The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Today I want to bring forward certain matters which are connected with what was spoken about yesterday and the day before, matters which concern mankind's evolution insofar as this evolution is dependent upon man's relationship with certain spiritual powers during the earth's future.

The day before yesterday we saw how man's inner being appears to spiritual examination. We saw how it is possible, through exact observation of this kind, to gain insight into the fact that within the physical-soul-spiritual being of man something comes together which, in a certain sense, belongs to the external world, insofar as this world consists of etheric forces and beings. Man draws together these forces to form his ether body as he descends to earthly life. We saw also that with this entity, consisting of forces from the external etheric world, there unites the effect of man's earthly deeds, of everything he causes to happen; in short, his karma.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we saw how, during the different epochs of human evolution, man not only sought but actually did, by various methods, gain insight into the spiritual world.

[ 3 ] I have often mentioned that a new stream of spirituality is now ready to pour into man's earthly existence. The present forms a link in mankind's evolution between an era of mainly intellectual development—which began in the first third of the 15th Century and has now practically run its course—and a future devoted to the spiritual. The most important task for mankind in the era of intellectuality was the development of reason through the investigation of external nature and the development of technology.

[ 4 ] In this direction great and impressive results have been accomplished in recent centuries. However, it must be said that the intellect has begun to lose its creativity, though we still live with its heritage. [ 5 ] The most creative period was from the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno right up to the 19th Century. Especially in Western civilization the greatest intellectual achievements have been attained in recent centuries.

[ 6 ] It is obvious, even to an external unbiased observation, that the intellect has lost some of its creative power. In general, mankind has no longer the same enthusiasm for intellectual accomplishments. Yet the practice of centuries continues through a certain cultural inertia. Thoughts run along the old grooves, but the intellect brings nothing new of real importance to the fore. This is particularly noticeable in our young people. Not so long ago it was a real pleasure to listen to a young person who had studied some subject. It may not have applied to everyone but certainly to those who had achieved something; one was eager to hear what they had to say, and it was the same everywhere in Western academic circles. But a change has come about in the last few decades; when a young person, fresh from university, speaks, one is no longer curious about what he will say next. One is not curious because one knows it already; it comes out automatically; it is as if the brain itself has lost its vitality. One gets the feeling that the activity of the intellect has slid down from the head to some deeper region. That human intelligence has become something mechanical which no longer springs from the region of the head must be obvious even to external observation. This situation has come about because intelligence was originally a natural endowment which mankind was predestined to develop predominantly between the 15th and 19th Centuries.

[ 7 ] However, in order to fructify the developed intellect, a stream of spirituality, from higher regions of world existence, now seeks entry into the earthly life of mankind.

Whether this will happen depends upon man opening his heart and soul to what thus seeks entry, through many doors, as it were, into the earthly world from the spiritual world. It will be necessary for man not only to become conscious once more of the spiritual in all nature, but able to perceive it.

[ 8 ] Consider how in the older civilizations, like those described yesterday, mankind in general perceived—in all the kingdoms of nature, in every star, in every moving cloud, in thunder and lightning—spirit and soul. On the background of this general consciousness the Yoga exercises evolved. [ 9 ] As I explained yesterday, the Yogi attempted to penetrate to his own self. Through inner exercises he sought to attain what today is taken for granted because we are born with it: consciousness of the `I', the feeling of selfhood. This the Yogi had first to develop in himself.

[ 10 ] But, my dear friends, it would be a great mistake to compare the ordinary consciousness of self, that we have today, with that of the Yogi. It makes a difference whether something is achieved through one's own human effort or whether one simply has it. When, as was the case with the Yogi, one first had to struggle to attain consciousness of self, then, through the inner effort one was transported into the great universal laws; one participated in world processes. This is not the case when one is simply placed into the sphere of self-consciousness. To belong willy-nilly to a certain level of human evolution is not the same as attaining that level through inner exercises.

[ 11 ] You will realize from what was said yesterday that mankind must gradually acquire knowledge in a different way; he must set his thought processes free from the breathing process. As I explained yesterday, this has the effect that thinking, by no longer being bound up with the subject, is able to unite itself with the rhythm of the external cosmos. We must go with our thinking out of ourselves into the external world, whereas the Yogi crept into his inner being, by hitching together, as it were, the systems of thought and breath. In so doing he identified himself with what his spirit-soul nature was able to experience on the waves of the inner rhythm of breathing. By contrast, we must give ourselves up to the world in order to participate in all the various rhythms which go through the mineral, plant, animal and human worlds right up to the realm of the Hierarchies. We must enter into, and live within , the rhythm of external existence. In this way mankind will again gain insight into that spiritual foundation of nature which external knowledge does not reach.

[ 12 ] The sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology which are pursued nowadays provide mankind with a vast amount of popular information. What they actually do is explain how sense observation, interpreted by the intellect, sees the world. But the time has come when mankind must rediscover what lies behind the knowledge provided by external observation and intellectual interpretation.

[ 13 ] If one has in mind their physical aspect only, when speaking about the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, then it makes no difference whether one uses these terms or prefers the more recent ones of solid, liquid, aeriform bodies and conditions of heat. When they are referred to today all one has in mind is how the physical substances within them are either combined or mixed, or else separated. However, it must be stressed that everything of a solid, earthen nature has as its foundation an elementary spirituality. Today's “enlightened” people may laugh when reminded that older folks used to see gnomes in everything earthy. However, when knowledge is no longer obtained by means of combining abstract, logical thoughts, but by uniting ourselves through our thinking with the world rhythm, then we shall rediscover the elemental beings contained in everything of a solid earthy nature. The outstanding characteristic of these elemental begins, dwelling in solid earth, is cleverness, cunning, slyness, in fact, a one-sidedly developed intellect.

Thus, in the solid earth element live spiritual beings of an elementary kind who are very much more clever than human beings. Even a person of extreme astuteness intellectually is no match for these beings who, as supersensible entities, live in the realm of solid earth. One could say that just as man consists of flesh and blood, so do these beings consist of cleverness, of super cleverness. Another of their peculiarities is that they prefer to live in multitudes. When one is in a position to find out how many of these astute beings a suitable earthy object contains, then one can squeeze them out as if from a sponge—in a spiritual sense, of course—and out they flow in an endless stream. [ 14 ] But counting these gnome-like beings is a difficult task. If one tries to count them as one would cherries or eggs—i.e., one, two, three- one soon notices that they will not be counted that way. When one has reached say three, then there are suddenly a lot more. So counting them as one would on the physical plane is no use; nor is any other form of calculation, for they immediately play tricks on you. Suppose one put two on one side and two on the other in order to say that twice two makes four. One would be wrong, for through their super cunning they would appear as seven or eight, making out that two times two makes eight, or something like that. [ 15 ] Thus, these beings defy being counted. It must be acknowledged that the intellect, developed by man in recent times, is very impressive. But these super-intelligent beings show a mastery over the intellect even where it is merely a question of numbers.

[ 16 ] The elemental beings dwelling in the fluid element—i.e., in water—have particularly developed what is, in man, his life of feeling and sensitivity. In this respect we humans are really backward compared with these beings. We may take pleasure in a red rose or feel enchanted when trees unfold their foliage. But these beings go with the fluid which as sap rises in the rosebush and participate in the redness of the blossoms. In an intimate way they share feelingly in the world processes. We remain outside of things with our sensitivity, whereas they are right inside the process themselves and share in them.

[ 17 ] The elemental beings of air have developed to a high degree what lives in the human will. It is splendid that the analytical chemist discovers the atomic weight of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and that he finds out how hydrogen and oxygen combine into water to be further analyzed or else how chloride of lime is analyzed, and so on. But elemental spiritual beings are active behind all this and it is essential that man should acquire insight into their characteristics. During the period in which man developed the intellect—as already mentioned, this was from the first third of the 15th Century to the end of the 19th Century—these elemental beings were pushed to one side, as it were. While the intellect played a creative part in man's cultural life there was not much they could do; and because the elemental beings dwelling in solids had, in a certain sense, to hold back and leave the intellect to man, they also held back the beings of water and air. But now we live at a time when the intellect has begun to decline within the civilized world; it is falling into decadence. If mankind does not become receptive to what streams towards him from the spiritual world then the result of this dullness on man's part will be—and there are signs already of it happening—that these elemental beings will gather together to form a kind of union and place themselves under the leadership of the supreme intellectual power: Ahriman.

[ 18 ] If it should happen that the elemental beings come under the guidance of Ahriman with the clear intention of opposing human evolution, then mankind would be unable to make further progress. The possibility would arise that the Ahrimanic powers in union with the elemental beings would divert the earth from its intended course. The earth would not continue what is described in my Occult Science—an Outline as the Saturn-Sun-Moon-Earth evolution. The earth can only become what it was originally intended to become if man, in each epoch, tackles his task rightly.

[ 19 ] One can see already how matters stand. Those who have reached a certain age know that formerly one gained insight into another human being's inner thoughts and feelings simply through normal conversation and exchange of ideas. One took it for granted that a person's reason and intellect resided in his head, and what was in the head would be conveyed through the spoken word. There are many people today who no longer take it for granted that reason is located in the head of many of their contemporaries; rather do they assume it to have slid further down. So instead of listening they now analyze. This is just one example from one misunderstood aspect of the whole problem. But I would say that when one starts to psychoanalyze people instead of just letting them talk, then that is, in fact, an admission that reason no longer resides in the head. It is assumed to have slid down into deeper regions of human nature and must be psychoanalyzed to be brought up gain to consciousness. In this age of a declining intellect there are already people who dislike it if one appeals to their intelligence; they prefer to be analyzed. This is because they do not want to participate with the head in what their soul brings to light.

[ 20 ] Nothing is achieved by looking at these things merely from an external point of view. To see clearly what is involved they must be considered—as we have just done—in the wider context of world evolution. Certain aspects of psychoanalysis may do some good. There are conditions which formerly were simply accepted but are no longer tolerated and must be cured. However, as so many cures are needed, physical ones do not suffice, so one resorts to psychological ones. Why this should be so must be seen in a wider context.

[ 21 ] Superficially judged, there is no point in objecting to all the good reasons and beguiling arguments put forward by psychoanalysts, not even from the wider viewpoint of world evolution. People want to avoid seeing things in their wider context, though it would lead them to the recognition that a spiritual stream is seeking to enter our present civilization to replace the declining intellect.

[ 22 ] What we have considered so far amounts to one aspect of what in the future threatens mankind. There is another aspect—just as the lower elements of earth, water and air are inhabited by elemental beings, so are the higher elements of light ether, chemical ether and life ether. However, these beings of the higher elements differ considerably from those of the lower ones. The beings of light, and particularly those of life, do not aim at becoming multitudes. The ones who strive the most to become multitudes are the beings of the earth element. The beings of the etheric element strive rather towards unity. It is difficult to differentiate them from one another; they do not express any individuality and rather strive to amalgamate.

[ 25 ] Certain initiates in ancient times, through whom certain teachings of the Old Testament originated, turned their attention particularly towards the etheric elements. The strong tendency of these elements towards unification created an influence which resulted in the strict Monotheism of Judaism.

[ 26 ] The religion which is based on the worship of Jehovah originated mainly from a spiritual vision of the realm of the ethers. In this realm live spiritual beings who do not strive to separate from one another and become many individuals. Rather do they strive to grow together and disappear into one another; they seek to become a unity.

[ 27 ] If these beings are disregarded by man—i.e., if he does not turn to spiritual knowledge and the insight that what exists up in the sky is not merely the physical sun, but that with the sun's warmth and light ether beings stream down to earth—if man's comprehension stops at the external material aspect, then the possibility exists that these beings will unite with Luciferic powers. In order for the earth to become what it was originally intended to become, man must wake up to the dangers that threaten from both sides—on the one hand, the danger that those beings who dwell in the lower elements will join forces with Ahrimanic powers, and on the other, that the Luciferic powers will unite with those of the higher elements in their striving for unity.

[ 28 ] The significance of spiritual knowledge for man's earthly destiny cannot be emphasized too strongly. Unless man draws near to spiritual reality something completely different from what ought to happen will happen to the earth. No matter how far or how deeply our sophisticated sciences of physics and chemistry investigate the material world around us, the fact remains that what is investigated will all disappear along with earth existence itself. In the last resort, chemistry and physics have no value whatever beyond the earth. When the evolution of the earth comes to an end, all mineral substances will turn to dust and dissolve in the cosmos. Only what pertains to the plant, animal, and human world will pass over to the Jupiter existence. Therefore, all the magnificent achievements of these sciences are related only to what is transitory. It is essential that knowledge is attained of that which endures beyond the earth.

[ 29 ] As already mentioned, whatever physical laws are discovered, whatever is investigated concerning the atomic weight of individual elements or whatever chemical formulae are produced—all these things are concerned only with what has merely transient significance. Man must grow beyond earth existence through knowledge of the kind of things I have explained. These are matters of great import and significance.

Translation cuts off here. It is filled in for completion

[ 30 ] When one looks in all seriousness at such significant things as we have now, I would say, brought out as the result of yesterday's and the day before yesterday's considerations, then one would also like to look again at the anthroposophical movement, which is striving to take into account the fact that spiritual life wants to enter the earth. One would also like to turn to the anthroposophical movement itself, and so allow me to say a few words about this anthroposophical movement now.

[ 31 ] You sometimes get the impression from what is happening in the anthroposophical movement today that things are very different from how they were years ago. The entire anthroposophical movement actually arose more from an esoteric deepening into the spiritual world. And when anthroposophy began twenty years ago, at that time within the Theosophical Society, everything that was being pursued, presented, and put forward in smaller circles grew, but also everything that was carried out of the smaller circles into the public sphere grew out of esoteric foundations. And what kind of esoteric background this was can be felt today in a publication such as my cycle “The Orient in the Light of the Occident” in “Drei,” where this cycle was printed in 1909; one feels the esoteric impulse throughout this cycle.

[ 32 ] Now, my dear friends, some older members look back on the earlier days of the anthroposophical movement with a certain dissatisfaction because they believe that this esoteric current no longer exists today — not really with good reason, because more esoteric things than have been presented in these three days can hardly be presented in the present. So one cannot say that esotericism has ceased to be pursued in our inner circles, especially here in Dornach, and this esotericism also flows through the public lectures. But the older members do not look back because esotericism is no longer there, because it does not flow into what is being offered, but because today they find other things as well.

[ 33 ] People find that university courses and congresses are now being held. A whole series of university courses have already been held in Dornach and in other cities — Dornach is not a city — in Dornach and in other places. A conference has been held in Stuttgart, and now we are facing a conference in Vienna. Now, our older members notice that there is a different tone at these university courses, at these conferences, that anthroposophy is treated in a different way [than they are used to], that anthroposophy is treated with a certain scientific character. Some of the older members are angry about this and say: That doesn't really interest us. They engage in logical acrobatics, developing one thing from another according to the pattern that prevails in science today. We have become accustomed to approaching the spiritual world in great leaps through inner understanding; we find it possible to approach the spiritual world out of a certain inner understanding. And now people come along and talk from chemical and physical principles, and in recent times even from mathematical formulas, stringing one thing after another, just as is customary in science today, except that they speak anthroposophically and show how anthroposophy has no reason to shy away from appearing fully valid in scientific circles. That doesn't interest us, say the older members today.

[ 34 ] Yes, my dear friends, there is something peculiar about this lack of interest. It was not actually this second stream of anthroposophical life that we sought, but it came to us. Anthroposophy has such a widespread literature today that many more people in the world are familiar with it than one might think. They just don't dare to come forward. But it is nevertheless a rarity that a book like my “Outline of the Secret Science,” which is difficult to read — it was meant to be difficult to read! — which is not written in a way that endears itself to the soul — it is not exactly travel literature — has had fifteen editions since 1909, all of which are now out of print. So, anthroposophy came out into the world, and it was only natural that it became known to people with a scientific or pseudo-scientific education. And then one day we were faced with the fact that other people were drawing anthroposophy into the current scientific enterprise. That was not a matter of choice. It was indeed the case that one day we were faced with a fait accompli. Anthroposophy was scientifically examined, scientifically rebuked, scientifically criticized, and held accountable before science, even if only inadequately today. On the other hand, it was natural that a number of younger friends took a different path than older scientists in our movement.

[ 35 ] I may have already mentioned here an older scientist with whom an anthroposophical conversation years ago was downright exasperating. The person in question is an exceptionally learned botanist. Well, I was so naive, or thought I had to be naive for certain reasons, that I thought the best way to talk to this gentleman about anthroposophy would be to start with botany. So I spoke to the scholar about the essence of plants, the essence of flowering, the essence of germination, in such a way that these individual things pointed to anthroposophy. It did not occur to him to take an interest in this. On the other hand, he was interested in—and very well versed in—all the descriptions that came from the Theosophical Society about the etheric body, the astral body, and so on. For heaven's sake, he thought to himself, I have to lecture on botany and explain plants to my university students in the botanical cabinet; yes, if anthroposophy comes into play there, it will be a fatal story. That won't do, it must be protected from that; I have to be a respectable professor who is not so different from the others. — Therefore, he was not at all interested in how I could talk about plants from an anthroposophical point of view, even though he is a botanist. Yes, one had to speak quite separately from the etheric body and the astral body and, in his opinion, preferably from Kama-Manas and Budhi-Manas and so on, and one could already talk to him about races and rounds, because so-called empirical research does not go that far.

[ 36 ] Yes, you see, the learned people of the older generation were not very interested in integrating anthroposophy into their science. So younger friends gradually came along, but because of their more inwardly coherent soul nature, they felt the need to deal with anthroposophy in their science as well. And so, on the one hand, you had, forgive me, the mob that attacked anthroposophy, and on the other hand, the younger people who now wanted to engage with their sciences from an anthroposophical perspective. This meant that, in a completely natural way, from outside, the scientific work was able to take place. And then, of course, it couldn't be that in university courses and congresses, I myself would have spoken in a way that was, I don't want to say unscientific, but anti-scientific, that is, apart from science. And so, through what came from the world, these institutions, these enterprises, acquired a kind of scientific character, which was also demanded by the fact that anthroposophy gradually had to intervene in practical life, even in therapy. All this, as I said, came to anthroposophy as a demand from the world. As I said, if older friends take into account that esotericism is still continuing, and are content with this, taking note out of general interest of how the scientific current flows when it is fertilized by anthroposophy, then they will soon come to the conclusion: We go to the conferences, we hear things about differential equations, integrals, and so on, and we find: Yes, now things have changed somewhat, but it is necessary that they have changed in this way.

[ 37 ] The difficulty actually lies elsewhere; it does not lie so much in these two currents, which you can see everywhere and about which you have more or less mixed feelings. My dear friends, I did not want to talk so much about these two currents, but rather about what is important to me in the present. Today, when one participates in anthroposophical life, one experiences on the one hand the continuation of the old esotericism and on the other hand the exoteric, scientific striving. Between them there is still an abyss; there is no connection. And that is what needs to be considered above all else. We have very significant, beautiful debates of an anthroposophical nature in the individual sciences, and on the other hand we have the continuation of the old esotericism. But today we simply do not yet have enough people and workers who can build bridges across the abyss that yawns between them. Today, individuals speak very beautifully about anthroposophy in botany, about anthroposophy in chemistry, about anthroposophy in physics, and so on. One can also continue the old esotericism, but it does not build a bridge from one to the other, and therefore so many people are no longer familiar with it. This bridge is, of course, entirely possible, and it must be built at some point; but today there is still a chasm, and there are still too few active workers among us for what should actually happen to happen in all areas. However, such shortcomings – for they are indeed shortcomings – are still largely overlooked.

[ 38 ] My dear friends, if we develop the necessary seriousness that can arise from such considerations as those I put forward at the beginning today, as well as yesterday and the day before, if we face the whole seriousness of the present situation of humanity, then we will say to ourselves: However many shortcomings the anthroposophical movement may still have at present—and we must keep an open eye for these shortcomings—we must nevertheless recognize that patience is needed to wait until we have enough active workers so that something like this abyss between our present exoteric and esoteric endeavors can be filled or at least bridged.

[ 39 ] Of course, there is a difficulty in relation to the world in that, despite all our conferences, everything that is achieved there always remains, I would say, within the conference. One need only remember the wonderful Stuttgart conference, which was extremely successful as such, but remained an internal affair. There was no question of implementing the results of the congress or making known what had been achieved there. No one is concerned with implementation. And so it has been with every single undertaking so far. So today we have far too few active workers to be able to achieve in a thoroughgoing manner what actually needs to be done. As a result, it happens again and again—when someone gets a whiff of the anthroposophical movement and listens to a single lecture here or there, from which they cannot form a judgment, but nevertheless form a judgment—as a result, it happens again and again today that we are inundated with assessments of anthroposophy by people who actually know nothing about it. This is partly because we have too few active workers, and partly because the seriousness I spoke of again today is not sufficiently present in reality.

[ 40 ] You see, my dear friends, if the anthroposophical movement were working uniformly everywhere, the time would have come today when people would quietly begin — I must say “quietly” — here and there to strike a note showing that anthroposophy has to do with the most serious issues not only of our age but, in fact, of the entire future of humanity. What appears in journals and so on is mostly written with a complete ignorance of anthroposophy, and in some cases with malicious intent.

[ 41 ] You see, I received a review of my last lecture cycle in Germany from a person unknown to me. It concerns the lecture cycle which, as you will have heard, was subjected to those appalling disturbances, which are clearly aimed at further and more gruesome attempts to eradicate the anthroposophical essence. I have said so often that these things will increase more and more; there is no need to repeat it. But I am accustomed to the fact that when something happens again, no matter how terrible it may be, people in the widest circles, even within our society, are of the opinion that this is the worst that can happen and that we therefore need not concern ourselves with it. It is not the worst, you can be sure of that!

[ 42 ] But I do not want to talk about that. I would rather point out that here and there today there is a quiet awareness of the importance of the impulse of the times. The person who wrote what I am referring to here has no idea of the significance of what I said yesterday, for example: that we must not ignore what has been achieved in recent centuries within Western civilization as a culture of reason, that we cannot return to the ancient Indian yoga breathing techniques, for example, and that we must not seek in earlier, more primitive epochs of human development the forces that can enable us to penetrate the spiritual world. The author of the article is one of those who believe that there is no other way forward in the present, that since we are cut off from all real human dignity and all real human nature, we must return to earlier paths by which humanity entered the spiritual world. — That is the great error, that people cannot find their way into a path that is adapted to the immediate present, to the soul nature of the immediate present.

[ 43 ] So the person concerned believes that when I always say that we should take into account what is necessary in the present, I am making compromises. That is why he says:

[ 44 ] Steiners personal calling ends where he attempts practical compromises in the face of the enormous complex that is Europe.

[ 45 ] It is not a compromise, but rather what is necessary from the inner connection of the matter! We do not want to give anything away in the way he forms the terminology here. Well, I cannot now tidy up the whole essay, and so I will read the passage to you as it stands.

[ 46 ] However, it must be the prophets who are most dismayed by the harsh inviolability of a “ground of given facts.” But he ceases to be a “prophet” in the full sense of the word when he becomes a political philosopher and makes corresponding concessions to this ground.

[ 47 ] So these concessions are not made. That is precisely the great mistake.

[ 48 ] For it is precisely in its radicalism that the radiant power of all prophecy lies. The prophet must—without the intervention of any human small-mindedness in everyday politics—give birth to the living spirit; he must hurl the seeds of powerful principles into humanity like an insensitive mediator, seemingly unconcerned about the seasons of their realization. He must leave the realizations to the creative function of the peoples.

[ 49 ] With the recognition of the necessity of saving Europe — which, with its poor cosmic circulation, is gradually clogging up the entire planet — anthroposophy no longer stands alone.

[ 50 ] At least there is already a very faint awareness that there is something wrong with the current European civilization, that it is in a “bad circulation community with the cosmos.”

[ 51 ] The objectified synthesis of all European philosophy emerges: the doctrine of the polarity of contrasts and their central resolution and balance—creative indifference. This means a revolution of the entire human standpoint. We see the human complex on a rushing precipice, completely skewed toward the universal force, filled with one-sidedly differentiated energy, closed off from the entire cosmos, an arteriosclerotic giant carcass, a catastrophe in the solar system, a “digestive disorder of God.” — Here, insights converge, anthroposophy identifies with the doctrine of creative indifference, and the mystery cults of the Egyptians and the breathing exercises of the Indian yogis emerge with new meaning.

[ 52 ] Now the person in question would like to argue, according to his view, that there is no other solution to the disturbed digestive system of modern civilization with its arteriosclerosis and constipation than to return to the practice of yoga. But at least he is beginning to grasp the seriousness of the situation, albeit in a somewhat strange, uninformed, and amateurish way. The author continues:

[ 53 ] At night we switch off our consciousness — insofar as we are not yet so disturbed that we barricade ourselves with individuality in our sleep from cosmic renewal — ...

[ 54 ] This is, of course, a completely wrong view, because human beings cannot draw any forces of renewal from sleep; on the contrary, it is precisely when they do not turn to spirituality that they draw forces from sleep in the last resort.

[ 55 ] ... without the inhibition of isolated consciousness, they absorb the healing forces of the cosmos.

[ 56 ] This is not the case with sleep.

[ 57 ] The moment we isolate ourselves, our whole life becomes nothing more than a mere existence, a living off capital, a running down of stored energy, nothing but a process of decay. The consequence of all individuality (individuality in the sense of bourgeois ideology) is therefore inescapable: death. Nothing stands in the way of human immortality—today a great utopia—except the false disposition of humans toward central balance.

[ 58 ] He also has no real understanding of what this is all about, that it is ultimately something he describes in very abstract terms as balance, and which can be understood in concrete terms when one sees how the astral body and the etheric body come together in the region of the human heart. There is also the central point for a real balance. This balance has a cosmic meaning. People today talk in abstract terms; they are simply incapable of penetrating the concrete realities.

[ 59 ] Today, anthroposophy is approaching the practice of yoga.

[ 60 ] It does not do this, but rather through a different practice.

[ 61 ] Whatever objections one may have to the dogmatism of anthroposophy, Steiner has accomplished an unprecedented work of rebellion against the entire monistic-materialistic natural science, which is only historically burdened instead of historically oriented. Perhaps Rudolf Steiner will succeed in establishing the practice of yoga against the narrow-minded materialism and arrogance of Europe.

[ 62 ] It would not be the practice of yoga itself. But to assert something against the narrow-minded materialism and arrogance of Europe is certainly something that is right and that is interpreted here in an unhealthy but nevertheless subtle way.

[ 63 ] Having reached the limits of its viability, Europe will, out of organic necessity, turn to this ancient wisdom of Indian yogis and recognize the spiritual significance of the breath.

[ 64 ] It would be very, very bad for Europe if it did that, if it returned to the practice of yoga. But at least we can see that here and there a quiet awareness of the seriousness of the situation is beginning to emerge, something to which humanity should commit itself.

[ 65 ] Well, it is possible that anthroposophy will be brutally crushed before it is able to carry out what is entirely possible according to its inner nature. But that is at least something that is significant. I am not merely pointing to this newspaper article, whose author is unknown to me. It was sent to me by those who organized this series of lectures. As I said, quite apart from this article, one can say that today, here and there, people are quietly beginning to point out the seriousness of our situation, of our human situation in modern civilization.p>

[ 66 ] And I would like to say: Only from such an understanding of the tremendous seriousness of the situation can that which can truly stand up to anthroposophy in a genuine way emerge. And we should strive to summarize what is emerging today as currents, on the one hand esoteric and on the other exoteric-scientific, out of the necessity of the times. We should take into account that these things have developed out of necessity and that the time will come—if anthroposophy is not killed off, as I said—when enough active forces will be found to bridge the gulf between these two currents. You see, that is what I wanted to give you today as an internal guide, following on from such an important consideration as I have tried to present to you here over the last few days.

[ 67 ] I will announce when we will have the next lecture, as I cannot yet determine the exact day when I will return from the Vienna Congress. I hope that this Vienna Congress will be well attended. I have not had the opportunity to find out who from here has been able to attend. But hopefully this Vienna Congress will be something that will have a greater impact on the general anthroposophical movement than our other events have had. For it is indeed the case that what happens at these congresses should then flow over into the entire anthroposophical movement and from there be further developed throughout the world. Otherwise, the great energy that is always expended at such events is more or less wasted.

Yesterday I tried to outline the various preparations of different nations for the significant point in humanity's development in the middle of the nineteenth century that then, in a sense, flowed from that time on into our present age. All this can be illustrated through descriptions of the connections between external phenomena and the inner spiritual course of development. Today, we shall bring together several facts that can throw some light on the actual underlying history of the nineteenth century. After all, it is true that the middle of that century is the point when intellectual activity completely turned into a function, an occupation, of the human physical body. Whereas this activity of the intellect was a manifestation of the etheric body during the whole preceding age; from the eighth century B.C. until the fifteenth century A.D., it has increasingly become an activity of the physical body since that time. This process reached a culmination in the middle of the nineteenth century. Along with this, the human being has in fact become more spiritual than was previously the case.

The insights into the spiritual world that had come about earlier and had diminished since the beginning of modern times were derived, after all, from the more intensive union of the physical body with the etheric body. Simply because they were now in a position to carry out something completely nonphysical with their physical body, namely, intellectual activity, human beings thus became completely spiritual beings in regard to their activity. But as I already pointed out yesterday, they denied this spirituality. People related what they grasped mentally only to the physical world. And as I attempted to characterize it yesterday, the different nations were prepared in different ways for this moment in the development of modern civilization.

From this earlier characterization, the fundamental difference between the soul condition of the Roman-Latin segment of Europe's population and that of the Anglo-Saxon part will have become clear. A radical difference does indeed exist in regard to the inner soul constitution. This radical difference can best be characterized if certain spiritual streams that have run their course in humanity's evolution since ancient times and have been recognized long ago are juxtaposed to the contrast between France, Spain, Italy, and the inhabitants of the British Isles and their American descendants. This can be characterized in the following way. Everything that was part of the Ahura-Mazdao cult in the ancient Persian culture, mankind's looking up to the light, encountered in a diminished form in the Egypto-Chaldean civilizations and, even more diminished, in Greek culture, finally became abstract in the Roman culture. All this left residual traces in what has been preserved throughout the Middle Ages and the modern era in the Romance segment of the European population. The last offshoot of the Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazdao culture has remained behind, as it were, whereas, on the other hand, the stream that was considered the ahrimanic one in the ancient Persian world view emerges as modern culture. Indeed, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, these two cultures confront each other in recent times. We find poured into this Ormuzd stream everything that comes from the Roman Church. The forms Christianity assumed by enveloping itself with the Roman-juristic forms of government, by turning into the papal church of Rome, are the last offshoots. We have indicated much else from which these forms originated, but together with all these things they are the last offshoots of the Ormuzd cult. These last traces can still be detected in the offering of the Mass and all that is present in it. A proper understanding of what lies at the basis of these traces will be attained only if less value is placed on insignificant aspects as compared to the great streams of humanity, only if in studying these matters the true value is sought in the forms of thought and feeling that hold sway.

In regard to external civilization, modern impulses came to expression in a tumultuous way in the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. As I indicated yesterday, there lived in it though in abstractions, the appeal addressed to the individual, the conscious human being. We might actually say, like a counterblow against what continued to survive in Romanism, these abstractions of freedom, equality, and brotherhood came into being out of the world of ideas. We must distinguish between what found its way into the Roman forms of thought and feeling out of ancient spiritual streams, and the element that originated from human nature. After all, we must always distinguish the essence of a single nationality from the ongoing stream of humanity in general. We shall see how a light that clearly points to the characteristic moment in humanity's evolution in that century also takes shape precisely in the French civilization later on in the nineteenth century. But the national element in the French, Spanish, and Italian cultures contains in itself the continuation of the Ormuzd element in those times in which this element—naturally transformed through the Catholicity of Christianity—appears as a shadow of an ancient civilization. Therefore, we see that despite all aspirations towards freedom Romanism became and has remained the bearer of what the Roman Church in its world dominion represents.

You really do not understand much of the course of European development, if you do not clearly realize in what sense Roman ecclesiasticism continues to live in Romanism to this day. Indeed even the thought forms employed in the struggle against the institutions of the Church are in turn themselves derived from this Roman Catholic thinking. Thus, we have to distinguish between the general stream of humanity's evolution, which has assumed abstract character and flows through the French Revolution, and the particular national, the Roman-Latin stream, which is actually completely infected with Roman Catholicity.

Out of this stream of Roman Catholicity, a remarkable phenomenon arises in the beginning of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon and its significance for the development in Europe is given far too little attention. Most people who spend their lives being asleep to the phenomena of civilization know nothing of what has been living in the depths of European culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century and is still fully grounded in Roman Catholicity. All this is concentrated, I should say, in the first third of the nineteenth century in the activities of a certain personality, namely, de Maistre.¹ De Maistre is actually the representative of the Catholicity borne by the waves of Romanism, Catholicity that has the aspiration to lead the whole of Europe back into its bosom. With de Maistre, a personality of the greatest imaginable genius, of compelling spirituality but Roman Catholic through and through, appears on the scene.

Let us now give some consideration to something that is completely unfamiliar to those who think along Protestant lines, yet is present in a relatively large number of people in Europe. It is not commonly known that a spiritual stream does in fact exist that is quite unknown to what has otherwise developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century, but that is itself well-acquainted with the effects of this new mentality of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Let us try to characterize the world view in the minds of those for whom de Maistre was a brilliant representative in the first third of the nineteenth century. He himself has long since died, but the spirit that inspired him lives on in a relatively large number of people in Europe. Our present is the time in which it is coming to life again, assuming new forms and seeking to gain larger and larger dimensions. We shall characterize the world view at its roots in a few sentences. This view holds that since the beginning of the fifteenth century the course of human life on earth is going downhill. Since that time, only dissipation, godlessness, and vapidity have proliferated in European civilization; the mere intellect focusing on usefulness has gripped humanity. Truth, on the other hand, which is identical with the spirituality of the world, expresses something different since time immemorial. The problem is that modern man has forgotten this ancient, sacred truth. This primordial, sacred truth implies that man is a fallen creature. The human being has cause to appeal to his conscience and remorse in his soul so that he can lift himself up, so that his soul will not fall prey to materiality. But inasmuch as European humanity utilizes materiality since the middle of the fifteenth century, the European civilization is falling into ruin and with it the whole of mankind.

That is the world view whose main exponent is de Maistre. According to this view all of humanity falls into two categories, one representing the kingdom of God, the other representing the kingdom of this world. The followers of this view look upon the earth's population and distinguish those who they say belong to the kingdom of God. They are the ones who still believe in the ancient truths, who, in fact, have vanished in their true form since the beginning of the fifteenth century. Their noblest aftereffects can still be detected in the views of Augustine,² who also differentiates between human beings who are predestined to salvation and those predestined to damnation. The adherents of de Maistre claim that when one encounters a person in this world, he either belongs to the kingdom of God, or to the kingdom of this world. It only appears as though human beings were all mixed together. In the eyes of the spiritual world they are strictly separated from one another, and they can be distinguished from one another. In antiquity, those who belonged to the kingdom of the world, worshiped superstition, that is, they fashioned for themselves false images of the deity; since the beginning of the fifteenth century, they cling to unbelief. That is what de Maistre and his followers say. They know very well what the majority of the European population has slept through, namely, the new age that has in fact dawned since the beginning of the fifteenth century. They indicate this point in time; they indicate it as that moment in time when humanity forgot the source, the actual source of divine truth. The put it like this: Through sole use of the shadowy intellect, human beings found themselves in a position where the connecting link between them and the source of eternal truth was severed. Since that time, Providence no longer extends mercy to mankind, only justice, and this justice will hold sway on the day of Judgment.

If one relates something like this, it is like telling people a fairy tale; nevertheless, there are those in Europe who cling to this view that since the beginning of the fifteenth century divine world rule has assumed a quite different position in regard to earth humanity. They cling to this tenet just as modern scientists adhere to the law of gravity or something like that. Despite the fact that the existence of this view of life is of fundamental significance particularly for the present, people today do not wish to pay any heed to something like this. De Maistre sees the most pronounced defection from ancient truth in the French Revolution. He does not view it in the way we considered it, namely, as the arising in abstract form of what is supposed to direct human beings to the consciousness soul. Instead, he views this Revolution as the fall into unbelief, the worst thing that could have happened to modern humanity. The French Revolution in particular signifies to him that the seal has now been set on the fact that the divine world power no longer has any obligation to extend mercy in any form on the human being but merely justice, which will be sure to prevail on the Day of Judgment. It is assumed in these circles that those who will fall prey to the powers of doom are already predestined, and also already preordained are those who are the children of the Kingdom of God, who are destined to save themselves because they still cling to ancient wisdom that enjoyed its special bloom in the fourth century A.D.

Such an impulse pervades the text Observations About France de Maistre wrote in 1796 when he still lived in Piermont. Already then he reproached France, the France of the Revolution, for its long list of sins. Already then, he referred to the foundations of Romanism that still retain what has come down from ancient times. This sentiment is expressed even more strongly in de Maistre's later writings, and the latter are connected with the whole mission in world history de Maistre ascribed to himself.³

After all, he chose Petersburg as the setting for his activity; his later writings proceeded from there. De Maistre had the grandiose idea to tie in with Russianism, particularly with the element that had found its way since ancient times from Asia into the Orthodox Catholic, Russian religion. From there, he wished to create a connection to Romanism. He tried to bring about the great fusion between the element living in the Oriental manner of thinking in Russian culture, and the element coming from Rome. The article he wrote in Petersburg in 1810, ”Essay Concerning the Creative Principle of Political Constitutions,” is already imbued with this view. We can discern from this text how de Maistre refers back to what Christianity was in regard to its metaphysical view prior to the scholastic age, what it was in the first centuries and what was acceptable to Rome. De Maistre aimed for Roman, for Catholic, Christianity as a real power, but in a certain sense he even rejected what the Middle Ages had already produced as an innovation on the basis of Aristotle's philosophy. In a certain sense, de Maistre tried to exclude Aristotle, for the latter was to him already the preparation for what has appeared since the fifteenth century in the form of the modern faculty of reason. Through human faculties other than logic, de Maistre wanted to attain to a relationship with spirituality.

The essay he wrote in the second decade of the nineteenth century, “Concerning the Pope,” moves particularly strongly in the direction of this concept of life. We might say that it is a text that exudes a classic spirit in its composition, a spirit that belongs, in a manner of speaking, to the finest times of French culture under Louis XIV. At the same time, it had as penetrating an effect as any inspired writing. The Pope is presented as the rightful ruler of modern civilization, and it is significant that this is being stated in Petersburg. The manner of presentation is such that one is supposed to distinguish between the temporal, namely, the corruption that has come into the world through a number of Popes, the objectionable elements in regard to some of the Popes, and the eternal principle of Roman Papacy. In a sense, the Pope is represented as incarnation of the spirit of the earth that is to rule over this earth. One is moved to say: All the warmth that lives in this essay about the Pope is the shining forth of Ormuzd's spirit that very nearly sees Ahura-Mazdao himself incarnated in the Roman Pope and therefore makes the demand that the Roman Catholic Church in its fusion with all that found its way from the Orient into Russia—for this is implied in the background—will rule supreme, that it will sweep away all that the intellectual culture has produced since the beginning of the fifteenth century.

De Maistre was really brilliantly effective in this direction. In 1816, his translation of Plutarch was published.⁴ In it he tried to demonstrate the sort of power that Christianity possessed; a power, so he thought, that had insinuated itself as thought form into Plutarch's dissertations although the latter was still a pagan. Finally, the last work from de Maistre's pen, again proceeding from Petersburg, Twilight Hours in St. Petersburg, was published in two volumes.⁵ First of all, everything I have already characterized appears in them in an especially pronounced form; in particular he depicts the radical struggle of Roman Catholicism against what appears on the British Isles as its counterpart.

If, on the one hand, we see how Roman Catholicism crystallizes in all this in a certain direction, if we note what is connected in the form of Roman Catholicism with personalities like Ignatius of Loyola,⁶ Alfonso di Liguori,⁷ Francis Xaverius,⁸ and others and relate this to the brilliant figure of de Maistre; if we observe everything that is present here, then, in a manner of speaking, we see the obsolete, archaic light of Ormuzd. On the other hand, we note what de Maistre sees arising on the British Isles and what he then assails cuttingly with the pungent acid of his penetrating mind. This struggle by de Maistre against the true essence of the Anglo-Saxon spirit is one of the most grandiose spiritual battles that has ever taken place. In particular, he aims at the personality of the philosopher Locke⁹ and sees in him the very incarnation of the spirit that leads mankind into decline. He opposes Locke's philosophy brilliantly to excess.

We need only recall the significance of this philosophy. In the background, on the one hand, we must note the Roman principles of initiation that express themselves like a continuing Ormuzd worship. We must be aware of everything that flowed into this from somebody like Ignatius of Loyola,¹⁰ and in such grand manner from de Maistre himself. On the other hand, in contrast to everything that has its center in Roman Catholicism in Rome itself, yet is based on initiation and, I might say, is certainly the newest phase of the Ormuzd initiation, we have to observe all the secret societies that spread from Scotland down through England and of which English philosophy and politics are an expression. From a certain, different viewpoint, I have described that on another occasion. De Maistre is just as well informed about what makes itself felt out of an ahrimanic initiation principle as he is knowledgeable about what he is trying to bring to bear as the Ormuzd initiation in the new form for European civilization. De Maistre knows how to evaluate all these things; he is intelligent enough to recognize them esoterically, inasmuch as he attacks the philosopher Locke who in a sense is an offspring, an outward, exoteric offspring, of this other, ahrimanic initiation. He is attacking an important personality, the one who made his appearance with the epochal book Concerning Human Reason, which then greatly influenced French thinking. Subsequently, Locke was indeed revered by Voltaire.¹¹ His influence was such that Madam de Sevigne¹² remarked concerning an Italian writer who made Locke palatable in a literary sense for Italy, that the latter would have liked to consume Locke's rhetorical embellishments in every bowl of boullion.

Now de Maistre took a close look at Locke and said: It is impossible that Voltaire, for example, and other Frenchmen could have even read this Locke! In his book Twilight Hours in St. Petersburg de Maistre discusses in detail how writers actually gain world fame. He demonstrates that it is quite possible that Voltaire had never read Locke; he really could not have read him, otherwise he would have been smart enough not to defend Locke as he did.

