in the ether. Yet if you look it up in the text-books or go among the physicists to ascertain what ideas they have about this “ether” which is supposed to bring about the phenomena of light, you will find contradictory and confused ideas. Indeed, with the resources of Physics as it is today it is not really possible to gain true or clear ideas of what deserves the name of “ether”.

We will now try to set out upon the path that can really lead to a bridging of the gulf between phoronomy and even only mechanics,—inasmuch as mechanics already has to do with forces and with masses. I will write down a certain formula, putting it forward today simply as a well-known theorem. (We can go into it again another time so that those among you who may no longer recall it from your school days can then revise what is necessary for the understanding of it. Now I will simply adduce the essential elements to bring the formula before your minds.)

Let us suppose, first in the sense of pure kinematics, that a point (in such a case we always have to say, a point) is moving in a certain direction. For the moment, we are considering the movement pure and simple, not its causes. The point will be moving more or less quickly or slowly. We say it moves with a greater or lesser “velocity”. Let us call the velocity \(v\). This velocity, once more, may be greater or it may be smaller. So long as we go no farther than to observe that the point moves with such and such velocity, we are in the realm of pure kinematics. But this would not yet lead us to real outer Nature,—not even to what is mechanical in Nature. To approach Nature we must consider how the point comes to be moving. The moving object cannot be the mere thought of a point. Really to move, it must be something in outer space. In short, we must suppose a force to be acting on the point. I will call \(v\) the velocity and \(p\) the force that is acting on the point. Also we will suppose the force not only to be working instantaneously,—pressing upon the point for a single moment which of course would also cause it to move off with a certain velocity if there were no hindrance—but we will presuppose that the force is working continuously, so that the same force acts upon the point throughout its path. Let us call \(s\) the length of the path, all along which the force is acting on the point. Finally we must take account of the fact that the point must be something in space, and this “something” may be bigger or it may be smaller; accordingly, we shall say that the point has a greater or lesser mass. We express the mass, to begin with, by a weight. We can weigh the object which the force is moving and express the mass of it in terms of weight. Let us call the mass, \(m\).

Now if the force \(p\) is acting on the mass \(m\), a certain effect will of course be produced. The effect shows itself, in that the mass moves onward not with uniform speed but more and more quickly. The velocity gets bigger. This too we must take into account; we have an ever growing velocity, and there will be a certain measure of this increase of velocity. A smaller force, acting on the same mass, will also make it move quicker and quicker, but to a lesser extent; a larger force, acting on the same mass, will make it move quicker more quickly. We call the rate of increase of velocity the acceleration; let us denote the acceleration by \(g\). Now what will interest us above all is this:—(I am reminding you of a formula which you most probably know; I only call it to your mind.) Multiply the force which is acting on the given mass by the length of the path, the distance through which it moves; then the resulting product is equal to,—i.e. the same product can also be expressed by multiplying the mass by the square of the eventual velocity and dividing by 2. That is to say:

Look at the right-hand side of this formula. You see in it the mass. You see from the equation: the bigger the mass, the bigger the force must be. What interests us at the moment is however this:—On the right-hand side of the equation we have mass, i.e. the very thing we can never reach phoronomically. The point is: Are we simply to confess that whatever goes beyond the phoronomical domain must always be beyond our reach, so that we can only get to know it, as it were, by staring at it,—by mere outer observation? Or is there after all perhaps a bridge—the bridge which modern Physics cannot find—between the phoronomical and the mechanical?

Physics today cannot find the transition, and the consequences of this failure are immense. It cannot find it because it has no real human science,—no real physiology. It does not know the human being. You see, when I write \(v^2\), therein I have something altogether contained within what is calculable and what is spatial movement. To that extent, the formula is phoronomical. When I write \(m\) on the other hand, I must first ask: Is there anything in me myself to correspond also to this,—just as my idea of the spatial and calculable corresponds to the \(v\)? What corresponds then to the \(m\)? What am I doing when I write the \(m\)? The physicists are generally quite unconscious of what they do when they write m. This then is what the question amounts to: Can I get a clear intelligible notion of what the \(m\) contains, as by arithmetic, geometry and kinematics I get a clear intelligible notion of what the \(v\) contains? The answer is, you can indeed, but your first step must be to make yourself more consciously aware of this:—Press with your finger against something: you thus acquaint yourself with the simplest form of pressure. Mass, after all, reveals itself through pressure. As I said just now, you realize the mass by weighing it. Mass makes its presence known, to begin with, simply by this: by its ability to exert pressure. You make acquaintance with pressure by pressing upon something with your finger. Now we must ask ourselves: Is there something going on in us when we exert pressure with our finger,—when we, therefore, ourselves experience a pressure—analogous to what goes on in us when we get the clear intelligible notion, say, of a moving body? There is indeed, and to realize what it is, try making the pressure ever more intense. Try it,—or rather, don't! Try to exert pressure on some part of your body and then go on making it ever more intense. What will happen? If you go on long enough you will lose consciousness. You may conclude that the same phenomenon—loss of consciousness—is taking place, so to speak, on a small scale when you exert a pressure that is still bearable. Only in that case you lose, a little of the force of consciousness that you can bear it. Nevertheless, what I have indicated—the loss of consciousness which you experience with a pressure stronger than you can endure—is taking place partially and on a small scale whenever you come into any kind of contact with an effect of pressure—with an effect, therefore, which ultimately issues from some mass.

Follow the thought a little farther and you will no longer be so remote from understanding what is implied when we write down the \(m\). All that is phoronomical unites, as it were, quite neutrally with our consciousness. This is no longer so when we encounter what we have designated \(m\). Our consciousness is dimmed at once. If this only happens to a slight extent we can still bear it; if to a great extent, we can bear it no longer. What underlies it is the same in either case. Writing down \(m\), we are writing down that in Nature which, if it does unite with our consciousness, eliminates it,—that is to say, puts us partially to sleep. You see then, why it cannot be followed phoronomically. All that is phoronomical rests in our consciousness quite neutrally. The moment we go beyond this, we come into regions which are opposed to our consciousness and tend to blot it out. Thus when we write down the formula

we must admit: Our human experience contains the \(m\) no less than the \(v\), only our normal consciousness is not sufficient here,—does not enable us to seize the \(m\). The \(m\) at once exhausts, sucks out, withdraws from us the force of consciousness. Here then you have the real relationship to man. To understand what is in Nature, you must bring in the states of consciousness. Without recourse to these, you will never get beyond what is phoronomical,—you will not even reach the mechanical domain.

Nevertheless, although we cannot live with consciousness in all that, for instance, which is implied in the letter \(m\), yet with our full human being we do live in it after all. We live in it above all with our Will. And as to how we live in Nature with our Will,—I will now try to illustrate it with an example. Once more I take my start from some-thing you will probably recall from your school-days; I have no doubt you learned it.

Here is a balance (Figure IIa). I can balance the weight that is on the one side with an object of equal weight, suspended this time, at the other end of the beam. We can thus weigh the object; we ascertain its weight. We now put a vessel there, filled up to here with water, so that the object is submerged in water. Immediately, the beam of the balance goes up on that side. By immersion in water the object has become lighter,—it loses some of its weight. We can test how much lighter it has grown,—how much must be subtracted to restore the balance. We find the object has become lighter to the extent of the weight of water it displaces. If we weigh the same volume of water we get the loss of weight exactly. You know this is called the law of buoyancy and is thus formulated:—Immersed in a liquid, every body becomes as much lighter as is represented by the weight of liquid it displaces. You see therefore that when a body is in a liquid it strives upward,—in some sense it withdraws itself from the downward pressure of weight.

What we can thus observe as an objective phenomenon in Physics, is of great importance in man's own constitution. Our brain, you see, weighs on the average about 1250 grammes. If, when we bear the brain within us, it really weighed as much as this, it would press so heavily upon the arteries that are beneath it that it would not get properly supplied with blood. The heavy pressure would immediately cloud our consciousness. Truth is, the brain by no means weighs with the full 1250 grammes upon the base of the skull. The weight it weighs with is only about 20 grammes. For the brain swims in the cerebral fluid. Just as the outer object in our experiment swims in the water, so does the brain swim in the cerebral fluid; moreover the weight of this fluid which the brain displaces is about 1230 grammes. To that extent the brain is lightened, leaving only about 20 grammes. What does this signify? While, with some justice we may regard the brain as the instrument of our Intelligence and life of soul—at least, a portion of our life of soul—we must not reckon merely with the ponderable brain. This is not there alone; there is also the buoyancy, by virtue of which the brain is really tending upward, contrary to its own weight. This then is what it signifies. With our Intelligence we live not in forces that pull downward but on the contrary, in forces that pull upward. With our Intelligence, we live in a force of buoyancy.

What I have been explaining applies however only to our brain. The remaining portions of our body—from the base of the skull downward, with the exception of the spinal cord—are only to a very slight extent in this condition. Taken as a whole, their tendency is down-ward. Here then we live in the downward pull. In our brain we live in the upward buoyancy, while for the rest we live in the downward pull. Our Will, above all, lives in the downward pull. Our Will has to unite with the downward pressure. Precisely this deprives the rest of our body of consciousness and makes it all the time asleep. This indeed is the essential feature of the phenomenon of Will. As a conscious phenomenon it is blotted out, extinguished, because in fact the Will unites with the downward force of gravity or weight. Our Intelligence on the other hand becomes light and clear inasmuch as we are able to unite with the force of buoyancy,—inasmuch as our brain counteracts the force of gravity. You see then how the diverse ways in which the life of man unites with the material element that underlies it, bring about upon the one hand the submersion of the Will in matter and on the other hand the lightening of Will into Intelligence. Never could Intelligence arise if our soul's life were only bound to downward tending matter. And now please think of this:—We have to consider man, not in the abstract manner of today, but so as to bring the spiritual and the physical together. Only the spiritual must now be conceived in so strong and robust a way as to embrace also the knowledge of the physical. In the human being we then see upon the one hand the lightening into Intelligence, brought about by one kind of connection with the material life—connection namely with the buoyancy which is at work there. Whilst on the other hand, where he has to let his Will be absorbed, sucked-up as it were, by the downward pressure, we see men being put to sleep. For the Will works in the sense of this downward pressure. Only a tiny portion of it, amounting to the 20 grammes' pressure of which we spoke, manages to filter through to the Intelligence. Hence our intelligence is to some extent permeated by Will. In the main however, what is at work in the Intelligence is the very opposite of ponderable matter. We always tend to go up and out beyond our head when we are thinking.

Physical science must be co-ordinated with what lives in man himself. If we stay only in the phoronomical domain, we are amid the beloved abstractions of our time and can build no bridge from thence to the outer reality of Nature. We need a knowledge with a strongly spiritual content,—strong enough to dive down into the phenomena of Nature and to take hold of such things as physical weight and buoyancy for instance, and how they work in man. Man in his inner life, as I was shewing, comes to terms both with the downward pressure and with the upward buoyancy; he therefore lives right into the connection that is really there between the phoronomical and the material domains.

You will admit, we need some deepening of Science to take hold of these things. We cannot do it in the old way. The old way of Science is to invent wave-movements or corpuscular emissions, all in the abstract. By speculation it seeks to find its way across into the realm of matter, and naturally fails to do so. A Science that is spiritual will find the way across by really diving into the realm of matter, which is what we do when we follow the life of soul in Will and Intelligence down into such phenomena as pressure and buoyancy. Here is true Monism: only a spiritual Science can produce it. This is not the Monism of mere words, pursued today with lack of real insight. It is indeed high time, if I may say so, for Physics to get a little grit into its thinking.—so to connect outer phenomena like the one we have been demonstrating with the corresponding physiological phenomena—in this instance, the swimming of the brain. Catch the connection and you know at once: so it must be,—the principle of Archimedes cannot fail to apply to the swimming of the brain in the cerebro-spinal fluid.

Now to proceed: what happens through the facts that with our brain—but for the 20 grammes into which enters the unconscious Will—we live in the sphere of Intelligence? What happens is that inasmuch as we here make the brain our instrument, for our Intelligence we are unburdened of downward-pulling matter. The latter is well-nigh eliminated, to the extent that 1230 grammes' weight is lost. Even to this extent is heavy matter eliminated, and for our brain we are thereby enabled, to a very high degree, to bring our etheric body into play. Unembarrassed by the weight of matter, the etheric body can here do what it wants. In the rest of our body on the other hand, the ether is overwhelmed by the weight of matter. See then this memberment of man. In the part of him which serves Intelligence, you get the ether free, as it were, while for the rest of him you get it bound to the physical matter. Thus in our brain the etheric organisms in some sense overwhelms the physical, while for the rest of our body the forces and functionings of the physical organisation overwhelm those of the etheric.

