The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There are certain deeper questions of karmic connection concerning more especially our human influence upon karma, particularly upon that of other people, and concerning also the changing of the direction of karma, be it to a greater or less extent. Such questions as these one can neither answer nor even give an idea of how they ought to be answered, without touching, as we shall today, upon certain important secrets of our world existence. They may perhaps arise out of what has been said, if we follow up what has been broached and had light thrown upon it from one side or another.

We may ask what happens in a person's karma when by reason of his previous acts or experiences there has arisen a necessity for illness to compensate for these acts and experiences, and this person is really healed through human assistance by means of remedies or other intervention. What does this signify and in what way is such a fact related to a deeper conception of karmic law?

Now I will begin by saying that in order to throw any important light at all upon this question, things must be touched upon which are far removed from the science and the present thought of today and which may, so to say, only be spoken of amongst Anthroposophists who, having absorbed some of the truths relating to the deeper foundations of existence, have already prepared themselves for such things, and have acquired a perception of how things which today can only be indicated, may nevertheless be fully proved. I should like, however, to take this opportunity of asking one thing of you. I am today compelled to talk about the deeper foundations of the earth's existence which I shall endeavour to express as precisely as possible. But this would be wrong if it were used in another connection or spoken of without any connection at all, and would lead to one misunderstanding after another. I ask you for the present just to accept it only, and make no other use of it. I must also make a point, regarding these things, that they should not be handed on; that no one should consider them as a teaching which may in any way spread further; for only the connection justifies such a statement, and such a statement is justifiable only when it is backed by the consciousness that can coin suitable words to express thoughts of this kind.

We are now speaking, on the one hand, of the deeper nature of material existence, and on the other, of the nature of soul existence. We must today acquire a deeper comprehension of what pertains to the soul and to the material world. This is, indeed, necessary for a quite definite reason—for the reason given in the previous lectures when we said that the soul of man can penetrate more or less deeply into matter. We described yesterday the nature of the male by saying that in a man the soul penetrates deeper into matter, while in the female the soul holds back in a certain way and is more independent of matter. We saw that much of karmic experience depends upon how the penetration of the soul into matter takes place. We saw also how certain illnesses in one incarnation appear as the karmic consequences of errors made by the soul in former incarnations when it worked at its deeds, experiences and impulses. Then on the way between death and a new birth the soul acquired the tendency to transform into matter that which was formerly only a characteristic, a mere influence in the soul; so it now permeates the body. Because the human being is then permeated by a soul which has also absorbed either the luciferic or ahrimanic influence, the human substance will in consequence be damaged. Here is to be found the cause of illness, and we may therefore say: In a sick body there dwells a damaged soul which has come under a wrong influence—a luciferic or ahrimanic influence; and the moment we are able to remove these influences from the soul, the normal relationship of soul and the body should come about, and health should be re-established. What then is the relation between these two members of the earthly human existence of which we are now speaking, matter and soul? What are they in their deeper nature?

The man of the present day is generally of the opinion that the answer to the question, ‘Of what does matter consist? What is the soul?’—if it could be given at all—must prove to be the same all over the world. I do not think it would be easy for him to understand that for the beings who lived upon the old Moon, the answer to these questions must be quite different from those of beings who live upon the Earth. For existence is so much in the throes of evolution, that even the ideas may alter which a being may have about the deeper foundations of his own nature; so that the answer to this question, ‘What is matter, what is the soul?’ must also vary. It must at once be emphasised that the answers which will be given are only those which the earth-man can make, and are of significance only to the earth-man.

A person will at first judge ‘matter’ according to what confronts him in the external world in the shape of different beings and things, and everything which makes an impression upon him in any way. Then he discovers that there are different sorts of matter. But I need not go very far into that, for you may find in all the ordinary books those expositions which could be given here if we had time enough. These differences in matter present themselves to man when he sees the different metals, gold, copper, lead, and so on, or when he sees anything that does not belong to this category. You know, too, that chemistry traces these different materials back to certain fundamental substances of matter, called ‘elements.’ These elements, even in the nineteenth century, were still considered to be substances possessing certain properties which did not admit of being further divided. But in the case of a substance such as water, we are able to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen, yet in hydrogen and oxygen themselves we have substances which, according to the chemistry of the nineteenth century, were incapable of being further divided. One could distinguish about seventy such elements. You will doubtless also know that owing to phenomena which have been produced in connection with a few special elements—radium, for instance—and also owing to various phenomena produced in the study of electricity, the idea of the elements has been shaken in many ways. One has come to the conclusion that the seventy elements were only temporary limitations of matter, and that one could trace back the possibility of subdivision to a fundamental substance, which then through inner combinations, through the nature of its inner elementary being, manifests at one time as gold, at another time as potash, lime, and so on.