Even though de Maistre sees a veritable devil in Voltaire, he still does him justice by saying this of him. And in order to substantiate this, he offers long essays on how individuals like Locke are written and spoken about in the world, individuals who are viewed as great men. This is notwithstanding the fact that in reality people are not concerned with gaining firsthand knowledge about them, but instead familiarize themselves with such individuals by means of secondary sources. It is as if humanity were imprisoned in error—this is how Locke affects these people. The whole modern way of thinking that, according to de Maistre's view, then led to the catastrophe of the French Revolution actually proceeds from Locke; in other words Locke is the exponent, the symptom, the historical symptom for this. From the point from which Locke proceeded, this way of thinking dominates the world. De Maistre scrutinizes Locke, and he says that there were few writers who had such an absolute lack of a sense of style as did Locke, and he demonstrates this in detail. He tries to prove in every instance that Locke's statements are so trivial, so matter of fact, that one need not reckon with them at all, that it is quite unnecessary to trouble one's thoughts with them. He states that Voltaire said Locke always clearly defined everything, but, asks de Maistre, what are these definitions by Locke? Nothing but truisms, “nonsensical tautologies,” to use a modern term, and ridiculous. According to him, all of Locke's pen pushing is supposedly a joke without style, without brilliance, full of tautologies and platitudes.

This is how de Maistre characterized something that became most valuable for modern mankind, namely, that people today see greatness in platitude, in popular style, in the lack of genius and style, in what can be found in the streets but passes itself off as philosophy.

Yet, de Maistre is actually a person who in all instances pays attention to the deeper spiritual principles, to the spiritually essential. It is most difficult for matters such as these encountered here to be made comprehensible to a person today. For the way a personality like de Maistre thinks is really quite foreign to present day human beings who are accustomed to the shadowy intellect. De Maistre not only observes the individual person; he sees the spiritual element working through that individual. What Locke wrote must be characterized in de Maistre's sense in the way I have just described it. However, de Maistre expresses this with extraordinary brilliance and geniality. At the same time, he says: If, in turn, I consider Locke as a person he was indeed a quite decent fellow; one can have nothing against him as a person. He is the corrupter of Western European humanity, but he is a decent person. If he would be born again today and would have to watch how human beings make use of this triviality that he himself recognized as such after death, he would cry bitter tears over the fact that people have fallen for his platitudes in this manner.

All this is expressed by de Maistre with tremendous forced and plausible emphasis. He is imbued with the impulse thus to annihilate what appears to him as the actual adversary of Roman Catholicism and what, according to his view, thrives especially on the other side of the Channel. I would like to read to you one passage verbatim from the “Petersburg Twilight Conversations,” where he speaks of the—to his view wretched—effect of Locke on politics: “These dreadful seeds”—so he says—“perhaps would not have come to fruition under the ice of his style; animated in the hot mud of Paris, they have produced the monster of the Revolution that has engulfed Europe.”

After having uttered such words against the spirit working through Locke, he again turns to Locke as a person. This is something that is so difficult to impress on people of our age who constantly confuse the external personality with the spiritual principle that expresses itself through that human being and see it as a unit. De Maistre always distinguishes what reveals itself as actual spirituality from the external human being. Now he turns again to the outward personality and says: He is actually a man who had any number of virtues, but he was gifted with them about as well as was that master of dance who, according to Swift,¹³ was so accomplished in all the skills of dance and had only one fault—he limped. Thus, says de Maistre, Locke was gifted with all virtues. Yet, de Maistre truly sees him as an incarnation of the evil principle—this is not my figure of speech, de Maistre himself uses this expression—that speaks through Locke and holds sway supersensibly since the beginning of the fifteenth century. One really gains some respect for the penetrating spirituality that imbued de Maistre. One must also be aware, however, that there really exist people who are gaining influence today and are on the verge now of winning back their influence over European civilization, who are definitely inspired by that spirituality that de Maistre represented on the highest level.

De Maistre still retained something of the more ancient, instinctive insights into the relationship between world and man. This is particularly evident from his discourse about the Sacrifice Offering and the ritual of the Sacrifice. He had somewhat of an awareness of the fact that what is linked to the physical body in regard to the consciousness soul must make itself felt independently in the human being and that it is embodied in the blood. Basically, it was de Maistre's view that the divine element had only been present in human evolution up to the fourth Christian century. He did not wish to acknowledge the Christ Who works on continuously. Above all, he tried to extinguish everything existing since the fifteenth century. He longed to return to ancient times. Thus, he acquired his particular view of the Christ, a view that possessed something of the ancient Yahweh, indeed of the old pagan gods, for he really went back to the cult of Ormuzd. And he gathered from this viewpoint that the divine element can only be sought far beyond the human consciousness soul, hence, beyond the blood. Based on such profound depths of his world view de Maistre expressed the thought that the gods—namely the gods of whom he spoke—have a certain distaste for the blood, and in the first place have to be appeased by the blood sacrifice. The blood has to offer itself up in sacrifice.¹⁴

It goes without saying that this is something the supremely enlightened modern human being laughs at. Yet it is something that has passed on from de Maistre to those who are his followers and who represent a segment of humanity that must be taken seriously, but who are also intimately connected with everything proceeding today from Roman ecclesiasticism. We must not forget that in de Maistre we confront the finest and most brilliant representative of what infused France from Romanism and what indeed has come to expression in French culture, I would say, in an ingenious but folk-oriented form. It is this that lives in French culture and has constantly brought it about that clericalism played a significant role in everything motivating French politics throughout the whole nineteenth century.

In France, the abstract impulses of freedom, equality, and brotherhood clashed with what existed there as Roman Catholicism. Actually, we must vividly feel what imbued a person such as Gambetta¹⁵ when, at a decisive moment, the deep sigh escaped from him: “Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi!” (“Clericalism, that is the enemy!”). He sensed this clericalism that pulsed up from everything in the art of social experimentation during the first half of the nineteenth century. It lived in Napoleon III; it was something even the Commune¹⁶ had to struggle against. It was an element that survived into¹⁷ of the 1880's and the conflicts around the personality of Dreyfus;¹⁸ it is something that is alive even today.

An element is present in France that stands in an inner, spiritual, and absolutely radical difference to all that exists on the other side of the Channel in Great Britain and is basically embodied in the elements that remained behind from something else, from the various Masonic orders and lodges. Whereas, on the one hand, we are dealing with initiated Roman Catholicism, on the other hand we encounter the movements of secret societies, which I have already characterized here from another viewpoint and which represent the ahrimanic stream. There is a tremendous difference in the way the modern question of one person's individual status is expressed, say, in the elections to Parliament in France, or over in Great Britain. In France, everything proceeds from a certain theory, from certain ideologies. In England, everything emerges directly from the practical relationships of commercial and industrial life and collides, as I pointed out yesterday, with the ancient patriarchal conditions that prevailed particularly in the landowners' lifestyle. Just look at the way things take place in France. You find everywhere what you might call spiritual battles. There are struggles for freedom, for equality and brotherhood; people fight for the separation of school and church. People struggle to push the church back. But it is not possible to do so, for the church dwells in the depths of the soul's existence. Everything runs its course, in a manner of speaking, in the domain of certain dialectics, of certain arguments.

Over in England, these matters run their course as questions of power. There, we find a certain spiritual movement that is typical of the Anglo-Saxon people. I have often pointed out that as the middle of the nineteenth century approached, certain people came to the conclusion that things could not be allowed to go on in the same way any longer; human beings had to be made aware of the fact that a spiritual world does exist. The merely shadowlike intellect did not suffice. Yet people could not make up their minds to bring this inclination towards the spirit to the attention of the world in a manner other than through something that is “super-materialistic,” namely, through spiritism. This spiritism, which in turn has a greater impact than one would think, has its origins there. Spiritism, out to grasp the spirit externally, so to speak, just as one grasps matter, is therefore super-materialistic, is more materialistic than materialism itself. Locke lives on, so to say, in this super-materialism. And this element that in a sense, dwells in the inner sphere of the modern cultural development, expresses itself outwardly. It is certainly again and again the same phenomenon.

We encounter a tendency toward that spiritual stream de Maistre opposes so radically in the 1840's across the Channel: The tendency to comprehend everything by means of material entities. Locke basically referred to the intellect in such a manner that he deprived the intellect of its spiritual nature. He made use of the most spiritual element in the human being in order to deny the spirituality in the human being, indeed, in order to direct human beings only to matter. Similarly people in the nineteenth century referred to the spirit and tried to demonstrate it through all sorts of material manifestations. The intention was to make the spirit comprehensible to human beings through materialism. The element, however, that imbued the initiates of the various fraternities then passed over into the external social and political conditions.

One is inclined to say: By fighting for the abolition of the grain tariff in 1846 and succeeding in that endeavor, the cotton merchant Cobden and the Quaker Bright¹⁹ were the outward agents of the inner spiritual stream in the political life in the same way as the two most inept individuals who ever existed in politics, Asquith and Grey in the year 1914.²⁰ Certainly, Cobden and Bright were not as blind as Asquith and Grey, but basically it is the same symptom, presented to the world in outward phenomena such as the abolition of the grain tariff in 1846 when industry was victorious over the ancient patriarchal system, only on a new stage. Yesterday, I listed the other stages preceding this one. Then we can observe, so to speak, stage following upon stage. We see the workers organizing themselves. We note that the Whigs increasingly become the party concerned with industry, that the Tories turn into the party of the landowners, of the old patriarchal system. But we also see that this ancient patriarchal element could no longer resist the abrupt clash with modern technology—I characterized the manner of that yesterday—and that, all at once, modern industrialism pushed its way in. Thus, centuries, indeed millennia, were skipped, and England's mental condition that dated back to pre-Christian eras and existed well into the nineteenth century simply merged with what has developed in recent times.

Then we see the right to vote increasingly extended, the Tories calling for the support of a man, who only a short while ago certainly would not have been counted among them, Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, who was of Jewish extraction, an “outsider.”²¹ We watch the Upper House finally becoming a shadow and the year 1914 approaching in which a quite new England emerges. Only future historiography will be able to evaluate this emergence of the new England correctly.

You see, this is the course of the major events in the development of the nineteenth century. We see the various moments flashing up, indicating how significant a point in humanity's evolution has actually appeared. Only the most enlightened minds, however, can discern the light flashes that are the most important. I have frequently called attention to a phenomenon that is highly significant for the comprehension of the development in the nineteenth century. I have called attention to the moment in Goethe's house in Weimar when, having heard of the July revolution in France, Eckermann appeared before Goethe and Goethe said to him: “In Paris, unheard-of things have occurred, everything is in flames!” Naturally, Eckermann believed that Goethe was referring to the July revolution. That was of no interest at all to Goethe; instead, he said: “I don't mean that; that is not what interests me. Rather, in the academy in Paris, great controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has broken out concerning whether the individual types of animals are independent or whether the one type passes over into the next.” Cuvier claimed the first, namely, that one is dealing with firm, rigid types that cannot evolve into other types. Geoffroy held that one has to view a type as being changeable, that one type passes over into the next.²² For Goethe, this was the major world event of modern times!

In fact, this was true. Goethe, therefore, had a profound, tremendously alive sensitivity. For what did Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire argue against Cuvier? The former sensed that when human beings look into their inner being, they can animate this shadowy intellect, that it is not merely logic, which is passively concerned with the external world, but that this logic can discover something like living truth about the things in this world within itself. In what imbued Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, Goethe sensed the assertion of the living intellect, something that arose, I might say, in the occult development of modern humanity and reached its culmination in the middle of the nineteenth century. Goethe really sensed something of great significance.

Cuvier, the great scholarly scientist, claimed that one had to be able to differentiate between the individual species and had to place them side by side. He stated that it was impossible to transform one type into the next, least of all, for example, the bird species into that of the mammals, and so on. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, on the other hand, claimed that it was possible to do so.

What sort of confrontation was that? Ordinary truth and sublime error? Oh no, that is not the case. With ordinary, abstract logic, with the shadow-intellect, one can just as easily prove the correctness of what Cuvier claims as of what Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has stated. On the basis of ordinary reason, which still prevails in our science today, this question cannot be resolved. This is why it has come up again and again; this is why we see Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire confront Cuvier in Paris in 1830 and in a different manner Weissmann²³ and others confront Haeckel.²⁴ These questions cannot be determined by way of this external science. For here, the element that has turned into the shadowlike intellect since the beginning of the fifteenth century, something that de Maistre detests so much, is really aiming at abolishing spirituality itself.

De Maistre pointed to Rome, even to the fact that the Pope—except for the temporal, passing papal personalities—sits in Rome as the incarnation of what is destined to rule over modern civilization. The culmination point of these discourses by de Maistre was reached in the year 1870, when the dogma of the Pope's infallibility was proclaimed. By way of the outmoded Ormuzd worship, the element that should be sought in spiritual heights was brought down into the person of the Roman Pope. What ought to be viewed as spirituality became temporalized matter; the church was turned into the secular state. This was subsequent to the fact that the church had already for a long time been successful in fitting the secular states into the form it had assumed itself when it had turned into the state religion under Constantine.

Therefore, in Romanism, we have on the one hand something that turns into the modern state inasmuch as the legal principle itself rebels and brings about its own polarity, so to speak, in the French Revolution; on the other hand, we have the outdated Ormuzd worship. Then we confront the element arising from the economic sphere, for all the measures that are taken on the other side of the English Channel originate from that sphere. In de Maistre we encounter the last great personality who tries to imprint spirituality into the judicial form of the state, who tries to carry the spirit into earthly materiality. This is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has to oppose. It wishes to establish super-sensible spirituality. It tries to add to the prolonged Ormuzd worship, to the ahrimanic worship, something that will bring about a balance, it wishes to make the spirit itself the ruler of the earth.

This cannot be accomplished other than in the following manner. If, on the one hand, the earthly element is imprinted into the structure of political laws and, on the other hand, into the economic form, this spiritual life, in turn, is established in such a way that it does not institute the belief in a god who has become secular but rather inaugurates the reign of the spirit itself that flows in with each new human being incarnating on earth. This is the free spiritual life that wishes to take hold of the spirit that stands above all that is earthly. Once again, the intention is t bring to bear what one might call the effusion of the Spirit.

In A.D. 869, during the general ecumenical council, the view of the spirit was toned down in order to prevent human beings from arriving at the acknowledgment of the spirit that rules the earth from heaven, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, in order to make possible the appearance of a man such as de Maistre as late as the nineteenth century.

This is what is important: Rather than appealing to the spirit believed to be incarnated in an earthly sense, a Christ-being believed to be living on in an earthly church, we must appeal to the spiritual entity that is indeed connected with the earth, yet must be recognized and viewed in the spirit. But since everything human beings must attain in the earthly domain has to be acquired within the social order, this cannot come about in any other way but by acknowledging the free right of the spirit descending with each new human life in order to acquire the physical body, the spirit that can never become sovereign in an earthly personality and dwells in a super-sensible being.

The establishment of the dogma of infallibility is a defection from spirituality; the last point of what had been intended with that council of 869 had been reached. We must return to the acknowledgment, belief in, and recognition of the spirit. This, however, can only come about if our social order is permeated with the structure that makes possible the free spiritual life alongside other things—the earth-bound political and economic life.

This is how the insight human beings must acquire today places itself into the course of civilization. This is how it has to be experienced within the latter. If we fail to do that, we cannot arrive at the essence of what is actually trying to come to expression in the “Threefold Social Organism,” of what tries to work for the salvation of a civilization that otherwise must fall victim to decline in the manner described by Spengler.

• 1. Joseph-Marie Comte de Maistre, 1753–1821, French diplomat and political theoretician.
• 2. Augustine, 354–430, neo-Platonist, Church Father. Converted to Christianity in 387, Bishop of North Africa. Wrote City of God, Confessions, among other books.
• 3. “Considerations sur la France,” London, 1796; “Essai sur le principe generateur des constitutions politiques,” Petersburg, 1810; "Du pape," Lyon, 1819.
• 4. Plutarch, around A.D. 125, from Chaironea. Greek philosopher and historian of the Roman-Hellenistic age.
• 5. Joseph de Maistre, Les soirees de St. Petersbourg, 1821, or “Twilight Conversations in St. Petersburg, Discourses About the Reign of Divine Providence in Temporal Matters,” with an appendix: “Explanations Concerning the Sacrifices.”
• 6. Ignatius of Loyola, 1491–1556, founder of the Jesuit Order, canonized in 1622.
• 7. Alfonso Maria di Liguori, 1696–1787, founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, canonized in 1839.
• 8. Francis Xaverius, 1506–1552, Jesuit; missionary to India and Japan.
• 9. John Locke, 1632–1704, English philosopher of the Enlightenment.
• 10. Jaques Benigne Bossuet, 1627–1704, French theologian and Church politician.
• 11. Voltaire, actually Francois-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778, French theologian and philosopher of the Enlightenment.
• 12. Madame De Sevigne's remark concerning an Italian writer: See de Maistre's Les soirees de St. Petersbourg, vol. 1, p. 413. Concerning his discourse about Locke, see the whole sixth conversation in Les Soirees, vol. 1, p. 337–430.
• 13. Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745, Dublin, English writer and satirist.
• 14. See note 5.
• 15. Leon Gambetta, 1838–1882, French statesman and republican. Remark from a speech on May 4, 1877.
• 16. Commune: Socialistic-Communistic community council that ruled over Paris for several months following the armistice of 1871 with Germany. The movement was bloodily defeated in May of 1871.
• 17. Boulangism: George Boulanger, 1837–1891, French general and monarchist.
• 18. Alfred Dreyfuss, 1859–1935, French officer, banished in 1894 for alleged high treason, pardoned in 1899. The Dreyfuss affair gave rise to consolidation of the political Left in France.
• 19. Richard Cobden, 1804–1865, and John Bright, 1811–1889, adherents of free trade, brought about abolition of the grain tariff, which, along with other factors, brought about England's industrial advancement.
• 20. Herbert, Earl of Oxford and Asquith, 1852–1928, liberal British Prime Minister in 1914; Edward Grey, 1862–1923, British Foreign Minister in 1914, belonging to the imperialistic faction of the Liberals.
• 21. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804–1881, British Prime Minister from 1868 until 1880.
• 22. Baron George Cuvier, 1769–1832, and Geoffroy de St.-Hilaire, 1772–1844, French natural scientists. See Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, part 3, conversation of August 2, 1830 (the quote is not verbatim).
• 23. August Weissmann, 1834–1914, zoologist.
• 24.

Spiritual Science should above all things be conceived of, by those who have already noted for a long time, in the sense that the question should come before the soul as to how Spiritual Science can be most intensely effective for human life. This has certainly often been emphasized, but we cannot often enough to bring forward the side of the reality of Spiritual Science and its significance for our age. Spiritual Science is certainly in a sense a Science, and as such it is, we may say, still in a “fragmentary” stage at the present day, only partly established; what it may eventually become can really only be present in the first beginnings at the present time.

What I mean by this is the content of Spiritual Science, through which we can learn something of man in so far as this has its life on the other side of the gates of physical life: which are birth, or conception, and death. Through spiritual Science we can also learn something about the evolution of the Earth and the Cosmos, and as to how this evolution of Earth and the Cosmos is connected with man, and so on. Thus, through Spiritual Science the human desire for knowledge can be satisfied in a more comprehensive and complete manner than is possible through external sensible science. We can answer the questions which weigh on man's soul and so on.

Besides this significance of Spiritual Science from the view of ‘content’ there is another very essential one. This can be observed if we keep in view what we can become, what can be made of our soul-life, our soul-disposition, our soul-constitution, when we busy ourselves with the thoughts and ideas which come to us from Spiritual Science. It might even be—in what science has this not been the case in the course of the development of mankind!—that much of what can and must be proclaimed today quite conscientiously from the sources of Spiritual Science might have to be corrected; that much may appear in another form in the future through the further progress of Spiritual Science. Then perhaps there may be a different content in one or another department of this Spiritual Science. But what it may become for the disposition and constitution of our soul through its ideas and its thoughts, would not be affected thereby, and this is fundamentally connected with certain basic qualities of our present day. We will today review certain basic characteristics of our time, particularly as regards the constitution of the soul of man. We will dwell on the four most important soul-activities which we know well from our observation: the perception of man with respects to outer sense-processes; imagination (the forming of ideas) through which we then work upon these outer sense-impressions; our feeling; and our willing. Our soul-life runs its course from waking till going to sleep in perception, imagination, feeling and willing.

First we will consider perception. When the soul's eye is sharpened by Spiritual Science we can observe what has of necessity developed as the basic cultural characteristic of the human soul in the course of the last three or four centuries, in those countries which come into our consideration. (What I say is not setting criticism: it is only a characterization.) It may be asked what this is. It only needs a superficial observer of life to discover that men, in regard to their faculty of perception (in respects to the immediate relation of the soul to the outer world through the senses), have come to a point when they constantly need livelier, more violent, more fascinating impressions, to satisfy the faculty of perception of their senses. Those of you who are somewhat older may think back to your youth; just compare many of the phenomena of life in your youth, which you could perceive around you, with similar phenomena of life now—the further you go back the more striking this is—and ask yourselves to what a high degree that which is known as the impulse, the tendency to the ‘sensational,’ has not gained the upper hand! What is really this sensational element? It rests on the fact that man needs today forceful, exaggeratedly quick-changing and purely sensuous impressions, so that he may be thrilled and carried away from the outer world; he wants to be taken hold of and fascinated. The sensational has gained the upper hand to an uncommon extent. But something significant is connected with this. Through the domination of the sensational, the strength and energy of the human Ego is modified. Spiritual Science alone can lead to an understanding of what comes under consideration here; for he shows what perception of the outer world really is.

If we search through philosophical literature we find nothing more spoken of in the nature of external perception, or ‘sensing’ as it is called. All sorts of theories have been set up as to what sensing, perceiving really is, within the human physical soul life. I need not enlighten you as to that. But the point of view of Spiritual Science in this respect shall be indicated.

I have already mentioned here in Berlin, in a public lecture, that the development of natural science in the 19th century and into our own times has accomplished great things, great things in regard to the understanding of certain sensible connections of the external world of realities. But it sees the evolution of man in particular as far too direct and simple. It simply imagines that at one time there were only the lower animals, then higher animals, then still higher ones, and out of these men finally developed as, in a sense, the highest animal all. The evolution of man, however, is not so simple as this. We have often pointed out that man, who must appear to us in his external bodily form has an image of the divine reality of the Cosmos, can be thought of as represented in the most varied manner. He can even be thought of, in regard to certain natural-scientific points of view, as being divided into three parts: first the head- or senses-man (this is not exact but as the most important senses lie in the head, we may say ‘head-man’). Secondly, the trunk-man; and thirdly, the extremities-man. Of these three members of the human organization, the trunk-man, the heart- and lung-man, alone is really formed as natural science imagines him today. The head-man is really not in the process of progressive development but of a retrogressive one. The head of man arrests the progressive development at a certain stage and turns it back again. It has been repeatedly said that such an idea is difficult, and it has been asked how one can simplify it for oneself. I have pointed out in several places even the external rightly understood facts of natural science confirms my statements—only one must be a real natural scientist and not merely follow the pattern of certain scholars of the present day. Observe the human eye, and compare it with the eye of animals which have reached a certain stage of evolution. We cannot say that the human eye is more complicated in its outer form than the eyes of these animals, for that would not be true. There are animals which have, for example, in the inside of their eye—where we, from an outer physical point of view, have nothing at all—the ‘cell-apophysis’ and the ‘sword-apophysis.’ These are certain organs in the inside of the eye which are continuations of the blood vessels into the inside of the eye. Through these an intimate connection between the whole life of feeling of the animal and his perceptive life is established in the eye. The animal feels much more intensely in the eye than man does. In man there is no ‘cell-apophysis’ or ‘sword-apophysis.’ The human eye is simplified. In its form is not merely progressive, it is retrogressive. One could prove in the smallest details of the human head-organism that man is really retrograding in respect to his head, especially compared with the rest of the human make-up, which is progressive.

Someone who thought that this backward development of the head was difficult to imagine asked me whether I could point to a significant fact or clue by which one could understand this better. I told him to think of the following: In the process of development of the different animals ending with man, it comes about a certain period of the embryonic stage that the human being turns back to the hairy state. Man himself is not hairy, but the head belongs to the hairy portions, in general; the fact that man, as regards the formation of his head, reverts to the rank of the animal, likewise shows the retrograde development of the head. This is a superficial, external indication. The inner signs speak much more distinctly. I beg you to keep in mind the vast importance of these facts.

For the very reason that the head is retrogressive, that evolution does not progress in a straight line but is retrogressive in the head, is dammed up and turned back, room is thereby created for the psycho-spiritual development of man. Those natural scientists who are of the opinion that the psycho-spiritual life of man is only a result of his physical organism, do not understand their own natural science aright. They do not understand that in order to bring his soul and spirit nature into being it is necessary that the physical organization of man should not shoot and sprout, but that it should withdraw. It flags and is turned back and makes room for the psycho-spiritual development. Where man most develops his soul and spirit nature, there the physical development draws back.

One becomes inwardly aware, when one has gone through a psycho-spiritual development, that, simply through inner observation, one can get an answer to the question: What really is ordinary imagination and perception? What is the ordinary waking life, in which imagination and perception are mingled?

As regards the head of man, perception and imagination and the waking life in general is a state of ‘hungering.’ Man is so peculiarly organized that, in his inner equipoise, from waking till sleeping, the head, that is his inner organization, is continually ‘hungry’ as compared with the rest of the body. Certain ascetics who seek an increase of psycho-spiritual life have made use of this; they allow the whole body to be hungry, because the hunger-process, extended to the whole body, is said to bring about certain inner illumination. This is false. The normal state is that our head in the waking state is nourished less through the inner processes than the rest of the organism, and we can only be awake and perceive because the head is less nourished than the rest of the body.

Now the question arises: if our head hungers whilst we are undergoing this backward development of the head—in sleep there is an attempt to arrest this process—what then do we perceive? Through Spiritual Science we learn to distinguish between two things which in practice are always linked together, but which are two quite different things. There is first the mere waking life, and then the outer perceptions and the ordinary concept of memory. What then goes on when in waking consciousness we are hungering in our head?

First of all we are aware on the one hand of our Ego from the last incarnation. When we are merely awake we are aware of what we brought with us from the spiritual world, and with which we entered into existence through birth or conception. That enters and fills the space made for it in our organism; but when we perceive outer sensible objects, these external objects step into the space of the Ego, which otherwise we perceive when we have no external impression but are merely awake. In ordinary life these two things are intermingled: we are continually perceiving external objects, and are very seldom in such a state of soul that we are merely awake. The state of soul directed to external things is however always interwoven with an inclination to perceive our former Ego and to replace it by something, by external colors and sounds; then again, to perceive the former Ego and then again the external things. As soon as we perceive externally, as soon as an outer object works upon us, it suppresses our tendency, our power, to perceive the Ego of our last incarnation. It remains unconscious, we know nothing of it; but in this sense-perceiving there is really a conflict between the object which now stands before us and the Ego from our last incarnation.

Now you can imagine what it means when we are developing a striving after the sensational, when we wish to give ourselves up to the outer world. That never makes us stronger in life, but always weaker; for in so doing we weaken our Ego from the past incarnation, which in a certain sense constitutes our strength. Thus you can clearly see that with the inclination of man towards the sensational, a certain weakening of the human nature appears, and the Ego becomes weaker.

Now when we do not perceive, but think, imagine, what process takes place? Either our thoughts are silent or—which is not so frequent in present-day man—they link onto some external perception. When they are silent in waking-life, all we have gone through between the last incarnation and the present one works in us, in that which is able to work where room has been made for it by the body. Thus the last incarnation works in the place where perception arises; and in the place where conceptions arises, works the life which we have spent between death and the present birth. If we develop powerful thoughts within ourselves, it means that we are trying to develop these out of what we brought with us from the last birth, upon which we must take our stand. If only we have all thoughts which are called up within us from an external stimulus, which only revolve in our soul because we receive them from outside, we continually weaken what we have brought over from the time he dreamed death and birth, that is to say, our Ego. The search for sensation weakens our present life. The desire to animate our Club evenings with the dusky pints of beer so that we need to make as little demand as possible on ourselves, or the excitement of playing games, in short all this seeking for excitement from without, is not a strengthening but a weakening of the Ego, and it rests fundamentally on the fact that we do not feel strong enough to occupy ourselves with something pertaining to our soul-life. Through Spiritual Science we can clearly see the underlying reason why people are so desirous of sensation and in need of stimulus at the present time. What enters from this side into our present-day culture can be designated by a common name. Do not be offended by this name; it betokens a fundamental feature of many of the currents in the life of the present day: a limitation and narrowness of outlook. No one can deny, even taking present-day science and other activities into consideration, that one of the chief characteristics of the present-day man is his limited outlook, that limitation which prevents him from seeking the rich material in his own soul which comes from his past life and from his prenatal life. He does not believe, and he would have first to believe it, that one could be incited to do this through Spiritual Science.

Let us observe from this point of view what thoughts and ideas of Spiritual Science can be for the mood and disposition of the soul. They are certainly not external stimuli, nor anything sensational, and they decidedly did not aim at this. They do not take possession of the senses through external sensations. Many people miss this. In matters of Spiritual Science people must themselves reflect, and if they do not bring forth anything from the fund of their own soul, they are likely to fall asleep over Spiritual Science.

Spiritual Science gives us just this animation and shaking up of the soul-life, so that we gain the possibility of developing thoughts from our own inner self. It works against the sensational. It does this specially by giving us the possibility of thinking much about a few impressions of the senses. We need not hasten from sensation to sensation. We can give much thought to all possible sorts of sense-impressions. All the simple things which approach us personally become a riddle. Every detail makes us think a great deal; and thoughts about Saturn, Sun, Moon, the different Earth and so on, which many find so complicated, make the mind active and mobile and do not allow narrow-mindedness to any extent. Thus does our Spiritual Science work against a certain attribute of culture; it fights against a narrow outlook in the realm of perception and imagination. That is different again from the content which one can get from Spiritual Science; it is something that it can make up our soul, and we should take note of that.

Now in regard to the life of feeling. What is the most noticeable thing about a person who approaches Spiritual Science in any way? And what is the most noticeable thing about most people who do not wish to know anything about it, and who turn aside from it altogether? In the latter it is lack of interest in the great circumstances of the world. We must first of all enlarge our interests beyond what lies nearest, if we are to become interested in Spiritual Science. For what do most people in our time care about what the Earth was before it became “Earth”? What do most people of the present day care what civilization was before our own time? To do so one must develop more comprehensive interests. It is a question of extending one's interests beyond the thing lying nearest. Our age has the tendency to narrow the sphere of our interests as much as possible. What is really the tendency of our age? Allow me to use the following expression: it is not at all flattering, but I do not wish to criticize, only to characterize. Our time is striving in all ways towards narrow-mindedness, towards Philistinism, and if this takes hold of the majority of people, the consequence will be that the Philistinism will gradually be introduced into the most public departments. In this respect we have a remarkable example, which in respect to the things of the present day, must have a most depressing effect on those who can see through things.

In the East we have a nation which today is certainly in its infancy as regards the basic forces of its soul, but which possesses basic forces which in the future—in the sixth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture—are to develop to a remarkable height; basic soul forces which will work spiritually and have a spiritual character, and which we ought to recognize and cultivate as such. But what has established itself as public life in a remarkable manner today over a great part of this national force? Leninism! One cannot imagine anything more grotesque than the coupling together—I do not now refer to the man but to the thing—of this “aping of the civilization of the West” with the prophetic civilization of the East. There are no two things more opposite, and yet they are coupled together here. It is the most grotesque expression of materialistic striving; for out of the Folk-Spirit of the East something absolutely anti-philistine will be formed; but Leninism is the most absolute basic force of philistinism, the negation of all cultural interests of a far-reaching nature and the limitation of the interests of civilization to the narrowest realm of philistinism. We must clearly understand that. Nothing can better help us to penetrate these things, then the knowledge of Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science also works against philistinism, by appealing to the wide comprehensive interests of man. For one cannot possibly become a Spiritual Scientist without taking an interest in what binds man to the Cosmos, in what passes beyond all that is narrow and pulses into all that is great. So, in the realm of the life of feeling, spiritual knowledge is also the opponent of philistinism and of narrow-mindedness, which must inevitably result from materialism; as in the realm of the perceptive and conceptual life is also the opponent of narrow-mindedness and limitation.

In the domain of the will-life also, he who observes life even but to a small extent, can make a noteworthy observations. In respect to the expressions of the will, not materialism itself but what it brings in its train leads to the development of something remarkable in collective human life. The will must indeed always express itself with the help of the bodily nature, if it is to have an effect on the outer world. In regard to the will, present-day materialism makes man awkward. By reason of man's directing his bodily forces only in to quite distinct channels in his earliest youth and wielding them only in some particular directions, he becomes awkward in wider spheres. There are men today who, when they first find themselves in need of it, cannot even sew on a trouser-button for themselves, let alone anything else, strange as this may sound. If a man does not regard Spiritual Science as theory or doctrine but as something that works warmly within him and is taken into his whole personality, he will find that this passes over into the muscles and the pulsation of the blood and makes him dexterous. If we imparted a spiritually-scientific way of picturing things to our children, we should see the result; we should see that they would become adroit, that they would be able to do things more easily, their fingers would become more flexible. The possibility of making the ideas more mobile, occasions the will also do become more active in its methods of expression. Thus in the sphere of the will-life, Spiritual Science fights against that which threatens mankind: awkwardness. This is a characteristic of our time to a far greater extent than we realize. Just observe how little fitted men are today to do anything at all outside the narrow concerns of their professions; they are no longer able to do anything else besides; and they only do more or less work in their professions for the reason that their soul's course has been laid out for them. Confront a man who is thoroughly routine in his profession with something different, and you will see how very one-sided our present-day culture is. That cannot be obviated by external means; for the whole political economy tends towards specializing everything. To try to fight against this would be absurd. It is possible, however, so to fortify men's inner nature that they would receive the impulse of dexterity from the center of there being. For that it is necessary however to be quite permeated, thoroughly permeated, with the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and chiefly of the super-sensible nature of man. We cannot understand perception and conception, even from a spiritually-scientific point of view, if we do not know what I have said before, that the human organism makes room, through the backward activity of the head-organism, for the past life and also the life between death and rebirth to flow in. The life after death also close into our organism.

The opinions of natural science about the human organization are, as I have already said, far too one-sided. The trunk-man alone might be thus one-sidedly observed, but not so the extremities-man. If we observe the extremities: arms, hands, feet, legs (which organism is continued inwardly), this extremity-organism is seen to be the reverse of the head-organism: and over-development exists there which forces the development beyond the normal. If we accurately study man's development in regard to these relations we shall see that it shoots beyond the needs between birth and death. Let us consider only what is external: the armed organism in connection with the breasts; the secondary organs which serve propagation; the legs in connection with the primary sexual organs—the extremities in connection physically with that whereby man even physically looks out beyond himself. The extremities organism at its center serves not nearly what is poured out over the individual human life, but that by means of which his vision extends beyond himself: the psycho-spiritual. What lies—as soul and spirit—beyond the extremities extends beyond what serves human life between birth and death. Thus, just as man physically out of his own organism functions into that of the child through the center of his extremities, so that is present in him spiritually as imagination which he carries through the portal of death by virtue of his being an arm- and leg-man. Through imaginative cognition it can be very clearly seen that man bears quite distinctly—and even anatomically—his future state after death, spiritually in his extremities-organism. If we study natural science properly, we shall gradually cease to say that Spiritual Science is something that we cannot understand. If we really observe the human organism not as rectilinear, for that it is not, but as it really is, then natural science itself will make it necessary to turn to Spiritual Science. Mankind will of course have to overcome something—the belief in the similarity of all other sense-impressions. The similarity of all external sense-impressions is believed today, not only by the unlearned, but also by the scientific investigator who has a man before him in the clinic and examines him anatomically. To him the heart is a similar organism to the head, but this is not correct; the head as compared with the heart stands at the retrogressive stage in its whole organization. Only we do not know how to observe; that is the trouble. If we want to learn to observe correctly, we can gain from natural science itself fundamental conviction of the spiritual in man, which passes through births and deaths. When however we arrive at this, we shall also take into account this soul and spirit nature in the whole movement and growth of culture and we shall then understand the importance of the struggle against having a narrow outlook, against philistinism, and gaucherie, and we shall copperhead much else as well. Above all we shall learn to reckon with the spirit in practical life. The physicist is allowed to speak freely today of positive and negative electricity, of positive and negative magnetism; and yet it is taken amiss when the spiritual scientist in his domain speaks of two currents of force in the human soul, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. But these two currents of force are just as much a polarity for the human soul as positive and negative magnetism or electricity in the physical. If we wish to understand humanity in its development we must take the trouble to observe what is at work in regard to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic element in life. An example:

Our social structure was for a long period of time influenced in a one-sided manner by Luciferic beings. Yet we could not simply eradicate the Luciferic element from life! A person who is always saying, “I will protect myself from the Luciferic element” is the very one to fall into it. There can only be a question of conceding it the right place in life and of knowing what is Luciferic and what is Ahrimanic: then we shall not exaggerate their effects and not put them in a false light. For centuries our social structure in Europe and also in other parts of the world has been ruled by strong one-sided Luciferic impulses. These strong Luciferic impulses lay hold of the instincts and habits of man, of that which works from within. All this is not criticism, only a characterization of these times. How did the Luciferic element work? Now great consideration has been given to determining social culture, the position of a man in life by laying great value on his vanity, on his ambition. These are Luciferic impulses. The vanity and ambition of a man had been stimulated. I would remind you how much weight is attached to pride and ambition in schools, even up to our times; and pride and ambition has led a man in many respects to acquire this or that, in order to gain an important place in life.

We have now reached an important point in life. It can scarcely escape the notice of a close observer that these Luciferic impulses are on the decline. To use a superficial expression, they no longer draw. But now something else is to be brought in, something essentially Ahrimanic; and one Ahrimanic feature is creeping into the customs of our present day. Our beloved populist so free from authority, which never wants to believe in authority, and which therefore, as a matter of course, falls a victim to all authorities, will again unsuspectingly allow to pass unobserved what is now about to take root as a one-sided Ahrimanic power in regard to the form the social structure. Something quite remarkable is now making itself felt, so-called “Intelligence tests.” Experimental psychology, which at the universities is doubtless to a certain extent justifiable, can discover many things as regards the working of the human body and as to how it expresses various things. But this psychology desires to have a certain occupation, and testing is easier than any other examination of the soul. The experimenter has a certain instrument which makes records on an electrical course; it places students at certain points and notes how long it takes for an impression to be received and to be brought to their consciousness. He thus works, from he an external clinical point of view, in a business-like way. That is easier than to investigate inwardly. For certain things the value of this experimental psychology is undeniable, but it wants to have a wider field. It now wants to take in hand “Intelligence tests.” For that, a number of children are taken from various grades of school classes and are tested as regards their “talents,” their memory, their power of observation, and so on; but the way in which the test is carried out by the methods of experimental psychology is very remarkable. Memory, for instance, is tested in the following way: On the blackboard two rows of words are written which have no connection with one another; for example, “head” and “crystal,” then two other disconnected words, and so on. After they have all been rubbed out again, the first word only is written down and the child has quickly to add the second one from memory. Those children who have best observed which word came next are considered to have the best memories, and the others who can recollect nothing at all or need a longer time are supposed to have a worse one. That is how the memory or the intelligence is tested. I will read a prize example of this (from the newspaper “German Politics,” 1918: “The discovery of the psycho-technique in Germany during the War” by Dr. Curt Piorkowski):

“For instance, in getting the concepts of ‘mirror,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘escape,’ a whole row of different connections between the mirror and the escape assert themselves, for the discovery of which no sort of special knowledge is necessary, only a distinct combination. The obvious connection (which will be made by the less intelligent persons) is of course that the person threatened sees in the mirror the murderer creeping along. Yet quite other suggestions are also possible! A stealthy murderer can for instance knock up against a mirror and waken the threatened sleeper by the clatter, so that he can escape; or the designing murderer may be blinded by a reflecting mirror.”

Imagine how intelligent a boy or girl must be if they are to hit upon such an idea!

“But motives of feeling may also be related. So for instance the murderer may be so terrified at his own image, indistinctly seen in the mirror in the semi-darkness, that he desists from the carrying-out of the deed, be it that horror or prickings of conscious seize him at the sight of himself in the mirror, or that in the dim light he takes his own reflected image for that of another.”

It is considered quite especially intelligent if the person under examination thinks that the murderer might see himself in the mirror, and take his own face for that of another.

“Another idea is the discovery of the stealthy murderer reflected in the water of the calm peaceful forest lake near threatened man, and so on.”

Just according to whether the examinee interpolates the obvious thing or not is he considered more or less intelligent, and as a child who is shown to be the more intelligent in this respect will be supported by scholarships or in some other way; while the one who could think of nothing further then that one might see a murderer in the mirror receives no scholarships. In such a way is the intelligence to be tested today and with regard to these tests there is enthusiasm. By this means social order is to be influenced even if not arranged. The dear public however will welcome such things with all their hearts as the issue of the true and sincere science of the present day, for these things create a great stir today. In this way sought to find ways and means of methodically “putting the right man in the right place,” and essays are written beginning as follows: “More than almost any other science has applied psychology blossomed during the war. It is not a chance appearance, for war with its waste of men and its various requirements has proved the importance of not using human forces extravagantly and aimlessly; but using them to the best advantage. Up till now pedagogy alone dealt practically with exact psychology; now three new questions are added: for what vocation as the man best suited? (Problem of the suitability of a profession) How is a substitute be found for the many intelligences that have been destroyed? (Selection of talent); What possibilities of healing are there for those wounded in the head or those with otherwise damaged nerves? (Practice of psychical therapy).”—And so it goes on in the style. An error of the times is coupled with a significant phrase and the matter will be less noticed, because there are, of course, vocations which must be conducted according to this method. It is quite obvious that airmen for instance have to be examined in a similar way, with a certain justification. But this should not be applied to all. For in such a one-sided development something Ahrimanic will thereby be brought into our social structure. All that comes from the soul-nature, from the elemental, impulsive soul-nature, would thus be eliminated from human aspirations and endeavor. To put the matter roughly: Do we believe that if such intelligence tests could really be determinative, a phrase like “Joy and Love are the wings of great deeds” could still have significance? If people would only think of their own great men! We can be quite sure that if such an examiner had to examine Helmholtz he would have represented him quite certainly as a fellow without talent. Read the biography of Helmholtz!

That is an Ahrimanic feature. Things appear disguised as well. If people are not able to observe things through Spiritual Science, they cannot see where the harm is. It does not suffice that in our time people like to wallow in all kinds of sensual feelings, it is necessary they should wake up in regard to their judgment of life. A great deal would be gained in regard to this nonsense of intelligence tests if there were at least a few people who formed an objective opinion about it. For it will blossom and flourish, you may be quite sure of that! It will become what the “prejudice-free soul-test” has at last made it, and it will be glorified as one of the finest outcomes of that philosophical tendency which has at last stripped off the old idealistic prejudices and methods and now goes in for “the real.” Spiritual Science must work practically in this sense.