I drew your attention to the relation you enter into with the outer world whenever you expose yourself to pressure. There is the “putting to sleep”, of which we spoke just now. But there are other relations too, and about one of these—leaping a little ahead—I wish to speak today. I mean the relation to the outer world which comes about when we open our eyes and are in a light-filled space. Manifestly we then come into quite another relation to the outer world than where we impinge on matter and make acquaintance with pressure. When we expose ourselves to light, insofar as the light works purely and simply as light, not only do we lose nothing of our consciousness but on the contrary. No one, willing to go into it at all, can fail to perceive that by exposing himself to the light his consciousness actually becomes more awake—awake to take part in the outer world. Our forces of consciousness in some way unite with what comes to meet us in the light; we shall discuss this in greater detail in due time. Now in and with the light the colours also come to meet us. In fact we cannot say that we see the light as such. With the help of the light we see the colours, but it would not be true to say we see the light itself,—though we shall yet have to speak of how and why it is that we see the so-called white light.

Now the fact is that all that meets us by way of colour really confronts us in two opposite and polar qualities, no less than magnetism does, to take another example—positive magnetism, negative magnetism;—there is no less of a polar quality in the realm of colour. At the one pole is all that which we describe as yellow and the kindred colours—orange and reddish. At the other pole is what we may describe as blue and kindred colours—indigo and violet and even certain lesser shades of green. Why do I emphasise that the world of colour meets us with a polar quality? Because in fact the polarity of colour is among the most significant phenomena of all Nature and should be studied accordingly. To go ahead at once to what Goethe calls the Ur-phenomenon in the sense I was explaining yesterday, this is indeed the Ur-phenomenon of colour. We shall reach it to begin with by looking for colour in and about the light as such. This is to be our first experiment, arranged as well as we are able. I will explain first what it is. The experiment will be as follows:—

Through a narrow slit—or a small circular opening, we may assume to begin with—in an otherwise opaque wall, we let in light (Figure IIb). We let the light pour in through the slit. Opposite the wall through which the light is pouring in, we put a screen. By virtue of the light that is pouring in, we see an illuminated circular surface on the screen. The experiment is best done by cutting a hole in the shutters, letting the sunlight pour in from outside. We can then put up a screen and catch the resulting picture. We cannot do it in this way; so we are using the lantern to project it. When I remove the shutter, you see a luminous circle on the wall. This, to begin with, is the picture which arises, in that a cylinder of light, passing along here, is caught on the opposite wall. We now put a “prism” into the path of this cylinder of light (Figure IIc).

The light can then no longer simply penetrate to the opposite wall and there produce a luminous circle; it is compelled to deviate from its path. How have we brought this about? The prism is made of two planes of glass, set at an angle to form a wedge. This hollow prism is then filled with water. We let the cylinder of light, produced by the projecting apparatus, pass through the water-prism. If you now look at the wall, you see that the patch of light is no longer down there, where it was before. It is displaced,—it appears elsewhere. Moreover you see a peculiar phenomenon:—at the upper edge of it you see a bluish-greenish light. You see the patch with a bluish edge therefore. Below, you see the edge is reddish-yellow.

This then is what we have to begin with,—this is the “phenomenon”. Let us first hold to the phenomenon, simply describing the fact as it confronts us. In going through the prism, the light is somehow deflected from its path. It now forms a circle away up there, but if we measured it we should find it is not an exact circle. It is drawn out a little above and below, and edged with blue above and yellowish below. If therefore we cause such a cylinder of light to pass through the prismatically formed body of water,—neglecting, as we can in this case, whatever modifications may be due to the plates of glass—phenomena of colour arise at the edges.

Now I will do the experiment again with a far narrower cylinder of light. You see a far smaller patch of light on the screen. Deflecting it again with the help of the prism, once more you see the patch of light displaced,—moved upward. This time however the circle of light is completely filled with colours, The displaced patch of light now appears violet, blue, green, yellow and red, Indeed, if we made a more thorough study of it, we should find in it all the colours of the rainbow in their proper order. We take the fact, purely and simply as we find it; and please—all those of you who learned at school the neatly finished diagrams with rays of light, normals and so on,—please to forget them now. Hold to the simple phenomenon, the pure and simple fact. We see colours arising in and about the light and we can ask ourselves, what is it due to? Look please once more; I will again insert the larger aperture. There is again the cylinder of light passing through space, impinging on the screen and there forming its picture of light (Figure IIb). Again we put the prism in the way. Again the picture of light is displaced and the phenomena of colour appear at the edges (Figure IIc).

Now please observe the following. We will remain purely within the given facts. Kindly observe. If you could look at it more exactly you would see the luminous cylinder of water where the light is going through the prism. This is a matter of simple fact: the cylinder of light goes through the prism of water and there is thus an interpenetration of the light with the water. Pay careful attention please, once more. In that the cylinder of light goes through the water, the light and the water interpenetrate, and this is evidently not without effect for the environment. On the contrary, we must aver (and once again, we add nothing to the facts in saying this):—the cylinder of light somehow has power to make its way through the water-prism to the other side, yet in the process it is deflected by the prism. Were it not for the prism, it would go straight on, but it is now thrown upward and deflected. Here then is something that deflects our cylinder of light. To denote this that is deflecting our cylinder of light by an arrow in the diagram, I shall have to put the arrow thus. So we can say, adhering once again to the facts and not indulging in speculations: By such a prism the cylinder of light is deflected upward, and we can indicate the direction in which it is deflected.

And now, to add to all this, think of the following, which once again is a simple statement of fact. If you let light go through a dim and milky glass or through any cloudy fluid—through dim, cloudy, turbid matter in effect,—the light is weakened, naturally. When you see the light through clear unclouded water, you see it in full brightness; if the water is cloudy, you see it weakened. By dim and cloudy media the light is weakened; you will see this in countless instances. We have to state this, to begin with, simply as a fact. Now in some respect, however little, every material medium is dim. So is this prism here. It always dims the light to some extent. That is to say, with respect to the light that is there within the prism, we are dealing with a light that is somehow dimmed. Here to begin with (pointing to Figure IIc) we have the light as it shines forth; here on the other hand we have the light that has made its way through the material medium. In here however, inside the prism, we have a working-together of matter and light; a dimming of the light arises here. That the dimming of the light has a real effect, you can tell from the simple fact that when you look into light through a dim or cloudy medium you see something more. The dimming has an effect,—this is perceptible. What is it that comes about by the dimming of the light? We have to do not only with the cone of light that is here bent and deflected, but also with this new factor—the dimming of the light, brought about by matter. We can imagine therefore into this space beyond the prism not only the light is shining, but there shines in, there rays into the light the quality of dimness that is in the prism. How then does it ray in? Naturally it spreads out and extends after the light has gone through the prism. What has been dimmed and darkened, rays into what is light and bright. You need only think of it properly and you will admit: the dimness too is shining up into this region. If what is light is deflected upward, then what is dim is deflected upward too. That is to say, the dimming is deflected upward in the same direction as the light is. The light that is deflected upward has a dimming effect, so to speak, sent after it. Up there, the light cannot spread out unimpaired, but into it the darkening, the dimming effect is sent after. Here then we are dealing with the interaction of two things: the brightly shining light, itself deflected, and then the sending into it of the darkening effect that is poured into this shining light. Only the dimming and darkening effect is here deflected in the same direction as the light is. And now you see the outcome. Here in this upward region the bright light is infused and irradiated with dimness, and by this means the dark or bluish colours are produced.

How is it then when you look further down? The dimming and darkening shines downward too, naturally. But you see how it is. Whilst here there is a part of the outraying light where the dimming effect takes the same direction as the light that surges through—so to speak—with its prime force and momentum, here on the other hand the dimming effect that has arisen spreads and shines further, so that there is a space for which the cylinder of light as a whole is still diverted upward, yet at the same time, into the body of light which is thus diverted upward, the dimming and darkening effect rays in. Here is a region where, through the upper parts of the prism, the dimming and darkening goes downward. Here therefore we have a region where the darkening is deflected in the opposite sense,—opposite to the deflection of the light. Up there, the dimming or darkening tends to go into the light; down here, the working of the light is such that the deflection of it works in an opposite direction to the deflection of the dimming, darkening effect. This, then, is the result:—Above, the dimming effect is deflected in the same sense as the light; thus in a way they work together. The dimming and darkening gets into the light like a parasite and mingles with it. Down here on the contrary, the dimming rays back into the light but is overwhelmed and as it were suppressed by the latter. Here therefore, even in the battle between bright and dim—between the lightening and darkening—the light predominates. The consequences of this battle—the consequences of the mutual opposition of the light and dark, and of the dark being irradiated by the light, are in this downward region the red or yellow colours. So therefore we may say: Upward, the darkening runs into the light and there arise the blue shades of colour; downward, the light outdoes and overwhelms the darkness and there arise the yellow shades of colour.

You see, dear Friends: simply through the fact that the prism on the one hand deflects the full bright cone of light and on the other hand also deflects the dimming of it, we have the two kinds of entry of the dimming or darkening into the light,—the two kinds of interplay between them. We have an interplay of dark and light, not getting mixed to give a grey but remaining mutually independent in their activity. Only at the one pole they remain active in such a way that the darkness comes to expression as darkness even within the light, whilst at the other pole the darkening stems itself against the light, it remains there and independent, it is true, but the light overwhelms and outdoes it. So there arise the lighter shades,—all that is yellowish in colour. Thus by adhering to the plain facts and simply taking what is given, purely from what you see you have the possibility of understanding why yellowish colours on the one hand and bluish colours on the other make their appearance. At the same time you see that the material prism plays an essential part in the arising of the colours. For it is through the prism that it happens, namely that on the one hand the dimming is deflected in the same direction as the cone of light, while on the other hand, because the prism lets its darkness ray there too, this that rays on and the light that is deflected cut across each other. For that is how the deflection works down here. Downward, the darkness and the light are interacting in a different way than upward.

Colours therefore arise where dark and light work together. This is what I desired to make clear to you today. Now if you want to consider for yourselves, how you will best understand it, you need only think for instance of how differently your own etheric body is inserted into your muscles and into your eyes. Into a muscle it is so inserted as to blend with the functions of the muscle; not so into the eye. The eye being very isolated, here the etheric body is not inserted into the physical apparatus in the same way, but remains comparatively independent. Consequently, the astral body can come into very intimate union with the portion of the etheric body that is in the eye. Inside the eye our astral body is more independent, and independent in a different way than in the rest of our physical organization. Let this be the part of the physical organization in a muscle, and this the physical organization of the eye. To describe it we must say: our astral body is inserted into both, but in a very different way. Into the muscle it is so inserted that it goes through the same space as the physical bodily part and is by no means independent. In the eye too it is inserted: here however it works independently. The space is filled by both, in both cases, but in the one case the ingredients work independently while in the other they do not. It is but half the truth to say that our astral body is there in our physical body. We must ask how it is in it, for it is in it differently in the eye and in the muscle. In the eye it is relatively independent, and yet it is in it,—no less than in the muscle. You see from this: ingredients can interpenetrate each other and still be independent. So too, you can unite light and dark to get grey; then they are interpenetrating like astral body and muscle. Or on the other hand light and dark can so interpenetrate as to retain their several independence; then they are interpenetrating as do the astral body and the physical organization in the eye. In the one instance, grey arises; in the other, colour. When they interpenetrate like the astral body and the muscle, grey arises; whilst when they interpenetrate like the astral body and the eye, colour arises, since they remain relatively independent in spite of being there in the same space.

I have tried to show how it is possible to rise to supersensory modes of cognition, how through them we gain access to new realms of experience—realms that are completely accessible only to a super-sensory approach. I spoke of the development of imaginative cognition—how by means of it we can understand what takes place in the activity of the human senses, and also understand the nature of the plant world. We learn these things through imaginative cognition as we understand the physical-mineral phenomena of the world through a mathematical approach. Further, I pointed out that through a continuation of these exercises we can attain to a higher form of knowledge—namely, inspired cognition. This opens the way to certain realms of experience through which we can begin to understand what I have called the human rhythmic system.