These scientific theories vary; and just as the scientific theories changed in ‘each fifty years’ of the nineteenth century, so it came about that certain physicists saw in matter certain entities which are charged with electricity; just as the ionic theory is now in fashion—for there are fashions in science—in the same way at no distant future other scientific methods will exist, and our idea of the constitution of matter will be quite different. These are facts. Scientific opinions are changeable, and must be changeable, for they depend altogether upon those facts which are of significance for one particular epoch. The teachings of Spiritual Science on the other hand continue through all ages—as long as there are civilisations on the earth—and will continue as long as these civilisations exist. It has always had the same comprehensive view regarding the nature of material existence and matter; and in order to lead you on to what Spiritual Science looks upon as the essential part of matter and of substance, I should like to say the following:

You all know that ice is a solid body—not through its own nature, but through external circumstances. It at once ceases to be a solid if we raise the temperature sufficiently; it then becomes a fluid substance. Therefore it does not depend upon what is in a substance itself as to what form it takes in the external world, but upon the entire conditions of the universe surrounding it. We can then further bring heat to this substance, and out of the water we can, after a certain point, produce steam. We have ice, water, steam, and through the raising of the temperature we have caused what we may describe as ‘the appearance of matter in manifold forms.’ Thus we have to distinguish in matter that the appearance it presents to us does not come out of an inner constitution, but that the manner in which it confronts us depends upon the general constitution of the universe, and that one must not isolate any part of the whole universe into individual substances. Now the methods of modern science cannot reach where Spiritual Science is able to reach. The science of today can never, by means of the methods at its disposal, bring the substance of ice—which, when the temperature is increased, is first made fluidic and then turned into steam—into the final condition attainable on earth, into which every substance can be transmuted. It is not possible today, by scientific means, to bring about conditions which show that ‘if you take gold and rarefy it as far as it can be rarefied upon the earth, you will bring it at last to a state which could equally be reached by silver or by copper.’ Spiritual Science can do this because it is based upon the methods of spiritual research; is thus able to observe how, in the spaces between substances, there is always a uniform substance everywhere which represents the extreme limit to which all matter is reducible. Spiritual research discovers a condition of dissolution in which all materials are reduced to a common basis, but what then appears there is no longer matter, but something which lies beyond all the specialised forms of matter around us. Every single substance, be it gold, silver, or any other substance, is there seen to be a condensation of this fundamental substance, which is really no longer matter. There is a fundamental essence of our material earth existence out of which all matter only comes into being by a condensing process, and to the question: What is this fundamental substance of our earth existence, Spiritual Science gives the answer: ‘Every substance upon the earth is condensed light.’ There is nothing in material existence in any form whatever which is anything but condensed light. Hence you see that to those who know the facts, there can be no necessity for such a theory as that of the ‘vibration hypothesis’ of the nineteenth century. Therein one sought to find light by methods which themselves are coarser than the light itself. Light cannot be traced back to anything else in our material existence. Wherever you reach out and touch a substance, there you have condensed, compressed light. All matter is, in its essence, light.

We have thus indicated one side of the question from the point of view of Spiritual Science. We have seen that light is the foundation of all material existence. If we look at the material human body, that also, inasmuch as it consists of matter, is nothing but a substance woven out of light. Inasmuch as man is a material being, he is composed of light.

Let us now consider the other question: ‘Of what does the soul consist?’ If we were to make research in the same way, by means of the methods of Spiritual Science, into the substance, into the really fundamental essence of the soul, then it would appear that just as all matter is compressed light, so all the different phenomena of the soul upon earth are modifications, are manifold transformations of that which must be called, if we truly realise the fundamental meaning of the word: love. Every stirring of the soul, wherever it appears, is in some way a modification of love, and if the inner and the outer are, as it were, intermingled, impressed into one another in man, we find also that his outer bodily part is woven out of light, and his inner soul is woven spiritually out of love. Love and light are, indeed, in some way interwoven in all the phenomena of our earth existence, and anyone who wishes to understand things as explained by Spiritual Science, will first of all ask: To what extent are love and light interwoven?