Now much is connected with these things, and above all this, that breadth of interest and reality must at last become fundamental attributes of the human soul. I should like to give you two pretty examples of the way in which reality works in our day, and how a certain interest is not present. If I choose personal examples I take it for granted that you will not take it amiss, for you indeed know that I do not do so from any personal foolishness. Recently I held a lecture in Munich on the experiences which the seer makes in art. I have never supposed that any newspaper reporter would be able to understand the subject of Spiritual Science or to write anything in praise of it. If a newspaper reporter should begin to write about Spiritual Science in a flattering manner I should think that something was not in order; but we may study some examples of their work. In the lecture mentioned I also spoke of the art of music and of how musical experience affects the whole man in a remarkable way, that really whenever there is a musical experience a rhythm is set up in the inner man. I then spoke on the one hand in reference to the physiological side, explaining the flowing to and fro of the brain-fluid through the arachnoidal space and further demonstrated how the spinal-marrow canal is elastic to a greater or less degree and how a wonderful inner rhythm is in fact brought about thereby. Musical experiences create a glorious rhythm in life; I mentioned these rhythmical movements of the brain-fluid as being connected with inspiration and expiration; and as I also spoke in this lecture of symbolic ideas, a newspaper reporter wrote that I myself used symbolic ideas which were untenable: the idea of ‘brain-fluid’! We need only recollect that without the ‘brain-fluid’ the brain, which according to the principle of Archimedes becomes lighter than the brain-fluid, would compress and crush to pieces the blood vessels lying beneath it. Thus the ‘brain-fluid’ is a very real thing. But thus do matters stand with respect to the interests which men have, and such is the nonsense written in consequence.

Then an example, only a small illustration, of truth and untruth. I have often mentioned that the remarkable scholar Max Dessoir has also written a chapter about Anthroposophy in his book “The Other Side of the Soul.” I tried to point out to him the many different misrepresentations. Even from an external point of view his method of relating is really very comical by reason of its absolute superficiality. Thus for instance he mentioned my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” and said of it that it was my first literary production. I could not do otherwise than reply, although it was out of place to do so, that for 10 years before it appeared I had already written and had my books published. But “The Other Side of the Soul” by Max Dessoir aroused attention; it was discussed everywhere by the journalists (who consider the brain-fluid as a symbolical idea). It caught on, and now a second edition has appeared. In the preface to this, Max Dessoir tries to justify himself, and again in the same fashion. He cannot get out of it and says the context proved quite clearly that I did not grasp what he meant; he meant that the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” was my first “theosophical” book. Thus apart from the fact that everyone must smile at his statement that he did not mean my first literary work, everyone must again laugh when the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” is called my first “theosophical” book. For a far-reaching discussion exists as to whether I abandoned philosophical authorship in my theosophical works. That is how far veracity is regarded, and it is necessary to attract people's notice to it. But without veracity we cannot progress, and we dare not let such things simply pass in this manner. To anyone who has knowledge of the things concerned, the whole book of Max Dessoir is compiled like the chapter on Anthroposophy . And yet, what happened? A newspaper, the “Kant Studien,” which regards itself as extremely serious (I mention this because in this paper no attack is made on Anthroposophy)—the “Kant Studien”—which prides itself tremendously on its purely scholarly scientific bent, speaks of this product of Dessoir as a serious scientific book in many ways. One of the saddest experiences one can have is to find a book which evinces the greatest superficiality considered by a philosophical magazine as a “serious scientific book,” as it is called there. Now I ask: What then is the public, the public which has no belief in authority, to do today? It takes such works as the “Kant Studien” (Studies of Kant) and so on, as a matter of course out of the libraries. And yet such things are to be found in it.

We must go back to what lies at the base of human nature through the spirit if the will be present. And this foundation is only touched by the strivings of Spiritual Science today. In this one cannot do otherwise than work towards reality, breadth of interest, towards anti-philistinism and activity as regards life. I wished to speak to you again of these things so that our consciousness may not grow faint; in Spiritual Science it is not merely the content that matters, but also the special nature of the concept, ideas and thought in our soul, so that it may be raised out of limitations, philistinism and awkwardness. That is something which the observer of the special impulses which lie in Spiritual Science must consider more and more. We must grasp the practical value of Spiritual Science. In the next lecture we shall speak further of these things.

If we wish to be convinced of what, in the newer sense of the word, Natural Science signifies, we must look back to the sources of our present civilization. As can be seen even front the ordinary historical and scientific observation, these sources must be thought of as lying very far back in time, it is only if one keeps in mind the evolution of man and the gradual appearance of his special powers in more recent times that one can set-how these powers arose front the depths of the human soul, powers which lead to the present observation of nature and the affiliation of this to technique and to life.

There is a certain difficulty in placing more recent historical epochs in their essence before anyone who is wedded to the present day Science. In the previous lecture we attempted by way of introduction to proceed from the present—a present be it understood to which Herder and Goethe belong and to investigate certain streams which lead back to ancient times. We have seen how one of these two streams which existed so characteristically in Goethe led its hack to the Egyptian point of view, the other to the Chaldean. We went back to pre-Christian times and emphasized characteristic distinctions between the soul mood of the Chaldean people living in further Asia which can be traced back to about the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium and that of Egypt, which can be studied still further back even in external history.

We have seen how a view existed among the Chaldeans belonging more to the external world in which the human mind so lost itself in the external world that even time became elastic. This soul mood made it necessary to regard the day hours in summer longer than in winter, whereas with the Egyptians the division of the year throughout the centuries was held rigidly by a method of calculating and not from any grasp of external events. They reckoned 365 days to the year and went on in stages of 365 days, not noticing that in reality they were no longer in harmony with the course of the year as it ran in the sense world externally. While they reckoned the year shorter than it is they encountered contradictions with what is really perceived in the outer world. This shows a significant distinction in the soul moods of two people who were connected with each other through trade relations and by spiritual intercourse, people who stood near to each other outwardly. One can only value such a distinction correctly by entering deeply into the origins of human civilization. This is rendered increasingly difficult because the civilizations which have developed one after the other in time exist to-day side by side in space arrested at different phases of evolution.

If to-day the European or the American who wishes to emerge from his materialism to more spiritual ideas about the human being, if he turn to the present Indian civilization, he finds within this a highly developed spirituality, a mysticism penetrated by acute intellectual concepts. He finds within its philosophy absolutely nothing of what he has learnt to know as the natural scientific view of Western or American civilization. If he feel a longing to experience something concerning humanity, something which modern science cannot give him, and if he do not allow himself to take into consideration what a newer spiritual science can give concerning man, then he will seek to absorb himself in the spiritual view of modern India or at least of what has been preserved from an epoch that is relatively not very ancient.

Whoever is armed with spiritual science, however, and approaches this Indian view of the world will find that from what exists in it to-day or what has been preserved historically from a more or less far distant past, there is expressed something which is no longer quite apparent but which seems to be a kind of lower stratum, as something springing up from dark depths. This plays even into the language and especially into the ideas and images. It must be conceived as something which has undergone many transformations before it has reached its present form. What exists in modern India has only received its form in most recent times but it carries elements in itself which are primaeval, which have required thousands of years in order to be what they have become.

If we turn to other civilizations, the Western Asiatic or the Chinese for instance, we find that something similar is the case; but we have the feeling that we need not go back so far in order to understand the present as we have to do in India. And if we observe Egyptian life as it transpired since about the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, we have the feeling that what is contained historically in documents is such that we are obliged to immerse ourselves into most ancient times, as we attempted to do, for example, in the last lecture. But we also find that the old has been preserved there with a kind of purity so that its fundamental depth is apparent even in later times, whereas in India it must be sought in the outset of its development.

In a similar way this is the case with the Greek and with our own civilization which, as we shall see, begins about the fifteenth century. The matter so appears that for a penetrating view, primeval elements have continued but are hardly noticeable to ordinary observation.

We will now see how the ancient elements within European and American civilizations are to be discussed.

One might say that the natural scientific element which has entered recent civilization appears to have so thoroughly cleared away what was old that this old element can only be substantiated by definite methods. It is however still there. There exist side by side on earth civilizations of different ages. One must go far back in time in order to understand modern Indian civilization, not so far back to understand the civilizations and literature of Western Asia, still less far back for the Egyptian and again still less to understand the Greco-Roman culture. One can remain almost entirely in the present in seeking to understand modern European and American civilization.

What has developed consecutively in the course of time stands side by side for us now and what stands side by side thus is in reality of varying ages, at least so far as regards external appearances. The temporal is mingled with the spacial and one must first find from a modern standpoint the methods which show from what present day civilizations one can go back into ancient times and from which one can find access to these old times by difficult and devious paths.

Now as you know, the observation of natural science, the so-called anthropological or geological observation, joins on to what history furnishes and we saw in the last lecture how superficially this is often done. We are led back into very early European times by superficial anthropological investigation. Of course there is less said about the people of Asia but as regards European evolution we are led back into ancient epochs. You know that geology, enriched by modern anthropology and history, says that, concerning certain trustworthy artistic remains which have been found in caves in Spain and France, very ancient races of Europe date back thousands of years; that in these extraordinary paintings revealed by the cave explorations we are told how in ancient times men must have lived in Europe in a certain degree of civilization even before that significant event spoken of by anthropology and geology as the European ice-age within which a great part of the European continent was covered with ice and thus made uninhabitable. Such regions as those in which the cave explorations of Southern France and Spain have been undertaken, must have been oases. Amid the wide ice fields men must have dwelt: a relatively rich nature must have existed and a civilization have evolved.

Thus are we led back even to-day into very ancient times of European life. And here, what external investigation can furnish joins on to what Spiritual Science has to say. Spiritual Science can indeed only proceed from what the developed soul powers of man can fathom, what can result from imagination and inspiration; it can speak of what can be consciously per-ceived inwardly. One can say in referring to what external history can investigate: Spiritual Science can in reality only fathom more or less the spiritual part of evolution, least of all that which has occurred in external nature. However, through spiritual investigation one can go back to those epochs which have seen man and his environment in quite different relations to those of the European ice-age.

It will be the task of these lectures to go back to those ancient times when man lived under quite different relationships and in quite different regions of the earth than later; but a feeling ought to be evoked regarding how justified it is to point to a supersensible cognition which traces back the history of human evolution into early times.

If anyone whose soul life, deepened through the view and feeling gained from spiritual science, approaches what outer history gives, he can have experience of the evolutionary path of civilized man. One can admit from the point of view of external anthropology and geology and history, that if one goes back ten to fifteen thousand years one finds quite another kind of life than that of modern civilized Europe. One can admit that in this epoch, during the last ten to fifteen thousand years, the evolution of European, Asiatic and eventually also of ancient American humanity takes place.

But what lies in documents must be illumined in a special manner by spiritual science. One must of course say that out of such considerations as I discussed by way of introduction, if one has acquired the possibility of going back from the present into earlier soul-moods one can then perceive correctly that which exists side by side.

In relation to antiquity, attention must be given first of all to the region of India. What is still there to-day as an extraordinary acute method of interpreting the world leads back to the times of the mighty Indian philosophy in which the Vedas had birth. But even if we let the Vedas, the Vedanta philosophy, the Yoga philosophy of India affect us we feel that in order to understand what, in its after effects, still exists beside us on Earth, we feel that we must go back into very early times indeed. If we compare it with, for example, our European method of thinking logically or with the Greek method of building up thoughts, we then find that the European culture of to-day, when compared with the Indian, appears like a descendant, like a grandchild, a child living beside his father and contemporary with him. Indian culture stands there reflecting very early times, but it has become old. In its old age condition one can still fathom what was revealed in ancient times as the highest spirituality, but one only sees it in decadence, in its old age. One sees it as one can see in the child certain early conditions of its father but these are changed because the conditions are experienced in a later date. Think of a man, for example, who was a child in the ninetieth year of the nineteenth century and then turn from him to his father or grandfather. The grandfather was a child in the fortieth or fiftieth year of the nineteenth century but he went through childhood in different conditions to those of the ninetieth year. The child of the latter time knows quite different things to what his grandfather knew with his naïve childhood in the fortieth year. If one acquire this kind of insight into the development of peoples, the present European civilization or even that of Greece appears, so far as we can penetrate into them, as if born late compared with what was born earlier in India or what to-day we find ancient in it. If we can sense this India which has grown old, which was already old at the time of the Vedas and Vedanta philosophy, if we can penetrate this in our mood of soul trained through spiritual science in order to see the earlier from out of the later just as one sees the childhood in a man who has become old, then we can arrive at a perception of primaeval India. But then we must realize that this primaeval India was without doubt a civilization fundamentally different from our own. It must have been absolutely permeated by the spirit and have comprehended man in a special, spiritual way. And if one observes the manifold character of what we find in India, the Veda poems with their imagery which remains however in a fluidic element, the acute Vedanta philosophy, the fervent Yoga philosophy, one must say that in the course of time civilization must have mingled with civilization there; that once upon a time a primaeval civilization of a thoroughly spiritual kind must have existed there.

Then something less spiritual was drawn over this, something which found its expression in the Vedas. What appears in the fervent Yoga philosophy was then founded. It was impossible that all these could have arisen out of one race. Different peoples with different capacities have intermingled. The one brought the teachings of Yoga, the other the Veda poems. These peoples already found a primeval India which they absorbed and from which they took what was ripe and old and had withered in man. The incoming race came with fresh blood; they fashioned that which men in decadence could develop no further. And so it went on.

In this way the present condition gradually arose and one is not far wrong in comparing this primaeval Indian culture with those remnants which exist in the regions where modern civilization has developed. We can compare with the men of primaeval India those who painted the extraordinary pictures in the west of Europe, the lines of which make such a deep impression on us. When we look at these pictures, if we can lose ourselves in what the human soul experienced while producing these pictures, we must say: certainly, something very primitive is contained here, often something like that which modern precocious children paint; but yet there is something else. We see from these pictures how men lived with a love for outer nature and we see that these pictures were painted from out of deep inner impulses. We see that they were painted by men who did not first analyse with the eye so as to decide how they should draw lines or place colours but who fashioned and painted from out of their inner experience what was deeply rooted in their love.

If one compares this with what was founded in the civilization of primeval India, one finds a relationship.

In Western Europe the development is primitive and it remains primitive; over in Southern Asia it evolves further and further because it is continually fructified by other races and it develops right on to the Vedanta philosophy. If I had brought these facts forward, as I have often done, in a spiritual scientific way you would then see that one can approach the matter concretely but quite differently. I now present them as they appear to the spiritual scientist when he takes external documents into consideration. But one cannot approach these matters, as customary to-day, with crude ideas acquired from a crude natural scientific observation. Our ideas must be pliable and plastic, as you will see from the considerations I will now place before you. Naturally one cannot show the connection between the cave civilization of Western Europe and the Indian as one proves the similarity of triangles, but the certainty we attain is not little if we only penetrate these things and if we adopt that soul-mood to which attention has been drawn.

He who deepens his soul life—from this point of view in the wonderful ideas of the Vedanta philosophy, sees these transformed into an abstract spirit in the draughtsmanship of those paintings in the caves of Spain and Southern France. It does not appear striking, therefore, even from external investigation, that spiritual science explains how a common primaeval race, which must be sought for in the eighth pre-Christian millennium, gradually spread over the inhabitable regions of Europe, Africa and Asia and developed according to the different relationships of life. This ancient civilization within which man lived united to outer nature, showed itself in its most gifted form in ancient India. Here was revealed what comes to expression otherwise in a primitive way only.

There was developed also farther that which has astounded people, for instance in the culture of Crete. This arose in the east of Europe. In India it developed as the primaeval Indian culture, and progressed further and further, remaining capable of life even in its old age. It passed through its blossom in that epoch when the Vedas, the Vedanta philosophy and other philosophical methods of thought arose. A great many things intermingled in this India which developed at different times but which are there to-day side by side.

If we attend particularly to primeval Indian civilization we must say that everything points to a humanity with a soul mood into which we cannot enter through external means.

I have said that one can press forward to Imaginative Cognition. If one does this consciously one gets an idea of what such men experienced, not consciously yet but instinctively like the ancient Chaldeans or the later Egyptians. Their mood of soul was absolutely different from that of modern men.

Through this advance in Imaginative Cognition man himself becomes a picture; he blends with this picture and thus lives into the 'becoming' (das Werden) of the world. Thus did the Chaldeans for example, live in the 'becoming.' But on the other hand one learns to know also when to rise to Inspiration, how to overcome the separation between the inwardly subjective and the outwardly objective; to feel at one with the cosmic all, to so feel one's being in the Cosmos that one can say: What announces itself through me is the voice, the speech of the Cosmos itself. I only give myself to it in order to be an organ in the Cosmos and to let the world reveal itself through me. We can reach this state consciously in Inspiration.

The Egyptian lived in it instinctively in a late stage. This leads us back to times from out of which a relatively good document obtains in Chinese civilization. What is usually described as such is a late product, but just as in India ancient stages, child stages reveal themselves so are revealed in China primaeval stages of civilization. We can feel how an instinctive Inspiration lives in the Chinese civilization. Through spiritual science we obtain to-day a conscious Inspiration, in China it was more or less instinctive; which means that its results exist as a background in what is imparted to-day in Chinese literature. We are led back to a view of man which presents him as a member of the entire Cosmos.

Just as we speak to-day of a three-fold man, the head man, the member man, and the rhythmic man, and fathom his being in its full depths through Inspiration, in the same way the ancestors of the Chinese civilization once lived in an inspired knowledge of something similar. This however did not relate itself to man because man was only a member of the entire Cosmos but it related itself directly to the Cosmos. Just as we feel conscious of our head, the Chinese felt what he called 'Yang.' If we wish to contemplate our head especially we cannot look at it, we can at most see the tip of our nose if we turn our eyes that way. As we can see the surface portions of our organism when we regard ourselves outwardly but are only conscious of our head to a certain extent in our mind, in the same way the Chinese was conscious of something which he called Yang. And by this Yang he conceived what was to be found above, what spread itself out spiritually; the heavenly, the shining, the producing, the active, the giving. And he did not distinguish himself from what he knew as his head, from this Yang.

Again, as we distinguish man from his environment when we feel the 'member-man' placing us in activity and connecting us with our environment, similarly the Chinese speak of 'Yin,' and in this he points to what is dark, what is earthy, receptive, and so on.

We say to-day that in our limb and digestive system we take up external substances, uniting these through this system with our own being, and we take up the senses-thought element through our head organization, but between these two stands everything which maintains rhythm of breath; the rhythm of blood brings this about. As we feel and cognize man, in the same way the Chinese once saw the whole Cosmos: above the creative, illumining, heavenly; below the earthy, dark, receptive; and the equilibrium between the two, that which forms a rhythm between heaven and earth, that he felt when the clouds appeared in the sky, when the rain fell and when it evaporated, when the plants grew out of the earth towards the heavens. In all this he felt the rhythm of above and below and he called this 'Tao.' Thus he had a view of that with which he grew. It presented itself to him in this three-fold way. But he did not distinguish himself from all this.

This view meets us transformed in Western Asia. What is transmitted to us as a primaeval civilization from the region of Persia, what shows itself in China, this must have once undergone a quite different development, metamorphosed into what is given as the opposition between Ahura Mazdao and Ahriman; Ahura Mazdao the illuminating, radiating God of Light and the dark, gloomy Ahriman, between whom the world is represented as running its course.

The early Indian could not yet distinguish the higher from the lower, heaven from earth, and this is the difference between what was early Indian and what in China was metamorphosed entirely and can be found as the basis for many civilizations in further Asia that I have named the early Persian in my book Occult Science. As yet no difference was spoken about between what was subjective and inward in men and what was outward and objective. In the outer world no distinction was made between what is light spiritually and what inclines to be more bodily dark, while in later times, in the early Persian epoch, the two were distinguished from each other. The interchange of activity between the two was thought of as being brought about through Tao or through some rhythmic equilibrium.

What is it that now took place? Why did men forsake the old standpoint so that they could no longer distinguish the spiritually light from the physically dark and for what reason did they go over to the conception of so opposite an idea as that of polarity or duality?

When we realize what is to be found in documents and when we let the feeling which lies in these documents and in their tradition act upon our souls, we come to the knowledge that in those olden times men played little part in the outer world. They lived mostly, from our own correct point of view, on a high spiritual plane, but on the other hand also, in animal innocence. For everything that they experienced in relation to the universe was instinctive. Later on this was thought of as being the out-breathing of Brahma.

All this was only possible to men who did not take part and work actively in outer nature, but who entered into nature, one might say, as does an animal, as a bird that takes what nature offers for nourishment without first working for it; fetching it merely by flight. These men therefore lived in full harmony with all the kingdoms of nature and extended their love over them all.

When with full human understanding we place ourselves within all existence we realize directly that what was love of animals and plants in the Indian-oriental view of life has arisen out of the great all-love' that does not harm any being and therefore has not yet attained to the fully awakened human consciousness in which men lived in later days. They lived in an atmosphere of spirituality which was instinctive but was higher than that of the Greeks or of the spirituality of today. They lived blameless in nature: they did not kill, they even regarded the plants on which they lived in such a way that they did not sow them but took only those that grew wild.

In such a way one looks back upon the peopling of the southern Asiatic regions thousands of centuries ago.

Later there awoke in men the consciousness of the radical difference between the higher and lower, a consciousness of the spiritual which man cannot alter, which is above the physical upon which he can work and to which he can devote himself.

About the beginning of the 6th or 5th millennium B.C. a change takes place—one can trace it in decadent remnants—in which what surrounded men and what they could alter is looked upon differently and as something over which they could exercise lordship. They begin to tame animals, they make domestic animals out of wild animals, and they become agriculturists.

From the 7th or 6th millennium B.C. is the time of great radical change when men begin to work upon Nature and thus distinguish Nature from that which is radiant and shines upon what they could affect and what can gain form through humanity. But it is not only men that can give form to things: men can make instruments, a primitive axe was the instrument that preceded the plough—probably it was woman who first pursued agriculture—they ploughed the ground by hand, and sowed. But just as man saw that the earth could gain form through him he saw also that it was not through him that in spring the earth is decked out with plants and that in autumn the plants disappear. And therefore as the earth can acquire form through man, form also comes from what illumines him from out of surrounding space, and he comes to the distinguishing of light and darkness, spirit and matter.

All this developed in such a way that men first learnt to distinguish themselves from the outer world through labouring on the land and being agriculturists and through breeding cattle. We can see in later Persian culture how everything depended on agriculture. We can see the connexion of this with what is expressed in the Avesta and we can recognize the progress from the early Indian civilization. But this develops in such a way that man does not as yet know himself as a Self. Humanity identifies itself with the external world. Men on the whole are entirely instinctively inspirational and they pass from instinctive inspiration to an understanding of the soul life which in after times, in the beginning of the third millennium, appears as the Chaldean imaginative civilization of which we can say that men have progressed so far that they not only distinguish the higher from the lower but that they occupy themselves with the stars; that they invent instruments, water-timepieces, etc. If however we study the Chaldeans we will find everywhere how strongly mankind lives in the outer world and that it is difficult for an inner life to be acquired.

In Egypt we see something different. We see the Chaldean arising later than the Egyptian. We can follow the Egyptian back to the time in which we can also set the early Persian civilization with its metamorphosing of the Chinese culture, to the time when the higher and the lower were differentiated. But we can see, just in the beginning of the third millennium B.C., a mighty and radical change within the culture of Egypt. Just as we saw a similar radical change when taming animals and agriculture began, so do we see in the third millennium a still more extensive change. We come upon it in this way. We see how in Egypt the building of pyramids developed in a later period. We can also follow Egyptian culture historically to-day further back than the pyramids. These begin in the third millennium. Egyptian civilization reaches back to the time of Menes before this century. The mighty pyramids were not built then. At the same time that the pyramids were built we see something arising in Egypt which points in a conspicuous way to the fact that the Egyptians experienced intensely an inward development of consciousness. In order to build these pyramids powerful instruments must without doubt have existed. Such instruments could have only arisen through some kind of metal work and this working with metals implies a certain knowledge of the inner nature of metal . We see what was later named chemical knowledge arising in a primitive form with the Egyptians, in other words, we see how men began to make their inner nature strongly active and how they did not yet know that this inner nature was there.

How mankind became aware of this inner nature and its strength can best be recognized by us when we examine from a definite point of view the highly developed Egyptian art of healing. It is quite different from our own medical science. For the illnesses existing in Egypt there were specialists, eye specialists in particular. The healers there made use of the so called Temple sleep. The sick were brought to the Temple and put into a kind of sleep during which they entered a sort of dream condition. What they then remembered was studied in its pictorial characteristics by priests who were versed in such things. These priests found out what taught them pathology through the inner dramatic course of the dreams, through the character of the pictures, whether they were dark on light or dark following light and so on. From another side they discovered indications for remedies in the particular configuration of the dreams. Through observation of what men experienced inwardly and what in dream pictures presented itself to the inner sight, the inward bodily condition of human beings was studied in Egypt.

We see this occurring parallel with what was developing in Chaldea. There men lived more in an external outlook. They invented instruments, their wonderful water clocks for instance evolved from the pictorial character of their souls. They were so immersed in the pictorial element that they looked upon time as transmutable pictures. This picture making element was like an outward one in which they lived. With the Egyptian this element was grasped inwardly, it was so taken that they studied it in dream form. We see here an epoch when men did not feel themselves merely as members of the universe but in which they raised themselves out of the world and individualized themselves in these two ways in the Chaldean and the Egyptian. And we see an evolution in the arising of the pictorial observation of instinctive imagination. In a twofold way this meets us, the one in Chaldea, the other in Egypt. And in the beginning of the building of the pyramid, which in its measurements and geometric relations rests on a perception of proportions in the development of man, on the development of inner forces and on the experiencing of these forces, we see a third epoch of culture in which instinctive imagination gives a definite tint to the evolution of man.

And we see how in this time the social conditions became the natural result of what arose as soul conditions. If we study the social conditions of primeval India we will find that men lived in peace together.

We see in primaeval Persia how a warlike element existed, since there it was that men took up the fight with Nature, and we see how this warlike instinct went over into their imagination. And since they were possessed inwardly, since this instinctive inward possession of men in relation to themselves can only be what is emotional and of the will, those impulses for power showed themselves in the grotesque and great pyramids which are resting places for the dead and at the same time serve as testimonies of the outer power of those who ruled. We see how consciousness of power wells up but also how other folk mix with them bringing new blood into what existed as imaginative, instinctive, in the social conditions also. We see how such stock come more from out of central Asia and mix with the others. What they bring belongs to what is a feeling of 'themselves-now-men,' distinct from their environment.

In Egypt there arose in a definite period what made the Egyptian realize himself as a godlike human being: he felt his self-consciousness so strongly that he looked upon all other people as barbarians and as human only those people who could live in inner pictures. One can see thus arising an intensified value of self-consciousness which runs parallel with an event belonging to this spiritual condition.

If we study the laws of Hammurabi we find that the horse is not yet included among the domesticated animals. It came into civilized life, however, very soon after. Hammurabi speaks of the ass and the ox and soon after his time the horse is named in documents the 'mountain ass.' It was so called because it was brought over from the mountainous East. Races that had penetrated into Chaldea brought the horse with them and with this a war-like element appeared. We see the war-like element, born in olden times, developed further when the horse is tamed and added to the other tamed animals. This also is connected with a certain condition of the soul. One can say that up to this period man had not mounted a horse and strengthened his individuality to a certain extent through fettering the horse to his own movement. The point of development in which he now was awake expressed itself as the pictorial perception of the Chaldean and as the inner dreamlike life of the Egyptian. In this way the external relations of human evolution are intimately connected with the metamorphosis of the soul in the succeeding epochs: on one side the building of the pyramids, on the other the taming of the horse. Regarded externally they express the third epoch of culture, the Chaldean-Egyptian; and these are intimately connected with the arising of the instinctive-imaginative life.

The highly developed civilisation of Egypt at the period in which the pyramids were built expressed itself in a dreamlike imagination. It came to a close relatively early.

We see the first dawn at the beginning of the third millennium. After it had begun to decline its soul mood lived on in Asia, progressing through Western Asia, Asia Minor and over to the European continent. It is clearly perceptible in what comes over from Asia Minor from the older Greek civilization and is still perceptible in the Homeric poems and in their outlook on the world. But in the approach to these Homeric poems we come upon a radical transformation. What lies at their base as a world outlook shows imaginative ideas throughout and also the perception of man which is pictorial.

In order to understand Homer's own peculiar method, one must see plastically with the inner eye of the soul when, apart from the fact that he speaks in pictures that can be seen outwardly of an Achilles or a Hector, he points out the pictorial element, as for example, 'the quick footed Achilles, Hector the hero with the waving crest.' In the whole nature of Homer we see something that is Chaldean.

This becomes different as the Greek civilisation develops which we find with Aeschylus and Sophocles and in the Greek sculpture. We can distinguish this from what is older because we realise how strong was the impulse in Greece to understand man in his own actual human nature.

If we look at the Chaldeans we see how the plastic perception appeared there in images and we see it especially in one of those races which were near to the Chaldeans locally, the Sumerians. We see how this race tends like the Egyptian towards the outward aspect of humanity. We find among the Greeks in drama and also where drama is led over into the domain of sculpture, how man is to be understood in his outward aspect. This was strongly felt by the man of the third epoch in his expression of deep, instinctive forces. This happened in Egypt during the building of the pyramids when, in their structure, men allowed their forces to grow into gigantic proportions; and in certain races of Asia who lived in an especially warlike way and placed themselves on horseback and felt themselves one with the horse.

The Greek then proceeded to say: 'I do not require external means, all human forces lie within my skin.' And he fashioned plastically those forms of men, perfect in themselves, which take everything into themselves which a previous epoch had to seek through an external embodiment. This entire immersion of oneself, this entire living in what is human and this seeking for the sublime in man, this we find expressed in the Greek spirit. And we meet it later in another form in Rome if we call to mind the passing through the Forum of the Emperor or some other figures in the Roman toga. We can see even to-day how in a much more abstract way than in Greece there was this fashioning of men with the highest forces felt within their bodies.

In the sixth pre-Christian century a new epoch begins; the Homeric age being still earlier. This age which now begins develops especially strong and powerful in Greece where it increases in splendour for about four centuries and then meets with a downfall.

Then Christianity arises. When the Greek had his Zeus statue before him he still felt something fully living there, but when the Roman regarded his statues he saw fundamentally only an abstract idea. This abstraction be came more and more pronounced and even in the fourth post-Christian century when the Senators entered the Roman Senate Hall each one threw a grain of incense into the glowing flame which burned in front of the statue of Victory, before he took his seat as Senator. We see how that which was felt in Greece as the fulness of life in the statues of Zeus, Athene and Apollo is still felt in the statue though in a merely abstract thought form, which was however real. There was still something like the magic weaving of divine forces themselves in the Zeus and Athene statues.

We then see how the Christian Emperor Constantine had this statue removed out of the Senate Hall because he thought it had lost all meaning in the sight of Christianity. And we see how Julian the Apostate once again absorbs himself in the fully human view of the fourth epoch, bringing back again the statue of Victory to the Senate Hall; how he causes the ancient ceremonies to be enacted again by the Senators but how he can no more renew the old and how he succumbs as a consequence. For the arrow which struck him down was the arrow of a murderer hired by his enemies.

And out of all this the epoch develops which I shall have to characterize further, the epoch in which men occupy themselves with inner spirituality, with intellectuality, with the power of understanding. This develops in its own special way through the Middle Ages where the intellect was thought about as we find it in Scholasticism where men fought over Nominalism and Realism.

In the 15th century a quite different spirit leads over to the age of Natural Science. In the beginning this spirit was specially strongly developed in Galileo and Copernicus who brought about the great progress in human consciousness which might be called 'interiorization' as compared with Greek consciousness. It may be so called in spite of having developed during the 18th century into that materialism which in the 19th century revealed so much with regard to external nature.

To-day we stand at a great turning point. I do not want to bring forward epoch fantasies like those of Spengler but I wish to say something different. In the beginning of the Egyptian age we see the first stage of human understanding arising, how the age of the pyramids began and how this stage was announced through other symptoms. We see how the next stage begins in the eighth pre-Christian century, how it develops in Greece and in Rome in the soul mood which understands 'man as man,' how this age comes to an end and the 'interiorization' of the intellect begins in the fifteenth century.

Thus we look back upon three great turning points: the point where the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch begins, we see how the Greek-Latin period begins and we see how that age arose which inaugurated Natural Science. In this last something again is introduced as was the case with the pyramids, something representing the special penetration of human evolution with what is new.

The Romans could not uphold what was to the Greeks full of life; they could only carry out that abstraction and intellectuality which died in the lifeless Latin language. We must take heed of all this to-day because we have more consciousness than the Greeks. And from out of our consciousness we must take heed that we prevent from within that destruction which came upon Greece and which stands as a fearful example before us. We must learn from history in such a way that it will not happen to us as it has happened to men who were weak because they depended upon what was outward. We must conquer what could not be conquered in earlier ages. And when it is said that one must learn from history, we must do this in such a way that we steel ourselves and become attentive to what ancient times can teach us so that we not only learn to avoid those mistakes made by individuals but also what should be named the necessary omissions in human evolution. What threatens to come upon humanity today as it happened in the past must be overcome. We have got to transcend a great crisis. And we can only understand the nature of this present crisis if we understand it in the light of a deep comprehension of human evolution. Together with this we will understand how a spiritual Science arises from out of Natural Science. This can only be understood through being able to grasp it from out of the entire spirit of human evolution.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! First of all, allow me to express my heartfelt thanks to the Federation for Anthroposophical School of Spiritual Science for giving me the opportunity to speak about the relationship between certain scientific peculiarities of the present day and anthroposophy in an introductory lecture. Furthermore, I must ask you today to bear in mind that there is a certain difficulty in such a first, orienting lecture. This is because, of course, much of what needs to be said about a comprehensive topic can only be hinted at and therefore, necessarily, only suggestions can be made that will require further elaboration later on and that, by their very nature, must leave out some of the questions that inevitably arise.

But there are also certain difficulties in a factual sense with today's topic. The first is that in the broadest circles today, especially when the topic is discussed – the relationship between science and anthroposophy in any respect – a widespread prejudice immediately arises, namely that the anthroposophy meant here wants to take up an opposing position to science – to the kind of science that has developed in the course of human history in recent centuries, and which reached its zenith in the last third of the 19th century, at least in terms of its way of thinking and methodology. But it is not the case that there is such an oppositional position, because this anthroposophy, as I mean it here, is precisely concerned with bringing to bear the best fundamental principles of the scientific will of modern times. And it endeavors to further develop precisely that human outlook and scientific human attitude that is needed in order to truly validate the recognition of conventional science.

And in this further development, one finds that precisely from the secure foundations of the scientific way of thinking, if these are only correctly understood and pursued not only in their logical but also in their living consequences, then the path is also found to those supersensible regions of world existence with which the human being must feel connected precisely in their eternal foundations. In a certain respect, simply by continuing the fundamental principles of science, the path to the supersensible realms through anthroposophy is to be found.

Of course, when I speak to you about the relationship between anthroposophy and science, I will speak in such a way that you will not deviate from what you are accustomed to recognize as scientific conscientiousness and thinking. But I will not have to speak about individual fields, but rather, to a certain extent, about the entire structure of the scientific edifice of the present day. And since I have to assume that among you, dear fellow students, there are members of the most diverse fields of science, I will naturally not be able to do justice to the individual needs, and some things will have to be said in a way that is not meant to be abstract, but which is looking in an abstract way, so that perhaps the individual will have to draw the consequences from what I have to say for the individual fields. Agnosticism is a word that is not often used today, but it denotes something that is indeed related to the foundations of our scientific way of thinking. This agnosticism was established, I would say, as a justifiable scientific way of thinking, or perhaps better said, a philosophical way of thinking, by personalities such as Herbert Spencer. It was he who preferred to use this term, and if we want to find a definition of agnosticism, we will have to look for it in his work. But as a basis, as a fundamental note of scientific thought, agnosticism exists in the broadest fields of knowledge in the present day. If we are to say in the most abstract terms what is meant by agnosticism, we could say something like the following: we recognize the scientific methods that have emerged as certain in recent centuries, we use them to pursue appropriate science, as we must pursue it today in certain fields - through observation, through experiment, and through the process of thinking about both experiment and observation.

By pursuing science in this way – and I am well aware that this is absolutely justified for certain fields today – one comes to say to oneself: Of course, with this science one achieves a great deal in terms of knowledge of the laws that underlie the world. And then efforts are made to extend these laws, which have been assimilated, to man himself, in order to gain that which everyone who has healthy thinking within him ultimately wants to gain through knowledge: an insight into man's place in the universe, into man's destiny in the universe.

When one pursues science in this way, one comes, in the course of science itself, to say: Yes, these laws can be found, but these laws actually only refer to the sum of external phenomena as they are given to the senses or, if they are not given to the senses, as they can be inferred on the basis of the material that results from sensory observation. But what is discovered in this way about nature and man can never extend to those regions that are regarded in older forms of human knowledge as the supersensible foundation of the world, with which the deepest nature of man, his eternal nature, if it may be called that, must still have a certain connection.

Thus, it is precisely through the scientific approach that one comes to an acknowledgment of the scientifically unknowable - one comes to certain limits of scientific research. At most, one comes to say to oneself: the human soul, the inner spiritual being of man, must be connected with something that cannot be attained by this science alone. What is connected with it in this way cannot be investigated scientifically; it belongs to the realm of the unknowable. Here we are not faced with Gnosticism, but with an agnosticism, and in this respect contemporary spiritual life, precisely because of its scientific nature, has placed itself in a certain opposition to what still existed at the time when Gnosticism was the attitude of knowledge and was called Gnosis.

Now, what is advocated here as Anthroposophy is not, as some believe, a revival of the old Gnosticism, which cannot be resurrected. That was born out of the thinking of its time, out of the whole science of its time, so to speak. Today we are in an age in which, if we want to found a science on supersensible foundations, we have to take into account what has been brought forth in human development through the work of such minds as Copernicus, Galileo and many others whom I will not name now. And in saying this, one implicitly declares that it is impossible to take the standpoint of Gnosticism, which of course had nothing of modern science. But it may be pointed out that this Gnostic point of view was in a certain respect the opposite of what is often regarded today as the basic note of science. This Gnostic point of view was that it is very well possible for man to penetrate to the supersensible regions and to find there that which, though not religion, can be the basis of knowledge for religious life as well, if he turns to his inner powers of knowledge not applied in ordinary life.

Now, we will most easily come to an understanding of what I actually have to say today in this introductory lecture if I first remind you of something well known that can point to the transformation that the human cognitive process has undergone in the course of human development.

You all know, of course, what a transformation philosophy has undergone in terms of external scientific life. It encompasses – even in this day and age – the full range of scientific knowledge. As a human activity, philosophy was simply something that, as the name itself suggests, has a certain right to exist. Philosophy was something that did not merely flow from the human intellect, from observation and experiment, although philosophy also extended to the results that intellect, observation and even primitive experiment could arrive at. Philosophy was really that which emerged from the whole human being to a much greater extent than our present-day science, and again in a justified way. Philosophy emerged from a certain relationship of the human being's mind and feelings to the world, and in the age that also gave the name to philosophy, there was no doubt that the human being can also arrive at a certain objectivity in knowledge when he seeks his knowledge not only through experiment, observation and intellect, but when he applies other forces - forces that can be expressed with the same word that we use to describe the “loving” of something - when he therefore makes use of these forces.

And philosophy in the age of the Greeks also included everything that we today summarize in the knowledge of nature. Over the course of the centuries, philosophical endeavor has developed into what we know today as knowledge of nature. In recent times, however, this knowledge of nature has undergone an enormous transformation – a transformation that has made it the basis for practical life in the field of technology to the extent that we experience it in our lives today. If we take an unprejudiced survey of the scientific life of the present day, we cannot but say that what science has done especially well in recent times is to provide a basis for practical life in the field of technology. Our natural science has finally become what corresponds to a word of Kant - I quote Kant when he has said something that I can acknowledge, although I admit that I am an opponent of Kant in many fields. Kant said that there is only as much real science in science as there is mathematics in it. In scientific practice, especially in natural scientific practice, this has been more and more recognized.

Today we do natural science while being aware that we connect what we explore in space and time through observation and experiment with what mathematics reveals to us through pure inner vision. And it is precisely because of this that we feel scientifically certain that we are able to interweave something that is so very much human inner knowledge, human inner experience, as is mathematical, with what observation and experiment give us. By encompassing that which comes to us from outside through the mathematical certainty given to us in pure inner experience, we feel that we are connected to this outside in the process of knowledge in a way that is enough for us to experience scientific certainty. And so we have come more and more to see the exactness of the scientific in precisely the scientific prerequisites, to mathematically justify what we do in scientific work.

Why do we do this? My dear fellow students, why we do it is actually already contained in what I have just said. It lies in the fact that, by doing mathematics, we are merely active within our own mental experience, that we remain entirely within ourselves. I believe that those who have devoted themselves specifically to mathematical studies will agree with me when I say: in terms of inner experience, the mathematical, the process of mathematization, is something that, for those who do it out of inner ability and I would say, can do it out of inner enthusiasm, can give much more satisfaction than any other kind of knowledge of the external world, simply because, step by step, one is directly connected with the scientific result. And when you are then able to connect what is coming from outside with what you know in its entirety, whose entire structure you have created yourself, then you feel something in what is scientifically derived from the interweaving of external data and mathematical work that can be seen as based on a secure foundation. Therefore, because our science allows us to connect the external with an inner experience through mathematics, we recognize this as scientific in the Kantian sense, insofar as mathematics is in it.

Now, however, this simultaneously opens the way for a very specific conception of the scientific world view, and this conception of the scientific world view is precisely what anthroposophical research pursues in its consequences. For what does it actually mean that we have come to such a view of our scientific knowledge? It means that we want to develop our thinking inwardly and, by developing it inwardly, arrive at a certainty and then use it to follow external phenomena, to follow external facts in a lawful way. This principle is now applied to anthroposophy in the appropriate way, in that it is applied to what I would call pure phenomenalism in relation to certain areas of external natural science, in relation to mechanics, physics, chemistry, in relation to everything that does not immediately reach up to life. In the most extreme sense, we hold fast to this phenomenalism for the domains that lie above the inanimate. But we shall see in what way it must be supplemented there by something essentially different.