I would like to look at the whole problem once again from a certain angle. When one tries to gain a real understanding of what is included in the sphere of human rhythmic activity, one sees—if one is honest—that the processes taking place here elude the kind of comprehension by which physical processes are understood through mathematics. Nor will one find that they can be comprehended through what I have called imaginative cognition. Everything that has to do with the senses and which is developed in the nervous system in the course of life as I have described—thus also providing a basis for the experience of the life panorama when imaginative cognition has been developed: all of this only clarifies the term, nerve-sense organization.

In fact, our sensory organization can only be fully understood when this capacity of imaginative cognition has been acquired by us. Even external natural science has noticed that it is not really possible to understand a particular human sense when it is explained in terms of the general human organization. You will find, if you study what individual scientists have to say in this regard, that the facts themselves—in external phylogeny, or embryology, or ontology—simply point to the necessity of accepting the eye, for instance, as being formed from without. The structure of the eye cannot be understood in terms of the rest of the human organism—as, for example, the structure of the liver or the stomach. It can only be understood as brought about through outer influences, through action from without. But how do we grasp this process of "in-forming from without" in the human organism? Only imaginative cognition makes it comprehensible to us, as a mathematical approach makes physical phenomena comprehensible.

From all this you may now begin to see why external science gives us essentially a deficient physiology of the senses. Before I myself was able through imaginative cognition to develop a physiology of the senses, something in me always resisted any wish to subject the realm of the human senses to the sort of measures applied by conventional physiology and psychology. I always found that what they offered to explain the senses was incomplete for the sense of hearing or sight, for example. Particularly the psychological explanations are deficient in this respect. Basically they always start by asking: how are the human senses constructed in general? Then, having given a general characterization, they proceed to specialize for the various senses. But it never occurs to them that their customary descriptions, particularly in the psychology text books, are really only applicable to the sense of touch. There is always something in their theories that does not fit when one tries to apply them unchanged to any other sense. We can understand this when we remember that the physiologies and psychologies use exclusively the ordinary logic of the intellect to put together the facts which external research presents. However, for someone who is examining the question carefully, it is simply impossible to do justice to the sensory phenomena by only the putting together of physical facts. When we apprehend each separate sense with imaginative cognition (when doing this, I was forced to extend the number of senses to twelve) and not just intellectually, we arrive at their true individual forms. We see that each separate sense is built into the human being from certain entities, certain qualities of the outer world. This reveals again—to one who will see it—the bridge that is thrown across from what I have called clairvoyant research to what is given by empirical observation.

Certainly it can be said that a person endowed with healthy human understanding may still have no inclination to give up a certain point of view, and therefore may find no reason to be interested in clairvoyant research. But there really is an objection to this. When we subject the facts to a thorough analysis, there is a point at which we reach an impasse when we apply only sense observation and the ordinary logic of the intellect. We simply cannot clear up the problems. They leave an unsolved remainder. For this reason we must develop our logical thinking further to imaginative perception. Part of what imaginative perception discloses to us is the individual forms of the various human senses, as well as the gradual formation of the human nervous system.

There is something to add to this—I will explain with a short story. Once I was at a meeting of the society that at that time called itself the Giordano Bruno Association. The first to speak at the meeting was a stalwart materialist who elaborated on the physiology of the brain; by this he believed he had given sufficient explanation for the association of mental images and in fact for everything that takes place in mental life. He made drawings for the different parts of the brain and showed how they are assigned different functions—one to seeing, another to hearing, and so on. Then he tried to show how it might be possible, following the neurologist Meynert, to see the connecting paths as physical formations responsible for connecting the individual sensory impressions, the individual mental pictures, and so on. Whoever wishes to learn about this can read about these extremely interesting investigations by the important neurologist Meynert, for they are still significant even for the present day. Well, after this materialistically tinged but still quite ingenious explanation, in which the brain was presented not as the mediator but as the producer of mental life, another man stepped forward, just as stalwart an Herbartian as the man before him was a materialist. This man said the following:

This is in fact a characteristic experience in the field of knowledge, because when one tries to illustrate mental pictures symbolically through diagrams, as Herbart did (it can also be done in other ways), one actually arrives at something very similar to what one gets when one sketches processes and parts of the brain. How does this happen? This is something that becomes clear only to imaginative cognition, when we see in the retrospective life panorama how the independence of the soul life develops. We see how the etheric body actually organizes—and, in fact, has already at birth to some extent organized—the brain. It permeates the brain in its organization. Then we are not surprised to find out that the brain grows similar in formation to the entity which permeates it. But we do not come to real insight in the matter until we are able to perceive that there is an activity of soul working on the organization of the brain. This is similar to when someone paints a picture and what he paints resembles what he is copying. It is similar because the image he has in his mind works on in his painting and brings about the similarity. In the same way, what is found in the brain—actually in the entire nervous system—as the consequence of a forming activity on the part of the soul, will be similar to the soul's forming activity, or to the soul content itself. But if we wish to understand the activity that works itself into the nervous system, we must simply say: in its origin and development, the whole nervous system is an expression of a reality that may only be viewed imaginatively.

The brain and the entire nervous system are, of course, external physical formations. But we do not really grasp them unless we comprehend them as imaginations that have become physical. Thus what the spiritual investigator generally calls imagination is not, as one might suppose, absent from the phenomenal world—it is indeed present, but in its physical image. This fact occasionally makes itself manifest in a striking way, as in the case of those two men, the one a physiologist, the other a philosopher, who portrayed two different things in the same way.

But this has still another aspect. I have already referred to the research of the psychiatrist, physiologist, and psychologist Theodor Ziehen. Theodor Ziehen undertook to explain mental life in such a way that he replaced it by brain activity in every particular. His explanation is essentially the following: he contemplates mental life; he then considers the brain and nervous system anatomically and physiologically (to the extent that present empirical research permits) and shows which processes, in his opinion, are present in the brain for a particular mental activity (including memory). I have pointed out, however, that his explanation—which is truly valuable for the study of mental life and brain activity—is forced to come to a standstill before our life of feeling and our life of will. You will find this in Ziehen's Physiologische Psychologie (Physiological Psychology). There is, however, a shortcoming in this psychology. Although he makes everything so enticing by explaining mental life in terms of processes in the brain, in the end he does not completely account for such things as the forms that are present in the brain. To do this it is necessary to bring in an artistic principle; and this again is nothing else than the outward expression of imaginative cognition. Were Ziehen to consider this, his explanation of mental life through brain processes would not be fully satisfying to him either. When he wants to move on to the realm of feeling, he finds himself completely at sea. He is not able to account for feelings at all. So he tacks a “feeling coloration” onto the mental images. This is nothing but a word; when one cannot go any further, one makes do with a word. He says: Yes, in certain cases we are dealing not just with mental images, but with feeling-tinged mental images. He comes to this because he is unable to fit feeling into the brain, where it might enter into mental life. Also he does not find an organic basis for feeling that would permit him to make a link to mental life similar to that of the brain and nerves.

In the case of brain and nerve activity it is easier because researchers like Theodor Ziehen are—most of them—extremely clever when it comes to an intellectual or mathematical understanding of the entire natural realm. I mean that exactly—without irony. In science these days an extraordinary amount of intellectual acumen has been applied in this direction. If you should decide to become better acquainted with the whole anthroposophical movement, it would become clear to you that in no way do I favor dilettante talk about abstruse nebulous anthroposophical conceptions while arrogantly disputing what present-day science presents, or that I approve when a speaker does not know present-day science well enough to acknowledge it in all its proper significance. I hold firmly to the standpoint that one can pass judgment on present-day science from an anthroposophical point of view only if one is really familiar with this science. I have had to suffer continually from the actions of anthroposophists who, without having an idea of the importance and task of contemporary science, talk loosely about it. They think a few fine anthroposophical phrases they have learned entitle them to pass judgment on what has been achieved through years of painstaking, conscientious, and methodical work. This stage we must of course leave behind us.

Now, to continue, what actually happens is this: one arrives at the point of finding the relation between mental life and nerve-sense activity. But something is always left unexplained. Something always eludes one's attention. One swims slowly from the point of view of rational, logical, mathematical construction into a realm where things become unclear. One examines the senses and sees their continuation in the nervous system—and that is where one should take the next step into imaginative thought. But to some degree every human being has a dim feeling of the transformation of well-defined mathematically constructible figures into something that cannot be grasped mathematically and yet manifests itself clearly in the brain and nervous system. As a result of this feeling it is said that someday we shall also succeed in penetrating those parts of sensory life and nerve life that evade direct, purely mathematical construction. In other words, something is put off as a future ideal that is in fact attainable now if one will simply admit that it is not possible to penetrate the realm of the senses and nerves merely by rational cognition. This must be led over to something pictorial, something evoked just as consciously as a mathematical figure, but going beyond the mathematical. I mean, of course, imagination.

Perhaps for some of you it would be helpful to make an exact picture of how ordinary analytic geometry relates to so-called synthetic or projective geometry. I would like to say a few words on this subject. In analytic geometry we discuss some equation of the kind y=ƒ(x). If we stay, for instance, in the x-y coordinate system, then we say that for every x there is a y, and we look for the points of the y-coordinate, which are the results of the equation. What is actually occurring here? Here we have to say that in the way we manipulate the equation, we always have our eye on something that lies outside of what we ultimately seek, because what we are really looking for is the curve. But the curve is not contained in the equation—only the possible x and y values are contained in the equation. When we proceed in this manner, we are actually working outside the curve; and what we get as values of the y-coordinate in relation to the x-coordinate we consider as points belonging to the curve. With our analytic equation, we never really enter the curve itself, its real geometric form. This fact has significant implication as regards human knowledge.

When we do analytic geometry, we perform operations which we subsequently look for spatially; but in all our figuring we actually remain outside of a direct contemplation of geometrical forms. It is important to grasp this because when we consider projective geometry, we arrive at a very different picture of what we are doing. Here, as most of you know, we don't calculate, we really only deal with the intersection of lines and the projection of forms. In this manner we get away from merely calculating around the geometrical forms, and we enter—at least to some degree—the geometrical forms themselves. This becomes evident, for example, when you see how projective geometry goes about proving that a straight line does not have two, but only one point at infinity. If we set off in a straight line in front of us, we will come back from behind us (this is easily understood from a geometrical point of view), and we can show that we travel through exactly one point at infinity on this line. Similarly, a plane has only one line at infinity, and the whole of three-dimensional space has only one plane at infinity.

These ideas—which I am only mentioning here—cannot be arrived at by analytical means. It is not possible. If we already have projective-geometric ideas, we may imagine we can do it; but we cannot really. However, projective geometry does show us that we can enter into the geometrical forms, which is not possible for analytic geometry. With projective geometry it is really possible. When we move out of mere analytic geometry into projective geometry, we get a sense of how the curve contains in itself the elements of bending, or rounding, which analytic geometry describes only externally. Thus we penetrate from the environment of the line, the surroundings of the spatial form, into its inner configuration. This gives us the possibility of taking a first step along the way from purely mathematical thinking—of which analytic geometry is the prime representative—to imagination. To be sure, with projective geometry, we do not actually have imagination yet, but we approach it. When we go through the processes inwardly, it is a tremendously important experience—an experience which can actually be decisive in leading us to an acknowledgment of the imaginative element. Also, this experience leads us to affirm the path of spiritual research, inasmuch as we can form a real mental picture of what the imaginative element is. When I was reading the memoirs of Moriz Benedict—a good natural scientist and physician of our day—I found them in general to be unpleasant, blase and arrogant, but at one point I felt real sympathy. There he says something which seems to me quite correct; he finds that medical doctors lack the preparation that the study of mathematics can give. Of course, it would be a very good thing indeed if physicians had more mathematical preparation, but in this regard we must just register the shortcomings in contemporary training. From my point of view, however, while reading his memoirs, I could not help feeling: No matter how good their mathematical conceptions, doctors would still not be in a position with them to properly account for the kinds of forms that exist, for example, in the sense and nervous systems. There one can only succeed by transforming mathematical knowledge and advancing to imaginative knowledge. Only then does the specific nerve or sense structure reveal itself to us in a similar manner as a physical-mineral structure reveals itself to the mathematical representation.