By visualizing the mathematical relationship to the external world, one gradually comes to realize that in inorganic sciences, thinking can only have a serving character at first, that nowhere are we entitled to bring anything of our own thoughts into the world if we want to have pure science. But this leads to what is called phenomenalism, and which, though it may be criticized in many details, has, in its purest form, been followed by Goethe.

What is this phenomenalism? It consists in regarding phenomena purely, whether through observation or through experiment, just as they present themselves to the senses, and in using thinking only to see the phenomena in a certain context, to line up the phenomena so that the phenomena explain themselves. But in so doing, everything is initially excluded from pure natural science that regards hypotheses not merely as auxiliary constructions, but as if they could provide something about reality. If one stops at pure phenomenalism, then one is indeed justified in assuming an atomistic structure from observation and experiment – be it in the material world or in the world of forces – but this tendency towards an atomistic structure can only be accepted to the extent that one can pursue it phenomenologically, that one can describe it on the basis of phenomena.

The scientific world view that constructs an atomism that postulates something actual behind the phenomena that can be perceived with the senses, but that cannot fall into the world of phenomena itself, sins against this principle.

But anthroposophy draws the final conclusion, to which everything in modern natural science actually tends. Even in this modern natural science, we have recently come to a high degree of development of this phenomenalism, which is still little admitted in theory but is applied in practice, by simply not concerning ourselves with the hypothetical atomic worlds and the like and remaining within the phenomena. But if we stop at the phenomena, we arrive at a very definite conclusion. We arrive at the conclusion that we really come to agnosticism. If we merely string together phenomena by thinking, if we bring order into phenomena, we never come to man himself through this ordering, through this tracing of laws. And that is the peculiar thing, that we must simply admit to ourselves: If you draw the final, fully justified conclusion of modern science, if you go as far as pure phenomenalism, if you put unjustified hypotheses of thought behind the veil of the sensory world, you cannot help but arrive at agnosticism. But this agnosticism is something quite different for knowledge than what humanity has actually hoped for and sought through knowledge within its course of development, within its history.

I do not wish to lead you into remote supersensible regions, although I will also hint at this, but I would like to point out something that should show how knowledge has nevertheless been understood as something quite different, for example in ancient times, from what knowledge can become today if we conscientiously build on our scientific foundations. And here I may again point to that Greek period in which all the sciences were still united within philosophy. I may point out that each of us has the deepest reverence for Greek art, to take just one example, for example for what lives in Greek tragedy.

Now, with regard to Greek tragedy, the catharsis that occurs in it has been spoken of as the most important component of it - the crisis, the decisive element that lives in tragedy. And an important question, which at the same time is a question that can lead us deep into the essence of the process of knowledge, arises when we tie in with what the Greek experienced in tragedy. If we define catharsis in such abstract terms, then it is said, following Aristotle, that tragedy should evoke fear and compassion in the spectator, so that the human soul, by evoking such or similar passions in it, is cleansed of this kind of passion. Now, however, it can be seen – I can only mention this here, the evidence for it can certainly also be found through ordinary science – from everything that is present in Greek tragedy, that thinking about this catharsis, about this artistic crisis, was very closely connected in the Greek mind, for example, with medical thinking.

What was present in the human soul through the effect of tragedy was thought of only as a healing process for something pathological in man, which was elevated into the scenic. From this artistic point of view, one can see how the Greeks understood therapy, the healing process. He understood it to mean that he assumed that something pathological was forming in the diseased organism. What is forming there - I must, of course, speak in very abstract terms in an introductory lecture - the organism takes up its fight against that. The human organism overcomes the disease within itself by overcoming the disease process through excretion. This is how one thought in the field of pathological therapy. Exactly the same, only raised to a higher level, was the thinking in relation to the artistic process. It was simply thought that what tragedy does is a kind of healing process for the soul. Just as the remnants of a cold come out of the organism, so the soul, through the contemplation of tragedy, should develop fear and compassion, then take up the fight against these products of elimination and experience the healing process in their suppression.

However, one can only understand the fundamentals of this way of thinking if one knows that even in Greek culture – in this Greek culture, which was healthy in some respects – there was the view that if a person merely abandons himself to his nature with regard to his psychological development, it will always lead to a kind of illness, and that the spiritual life in man must be a continuous process of recovery. Anyone who is more familiar with Greek culture in this respect will not hesitate for a moment to admit that the Greeks conceived of their highest spiritual life in such a way that they said to themselves: This is a remedy against the constant tendency of the soul to wither away; it is a way of counteracting death. For the Greeks, the spiritual life was a revival of the soul in the direction of its essence. The Greeks did not see only abstract knowledge in their science; they saw in their science something that stimulated a healing process in them. And that was also the special way of thinking, with a somewhat different coloring, in those world views that are based more on Judaism, where there is talk of the Fall of Man, of original sin. The Greeks also had this view - only in a different way - that it is necessary for the human soul to devote itself to an ongoing process of healing in life. Within this Greek spiritual life, it was generally the case that man did not juxtapose the activities to which he devoted himself and the ways of thinking that he held. They were rather combined in him, and so, for example, the art of healing was just an art to him - only an art that remained within nature. And the Greeks, who were eminently artistic people, did not regard art as something that could be profaned or dragged down into a lower realm when compared to that which is a healing process for the human being.

And so we see how, in those older times, knowledge was not actually separated from all of human nature, how it encompassed all human activity. Just as philosophy encompasses knowledge of nature and everything that should now arise from science, by developing it further and further, it also encompasses the artistic life. And finally, religious life was seen as the comprehensive, great process of recovery of humanity, so that, in understanding knowledge in the old way, we must actually say: there knowledge is understood as something that comes from the whole human being. Thought was already there, but humanity could not stop at this phase of the development of knowledge. What was necessarily connected with this phase of the development of knowledge? This can be seen quite clearly if one, equipped with today's scientific spirit, delves a little into some work, let us say in the 13th or 14th century, that was considered scientific in the natural sciences, for example. If you want to understand such a work, you not only have to familiarize yourself with the terminology, but you also have to immerse yourself in the whole spirit.

I do not hesitate to say that if you are steeped in today's scientific spirit and have not first done intimate, honest historical studies, you will inevitably misunderstand a scientific work from a period such as the 13th and 14th centuries AD, for the simple reason that even in those days – and the further back we go in human development, the more this is the case – man not only brought mathematics into the external world, but also a whole wealth of inner experiences in which he believed just as we believe in our mathematics. Thus we address nature quite differently today when we chemists speak of sulfur, phosphorus or salt than when people of that time spoke of sulfur or salt. If we apply today's concepts, we do not in the least touch the meaning that was then in a book, even one meant to be scientific, because at that time more and something other than the mathematical or the similar to mathematics was carried into the results of observation of the external world. Man brought a whole wealth of inner experience – qualitatively and not merely quantitatively – into the outside world.

And just as we express a scientific result with a mathematical formula, just as we seemingly connect subject with object, so in those days subject was connected with object even more, but the subject was filled with a wealth that we no longer have any idea of today and that we dare not allow ourselves to carry back into nature in the same way. Man at that time saw much in the external world that he himself put into it, just as we today put mathematics into nature. He did not think about nature in the same way as we do today, but he projected a great deal into it. In doing so, however, he also projected the moral into nature. Man projected the moral into nature in such a way that in four millennia the moral laws arose in the same way as the laws of nature arose in his knowledge. Man, who projected into nature what in ancient times was thought of as salt, sulphur, phosphorus, etc., was also allowed to project into nature what he experienced as moral impulses, because inwardly he was not doing anything different.

Now, however, we have rightly separated from such a view of the external world, through which we carry all that has been suggested into it. We only carry the mathematical into the external world, and our science therefore becomes a very good basis for technical practice. But by only bringing the mathematical into the external world, we no longer have the right to transfer the moral into objectivity through our science. And we must of necessity – precisely when we are very scientific in the sense that has emerged in recent centuries – fall prey to a moral agnosticism, because we have no other choice than to see only the subjective in moral principles, to see something that we cannot claim comes from nature in the same objective way as the course of a natural process itself.

And so we are obliged to ask ourselves: How do we found moral science and with it the basis of all spiritual science, including all social science? How do we found moral science in an age in which we must justifiably recognize phenomenalism for external nature? That was the big question for me at the time I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom.” I stood on the ground - completely on the ground! on the ground of modern natural science, yes, on the ground of a phenomenalism regarding what can be fathomed by the process of knowledge from the external world of the senses. But then, if one follows the consequences with all honesty to the end, one must say: If morality is to be justified objectively, then another knowledge must be able to stand alongside this knowledge, which leads to phenomenalism and thus to agnosticism - a knowledge that does not thinking to devise hypothetical worlds behind the phenomena of the senses, but a knowledge must be established that can grasp the spiritual directly in intuition, after it - except for the mathematical - is no longer carried out into the world in the old way. It is precisely agnosticism that, on the one hand, compels us to fully recognize it in its own field, but at the same time also compels us to rouse our minds to activity in order to grasp a spiritual world from which we can, in the first instance, if we do not want to remain merely in the subjective, find moral principles through objective spiritual observation.

My Philosophy of Freedom has been called, with some justification, ethical individualism, but that only captures one side of it. We must, of course, arrive at ethical individualism because what is now seen as a moral principle must be seen by each individual in freedom. But just as in the inner, active process of the mind, mathematics is worked out in pure knowledge and yet proves to be well-founded within objectivity, so too can that which is the content of moral impulses be grasped in pure spiritual insight - not merely in faith, but in pure spiritual insight. And that is why one is compelled, as I was in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to say: Moral science must be based on moral intuition. And I said at the time that we can only arrive at a real moral view in the modern style if we realize that Just as we extract individual natural phenomena from the whole of nature, we must extract the moral principles, which are only intuitively grasped spiritually but nevertheless objectively grasped quite independently of us, from a contemplated spiritual world, from a supersensible spiritual world.

I spoke first of moral intuition. This brings the process of knowledge into a certain line. Through the process of knowledge — especially if it is to remain genuinely scientific — the soul is driven to muster its innermost powers and to push this mustering so far that the intuition of a spiritual world really becomes possible. Now the question arises: Is only that which can be grasped as moral impulses to be seen in the spiritual world, or is perhaps that which leads us to our moral intuitions merely one area among many? The answer to this, however, arises when one grasps what has been experienced inwardly in the soul as moral intuitions and then continues this in an appropriate way.

Exactly the same thing that the soul experiences when it rises to the purely spiritual grasp of the moral – it has only become necessary in modern times through natural science – exactly the same thing that is lived through there can now also be lived through for further areas. Thus it may be said that anyone who has once practiced self-observation of this inner experience that leads to moral intuition can indeed develop this inner experience more and more. And the exercises presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” serve to develop this inner experience. And these exercises then lead to the fact that one does not stop at thinking and forming hypotheses with it, but that one regards this thinking in its liveliness and develops it further - to what I will now explain in the second part of my lecture and what can be called an exact looking at the supersensible world. What is meant is not the lost mystical vision of earlier times, but an exact vision of the supersensible world, in accordance with science, which can be called exact clairvoyance. And in this way we gradually arrive at those forms of knowledge which I characterized only recently here in a public lecture: imagination, inspiration and the higher intuition — forms of knowledge that illuminate the inner human being.

If we now ask ourselves how we can still have an objectively based moral science and thus also a social science, precisely when we are firmly grounded in natural science, then in these introductory words I wanted to show you first of all how, by honestly place oneself on the ground of today's science, but still wants to turn to life - to life as it simply must be for the person who is to achieve an inner wholeness - how one is thereby rubbed into spiritual research. This now differs from ordinary research in that ordinary research simply makes use of those soul powers that are already there, in order then to spread over the wide field of observation and experiment. In contrast to this, anthroposophical research first turns to the human being so that he may develop higher soul forces, which, when they are precisely developed, lead to a higher vision, which in the supersensible provides the complement to what we find in the sensual through our exact scientific methods.

How this exact higher vision is developed, how one can now penetrate from the sensual into the supersensible outside the moral realm, that will be the subject of my discussions after the break.

Short break

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! The first step in attaining supersensible knowledge is achieved through what we may call meditation, combined with a certain concentration of our thinking. In my last public lecture here in Leipzig, I described the essential point of this from one perspective. Today I would like to characterize it from a different perspective, one that also leads us to a scientific understanding of the world. The essence of this meditation, combined with concentration of thought, consists precisely in the fact that the human being does not remain, for example, with that inner handling of thinking that has been formed once through inheritance, through ordinary education and so on, but that at a certain point in his mature life he regards this thinking, which he has acquired, only as a starting point for further inner development.

Now you know that there are mystical natures in the present day who speak somewhat contemptuously of thinking and who resort to all kinds of other powers of cognition that are more tinged with the subconscious in order to gain a kind of view of the world that is supposed to encompass what ordinary thinking cannot grasp. This dream-like, fantastic immersion in an inner soul life, which crosses over into the pathological realm, has nothing to do with what is meant by anthroposophy. It moves in precisely the opposite direction: every single step that is taken to further develop thinking, to reeducate it to a higher ability, can be pursued with such an inner free and deliberate vividness that can otherwise only be applied to the inner experiences of the soul, which we develop through such a deliberate cognitive activity as that practiced by mathematicians.

Thus one can say: precisely that for which modern man has been educated through his scientific education – mathematical thinking – is taken as a model, not only for seeking out some external connections, but for developing a higher thinking process itself. What mathematics undertakes in the horizontal plane, if I may express myself figuratively, is undertaken in the vertical plane, I would say, by carrying out an inner soul activity, a soul exercise itself, in such a way that you give an account of yourself inwardly with every single step, just as you give an account of yourself with mathematical steps, by placing a certain content of ideas at the center of your consciousness when you control your thoughts, which should simply be a content of thoughts. It does not depend on the content; it depends on what you do with it. You should not suggest something to yourself in any way. Of all these more unconscious soul activities, anthroposophical practice is the opposite.

But if you further develop what you have already acquired as a certain form of thinking by resting with all your soul activity on a manageable content, and if you this resting on a certain soul activity, this attentiveness to this soul activity with the exclusion of everything else that can otherwise penetrate into the soul, is undertaken again and again, the thinking process becomes stronger. And only then do you notice what was, so to speak, the good side of materialism, of the materialistic world view. Because you now realize that all the thinking that you do in ordinary life, especially the thinking that continues in memory, leads us to the fact that what we have experienced in thought can later be brought up again through memory. One notices that all this can only be accomplished by man between birth and death by using his body as a basis - I do not want to say as an instrument, but as a basis. And it is precisely by developing thinking through inner development that we realize that ordinary thinking is entirely bound to the human body and its organs, and that the process of memory in particular cannot be explained without recourse to a more subtle physiology. Only now do we realize that thinking is freeing itself from the body, becoming ever freer and freer from the body.

Only now do we ascend from thinking that takes place with the help of the body to thinking that takes place in the inner processes of the soul; only now do we notice that we are gradually moving into such inner experience, which does not occur, but - I would like to say - is preparing itself. When we pass from the waking state of ordinary consciousness into the state of sleep, our organism simply becomes such that it no longer performs those functions that live out in imagining and in the perceiving associated with imagining.

But because in our ordinary life we are only able to think with the help of our body, thinking ceases the moment it can no longer be done with the help of the body – that is when we fall asleep. The last remnants remain in the pictorial thinking of dreaming, but if one again and again and again pushes thinking further and further through an inner, an exact inner exercise - that is why I speak of exact clairvoyance in contrast to dark, mystical clairvoyance -, through an exact exercise, one learns to recognize the possibility of thinking that is independent of the body. It is precisely because of this that the anthroposophical researcher can point to his developed thinking with such inner certainty, because he knows - better even than the materialist - the dependence of ordinary thinking on the bodily organization, and because he experiences how, in meditation, in practice, the actual soul is lifted out of its bondage to the body. One learns to think free of the body, one learns to step out of the body with one's I-being, one gets to know the body as an object, whereas before it was thoroughly connected with the subjectivity.

This is precisely what is difficult for contemporary education to recognize, because on the one hand, through anthroposophical knowledge, the bondage of the imagination to bodily functions has been understood in modern science, and this is actually becoming more and more apparent through anthroposophical knowledge. But we must be clear about the fact that, despite this insight, we cannot stop at this thinking, but that this thinking can be detached from the body by strengthening it inwardly through meditation. But then this thinking is transformed.

At first, when this body-free thinking flashes, when the experience flashes: you are now in a soul activity that you carry out as if you had simply withdrawn from your body - when this inner experience flashes, then the thinking becomes inwardly more intense. It acquires the same inner satiety that one otherwise has only when perceiving a sensual object. Thinking acquires pictorial quality. Thinking remains in the sphere of composure, just like any other thinking that is bound to the body, but in the body-free state it now acquires pictorial quality. One thinks in images. And this thinking in images was also present in its beginning in what Goethe had developed in his morphology. That is why he claims that he can see his ideas with his eyes. Of course, he did not mean the physical eyes, but what arose in him, so to speak, from an elementary natural process, but which can also be developed through meditation. By this he meant that he saw with the “spiritual” eye what was just as pictorial as otherwise only the physical perceptions, but which was thoroughly mental in its inner quality. I say “thought-like,” not thought, because it is a thought that has been further developed, a metamorphosed thought - it is thought-like.

In this way, however, one rises to the realization of what one is as a human being in one's life on earth - at least initially to the moment in which one is currently living. In ordinary consciousness, we have before us the present moment with all the experiences that are in the environment. Even in ordinary science, we have before us what comes as a supplement to this - there are the thoughts that arise in our minds, which we connect with the experiences of the present moment. This body-free, pictorial thinking, to which we rise and of which I have just spoken and which I call imaginative thinking - not because it is an imagination, but because it proceeds in images and not in abstractions - this thinking encompasses our past life on earth as a unity, as in a single tableau that stands before us. And we now recognize that in us, alongside the spatial organism, there lives a temporal organism - an organism in which the before and after stand in just as organic a connection as the side by side in the outer, physical spatial organism that we carry on us. This organism is recognized as a supersensible organism - in my books I have called it the “etheric body”; one can also call it the life body.

What it comprises is not at all identical with the unwarranted assumption of a “vital force” by an earlier science, which arrived at this vital force only by hypothetical means, whereas this life body comes to the developed imaginative thinking as a real intuition. In this way, one arrives at the fact that what is past for ordinary consciousness in the inner being of man - as something that I experienced ten years ago, for example, and that now emerges in my memory - that this does not now appear as something past, but one experiences it as something directly present, one looks at it with the intensity with which one looks at something present. But as a result, what would otherwise have been lost in the passage of time is suddenly revealed to you in its entirety; your whole life is a single image, one whose individual parts belong together. And one realizes that in reality the past is a present thing, that it only appears as past because we, with our knowledge attuned to present observation, have it only as a memory at this moment. But in objectivity it is an immediate present, a reality.

Thus one comes to the recognition of what is the first supersensible in man. But it also leads to the recognition of something that is present in the entire living world, which inorganic science cannot provide up to the level of chemistry: we come to the insight that is the further development of Goethean morphology; we come to the insight that the individual plant form is only a particular manifestation of that form, which also exists in other plants; we come to what Goethe calls the primordial plant, which is not a cell, but a concretely formed, supersensible form that can be grasped only by imaginative cognition, but which can live in every single plant form — can live in a changed, metamorphosed way. We come to an appreciation of what we find in the vegetable world when we want to understand it fully. And we must realize that if we do not develop this imaginative knowledge, which shows a supersensible, dynamic element in everything vegetable, we learn to recognize only the mechanical, physical, chemical processes that take place in the plant form.

It is to the credit of modern natural science, insofar as it is botany, that it has carefully studied what takes place in the plant form, or rather, in the part of space enclosed by the plant form, what takes place in the mechanical, physical, and chemical processes. These processes are no different from those that are also out there, but they are grasped by something that cannot be grasped by the same methods as the physical and chemical ones. They are grasped by that which lives as a real supersensible and can only be recognized in imagination – in that imagination in which we also find ourselves at the same time as human totality in our experience since birth as if standing before us in a single moment.

We learn, on the one hand, to recognize why we, especially when we apply the modern, exact scientific methods as they have developed, must come to a certain agnosticism with regard to the understanding of the vegetable. And so we can see why there must be a certain field of agnosticism; and so we can also see how anthroposophy adds precisely that which must remain unknown to this agnosticism. We see how anthroposophy leads beyond agnosticism while allowing it full validity in its own realm. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one thing.

The other thing, however, is that at this stage we are acquiring a more detailed understanding of the interaction between the human being and the external world. Physics, mechanics, chemistry are rightly being developed in the present day in such a way that we carry as little of the human as possible into this external world, in that we say: only that has objectivity in which we contain all subjectivity. - Certainly, anthroposophy will not fight the justification of this method in a certain field, but will recognize it. But when we use what we also recognize in the imagination to grasp and behold what lives in the vegetable kingdom, we attain on the one hand an intimate knowledge of our own supersensible being — at least as it is between birth and death — but we also thereby gain a vision of the fluctuating, metamorphosing processes in the world of living forms. In this way we connect ourselves as human beings with the outer world, initially at a first level, in imagination. We incorporate the human element into our world view.

The next level of supersensible knowledge is inspiration. It is attained by developing more and more, I would say, the opposite pole of meditation and concentration. Anyone who has acquired a certain practice in meditation and concentration knows that when you energize thinking, you also get the inner inclination to dwell on what arises as a part of the soul as energized thinking. One must exert oneself more when leaving these energized imaginative thoughts than when leaving any other thought. But if one can now really throw these energized thoughts out of consciousness again - this whole imaginative world that one has first appropriated -, if one can empty consciousness, not cannot be emptied from the ordinary point of view, but can be emptied after one has first inwardly strengthened it, then this emptiness of consciousness becomes something quite different from what the emptiness of consciousness is in ordinary life. There the emptiness of consciousness is sleeping.

The emptiness of consciousness, however, which occurs after one has first strengthened this consciousness, is very soon filled by the phenomena of an environment that is now completely different from all that one has previously known. Now one gets to know a world to which our ordinary ideas of space and time can no longer be applied. Now we get to know a world that is a real external world of soul and spirit. It is just as concrete as our real world of the senses. But it can only flow into us if we have emptied our consciousness at a higher level. After one has first come to imagination, by concentrating on a spiritual content and now being able to perceive outside one's body because one has activity within oneself - not the passivity that is present in ordinary consciousness - and by having gone through the appropriate preparations, the spiritual outer world now penetrates through the developed activity of the freed consciousness, just as the appearances of the world of colors or the world of sounds otherwise penetrate through the senses.

On the one hand, through this spiritual outer world, we arrive at an understanding of what we were as human beings before we descended from a spiritual and soul world into the physical world, before we united with what had been prepared in the mother's womb through conception as the physical human germ. One gains an insight into what first lived in a spiritual-soul world and then united with the physical human being. So one gets to know that which, between birth and death, is basically quite ineffective, which is, so to speak, excluded from our sensory perception, but which was effective in us and which worked in its purity before we descended into a physical body. That is one thing: we gain a deeper knowledge of human nature by ascending to this second stage of supersensible vision, which is developed just as precisely as the other, the imaginative stage. And this knowledge, through which a spiritual world flows into us, just as pure air flows from outside into our lungs and is then further processed, this knowledge, which we process in the subconscious for ordinary consciousness, but in the subconscious for the developed consciousness, fully consciously, I have allowed myself to call this influx “inspirative knowledge”.

This is the second step. Through it, we first come to recognize our eternal as pre-existing. But with this we also have the possibility to penetrate into what now not only lives in the external world, but what lives and feels, what thus lives out in the living formation of the inner life in such a way that this inner life becomes present to itself in feeling. Only through this do we learn to recognize what lives around us as animalistic. We supplement our knowledge with what we can never attain through an ordinary view, as we have developed it in physics and chemistry. We come to look at what lives in the sentient being as a higher, supersensible reality. We now learn through observation, not through philosophical hypotheses in the modern sense, to actually follow a new, higher world: the world of the spiritual and soul in the sentient physical. But in doing so, we move a step further away from agnosticism. This must exist if we only follow the chemical processes in the sentient living. We must follow these, and it is the great merit of modern natural science that these can be followed, but with that, this natural science must become agnostic. This must find its completion in the fact that precisely now, in free spirituality, one experiences through inspiration that which must be added in order to arrive at the full reality of sentient life. But in this way one achieves something else, of which I would like to give you an example. In this way one comes to recognize that the process that takes place in the human being, for example - it is similar for the animal - that this process is not only an ascending one, but at the same time also a descending one. Only now are we really learning to look at ourselves properly from within; we learn, by ascending to this inspired realization, to know more precisely what is actually going on in our ordinary consciousness. Above all, one learns to recognize that it is not a process of building up, but of breaking down, that our nervous life is essentially a life of breakdown. If our nerves could not be broken down - and of course rebuilt from time to time - we could not develop ordinary thinking. Vital life, when it appears in abundance, is basically a numbing of thought, as it occurs in every sleep. The kind of life that is interspersed with feeling and thinking must, at the same time, carry within it a process of decomposition, I would say a differential dying process.

This process of disintegration is first encountered in healthy life, that is, in the life in which it occurs in order for human thinking in the ordinary sense of the word to come about at all. Once one has acquired an understanding of the nature of these processes, one also becomes familiar with the abnormal occurrence of these processes. There are simply certain organs or organ systems in the human organism in which parallel processes to ordinary thinking occur. But if the catabolic processes, which are otherwise the physical basis of thinking, extend to organs to which they are not otherwise assigned, so to speak, through an internal infection – the word is not quite used in the actual sense – then disease states arise in these organs.

It is absolutely necessary that we develop pathology in such a way that we can also find the processes that we recognize in physiology in pathology. However, this is only possible if we can see the essence of these processes in our human organization; it is similar in the animal organization, but still somewhat different - I say this again so that I am not misunderstood. By observing the processes in our human organism in such a way that we recognize one polarity as an organization that is designed for breakdown and the other polarity as one that cannot be affected by this breakdown in a healthy state, we learn to see through these two aspects in inspired knowledge.

If we learn to see through this and can we then connect this seeing through of our own organism with an inspired recognition of the outer world, of the processes in the plant kingdom, if we learn to see through this mineral kingdom and also the animal kingdom through inspired knowledge, then we learn to recognize a relationship between human inner processes and the outer world that is even more intimate than that which already existed at the earlier stage of human history. I have shown how, at this earlier stage, man felt related to external nature by seeing in all that appears in the most diverse metamorphoses in the vegetable world something that he found in the soul, in his own life between birth and death.

But if, through inspired knowledge, he now learns to see that which he was in his pre-existent life, then at the same time he sees through that in the outer realm which not only lives in feeling, but which has a certain relation, a certain connection, to that which lives in the human organization, which is oriented towards feeling, towards thinking. And one learns to recognize the connections between the processes outside and the processes inside, and also the connections with the life of feeling. One learns to recognize what is brought forth in man when the organs are seized by the breakdown, which actually should not be seized by it, because the breakdown in this sense must only be the basis for the thinking and feeling process. When, as it were, the organic activity for thinking and feeling seizes members of the human organism that should not be seized, then what we have to grasp in pathology arises. But when we grasp the outer world with the same kind of knowledge, then we find what must be grasped by therapy. Then we find the corresponding process of polar counteraction, which - I would express it this way - normal internal breakdown. In short, through an inner vision we find the connection between pathology and therapy, between the disease process and the remedy. In this way we go beyond medical agnosticism – not by denying present-day medicine but by recognizing what it can be – and at the same time we find the way to add to it what it cannot find by itself.

If anyone now believes that anthroposophy wants to develop some kind of dilettantism in the most diverse fields of science, then I have to say: that is not the case! It consciously wants to be the continuation of what it fully recognizes as the result of today's science, but it wants to supplement it with higher methods of knowledge. She wants to go beyond the deficiencies of mere trial and error therapy, which basically everyone who is also active in practice has already sensed, to a therapy gained from observation that has an inner, organic connection with pathology, which is, so to speak, only the other side of pathology. If one succeeds in finding pathology simply as a continuation of physiology in the way described, then one also succeeds – by getting to know the relationship between man and his natural environment – in extending pathology into therapy in a completely rational way, so that in the future these two need not stand side by side as they do today in a more agnostic science.

These are only suggestions that I would like to make in the sense that they could show a little – I know how incomplete one has to be in such an orienting lecture – how far it is from anthroposophy to ant opposition to recognized science, but rather that it is precisely important for it to draw the final consequence from the agnostic form of science and thereby arrive at the view of what must be added to this science. This is already being sensed, and basically there are many, especially members of the younger generation, who are learning to feel that science as it exists now is not enough, who feel: we need something else, because it is not enough for us. Precisely when we are otherwise honest about it, then we have to come to something else through it. And it is precisely for those who get to know science not just as an answer but, in a higher sense, as a question that anthroposophy wants to be there — not to drive them into dilettantism, but to progress in exactly the right, exact way from science to what science itself demands if it is pursued consistently.

But then there is a third higher stage of knowledge. This is attained when we extend the exercises to include exercises of the will. Through the will, we initially accomplish mainly what a person can do in the external world. But when we apply the same energy of the will to our own inner processes, then a third stage of supersensible knowledge arises on the basis of imagination and inspiration. If we are completely honest with ourselves, we will have to admit at every moment of our lives: We are something completely different today than we were ten or twenty years ago. The content of our soul has changed, but in changing it, we were actually quite passively surrendered to the outside world. It is precisely in relation to our inner transformation that a certain passivity reigns in us.

But if we take this transformation into our own hands, if we bring ourselves to radically change what is habitual in us, for example, in a certain relationship - where a change seems possible - if we behave inwardly towards ourselves in such a way that we make ourselves into a different person in a certain direction through our own will, then we have to actively intensify our inner experience over years, often decades, because such exercises of will take time. You make up your mind: you will develop a certain quality or the form of a quality in yourself. After months you notice how little you succeed in doing this, in this way, what otherwise the body makes out of you. But if you make more and more effort, then you not only see your inner, supersensible human being, but you also manage to make this inner human being, so to speak, completely transparent. A sense organ such as our eye would not be able to serve us as a visual organ if it did not selflessly - if I may use the term - withdraw its own substantiality. As a result, it is transparent, physically transparent. Thus, through exercises of will, we become, so to speak, inwardly transparent to the soul.

I have only hinted at a few things here. You will find a very detailed account in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” We really do enter a state in which we see the world without ourselves being an obstacle to fully penetrating into the supersensible. For, in fact, we are the obstacle to entering fully into the supersensible world because, in our ordinary consciousness, we always live in our body. The body only imparts to us what is earthly, not what is soul-spiritual. We now look, by being able to disregard our body, into a stage of the spiritual world through which that appears to us before the spiritual gaze, which becomes of our soul, when it has once passed through the gate of death. Just as we get to know our pre-existent life through the other way I described earlier, so now we get to know our life in the state after death. Once we have learned to see the organism no longer, we now learn, as it figuratively presents itself to us, the process by which we find ourselves when we discard this physical organism altogether and enter the spiritual-soul world with our spiritual-soul organism. The demise of our physical existence, the awakening of a spiritual-soul existence: this is what we experience in the third stage of supersensible knowledge, in the stage that I have called higher intuitive knowledge.

By having this experience, by being able to place ourselves in a spiritual world without being biased by our subjectivity, we are able to recognize this spiritual world in its full inwardness. In inspiration, it is still as it flows into us; but now, in higher intuition, we get to know it in its full inwardness. And now let us look back at what first presented itself to us as a necessity: moral intuition. This moral intuition is the only one for ordinary consciousness that arises out of the spiritual world during proper self-contemplation of pure thinking - I have presented this in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. But if we now go through imagination and inspiration, we do exercises that teach us to completely detach ourselves from ourselves, to develop the highest activity of the spiritual and soul, and yet not to be subjective, but to be objective, by living in objectivity itself. Only when we have achieved this standing in objectivity is it possible to do spiritual science.

Only then is it possible to see what is already living as spiritual in the physical world; only then does one gain a real understanding of history. History as a series of external facts is only the preparation. What lives as spiritual driving forces and driving entities in the historical can only be seen through intuitive knowledge. And it is only at this level of intuitive knowledge that we truly see what our own ego is. At first, our own ego appears to us as something we cannot see through. Just as a dark space within a brightness appears to us in such a way that we see the brightness from the darkness with our eyes, so we look back at our soul, see its thoughts, feel further inner processes, live in our will impulses. But the actual I-being is, so to speak, like a dark space within it. This is now being illuminated. We are getting to know our eternal being. But with that, we are only getting to know the human being in such a way that we can also fully understand him as a social being. Now we are at the point where the complement to social agnosticism occurs.

This is where things start to get really serious. What is social agnosticism? It arises from the fact that we apply the observation that we have learned to apply correctly to external, natural phenomena, and that we now also want to apply this trained observation to social phenomena. This is where the various compromise theories in social science and sociology come from – in fact, all the theories about the conception of social life that we have seen arise. This is where the approach to the conception of social life that starts from the natural sciences comes from, but which must therefore disregard everything cognizable, everything that is alienated from thought and only present in the life of instincts. The extreme case of this occurred in Marxism, which regards everything that is spiritual as an ideology and only wants to see the impulses of social life realized if these impulses develop out of the instinctive, which belongs to agnosticism. Class consciousness is actually nothing more than the sum of all that is not rooted in a knowledge of man, but that comes from the instincts - only it must be recognized by those who develop such instincts in certain life circumstances.

If you look at our social life with an unbiased eye, you will find that we have come to agnosticism precisely in the social sphere. However grotesque and paradoxical it may still appear to modern man, in this field of spiritual science we can only go beyond this kind of knowledge, insofar as it is agnostic, if we rise to truly intuitive knowledge and thus to the experience of the human being. We humans today actually pass each other by. We judge each other in the most superficial way. Social demands arise as we develop precisely the old social instincts most strongly. But an inner, social soul mood will only come about if the intuitions from a spiritual world permeate us with life. In the age of agnosticism, we have necessarily come to see everything spiritual more or less only in ideas. However, ideas, insofar as they are in ordinary consciousness, are not alive. Today's philosophers speak to us of logical ideas, of aesthetic ideas, of ethical ideas. We can observe them all, we can experience them all inwardly and theoretically, but they have no impulsive power for life. The ideas only become a reality of life when they are wrung out in intuitive experience of the spiritual. We cannot achieve social redemption and liberation, nor can we imbue our lives with a religiosity that is appropriate for us, if we do not come to an intuitive, vitalized grasp of the spiritual.

This life-filled comprehension of the spiritual will differ significantly from what we call spiritual life today. Today, we actually call the ideational life spiritual life; in other words, life in abstract ideas that are not impulses. But what intuition provides us with will give us as humanity a living spirit that lives with us. We have only thoughts, and because they are only thoughts, we have lost the spirit altogether. We have thoughts as abstractions. We must regain the life of thoughts. But the life of thought is the spirit that lives among us - and not the spirit that we merely know. We will only develop a social life if, in turn, spirit lives in us, if we do not try to shape society out of the spiritless - out of what lives in social agnosticism - but if we shape it out of that attitude that understands through intuition to achieve the living spirit.

We may look back today on earlier ages - certainly, we have overcome them, and especially those of us who stand on anthroposophical ground are least likely to wish them back in their old form. But what these earlier ages had, despite all the mistakes we can easily criticize today, is that in certain epochs they brought the living spirit - not just the spirit of thought - among people. This allowed the existing basis of knowledge to expand to include artistic perception of the world, religious penetration of the innermost self, and social organization of the world. We will only achieve a new social organization of the world, a new religious life, and new artistic works on the basis of knowledge, on which they have always fundamentally stood, when we in turn gain a living knowledge, so that not only the thoughts of the spirit, but the spirit itself lives in humanity. It is this living spirit that Anthroposophy seeks. Anthroposophy does not want to be a theory or a theoretical world view; Anthroposophy wants to be that which can stir the spirit in its liveliness in the life of the human being, that which can permeate the human being not only with knowledge of the spirit, but with the spirit itself.

In this way we shall go beyond the age that has brought phenomenalism to its highest flowering. Of course, one can only wish that it will continue to flourish in this way, one can only wish that the scientific way of thinking will continue to flourish in the conscientiousness in which it has become established. But the life of the spirit must not be allowed to exist merely by continuing to live in the old traditions. Fundamentally, all spiritual experiences are built on traditions, on what earlier humanity has achieved in the way of spirit.

In principle, our art today is also built on traditions, on the basis of what an earlier humanity has achieved. Today, we cannot arrive at new architectural styles unless we reshape consciousness itself, because otherwise we will continue to build in Renaissance, Gothic, and antique styles. We will not arrive at creative production. We will arrive at creative production when we first inwardly vitalize knowledge itself, so that we do not merely shape concepts but inner life, which fills us and can form the bridge between what we grasp in thought and what we must create in full life.

This, dear attendees, dear fellow students, is what anthroposophy seeks to achieve. It seeks to bring life into the human soul, into the human spirit, not by opposing what it recognizes as fully justified in the modern scientific spirit, as it is often said to do. It seeks to carry this spirit of science further, so that it can penetrate from the external, material and naturalistic into the spiritual and soul realms. And anyone who can see through people's needs in this way today is convinced that in many people today there is already an inner, unconscious urge for such a continuation of the spirit of science in the present day. Anthroposophy seeks only to consciously shape what lives in many as a dark urge. And only those who get to know it in its true light, not in the distortions that are sometimes created of it today, will see it in its true light and in its relationship to science.

Pronunciation

Walter Birkigt, Chairman: I would like to thank Dr. Steiner for the lecture he has given here, and I would now like to point out that the discussion is about to begin. Please submit requests and questions in writing.

Dr. Dobrina: Dear attendees! After such a powerful picture of the present and past intellectual history of humanity has been presented, it is not easy to give a sharp summary in a few words. But I think that before proceeding to a critique, one must first appreciate the depth of the whole presentation. One must appreciate and admit that a synthesis is sought between natural science with its exact trains of thought and spiritual science with its partly antiquated forms.

In the last few centuries, natural science has indeed managed to rise to the throne and even to push philosophy down from the throne as antiquated. Now, however, those who cannot be satisfied with the philosophy that has been overthrown and deified are again looking for an impetus to bring philosophy back to the old podium on which it stood in Greece. And I believe that anthroposophy, as developed for us by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, is an attempt to shape the synthesis in such a way that, although it only recognizes natural science in the preliminary stages and makes every effort not to object to its exactness, it then goes beyond it to penetrate into the supersensible realm. However, the step into the supersensible world seems to me to be based on very weak foundations, especially since Dr. Rudolf Steiner works with concepts such as preexistence. Those who have more time could ask more pointed questions about what he means by this preexistence or what he has to say about the “post-mortem” life, about life after death.

Applause.

In any case, I believe that from this point of view we can and must immediately enter into a sharp discussion with him, and it will probably show that basically the whole conceptualization of Dr. Rudolf Steiner breaks down into two quite separate areas. On the one hand, he makes an effort to plunge into therapy and to consider Greek thinking from the point of view of therapeutic analysis, while on the other hand he works with concepts that come from the old tools of theosophy and are very reminiscent of antiquated forms of spiritual life.

Applause

For this reason, I would like to say very briefly that the whole picture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner has developed here, as well as in the previous public lecture, seems to me to be quite inadequate and that on this basis one can in fact arrive at no criticism of modern life, nor of modern economic struggles, nor of the position that is taken today against the spiritual powers that have fallen into decline.

Applause.

Perhaps Dr. Rudolf Steiner would be kind enough to

respond to this shortly.

Walter Birkigt: Does the assembly understand the statement as a question, that Dr. Steiner should respond immediately? I would therefore ask Dr. Steiner to respond.

Applause.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, dear attendees, I said in my lecture that it should be an orienting one. And I said that an orienting lecture faces the difficulty of being able to only hint at certain things that would require further elaboration, so that a whole flood of unsatisfactory things naturally arise in the soul of the listener, which of course cannot be cleared away in the first lecture either. The point of the comments – I cannot say objections – made by the esteemed previous speaker is that he found that I had used words that he considers old terms.

Now, my dear audience, we can put all our words – even the most ordinary ones – into this category. We must, after all, use words when we want to express ourselves. If you were to try to see what is already available today in contemporary literature, which often seems outrageous to me – I mean outrageous in terms of its abundance – if you were to read everything that I myself have written, for example, ...

Heiterkeit

... when faced with this abundance, it is quite natural that in a first, introductory lecture, only some aspects can be touched upon. So let us take a closer look at what the esteemed previous speaker has just said. He said that pre-existence reminds him of old concepts. But now, he is only reminded of old terms because I have used words that were there before. Of course, when I say that by elevating imaginative knowledge, which I have characterized, to inspired knowledge, which I have also characterized, I arrive at the concept of preexistence. If I merely describe how one comes to the vision of the pre-existent life, then it does not depend on the term “preexistence,” but only on the fact that I describe how a precise practice takes place to arrive at an insight into what was there in the human being before this human being — if I may put it this way — united with a physical body, with what was being prepared in the mother's body through the conception. So, I only used the word pre-existence to point to something that can only be seen when supersensible knowledge has been attained in the way I have described. In Gnosticism one finds a certain attitude towards knowledge. As such, Gnosticism has nothing to do with the aims of modern anthroposophy, but this attitude towards knowledge, as it was present in ancient Gnosticism and which aims at recognizing the supersensible, is reviving in our age - in the post-Galilean, post-Copernican age - but in a different form.

And now I will describe to you in more detail what should follow – I will describe it in a few sentences. You see, if we look from a knowledge that is sought on the basis of the methods I have spoken of, if we look from this kind of knowledge to an older one that is very different from it, we come to an oriental form of knowledge that could in fact be called “theosophical”. Only after this had developed in older times could a philosophy arise out of a theosophy, and only then could anthroposophy arise out of a philosophy. Of course, if you take the concepts in such a way that you only hold them in their abstractness, not in what matters, then you will mix everything up, and the new will only appear to you as a rehash of the old. This theosophy was achieved by completely different methods of knowledge than those I have described.

What were the essentials of this method of knowledge? I do not mean everything, but just a certain phase of it. For example, the ancient Indian yoga process, which should truly not be experienced as a warm-up in anthroposophy. We can see this from the fact that what I am describing initially seems very similar to this yoga process, doesn't it? But if you don't put it there yourself, you won't find that what I am describing is similar to the yoga process. This consisted in the fact that at a stage of human development in which the whole human life was less differentiated than it is today, it was felt that the rhythmic breathing process was connected with the thinking process. Today we look at the matter physiologically. Today we know: When we breathe, when we inhale, we simultaneously press the respiratory force through the spinal canal into the brain. In the brain, the breathing process continues in a metamorphosed way, so that, physiologically speaking, we have a synthesis of the breathing process and the thinking process.

Yoga is based on this process, transforming ordinary breathing into a differently regulated breathing. Through the modified breathing process – that is, through a more physical process – thinking was transformed. It was made into what a certain view in the old, instinctive sense yielded. Today, we live in a differentiated human organization; today we have to go straight to the thought process, but today we also arrive at something completely different as a result. So when you go into the specifics, you will be able to clearly define each individual phase of cognition as it has occurred in succession in human development. And then you will no longer think that what is now available in the form of anthroposophy, as a suitable way of acquiring higher knowledge in the present day, can somehow be lumped together with what was available in older times. Of course, we cannot discuss what I have not talked about at all on the basis of what I have told you in an introductory lecture. I would now, of course, have to continue with what pre-existent life is like. I could say nothing else in my introductory lecture except that the realization of pre-existent life is attained through the processes described, which are indeed different from anything that has ever emerged in history as inner development.

And now I would really like to ask what justification there is for criticism when I use the word pre-existence in the sense in which everyone can understand it. It means nothing other than what it says through the wording. If I understand existence as that which is experienced through the senses, and then speak of pre-existence, then it is simply existence in the spiritual and soul life before sensual existence. This does not point to some old theosophy, but a word is used that would have to be further explained if one goes beyond an orienting lecture. You will find that if you take what may be called Theosophy and what I have described in my book, which I have also entitled “Theosophy” - if you take that, then it leads back to its beginnings in ancient forms - just as our chemistry leads back to alchemy.

But what I have described today as a process of knowledge is not at all similar to any process of knowledge in ancient times. It is therefore quite impossible to make what will follow from my lecture today and what has not yet been said the subject of a discussion by saying: Yes, preexistence, that leads back to old tools. If you have followed it, it does not lead back to old tools, but it does continue certain attitudes of knowledge that were present at the time when the old tools were needed, and which today only exist in their remnants and project into our present as beliefs, whereas in the past they were reached in processes of knowledge. Now, through processes of knowledge that are organized in the same way as our scientific knowledge, we must again come to insights that can fill the whole human being, not just the intellectually oriented one.

Dear attendees, if you want to criticize something, you have to criticize what has been said directly, not what could not be discussed in the lecture and of which you then say that it is not justified or the like. How can something that is just a simple description not be justified? I have done nothing but describe, and that is precisely what I do in the introductory lectures. Only someone who knew what happens when one really does these things could say that something is not explained. If one really does these things, that is, if one no longer merely speaks about them from the outside, then one will see that they are much more deeply grounded than any mathematical science, for they go much more closely to the soul than mathematical processes do. And so such a criticism is an extraordinarily superficial one. And the fact that anthroposophy is always understood only in this external way makes its appearance so extraordinarily difficult. In no other science is one required to give everything when a lecture is given. Only in anthroposophy is one required to give everything in a lecture. I have said from the beginning that I cannot do that.

Applause

But it is not a matter of my describing what is available as old tools of the trade, for example how gnosis has come to such knowledge in inner soul processes or how, for example, the oriental yoga school comes to knowledge. If one knows these tools, if one does not just talk about them, ...

Applause

... then people will no longer claim that anthroposophy reminds them of the old days. This is only maintained as long as one allows reminiscences to come in the form of abstract concepts that arise only from the fact that they are not compared with the concrete, with the real. Of course, I could go on for a very long time, but this may suffice as an answer.

Lively applause

Mr. H. Schmidt: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to criticize something, or rather put a question mark over it: Dr. Steiner said this evening that every scientific world view is dualistic in the sense that it must add to what is immediate and certain something uncertain. It is clear that in anthroposophy this other is the supersensible world. But the scientific value of a philosophy is shown to us in how far it succeeds in presenting the inner relationship between the supersensible and the sensible - I say “scientific” value on purpose, not cultural or psychological. Platonism, for example, which in this respect has not so often succeeded in constructing the relationship between idea and reality, had an enormous cultural significance.

Now, in anthroposophy, Dr. Steiner attempts to describe the relationship between the supersensible and the sensible, that is, he attempts to prove the necessary transition from the immediate sensory world to the supersensible world, or - seen subjectively - from empirical and rational knowledge, from scientific knowledge, to what I would call super-scientific knowledge. He used anthroposophy for this. I am only relying on Dr. Steiner's lecture, and more specifically on the first part – frankly, I didn't have enough strength for the second.

Applause

Anthroposophy is based on the analogy of mathematics. Dr. Steiner explained how we project mathematics into nature. This has already been established in Greek science, and in fact the ideal of mathematical science is at least to mathematize nature, as they said in ancient times. But in what sense can we even talk about this? That is precisely the problem.

Dr. Steiner explained with what affect, with what passion, with what sympathy the individual mathematician imposes his ideas of conceptual things in empirical reality. But what are the structures that the mathematician deals with? They are not his representations at all. The circle, for example, that a mathematician draws on the blackboard to demonstrate his geometric theorems is not his representation. He has nothing to do with the circle as a human being – rather, he has nothing to do with it as a mathematician, but he does have something to do with it as a human being, in that he uses his two eyes to perceive the circle. Restlessness

The concept of a circle, which the mathematician does deal with, cannot be represented in reality at all; it is never perceived by the senses. The concept of a circle is much more general.

Now anthroposophy needs something personally real that it wants to project into nature. The general, which I have in my mathematical head, so to speak, does not exist in reality. If the supersensible world is to be founded on the sensory world in such a way that conclusions can be drawn from the subject to the object, then this can never be done by projecting subjective ideas into nature in the manner of mathematics. In my opinion, the analogy of mathematics is not appropriate for this, because mathematics deals with conceptual things that never occur as such in reality. In my opinion, this is an objection to anthroposophy in general. On the other hand, today's lecture emphasizes the reality of supersensible things.

So, what matters to me: I cannot see how mathematics is supposed to serve here to explain the bridge from the sensory to the supersensible. The main value of the lecture now obviously lay in the fact that personal experience, personal excitement, the totality of personal experience, is to be active in thinking. But that must immediately raise a concern for everyone. The personal, the individual, is precisely what is unnecessary. Yes, anyone can tell me: “That is your imagination, that is your idea, I have nothing to do with it.” In my opinion, this is an objection to anthroposophy in general.

Applause

Then, what Dr. Steiner was particularly concerned about, in the inner participation that his lecture had at this point and that was actually moving for the opponent: the starting point for higher knowledge for Dr. Steiner is moral intuition. Anthroposophy requires a supersensible to derive moral principles from it, and it gains this derivation by looking at the supersensible. To be honest, that doesn't make any sense to me at all. Let's assume that there is a supersensible faculty of knowledge, or rather, such faculties of knowledge that we ordinary mortals do not yet have, and that it would also be possible to actually see the supersensible with this higher faculty of knowledge - the supersensible as an existing thing: how can I see from that what I should do? We can never deduce what we should do from what is. We can never build a bridge from the sphere of being to the sphere of ought.

Walter Birkigt: Since there are no further requests for the floor for the time being, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner to respond. Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, I would like to say the following first: The very nature of the remarks I made this evening prevented me from speaking of analogy where I spoke of mathematics, and I ask you to reflect carefully on the fact that I did not use the word analogy. This is no accident, but a thoroughly conscious decision. I could not use the word 'analogy' because there was no question of an analogy with mathematics, but mathematical thinking was used to arrive at a characteristic of the inner experience of certainty. And by trying to explain how one can arrive at an inner experience of certainty in mathematics, I wanted to show how one can acquire this same degree of certainty in a completely different field, where one tries to arrive at certainty in the same way. It is therefore not about an analogy with mathematics, but about citing two real experiences of the soul that are to be compared with each other in no other way than by pointing to the attainment of inner certainty. Dear attendees, what the previous speaker said is not a reference to my lecture, because then he could not have used the word analogy. I avoided it because it does not belong.

Furthermore, it was said that I spoke of the passion of the individual mathematician. I could not do that either, because I simply referred to the nature of mathematical experience as it is known to those who are initiated into and trained in mathematics. How anyone can even think of speaking of some kind of personal involvement in mathematics is beyond me. On the other hand, I would like to make the following comment: It sounds very nice to say that the inner concept of the circle has absolutely nothing to do with the circle that I draw on the blackboard. I am not going to claim that it has anything to do with it, because it would never occur to me to say that the inner concept of the circle is made of chalk. I don't think that's a very profound truth that is being expressed.

But when we pass from abstract thinking to thinking in terms of reality, we must say the following. Let us take something that we construct mathematically within ourselves, for example, the sentence: If we draw a diameter in a circle and from one end of the diameter a line to any point on the circumference and from this point a further line to the other end of the diameter, then this angle is always a right angle. I do not need to draw this on the board at all. What I recognize there, namely that in a circle every angle through the diameter with the vertex on the periphery is a right angle, that is a purely internal experience. I have no need to use the circle here on the board.

Interjection: That is not true! Only when you have also looked at it, can you construct it afterwards!

But there is no doubt that what I draw on the board is only an external aid.

For anyone who can think mathematically, it is out of the question that they cannot also construct such mathematical truths purely through inner experience, even if they are the most complicated mathematical truths. There is no question of that. Even if I had to draw them with chalk, that would still have no significance for the simple reason that what constitutes the substantial validity of the proposition is to be illustrated in the drawing, but does not have to be concluded in it. If I use the drawing on the board to visualize that the angle is a right angle, then this visualization does not establish anything specific for the inner validity of the sentence. And that is what ultimately matters. There can be absolutely no question of my first needing the drawing on the board. But even if I needed it, that would be completely irrelevant to what I have said about the nature of mathematization – not about solving individual problems, but about mathematization in general. What is important here lies in a completely different area than what has been mentioned here, because when we look at mathematization, we are simply led to say that we experience inner truths.

I did not say that we already experience realities in mathematics. Therefore, it is completely irrelevant to object that mathematics as such does not contain any reality. But in the formal it contains truths, and these can also be experienced. The way in which one comes to truth and knowledge is important, even if these do not initially have any reality within mathematics itself. But when this mathematical experience is transferred to a completely different area, namely to the area where the exactness of mathematics is applied to the real life of the soul, the character of exactness, which is initially experienced in the mathematical-formal, is carried into the real. And only through this am I entitled to carry over into reality what applies to mathematics as merely formal.

I have first shown how to arrive from within at truths which we — of course only in an external way — apparently transfer as unrealities to observation, to experiment, or with which experiment is interwoven. And then I also showed how this formal character is transformed into a real one. But then, what is apparently so plausible still does not apply: what is mathematical only lives in me; the concept only lives in me, it does not live outside in reality. What has been mathematically explored and mathematically worked out would have nothing to do with reality as such. Well, does the concept of a circle really only live in me?

Imagine – I don't draw a circle on the board, but I have my two fingers here. I hold a string with them and make the object move in a circular motion, so that this lead ball moves in a circle. The laws that I now recognize for the movement by mathematically recognizing them – do they have nothing to do with reality? I proceed continually in such a way that I determine behavior in the real precisely through mathematics. I proceed in such a way when I go from induction to deduction that I bring in what I have first determined by induction and then process it further with mathematics. If I introduce the end term of an empirical induction into a mathematical formula and then simply continue calculating, then I am counting on the fact that what I develop mathematically through deduction corresponds to reality. It is only through this that the mathematical is fruitful for reality, not through such philosophical arguments as have been presented.

Let us look at the fruitfulness of the mathematical for reality. One can see the fruitfulness simply when, for example, someone says: I see the irregularities that exist in relation to what has been calculated, and therefore I use other variables in the calculation. And so he initially comes to assume a reality by purely mathematical means; reality arises afterwards – it is there. Thus I have, by continuing my empirical path purely through mathematics, also shown the applicability of the inner experience to the outer world. At least I expect it. And if one could not expect that the real event, which one has followed in sensory-descriptive reality to a certain point, continues in the calculation, then what I just meant would not be possible at all: that one feels satisfied in mathematics. The point is to take the concepts seriously, as they have been dealt with.

Now to what I said about moral intuition. You may remember that I said in my lecture that the intuition that I established as the third stage of supersensible knowledge occurs last. But moral intuition also occurs for ordinary consciousness. It is the only one that initially arises for a consciousness that has advanced to our level from the supersensible world. Moral intuition is simply an intuition projected down from a higher level to our level of knowledge. I illustrated this clearly in the lecture. That is why I spoke of this moral intuition first, not afterwards. I have described it as the starting point. One learns to recognize it; and when one has grasped it correctly, then one has a certain subjective precondition for also understanding what comes afterwards. For in experiencing moral intuition, one experiences something that, when compared with what is otherwise real, has a different kind of reality, and that is the reality of ought. If you go into what I have said, then the difference between being and ought is explained simply by the fact that moral intuition projects into our ordinary sphere of consciousness, while the other intuition is not a projection, but must first be attained. It was not at all implied that moral intuition is only a special case for the process of knowledge of general intuition, but it is simply the first case where something occurs to us intuitively in our ordinary consciousness, in today's state of consciousness.

So, it is important to understand exactly the concepts that are developed here for anthroposophy. I wanted to give suggestions. I fully understand that objections are possible because, of course, one cannot explain everything in such detail, and so I assume that there are still many doubts and so on in the souls of those present. But imagine how long my lecture would have been if I had already dispelled in the lecture all the doubts that I am now trying to dispel in my answer. That is what one has to reckon with in a first exploratory lecture, not only in anthroposophy but in all fields. That is what it was about today. I did not want to give anything conclusive, and I must say that some people do not want to go into anthroposophy at all. But I have found that the best recognizers of what anthroposophy is were often not those who fell for it right from the start, but that the best workers in anthroposophy became those who had gone through bitter doubts.

Therefore, please do not take what I said with a certain sharpness in the reply as if it were meant with hatred. Rather, I am basically pleased about everything that is objected to, because it is only by overcoming these obstacles of objection that one actually enters into anthroposophy. And I have always had more satisfaction from those who have come to anthroposophy via the reefs of rejection and doubt than from those who have entered with full sails at the first attempt.

Lively applause.

Mr. Wilhelm: I do not wish to criticize, but only to ask a question to which I would find Dr. Steiner's answer very interesting. Dr. Steiner replied to the criticism of the first speaker, who compared Theosophy with Anthroposophy, by saying that the method of knowledge of Anthroposophy is quite different from that of Theosophy, especially the old one, and that in the whole history of Theosophy there is no trace, not a single reference, to the method of knowledge presented by Dr. Steiner this evening. I would just like to ask whether Dr. Steiner is familiar with the passages in 'The Green Face' – a book that has a very strong Theosophical slant and where this method of knowledge actually forms the basis of the whole work. I would be very interested to hear Dr. Steiner's position on this.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I would first like to point out that it would be possible, if there were indeed echoes in the “Green Face”, which appeared a few years ago, of what I have said this evening, to be fundamentally traced back to anthroposophy. Shout: Never!

I only said in general that it would not contradict itself, but since someone here shouted “Never!”, I completely agree with that, because I find nothing anthroposophical in “The Green Face”, but I find that what is said about anthroposophy in “The Green Face” is based on methods of knowledge that I would not want to have anything to do with. That is what I have to say about it.

Yesterday we were trying to describe in accordance with its inner nature an extraordinarily important fact in the evolution of man; we tried to describe it from an unfamiliar point of view, but one of outstanding significance. Let us briefly recall this. I was trying to show that a certain state of equilibrium was brought about in the evolution of Europeans because the event which was meant to happen in the year 666 of our era had been opposed by that other event known as the Event of Golgotha. I said that men are in the course of an evolution predetermined for them, in a certain sense, by those Regents of the world from whom mankind received its origin. If we follow this evolution in detail, we come to see just how the soul can take its place in any epoch into which it is born. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in the fifteenth century and will last until the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth millennium. In this epoch men are intended to enter upon the development of what we call the Consciousness Soul. All the affairs of this epoch point finally to the goal that may be termed the perfecting of the Consciousness Soul. Painful events, joyful events, events that put men to the test and events that we may call divine gifts for the blessing of mankind, all that is full of light, all that is full of shadow in this epoch—all this is meant to serve the purpose of enlightening man about himself and his connection with the world. To find his place consciously in the world and thereby to strive for what has hitherto been pervaded with so much fantasy that it has never been rightly known—to strive to reach for the first lime through self-discipline what may be called the free human personality, a real control of the will founded upon self-education: that will be the task drawing men on in this epoch. In simple terms we might say that what is thus going on has been decreed by the Divine Beings with whom man has been united since his starting-point, Beings who lead him on from stage to stage, and are opposed from two sides by those Powers we know as Ahrimanic and Luciferic Powers.

Now I said: Let us put the hypothetical case that the Event of Golgotha never happened, that no Christ decided to unite His divine destiny with that of earthly men—what would then have come about? We can never know the true facts of history if we take note only of what is apparent, for then we never achieve a real, correct valuation of events. If to-day, for example, some event prevents our undertaking something we should otherwise have done; if we are thus prevented from being next day in some place where a railway accident might have caused our death, then it cannot be said that the event in question is rightly estimated if it is merely recorded. For quite certainly this event, if we consider it only in itself, may be entirely insignificant, and yet it may be sufficient to keep us from being where death might have met us; and we cannot understand the event if we consider only what concerned us at the time. It is just because men take things so materially and intellectually, never asking what might have happened—it is just on this account that they fail to gain insight into the true value and reality of events.

We therefore ask the question: If we assume that the Christ through the Event of Golgotha had never united His divine destiny with the destiny of man, what would have happened? Now I told you yesterday that in the year 666, by reason of certain measures which would then have been possible, men would have gone through a quite different point in their evolution; that through certain geniuses who would have arisen, men would have acquired an enormous amount of great wisdom, somewhat fantastic wisdom, but all the same a great amount of wisdom. This wisdom would have had a tremendous significance, for if men—as was predetermined for them by the Divine Spirits connected with their origin—had gone on developing gradually to receive this wisdom in the normal course of events, they would have had to wait, as I indicated, for thousands of years. They will indeed receive it in a different way, because they will acquire it through their own efforts.

Thus something would have been received prematurely that men through their own exertions can acquire only in the course of a long, long time. And men would have been unripe for it. It is hardly possible to-day to picture what course history would have taken for so-called civilised mankind if this had happened. Men would have acquired an unripe knowledge out of a kind of instinct—but the instinct of genius; they would have been overwhelmed to a certain degree by this knowledge, as though paralysed, disabled by it, and their future evolution would have been cut short. They would have come to the point of acquiring the Consciousness Soul not in a natural way, as was to happen from the fifteenth century on, but artificially in the seventh century through a kind of inoculation. But the whole evolution to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man, would have gone by the board. People would have become extraordinarily perfected as men of the earth, but they would have been shut out from all further evolution. This is what is referred to in such vehement terms in the Apocalypse, in the Revelation of John, as the appearance of the Beast. There is mentioned the number 666, which gives many scholars so much trouble to explain; they have all more or less missed the real meaning of it.

Now in order to ensure that this should not happen, and that a force opposed to it should come to the aid of mankind, the Event of Golgotha had to enter into human evolution at a prior date, after which men could receive what has flowed into their evolution through the appearance of Christ Jesus.

This is yet another point of view for judging rightly what the Event of Golgotha is in human evolution—it is something which has given the whole of Earth-evolution its meaning. Thus in order to indicate the significance of the Event of Golgotha for Earth-evolution, I have often said: If a being from another planet in our solar system—a being equivalent to earthly man but not at home on this planet—were to land one day on the earth, naturally everything on the earth would be strange to him. Such a being, if suddenly precipitated into earthly existence, would find a very great deal that he could not understand; but one thing he would understand. If you took this being—wherever he came from—and showed him Leonardo's “Last Supper,” pointing out the action of the Christ, he would in his own way get some feeling for the meaning of the earth. You might show him also what the earth has in the way of natural products, or the wide range of works of art—he would understand only what is in any way interwoven with the destiny of Christ Jesus. What I mentioned yesterday is drawn entirely from spiritual perception. Spiritual perception alone can be a guide to the important facts of human life to-day. Through supersensible perception of that which is fulfilled in the course of time, this polarity is revealed between the year of the birth of Christ Jesus and the year 666. But now let us look in external history for knowledge of this; let us ask external history if anywhere it confirms that such a thing has actually happened.

Now as ordinary scholarship does not know much of these things, it has never in its chronicles taken a great deal of notice of the relevant events. But when we know the truth, we find that even external history can lead us to these events, and that they then throw light on the most important matters. Here in life certain things happen, and behind these things there is the same spiritual world. Anyone who is aware of the connections knows how one or other event is related to its spiritual background. For anyone who is studying how modern man has emerged from the old Graeco-Latin cultural evolution, and looks only at the external facts of history, a very great deal remains problematical. It is from the inner connections that light comes.

Just take the event, of very little interest to ordinary people, but all the same an extraordinarily significant event—take the event of the year 529, when the Emperor Justinian prohibited the further functioning of the Greek schools of philosophy—those schools which were the shining light of antiquity. So all the scholarship of olden times which had been drawn into the Greek schools of philosophy, and had produced an Anaxagoras, a Heraclitus, and later a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle—all this was swept away in 529 by a decree of the Emperor Justinian. True, it is possible to gain from history some idea of why Justinian swept away the old knowledge in Europe; but if we reflect honestly upon these matters, we shall remain dissatisfied with any of the explanations given. We fed the working of unknown forces. And it is strange that this event coincides—not exactly, but historical facts often appear to belong together when they are looked at from a later time—this event ties up with the expulsion of the philosophers from Edessa in the year 489 by the Isaurian, Zeno Isauricus. So from the most important places of that world the most learned men were driven out. And these men, who had preserved the ancient wisdom that had not yet been influenced by Christianity were obliged to wander forth. They fled to Nisibis, journeyed then to Persia and founded the Academy of Jundí Sábúr. (See note at end of lecture, p. 103.)

Now even among philosophers very little is said about this Academy of learning at Jundí Sábúr. But unless one has some knowledge of the character of this Academy, founded by those who had belonged to the ancient schools of learning, nothing about the whole evolution of modern humanity will be understood. For this ancient learning, carried over into Persia by the sages whom Justinian and Isauricus had banished, provided the basis for an enormously significant teaching which was given out in the seventh century at Jundí Sábúr. It was in Jundí Sábúr that Aristotle was translated. And the remarkable thing is that Aristotle (whose works might otherwise have been completely lost) had first been translated into Syrian, in Edessa, by those very men of learning who were later driven out by Zeno Isauricus. The Syrian translation was brought to Jundí Sábúr, and there translated into Arabic.

This rendering of Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic, by way of the Syrian language, indicates something very remarkable. Anyone who has an insight into the transformation that thoughts undergo when they are translated into another language—or when an attempt is made to translate them—will be able to grasp how, to put it hypothetically, a certain intention could have gone into presenting, not Aristotle the Greek, but the Aristotle who made his way into Arabic through the Syrian. Thus it came about that Aristotelian concepts were imbued with an Arabian light, thrown over them by the remarkable souls of the Arabians of that time, in whom the keenest thinking was united with a certain visionary capacity—a capacity, however, which took its course on logical lines and rose to actual perception. And so, in the light of this characteristic teaching, an impressive world-outlook developed in Jundí Sábúr during the seventh century.

What I have been referring to is not an imaginary event, nor something that never took place on earth; it was in Jundí Sábúr that the teaching I spoke of yesterday was given—a teaching which in its essential nature forms the greatest imaginable contrast to all that has developed from the Event of Golgotha. And it represented a definite endeavour by the sages of Jundí Sábúr. This endeavour—just as I told you yesterday—was on behalf of an all-embracing knowledge which was meant to replace the exertions of the Consciousness Soul. It would have made of man a mere man of the earth and would have shut him off from his true future—his evolution into the spiritual world. Men of wisdom would have arisen, but materialistically thinking men, men entirely of the earth. They would have been able to see deeply into what was spiritual and supersensible in the earth, but they would have been cut off precisely from the evolution intended for man by his creators—the evolution to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Whoever has any inkling of the wisdom of Jundí Sábúr will indeed regard it as in the highest sense dangerous for mankind, but also as a phenomenon of great power. And the intention was to deluge with this learning not only the immediate vicinity but the whole of the then known civilised world—Asia, Europe, and everywhere.

The preliminaries for this were prepared. But the influence that was to have gone out from Jundí Sábúr was deadened, held back by retarded spiritual forces, which were nevertheless connected—although they form a kind of opposition—with the outflow of the Christ Impulse. Through the appearance of Mohammed and his visionary religious teaching, there was a deadening of the influence that was meant to go out from Jundí Sábúr. Above all in those regions where it was wished to spread the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr, Mohammed took the ground from under its feet. He skimmed the cream off it, and so the Jundí Sábúr influence was left to trail behind and could accomplish nothing in face of what Mohammed had done. Here you can see the wisdom in world-history; we come to know the truth about Mohammedanism only when, in addition to other things, we know that Mohammedanism was destined to deaden the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr, to take from it the strong Ahrimanically seductive force which would otherwise have been exercised upon mankind.

However, this wisdom of Jundí Sábúr has not entirely disappeared. We must follow attentively the evolution of mankind from the seventh century up to our own time, if we are to understand what has happened in connection with the Gnostic movement of Jundí Sábúr. The eminent teacher, whose name is unknown, but who was the greatest opponent of Christ Jesus, failed to achieve his purpose—the purpose of the teaching he gave to his pupils at Jundí Sábúr—but something else was achieved. Careful studies, however, are necessary in order to recognise what this was.

The question may be asked: How has it really come about that our present science has arisen, with its particular method of thinking? What I am now about to say is not unknown to conscientious historians. This present scientific method of thinking, as I described it for you yesterday, has not developed in a direct line from anything in Christianity—no, in reality it has nothing to do with Christianity as such. It is possible to trace step by step, from decade to decade, how the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr—certainly in a deadened form—spread over Southern Europe and Africa to Spain, to France, to England, and then over the Continent by way of the monasteries. We can trace how the supersensible is driven out and only the sense-perceptible retained; we can trace the tendency, as it were, the intention. And that which arises from the deadening of the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr is Western scientific thinking.

In this connection it is particularly interesting to study Roger Bacon—not Bacon of Verulam but Roger Bacon. Although he was a monk—not, however, looked upon very favourably by his colleagues—we can see how the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr flowed into him. So little do men to-day know of the sources of what is working in their souls that they imagine they have a scientific thinking free from prejudice, whereas this “impartial scientific thinking” derives in fact from the Academy of Jundí Sábúr.

It is not true that the findings gained from spiritual vision are incapable of corroboration; but we have to set about it in the right way if in the life of outward experience we are to show how what is brought from the spiritual actually emerged. In the near future these considerations will be of extreme importance. For if men wish to extricate themselves from the confusion of to-day, the confusion of recent years, they will have to see the past in its true colours. The fact that to-day they are inclined to look at everything from a scientific angle has nothing directly to do with Christianity; it is the result of the conditions I have been describing. Thus in the evolution of Western culture we have these two forces, these two streams—on the one hand the Christian stream, on the other hand the stream that has so deeply influenced Western thinking, and can in fact be studied when we examine the spiritual life of the Middle Ages.

This spiritual life of the Middle Ages is studied very one-sidedly. But go and look at the pictures which were painted about the way in which the Schoolmen behaved towards the Arabian philosophers; see how in the sense of Western Christian tradition the Schoolman is shown standing there with his Christian doctrine and preparing to tread the Arabian men of learning under foot ... over and over again this same passionate theme, the treading under foot of the Arabian men of learning by the force of Christ. Look at this in the pictures arising from the Christian tradition of the West, and you will understand how there lives in these pictures the passionate wish of the Middle Ages to set Christianity in opposition to all that sprang originally from the enmity of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr towards the Christ; all the passionate feeling about the Arabian learning and its spreading over Europe, right up to the time of Maimonides Ramban and Avicenna—everywhere we find the echo of what I have been describing. But just think—man was intended, aided by the Mystery of Golgotha, to find the Consciousness Soul out of his personality, and then to rise further to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. The purpose of the genius of Gnostic learning, however, was that man should receive something through direct revelation, without needing from the fifteenth century onwards to develop his Consciousness Soul. He was to acquire as a revelation of genius all that otherwise he would have had to find through his own personal capacity, in conjunction with the divine-spiritual Beings appointed for him, among whom even Christ Jesus belongs. The thoughts of men such as Averröes, who had acquired the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr in its deadened form, were focused upon this. Who would ever really understand, on reading the foolish, disconnected information given to-day in school-books about Averröes, why this Spanish-Arabian man of learning said: “When a man dies, it is only the substance of his soul that flows into the universal spirituality. Man has no personal individuality; all that is soul in separate men is merely a reflection of the one universal soul.” Why did he say this? He said it because it is part of the Jundí Sábúr wisdom, which told people not that each individual is to develop the Consciousness Soul, but that the wisdom of the Consciousness Soul was to come to them as a revelation from above. Then it would have been an Ahrimanic revelation, and the content of the Consciousness Soul would have really merged into monism, with the individual consciousness becoming merely semblance. Everything that lives in the cultural evolution of the West is illuminated when things are considered spiritually. Now we must ask ourselves over and over again, first: How can this evolution of the Consciousness Soul come about?—for it has to come about; and secondly: What prevents men to-day from turning to Spiritual Science, which alone can show them the way to the Consciousness Soul?

Now yesterday I explained to you how the knowledge of nature—of which modern man is inordinately proud—leads to conceptions that do not reflect nature, but only its ghost. What men know of nature is not the truth; it is a ghost, and related to the reality of nature in the same way that a ghost is related to reality. But scientists are not aware of the ghostly nature of their knowledge, nor are they aware that what they know as Man is not Homo but Homunculus. Now the course of human evolution, which in its present character began during the fifteenth century and will continue to the middle of the fourth millennium, will be such that man will have increasingly to discern what he is really striving for in, let us say, his knowledge of nature, and how far he approaches reality with this knowledge. He will have to strive for knowledge and he will have to avoid the obstacles that meet him on the way. The most important obstacles—we have already described them from a certain point of view but we will call them up again before our souls—arise because in our scientific age, which is a child of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr, man pursues a ghostly knowledge, for he forms conceptions about nature from which all that is spiritual has departed. And we may ask—Why docs he do this?—for then we shall gain some idea of what man has to overcome. Why, then, does man unconsciously want this ghostly knowledge of nature and why is he so proud and overbearing about it? Why?

My dear friends, the moment we recognise, recognise fully, that this knowledge gives only the ghost of nature, we feel impelled to press on to the true reality behind the ghost; then we want to have nature in her reality. We might indeed characterise our scientific world-outlook also from the following aspect, and say: This scientific world-outlook arrives at ghostly conceptions, and is satisfied because it believes it then has conceptions about real nature. It goes on to invent all kinds of concepts, atoms, molecules and so on, which as you know do not exist and are mere inventions. It also invents all sorts of laws, such as the conservation of energy, the conservation of matter, which in fact do not exist. It looks for all kinds of hypotheses for what has no existence, for what it conceives of in a ghostly way in accordance with these natural laws. And why does it do all this? It is because the secret fear we have already mentioned makes itself felt immediately in the deep places of the soul; but the man concerned knows nothing of this fear because it is unconscious—I might even call it cowardice. For what would happen if he found courage enough to say: “You want a concept of nature, not the ghost of nature? Then you must press on to the reality.”—But then one will not find atoms, or molecules, or the concepts of Oswald or Haeckel; then one comes to Ahriman and his hosts! And it all becomes spiritual. Anyone who makes his way through true natural science to reality discovers Ahriman. But men are afraid of this, for they think they are falling into an abyss if, when they are seeking solid matter, there is in truth nothing, and they find spirit there. For the Spirit who is revealed is one to whom we cannot pray; we must protect ourselves against him and meet him in full consciousness.

Truly it is no arbitrary act to place the Christ in our sculptured group together with Ahriman and Lucifer; it is because this grouping is connected with the deepest problems of our present life, and because man must be fully aware of these matters. Our natural science is a ghostly one, must be ghostly, as long as we have not the courage to look for the spiritual in nature—but then we find Ahriman. And our knowledge of the soul does not give us the real soul, only an image of the soul. Strictly speaking, we get no more than this image from what is taught to-day in academies and universities as psychology. And this image blinds us to the reality; for were man to investigate further the path on which this image arises, then Lucifer would show himself. He is the next spiritual Being to be found.

Indeed, anyone who can really get through to what remains to-day of the intended knowledge of Jundí Sábúr, even though it has been blunted in the course of history, will find that these methods lead to a very exact knowledge of Lucifer and Ahriman. And they were indeed meant to lead only to Lucifer and Ahriman, and not to the guidance of mankind by Christ Jesus.

Now this is something that was felt by the medieval Scholastics who wanted to tread the Arabian men of learning under foot and always saw themselves in this attitude; and it was felt on account of its connection with the deepest evolutionary impulses of mankind. What was to have been revealed to man by Ahrimanic intervention—instead of his having to secure it by his own efforts during the course of centuries—would have been a highly dangerous wisdom because of its connection with three things. Man is on the way laboriously to acquire this wisdom through the Consciousness Soul, but at that time, in the seventh century, it was to have come to mankind in the way I have described. It is not a forbidden wisdom for man, but a wisdom he was meant to strive for under the guidance of the Christ Impulse. Now the three things to which the wisdom is related are, first, the nature of birth and death. We have said a good deal about birth and death, and from the way we have spoken of them you know it is only by supersensible knowledge that man can master birth and death. Through the fact that man is born, and dies, the supersensible makes its appearance in the world of the senses. Birth and death remain riddles for those who try to grasp them merely from the point of view of the senses, for they are not sense-phenomena. To regard them as sense-phenomena is not in accordance with truth; the truth is that they are supersensible events. When, however, we try to investigate the mysteries of birth and death supersensibly, with real observation, certain accompanying phenomena make themselves known. Above all there appears the accompanying phenomenon which makes us realise that as we live here in the sense-world, we have only an apparent life of soul. In the West, men have struggled against this truth for centuries. You can follow their struggles in my book Vom Menschenrätsel, where I speak of it right at the beginning. But there I had to express myself more cautiously, for these things still cannot be given to the outer world to-day; they are still considered paradoxical. You know how the whole Western world has come under the influence of the proposition formulated by Descartes, but really going back to Augustine: Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. Men believed that in thinking they were laying hold of the reality of the soul. The proposition would have to run differently if we wished to establish the truth about man as he lives in the world of the senses. We should have to say: I think, therefore I am not. For the moment we begin simply to think, the moment we develop purely inward thinking, we are no more. What is then within us? This is certainly a very complicated phenomenon, but by tomorrow it will have become clear to us.

Let us take this to be man's life (diagram), and this to be

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what throughout life he experiences as a conceiving, thinking being. Then this (red) is merely an appearance, running from birth to death like a hollow reed, for the truth lies further back. The truth is there before birth, or let us say before conception; in the supersensible spiritual world is our reality; and at the boundary where we enter the world of the senses only the image of us is allowed through. We are only an image of our life before birth, or before conception. The truth is not that something now living is speaking to you; only the images of it have been allowed to pass through. The truth is that what was in the spiritual world continues to speak to-day. We are not eternal because we go on existing, but because we are still to-day what in truth we were before birth or conception, and it is this which speaks into the present. Through having been drawn down into bodily existence, we have really become an illusory appearance of our essential being for the term of our earthly life. “I think, therefore I am not”—philosophy from Augustine to Descartes has sought to spread darkness over this profound truth. People will never gain knowledge of the mysteries of birth and death while this darkness prevails. For they ask: “When did the soul have its beginning?” “At birth.” “When does it cease?” “At death.” If we recognised the supersensible truth we should speak differently and say: When did the soul cease to unfold its life as soul ? When we were born, or conceived. When will the soul begin again to unfold its life as a supersensible being? When we die. Here on earth this life is interrupted so that not only the supersensible should work into our life, but that we may absorb what can be gained through the senses and make it part of our life as a whole. There will be no question here of a fanatical asceticism; the obvious fact is that earthly life is absolutely necessary to the whole life of man. But this earthly life is so important, and appears under the guise of materiality, precisely because our true human life as super-sensible beings ceases when we enter earthly life, and begins again when we live on after death.

The mysteries of birth and death begin to reveal themselves only when we know that we are supersensible beings, and are only the image of what we are before birth, and after death, as soul-beings. But then we must have the courage to look steadily at ourselves. If here (see diagram) there is only a hollow reed, only an image, we must find the courage to say: Do not let us be blinded by the image, but let us with full knowledge confront Lucifer. The gaining of knowledge is fruitful for life; it demands courage, inner courage. This must be repeatedly emphasised. That is one thing: knowledge concerning birth and death.

The second thing is knowledge concerning the course of our life itself. Because we look upon our relation as soul to body falsely—though the falsity is justified for the reasons you can find in my Occult Science—we have a false conception also of the course of our life. We form it on the lines of the illustration I made use of here a few days ago: you remember how I took the image of Father Rhine. Someone stands on the bridge in Basle, looks down and says: “There's the old Rhine; the old Rhine ...” yes, but what do you mean by the old Rhine? The water I see flowing there below is not old, for in the course of an hour it will be far away, and in a few days somewhere in the wide ocean; the water is certainly not old. And what you mean does not seem to be merely the river-bed, hollowed out of the earth between the Swiss mountains and the North Sea. Then what is Father Rhine, the old Rhine, so often spoken of? It is not at all a substantial thing; no substance is left once you have the idea of Father Rhine. And this is no less true of our own bodily nature. This bodily nature of ours is a continuously running stream: a destroying and renewing of the vital fluids; a destroying and renewing of the vital fluids. Nothing remains but the form, which is of spiritual origin. Substance continually pours into the form; it appears, pours itself in, is destroyed—just like the waters of Father Rhine.

Because of the illusion, the may a, that permeates the outer world, we do not see this flux of continuous dissolution and renewal which is the truth about the life perceived by the senses. We behold instead what comes to birth—the lump of flesh filled with bones and blood, which is to grow bigger until it is full-grown, and then remains so until death. This is conceived of in much the same way that Father Rhine is conceived of as a piece of water, which of course it is not; but just as we might picture a piece of water stretching from the Swiss mountains to the North Sea, and then imagine it lying there at rest in its bed, so do we form a conception of the human body. It is continually flowing, whereas we believe it to be something rigid—it is difficult to find a good word for this—a rigid something between birth and death. If we had a correct vision of ourselves, we should see the continuous flux, and could never suppose that this continuous flux has anything to do with our true being. But if we could see the underlying forces of dissolution which are continually at work there, we should acquire a knowledge of medicine, a spiritual medical knowledge which would certainly take a different form from our modern medical knowledge. You will not get the right idea of this spiritual medical knowledge if you say: “Yes, indeed—that is how illnesses would be healed!” Illnesses cannot be healed in the way men would like to-day. All we do with true spiritual medical knowledge is to keep intact the forces of healing. Genuine therapeutics would consist in so ordering life that a man would be master of the forces that bring about continuous excretion, dissolution, and renewal in his organism. We should need no drugs from the chemist if the individual man not only knew how to apply this mastery to his own person, but were so to live with his fellows that it could be accepted by the whole human race. I have often mentioned this. That is the second thing.

The third thing to be connected with this knowledge is a true natural science. What is true natural science, my dear friends? As I have often emphasised, Spiritual Science is not hostile towards natural science in its present form, but it realises that this natural science does not give the whole truth about nature; it gives only a ghost. There is no point in fighting this ghost—in our various ways we must just put up with it. It is no good thinking out a poison, like the philosopher Richard Wahle in the story I told you yesterday—even though it were a poison meant only to destroy a philosophy, a philosophical poison, nothing more. It is no use thinking out some poison to rid the world of all those who think scientifically; the useful thing is to discover how far they are right. We should say to scientists: If you were to insist on the accuracy of your research, we should entirely agree; but at the same time you ought to admit that through this research, which is accurate from the scientific point of view, you arrive at conceptions only of nature's ghost and not of nature's reality. But we have to get through to reality; that is precisely the task of this age of the Consciousness Soul. The scientist will claim that he has this or that good reason for not letting his knowledge of nature become ghostlike, to which the spiritual scientist must reply: But you are quite right to have your ghostly knowledge of nature. For if you seek any substance in nature beyond its ghost, you will be wrong; you are right only if behind the ghost you look for what is Ahrimanic, when you look for what is spiritual. You are therefore right in seeking a ghostly knowledge.—Now what I have told you about man's bodily nature takes on a decidedly ghostly character. And anyone who looks right into nature from a higher point of view beholds as a true natural phenomenon, about which he is under no illusion, a quite different phenomenon from those substantial ones commonly brought to our notice. The peculiar thing—I will say more about it tomorrow—is that in spite of everything the world at some points is always indicating the truth. Somewhere a pointer to the truth can be found, if people want to know how they should think about the reality of the natural phenomena which lie open to our senses on all sides.

What then should we be looking for? Is there anything in nature itself to enlighten us? Yes, there is: for example, the rainbow—the rainbow is a true picture of a natural phenomenon. Just think—of course you know this—if you could get to where the rainbow is, you could quite comfortably pass through it; it is brought about simply by the inter-working of certain processes. Just as spectre-like, just as ghost-like, are all the processes of nature, only this is not perceived; they are not what they appear to be to the eye, the ear, or the other senses; they are the combined outcome of other spiritual processes. We tread the earth, believing we have solid matter below us; in reality it is merely what we perceive as with the rainbow—and when we believe we are treading on firm ground it is Ahriman sending up the force from below.

Directly we get free from what is merely spectre-like, ghost-like, in natural phenomena, we meet the spiritual. In other words, all searching for so-called solid matter is really rather nonsensical. If man will only give up looking for anything coarsely material as the basis of nature—and this he will do before the fourth millennium—he will come to something quite different; he will discover rhythms, rhythmical orderings, everywhere in nature. These rhythmical orderings are there, but as a rule modern materialistic science makes fun of them. We have given artistic expression to them in our seven pillars, and so on, in the whole configuration of our Building.¹ This rhythmical order is there in the whole of nature. In the plants one leaf follows another in rhythmical growth; the petals of the blossoms are ordered rhythmically, everything is rhythmically ordered. Fever takes a rhythmical course in sickness; the whole of life is rhythmical. The discerning of nature's rhythms—that will be true natural science.

By learning to understand the rhythms in nature we shall even come to a certain application of the rhythmical in technology. This would be the goal for future technics: harmoniously related vibrations would be set going; they would be small at first but would act upon each other so that they became larger and larger, and by this means, simply through their resonance, a tremendous amount of work could be done.