Matters such as these allow you to see how, in every area, the doors stand open for contemporary science to enter into what spiritual research wishes to give. In the coming days, if we manage to enter, even a little bit, into medical-therapeutic aspects, you will see how wide open the doors really are for spiritual research to enter and throw light on all that cannot be revealed through the usual methods of investigation. Let us now suppose we proceed on this path, but we do not wish to proceed any further than imagination, which I will describe further tomorrow. Let us suppose we do not wish to move forward to inspiration. We will then not have the slightest possibility of even recognizing something in the human organism as the approximate image or bodily realization of a soul-spiritual nature—so that two men with completely opposite ways of thinking will draw these structures similarly. Only through inspired cognition will we have our first opportunity to become aware in the human being of the rhythmic system, encompassing primarily the processes of respiration and blood circulation. Only at this point are we able to tolerate—if I may express it thus—the outer lack of similarity between the physical structures and the soul-spiritual. The life of feeling does in fact belong directly to the rhythmic system in the same way as the life of mental representation belongs to the nervous system. The nerve-sense system, however, is a kind of external physical image of mental life, while the rhythmic system—what is accessible to external sense-empirical investigation—shows hardly any resemblance to what takes place in the soul as feeling. Just because this is so, external research never discovers that this similarity exists; it only reveals itself when we come to another kind of cognition than that of imagination. With this step, as I indicated yesterday, we approach a path of knowledge which was followed in a more primitive, or instinctive way in the practice of yoga in ancient India.

Those who practiced the yoga system, (as already pointed out, to try to renew this yoga would be wrong, because it is not suited to the changed constitution of modern man) tried for short periods of time to replace the ordinary, normal, but largely unconscious respiratory process with a more consciously regulated respiration. They inhaled differently from the way we ordinarily do in our normal, unconscious breathing. The breath was then held, to bring to awareness of how long it was held and then it was exhaled in a particular manner. At best, such a method of breathing could give additional support to present spiritual life. In India, however, this process was done by those who wanted to reach the awe-inspiring Vedanta philosophy or the philosophical foundation of the Vedas. This is no longer possible todäy. In fact, it would contradict what the human constitution actually is today. Nevertheless, much can be learned from this way in which a rhythmic process is willfully made conscious by an alteration of normal breathing. What otherwise takes place quite naturally in the course of living is lifted into the domain of conscious will. Thus respiration—all that takes place in the human life-process during breathing—is carried out consciously. Because it is carried out consciously, the entire content of human consciousness changes. In breathing we draw what is in the environment into our own organization. In the kind of consciously structured breathing process I have described, something of a soul-spiritual nature is also drawn into the human organization.

Now consider the following. When we contemplate the human organization as a whole, if we are not satisfied with abstraction but want to move on to reality, then we cannot really say: We are only what is within our skin. We have within us the respiratory process, it may be about to begin, or it may be proceeding with the transformation of oxygen and so on. But what is in us now was outside us before and it belonged to the world. And, what is in us now, when exhaled, will again belong to the world. As soon as we approach the rhythmic system, we do not find ourselves individualized organically in the same way as we picture ourself when we consider only what is not of an aeriform nature within our skin. When the human being becomes fully aware that he exchanges his aeriform organization quite rapidly—now the air is without, now it is within—he cannot help but appear to himself as a self-conscious finger would appear to itself, as a part of our organism. The finger could not say: I am independent—it could only feel part of the whole human organism. As a breathing organism, we must feel the same way. We are members of our cosmic surroundings precisely by virtue of the respiratory organism and the only reason we do not pay attention to the fact that we are a part of it is because we perform this rhythmical organizing activity naturally, almost unconsciously.

When, on the other hand, this fact is raised to consciousness through the yoga process, one notices that, in fact, it is not just material air that is inhaled and combined with one's self, but along with the air something of a soul-spiritual nature is inhaled and assimilated. When exhaling, something of a soul-spiritual nature is returned to the outer world. One comes to know not only one's material connection with the cosmic surroundings; one also comes to know one's soul-spiritual connection with the cosmic surroundings. The entire rhythmic process is metamorphosed so that a soul-spiritual element can incorporate itself.

Just as the cosmic environment integrates itself into the process of mental representation, so into the breathing process (which otherwise is an inner physical-organic process), something of a soul-spiritual nature is incorporated. In this way the transformed yoga breathing becomes a more pantheistically-tinged way of knowing, in which the separate entities are less individualized. Thus in the Indian, a different consciousness takes shape from the ordinary one. He experiences himself in another state of consciousness in which he is, as it were, surrendered to the world. At the same time, this has the effect of leading him into an objective relationship with his accustomed mental world as he moves down, as it were, with his consciousness into the respiratory-rhythmic system. Before this, his conscious life was in the nerve-sense system, in the form of the sum total of his mentally-viewed images. Now he experiences himself, precisely what he experiences he doesn't know, but as soon as it becomes objective it comes into inner view, and through this he learns to recognize the true nature of his accustomed image world. He now experiences himself one level lower, so to speak, in the rhythmic system. When we become acquainted with this inner process of experience, then we can understand in a new way what is breathing through the Vedas. The Vedanta philosophy is not only something that has taken a different form than it takes in the west; it grows out of something immediately experienced—from the experience that is simply given in a consciousness displaced into the breathing process.

There is still a further experience when we descend into this respiratory process. Before I mention it, however, I would like to review more precisely what I indicated the day before yesterday. I said that the yoga-process is not for us any more, and the human constitution has advanced since then. In our age we are no longer capable of entering into the yoga process, simply because our intellectual organization is so strong today; because our mental images are so inwardly “hardened”—this is just meant figuratively—that we would send much more power into the respiratory system than did the Indian with his “softer” mental life. Today the human being would be inwardly numbed or he would disturb his rhythmic system in some other way if he proceeded as the Indian did in the yoga process. As I have pointed out—and as I will describe later in greater detail, we are in a position to advance from a further development of the memory faculty to a development of the process of forgetting. By entering into the depth of the forgetting process, we take hold of respiration from above, and can leave it as it is. We do not need to change it. The right way for modern man is to let it be. With an artificially enhanced forgetting, we shine down, as it were, into the respiratory system. We transfer our consciousness into this region. But now it is possible to do this in a more fully conscious way, with greater penetration of the will than the ancient Indian could use.

In this way, we now have the possibility to recognize the rhythmic system in its association with human feeling life. When we gain the ability to retain a mental imaging capacity in this region, when it becomes possible for us to have inspired mental images, we no longer feel the need for the sense-perceptible structure to be similar to the soul structure—as is the case where the brain structure is similar to the connections between mental images. In fact, the external, sensory structure can be so different from the related soul element that it completely escapes the notice of conventional physiology, as in Theodor Ziehen's case. Looking at the world in a more spiritual way, looking at it purely spiritually, we find that in fact it is the feeling life that enables us to penetrate consciously into the rhythmic system. Thus we begin to see why in earlier times (the Indians, after all, are simply representative of what came from the earlier stages of human development), when human beings strove to go beyond an ordinary everyday understanding of the world, their path to knowledge led them down into the life of feeling. Cognition remained an activity of mental picturing, but it penetrated into the feeling life, it was suffused with feeling. Modern research only speaks of a coloration of feeling. What the yogi of old, and human beings in general in older cultures experienced, was a sinking down into the realm of feeling. Yet this was without the vagueness typical of this realm. The full clarity of conscious mental life remained, and yet not only was feeling not extinguished, but it appeared more intense than in ordinary everyday life, thereby suffusing everything that normally had a sober, prosaic character. At the same time the mental images, in going through a metamorphosis, a deepening, took on other forms. These transformed mental images were so suffused with feeling that the will was directly stimulated. What this human being of earlier times then did was something that we do today in a more abstract way, when we take something we are carrying in our soul and use it as a subject for drawing or painting. What was experienced in yoga in this way was so intense that the mere drawing or painting of it would not have been enough. It was an entirely natural step to transform it into an external symbolism embodied in external objects.

Here you have the psychological origin of all that appeared in the form of rituals in ancient culture. To find the motive for these rituals, one must look at their inner nature. It was not out of some form of childishness, but out of his way of experiencing knowledge that the human being of old came to perform ritualistic ceremonies and to regard them as something real. For he knew that what he molded into his ritual was something inward put into outer form, something rooted in a cognition from which he was not estranged, but which connected him with reality. What he impressed into his ritual was what the world had first impressed into him. When he had reached this state of knowledge, he said to himself: Just as the physical breath from the surrounding cosmos lives within me, now the spiritual essence of the world lives in my transformed consciousness. And when I in turn make an outer structure, when I build into the objects and rituals what first formed itself in me out of the spiritual cosmos, I am performing an act that has a direct connection with the spiritual content of the cosmos.

Thus for the human being of an ancient culture, the outward cultic objects stood before him symbolically in such a way that through them he felt again the original connection with the spiritual entities he had first experienced through ordinary knowledge. He knew that in the elements of the ritual something is concentrated in an outer visible form. This something does not exhaust itself in the outward expression I see before me, for the soul-spiritual powers that live in the cosmos are alive in the ritual while it takes place.

What I am relating to you is what went on in the souls of those human beings who as a result of their inner experiences gave form to the rituals. One reaches a psychological understanding of such rituals when one is willing to accept the idea of inspired cognition. These things simply cannot be explained in the usual external way. One must enter deeply into man's being and must consider how the various functions of the entire human race developed in sequence—how, for instance, in a certain epoch particular rituals developed. The religious ceremonies of today are actually rernnants of something that took form in ancient times and then stood still afterward. This is why it is becoming so difficult for a person today to understand the reason for the religious ritual, for he feels it is no longer a justifiable way of relating to the outer world.

Furthermore, we can see another aspect of how the soul works in the course of mankind's development. Deep knowledge, as I have described, underlies the creation of a ritual or the carrying out of a ritual. But humanity has developed further and another factor has entered in, which still lives more or less in the unconscious. What shows itself most clearly when we reach imaginative cognition is that the nervous system is formed out of our soul-spiritual powers. This too has developed in the course of human history. Particularly since the middle of the fifteenth century, humanity in all its various groups has developed in such a way that this instinctive incorporation of the soul-spiritual powers into the nervous system has become stronger than it was formerly. We simply have a stronger intellect today. This is obvious when one studies Plato and Aristotle. Our intellect is organized differently. In my Riddles of Philosophy I have demonstrated this from the history of philosophy itself. Our intellectual functioning is different. We simply overwork that element of the soul which has grown stronger in the course of human development. And this element which has grown stronger has also become more independent. The increasing independence of our intellect from the nervous system simply has not reached the attention of the philosophers—or of mankind in general. Because the human being has grown stronger on the inside, so to say—because he has penetrated his nervous system with a stronger organizing power from the soul-spiritual realm, he feels the need to make use of this intensified intellectual activity in the outer world. In ancient times, knowledge attained inwardly was used in the creation and the exercise of rituals; there was a striving to carry over what had been originally experienced inwardly as knowledge into what was performed outwardly. In the same way today, the longing arises to satisfy our stronger, more independent intellect in the outer world. The intellect wants a counterpart that corresponds to the ritual.

What is the result of such a wish? Please accept the paradox, for psychologically it is so: Where inner experience is expelled, as it were; where the intellect alone wishes to arrange a procedure so that it can live in the object just as cosmic life was once intended to live in the “object” of the ritual: what results from this is the scientific device, serving the experiment. Experiment is the way the modern human being satisfies his now stronger intellect. Thereby he lives of the opposite pole from the time when man satisfied his relation to the cosmos through the cultic object and ritual ceremony. These are the two opposite poles. In an ancient culture of instinctive clairvoyance, the impulse was to give outer presence to inner cosmic experience in what could be called ritualistic exercise. Our intensified modern intellect, on the other hand, is such that it wishes to externalize itself in controlled movements that are devoid of all inwardness, in which nothing subjective lives—and yet the experiment is controlled just precisely through the subjective attainments of our intellect. It may seem strange to you that the same underlying impulse gives rise on the one hand to the ritual, and on the other to the experiment, but one can understand these polarities if one considers the human being as a whole.

Starting with this as a foundation, we will continue our discussion tomorrow.