Now tomorrow I will show you in greater detail why it is so truly wise on the part of the Christian world-order—which in this sense is the wise divine world-order—to let mankind become ripe in the course of centuries for the knowledge of which I have just been speaking, whereas the Academy of Jundí Sábúr wanted to force it upon men. For men must have something else as their aim if this knowledge is to come to them. These forms of knowledge may be bestowed upon mankind only if, simultaneously with a development towards them, there comes into being as widely as possible, in connection with our third point, an entirely selfless social order. No rhythmical technics can lie introduced without causing harm to mankind, unless at the same time a selfless social order is striven after; to an egoistic society they would bring only hurt.

Again, in connection with the second point, I mentioned a force which is bound up with healing power. I spoke of how one could come to see processes of dissolution and renewal, excretion and assimilation, occurring under the influence of this force. As I have said from other points of view, this force cannot be given over to mankind unless progress is made in other directions at the same time. Men will have first to cultivate a strict conscientiousness, in relation not only to outwardly visible things, but also to things not outwardly visible. They will have to learn to control not only what is visible, but also, under the guidance of conscience, their thinking and feeling. For with a knowledge of this force—which is hidden by the fact of our looking on the flow of life between birth and death as a rigid body—with a mastery of this force tremendous harm could be done, if it were not developed in the light of a strictly responsible conscience even towards what is not apparent.

And the third thing would correspond with my first point, with knowledge of the mysteries of birth and death. These mysteries of birth and death presuppose likewise that mankind will first come to experience a certain maturity; they presuppose that man will really be able to confront Ahriman and Lucifer consciously. Anyone who knows how to reflect upon the meaning of what is meant by this first point, realises the following, which I will now put before you in conclusion; tomorrow we shall be saying more about it. He realises the following.

My dear friends, it is possible to study natural science as mere ghostly knowledge and not to realise that it is mere ghostly knowledge; it is possible to content oneself with this untrue knowledge. This is helpful; it actually helps us, for then we do not face the danger of meeting Ahriman. You can make Ahriman invisible, but then you must accumulate knowledge of nature merely in the present-day sense, which does not reach the truth. To remain content with this knowledge of nature, and so with what is untrue, is a good way of defending yourself against Ahriman. But you must choose: either you want the truth, in which case you will have to make acquaintance with Ahriman at work supersensibly in the world; or you can keep to what is untrue. If you cultivate what is untrue, you will say: “The ghostly knowledge of nature gives us the true nature.” Well and good; then be content with what suits Ahriman; he wants lies, he lives upon lies. And he can really live very well on these hidden lies; nothing pleases him more than to see holding sway the lie that a ghostly knowledge of nature is real knowledge of nature.

Again, I have spoken of that which is a mere semblance of the supersensible; I described it as the image that is allowed through. Here too is a choice. We can penetrate to the supersensible—but then we have to look Lucifer (spiritually, of course) in the eye. Or we can keep to what is untrue and take the semblance of the soul for its reality. Then, however, we can never come to understand birth and death, or immortality; for then we shall be looking not upon the soul, the immortal soul, but only upon its image. This is what I have wanted to place before your souls by way of introduction. To-morrow we will go on from here.

You can see how important these thoughts are. In this age of the Consciousness Soul, earthly man has the choice of striving for the truth, which requires him to confront the spiritual with courage; or of avoiding the spiritual, when he can remain in illusion, holding to the untrue. The Academy of Jundí Sábúr wanted to spare man this striving for the truth, to spare him the trouble of further evolution; therefore it wished to reveal to him what it had itself received as an Ahrimanic revelation. The Academy of Jundí Sábúr, of which the last shadows, the ghost, remain in the scientific illusions of to-day, wanted to make of man an entirely earthly being. These endeavours were overcome by what had been destined for mankind from his very beginning—by the Mystery of Golgotha.

• 1. The first Goetheanum, subsequently destroyed by fire.

Dr. Steiner: Is everyone here? We have gathered today because we have a number of things to discuss, and also because Mr. S. believes there are some things he needs to say about the events of the last meeting. I am not certain whether we should do that first.

A teacher: What should we do about the parents of the children who were expelled? We think their progress reports should not include any remarks about the expulsion.

Dr. Steiner: People all over Stuttgart are talking about the school and those rumors will then conclude that the faculty did not have the courage to admit what it had done.

If something like what occurred here came up in another school, it would not be such an affair as we have here. There has been some talk about whether one thing or another corresponds to what is normal in other schools, but this situation could, under certain circumstances, bring the entire Waldorf School into discredit if it is improperly used. You speak as though you did not know Mr. von Gleich exists. If someone were expelled in some other school, no one would care. What I fear is that if we do come to agreement, but handle it the way we are now, we will soon have a repetition.

I did not say he must be removed, but that it is possible that we may have to expel him. The goal of all of the suspensions was to enable us to discuss the matter. When you came to me in Dornach with that pile of unbelievable interrogations, there was nothing more to do. There was nothing more we could do. I said that you should look into the matter, but I did not mean that you should formally interrogate the boys and girls. I wanted the suspensions because I had lost trust.

A teacher: My recollection is that you said the other students must be suspended.

Dr. Steiner: I used the conditional tense: “If G.S. really gave the injections, then it might well be necessary to expel him.” You looked into the matter only afterward.

A teacher: The situation with the injections was completely clear.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that the boys played around. No one knows what he injected. There were some stupid pranks. The reason for the suspension was to be able to look into the matter when I got here. The problem is that the case of G.S. in connection with the others has created these difficulties. The problem that will create difficulties for the school is that the others had to be removed. The difficulty lies in the situation as a whole.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the lack of contact with the students.

Dr. Steiner: The contact between the faculty and the students in the upper grades has been lost. That is not something new. It was quite clear when the students in the upper grades requested a meeting with me. That fact alone speaks quite clearly about a loss of contact with the students. That is the foundation of the whole problem. As soon as such contact is genuinely present, things like this will no longer occur.

How do you think I could make a decision about such a matter over the phone, when I could not actually look at the situation? At the point when Mr. S. brought me the minutes of the interrogations containing things that should never have been discussed, a genuine conflict between the faculty and the students existed. There was nothing for me to decide, since I could not go so far as to make the students into teachers. The problem was a polarity, teachers or students. That became grotesquely apparent. Things slid so far that the students themselves spoke about the teachers speaking to them differently as teachers and as human beings. There was an open conflict between the faculty and the students, and there was, therefore, no other possibility than to make a decision. All that was left was to find the right words. What I said on the telephone was that you should look into the matter and determine the cause. Instead, you interrogated the students. It is only possible to understand “looking into the matter” as trying to determine what the problem is through observation. My understanding was that the faculty would try to find out what was behind the situation, but holding interrogations was simply impossible. I also do not believe that you held these interrogations before our first telephone conversation.

A teacher: There were no interrogations before the second telephone conversation.

Dr. Steiner: What I said could have only meant that if the suspicion were correct that G.S. had injected a student with morphine or opium, we would have to expel him.

A teacher: When a boy injects someone, it seems to me that that is such bad behavior that there is nothing else to be done other than throw him out.

Another teacher: Could we take that back?

Dr. Steiner: That would harm the movement most. You need to remember the following. I had to speak about the Waldorf School recently. I had to present the Waldorf School to the public as a model school, and in fact, it is broadly seen as such. Those people in Stuttgart who are interested in the Waldorf School need only to ask around, and they hear exactly the opposite. These are the things I am always referring to that arise from our position and make it possible to undermine the anthroposophical movement. The question is whether we want to create something that would help undermine the movement. The anthroposophical movement will not be undermined if we expel some students. It would, however, be undermined if people say things that we cannot counter. I am powerless against things that take place in discussions in which I do not participate. It is impossible for me to speak with the expelled students. There is nothing I can say when things have gone so far that the students have left. Through such events, I cannot speak at all about the school. This occurs just at the time when everyone is talking about the school.

I deeply regret that despite the fact that I have been here, I could not see everything. I did see most things, but not everything. I have to say that some aspects of the teaching in the Waldorf School are really very good and are still maintained in our old exemplary form. I really prefer, as long as it is not otherwise necessary, to say exemplary. However, there are certain points that show that the Waldorf School principles are no longer being carried out. We really need to discuss everything here in our meetings. It is an impossible situation when I come into a class, and the teacher has a book in hand and reads an arithmetic problem out of it, where the question is to compute the sum of the ages of three people and then another question is asked so that the children need to determine the sum of the ages of seven people. We are part of a movement that says that we should do only what is true to reality, and then we ask the children to compute the total ages of a group of people. What result do you expect? There is no reality in that. If such sloppiness happens in the school, then what I presented to you in our seminar course was simply for nothing.

As far as I am concerned, if that were simply one case, I would have said nothing. And if there were simply some points that were not so carefully considered, I would not be leaving with such a heavy heart. I have always tried to stress that the Waldorf School can put you above normal, everyday superficiality, but now the Waldorf School has fallen into the typical Stuttgart system. That is, for me, the most bitter thing that can occur, especially when I have to present the Waldorf School as a model. Somehow, that you have lost contact with one another must lie in the atmosphere here.

I must admit I’m really very concerned. When we founded the Waldorf School, we had to make a kind of declaration that after the students had completed three grades, they would be able to move to another school without difficulty. When I look at what we have achieved in three years—well, we just are not keeping up. It is really impossible for us to keep up.

The school inspector’s report was somewhat depressing for me. From what you told me earlier, I had thought he was ill-willed. But, the report is full of goodwill. I must admit that I found everything he wrote necessary. For example, you are not paying enough attention, so the students are always copying from one another. The things contained in the report are true, and that is so bitter. You gave me the impression he had done everything with ill intent. However, it is actually written in such a way that you can see he did not at all want to harm the school. Of course, he speaks that way when we are totally ruining the children. And of course, the result will be that things that are so good in principle become so bad when they are improperly used. We must use what is good. What we need is a certain kind of enthusiasm, a kind of inner activity, but all this has slowly disappeared. Only the lower grades have some real activity, and that is a terrible spectacle. The dead way of teaching, the indifference with which the instruction is given, the complete lack of spontaneity, must all disappear. Some things are still extraordinarily good, as I said before, but in other places there is a total loss of what should be. We need some life in the classes, real life, and then things will fall into place. You need to be able to go along with things and agree with them if you are to present them publicly, that is no longer possible for me. In many cases, people act as though they did not need to prepare before going into class.

I do not want to imply that is done elsewhere. I say it because no one wants to understand what I have been saying for years, namely, that through the habits of Stuttgart, the anthroposophical movement has been ruined. We were not able to bring forth what we need to care for, the true content of the movement. The Waldorf faculty has completely ignored the need to seek out contact. Now, the Society does not try to contact the teachers, and if you ask why, you are told that they do not want us. That is certainly the greatest criticism and a very bitter pill! Each individual needs to feel that they belong to the Society, but that feeling is no longer present. I always need to call attention to the fact that we have the movement. As long as people did not start things and then lose interest in them after a time, things went well for the movement. However, here in Stuttgart things have been founded where people have lost interest in them, and the Stuttgart system arose in that way. Every clique goes its own way, and now the Waldorf School is also taking on the same characteristic, so that it loses consciousness of its true foundation.

That is why I say it is obvious that this event will have no good end. If it were possible to guarantee that we would again try to work from the Waldorf School principle—if only such a guarantee were present! But, there is no such guarantee. There are always a lot of people who want to visit the Waldorf School. I am always sitting on pins and needles when someone comes and wants to visit. It is possible to discover a great deal when you think about things away from school. I certainly understand how difficult it is to create such classes, but on the other hand, I certainly miss the fire that should be in them. There is no fire, only indifference. There is a kind of being comfortable there. I cannot say that what was intended has in any way actually occurred.

A teacher: ... I want to leave...

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to create resentments. That is not the point. If I thought that nothing else could be done, I would have spoken differently. I am speaking from an assumption that the faculty consists of capable people. I am convinced that the problem lies in the habits of Stuttgart, and that people act with closed ears and closed eyes. They are asleep. I have not accused any teachers, but a sloppiness is moving in. There is no more diligence present. But diligence can be changed, it is simply no longer present.

A teacher: I would like to ask you to tell us what we have missed.

Dr. Steiner: This way of forcing something that has absolutely nothing to do with a mechanism into a mechanized scheme is simply child’s play in contrast to the inner process of it. This way of ignorantly putting all kinds of things together and calling it a picture when it is really not a picture is simply a method of occupying the students for a few hours. I believe it is absolutely impossible to discover an external mechanical scheme for the interaction of things connected with language. What would the children get from it when you draw a figure and then write “noun” and so forth in one corner? That is all an external mechanism that simply makes nonsense of instruction.

I hope that no animosities arise from what I am saying. Actually, our pedagogical discussions have been better than that. This fantasizing is most definitely not real. I was very happy with physical education. We should absolutely support that by finding another gymnastics teacher. The boys have become quite lazy. I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that there are also other impulses. Mr. N. has greatly misunderstood me. I did not claim that anyone was incapable of doing things the way that I would like. The problem is that we need to be colleagues in the movement.

A teacher: I have asked myself if my teaching has become worse.

Dr. Steiner: The problem you have is that you have not always followed the directive to bring what you know anthroposophically into a form you can present to little children. You have lectured the children about anthroposophy when you told them about your subject. You did not transform anthroposophy into a child’s level. That worked in the beginning because you taught with such enormous energy. It must have been closer to your heart two years ago than what you are now teaching, so that you awoke the children through your enthusiasm and fire, whereas now you are no longer really there. You have become lazy and weak, and, thus, you tire the children. Before, your personality was active. You could teach the children because your personality was active. It is possible you slipped into this monotone. The children are not coming along because they have lost their attentiveness. You no longer work with them with the necessary enthusiasm, and now they have fallen asleep. You are not any dumber than you were then, but you could do things better. It is your task to do things better, and not say that you need to be thrown out. I am saying that you are not using your full capacities. I am speaking about your not wanting to, not your not being able to.

(Speaking to a second teacher) You need only round yourself out in some areas and get away from your lecturing tone.

(Speaking to a third teacher) I have already said enough to you.

A teacher asks about more time for French and English since two hours are not sufficient in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: We can do such things only when we have developed them enough that we can allow the children to simply decide in which direction they want to be educated. We cannot increase the number of school hours. The number of school hours has reached a maximum, for both teachers and children. The children are no longer able to concentrate because of the number of hours in the classroom. We need to allow the children to decide. We need to limit Latin and Greek to those students who want to take the final examinations, and those students will also have to limit their other subjects. We already had to limit modern languages for them and allow more teaching time in Greek and Latin.

A teacher: The children come to me for Latin and Greek immediately after shop, eurythmy, and singing. I cannot properly teach them when they are so distracted.

Dr. Steiner: That may be true. Allowing the children to participate in everything cannot continue.

A teacher: We need to differentiate between those going into the humanities and those going on in business. Could we cut the third hour of main lesson short?

Dr. Steiner: Main lesson? That would be difficult. We can certainly not say that any part of the main lesson is superfluous.

A teacher: I wanted to make a similar request for modern languages in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly difficult to discuss moving forward in languages if we do not provide what the children need to have in other areas. In previous years, we did not do enough in those areas.

A teacher: If they have shop, I cannot teach Latin.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question of the class schedule and that needs to be decided by the faculty. You wrote down the class schedule for me. I will go through it to see if there is something we can do based purely upon the schedule. On the other hand, I was startled by how little the children can do. There is no active capacity for doing in the children, not even in the objective subjects. The children know so little about history. In general, the children know too little and can do too little. The problem is that an indifference has crept in, so that the things that are necessary are not done. There is no question of that in the 8b class. You need to be there for only five minutes and you can see that the children can do their arithmetic. This all depends upon the teachers’ being interested in the material. It is readily apparent how well the children in the 8b class can do arithmetic. What they can do, you do not see through examples of how they solve problems. That does not say very much. What you can see is that they were very capable in arithmetic methods. Individual cases prove that, but arithmetic is going poorly nearly everywhere.

(To a class teacher) The children know quite a lot, but you should not leave it to the children to decide when they want to say something, as those who are lazy will not speak up. You need to be careful that no one gets by without answering. Those who did speak knew quite a lot, and the history class went very well.

A teacher asks whether it would be possible to hold evening meetings where the teachers could meet together with students who were free.

Dr. Steiner: That would certainly be good. However, it is important how the teachers behave there. Such meetings must not lead to what occurred previously when the students voted for a student president.

A teacher: I thought more of lectures, music, and such things. Not a discussion.

Dr. Steiner: That might well be good, but it could also lead to a misunderstanding of the relationships.

A teacher wants to have one additional hour for each of the ancient languages.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot increase the amount of school time.

A number of teachers speak about the class schedule and increasing the amount of school time.

Dr. Steiner: An increase in the amount of school time cannot be achieved in an absolute sense. We can only increase the number of hours in one subject by decreasing them in another.

A teacher: The tenth grade has students who have forty-four hours of school per week.

Dr. Steiner: That is why many cannot do anything. I will look at the class schedule.

A teacher asks what to do for those who want a more musical education.

Dr. Steiner: If we begin allowing differences, we will have to have three different areas, the humanities, business, and art. We must look into whether that is possible without a significant increase in the size of the faculty.

A teacher: The students want to be involved in everything.

Dr. Steiner: That is perhaps a question for the faculty, and you should discuss it.

Now, to the things that are not as they should be and that have grown to cause me considerable concern. I am concerned, particularly for the upper grades, that the instruction is tending toward sensationalism. That occurs to the detriment of the liveliness in teaching. They want to have a different sensation every hour. The teaching in the upper grades has developed into a craving for sensations, and that is something that has, in fact, been cultivated. There is too little emphasis upon being able to do, and too much upon simply absorbing. That is sensational for many. When the students have so little inner activity, and they learn to feel responsibility so little, they assume that they can do whatever they want. That is often the attitude. You have copied too much from the university atmosphere. The boys think this is a university, and there is not enough of a genuine school atmosphere.

A teacher: If the students would participate energetically, I could give two hours of languages without becoming tired.

Dr. Steiner: Keeping the class active makes you more tired than when it sleeps.

A teacher asks about finding a new teacher for modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: We have been talking about a teacher for modern languages for quite some time. We could ask Tittmann, but I do not dare do that because we need to economize in every area. Try to imagine where we would get the money if we had no money for the Waldorf School. I would like to see the size of the faculty doubled, but that is not possible.

All this is something that is not directly connected with the difficulties. Most of them lie in attitude and will. For example, we must certainly stop using those cheap and sloppy student editions in our classes.

We can discuss the question of the teaching plan when I return. I would ask that you continue in the present way until the end of October. I hope that by the end of October we can move on to radical changes, but I fear they cannot be made.

A teacher asks about an explanation of the situation with the expelled students that is to appear in Anthroposophy and in the daily newspapers. Not only inaccurate, but also completely fabricated things had been reported publicly as facts.

Dr. Steiner: This explanation would refute what has already been published. The story is really going all around Stuttgart. It is a waste of time to explain things to bureaucrats, but the public should not remain unclear about it. We need to say that people could think what they want about the reasons, but we should energetically counter everything and declare them to be false. We should not forget that our concern here is not simply connected with the school, but is also a matter for the anthroposophical movement. Here I do not mean the Society, since it is asleep. But, we need to give some explanation. That would be the first thing to do. We can certainly not get by without that. When we expel some students, we also need to justify that publicly, otherwise it would just be one more nail in the coffin of the movement. We need to do it without making a big fuss, and we cannot act as though we were defending ourselves. That is why I was so surprised when you sent me the record of the interrogations while I was in Dornach. I found it mortifying to go into a “court procedure” with some students because of some dumb pranks.

A teacher: Would it be possible to write the text now?

Dr. Steiner: Well, you can make proposals. I don’t think it would be so easy to write by simply making proposals now. It needs to be written by someone with all due consideration.

A teacher asks about progress reports for these students.

Dr. Steiner: Progress reports? Giving in to someone like Mrs. X. (a mother who had written a letter to the faculty) is just nonsense. I cannot participate in the discussion because people would then complain that this is the first time they had heard about the situation. The faculty has made the most crass errors. You should have let the parents know earlier. As far as I am concerned, the reports could be phrased so that what the children are like is apparent only from the comments about their deportment, but that would only make things worse. Everyone knows they have been expelled, but then they receive a good report. Most teachers do not know that expulsions occur only rarely.

The best would be if Dr. X. would write these progress reports. Perhaps I could also look at them. Mr. Y. is too closely involved. I don’t think it would be a good idea for those most closely involved to do it. Form a committee of three, and then present me with your plans.

Concerning the parent meeting, you could do that, but without me. They might say things I could not counter, if I hear something I cannot defend. The things I say here, I could not say to the parents. We need to clear the air, and the teachers must take control of the school again. You do not need to talk about the things not going well. I think a meeting with the parents would be a good idea, but you, the faculty, would have to really be there. The things I took exception to earlier are directly connected with this matter. The school needs a new direction. You need to eliminate much of the fooling around. We need to be more serious. How are things with the student Z. who left?

A teacher gives a report.

Dr. Steiner: We need to be firm that he left the second, not the third, grade. Then we must try to show why it only seems that students are not so far along at the end of the second grade. The examples of his work we sent along show that Z. did not progress very far, that he only could write “hors” instead of “horse.” There are many such examples, but they are not particularly significant. Take another example. “He could only add by using his fingers.” That is not so bad. It is clear he could not add the number seven to another number.

The two places that could be dangerous for us lie in the following. The one is that people could claim he could do less than is possible with a calculator. To that, we can say that our goal is to develop the concept of numbers differently. We do not think that is possible with such young children. We will have to go into this business with calculators. The other thing that is dangerous for us is his poor dictation. There, we can simply say that dictation is not really a part of the second grade in our school. The situation is quite tempting for someone with a modern pedagogical understanding. That is how we can most easily be attacked. We will have to defend ourselves against that. We need to energetically and decisively defend ourselves. We need to stop the possibility of being criticized on these two points. We need to ward off this matter with a bitter humor. The report that was sent along makes things more difficult. He got a good report from us. This letter was written with good intent. For example, “I could not develop his knowledge further within the context of my class.” On the other hand, though, it is incomprehensible to a schoolmaster that he could write “horse” as “hors.”

A teacher: We have also received students who could not write.

Dr. Steiner: We should use such facts. If you can prove that, then you should include it. He wrote two-and-a-half typed pages, and then scribbled in some more. We should write just as much. We need to write back to him sarcastically. We need to develop some enthusiasm. We can certainly go that far. You need only look at Goethe’s letters, and you will also find errors of the same caliber. The faculty seems like a lifeless lump to me. You give no sign of having the strength to throw these things back into people’s faces. We need to use such things. The faculty is simply a lifeless lump. You are all sitting on the curule chairs of the Waldorf School, but we must be alive.

We need to use the resources we have. We need to write just as much, not like Mr. X. writes, but with a tone that is well-intended and not attacking.

A teacher: Do I always write such bad letters?

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps it is only this one case that I saw. A teacher asks about a student from out of town who cannot come to school when the weather is bad.

Dr. Steiner: We could give the father a binding answer. We could tell him that if the child lived in Stuttgart, we could, to the extent possible, take over the responsibility. However, when the boy has to make a longer trip, we can hardly be responsible for sending him out into bad weather when that might make him ill. We should tell the father that we understand the boy’s situation. However, we can make no decision other than to say that if the boy does not move into Stuttgart, he should leave the school. We need to take on that responsibility.

A teacher: Some students in the upper grades are taking jobs.

Dr. Steiner: That is no concern of ours if they are good students.

A teacher mentions a letter about a visit of some English teachers.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to accept their visit. However, I hope that by then there is a different atmosphere in the school. They can visit the various classes.

A teacher asks about how to treat colors in art class.

Dr. Steiner: Couldn’t you do what I said to the boys and girls yesterday? What I said today was concerned more with modern history. What I have said specifically about how to treat colors could be the subject of a number of lessons. Perhaps Miss Waller could send it to you from Dornach. I think you could go directly into the practical use of color with this class, so they become aware of what they have done in the lower grades. They should become aware of that. Of course, you must then go into the many things that must be further developed, the things you have begun, so that you also have them draw. I do not mean simply curves. You could also do the same with colors. For example, you could do it just as you did with curves to contrast a rounded and well-delineated blue spot and a curved yellow stroke. You should not do that too early. In the lower grades, the colors should live completely in seeing.

From there, you can go on to comparative anatomy; you could contrast the extremities in front and back. You could contrast the capacity of certain animals for perceiving and feeling with the wagging of a dog’s tail. That is actually the same problem. In that way, you can really get into life, you get into reality. Such things need to be brought into all areas of instruction. For many children, it is as though their heads were filled with pitch—they cannot think. They need to do such things through an inner activity, so that they genuinely participate. You can learn a great deal from the gymnastics class.

Yesterday, the boys were really very clumsy. I mean, they had a natural clumsiness and gymnastics is quite difficult for them. We need a second gymnastics teacher. The most you can teach is fourteen hours of gymnastics. If we had eighteen, we would need a second teacher. Particularly for boys, gymnastics, if it is not done pedantically, as it usually is, but, in fact, becomes a developmental force for the physical body, is really very good with eurythmy. The gymnastics teacher: I begin with the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we need to begin earlier. I would find it not at all bad if Mr. Wolffhügel would see to it that our classrooms are not so plain, but that they had some artistic content also. Our school gives the impression we have no understanding of art.

A teacher: B.B. is in my seventh grade class. Could you give me some advice?

Dr. Steiner: He is in a class too high for what he knows. He is lazy? I think it is just his nature, that he is Swedish, and you will have to accept that he cannot quickly comprehend things. They grasp things slowly, but if you return to such things often, it will be all right. They love to have things repeated. That is perhaps what it is that you are observing with him.

A teacher: He is a clever swindler and a facile liar.

Dr. Steiner: He does not understand. A swindler? That cannot be true. He does the things we have often discussed, but they only indicate that you need to work with him so that he develops some feeling for authority. If he respects someone, as he does Mr. L., then things are all right. What is important is that you repeatedly discuss things with him. He is not at all impertinent. It is important that you put yourself in a position of respect.

A teacher tells about an event.

Dr. Steiner: That was an event connected with a curious concept of law. In a formal sense, it was not right, and he thought the man should be punished. He was preoccupied with that thought for a long time. Sometimes you need to find out about such things from the children and then speak about them and calm them. If such things continue to eat into them, then things will become worse, and that is the case with all of these boys. It is bad when children think the teacher does not see what is right. We cannot be indifferent in that regard. We need to take care that the children do not believe that we judge them unjustly. If they believe that, we should not be surprised if they are impertinent.

A teacher asks about languages in the seventh and eighth grades. A third of the class are beginners and two-thirds are better. The teacher asks if it would be possible to separate the beginners from the more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: It is miserable that we do not group the children who are at the same stage. Is it so impossible to group them that way? You would need to put the fifth graders in a lower group. It has gradually developed that we are teaching language by grade, and that is a terrible waste of our energy. Couldn’t we teach according to groups and not according to grade?

A teacher: There is a time conflict.

Dr. Steiner: I am always sad that I cannot participate more in such things. I cannot believe it would not be possible. I still think it would be possible to group the students according to their capabilities, and at the same time work within the class schedule. That must certainly be possible if you have the goodwill to do it.

A teacher: It is possible with the seventh and eighth Grades.

Dr. Steiner: I think we could keep the same number of classroom hours. I cannot imagine that we cannot have specific periods for language during the week. Then we could do that.

A teacher: The problem is the religious instruction.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps we could do it if we fixed the languages classes to specific hours during the week.

A teacher asks whether Dr. Steiner had looked at W.A. in the seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: God! He certainly is disturbed by everything. He has gotten better, and if you ask him sometimes to say good things, he is also happy to do that. He likes some things. It would be a good idea if you gave him more serious things to write in his book. Curative eurythmy would not be much help. He needs to practice very serious things.

A teacher: Have you anything more to say about my class?

Dr. Steiner: In general, your class needs to be more involved with the material. They are not really in it. They are, what, about thirteen- year-old boys and girls. I think, of course, that enlivening arithmetic would do much to awaken them. They are not particularly awake. I do not think that they have a good understanding of what powers and exponents are. Do you do anything explain why they are called powers?

A teacher: I began with growth.

Dr. Steiner: I think you should include something like stories in the arithmetic instruction so that the process becomes clear from within. There are many ways you can do that, but you must always connect them with the material. The methods you have used with the children, where they use their fingers, are nothing more than an external contrivance with no inner connection. It tends toward being only play. If the children do not really concentrate, I do not believe the boys and girls will be able to solve the same equations a year from now that the present eighth-grade class can. It is a question whether they will be able to do that. They are not awake. They are still at the stage of thinking like a calf. In the other seventh-grade class, if we take the children’s abilities into account, they are actually more capable and more awake. Your class is not very awake. On the whole, you have a rather homogeneous class, whereas H.’s class has some who are quite capable and some who are quite dumb. Your class is more homogeneous. It is a very difficult group. You have some gifted children in your 8b class. The 8b class is made up of just about only geniuses. I think in your seventh-grade class there are quite a number who are basically dumb, and I think that you need to pull them out of their lethargy. They are covered with mildew. I am quite sorry I have not had time enough everywhere. Many things would have been easier had we not had these tremendous moral difficulties that have taken so much time. If the masters of pedagogy sitting on top of the mountain really had a more positive attitude toward the pedagogical course, I could have been more effective here. As it was, everything was very difficult. You do not need to get angry if I say that the faculty is like a heavy, dense mass sitting lazily upon their curule chairs, and because of that, we are all being ground up. We have yet to experience the worst opposition.

A teacher: Everything builds up because you are here so seldom.

Dr. Steiner: Then we have to find some way of making the year 975 days long. Recently I’ve been on the road all the time. Since November of 1921, I am almost always traveling. I cannot be here more. Things would go better if Stuttgart cliques don’t gain too strong a hold. The anthroposophical movement should never have expanded beyond what it was in 1914. That is not the right thing to think. The medical group says exactly the same thing. Mr. K., from Hamburg, thinks I need to go to Hamburg. However, I can discuss that question only when I have seen that they have done everything else. The pedagogical course I held contains everything. It only needs to be put into practice. I would never say such terrible things to the medical group if I had seen things progressing there. But they have simply left things aside. It is as though I had never held the seminar here.

A teacher mentions the difficulties that have arisen due to bad living conditions.

Dr. Steiner: Certainly, that has some effect, but there is an objection I could raise if I really wanted to complain. That has nothing to do with the fact that the school is as it is. That has nothing to do with that. It is not my intent to point my finger, I only want to say how things are. It is very difficult. I have said much that sticks in your throat, but it all came from a recognition that things must be different. The fact that, for instance, there really is no contact among you certainly has nothing to do with the problem of your housing. That everyone goes their own way is connected directly with how the school itself is. If anthroposophical life in Stuttgart were more harmonious, that would benefit the school, but recently things have become worse. In a moral sense, everyone is walling themselves off, and we will soon be at a point where we do not know one another. That is something that has become worse over time. What each individual does must affect others and become a strength in the Society. What we need is a joyful recognition and valuation of what is done by each individual, but the goodwill for that is missing. We are missing a joyful and receptive recognition of the achievements of individuals. We are simply ignoring those achievements. You should speak about what is worthy of recognition. The Stuttgart attitude, however, is non-recognition, and that curtails achievement. If I work and nothing happens, I become stymied. Negative judgments are justified only in connection with positive ones, but you have no interest in positive achievements. People become stymied when not one living soul is interested in the work they have done.

To a large extent, the contact between student and teacher has been lost and something else has developed. When there is such disinterest, I have no guarantee that such things as have happened could not be repeated again in the future.

A teacher asks about a permanent class teacher for one of the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: Things were no different before. There was a time when the students just hung on Dr. X. That occurred until a certain time and then stopped.

A teacher: Things have become so fragmented due to the many illnesses.

Dr. Steiner: The catastrophe occurred just at that time when not so many people were away. In general, our students are not bad students. I do not want to overemphasize it, but it seems to me that there is a certain kind of indifference here. Indifference was not so prominent when the teachers had more to do. Since the teachers have had some relief, a kind of indifference has arisen.

There must be some reason factions arise. People are talking about causality, that is, cause and effect. In the world around us, the effects arise from their causes, but here in Stuttgart, the effects arise from no cause at all. There are no causes here, and if you want a cause, there is none. If you try to pin someone down to a cause, that person would give a personal explanation, but you cannot find the cause.

The effects are devastating. We have seen what they are. Due to the Stuttgart attitude, we have here an absolute contradiction of the law of causality. The reasons actually exist, but they are continually disputed so that no one becomes aware of them. We always have effects, but the causes are explained away. If you multiply zero by five, you still have nothing, and I would certainly like to know what value nothing has.

Comments concerning the Pedagogical Youth Conference held October 3 through 15 in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: Had I come here and heard that all these young people are barging in and then not going away, I think I would have seen that was a situation that would have called for some words to slow it down. But, on a particular occasion when I asked why Y. was not here, I was told that people did not think there was any reason he should be here.

I do not intend to make the slightest accusation in that regard, and even if we discussed it further, there would be no reasons for it. The really sad thing about this Stuttgart attitude is that there are effects that have no causes.

You will not readily admit that you do not properly consider the matter if you say they have no trust. On the contrary, we must ask why we have not achieved what is right so that they would have had a more reasonable trust than presently exists? Many things have been neglected. The question for us is how can we win people’s trust. You have simply done nothing to allow a positive cooperation to occur. People have no reason to be distrusting. Things have not gone so far that the question could have been discussed even at a feeling level. The question did not even arise. The young people do not even notice you were there, they did not notice the spirits on top of the mountain. Had someone told me that Y. was difficult to get along with, I would have had a reason, but they said that they had not even thought about it.

The result is not that young people have no trust, but that they are given no opportunity to develop it. The great masters on the mountain are simply not there. People did not know you were there. They did not know that there was a Union for Independent Cultural Life.

A teacher: X. is among those who did not want to know that such a union exists.

Dr. Steiner: That is an effect. People would have found a way, but no one did anything to help them.

It is not good to fall into this Stuttgart attitude. I would like to see that you take the lack of cause more seriously in the future. This is a serious thing, as otherwise it will really be too late to get the situation under control.

Yesterday I pointed out that there is much more involved in learning to walk, speak, and think—the three most important activities of early childhood—than is apparent outwardly. I also indicated that it is impossible to observe the human being completely without distinguishing between what is internal and what is external. When considering the organization of the whole human being, who is made up of body, soul, and spirit, it is especially necessary to develop a refined faculty of discrimination, and this is particularly true in the field of education.

Let us first look at what is very simply called “learning to walk.” I have already mentioned that a part of this activity is connected with how the child establishes equilibrium in the surrounding physical world. The entire, lifelong relationship to static and dynamic forces is involved in this activity. Furthermore, we have seen how this seeking, this striving for balance, this differentiation of arm and hand movements from those of the legs and feet, also forms the basis for the child's faculty of speech. And how, arising out of this faculty, the new faculty of thinking is gradually born. However, in this dynamic system of forces that the child takes hold of in learning how to walk, there lives yet something else that is of a fundamentally different character. I noted this briefly yesterday, but now we must consider it more fully.

You must always bear in mind that, pre-eminently during the first stage of childhood, but also up to the change of teeth, the child is one big sense organ. This is what makes children receptive to everything that comes from their surroundings. But it also causes them to recreate inwardly everything that is going on in their environment. One could say—to choose just one particular sense organ—that a young child is all eye. Just as the eye receives stimuli from the external world and, in keeping with its organization, reproduces what is happening there, so human beings during the first period of life inwardly reproduce everything that happens around them.

But the child takes in what is thus coming from the environment with a specific, characteristic form of inner experience. For example, when seeing the father or the mother moving a hand or an arm, the child will immediately feel an impulse to make a similar movement. And so, by imitating the movements of others in the immediate environment, the usual irregular and fidgety movements of the baby gradually become more purposeful. In this way the child also learns to walk.

But we must not overemphasize the aspect of heredity in the acquisition of this faculty, because this constant reference to heredity is merely a fashion in contemporary natural-scientific circles. Whether a child first puts down the heel or the toes when walking is also is due to imitating the father, mother, or anyone else who is close. Whether a child is more inclined to imitate one parent or the other depends on how close the connection is with the particular person, the affinity “in between the lines” of life, if I may put it this way. An exceedingly fine psychological-physiological process is happening here that cannot be recognized by the blunt tools of today's theories of heredity. To express it more pictorially: Just as the finer particles fall through the meshes of a sieve while the coarser ones are retained, so does the sieve of the modern world-view allow the finer elements of what is actually happening to slip through. In this way only the coarser similarities between child and father, or child and mother, only the “rough and ready” side of life is reckoned with, disregarding life's finer and more subtle points. The teacher and educator, however, need a trained eye for what is specifically human.

Now it would be natural to assume that it must surely be deep love that motivates a child to imitate one particular person. But if one looks at how love is revealed in later life, even in a very loving person, one will come to realize that if one maintains that the child chooses by means of love, then what is actually happening has not been fully appreciated. For in reality, the child chooses to imitate out of an even higher motive than that of love. The child is prompted by what one might, in later life, call religious or pious devotion. Although this may sound paradoxical, it is nevertheless true. The child's entire sentient-physical behavior in imitation flows from a physical yearning to become imbued with feelings found in later life only in deeply religious devotion or during participation in a religious ritual. This soul attitude is strongest during the child's earliest years, and it continues, gradually declining, until the change of teeth. The physical body of a newborn baby is totally permeated by an inner need for deeply religious devotion. What we call love in later life is just a weakened form of this pious and devotional reverence.

It could be said that until the change of teeth the child is fundamentally an imitative being. But the kind of inner experience that pulses through the child's imitation as its very life blood—and here I must ask you not to misunderstand what I am going to say, for sometimes one has to resort to unfamiliar modes of expression to characterize something that has become alien to our culture—this is religion in a physical, bodily guise.

Until the change of teeth, the child lives in a kind of “bodily religion.” We must never underestimate the delicate influences (one could also call them imponderable influences) that, only through a child's powers of perception, emanate from the environment, summoning an urge to imitate. We must in no way underestimate this most fundamental and important aspect of the child's early years. Later on we will see the tremendous significance that this has for both the principles and practical methods of education.

When contemporary natural science examines such matters, the methods used appear very crude, to say the least. To illustrate what I mean, I would like to tell you the case of the mathematician horses that, for awhile, caused a sensation in Germany. I have not seen these Dusseldorf horses myself, but I was in a position to carefully observe the horse belonging to Herr von Osten of Berlin, who played such a prominent part in this affair. It was truly amazing to witness how adept his horse was at simple mathematical calculations. The whole thing caused a great sensation and an extensive treatise dealing with this phenomenon was quickly published by a university lecturer, who came to the following conclusion.

This horse possesses such an unusually fine sensibility that it can perceive the slightest facial expressions of its master, Herr von Osten, as he stands next to it. These facial expressions are so fine that even a human being could not detect them. And when Herr von Osten gives his horse an arithmetical task, he naturally knows the answer in his head. He communicates this answer to the horse with very subtle facial expressions that the horse can perceive. In this way it can “stamp” the answers on the ground.

If, however, one's thinking is even more accurate than that of contemporary mathematical sciences, one might ask this lecturer how he could prove his theory. It would be impossible for him to do so. My own observations, on the other hand, led me to a different conclusion. I noticed that in his grey-brown coat Herr von Osten had large, bulging pockets out of which he took sugar lumps and small sweets that he shoved into the horse's mouth during his demonstrations. This ensured an especially close and intimate relationship, a physically-based affinity between steed and master. And due to this intimate physical relationship, this deep-seated attachment, which was constantly being renewed, a very close soul communication between a man and a horse came about. It was a far more intimate process than the horse's supposedly more intellectual and outward observation of its master's facial expressions. Indeed, a real communication from soul to soul had taken place.

If it is possible to observe such a phenomenon even in an animal, then you can comprehend the kind of soul communication that can exist in a little child, especially if permeated by deeply religious devotion. You must realize how everything the child makes its own grows from this religious mood, which is still fully centered within the physical body. Anyone who can observe how the child, with its inner attitude of religious surrender, surrenders to the influences of the surrounding world, and anyone who can discern in all these processes what the child individually pours into the static and dynamic forces, will discover precisely in this physical response the inherent impulses of its later destiny. However strange it may sound, what Goethe's friend Knebel in his old age once said to Goethe is still true:¹

Anyone who looks back over one's past life will find that, when we have experienced a significant event and then look back at what led up to it, it becomes apparent that we were steered toward it. We find that it was not just one previous step, but a whole series of previous steps, that now make it appear as if we had been striving toward the decisive event from a deep inner soul impulse.

If such an event is connected with someone else, the person concerned will think (provided one can extricate oneself from the turmoil of life and perceive the finer nuances of physical existence): This is not an illusion, or something I have dreamed up; but if, at a decisive moment in life, I have found another human being with whom I am more intimately connected than with other people, then I really have been seeking this person, whom I must have already known long before we met for the first time.

The most intimate matters in life are closely connected with how the child finds its way into the static and dynamic realm. If one can develop a faculty for observing such things, one will find that an individual's destiny already begins to be revealed in a strangely sense-perceptible form by how a child begins to place the feet on the ground, in how a child begins to bend the knees, or in the way a child begins to use the fingers. All of this is not merely outwardly or materially significant, but it reflects what is most spiritual in the human being.

When a child begins to speak, it adapts itself to a wider circle. In learning the mother tongue, this circle embraces all who share the same language. Now the child is no longer restricted to the narrow circle of people who provide a more intimate social background. In living into the mother tongue, the child also adapts to something broader than the static and dynamic forces. One could say that, in learning to speak, the child lives into its folk soul, into the genius of its mother tongue. And since language is thoroughly spiritual, the child still lives in something spiritual, but no longer in a spirituality only connected with the individual human being, something that is a matter of individual destiny, but something that receives the child into the wider circle of life.

When the child learns to think—well, with thinking we do not remain in the realm of the individual at all. In New Zealand, for example, people think exactly the same as we do here today. It is the entire Earth realm that we adapt ourselves to when as children we develop thinking from speech. In speaking we still remain within a smaller circle of life. In thinking, we enter the realm of humanity as a whole. This is how the child's life circles are expanded through walking, speaking, and thinking. And through discrimination one will find the fundamental links between the way a child adapts itself to the of static and dynamic forces, and its future destiny during earthly life.

Here we see the work of what we have been calling in anthroposophy the I-being of the human individual. For us, this term does not imply anything abstract, it merely serves to pinpoint a specifically human feature. Similarly, through the medium of language, we see something emerge in the human being that is entirely different from the individual I. Therefore we say that in language the human astral body is working. This astral body can also be observed in the animal world, but there it does not work in an outward direction. In the animal it is connected more with the inner being, creating the animal's form. We also create our form, but we take away a small part of this formative element and use it to develop language. In speech the astral body is actively engaged. And in thinking, which has this universal quality and is also specifically different from the other two faculties, something is happening where we could say that the human etheric body is working. Only when we come to human sense perception do we find the entire physical body in collaboration.

I do not mind if, for the time being, you treat these statements more or less as definitions. At this point it is not an important issue, for we are not interested in splitting philosophical hairs. We are merely trying to indicate what life itself reveals. And this needs to be based on a knowledge of the human being that can lead us to a true form of education, one that encompasses both theory and practice.

When looking at such a progression of development, we find that the human being's highest member, the I, is the first to emerge, followed by the astral body and etheric body. Furthermore, we can see how the soul and spiritual organization, working in the I, astral, and etheric bodies, is working on the physical body until the change of teeth. All three members are working in the physical body.

The second dentition announces a great change that affects the child's whole life. We can first observe it in a particular phenomenon. What would you say is the most striking factor of early childhood? It is, as I have described it just now, the child's physical-religious devotion to its environment. This is really the most decisive characteristic. Then the child loses the baby teeth, which is followed by years of developing a certain soulspiritual constitution, particularly in the years between the change of teeth and puberty.

You see, what has been working physically during the first period of life will later, after the child has gone through puberty, reappear transformed as thought. The young child cannot in any way yet develop the kind of thinking that leads to an experience of religious devotion. During this time of childhood—first before the change of teeth, but also continuing until puberty—these two things keep each other at a distance, so to speak. The child's thinking, even between the change of teeth and puberty, does not yet take hold of the religious element. One could compare this situation with certain alpine rivers that have their sources high up in the mountains and that, on their way down, suddenly seem to disappear as they flow through underground caves, only to reappear lower down along their further courses. What appears as a natural religious reverence during the years leading to the change of teeth withdraws inward, takes on an entirely transformed soul quality, and seems to disappear altogether. Only later in life, when the human being gains the capacity to consciously experience a religious mood, does it reappear, taking hold of a person's thinking and ideation.

If one can observe such transformations, one will find external observation even more meaningful. As I mentioned already in the first lecture, I am not at all against the more external forms of observation, which are fully justified. Yet, at the same time, we must realize that these methods cannot offer a foundation for the art of education. Experimental child psychology, for example, has discovered the curious phenomenon that children whose parents anxiously try to engender a religious attitude, who try to drum religion into their children, such children achieve poor results in their religion lessons at school. In other words, it has been established that the correlation coefficient between the children's accomplishments in religious instruction and the religious attitude of their parents is very low during the years spent in primary education.

Yet one look at human nature is enough to discover reasons for this phenomenon. No matter how often such parents may talk about their own religious attitude, no matter what beautiful words they may speak, it has no meaning for the child at all. They simply pass the child by. For anything directed to the child's reason, even if formulated in terms intended to appeal to the child's feelings, will fail to have any impact, at least until the time of the change of teeth. The only way of avoiding such heedlessness is for the adults around the child, through their actions and general behavior, to give the child the possibility to imitate and absorb a genuine religious element right into the finest articulation of the vascular system. This is then worked on inwardly, approximately between the seventh and fourteenth year. Like the alpine river flowing underground, it will surface again at puberty in the form of a capacity for conceptualization.

So we should not be surprised if a generous helping of outer piety and religious sentiment aimed at the child's well-being will simply miss the mark. Only the actions performed in the child's vicinity will speak. To express it somewhat paradoxically, the child will ignore words, moral admonitions, and even the parents' attitudes, just as the human eye will ignore something that is colorless. Until the change of teeth, the child is an imitator through and through.

Then, with the change of teeth, the great change occurs. What was formerly a physically based surrender to a religious mood ceases to exist. And so we should not be surprised when the child, who has been totally unaware of any innate religious attitude, becomes a different being between the change of teeth and puberty. But what I have pointed out just now can reveal that, only at puberty, the child reaches an intellectual mode of comprehension. Earlier, its thinking cannot yet comprehend intellectual concepts, because the child's thinking, between the change of teeth and puberty, can only unite with what is pictorial. Pictures work on the senses. Altogether, during the first period of life ending with the change of teeth, pictures of all the activities being performed within its environment work on the child. Then, with the onset of the second set of teeth, the child begins to take in the actual content presented in pictorial form. And we must pour this pictorial element into everything that we approach the child with, into everything we bring to the child through language.

I have characterized what comes toward the child through the element of statics and dynamics. But through the medium of language a much wider, an immensely varied element, comes within reach of the child. After all, language is only a link in a long chain of soul experiences. Every experience belonging to the realm of language has an artistic nature. Language itself is an artistic element, and we have to consider this artistic element above everything else in the time between the change of teeth and puberty.

Don't imagine for a moment that with these words I am advocating a purely esthetic approach to education, or that I want to exchange fundamental elements of learning with all kinds of artificial or esthetically contrived methods, even if these may appear artistically justified. Far from it! I have no intention of replacing the generally uncultured element, so prevalent in our present civilization, with a markedly Bohemian attitude toward life. (For the sake of our Czech friends present, I should like to stress that I do not in any way associate a national or geographical trait with the term Bohemian. I use it only in its generally accepted sense, denoting the happy-golucky attitude of people who shun responsibilities, who disregard accepted rules of conduct, and who do not take life seriously.) The aim is not to replace the pedantic attitude that has crept into our civilization with a disregard of fundamental rules or with a lack of earnestness.

Something entirely different is required when one is faced with children between the change of teeth and puberty. Here one has to consider that at this age their thinking is not yet logical, but has a completely pictorial character. True to nature, such children reject a logical approach. They want to live in pictures. Highly intelligent adults make little impression on children aged seven, nine, eleven, or even thirteen. At that age, they feel indifferent toward intellectual accomplishment. On the other hand, adults with an inner freshness (which does not, however, exclude a sense of discretion), people of a friendly and kindly disposition do make a deep impression on children. People whose voices have a ring of tenderness, as if their words were caressing the child, expressing approval and praise, reach the child's soul. This personal impact is what matters, because with the change of teeth the child no longer surrenders solely to surrounding activities. Now a new openness awakens to what people are actually saying, to what adults say with the natural authority they have developed. This reveals the most characteristic element inherent in the child between the change of teeth and puberty.

Certainly you would not expect me, who more than thirty years ago wrote the book Intuitive Thinking: A Philosophy of Freedom, to stand here and plead authoritarian principles. Nevertheless, insofar as children between the change of teeth and puberty are concerned, authority is absolutely necessary. It is a natural law in the life of the souls of children. Children at this particular stage in life who have not learned to look up with a natural sense of surrender to the authority of the adults who brought them up, the adults who educated them, cannot grow into a free human beings. Freedom is won only through a voluntary surrender to authority during childhood.

Just as during the first period of life children imitate all of the surrounding activities, so also during the second period of life they follow the spoken word. Of course, this has to be understood in a general way. Immensely powerful spiritual substance flows into children through language, which, according to their nature, must remain characteristically pictorial. If one observes how, before the change of teeth, through first learning to speak, children dreamily follow everything that will become fundamental for later life, and how they wake up only after the change of teeth, then one can gain a picture of what meets children through the way we use language in their presence during the second period of life.

Therefore we must take special care in how, right at this stage, we work on children through the medium of language.

Everything we bring must speak to them, and if this does not happen, they will not understand. If, for example, you factually describe a plant to a young child, it is like expecting the eye to understand the word red. The eye can understand only the color red, not the word. A child cannot understand an ordinary description of a plant. But as soon as you tell the child what the plant is saying and doing, there will be immediate understanding. The child also has to be treated with an understanding of human nature. We will hear more about this later when we discuss the practical aspects of teaching. Here I am more concerned with presenting a basic outline.

And so we see how an image-like element pervades and unites what we meet in the child's threefold activity of walking, speaking, and thinking. Likewise, activities occurring around the child, which were at first perceived in a dreamy way, are also transformed, strangely enough, into pictures during this second period between the change of teeth and puberty. The child begins to dream, as it were, about the surrounding activities, whereas during the first period of life these outer activities were followed very soberly and directly, and simply imitated. And the thoughts of the child are not yet abstract, nor yet logical; they are also still pictures. Between the second dentition and puberty, children live in what comes through language, with its artistic and pictorial element. Thus, only what is immersed in imagery will reach the child. This is why the development of a child's memory is particularly strong at this age.

And now, once again, I have to say something that will make learned psychologists shudder inwardly and give them metaphorical goose flesh. That is, children receive their memory only with the change of teeth. The cause for such goose flesh is simply that these things are not observed properly. Someone might say, “What appears as memory in a child after the change of teeth surely must have already existed before, even more strongly, because the child then had an inborn memory, and all kinds of things could be remembered even better than later on.” This would be about as correct as saying that a dog, after all, is really a wolf, and that there is no difference between the two. And if one pointed out that a dog has experienced entirely different living conditions and that, although descended from the wolf, it is no longer a wolf, the reply might be, “Well, a dog is only a domesticated version of a wolf, for the wolf's bite is worse than the dog's bite.” This kind of thing would be somewhat analogous to saying that the memory of a child is stronger prior to the change of teeth than afterward. One must be able to observe actual reality.

What is this special kind of memory in the young child that later memory is descended from? It is still an inner habit. When taking in the spoken word, a refined inner habit is formed in the child, who absorbs everything through imitation. And out of this earlier, specially developed habit—which still has a more physical quality—a soul habit is formed when the child begins the change of teeth. It is this habit, formed in the soul realm, that is called memory. One must differentiate between habit that has entered the soul life and habit in the physical realm, just as one has to distinguish between dog and wolf—otherwise one cannot comprehend what is actually happening.

You can also feel the link between the pictorial element that the child's soul had been living within, as well as the newly emerging ensouled habit, the actual memory, which works mainly through images as well.

Everything depends, in all these matters, on keen observation of human nature. It will open one's eyes to the incisive turning point during the change of teeth. One can see this change especially clearly by observing pathological conditions in children. Anyone who has an eye for these things knows that children's diseases look very different from adult diseases. As a rule, even the same outer symptoms in an ill child have a different origin than those in an adult, where they may appear similar, but are not necessarily the same. In children the characteristic forms of illness all stem from the head, from which they affect the remaining organism. They are caused by a kind of overstimulation of the nerve-sense system. This is true even in cases of children who have measles or scarlet fever.

If one can observe clearly, it will be found that when walking, speaking, and thinking exert their separate influences, these activities also work from the head downward. At the change of teeth, the head has been the most perfectly molded and shaped inwardly. After this, it spreads inner forces to the remaining organism. This is why children's diseases radiate downward from the head. Because of the way these illnesses manifest, one will come to see that they are a reaction to conditions of irritation or overstimulation, particularly in the nervesense system. Only by realizing this will one find the correct pathology in children's illnesses. If you look at the adult you will see that illnesses radiate mainly from the abdominal-motor system—that is, from the opposite pole of the human being.

Between the age when the child is likely to suffer from an overstimulation of the nerve-sense system and in the years following sexual maturity—that is, between the change of teeth and puberty—are the years of compulsory schooling. And amid all of this, a kinship lives between the child's soul life and the pictorial realm, as I have described it to you. Outwardly, this is represented by the rhythmic system with its interweaving of breathing and blood circulation. The way that breathing and blood circulation become inwardly harmonized, the way that the child breathes at school, and the way that the breathing gradually adapts to the blood circulation, all of this generally happens between the ninth and tenth year. At first, until the ninth year, the child's breathing is in the head, until, through an inner struggle within its organism, a kind of harmony between the heartbeat and the breathing is established. This is followed by a time when the blood circulation predominates, and this general change occurs in the physical realm and in the realm of the child's soul.

After the change of teeth is complete, all of the forces working through the child are striving toward inwardly mobile imagery, and we will support this picture-forming element if we use a pictorial approach in whatever we bring to the child. And then, between the ninth and tenth years, something truly remarkable begins to occur; the child feels a greater relationship to the musical element. The child wants to be held by music and rhythms much more than before. We may observe how the child, before the ninth and tenth years, responds to music—how the musical element lives in the child as a shaping force, and how, as a matter of course, the musical forces are active in the inner sculpting of the physical body. Indeed, if we notice how the child's affinity to music is easily expressed in eagerly performed dance-like movements—then we are bound to recognize that the child's real ability to grasp music begins to evolve between the ninth and tenth years. It becomes clearly noticeable at this time. Naturally, these things do not fall into strictly separate categories, and if one can comprehend them completely, one will also cultivate a musical approach before the ninth year, but this will be done in the appropriate way. One will tend in the direction suggested just now. Otherwise the child aged nine to ten would get too great a shock if suddenly exposed to the full force of the musical element, if the child were gripped by musical experiences without the appropriate preparation.

We can see from this that the child responds to particular outer manifestations and phenomena with definite inner demands, through developing certain inner needs. In recognizing these needs, knowledge does not remain theoretical, but becomes pedagogical instinct. One begins to see how here one particular process is in a state of germination and there another is budding within the child. Observing children becomes instinctive, whereas other methods lead to theories that can be applied only externally and that remain alien to the child. There is no need to give the child sweets to foster intimacy. This has to be accomplished through the proper approach to the child's soul conditions. But the most important element is the inner bond between teacher and pupil during the classroom time. It is the crux of the matter.

Now it also needs to be said that any teacher who can see what wants to overflow from within the child with deep inner necessity will become increasingly modest, because such a teacher will realize how difficult it is to reach the child's being with the meager means available. Nevertheless, we shall see that there are good reasons for continuing our efforts as long as we proceed properly, especially since all education is primarily a matter of self-education. We should not be disheartened because the child at each developmental stage reacts specifically to what the external world—that is we, the teachers—wishes to bring, even if this may assume the form of a certain inner opposition. Naturally, since consciousness has not awakened sufficiently at that age, the child is unaware of any inner resistance. In keeping with their own nature, children, having gone through the change of teeth, demand lesson content that has form and coloring that satisfies what is overflowing from their organisms. I will speak more about this later.

But one thing that children do not want—certainly not during the change of teeth—something they will reject with strong inner opposition—is to have to draw on a piece of paper, or on the chalkboard, a peculiar sign that looks like this: A, only to be told that this is supposed to sound the same as what would spontaneously come from one's own mouth [Ah!] when seeing something especially wonderful!² For such a sign has nothing whatever to do with the inner experience of a child. When a child sees a combination of colors, feelings are immediately stimulated. But if one puts something in front of a child that looks like FATHER, expecting an association with what is known and loved as the child's own father, then the inner being of the child can feel only opposition.

How have our written symbols come about? Think about the ancient Egyptians with their hieroglyphs that still retained some similarity to what they were intended to convey. Ancient cuneiform writing also still had some resemblance to what the signs signified, although these were more expressive of the will-nature of the ancient people who used them, whereas the Egyptian hieroglyphs expressed more of a feeling approach. The forms of these ancient writings, especially when meant to be read, brought to mind the likeness of what they represented from the external world. But what would children make of such weird and ornate signs on the chalkboard? What could they have to do with their own fathers? And yet the young pupils are expected to learn and work with these apparently meaningless symbols. No wonder that something in the child becomes resentful.

When children are losing their baby teeth, they feel least connected with the kind of writing and reading prevalent in our present stage of civilization, because it represents the results of stylization and convention. Children, who have only recently come into the world, are suddenly expected to absorb the final results of all of the transformations that writing and reading have gone through. Even though nothing of the many stages of cultural progress that have evolved throughout the ages has yet touched the children, they are suddenly expected to deal with signs that have lost any connection between our modern age and ancient Egypt. Is it any wonder, then, if children feel out of touch?

On the other hand, if you introduce children to the world of number in an appropriate way for their age, you will find that they can enter the new subject very well. They will also be ready to appreciate simple geometric forms. In the first lecture I have already noted how the child's soul prepares to deal with patterns and forms. Numbers can also be introduced now, since with the change of teeth a hardening of the inner system is occurring. Through this hardening, forces are being released and expressed outwardly in how the child works with numbers, drawing, and so on. But reading and writing are activities that are, initially, very alien to children at around the seventh year. Please do not conclude from what I have said that children should not be taught to read and write. Of course they must learn this because, after all, we do not educate the young for our benefit, but for life. The point is, how should this be done without countering human nature? We shall go into this question more thoroughly during the next few days. But, generally speaking, it is good if educators realize how alien many things are to a child's soul, things that we take from contemporary life and teach because we feel it is necessary for the children to know them.

This must not lead us into the opposite error of wanting to create an esthetic form of education, however, or declaring that all learning should be child's play. This is one of the worst slogans, because such an attitude would turn children into the kind of people who only play at life. Only dilettantes in the field of education would allow themselves to be taken in by such a phrase. The point is not to select certain tidbits out of play activities that are pleasing to an adult, but to connect with what is actually happening when a child is playing.

And here I must ask you a pertinent question. Is play mere fun or is it a serious matter for children? To a healthy child, playing is in no way just a pleasurable pastime, but a completely serious activity. Play flows earnestly from a child's entire organism. If your way of teaching can capture the child's seriousness in play, you will not merely teach in a playful way—in the ordinary sense—but you will nurture the earnestness of a child's play. What matters at all times is the accurate observation of life. Therefore it can be rather regrettable if well-meaning people try to introduce their pet ideas into the one branch of life that demands the closest observation of all—that is, education. Our intellectual culture has landed us in a situation where most adults no longer have any understanding of childhood, because a child's soul is entirely different from that of a thoroughly intellectualized adult. We must begin by finding the key to childhood again. This means that we must permeate ourselves with the knowledge that, during the first period of life until the change of teeth, the entire behavior of a child reveals a physically anchored religious quality; and after this, between the change of teeth and puberty, a child's soul life is attuned to all that has a pictorial quality, and it undergoes many artistic and esthetic changes during this period of life.

When a child has reached puberty, the astral body, which has been working through language until this point, now becomes free to work independently. Previously, the forces that work through the medium of language were needed to build up the inner organization of the child's body. But after puberty, these forces (which work also in many other spheres—in everything that gives form, in relation to both plastic and musical forms) become liberated, and are used for the activity of thinking. Only then does the child become an intellectualizing and logically thinking person.

It is clear that what flashes, streams, and surges through language in this way, delivers a final jolt to the physical body before becoming liberated. Look at a boy who is at this age and listen to how his voice changes during puberty. This change is just as decisive as the change of teeth in the seventh year. When the larynx begins to speak with a different vocal undertone, it is the astral body's last thrust—that is, the forces flashing and working through speech—in the physical body. A corresponding change also occurs in the female organism, but in a different way, not in the larynx. It is brought about through other organs. Having gone through these changes, the human being has become sexually mature.

And now the young person enters that period of life when what previously radiated into the body from the nerve-sense system is no longer the determining factor. Now it is the motor system, the will system—so intimately connected with the metabolic system—that takes the leading role. The metabolism lives in physical movements. Pathology in adults can show us how, at this later age, illnesses radiate mainly from the metabolic system. (Even migraine is a metabolic illness.) We can see how in adults illnesses no longer spread from the head, as they do in children. It does not matter so much where an illness manifests, what matters is to know from where it radiates into the body.

But during grade school (from about six to fourteen) the rhythmic system is the most actively engaged. During this time, everything living within the nerve-sense system on the one hand, and within the metabolic-limb system on the other, is balanced by the rhythmic system. This balancing activity of the rhythmic system encompasses what works through our physical movement, where processes of combustion continually occur, and are also balanced by the metabolism. This balancing activity also works in the metabolism's digestion of what will eventually enter the bloodstream and take the form of circulation. This all comes together in the breathing process, which has a rhythmical nature, in order to work back again finally into the nerve-sense process. These are the two polarities in human nature. The nerve-sense system on the one hand, the metabolic-limb system on the other, with the rhythmic system in between.

We have to consider this rhythmic system above all when dealing with children between the change of teeth and puberty. It is fully expressed during these years, and it is the healthiest of the human systems; it would have to be subjected to gross external interference to become ill.

In this respect, modern methods of observation again take the wrong course. Think of the recent scientific tests that study fatigue in children by means of fatigue coefficients. Let me repeat again at this point, to avoid misunderstandings, that I have no intention of running down modern methods of scientific investigation as such, nor of heaping scorn on its methods. In these experiments various degrees of fatigue are measured, for example, in gym or arithmetic classes, and so on. There is nothing wrong in discovering such factors, but they must not form the basis of one's teaching. One cannot arrange a timetable according to these coefficients because the real task of a teacher is very different. At this stage of childhood, the aim should be to work with the one system in the human being that never tires throughout a person's whole life. The only system prone to fatigue is the metabolic and limb system. This system does tire, and it passes its fatigue to the other systems. But I ask you, is it possible for the rhythmic system to tire? No, it must never tire, because if the heart were not tirelessly beating throughout life, without suffering fatigue, and if breathing were not continuous without becoming exhausted, we simply could not live. The rhythmic system does not tire.

If we tire our pupils too much through one or another activity, it shows that, during the age under consideration—between seven and fourteen years—we have not appealed strongly enough to the rhythmic system. This middle system again lives entirely in the pictorial realm and is an outer expression of it. If you fail to present arithmetic or writing lessons imaginatively, you will tire your pupils. But if, out of an inner freshness and at a moment's notice, you can call up powers of imagery in the children, you will not tire them. If they nevertheless begin to droop, the source of their fatigue is in their motor system. For example, the chair that a child sits on might be pressing too hard, or the pen may not fit the hand properly. There is no need to calculate through pedagogical psychology how long a child can engage in arithmetic without undue strain. The important thing is that the teacher knows how to teach the various subjects in harmony with the pupils rhythmic system, and how, through knowledge of the human being, the lesson content can be presented in the appropriate form.

This can become possible only when we recognize that the pupil awakens to the intellectual side of life only with the advent of sexual maturity, and that between the change of teeth and puberty the teachers have to guide through personal example as they bring to their pupils what they wish to unfold within them. Consequently, a pedagogy that springs from a true knowledge of the human being has to be largely a matter of the teachers' own inner attitudes—a pedagogy destined to work on the teachers' own moral attitudes. A more drastic expression of this would be: The children in themselves are all right, but the adults are not! What is needed above all has already been put into words at the end of the first lecture. Instead of talking about how we should treat children, we should strive toward a knowledge of how we, as teachers and educators, ought to conduct ourselves. In our work we need forces of the heart. Yet it is not good enough to simply declare that, instead of addressing ourselves to the intellect of our pupils we now must appeal to their hearts, in both principle and method. What we really need—and this I wish to emphasize once more—is that we ourselves have our hearts in our pedagogy.

• 1. Karl Ludwig von Knebel (1744–1834) German poet and tutor at the Court of Weimar.
• 2. In German, the letter A is pronounced “ah” as in “father” or “star.”—Translator.

In order to round off, so to speak, what we could only superficially outline during the last few days regarding education based on anthroposophical investigations, I would like to add something today, as an example of how these ideas can be put into practice, about how the Waldorf school is run. What has to emerge clearly from the spirit of this education is that equal consideration be given to everything pertaining to the human body, soul, and spirit. If the actual teaching is carried out as characterized, therefore, it will at the same time become a kind of hygiene in the life of the child and, if necessary, even a therapy.

To see this clearly, one has to be able to look at the child's being in the right way. And here it must be understood that everything we have said about the child's development, from birth to the change of teeth, is revealed most of all in the activities of the nerve-sense system. Every organic system naturally extends over the entire human body, but each system is at the same time localized in a definite part of the physical organism. Thus the nervous system is mainly organized in the head. But when speaking about the three main organic systems of the human being—the nerve-sense system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic-motor system—we do not imply that they are confined only to the head, the chest, and the metabolic-limb systems, because this would be completely inaccurate. It is impossible to divide the human organization into three separate spatial regions. It can only be said that these three systems interpenetrate one another, that they work and weave into each other everywhere.

The nerve-sense system is, nevertheless, localized primarily in the region of the head. The rhythmic system, which includes everything of a rhythmic nature in the human being, is mainly organized in the chest organs, in the organs of breathing and blood circulation. Here one must not ignore the fact that everything that furthers the rhythms of digestion—and ultimately those of sleeping and waking—also belongs to the rhythmic system, insofar as digesting, and sleeping and waking are based physically within the human organism. The actual chemical-physiological process of digestion is closely connected with all that forms the human motor system. As for movement itself, a reciprocal activity occurs between the nutritional and digestive system on the one hand, and the actual physical movement on the other.

All of this means that, although the three systems work naturally into each other during the child's early years until the change of teeth, the formative and malleable shaping forces involved in the child's growth and nourishing processes work mainly downward from the head, the center of the senses and the nervous system. Consequently, if a young child becomes ill, that illness is due primarily to the influences of the nerve-sense system. That is why young children before their second dentition are especially likely to suffer from illnesses that originate from within—those called childhood illnesses.

The influences that emanate from the environment, those that reach children through their urge to imitate, have a very powerful effect on this vulnerability to childhood illnesses, more than is commonly realized by the medical profession within the current materialistic climate. Thus, a sudden outburst of anger by an adult, when witnessed by a young child, can be responsible in many cases for an attack of measles. I am not referring to the psychopathic outburst of a psychopath, but to a less violent form of temper that can very often be seen among people. The shock that follows, together with its moral and spiritual implications, must certainly be seen as a contributing factor for measles. Furthermore, all these influences that work on the child will remain as after-effects until almost the ninth year. If a teacher happens to become very angry in school (for example, if a child accidentally spills some ink, and the teacher reacts by shouting, “If you do that again, I'll pour the entire inkwell over your head!” or “I'll throw it at your head!”), then we shouldn't be surprised when this has a very damaging effect on the child's physical health. Of course, I have chosen a fairly drastic example, but this kind of thing can happen too easily in a classroom.

Inner dishonesty in teachers also has a very harmful effect on children, even after their second dentition. Falsehoods can take on many different guises, such as insincerity or hypocritical piety, or establishing a moral code for the children that the adults would not dream of applying to themselves. In such cases the element of untruth weaves and lives in the words spoken, and in what unfolds in front of the child. An adult may remain totally oblivious to it, but children will take it in through the teachers' gestures. Through the nerve-sense system, dishonesty and hypocrisy have an extremely powerful effect on the organic structure of the child's digestive tract, and especially on the development of the gall bladder, which can then play a very significant role for the rest of the child's life.

All pedagogical interactions have to be permeated by this intensive awareness of how spirit, soul, and body constantly interweave and affect each other, even though it is unnecessary for teachers to speak of it all the time. And since the human organism, from the head downward, is so active during these early years—that is, from the polarity of the nerve-sense system—and because abnormal conditions can easily override socalled normal conditions in the head region, the child is particularly vulnerable to childhood diseases at just this age.

The years between the change of teeth and puberty, strangely enough (and yet, true to the nature of the human organism) are the child's healthiest years, although this is not really surprising to anyone with insight into human development. This is because the child's entire organic structure at this age radiates from the rhythmic system. This is the very system that never becomes tired or overstimulated on its own. Symptoms of illness that occur during these years are due to outer circumstances, although this statement must not be taken too strictly, of course, and only within the context of actual life situations. The child who is subject to illness at this particular age, when the rhythmic system plays such a dominant part has been treated improperly, one way or another, in outer life.

When puberty is left behind, the occurrence of illness radiates outward from within—that is, from the metabolic-motor system. That is the time of life when the causes of illness, to which young people are exposed, arise from within. Because the method of teaching the actual lessons plays a large part in the physical well-being of the students, we must always allow a certain physical and soul hygiene to be carried, as if on wings, by our educational ideas and methods. This must always be part of whatever we do with our classes, particularly during the second period of childhood.

Here certain details can be indicated. Let us take, for example, a child with a melancholic disposition. If you give that child sugar—an appropriate amount, of course—you will find that the sugar has a totally different effect than it would have on a predominantly sanguine child. In a melancholic child the sugar will have a suppressive effect on liver activity. This gradual lessening of liver activity, in radiating out into the entire being of the child, effectively curbs the melancholic tendencies from the physical side. It is a useful expedient, but one has to understand it. Using it as an aid does not mean the denial of soul and spirit, because anyone who knows that spirit is working in all physical or material processes—as anthroposophy reveals—will not view the effect of an increased sugar-intake on the activity of the liver as something merely physical, but as the working of soul and spirit brought about by physical means. (Naturally, the result always depends on the correct dosage.) In the case of a sanguine child it can be beneficial to stimulate liver activity by withholding sugar.

This is an example of how knowledge of the interaction and mutual working of body, soul, and spirit can greatly benefit the three systems of the human being. It definitely allows one to say as well that, contrary to frequently held opinions, Waldorf pedagogy (which arises from spiritual foundations) certainly does not neglect the physical aspects of education. On the other hand, you will find that other forms of pedagogy, bent on developing the physical part of the child according to fixed, abstract rules indeed serve it least, because their adherents do not realize that every soul and spiritual stirring within a child has a direct effect on his or her physical nature.

Because of all this, I felt it necessary to give a seminar course before the opening of the Waldorf school, for the benefit of those who had been chosen to become its first teachers.¹ One of the primary aims of this course was to bring the fundamental and comprehensive thought of the working together of soul, body, and spirit into the new pedagogy before its actual launching; for knowledge of this has been lost gradually during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—more so than is generally realized.

During the years after the Waldorf school founding, shorter supplementary courses were also given.² It goes without saying that anyone who seriously considers taking an active role in Waldorf education must live in the spirit of these courses. This is what really matters. If one wants to treat a certain subject in a living way, the details are not as important, because they can always be worked out of the spiritual background. The details will then also appear in proper perspective. You may already have seen, through talks given by Waldorf teachers such as Dr. von Baravalle³ and Dr. von Heydebrand,⁴ how the attempt was made to let the spirit living in this education flow into the ways of teaching various subjects. Something like lifeblood will pulse through the lessons when the human structure is comprehended in terms of an all-comprising spiritual entity. In this respect, of course, much of what can be said today will have to remain brief and superficial.

I mentioned yesterday that a united faculty of teachers, functioning like the soul and spirit of the entire school organism, is absolutely fundamental to running a Waldorf school. According to one of its pedagogical impulses, it is not so much a statistical collection of the teachers' observations expressed during the meetings that is important, but that a living and individualizing psychology should be jointly developed from out of the actual experience of teaching lessons. I would like to give you an example.

In our school, boys and girls sit next to each other. When we started, there were just over one hundred students in the Waldorf school. But our numbers have grown so quickly that we had seven hundred pupils last year, which necessitated opening parallel classes, especially in the lower grades of the school. Now we find that there are more girls than boys in some classes, while in others there are more boys. The number of boys and girls more or less even in very few classes. To insist on equal numbers in each class would not only be pedantic, but would not work. First of all, new arrivals do not come neatly paired, and, second, such a scheme would not represent real life. The right way to proceed in such a situation is to make it possible to apply educational impulses whatever the outer circumstances may be.

All the same, we soon found that a class with a majority of girls presented a very different psychological picture than those with more boys, aside from outer circumstances—that is, aside from the most obvious. What gives such a class its psychological character is the imponderable element that easily escapes one's notice. Nevertheless, when working together in our meetings, the opportunity was presented to make fruitful investigations in this direction. And it soon became clear that sharing such questions of common interest greatly contributed to the school's becoming a living, ensouled organism.

Let's imagine someone who says, “I want to think only thoughts that will be useful to me later in life. I don't want to allow anything to enter my soul that does not have direct value for later life, because this would be uneconomical.” Such a person would become an appalling figure in life! First, because such a person would have nothing to dream about—indeed, could never dream. Of course, people who are inclined in this direction might simply reply, “Dreams are unimportant. One can very well do without them, because they really don't mean anything in life.” True, dreams have little consequence for those who accept only external reality. But what if there were more to dreams than just fantastic images? Naturally, those who believe they see something highly significant and deeply prophetic in every dream, even if it is only caused by the activities of their liver, bladder, or stomach—people who consider dreams more important than events in waking life—they will not draw any benefit from their dreaming. Yet, if one knows that in one's dream life forces are expressed—even if only indistinctly—that have either a health-giving or an illness-inducing effect on the breathing, circulatory, and nerve-sense systems, then one also knows that half of the human being is mirrored in these dreams, either in a hygienic or in a pathological sense. Further, one will recognize that not to dream at all would be similar to undermining the digestion or circulation through taking some form of poison. It is important to realize that much of what may appear unnecessary in a human being for outer life, nevertheless, plays an important part—similar to the way we see outer nature. Just compare the infinite number of herring eggs, distributed all over the seas, with the number of herrings actually born, and you could easily reproach nature for being tremendously wasteful. However, this could only be the opinion of those who do not know of the powerful spiritual effects the dead herring eggs have on the growing herrings. A certain number of eggs have to die so that a certain number of eggs may thrive. These things are all interconnected.

If we now relate this thought to the school as a living organism, we have the following situation: In the staff meetings of our teachers such matters as the proportion of boys to girls, and many other problems, are being worked through from a psychological and pneumatological aspect as part of a common study of soul and spirit. Efforts are made continually to effect a new understanding of the psychological and pathological problems facing the school. And, in order to cover every contingency, something else is essential in the life of a school, something we have in the Waldorf school, and that is a school doctor. He is a full-time staff member, who also teaches various classes in the school. This allows the teachers—insofar as they actively take part in all the meetings—to discuss and work through pathological and therapeutic questions, as well as those posed by the specially gifted child. Problems are studied not only for the benefit of individual cases—more or less statistically—but they are worked through in depth. In this way, much can be learned from each individual case, even if it does not always appear to be immediately useful.

One could compare this situation with someone who has taken in one thing or another, and declares it to be of no use in life. Nevertheless, life may prove otherwise. Similarly, whatever is worked through by the teachers in these meetings, creating a living psychology, a living physiology, and so on, continues to have an effect, often in very unexpected places. Imagine you had occupied yourself, let's say, with the spiritual functions of a child's gall—forgive this expression, but it is fully justified—and that through this study you had learned to find a way into this kind of thinking. If you were now suddenly called on to deal with a child's nose, you actually would relate very differently to the new situation. Even if you may think, “What is the good of learning all about the gall if now I have to deal with the nose?” Once you find a point of entry, you meet every problem and task differently.

In this sense, the teaching faculty must become the spirit and soul of the entire school organism. Only then will each teacher enter the classroom with the proper attitude and in the right soul condition. At the same time, we must also remember that, in just these matters, an intensely religious element can be found. It is unnecessary to have the name of the Lord constantly on one's lips or to call on the name of Christ all the time. It is better to adhere to the command: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord God in vain.” Nevertheless, it is possible to permeate one's entire life with a fundamental religious impulse, with an intensely Christian impulse. Certain experiences of old, no longer known to the modern mind, will then begin to stir in one's soul, experiences deeply rooted in human evolution, in the Christian development of humankind. For example, teachers who in the depths of their souls are seeking the proper stimulation for finding appropriate forms of pedagogy (especially in these pathological-physiological areas) would do well to allow themselves to be inspired, time and again, by what radiates from the Gospel of Saint Luke. (To modern ears such a statement must sound bizarre.) On the other hand, teachers who want to instill the necessary idealism for life in their students, would do well to find a source of inspiration by reading again and again the Gospel of Saint John. If teachers do not want their pupils to grow up into cowards, but into the kind of people who will tackle life's tasks with exuberant energy, they should look for inspiration in the Gospel of Saint Mark. And those who are enthusiastic to educate the young to grow into perceptive adults, rather than into people who go through life with unseeing eyes, may find the necessary stimulation in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. These are the qualities that, in ancient times, were felt to live in the different Gospels. If our contemporaries were to read that in past ages the Gospel of Saint Luke was felt to radiate a healing element in a medical sense, they could not make anything of it. On the other hand, if they entered life as real pedagogues, they would begin to understand such matters again.

This is one way one can speak about these things. It is just as possible to speak of them in an entirely different way, no less religious or Christian. For instance, the main theme during a seminar course could well be the four temperaments of the human being—that is, the psychic, physical, and spiritual natures of the choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic temperaments. First, one would give a description of these four temperaments and then one could discuss how they must be treated in class. For example, it has a salutary effect if one seats choleric children together in one corner of the classroom, giving a certain relief in this way to the rest of the class, because the teacher is freed from having to constantly discipline them. Choleric children can't help pushing and hitting each other. If they now find themselves suddenly at the receiving end, this in itself produces a thoroughly pedagogical effect, because the ones who do the pushing and shoving, goading others into retaliating, are being “shaped up” in a very direct way. And if, by seating the phlegmatics together, one lets them “phlegmatize” each other, this also has a wonderfully pedagogical effect. However, all this needs to be done with the appropriate tact. One really has to know how to handle the situation in each individual case. You will find a detailed treatment of the children's various temperaments in the published version of the first training course, given to the teachers of the Waldorf school.⁵

What I have said about the four Gospels, fundamentally speaking, is exactly the same when seen from a spiritual perspective, because it leads one into the same element of life. Today it is ordinarily felt that, if one wants to learn something, the relevant elements have to be put neatly side by side. But this is a procedure that will not lead to fundamental principles, as they have to be dealt with in actual life. For example, one cannot understand the human gall or liver system unless one also has an understanding of the human head, because every organ in the digestive tract has a complementary organ in the brain. One does not know anything about the liver unless one also knows its correlative function in the brain. Likewise, one does not have an inner understanding of the immense inspiration that can flow into the human soul from the Gospels, unless one can also transform these into the ways that character and temperament are imprinted into the human individuality here on Earth. To livingly comprehend the world is very different from comprehending it through dead concepts.

This will also help one to see that if children are raised in light of the education spoken of here, one allows something to grow in them that will outlast their childhood days, something that will continue to affect them throughout their lives; for what do you have to do when you grow old? People who do not understand human nature cannot assess how important certain impulses, which can be implanted only during childhood, are for life. At that tender age it is still possible for these impulses to be immersed into the soft and pliable organism of the child, still very open to the musical-formative forces. In later years the organism becomes harder, not necessarily physically, but in any case, tending toward psycho-bodily hardening. What one has absorbed through one's upbringing and education, however, does not grow old. No matter how old one has become, one is still inwardly endowed with the same youthful element that one had from, say, the tenth to the fifteenth year. One always carries this element of youthfulness within, but it has to remain supple and flexible to the degree that the now aged brain—perhaps already covered by a bald head—can use it in the same way that the previously soft brain did. If a person's education has not helped this process, however, the result is a generation gap, which appears so often these days, and is considered unbridgeable.

Sometimes people say something that is actually the opposite of what is really happening. For example, one often hears the comment, “The young today don't understand the elderly, because old people no longer know how to be young with the young.” But this is not the truth. Not at all. What really happens is that the young generation expects the old generation to be able to properly use the physical organization which has grown old. In this way, young people recognize something in the old that is different from their own condition, something they do not yet have. This is the quality that leads to the natural respect for old age. When young people meet an old person who can still use an already-bald head in the way children use their tousled heads, they feel that something can be received from the older generation, something that they cannot find in their contemporaries. This is how it should be.

We must educate young people so that they know how to grow old properly. It is the malaise of our time that as young people grow up, they do not recognize among the older generation those who have aged properly. They see merely childish individuals, instead, who have remained at the same level of development as the young generation. This is because of the inadequate education of old people who cannot properly use their physical organization, and they remain infantile. The expression “overgrown kids” is really chosen with great ingenuity, for it implies that such persons lost the ability to get hold of their entire organism during the course of their lives.⁶

They can work only with the head, which is precisely what children or young people are meant to do. So the young respond by saying, “Why should we learn from them? They are no further along than we are; they are just as childish as we are.” The point is not that old age lacks youthfulness, but that it has remained behind, is too infantile, and this causes difficulties today. You see how expressions, sometimes chosen with the most goodwill, mean the opposite of what they intend convey.⁷

These things must all be seen in the proper light before education can stand on its feet again. This has become more than necessary today. Forgive this somewhat drastic way of saying it, but in our intellectual age education really has been turned upside-down.

Thus, one of the characteristic features of Waldorf pedagogy is to learn that it is not the externals that are important. Whether a teacher draws substance to nourish the souls of students from the different qualities of the four Gospels, or whether this is done by using what was presented in the Stuttgart teachers' training course with regard to the four temperaments does not matter at all. What does matter is the spirit that reigns in everything developed there. Because of how superficially these things are often regarded today, it could easily happen that someone, when told that the treatment of the four temperaments could be studied in the fundamental course given in Stuttgart, could also consult a later course where one would find something about the teacher's attitude toward the four Gospels. The reaction of such a person might well be, “In this case, I should study the later course as well.” It certainly is a good thing to approach different subjects by using different sources. But there is also another way of looking at it—that is, one may find a common message running through both courses, given in two different places at different times, even though outwardly the subjects may appear very different. This inner correspondence found within different lecture courses can be uncomfortable because of the way their various points are interlinked, instead of fitting into the more conventional patterns of cause and effect.

Thus, the educational course given here at the Goetheanum just over a year ago (where some English friends were present, and which was rendered very competently and artistically by Mister Steffen)⁸ can be compared with what I presented to you again differently in this course.⁹ You will find that, basically, the substance of both courses is the same as, for example, the head and the stomach; each form a part of one organism. It may be uncomfortable that, because of how various themes mutually support each other, one cannot say: I have read and understood the first course; and because the later one is supposed to carry the same message, there is no need for me to study it as well. The fact is, however, that, if one has studied both courses, the earlier one will be understood in greater depth, because each sheds light on the other. It could even be said that, only when one has digested a later teachers' course, can one fully understand an earlier one because of these reciprocal effects. Mathematics is built on purely causal sequences, so it is possible to understand earlier stages without any knowledge of subsequent stages. But when it comes to teaching in a living way, its subject is affected by mutual interconnections, so that what was given at an earlier date may receive further elucidation by what was presented later.

I mention this because it is all part of the living spirit that has to permeate the Waldorf way of teaching. One has to have the good will that wants to know it from all sides, and one must never be satisfied with having comprehended one particular aspect of it. As a Waldorf teacher, one has to be conscious of the necessity for continually widening and deepening one's knowledge, rather than feeling satisfied with one's achievements and, indeed, considering oneself very clever. If one has lived into the Waldorf way of teaching, such delusions are soon overcome! For a real Waldorf teacher, everything that flows from this activity must be permeated with true heart and soul forces. It has to spring from the right kind of self-confidence, which rests on trust in God. When there is awareness of the divine forces working within, one will be fed by a constantly flowing fountain of life, flowing since time beyond memory, and very much apart from what one may or may not have learned externally. It is only the beginning of the way when self-confidence stems from outer achievements. One is in the proper place when self-confidence has led to confidence in the working of God, when it has led to an awareness of the power of the words: Not I, but the Christ in me. When this happens, self-confidence also becomes self-modesty, because one realizes that the divine forces of Christ are reflected in whatever is carried in one's soul. This spirit must reign throughout the school.

If it were not present, the school would be like a natural organism whose lifeblood was being drawn out, or that was slowly being asphyxiated.