Today I would like to add a few words to the lectures I have given here in the last few days. In earlier lectures I often spoke of a genius of language. And you already know from my book 'Theosophy' how, when spiritual essence is spoken of in the anthroposophical context, real spiritual essence is meant, and so also in what is referred to as the genius of language, real spiritual essence for the individual languages is meant, into which man lives and which, as it were, gives him the strength from the spiritual worlds to express his thoughts, which initially exist as a dead inheritance of the spiritual world in him as an earthly being. Therefore, it is particularly appropriate in the anthroposophical context to seek a meaning in what appears as formations in language, a meaning that even comes from the spiritual worlds to a certain extent independently of man.

Now, I have already pointed out the peculiar way in which we describe the actual element of the artistic, of beauty, and its opposite. We speak of the beautiful and speak of its opposite in the individual languages, of the ugly. If we were to describe the beautiful in a way that is entirely appropriate to the ugly, then, since the opposite of hate is love, we would have to speak not of the beautiful, but of the lovely. We would then have to say the lovely, that ugly. But we speak of the beautiful and the ugly and, based on the genius of language, make a significant distinction by designating the one and its opposite in this way. The beautiful, if we take it in the German language for the moment – a similar one would have to be found for other languages – is related as a word to that which shines. That which is beautiful shines, that is, carries its inner being to the surface. That is the essence of beauty: it does not hide, but brings its inner being to the surface, to the outer form. So that what is beautiful is that which reveals its inner being in its outer form, that which shines, that which radiates light, so that the light reveals what radiates out into the world, the essence. If we want to speak of the opposite of beauty in this sense, we have to say: that which hides itself, that which does not shine, that which withholds its essence and does not reveal to the outside world in its outer shell what it is. So when we speak of beauty, we are describing something objectively. If we were to speak just as objectively about the opposite of beauty, we would have to describe it with a word that means “that which hides itself, that which appears outwardly as other than it is.” But here we depart from the objective and approach the subjective, and then we describe our relationship to that which hides itself, and we find that we cannot love that which hides itself, we must hate it. That which shows us a different face than it is is the opposite of beauty. But we do not describe it, so to speak, from the same background of our being; we describe it from our emotion as that which is hateful to us because it hides itself, because it does not reveal itself.

If we listen carefully to language, then the genius of language can reveal itself to us. And we must ask ourselves: What are we actually striving for when we strive for the beautiful, in the broadest sense, through art? What are we actually striving for? The mere fact that we have to choose a word for the beautiful that comes from us, from the genius of language – for the opposite we do not go out of ourselves, we remain within ourselves, remain with our emotions, with hatred – the mere fact that we have to go out of ourselves shows that in the beautiful there is a relationship to the spiritual that is outside of us. For what seems? That which we see with our senses does not need to shine for us, it is there. That which shines for us, that is, which radiates in the sensual and announces its essence in the sensual, is the spiritual. So, when we speak objectively of the beautiful as beautiful, we grasp the artistically beautiful from the outset as a spiritual that reveals itself through art in the world. It is the task of art to grasp what appears, the radiance, the revelation of that which, as spirit, permeates and lives through the world. And all real art seeks the spiritual. Even when art, as it may, wants to depict the ugly, the repulsive, it does not want to depict the sensual repulsive, but the spiritual that announces its essence in the sensual repulsive. The ugly can become beautiful when the spiritual reveals itself in the ugly. But it must be so, the relationship to the spiritual must always be there if an artistic work is to have a beautiful effect.

Now, let us look at a single art form from this point of view, let us say painting. We have considered it in the last few days, in so far as painting reveals the spiritual essence through the color grasped, that is, through the radiance of the color. One may say that in those times when one had a real inner knowledge of color, one also surrendered to the genius of speech in the right way in order to place color in a worldly relationship. If you go back to ancient times, when there was an instinctive clairvoyance for these things, you will find, for example, metals that were felt to reveal their inner essence in their color, but were not named after earthly things. There is a connection between the names of the metals and the planets, because, if I may put it this way, people would have been ashamed to describe what is expressed through color only as an earthly thing. In this sense, color was regarded as a divine-spiritual element that is only conferred on earthly things in the sense in which I explained it here a few days ago. When gold was perceived in the color of gold, then one saw in gold not only an earthly thing, but one saw in the color of gold the sun announcing itself from the cosmos. Thus one saw in advance something going beyond the earth, even when perceiving the color of an earthly thing. Only by going up to the living things, one attributed their own color to the living things, because the living things approach the spirit, so there spiritual is also allowed to shine. And with the animals one felt that they have their own colors, because spiritual-soul in them appears directly.

But now you can go back to older times, when people felt artistically not outwardly but inwardly. You see, you don't get any painting at all. It's almost foolish to say, to paint a tree green, to paint a tree – to paint a tree and paint it green, that is not painting; because it is not painting for the very reason that whatever one accomplishes in imitating nature, nature is always more beautiful, more essential. Nature is always more full of life. There is no reason to imitate what is out there in nature. But then, real painters don't do that either. Real painters use the object to, let's say, make the sun shine on it, or to observe some color reflection from the surroundings, to capture the interweaving and interlacing of light and dark over an object. So the object you paint is actually only ever the reason for doing so. Of course you never paint, say, a flower that is standing in front of the window, but you paint the light that shines in through the window and that you see in the same way as you see it through the flower. So you actually paint the colored light of the sun. You capture that. And the flower is only the reason for capturing that light.

When you approach the human being, you can do it even more spiritually. Taking a human forehead and painting it like a human forehead – as you believe you see a human forehead – is actually nonsense, it is not painting. But how a human forehead is exposed to the sun's rays as they fall, how a dull light appears in the highlight, how the chiaroscuro plays – all that, in other words, that the subject provides the occasion for, that passes in the moment, and that one must now relate to a spiritual, to capture with color and brush, that is the task of the painter.

If you have a sense of painting, when you see an interior, for example, it is not at all about looking at the person kneeling in front of an altar. I once visited an exhibition with someone. We saw a person kneeling in front of an altar. You saw him from behind. The painter had set himself the task of capturing the sunlight streaming in through a window just as it would fall on the man's back. Yes, the man who was with me to look at the picture said: I would prefer to see the man from the front! Yes, that's right, there is only a material, not an artistic interest. He wanted the painter to express what kind of person it is and so on. But you are only entitled to do that if you want to express what can be perceived through color. If I want to depict a person on a hospital bed, in a particular illness, and I study the color of the face in order to capture the appearance of the illness through the senses, then that can be artistic. If I also want to depict, let's say, in totality, to what extent the whole cosmos comes to expression in human incarnate, in human flesh color, that can also be artistic. But if I were to imitate Mr. Lehmann, as he sits there in front of me, firstly I wouldn't succeed, would I, and secondly it's not an artistic task. What is artistic is the way the sun shines on him, how the light is deflected by his bushy eyebrows. So that's what matters, how the whole world affects the being I paint. And the means by which I achieve this is chiaroscuro, is color, is capturing a moment that is actually passing and fixing it in the way I described yesterday.

In times not so far removed from our own, people felt these things very keenly, as they could not imagine representing a Mary, a Mother of God, without a transfigured face, that is, without a face overwhelmed by the light and which emerges from the ordinary human condition through the overwhelming of the light. She could not be depicted in any other way than in a red robe and a blue mantle, because only in this way is the Mother of God placed in the right way in earthly life: in the red robe with all the emotions of the earthly, , the soul in the blue cloak, which envelops her with the spiritual, and in the transfigured face, the spiritualized, which is overwhelmed by the light as the revelation of the spirit. But this is not grasped in a truly artistic way as long as one only feels it as I have just expressed it. I have now, so to speak, translated it into the inartistic. One only feels it artistically in the moment when one creates out of the red and out of the blue and out of the light, by experiencing the light in its relationship to the colors and to the darkness as a world unto itself, so that one actually has nothing but the color, and the color says so much that one can get out of the color and the light-dark the Virgin Mary.

But then you have to know how to live with color, color has to be something you live with. Color has to be something that has emancipated itself from the heavy material. Because the heavy material actually resists color if you want to use it artistically. That is why it goes against the whole idea of painting to work with palette colors. They always become so that they still show a heaviness when you have applied them to the surface. You can't live with the palette color either. You can only live with liquid color. And in the life that develops between the person and the color when he has the color liquid, and in the peculiar relationship that he has when he now applies the liquid color to the surface, a color life develops, one actually grasps from out of the color, the world is grasped out of the color. Only then does the picturesque emerge, when you grasp the radiance, the revelation, the radiance of the color as a living thing, and only then do you actually create the shape on the surface from the radiating life. A world emerges all by itself. Because if you understand color, then you understand an ingredient of the whole world.

You see, Kant once said: Give me matter, and I will create a world out of it. Well, you could have given it to him long ago, the matter, you can be quite sure that he would not have made a world out of it, because no world can be created out of matter. But more can be created out of the undulating tools of colors. A world can be created from them, because every color has its immediate, I would say personal and intimate relationship to some spiritual aspect of the world. And today, with the exception of the primitive beginnings made in Impressionism and so on, and especially in Expressionism, but these are just beginnings, the concept of painting, the activity of painting, has been more or less lost to us in the face of the general materialism of the time. For the most part today, one does not paint, but rather one imitates shapes by means of a kind of drawing and then paints the surface. But these are painted surfaces, they are not painted, they are not born out of color and light and dark.

But one must not misunderstand the matter. If someone goes wild and simply tinkers with the colors next to each other, believing that he is achieving what I have called overcoming drawing, then he is not at all achieving what I meant. For by overcoming the drawing I do not mean having no drawing, but to get the drawing out of the color, to give birth to it out of the color. And the color already gives the drawing, one must only know how to live in the color. This living in the colored then leads the real artist to be able to disregard the rest of the world and give birth to his works of art out of the colored.

You can go back, for example, to Titian's “Assumption of Mary”. There you have a work of art that, I might say, consists of the transgression of the old principles of art. There is no longer the living experience of color that one still has with Raphael, but especially with Leonardo; but there is still a kind of tradition present that prevents one from growing too strongly out of this life in color. Experience this “Assumption of Mary” by Titian. When you look at it, you can see that the green cries out, the red cries out, the blue cries out. Yes, but then look at the individual colors. If you take the interaction of the individual colors even in Titian, you still have an idea of how he lived in the colors and how he really gets all three worlds out of the colors in this case. Just look at the wonderful gradation of the three worlds. Below are the apostles who experience the event of the Assumption of Mary. Look at how he manages to capture them in color. You can see how they are bound to the earth in the colors, but you don't feel the heaviness of the colors; instead, you only feel the darkness of the colors at the bottom of Titian's painting, and in the darkness you experience the apostles' being tied to the earth. In the way Mary is treated in color, you experience the intermediate realm. She is still connected to the earth. If you have the opportunity, look at the picture and see how the dull darkness from below is incorporated as a color in the coloring of Mary, and how then the light predominates, how the uppermost, the third realm already receives in full light, I would like to say, the head of Mary, shining with full light, lifting up the head, while the feet and legs are still bound down by the color. Observe how the lower realm, the intermediate realm and the heavenly realm, this reception of Mary by God the Father, is truly gradated in the inner experience of color. You can say that in order to understand this picture, one must actually forget everything else and look only at the color, because the three-tiered nature of the world is brought out of the color here, not conceptually, not intellectually, but entirely artistically. And one can say: It is really the case that, in order to grasp the world in a painterly way, it is necessary to grasp this world of radiant shine, of radiant revelation in chiaroscuro and in color, in order to emphasize, on the one hand, what is earthly-material, to emphasize the artistic aspect of this earthly-material aspect, and yet, on the other hand, not to let it rise to the spiritual. For if it were allowed to reach the spiritual plane, it would no longer be appearance, but wisdom. But wisdom is no longer artistic; wisdom lifts it up into the uncreated realm of the divine.

One would therefore like to say: In the case of the real artist, who depicts something like Titian in his “Assumption of Mary”, when one looks at this reception of Mary, or rather of Mary's head by God the Father, one has the feeling that one should no longer go further in the treatment of the light. It is a very fine line. The moment you start going further, you fall into intellectualism, which is unartistic. You can no longer add a line, I might say, to what is only hinted at in the light, not in the contour. Because the moment you go too far into the contour, it becomes intellectualized, that is, inartistic. Towards the top, the picture is in fact in danger of being inartistic. Painters after Titian also fell prey to this danger. Look at the angels up to Titian. When we go up to the heavenly region, we come to the angels. Look at how carefully the transition from color is avoided. You can still say that the angels in the pre-Titian period, and in a sense in Titian, are just clouds. If you cannot do that, if you cannot distinguish between being and appearance, even in the uncertainty, when you have already fully arrived at the being, at the being of the spiritual, then it ceases to be artistic.