This is the spirit that is most important, and if it is alive, it will engender enthusiasm, regardless of the staff or the leadership of the school. One can then be confident that a somewhat objective spirit will live throughout the school, which is not the same as the sum of the teachers' individual spirits. This, however, can be nurtured only gradually within the life of the teaching staff.

As a result of working in this way, something has emerged in the Waldorf school that we call “block periods” or “main lessons.” These main lessons—much longer than the ordinary lessons, which allow one subject to be studied in depth—do not distract children, as often happens because of too many subject changes. For example, students might typically be given a geography lesson from 8 to 8:45 A.M., followed by an entirely different subject, such as Latin, from 8:45 until 9:30 A.M. This might be followed again by math, or some other lesson. Block periods of main lessons, on the other hand, are structured so that the same subject is taught every day for about three or four weeks (depending on the type of subject) during the first half of the morning session. For example, in a main lesson period, geography would be studied for perhaps three or four weeks—not severely or in a heavy-handed way, but in a more relaxed, yet completely serious way. When the same subject is taken up again during one of the following terms, it will build on what was given during the previous block period. In this way, the subject matter covered during one year is taught in block periods instead of during regular weekly lessons. This method is, no doubt, more taxing for teachers than the conventional schedule arrangements would be, because such lengthy geography lessons could easily become boring for the children. This is solved by the teachers' much deeper immersion in the subjects, so that they are equal to their freely-chosen tasks.

After a mid-morning break, which is essential for the children, the main lesson is usually followed by language lessons, or by other subjects not taught in main lesson periods. Two foreign languages are introduced to our pupils as soon as they enter the first grade in a Waldorf school. Using our own methods, we teach them French and English—the aim not being so much a widening of their outer horizons, but an enrichment of their soul life.

You will ascertain from what was said yesterday that physical movement, practiced most of all in eurythmy and gymnastics, is by no means considered to be less important, but is dealt with so that it can play a proper role within the total curriculum. Similarly, right from the beginning in the first grade, all lessons are permeated by a musical element according to various ages and stages.

I have already indicated (with unavoidable briefness, unfortunately) how our pupils are being directed into artistic activities—into singing, music-making, modeling, and so on. It is absolutely necessary to nurture these activities. Simply through practicing them with the children, one will come to realize exactly what it means for their entire lives to be properly guided musically during these younger years, from the change of teeth through the ninth and twelfth years until puberty. Proper introduction to the musical element is fundamental for a human being to overcome any hindrance that impedes, later in life, a sound development of a will permeated with courage. Musical forces effect the human organism by allowing, as smoothly as possible, the nerve fluctuations to become active in the stream of breath. The breath-stream, in turn, works back upon the functions of the nervous system. The breathing rhythms then work over into the rhythms of the blood circulation, which in turn act on the rhythms of sleeping and waking. This insight, afforded by anthroposophical investigation, of how musical forces creatively work within the structure of the human being, is one of the most wonderful things in life.

One learns to recognize that we have an extremely sensitive and refined musical instrument in the raying out of the nerves from the spinal marrow, from the entire system of the spinal cord. One also learns to see how this delicate instrument dries up and hardens, whereby, inwardly, the human being can no longer properly develop qualities of courage, if musical instruction and the general musical education do not work harmoniously with this wonderfully fine musical instrument. What constitutes a truly delicate and unique musical instrument is coming into being through the mutual interplay between the organs of the nerves and senses with their functions on the one hand, and on the other hand, the human motor functions with their close affinities to the digestive rhythms and those of sleeping and waking.

The upper part of the human being wants to influence the lower part. By directing the child's entire organism toward the realm of music, we enhance the merging of external sounds (from a piano during music lessons, or from the children's singing voices) with the nervous and circulatory systems, in what can be recognized as a divine plan of creation. This is a sublime thing, because in every music lesson there is a meeting between the divine-spiritual and what comes from the earthly realm, rising, as it were, within the child's body. Heaven and Earth truly meet in every achievement of musical culture throughout human earthly evolution, and we should always be aware of this. This awareness, plus the teachers' knowledge that they are instrumental in bringing together the genius of Heaven with the genius of Earth, gives them the enthusiasm they need to face their classes. This same enthusiasm is also carried into the teachers' staff meetings where the music teacher may inspire the art teacher, and so on. Here you can see clearly how essential it is that spirit works through every aspect of Waldorf education.

To give another example: not long ago, during one of our teacher meetings, it truly became possible to work out to a large extent what happens to the students' spirit, soul, and body, when first given eurythmy exercises and then directed in doing gymnastics. Such insight into the relationship between gymnastics and eurythmy (which is very important to how these lessons are presented) was really accomplished in one of our teacher meetings the other day. Of course, we will continue our research. But, this is how teacher meetings become like the blood that must flow through the school as a living organism. Everything else will fall into place, as long as that is allowed to happen.

Teachers will know also when it is proper to take their classes for a walk or for an outing, and the role of gymnastics will find a natural and appropriate place within the life of the students, regardless of which school they attend. Doubts and anxieties will disappear with regard to the remark: What is done in a Waldorf school may all be very good, but they neglect sports there. Admittedly, it is not yet possible for us to do everything that may be desirable, because the Waldorf school has had to develop from small beginnings. Only by overcoming enormous obstacles and external difficulties was it possible to have gone as far as we have today. But when matters are taken care of with spiritual insight, the whole question of the relationship between physical and spiritual will be handled properly.

The following analogy could be used: Just as it is unnecessary to learn how the various larger and smaller muscles of the arm function (according to the laws of dynamics and statics, of vitalism, and so on) so that one can lift it, so it is also unnecessary to know every detail of the ins-and-outs of everything that must be done, as long as we can approach and present lessons out of the spirit that has become transformed into the proper attitude of the teacher—as long as we can penetrate properly to the very essence of all our tasks and duties.

I could only give you brief and superficial outlines of the fundamental principles and impulses, flowing from anthroposophical research, according to which the Waldorf school functions. And so we have come to the end of this course—primarily because of your other commitments.

At this point I would like to express once more what I already said during one of our discussions: If one lives with heart and soul, with the ideal of allowing education to grow into a blessing for all humankind in its evolution, one is filled with deep gratitude when meeting teachers from so many different places; for you have come to this course to obtain information about the way of teaching that arises from anthroposophical investigation, which I have attempted to place before you. Beyond whether this was received by one or another participant with more or less sympathy, I want to express my deep gratitude and inner satisfaction that it was again possible for a large group of souls to perceive what is intended to work on the most varied branches of life, and what is meant to fructify life in general through anthroposophy. Two thoughts will remain with you, especially with those who dealt with the organization and practical arrangements of this course: the happy memory of the gratitude, and the happy memory of the inner satisfaction as I expressed it just now. And the more intensely these thoughts can be inwardly formed—the thoughts of the work based on such gratitude and satisfaction—the more hope will grow that, in times to come, this way of teaching may yet succeed for the benefit of all of humanity.

Such hope will intensify the loving care for this way of teaching in those who already have the will to devote themselves to it with all their human qualities.

It should also be said that it was not only the Waldorf teachers who may have given you something of their practical experience, because those of you who have been present here as visitors have certainly given equally to them. By allowing us to witness what lives in us begin to live in other souls as well, you have fanned the glow of love that is both necessary and natural, and just that can engender genuine enthusiasm. And we may hope that out of feelings of gratitude and inner satisfaction, of hope and love that have flowed together during this course, good fruits may ripen, provided we can maintain the necessary interest in these matters, and that we are inwardly active enough to sustain them.

Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends, this is what I want to pour into my farewell, which is not to be taken as formal or abstract, but as very concrete, in which gratitude becomes a firm foundation, and inner satisfaction a source of warmth, from which hope will radiate out, bringing both courage and strength. May the love of putting into practice what is willed to become a way of teaching for all human beings be turned into light that shines for those who feel it their duty to care for the education of all humankind!

In this sense, having to bring this course to its conclusion, I wish to give you all my warmest farewell greetings.

Question: Would it be possible to implement the Waldorf way of teaching in other countries, in Czechoslovakia, for example?

Rudolf Steiner: In principle it is possible to introduce Waldorf education anywhere, because it is based purely on pedagogy. This is the significant difference between Waldorf pedagogy and other educational movements. As you know, there are people today who maintain that if one wants to give pupils a proper education, one must send them to a country school, because they consider an urban environment unsuitable for children's education. Then there are those who hold the opinion that only a boarding school can offer the proper conditions for their children's education, while still others insist that only life at home can provide the proper background for children. All of these things cease to be of real importance in Waldorf education. I do not wish to quarrel about these different attitudes (each of which may have its justification from one or another point of view), but since Waldorf education focuses entirely on the pedagogical aspect, it can be adapted to any outer conditions, whether a city school, a country school or whatever. It is not designed to meet specific external conditions, but is based entirely on observation and insight into the growing human being. This means that Waldorf pedagogy could be implemented in every school.

Whether this would be allowed to happen, whether the authorities that oversee education, the establishing of curricula, and so on would ever agree to such a step being taken, is an entirely different question. There is nothing to stop Waldorf pedagogy from being applied anywhere in the world, even tomorrow, but the real question is whether permission for this to happen would be granted. This question can be answered only in terms of the various local government policies. That is really all one can say about it.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, The Foundations of Human Experience, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996, and Practical Advice to Teachers, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1976, and Discussions with Teachers, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1967.
• 2. See Balance in Teaching, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1990; Education for Adolescents, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996; and Deeper Insights into Education (to be republished).
• 3. Dr. Herman von Baravalle (1898–1973) teacher of mathematics and physics at the Waldorf school in Stuttgart.
• 4. Caroline von Heydebrand (1866–1938) class teacher at the Waldorf school.
• 5. See footnote page 171. See also the 1909 lecture, “The Four Temperaments,” contained in Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy in Everyday Life, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995.
• 6. The German expression is Kindskopf, literally “child's head.”—Trans.
• 7. See Rudolf Steiner's The Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science, March 9, 1924 (published in The Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science, Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, 1964), which states:
  
  But the youth today does not see in the older men and women any human quality different from its own, yet worthy of its emulation. For the older people of the present day are not really “old.” They have taken in the content of many things and can talk of these. But their knowledge has not ripened in them. They have grown older in years, but in the soul they have not kept pace with the advancing years. They speak out of an older brain in just the same way that they spoke when the brain was young. Young people feel this fact. They do not perceive maturity when they are with their elders; they see their own young condition of soul in older bodies, and they turn away, for this does not seem true to them.
• 8. Albert Steffen (1884–1963), Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and a leading student of Rudolf Steiner beginning in 1907.
• 9. See Rudolf Steiner, Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1986.

You will recall the studies in which we have tried to establish a relationship to the different premises and assertions of modern psychoanalysis. What mattered to me in those studies was to bring clarity into the concept of the “unconscious,” to show that the way in which the concept of the “unconscious” is commonly used in psychoanalysis is essentially unfounded. As long as one is unable to go beyond this concept, a purely negative concept, one cannot say more than that psychoanalysis works with insufficient methods of cognition on an especially challenging phenomenon today. Because the psychoanalysts strive to explore the soul and spirit and, as we have observed, even pursue this soul and spirit into a social life, one must admit that we have here a point of departure that is much more significant than what official academic science is able to offer in this realm. Because analytical psychology tries to intervene in life, however, through pedagogy, therapy, and soon, most likely, social and political means, the dangers related to this matter must be regarded with great concern. The question thus arises what it is essentially that the researchers of today cannot and do not wish to reach. They recognize that there exists a soul nature beyond consciousness; they search for a soul beyond consciousness, but they cannot raise themselves to cognition of the spirit itself. Spirit can in no way be grasped through a concept of the unconscious, because an unconscious spirit is like a human being without a head. I have brought to your attention that there are people who under certain hysterical conditions walk about the streets and see in other human beings only their bodies, not their heads. It is a definite form of illness if one is unable to see a person's head. Among contemporary researchers, there are some who believe they are seeing the whole spirit. Since they represent the spirit as unconscious, however, they show immediately that they themselves have fallen prey to illusion, the illusion that there is an unconscious spirit, a spirit without consciousness, if we were to cross the threshold of consciousness, whether in the right way, as we have always described it in our spiritual scientific research, or in an ill, abnormal way, as in the cases that are usually submitted to psychoanalysts.

When one crosses the threshold of consciousness, one always enters a spiritual realm; regardless of whether one enters the subconscious or the super-conscious, one always enters a spiritual realm. This is a realm, however, in which the spirit is conscious in a certain way, is developing some form of consciousness. Where there is spirit there is also consciousness. One must only seek the conditions under which the consciousness in question exists. Through spiritual science it is possible to recognize what type of consciousness a particular spiritual being has.

A week ago the case was presented here of the lady who left a social gathering and ran in front of some horses but then was prevented from jumping into a river and was carried back to the house from which she had fled. There she was brought together with the master of the house, because in some unclear, subconscious way she was in love with this man. In this case it may not be said that the spirit, which did not belong to this lady's consciousness, this spirit that pushed and led her, is an unconscious spirit or that it is an unconscious soul quality. Indeed, it is something extremely conscious. The consciousness of this demonic spirit that led the lady back to her unlawful lover, this demon is indeed much shrewder in its consciousness than the lady is in her muddle-headedness, that is to say her consciousness. When the human being in any way crosses the threshold of his consciousness, these spirits that become active and powerful are not unconscious spirits. Such spirits become consciously active and powerful in their own right. The expression, “unconscious spirit,” as the psychoanalysts use it, has no sense whatsoever. If I were to speak merely from my own viewpoint, I could just as well say that the whole illustrious company sitting here is my unconscious if I were unfamiliar with it. Just as little may we describe as unconscious the spiritual beings that surround us and that take hold of the personality under particular conditions, as was the situation in this case that I related a week ago. They are subconscious; they are not actually grasped by the consciousness that lives directly within us, but in themselves they are fully conscious.

It is exceptionally important to know this—particularly for the task of spiritual science in our time—basically because the knowledge of a spiritual world that lies on the other side of the threshold and the knowledge of truly self-conscious individualities is not merely an achievement of today's spiritual science but is actually an ancient knowledge. In earlier times it was only known through an ancient, atavistic clairvoyance. Today one knows it through other methods; one learns to know it gradually. The knowledge of actual spirits to be found outside of human consciousness—spirits living under different conditions from human beings but standing in continuous relationship to human beings, spirits that can take hold of the human being in his thinking, feeling, and willing—this knowledge was always there. This knowledge was always considered the secret treasure of particular brotherhoods, who treated this knowledge within their circles as strictly esoteric. Why did they treat it in this way? To enlarge on this question would lead at this moment too far afield. It should be said, however, that individual brotherhoods were permeated with the earnest conviction that the majority of humanity was not sufficiently mature for this knowledge. Indeed, this was the case to a large extent. Many other brotherhoods, however, which are called brotherhoods of the left, were striving to retain this knowledge, because such knowledge, when taken possession of by a small group, would give this group power over others who did not possess such knowledge. There have always been endeavors whose aim was to secure power for certain groups over others. This could be achieved by considering a particular kind of knowledge as an esoteric possession but using it in such a way that the power over something quite different was expanded.

In our day it is particularly necessary to have real clarity in these matters. As you know—I have enlarged on this in the last lectures—since 1879 humanity has been living in a very special spiritual situation. Since 1879, extraordinarily powerful spirits of darkness have been shifted from the spiritual world into the human realm, and those people who cling to the mysteries connected with this fact and retain them wrongfully within small groups could cause everything imaginable with these secrets. Today I shall show you exactly how certain mysteries that relate to present-day development can be used in a wrongful way. You must be careful, however, to consider coherently all that I say today, which will be of a more historic nature, with what I will add tomorrow.

You all know that for a long time attention has been drawn within our anthroposophical stream to the fact that this twentieth century is one that should bring about in the evolution of humanity a special relationship to the Christ. This relationship to Christ will come about in the course of the twentieth century, and already in the first half, as you know, will begin the phenomenon that has been suggested in my first Mystery Drama, in which for a large number of people Christ in the etheric will be an actual, existing being.

We know that we actually live in the age of materialism. We know that since the middle of the nineteenth century this materialism has reached its climax. In reality, however, polarities must converge. It is exactly this climax of materialism within the evolution of humanity that must converge with the intensification in human evolution that leads to truly beholding Christ in the etheric. One can grasp that just the announcement of the mystery of beholding Christ, of this new relationship with humanity into which Christ will enter, would arouse ill-will and resistance from some human beings. These would be members of certain brotherhoods who wished to exploit the event of the twentieth century, this event of the appearance of the etheric Christ, who wished to use it for their own purposes and not allow it to become general human knowledge. There are brotherhoods, and brotherhoods always influence public opinion by allowing this or that to be publicized by such means as would be least noticed by people. There are certain occult brotherhoods who spread the message that the age of materialism has almost run its course, that in a certain way it is already past. These poor, pitiable, “clever people”—in quotation marks, of course—spread the doctrine in numerous assemblies, books, and societies that materialism has exhausted itself, that one can already grasp again something of spirit, but they can offer people nothing more than the word spirit and single phrases. These people are more or less in the service of those who have an interest in saying what is not true, that materialism has been “ruined by bad management,” as it were. This is not true; on the contrary, materialistic thinking is in the process of growing. It will thrive most when people deceive themselves by believing that they are no longer materialists. The materialistic way of thinking is in the process of increasing and will continue to increase for about four or five centuries.

It is necessary, as has been frequently emphasized here, to grasp this fact in clear consciousness, to know that it is so. Humanity will come to a true healing when one works so thoroughly in the life of spirit that one knows absolutely that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is there for the purpose of extirpating materialism from the general evolution of humanity. A more spiritual being, however, must counteract materialism. I have spoken in previous lectures about what people of the fifth post-Atlantean period must learn to meet, that is, the fully conscious struggle against evil rising up in the evolution of humanity. Just as in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch the task lay in the struggle with birth and death, so we are now facing a struggle with evil. What matters now, therefore, is to grasp spiritual teaching in full consciousness, not to cast sand into the eyes of contemporaries as if the devil of materialism did not exist. He will thrive increasingly. Those who deal with these matters in a wrongful way know about the event of the appearance of Christ as well as I do, but they deal with this event in a different way.

In order to understand this one must keep one's eyes on the following. Now that humanity has become what it has in the post-Atlantean time, the phrase that many people expound in their comfortable smugness is completely incorrect: “While we live here between birth and death, it is a matter of surrendering ourselves to life. If later, when we have passed through death, we then enter a spiritual world, that will reveal itself in good time and for that we can wait. Here we will enjoy life as if there were only a material world; if one enters a spiritual world through death, such a world will then reveal itself, if it really exists.” This attitude is about as clever as the pledge that someone makes, saying, “As truly as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” It is just about that intelligent, but it is the attitude of many who say, “It will be revealed after death how things are; meanwhile it is not at all necessary to occupy ourselves with spiritual science.”

This attitude has always been contestable, but in the post-Atlantean period in which we live it becomes especially ominous, because it has been particularly urged upon human beings by the powers of evil. When man under the present conditions of evolution passes through the portal of death, he takes with him the conditions of consciousness that he has created for himself between birth and death. The person who has occupied himself under present circumstances exclusively with materialistic ideas, concepts, and sense impressions of the material, of the sense world, condemns himself after death to live in an environment in which only concepts defined during bodily life have bearing. The human being who has absorbed spiritual ideas enters the spiritual world legitimately, but one who has rejected spiritual ideas is forced to remain in a certain sense within earthly conditions until he—and this may endure for a long time—has learned there to absorb enough spiritual concepts that he can be carried by them into the spiritual world. Whether we absorb spiritual concepts or reject them therefore determines our environment on the other side of the threshold. Many of those souls—and this must be said with compassion—who have rejected or were hindered from absorbing spiritual concepts here in life are still wandering about on earth and, though dead, remain bound to the earthly sphere. The soul of the human being, however, when no longer separated from its environment by the physical body—which can then no longer prevent the human soul from acting destructively—becomes a source of disturbance within the earthly sphere.

Let us study what I would like to characterize as the more normal situation, in which souls under present circumstances pass over into the spiritual world after death, souls who wished to know nothing at all about spiritual concepts and experiences. They become sources of disturbance, because they are retained within the earthly sphere. Only souls who here on earth have already been completely permeated by a certain relationship to the spiritual world pass through the portal of death in such a way that they can be received in the right way in the spiritual world. They will be carried away from the earthly sphere in such a way that they can spin threads to those remaining behind, threads that are continually being spun. We must be clear about this: the spiritual threads between the souls of the dead and those of us who are bound to them are not ruptured by death; they remain, are even closer, after death than they were here on earth. What I have said must be accepted as a serious, significant truth.

I am not the only one who has this knowledge; others are also aware that this is so at present. There are many, however, who exploit this truth in a terrible way. There are misguided materialists today who believe that material life is the only one, but there are also initiates who are materialists and who spread materialistic teaching through brotherhoods. You must not be misled into believing that these initiates are of the foolish opinion that there is no spirit or that the human being does not have a soul that can live independently of the body. You can be confident that one who has been truly initiated in the spiritual world would never surrender himself to the foolishness of believing in mere matter. There are many, however, who have a certain interest in encouraging the dissemination of materialism and who make all sorts of arrangements so that a large proportion of human beings believe only in materialism and are totally under its influence. There are brotherhoods that have at their head initiates who have exactly this interest in cultivating materialism and disseminating it. These materialists are well served when there is constant talk that materialism has already been overcome, for it is possible to further some causes by using words with antithetical meaning. How this is handled is often most complicated.

What is it that such initiates desire, these initiates who know quite well that the human soul is a purely spiritual being, a spiritual being fully independent of corporeality? What do these initiates desire who, in spite of knowing this, shelter and cultivate the materialistic thinking of human beings? These initiates desire that there should be as many souls as possible who here between birth and death absorb only materialistic concepts. Through this, these souls are prepared to remain in the earthly sphere. They become to a certain extent fastened to the earthly sphere. Picture to yourself that brotherhoods are established that clearly know this, that are thoroughly familiar with these circumstances. These brotherhoods prepare certain human souls so that they remain in the realm of the material. If these brotherhoods then arrange—which is quite possible through their infamous power—that these souls come after death into the region of the power-sphere of their brotherhood, then this brotherhood grows to tremendous strength. These materialists, therefore, are not materialists because they do not believe in the spirit—these initiate materialists are not so silly; they know full well the spirit's position. They induce souls to remain with matter even after death, however, in order to make use of such souls for their own purposes. From these brotherhoods, a clientele of souls is thus produced who remain within the realm of the earth. These souls of the dead have within them forces that can be guided in the most diverse ways, with which one can bring about a variety of things and by means of which one can come to special manipulations of power in relation to those who have not been initiated in these things.

This is simply an arrangement of certain brotherhoods. In this matter, one can see clearly only if one does not allow oneself to be deceived by darkness and fog, does not permit oneself to be deceived by the belief that such brotherhoods either do not exist or that their activities are harmless. They are by no means harmless; they are, in fact, extremely harmful. They say that human beings should enter more and more deeply into materialism, that they should believe, according to the thinking of such initiates, that spiritual forces exist, to be sure, but that these spiritual forces are nothing other than certain forces of nature.

Diagram 5 Click image for large view

I would like to characterize for you the ideal that such brotherhoods hold. One must exert a little effort to understand the situation. Picture for yourself, therefore, a harmless world of people who are somewhat led astray by today's prevailing materialistic concepts, who have strayed away a little from the old, established religious ideas. Picture for yourself such a harmless humanity. Perhaps we can picture it for ourselves graphically.

We imagine here the realm of such a harmless humanity (larger circle). As I said, this humanity is not completely clear about the spiritual world; led astray by materialism, they are unsure how they should conduct themselves toward the spiritual world. They are especially unclear how they should act in relation to those who have passed through the portal of death. Let us assume that the realm of such a brotherhood is here (small circle, green). This brotherhood spreads the teachings of materialism; it is concerned that people think purely materialistic thoughts. In this way the brotherhood brings about the procreation of souls who remain in the earthly sphere after death. These would become a spiritual clientele for the lodge (see drawing, orange). This means that dead people have been created who would not leave the earthly sphere but would remain on earth. If the right preparations have been made, they can be retained in the lodges. In this way, therefore, lodges have been created that contain the living as well as the dead, but dead who are related to earthly forces.

The matter is directed so that these people hold sessions in the same way as was the case with the seances held during the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, about which I have often spoken. It may then happen—and I beg you to bear this in mind—that what occurs in these seances is directed by the lodge with the help of the dead. The true intention of the masters of those lodges, however, is that the human beings should not know that they are dealing with the dead but rather should believe that they are dealing with higher forces of nature. People are made to believe that these are higher forces of nature, that psychism and the like are only higher forces of nature. The true concept of soul will be taken from them, and it will be said that, just as there is electricity, just as there is magnetism, so there are also such higher forces. The fact that these forces are derived from souls is concealed by those who are leaders in the lodge. Through this, however, these others, these harmless souls, gradually become completely dependent, dependent in their souls, upon the lodge, without realizing what is subjugating them, without realizing the source of what is actually directing them.

There is no remedy against this situation other than knowledge of it. When one knows about it, one is already protected. When one knows it to the extent that the knowledge has become an inner certainty, a real conviction, then one is protected. One must not, however, be too lazy in striving to gain knowledge of these things. It must be said, though, that it is never entirely too late. I have often brought the following to your attention: these things can become clear only gradually, and I can pull together only gradually the elements to bring you complete clarity. I have often made you aware that, in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, many brotherhoods of the West introduced spiritism experimentally to convince themselves through this test that they had gone as far with humanity as they had intended. It was a testing to see how far they were with humanity. In these seances they expected that people would say that there are higher forces of nature. Then they were disappointed, these brothers of the left, that people did not say this but rather said that in the seances spirits of the dead appear. That was a bitter disappointment for the initiates; that was exactly what they did not want, because it was just this belief in the dead that these initiates wished to take from man. Not the activity of the dead, not the activity of the forces of the dead, but this thought that the forces derive from the dead, this correct, significant thought, this was to be taken from man. The brothers see that this is a higher materialism; it is a materialism that not only denies the spirit but wishes to force the spirit into matter. They see that materialism has forms in which it can already be denied. One can say that materialism has disappeared—we are speaking already about spirit, but all of them speak about spirit in a vague way. It is very easy to be a materialist when all nature has been made into spirit in such a way that psychism emerges. What is important is that one is able to cast one's glance into the concrete spiritual world, into concrete spirituality.

Here you have the beginning of what will become more and more intense in the next five centuries. These evil brotherhoods now are limiting themselves, but they are bound to continue their activity if they are not prevented, and they can only be prevented if one overcomes laziness toward the spiritual scientific world conception.

Through these seances, therefore, these brotherhoods betray themselves, so to speak. Instead of covering themselves, they have unveiled themselves through these seances. This showed that their scheme was not really quite successful. For this reason, the impulse sprang up within these same brotherhoods to strive to discredit spiritism for a time during the 1890s. In short, you can see how deeply incisive effects can be achieved in this way with the methods of the spiritual world. What we are dealing with here is the enhancement of power, exploiting certain evolutionary conditions that must emerge in the course of humanity's evolution.

This growing materialization of human souls, this imprisonment of human souls within the earthly sphere—lodges are also in the earthly sphere—will be counteracted. If the souls therefore haunt the lodges and are to be effective there, they must be confined to the earthly. This striving, this impulse to work in the earthly sphere through the souls, is counteracted by the significant impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha. This impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha is also the healing of the world against the materialization of the soul. The way taken by Christ Himself is completely outside the will and intentions of human beings. No human being, therefore, no matter how knowledgeable—also no initiate—has influence over what Christ does, which will lead, in the course of the twentieth century, to the appearance about which I have spoken and of which you will find indications in the Mystery Dramas. This depends completely upon Christ Himself. Christ will exist in the earthly sphere as an etheric being. It depends upon the human being how he establishes a relationship to Him. On the appearance of Christ Himself, therefore, no one, no initiate however mighty, has any influence. It will come. I beg that you hold firmly to this. Arrangements can be made, however, for receiving this Christ event in this way or that, for making it effective.

These brotherhoods about which I have just spoken, which wish to confine the souls of human beings to the materialistic sphere, strive for the Christ to pass unnoticed through the twentieth century, for His coming as etheric individuality to be unobserved by human beings. This striving evolves under the influence of a quite definite idea, under a definite impulse of will. These brotherhoods have the urge to conquer the sphere of influence that is to come through Christ in the twentieth century and to continue further, to conquer it for another being, about which we shall speak later in more detail. There are brotherhoods of the West who strive to battle the Christ impulse. They wish to place another individuality who has never yet appeared in the flesh but only as an etheric individuality, who is of a strong Ahrimanic nature, in place of Christ.

All these measures about which I have just spoken regarding the dead and so forth serve in the end the aim of leading human beings away from Christ, Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and of securing the rulership of the earth for another individuality. It is a real struggle, not just something that I know of as abstract concepts or whatever but a real struggle. It is a real struggle that concerns itself with placing another being in place of the Christ being in the course of human evolution for the rest of the fifth post-Atlantean period and for the sixth and seventh. It will be the task of a healthy, honest spiritual development to eradicate such strivings, which are in the true sense of the word anti-Christian, to remove them, to annihilate them. This can be achieved, however, only through clear insight. This other being whom the brotherhood wishes to substitute as ruler they will call “Christ”; they will actually designate him as the “Christ.” What will be important will be to distinguish between the true Christ, Who, when He appears, will not be an individuality incarnated in the flesh, and the being that is distinguished from the true Christ by having never yet incarnated during earthly evolution. This other being is one who has only reached etheric embodiment, and he will be put by the brotherhoods in the place of Christ, Who is to pass by unobserved.

There we have the part of the battle concerned with counterfeiting the appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. He who observes life only on the surface, above all in outer discussions about Christ and the question of Jesus and so forth, does not look into the depths. This is the fog, the fumes with which people are deceived, diverting them from the deeper things, from what is the essential issue. When theologians debate about Christ, there is always in such discussions a spiritual influence from somewhere. These people then encourage quite different aims and purposes from those in which they actually believe consciously.

This is just the danger of the concept of the unconscious, that people are driven into confusion even concerning such circumstances. These evil brotherhoods pursue their aims very consciously, but what the brotherhoods pursue consciously naturally becomes unconscious for those who have all kinds of superficial discussions and plans. One does not reach the heart of the matter, however, when one speaks about the unconscious, for this so-called unconscious is simply on the other side of the threshold of everyday consciousness. It is in that sphere in which the knowing one can unfold his plans. You see that this is essentially one side of the situation, that it is really so that a number of brotherhoods take an opposing stand, brotherhoods who wish to replace the activity of the Christ with the activity of another individuality. These brotherhoods arrange everything so that they can achieve their purpose.

Countering this are brotherhoods of the East, especially Indian brotherhoods, who wish no less significantly to interfere in the evolution of humanity. These Indian brotherhoods pursue yet another goal. They have never developed the type of esotericism through which they could ensnare the dead into their realm, into the realm of the lodges. That is far removed from their purposes; they have no interest in such things. On the other hand, they also do not wish the Mystery of the Golgotha with its impulse to take hold of the evolution of humanity. They also do not wish this. It is not, however, that they do not wish it because the dead are at their disposal, as I indicated is the case with the brotherhoods of the West. They wish to fight against the Christ, Who will enter human evolution as an etheric individuality in the course of the twentieth century, not by substituting another individuality; for that purpose they would need the dead and these they do not have. Instead they wish to divert the interest away from this Christ. They do not wish to allow Christianity to become strong, these brotherhoods of the East, especially the Indian brotherhoods. They do not wish the interest in the true Christ, Who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, to flourish, the interest in the Christ Who had only a single incarnation for three years here on earth and Who cannot appear again on earth in a physical incarnation. They do not wish to make use of the dead in their lodges but something other than what were once simply living human beings. In these Indian, Eastern lodges, a different type of being is made use of in place of the dead used by the Western lodges.

When a human being dies, he leaves behind his etheric body; it separates from him soon after death, as you know. Under normal conditions this etheric body is assimilated by the cosmos. This absorption is somewhat complicated, as I have shown you in many different ways. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, however, and even after Golgotha, particularly in the Eastern regions, something quite distinctive was possible. When the human being after death surrenders such an etheric body, certain beings are able to inhabit this etheric body; they then become etheric beings with these etheric bodies that have been laid aside by human beings. In Eastern regions, therefore, it now happens that not dead people but all kinds of demonic spirits are induced to inhabit etheric bodies laid aside by human beings. Such demonic spirits that inhabit the etheric bodies laid aside by human beings are taken into the Eastern lodges. The Western lodges thus have the dead who have been directly confined within matter; the Eastern lodges of the left have demonic spirits, spirits that do not belong to earthly evolution but who creep into earthly evolution by occupying the etheric bodies vacated by human beings.

Exoterically this phenomenon is transformed through veneration. You know that certain brotherhoods possess the art of calling forth illusions. Because people do not know how widespread illusion already is in reality, they can easily be deceived by artificially called forth illusions. It is done in this way: what one wishes to achieve is clothed in the form of veneration. Imagine that I have a tribe of people, a related clan; I have arranged ahead of time as an “evil” brother the possibility that the etheric body of an ancestor is occupied by a demonic being. I say to them that they must venerate this ancestor. The ancestor is simply the one who had laid aside his etheric body, which was then occupied by demons through the machinations of the lodge. The veneration of ancestors is thereby brought about. These ancestors who are being worshipped, however, are simply demonic beings within the etheric body of the respective ancestor.

One can divert the world conception of Eastern people from the Mystery of Golgotha by working in these ways, as they do in the Eastern lodges. Through this their purpose will be achieved, that Christ as individuality, as He is intended to pass over the earth, remains unnoticed by Eastern people and perhaps by people everywhere. They therefore do not wish to substitute a false Christ but to cause the appearance of Christ Jesus to remain unnoticed.

To a certain extent a twofold struggle is thus waged today against the Christ impulse appearing in the etheric in the course of the twentieth century. Humanity is actually inserted within this evolution. What we see happening in individual cases is essentially only a consequence of what is transpiring in the great impulses of humanity's evolution. For that reason it is sad that people will be deceived constantly when the unconscious, the so-called unconscious, is working within them—be it some receding love affair or something similar—when, in fact, impulses of extremely conscious spirituality are passing from all sides through humanity but remaining relatively unconscious if one does not trouble oneself about them in one's consciousness.

To these things you must add much more. Human beings who have been honestly concerned with the evolution of humanity have always taken into consideration such things as we have characterized, and they have undertaken what was right from their point of view. Much more than this the human being cannot or is not permitted to do.

A good sheltered place for spiritual life, an exceptionally good sheltered spot, protected against all possible illusions, was Ireland, the Irish Island during the first Christian centuries. It was truly protected from all possible illusions, more than any other region on earth. This is also the reason that so many disseminators of Christianity in the early Christian centuries originated in Ireland. These disseminators of Christianity, however, had to work with a naive humanity, because European humanity, among whom they were active, was in those days naive. They had to take this humanity in its naiveté into consideration, but as far as they themselves were concerned, they had to know and understand the great impulses of humanity. In the fourth and fifth centuries particularly, Irish initiates were active in Central Europe. They began there, and their activity consisted in preparing what was to take place in the future. To a certain extent they were under the influence of the initiate-knowledge that revealed that in the fifteenth century (1413, as you know) the fifth post-Atlantean era was to begin. They were under this influence. They also knew that they had to prepare for a completely new age, that a naive humanity must be protected for this new period. What was it that was done at that time to protect this naive humanity, to build a fence around it, as it were, to keep certain harmful influences from entering? What was done?

Evolution was guided first by well-instructed and then by honest groups in such a way that gradually all ocean journeys were suppressed, journeys that in past times had been made from Northern lands to America. It was thus arranged that whereas in past times boats would cross from Norway to America for certain purposes (I shall say more about this another time), this knowledge of America would be completely forgotten by the European population, so that the connection with America was gradually obliterated. In the fifteenth century nothing was known of America by European humanity. The development was directed particularly from Rome so that for definite reasons the connection with America was gradually lost, because European humanity had to be sheltered from American influences. Especially involved in this process of protecting European humanity from American influences were just these monks from Ireland who as Irish initiates had spread Christianity over the European continent.

In ancient times quite definite influences were brought from America; in the age when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, however, matters were arranged so that European humanity was uninfluenced by America, knew absolutely nothing about it, lived in the belief that America did not exist. Only after the fifth post-Atlantean period had begun was America again discovered, as is familiar history. One of the truths with which you are most likely familiar is that what is learned in schools as history is many times a “fable convenue.” That America was discovered for the first time in 1492 is such a convenient fable. It was only rediscovered. It was merely that for a period the connections were cleverly concealed, as had to occur. It is again important, however, to know what the situation was, to know the true history. True history is that Europe was fenced in for a time and was carefully protected against certain influences that were not to come to Europe.

Such things show you how significant it is not to accept the so-called unconscious as an unconscious but rather as something that is extremely conscious and takes place beyond the threshold of everyday human consciousness. It is indeed important for a larger portion of humanity to learn about certain mysteries. I have therefore done as much as it is possible to do now in public lectures in Zurich. In Zurich, as you may know, I have gone at times as far as to explain to people the extent to which historical life is not grasped by human beings with the ordinary consciousness but is in reality dreamt, how the content of history is in reality dreamt by human beings. Only when people become conscious of this will health come to these concepts.

These are things through which one gradually awakens consciousness. The phenomena, the facts that will come about, will show us the truth of these things. One must only be sure not to overlook them. Human beings go blindly and slumbering through the facts; they also go blindly and slumbering through such tragic catastrophes as the present one. These are things that I would like to impress upon your hearts, today more historically. Tomorrow I shall speak about these things more explicitly.

I would like to add one more picture to these things. First, you have seen from the discussion what a tremendous distinction there is between East and West in the evolution of humanity. Second, I ask you to consider the following. You see, the psychoanalyst speaks about the subconscious, about the subconscious life of the soul, and so on. It is not so important to speak about such an indefinite concept of these things, but it is necessary to grasp what is truly beyond the threshold of consciousness. What is there? Much is certainly to be found down there under the threshold of consciousness. For itself, however, what lies down there is extremely conscious. One must come to understand what kind of conscious spirituality exists beyond the threshold of consciousness. One must speak of conscious spirituality beyond the threshold of consciousness, not unconscious spirituality. We must become clear that man has much about which he knows nothing in his ordinary consciousness. It would put the human being in a terrible position if he had to know in his ordinary consciousness all that goes on within him. Just consider how he would be able to go about eating and drinking if he were to acquaint himself exactly with all the physiological and biological processes that take place from the ingesting of food onward, and so on. All this takes place in the unconscious. There are spiritual forces at work everywhere, even in the purely physiological. Man cannot wait with eating and drinking, however, until he has learned what is really going on within him. So much goes on within man! For man, a large portion, by far the largest portion, of his being is unconscious, or to say it better, subconscious.

The strange thing is that this subconscious that we carry within us is taken hold of by another being under all circumstances. This means that we are not only a fusion of body, soul, and spirit, carrying within us through the world our soul, which is independent of our body; shortly before birth another being takes possession of the subconscious portions of the human being. This being is there, this subconscious being that accompanies man the entire way between birth and death. Somewhat before birth it enters man and accompanies him. One can also characterize this being as one that permeates man in those parts that do not come into his ordinary consciousness: it is a very intelligent being and possessed of a will that is akin to the forces of nature; in its will it is much more closely related to the forces of nature than is man. I must emphasize the peculiarity, however, that this being would suffer extraordinarily if under present conditions it were to experience death with man. Under present conditions this being cannot experience death with man. It thus disappears shortly before death; it must always save itself. It always has the urge, however, to arrange the life of the human being in such a way that it can overcome death. It would be dreadful for the evolution of the human being, however, if this being that has taken such possession of man should also be able to conquer death, if it could die with man and in this way enter the spiritual worlds that man enters after death. It must always take its leave of man before he enters the spiritual world after death. In some cases this is very difficult for this being, and all sorts of complications arise.

This is the situation: this being that holds sway completely in the subconscious is extremely dependent upon the earth as a whole organism. The earth is not at all the being described by geologists, mineralogists, and paleontologists; this earth is a fully living being. Man sees only its skeleton, because the geologist, mineralogist, and paleontologist describe only its mineral nature that is the earth's skeleton. If you knew only this much, you would know about as much as if you were to enter this room and, through some special arrangement of your capacities for sight, could see nothing of this honored company but the bones, the skeletal system. Imagine if one entered through the door and on these chairs sat nothing but skeletons (not that you necessarily would have nothing but bones—that I do not expect of you—but we will assume that man has the capacity to see only bones; he would be fitted out with some kind of X-ray machine). This is just what geology sees of the earth; it sees only the skeleton. This earth, however, not only consists of skeleton but is a living organism, and this earth sends from its center to every point on the surface, to every territory, special forces. Picture for yourself the surface of the earth (see drawing):

Diagram 6 Click image for large view

Here is the Eastern region, there the Western region, to take it only on a large scale. The forces that are transmitted from the earth are something that belong to the life organism of the earth. Depending on whether a human being lives on this or that spot on earth, his soul, this immortal soul, does not come directly in contact with these forces but only indirectly—the immortal soul of man is relatively independent of earthly conditions. The soul is only artificially dependent upon earthly conditions, as was shown today. By the circuitous path through this other being, however, this being that takes possession of man before birth and must leave him again before death, these various forces work particularly strongly. These forces are active in racial types and geographic differentiations in human beings. It is thus this “double,” which man bears within him, upon whom the geographic and other differentiations particularly exert their influences.

This is extremely significant, and we will see tomorrow in which way this double is influenced from various points of the earth and what the resulting consequences are. I have already mentioned that it is necessary for you to consider what I have said today with what will come tomorrow, because the one can hardly be understood without the other. We must now try to absorb into ourselves such concepts as become even more serious when related to the total reality, to that reality in which the human soul lives with its entire being. This reality metamorphoses itself in various ways, but how it is metamorphosed depends greatly upon man. Two significant metamorphoses that are possible become clear when one is aware of how human souls, depending upon whether they absorb materialistic or spiritual concepts between birth and death, imprison themselves on earth or come into the right spheres. In these matters increasing clarity must prevail in our concepts. We will then find increasingly the right relationship to the entire world. This will not occur in an abstract spiritual movement, but rather it must lie within us, in a concretely comprehended spiritual movement that reckons with the spiritual life of a number of individualities.

It is truly satisfying for me that such discussions—discussions that are also particularly significant for those among us who no longer belong to the physical plane but have passed through the portal of death, remaining our faithful members—that such discussions as these are fostered here as a reality, that they bring us ever closer to our departed friends.