If you go back to the 17th century, it will be different. There, materialism itself is already having an effect on the representation of the spiritual. There you can already see all the angels, I might say, painted with a certain non-artistic, but routine verve in all possible foreshortenings, to which you can no longer say: Couldn't they also be clouds? Yes, here reflection is already at work, here the artistic aspect already comes to an end.

And again, look at the apostles below, and you will get the feeling that, in fact, only Mary is artistic in the “Ascension of Mary”. Above, there is a danger that it turns into pure wisdom, into the formless. If one really achieves this, holding the formless and making it formless, then, I would say, on one side, towards one pole, there is the perfection of the artistic, because it is boldly artistic, because one ventures to the abyss where art ends, where one lets the colors blur from the light, where, if one wanted to go further, one could only begin to draw. But drawing is not painting. So there, towards the top, one approaches the realm of wisdom. And one is all the greater an artist the more one can still incorporate the wisdom into the sensual, the more one, if I want to express myself in concrete terms again, the more one can still incorporate the wisdom into the sensual, the more one, if I want to express myself in concrete terms again, the more one can still incorporate the possibility that the angels one paints can still be addressed as concentrated clouds that shimmer in the light in such and such a way and the like.

But if we start at the bottom of the picture and go up through the actual beauty, Mary herself, who is really floating up into the realm of wisdom, then Titian is able to depict her beautifully because she has not yet arrived, but is just floating up. It all appears in such a way that one has the feeling that if she swings up a little more, she will have to enter into wisdom. Art has nothing more to say there. But if we go down a little further, we come to the Apostles, and with the Apostles I said to you: the artist seeks to depict the earthly aspect of the Apostles through the use of color. But there he runs into the other danger. If he were to place his Mary even further down, he would not be able to depict her in her inner, self-sustaining beauty. If Mary were down there, for example, one would not understand the purpose. If she were sitting among the apostles, yes, she could not look as she does in the middle between heaven and earth. She could not look at all like that. You see, the apostles are standing below in their brownish coloration, and Mary does not fit in with them. For we cannot really stop at the fact that the apostles below have the heaviness of the earth in them. Something else must happen. This is where the element of drawing begins to intervene strongly. You can see this in Titian's characterized painting, where drawing begins to intervene strongly. Why is that?

Yes, you can no longer depict beauty in the brown, which actually goes beyond color, as you can in the case of Mary; something that no longer falls entirely within beauty must be depicted. And it must be beautiful in that something other than what is actually beautiful is revealed. You see, if Mary were sitting down there or standing among these apostles in the same coloring, it would actually be insulting. It would be terribly insulting. I am speaking only of this picture. I am not saying that Mary standing on the earth must be artistically offensive everywhere, but in this picture it would be a slap in the face for anyone looking at it artistically if Mary were standing down there. Why? You see, if she were painted in the same colors as the apostles, one would have to say that Mary was portrayed by the artist as virtuous. That is indeed how he portrays the apostles. We cannot have any other idea than that the apostles are looking up in their virtue. But we cannot say that about Mary. With her, it is so self-evident that we must not express her virtue. It would be just as if we wanted to depict God as virtuous. Where something is self-evident, where it becomes something that is being itself, it must not be depicted merely in outward appearance. Therefore, Mary must float away, must be in a realm where she is exalted above the virtuous, where one cannot say of her, in what appears in the color, that she is virtuous, any more than one could say of God himself that he is virtuous. At most, he can be virtue itself. But that is already an abstract sentence, that is already philosophy. It has nothing to do with art. But in the apostles below, we have to say that the artist succeeds in depicting the virtuous people through the color treatment itself in the apostles. They are virtuous.

Let us again try to get close to the matter through the genius of language. Virtue, what does it actually mean to be virtuous? To be virtuous is to be useful; because virtue is related to being useful. To be useful, to be useful, to be good for something, that is to be up to something, to be able to do something, to be able to do something, that is to be virtuous. But of course it ultimately depends on what one means in connection with virtuous, as for example Goethe also presented it, who speaks of a trinity: wisdom, appearance and power, that is, in this sense, virtuousness. Appearance = the beautiful, art. Wisdom = that which becomes knowledge, formless knowledge. Virtue, power = that which is truly useful, that which can do something, whose rule means something.

You see, this trinity has been revered since time immemorial. I could understand when a man told me a good many years ago that he was already sick of it when people spoke of the true, the beautiful and the good, because everyone who wants to say a phrase, an idealistic phrase, speaks of the true, the beautiful and the good. — But one can refer back to older times when these things were experienced with all human interest, with all human soul interest. And then, I would like to say, one sees, but in the manner of the beautiful, of the artistic, in the Titian painting above, wisdom, but not just wisdom, but still shining, so that it is still artistic, so that it is painted; in the middle, beauty; and below, virtue, the useful. Now we may ask the useful a little about its inner essence, its meaning. If we follow these things, we come, through the genius of speech, to the depth of the speech soul that creates among human beings. If we approach it only externally, it might occur to us that someone who had once been to church and listened to a sermon, where the preacher explained to his congregation in an outwardly phrase-like way how everything in the world is good and beautiful and purposeful. The adult was waiting at the church door and when the pastor came out, he asked him: “You said that everything in the world is good and beautiful and purposeful according to your idea. Am I also growing well?” The pastor said: “You have grown very well for an adult!” — Well, if you look at things in this external way, you won't get to the depths of them. Our way of looking at things today is in fact so superficial in so many fields. People today fill themselves completely with such external characteristics, namely with such external definitions, and do not even realize how they go around in circles with their ideas. For the virtuous person, it is not about being good at anything at all, but about being good at something spiritual, about placing ourselves in the spiritual world as human beings. The truly virtuous person is the one who is a whole human being because he brings the spiritual within him to realization, not just to manifestation, to realization through the will. But then we enter a region that, although it is human, also enters the religious, but no longer lies in the realm of the artistic, least of all in the realm of the beautiful. Everything in the world is formed in polarity. Therefore, we can say of Titian's painting: at the top he exposes himself to the danger of going beyond the beautiful, where he goes beyond Mary. There he is at the abyss of wisdom. Downwards, he is at the other abyss. For as soon as we depict the virtuous, that which man, as a being of his own essence, is meant to realize out of the spiritual, we in turn come out of the beautiful, out of the artistic. If we try to paint a truly virtuous person, we can only do so by somehow characterizing virtue in outward appearance, for my part by contrasting it with vice. But the artistic portrayal of virtue no longer actually shows any art; in our time it is already a falling out of the artistic.

But where is not everywhere in our time a falling out of the artistic, when, I would like to say, simply life circumstances are reproduced in a raw, naturalistic way, without the relationship to the spiritual really being there. Without this relationship to the spiritual, there is no artistry. Therefore, in our time, this striving in Impressionism and Expressionism is to return to the spiritual. Even if it is often done awkwardly, even if it is often only a beginning, it is still more than that which works with the model in a crude naturalistic way, which is inartistic. And if you grasp the concept of the artistically beautiful in this way, then you will also be able to accommodate tragedy, for example, and grasp tragedy in general in its artistic reach into the world.

A person who lives according to his thoughts, who leads his life in an intellectualistic way, can never become tragic. And a person who lives a completely virtuous life can never truly become tragic either. A person can become tragic if they have some kind of inclination towards the demonic, that is, towards the spiritual. A personality, a person, only begins to become tragic when the demonic is present in him in some way, for better or for worse. Now we are in the age of the freeing of the human being, where the human being as a demonic human being is actually an anachronism. That is the whole meaning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, that the human being grows out of the demonic to become a free human being. But as the human being becomes a free human being, the possibility of the tragic, so to speak, ceases. If you take the old tragic figures, even most of Shakespeare's tragic figures, you have the inner demonic that leads to the tragic. Wherever man is the manifestation of a demonic-spiritual, wherever the demonic-spiritual radiates through him, reveals itself, wherever man becomes, as it were, the medium of the demonic, there the tragic was possible. In this sense, the tragic will have to cease more or less, because humanity, having been set free, must break away from the demonic. Today it does not yet do so. It is falling ever deeper into the demonic.

But this is the great task for our time, the mission of our time, that human beings grow out of the demonic and into freedom.

But if we get rid of the inner demons that shape us into tragic personalities, we will be all the less able to get rid of the external demonic. For the moment man enters into a relationship with the external world, something demonic also begins for the modern human being. Our thoughts must become ever freer and freer. And when, as I have shown in my Philosophy of Freedom, thoughts become the impulses for the will, the will also becomes free. These are the polar opposites that can be set free: free thoughts and free will. But in between lies the rest of humanity, which is connected with karma. And just as the demonic once led to tragedy, so too can the experience of karma lead to a deep inner tragedy, especially in modern man. But tragedy will only be able to flourish when people experience karma. As long as we keep our thoughts to ourselves, we can be free. When we clothe our thoughts in words, the words no longer belong to us. What can become of a word that I have spoken! It is taken up by the other person, who surrounds it with different emotions and different feelings. The word lives on. As the word flies through the people of the present, it becomes a force that originated from a person. That is its karma, through which it is connected to the world, which in turn can be discharged back onto it. The word, which leads its own existence because it does not belong to us, because it belongs to the genius of language, can cause tragedy. Today, in particular, we see humanity, I would say, everywhere in the disposition to tragic situations through the overestimation of language, through the overestimation of the word. The peoples are divided according to language, want to be divided according to language. This is the basis for a huge tragedy that will befall the earth before the century is out. This is the tragedy of karma. If we can speak of the tragedy of the past as a tragedy of demonology, we must speak of the tragedy of the future as the tragedy of karma.

Art is eternal; its forms change. And if you accept that there is a relationship to the spiritual from the artistic point of view, you will understand that the artistic is something through which one can enter the spiritual world, both in creating and in enjoying. A true artist can create his picture in a lonely desert. It makes no difference to him who looks at the picture, or whether anyone looks at it at all, because he has created in a different community, he has created in the divine spiritual community. Gods have looked over his shoulders. He has created in the company of gods. What does it matter to the true artist whether any human being admires his picture or not? That is why one can be an artist in complete solitude. But on the other hand, one cannot be an artist without really placing one's own creature in the world, which one then also regards in terms of its spirituality, so that it lives in it. The creature that one places in the world must live in the spirituality of the world. If one forgets this spiritual connection, then art also changes, but it changes more or less into non-art.

You see, you can only create art if you have the work of art in the context of the world. The old artists were aware of this, who, for example, painted their pictures on the walls of churches, because there these pictures were guides for the believers, for the confessors, there the artists knew that this is in the earthly life, insofar as this earthly life is permeated by the spiritual.

It is hard to imagine something worse than creating for exhibitions instead of for such a purpose. Basically, it is the most terrible thing to walk through a painting exhibition or a sculpture exhibition, for example, where all kinds of things are hung or placed next to each other in a chaotic manner, where they don't belong together at all, where it is actually meaningless that one is next to the other. By painting having found the transition from painting for the church, for the house, to painting, I would like to say, already there, it loses its proper meaning. If you paint something within the frame, you can at least imagine looking out through a window and what you see is outside, but it is no longer anything. But now painting for exhibitions! You can't talk about it anymore. Isn't it true that a time that sees anything at all in exhibitions, sees anything possible, has just lost the connection with art. And you can see simply from what intellectual culture has to happen in order to find the way back to the intellectual-artistic. The exhibition, for example, can certainly be overcome. Of course, individual artists feel disgust for the exhibition, but we live in a time when the individual cannot achieve much unless the judgment of the individual is immersed in a worldview that in turn people in their freedom, in full freedom, as worldviews once permeated people in less free times and led to the emergence of real cultures, while today we have no real cultures.

However, a spiritual worldview must work on the development of real cultures and thus also on the development of real art, and have the highest interest in doing so.

In these first lectures, we shall bring together, from the field of knowledge of conditions which go to promote a healthy Agriculture, those which are necessary in order to enable us to reach certain practical conclusions which are to be realised in immediate application and which can only have significance when being so applied. To do so we have to enquire at the very outset how the products of Agriculture come into being and what is their connection with the Universe as a whole. Now a farm or agricultural estate comes to full expression as a ‘farm’ in the best sense of the word if it can be regarded as being a kind of separate individuality, a self-contained individuality. This is the condition to which every agricultural estate or farm should approach as near as possible, although it cannot be completely attained. In other words, everything that is needed to bring forth agricultural products should be supplied by the farm itself, which includes, of course, the necessary cattle and live-stock.

Anything brought in from outside, such as manure and the like, ought under ideal conditions of Agriculture, to be regarded rather as medicine for use in the case of sickness. A sound farm should be able to bring forth from itself everything that it needs. We shall see later why this is quite the natural thing. As long as we neglect the inner nature and essence of things and regard them only from their outer material aspect, so long will it be legitimate to ask: Does it really matter whether cow-manure is taken from the neighbouring farm or from one's own steading? Although it may be impossible to carry it out strictly it is important to hold before one the ideal of a self-contained farm. You will find some justification for this statement if you consider first the earth from which our farm arises and secondly the factors which work in upon the earth from the Universe. It is usual to speak of these factors in very abstract terms. People are aware, it is true, that the light and warmth of the sun, and all the meteorological phenomena connected with these, have a particular bearing upon the type of vegetation produced in a given area. But modern views can give no further details, nor throw any further light on the matter because they do not penetrate into the underlying facts. Let us therefore start from the standpoint which embraces the fact that the basis of all Agriculture is the soil of the earth.

This soil—I will indicate it schematically by this straight line (see Drawing No. 2) is generally looked upon as being something purely mineral into which at the best organic substance has entered either because humus has been formed or manure has been introduced. The idea that the soil not only contains added organic substance but also has itself a plant—like nature—and even contains an astral activity: such an idea has never been considered, still less conceded. And if we go a step further and consider how this inner life of the soil in the delicate balancing of its distribution is quite different in Summer from what it is in Winter, we come to subjects which are of enormous importance in practical life but to which no attention is paid to-day. If you start by considering the soil, then you must bear in mind the fact that it is a kind of organ within that organism which manifests itself wherever the growth of Nature appears. The earth surface is really an organ, an organ which, if you care to. you may compare with the human diaphragm. “We may put the matter broadly in this way (it is not quite exact but will give the right idea): Above the diaphragm there are in man certain organs, the head in particular, and the processes of breathing and circulation which work up into the head. Under the diaphragm are other organs. Now if we compare the earth surface with the human diaphragm we must say: The individuality represented by our farm, having the earth surface for its diaphragm has its head under the earth, while we and all the animals live in its belly. Above the surface of the earth, is really what may be regarded as the bowels of what I will now call the “agricultural-individuality.” On a farm, we are walking about inside the belly of the farm, and the plants grow upwards within this belly. Thus, we are dealing with an individuality which is standing on its head, and which is only rightly looked at if so understood, especially as regards its relation to Man. In relation to animals, the situation, as we shall see later on, is slightly different.

Now why do I say that the “agricultural-individuality” stands on its head?

I do so because the air, vapours and warmth, which are in the immediate neighbourhood of the soil and from which both man and the plants derive air, moisture and warmth—all this corresponds to the abdominal organs in the human body. On the other hand, everything that takes place within the earth, under the soil, affects the general growth of plants in the same way as our head affects our organism—especially in childhood, but also throughout the whole of our life. Thus, there is a constant and very living interplay of supra-terrestrial and sub-terrestrial activities.—The forces at work above the earth are immediately dependent upon what we will regard for the time being as localised on the planets. Moon, Mercury and Venus. These planets in strengthening and modifying the effects of the Sun exercise their influence on all that is above the earth surface, while the more distant planets lying outside the earth's path round the Sun strengthen and modify the effects of the solar influences which penetrate upwards through the earth. Thus, the growth of plants is affected by the distant heavens in so far as it takes place underground, and by the nearer heavens in so far as it takes place above ground; and the influences upon vegetable growth coming from the expanses of the Cosmos do not shine directly down upon the earth, but are first absorbed by the earth which then causes them to radiate upwards. What come from beneath as good or bad vegetable growth are really the cosmic influences which are reflected from below; whereas in the air and water above the earth the Cosmos exercises its power directly. The direct cosmic in-streaming is stored up beneath the earth's surface, and from there it works back. The inherent qualities of the soil affecting the growth of plants are dependent upon these stored up influences. (Later we shall consider the case of the animals). The soil still retains in it the effects of influences dependent upon the most remote parts of the Cosmos, which need to be considered in connection with the Earth. These effects are found in what we know generally as sand and rock; the substances which do not absorb water, which are ordinarily supposed to contain no nutritive elements whatsoever and which nevertheless play a very important part in the promotion of growth. These minerals are entirely dependent upon the activities of forces coming from the remotest parts of the Cosmos, and, improbable as it may appear, it is primarily through the medium of siliceous sand that it comes about that soil contains and radiates upwards what may be called its elements of life-ether and chemical activity (chemical ether). The inner life of the soil and the formation of its particular chemical properties depend entirely upon the constitution of its sandy parts, and what the plant roots experience within the soil is determined by the amount of Cosmic life and Cosmic Chemistry which the Earth has absorbed through the mediation of its stony substance (which of course, may lie at some depth below the earth surface). Anyone, therefore, who has to concern himself with the growth of plants should be quite clear as to the geological structure of the ground from which the plants are to grow, and further should bear in mind in all cases that those plants whose roots are for us of primary importance cannot do without silicon in the soil, even though thi3 may lie well below. We should be thankful that silicon makes up 47% to 48% of the Earth, either in the form of silicon (silicic acid) or in other' compounds. Such supplies as we need are therefore always present.

Now the effects which have been brought about in the root through silicon must be borne upwards through the plant. It must stream upwards and there must be a constant interaction between the cosmic forces that have entered into the plant through silicon and those that are active above—forgive me—m the “belly” and that supply the “head” below with what it requires. True the “head” must be provided for out of the Cosmos, but this process must interact with that which takes place above ground in the “belly.” The forces coming in from the Cosmos and being caught up underground must be able to flow upwards again, and the substance which brings this about is clay. Clay is the mediator through which the cosmic activity in the soil is enabled to work from below upwards. In actual practice this will give us the key to the handling of both clay soil and sandy soil according to the particular which we may wish to cultivate. But we must first know what is actually happening. How clay is to be described and how treated in order to make it fertile are important but secondary considerations. The first and foremost thing to know about clay is that it promotes the cosmic upward flow.

However, this cosmic upward flow is not enough by itself. There must also be present the opposite, which I would call the earthly or terrestrial element streaming downwards. All that undergoes a kind of external digestion in the “belly” (the processes above the surface throughout Summer and Winter are indeed a kind of digestion in relation in the growth of plants I) has to be drawn down into the earth. All forces produced by the action of water and air above the Earth and also the substances in delicate homeopathic distribution called from there are drawn down into the earth by lime presented in it in greater or smaller proportions. The lime content of the soil and the distribution of lime in homeopathic dilution above the surface—these are the factors which have the task of leading the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces down into the soil.

These things will take on a very different aspect in future when we shall have a real science concerning them, and not only the scientific guesswork of to-day: it will be possible then to give exact information. We shall then know that there is a great, an immense difference between the warmth that exists above the surface of the Earth and which stands within the sphere of the influence of the Sun, Venus. Mercury and Moon, and the. warmth which makes itself felt within the earth and which stands under the influence of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These two kinds of warmth which we may call the “blossom and leaf warmth” and the “root-warmth” respectively, are completely different from one another—so much so, indeed, that we can describe the warmth above the Earth as a “dead” warmth, the warmth below the Earth's surface a “living” warmth. The warmth below the surface, especially during Winter, contains an inner vital principle. If we human beings had to experience in ourselves this living warmth which works within the soil, we should all become immensely stupid, because in order that we may be intelligent beings, dead warmth has to be supplied to our bodies. But at the moment when the limestone and other substances enable warmth to be drawn into the soil and to change from outer into inner warmth, it passes over into a condition of gentle aliveness. It is recognised to-day that there is a difference between the air which is above the Earth and that which is below the surface, but the difference between warmth above the Earth and that below the surface has been overlooked. It is generally known that the air under the Earth contains more carbonic acid, while that above the Earth contains more oxygen; but the reason for this is not known. It is that the air, as it is drawn into the earth, is penetrated by a gentle aliveness. This is true both of warmth and of air. They both receive a tiny spark of life as they pass into the earth. It is different in the case of water and of the solid earth element itself. Both of these have less life inside the Earth than they have when above its surface. They become “more dead,” they lose something of their life they had outside. But it is precisely this circumstance which exposes them to the influences of the most distant cosmic forces. The mineral substances have to free themselves from the forces which are working immediately above the surface of the Earth if they wish to be accessible to these far away cosmic forces. In our epoch, this emancipation from the processes in the immediate neighbourhood takes place in the period of the time between the 15th January and 15th February, i.e. in Winter. The time will come when these indications will be acknowledged as exact data. It is at this period of the Winter that within the Earth the formative forces of crystallisation reach their full development in the mineral substances. In these days of mid-winter, it is a peculiar feature of the interior or the Earth that it becomes less dependent upon its mineral masses and falls under the influence of the crystallising forces of the cosmic expanses.

Now consider what happens. Towards the end of January, the mineral substances of the Earth have a greater “longing” than at any other time to reach crystal purity in the economy of Nature; and the deeper one goes, the greater one finds this “longing” to be. The plants, absorbed in their own life in the Earth, are less open at this time than at any other to the influence of the mineral substances. But for a time before and for a time after this period, (but especially before when the minerals are preparing to perfect their crystal shape and purity) they are of utmost importance to the growth of plants. It is then that they throw out forces which are of extreme importance to plant growth. Thus, some time in November and December there .is a point of time when the mineral forces at work under the Earth are particularly propitious to the growth of plants. The question therefore arises: How can this best be utilised for the growth of plants? Someday it will become evident that by utilising this knowledge we are able to guide the growth of plants. I will say this now: That m the case of a soil which does not of itself promote the required upward movement of forces which ought to work upwards in the Winter period, it is well to add clay in a proper proportion. (I shall indicate this proportion later on). In this way, we enable the soil to carry those forces, upwards to make it effective in the realm of plant growth above the Earth; before the forces of the minerals have reached their maximum effects for themselves, which will not be until January or February period. (These forces show themselves outwardly—for those who can read their story—in snow crystals.) It may be noted that the power of these forces becomes stronger and stronger the deeper we go into the interior of the Earth.

In this way, what seems to most people recondite can give us insight of the greatest positive value and practical help, where we should otherwise be working at random. Indeed, we must realise clearly that the cultivated ground together with what lies under the surface of the Earth forms an individuality living also within the element of time, (i.e. living through the four seasons,) and that the life of the Earth still is particularly strong during Winter, whereas in Summer it undergoes a kind of death.

Now with regard to the cultivation of the soil there is a point of great importance which must be thoroughly understood. It is a point I have often dealt with among Anthroposophists. It is that we know the conditions under which the forces of the cosmic spaces can work upon the earthly realm. Let us begin with seed formation. The seed which gives rise to the embryo of the plant is generally regarded as a molecular structure of exceptional complexity, and science lays great stress upon this interpretation. The molecules, it is said, have a certain structure, in simple molecules it is simple, in complicated molecules it becomes more and more complex, until we come to the extreme complexity of the albuminous or protein molecule. People stand in wonder and astonishment at the enormous complexity of the structure supposed to exist in the seed.

They do so because they reason as follows. The albumen (or protein) molecule, they say, must be of enormous complexity, for the organism in succeeding plants arises from it. This organism is enormously complex, and since its structure was determined by the embryonic conditions of the seed, the latter's microscopic or ultra-microscopic content must also have a structure of enormous complexity. Well, it is complex indeed in the beginning. As the earthly albumen is formed, its molecular structure is driven to the utmost complexity; but this alone would never give rise to a new organism. For the organism arising from the seed does not proceed by a mere continuation in the offspring of what was present in the parent plant or animal. What happens is that when the embryonic structure has reached its highest stage of complexity in the earth domain it falls to pieces and becomes a “little chaos,” it breaks up and dissolves, one might say, into “world-dust.” And when this little chaos of world-dust is there, the whole surrounding Cosmos begins to work upon it. to stamp it with its own image and to build up in it a structure conditioned by the forces of the Universe working in upon it from every side (see Drawing No. 3). Thus, the seed becomes an image of the Cosmos. Every time this happens, and seed formation is carried through to the point or chaos, the new organism is^: built up from the seed-chaos by the activity of the cosmos. The parent organism has only the tendency to bring the seed into such cosmic position that through its affinity with this cosmic position the cosmic forces will act in the proper directions so that, e.g., a dandelion will give rise to another dandelion and not a berberis.

But the new thing that is built up is always the image of some cosmic constellation. It is built up out of the cosmos. And if in the Earth we would make effective the forces of the cosmos, we must drive the earthly elements into the state of greatest possible chaos. This has to be the case whenever we want the cosmos to act upon our Earth. In the case of plant-growth this is in a certain sense provided for by Nature herself. But just because every new organism is built up by the Cosmos it is necessary that the cosmic principles must be allowed freedom to work in the organisms until the seed-formation is completed.

If, for example, we plant the seed of a given plant in the earth, the seed contains the impress of the whole Cosmos from a particular cosmic direction, which means that it came under the influence of a particular constellation and received its particular form. At the moment when the seed is placed in the soil it is strongly worked upon by the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces, and it is filled with the longing to deny the cosmic forces, in order that it may spread and grow in all directions. For the forces above the surface of the Earth do not want the plant to retain this cosmic form. The seed had to be driven to the point of chaos; but now that the plant is sprouting it is necessary to oppose the terrestrial to the cosmic forces which live as the form of the plant inside the seed. For the cosmic forces must be opposed and balanced, as it were, by the terrestrial forces. We must help the plant to become more akin to the Earth in its growth. This can only be done by introducing into the plant some form of living earthly matter which has not yet reached the state of chaos and seed formation, life which has been held up in a plant before the seeds have been formed. For this purpose, a rich humus formation comes to man's assistance m those districts that are fortunate enough to possess it. Man can hardly find any artificial substitute for the fertility given to the soil by Nature through humus. What causes the formation of humus? It arises from the absorption of remnants of living plants into the whole process of Nature. These remnants have not yet reached the state of chaos, and respect the cosmic forces, as it were. If humus is used for the growth of plants the terrestrial forces are held fast within them. The cosmic forces then work only in the upward stream that terminates in seed-formation. While the terrestrial forces work in the development of flowers, leaf and so on, the cosmos only radiates its influence into all this.

Let us suppose that we have before us a plant growing up out of its own root. At the top end of the stem comes the grain of seed, while the leaves and blossoms spread out sideways. Now, in the leaf and the blossom the terrestrial element is working in giving shape and filling it with matter; the reason why a leaf grows or a grain swells, and takes up the substance inside it is to “be found in the terrestrial forces which we lead to the plant and which have not yet reached the point of chaos. The seed, however, whose forces work upwards through the stem—vertically—not rotating around it (as in the formation of leaves Ed.) radiates the cosmic forces into leaves and blossoms. One can actually see this. We have only to look at the green leaves of a plant. In their shape, in the substances filling them and in their green colour, the leaves bear the terrestrial element. But they would not be green if they had not within them the cosmic force of the Sun. And now look at the coloured blossoms. In these the cosmic force of the Sun is not working alone but is supported by the distant planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. If we regard the growth and development of plants from this point of view, we shall see the redness of the rose as the force of Mars, the yellow of the sunflower- (so-called only because of its shape) as the force of Jupiter. It should be called the Jupiter flower, for it is the force of Jupiter that reinforces the solar force and brings forth the white and yellow colours in the flowers. The blue of the chickweed or chicory flower is the effect of Saturn reinforcing the effect of the Sun. Thus, we can see Mars in the red-coloured flower. Jupiter in the yellow, Saturn in the blue, while in the green colour of the leaf we see the Sun itself. But the same powers which appear as colour in the flower are also at work especially strongly in the root. Here once more the forces living in the distant planets are active within the soil. If we pull a plant out of the ground we may see that in the roots there is cosmic force, in the blossom mostly the terrestrial element. and only in the finest shading by the colour the cosmic element can be seen. The terrestrial forces on the other hand if living actively in the root cause the root to push out into form. For the form of the plant is determined by factors arising in the realm of earth. It is the terrestrial forces that causes the form to spread. When the root develops and divides, it is due to the terrestrial forces working downwards just as the cosmic forces (in the case of the colour) work upwards. Single roots are therefore cosmic roots, whereas forked roots are due to the terrestrial forces working down into the soil, just as in colour the cosmic forces work upwards into the flowers. And the cosmic force of the Sun stands between the two. The Sun force works principally in the green leaves, in the interaction between blossom and root, and in all that is between the two. Thus, the Sun element really belongs to what we have called the diaphragm provided by the surface of the earth: whereas the cosmic element belongs to the interior of the earth and works its way up into the upper part of the plant. The terrestrial element above the earth works downwards and is drawn into the plant with the help of the limestone. Plants which draw down the terrestrial element into their roots through the lime are those whose roots divide in all directions such as all herbs used for fodder, (but not turnips) and such as the sainfoin. Thus, it should be possible, looking at the form of a plant and the colour of the flowers, to tell how much cosmic forces and how much terrestrial forces are at work in it. Now let us assume that we find some means of holding back the cosmic forces within the plant. These forces will then be prevented from manifesting it by pushing up into flowers but will live out their life in the region of the stem of the plant. Now wherein do these cosmic forces reside in the plant? They reside in the silicon. Take the Equisetum. It has this very property of attracting silicon and permeating itself with it. It is 90% silicon. Thus, in this plant the cosmic element is present to a tremendous extent. It does not manifest itself in flowers, but in the growth of the lower part of the plant.

Now, let us take the opposite case. Let us suppose that we want to hold back these forces which work upwards from the root through the stem into the leaves and store them up in the region of the root. This possibility is no longer fully open to. us in the present epoch of our earth, since the genera and species of plants have been so firmly established. Formerly, in ancient epochs when men could easily transform one plant into another, this possibility had to come greatly into consideration. Today we consider it only from the point of view of finding out the condition favourable to a given plant. How can we then set about preventing these forces from pushing upwards into blossom and fruit? How can we in addition hold back the development of stem and leaf within the formation of the root? We must place such a plant on sandy soil. For silicon or flint holds back the cosmic forces and even gathers them. Now the potato plant is one in which the growth of leaf and stem is held back. The potato is a root-stock. The forces that form leaf and stem are held fast in the potato itself. The potato is not a root but a stem which has been held back. Potatoes must therefore be planted on sandy soil; this is the only way of holding back the cosmic forces in them.

The A B C of everything concerning the growth of the plant consists, therefore, m knowing what in any particular plant is of cosmic origin, and what is due to terrestrial forces. How can we make a soil more inclined to condense, as it were, the cosmic forces to retain them in root and leaf? How can we thin them out so that they can be sucked upwards into the blossoms and colour them and even into the fruit, and permeate them with a delicate taste? For the delicate taste in an apricot or plum is, like the colour of a flower, both being due to the cosmic forces which have worked their way upward through the plant. In the apple, you are literally eating Jupiter, in the plum you are eating Saturn. If modern man were faced with the necessity of producing the innumerable species and varieties of fruit-bearing plants from the much smaller number of original plants existing in primordial times, he would not get very far. And we may be thankful that the great majority of our existing fruit trees were brought into existence when mankind still possessed an ancient instinctive wisdom of how to produce new varieties out of the primitive species which then existed. Nowadays these things are done “by trial and error. People do not enter into the process with knowledge. And yet a rational method is the fundamental condition for any possible advance in Agriculture. What our friend Stegemann said in this connection was particularly apposite. He drew attention to the fact that agricultural products are deteriorating in quality. Now you may or may not agree with what I am going to say, but this deterioration is, I claim, connected as is the transformation of the human soul, with the declining of the Cosmic Kali-Yuga during the last few decades and the decades that are to come. For we are also in the presence of a complete inner transformation of Nature. All that we have inherited and been handed down in the way of natural talents, inherited knowledge, nature and of traditional medical remedies is beginning to lose its significance. We shall have to acquire new knowledge if we want to penetrate the natural connection of these things. Humanity has no other alternative before it today than either to learn again about the whole web of natural and cosmic connections, or to let both Nature and humanity degenerate and die out. As in the past, it is imperative that our knowledge should penetrate into the actual structure of Nature.

For example, man knows more or less what happens to air inside the Earth_? but he hardly knows anything of what happens to light inside the Earth. He does not know that silicon, the cosmic mineral» takes up light into the Earth and there makes it active, whereas humus, the substance closely allied to terrestrial life does not take up light and make it active in the earth but produces a lightless activity there. But these are things which will have to become understood and known.

Now, to go further: In any given region of the Earth there is not only a particular vegetation but also certain animals live there. For reasons which will appear later on, we need not consider human beings for the moment. It is one peculiar fact, and I should be glad to see this put to experimental test as I am quite sure that such a test would confirm it. This fact is that the right quantity of cows, horses and other live-stock on a farm will supply just the necessary amount of manure for the farm to restore to it what has been discharged into “chaos.” Moreover, the right proportion of horses, cows and pigs will yield the right proportions in the mixture of manures. This is because the animals eat the right proportion of the plant substances yielded by the soil, and because in the course of their organic processes they produce as much manure as is needed to be given back to the soil. And. though it cannot be strictly carried out. I would say that manure of any kind introduced from outside can only be regarded as a curative substance for a farm that has become diseased. A farm is only healthy if it can supply itself from the manure yielded by its own animals. This of course entails the development of a real knowledge of how many animals of a given sort are necessary for a given farm. But this will be found out as soon as some knowledge returns to us of the inner forces in Nature. To what I said about the “belly” being above the Earth and the “head” being under the Earth, belongs an understanding of the animal organism. For the animal organism is connected with the whole economy of Nature. With respect to form and colour structure and consistency of its substance it is under the influence of the planets. Working backwards from the snout the influences are as follows. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars affect the region extending from the snout to the heart, the heart is worked upon by the Sun, while the region extending from behind the heart to the tail comes under the influences of Venus, Mercury and Moon. (See Drawing No. 5).

Those who are interested in these things should try to examine the forms of animals from this point of view. For a development of knowledge along these lines would be of enormous importance. Go to a museum, for example, and examine the skeleton of any mammal. In doing so, bear in mind the principle that the structure and build of the head is primarily the result of the direct radiation of the Sun streaming into the mouth. Then you will 3ee that the structure of the head and of the adjoining parts depends upon the way in which the animal exposes itself to the Sun. A lion exposes itself quite differently from a horse: the reason for these differences will be examined later on. Thus, the front part of an animal and the structure of its head are directly connected with the Sun's radiation. Now the light of the Sun also reaches the Earth indirectly, by being reflected from the Moon. This too has to be taken into account. The sunlight that is reflected from the Moon is quite ineffectual when it falls on the head of an animal. (These things apply especially to embryonic life). The light* reflected from the Moon produces its greatest effect when falling upon the hind parts of the animal. Look at the formation of the skeleton of an animal's hind parts and the peculiar polarity in which it stands to the formation of the head. You should develop a feeling for this contrast in form between the animal's hind quarters and its head, and especially for the insertion of the hind limbs and the rear and the intestinal tract. This contrast between the front and the hindmost parts of the animal is the contrast between Sun and Moon. If you go further you will find that the influence of. the Sun stops just short of the heart; that Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are acting in the formation of the blood and the head;' and that, from the heart backwards the activity of the Moon is reinforced by that of Mercury and Venus. Thus, if we imagine ourselves to have picked up the animal, turned it round and set it upside down with its head in the earth we shall have the position invisibly taken by the “Agricultural-individuality.” The consideration of this formation of the animal enables us to see a relation between the manure produced by the animal and the needs of the earth in which the plants grow which serve as food for the animal. For you will remember that the cosmic forces which act in a plant are guided upwards through it from inside the earth. If, therefore, a plant is particularly rich in these cosmic forces, and an animal eats it, then the manure which this animal excretes will be particularly well-suited to the soil on which the plant grows. Thus, if we learn to grasp the forms of things we shall see in what sense an agricultural unit, or farm, is a “self-contained individuality” (or as we have called it an “agricultural-individuality”) only we have to include within it the necessary live-stock.