Love and light are the two elements, the two component parts of all earthly existence: love as the soul part, and light as the outer material part.

Now, however, another fact comes in. For both these elements, light and love, which would otherwise be side by side throughout the great course of the world existence, there must be found an intermediary, weaving the one element into the other—light into love. This must needs be a power which has no particular interest in love, which thus weaves light into the element of love—a power which is interested only in causing the light to be spread abroad to as great an extent as possible, and therefore causes light to stream into the element of love. Such a power cannot be terrestrial for the earth is the Cosmos of Love; and its mission is to weave love in everywhere. Anything, therefore, which is bound up with the earth existence can have no interest which is not to some degree influenced by love.

It is the luciferic beings which act here—for they remained behind upon the Moon upon the Cosmos of Wisdom. They are particularly interested in weaving light into love. The luciferic beings are everywhere at work when our inner part which is actually woven out of love comes into any sort of connection with light, in whatsoever form it may be found; and we are confronted with light in all material existence. Wheresoever we come into connection with light, the luciferic beings enter, and the luciferic influence becomes woven into love. In that way man first, in the course of his incarnations, entered the luciferic element. Lucifer has woven himself into the element of love; and all that is formed from love has the impress of Lucifer, which alone can bring us what causes love to be not merely a self-abandonment, but permeates it in its innermost being with wisdom. Otherwise, without this wisdom, love would be an impersonal force in man for which he could not be responsible. But in this way love becomes the essential force of the Ego where that luciferic element is woven, which otherwise is only to be found outside in matter. Thus it becomes possible for our inner being which, during earth existence, should receive the attribute of love in its fullness, to be permeated besides by everything that may be described as an activity of Lucifer, and from this side leads to a penetration of external matter; so that which is woven out of light is not interwoven with love alone, but with love that is permeated by Lucifer. When man takes up the luciferic—element, he interweaves into the material part of his own body a soul which is, it is true, woven out of love, but into which the luciferic element is interwoven. It is that love which is permeated with the luciferic element, which impregnates matter and is the cause of illness working out from within. In connection with what we have already mentioned as being a necessary consequence of an illness proceeding from a luciferic element, we may say that the ensuing pain, which we have seen is a consequence of the Luciferic element, shows us the effect of the working of the karmic law. So the consequences of an act or a temptation coming from Lucifer are experienced karmically and the pain itself indicates what should lead to the overcoming of the consequences in question.

Now ought we to help in such a case or not? Ought we in any way to cancel what has pressed in from the luciferic element with all its consequences working out in pain?

Remembering the answer to our question as to the nature of the soul, it follows of necessity that we have the right to do this only if we find the means, in the case of a man who has the luciferic element in him which caused his illness, to expel that luciferic element in the right way. What is the remedy which exerts a stronger action, so that the luciferic element is driven out. What is it which has been defiled by the luciferic element on our earth? It is love! Hence only by means of love can we give real help for karma to work out in the right way. Finally we must see in that element of love which has been psychically influenced by Lucifer resulting in illness, a force which must be affected by another force. We must pour in love. All those acts of healing dependent upon what we may call a ‘psychic healing process’ must have the characteristic that love is part of the process. In some form or other all psychic healing depends on a stream of love, which we pour into another person as a balsam. All that is done in this domain must finally be traced back to love; and this can be done. Even if we set simple psychic factors in action; if we assist another, perhaps, only to overcome depression, this can be traced back to love. All arises from the impulse of love, from simpler processes of healing, to that which is often, in amateur fashion called ‘magnetic healing.’ What does the healer communicate to the one to be healed? It is, to use an expression of physics, an ‘interchange of tensions.’ Certain processes in the etheric body of the healer create with the person to be healed a sort of polarity. Polarity arises just as it would arise in an abstract sense, when one kind of electricity, say positive, is produced and then the corresponding electricity—the negative—appears. Thus polarities are created, and this act must be conceived as emanating from sacrifice. One evokes in oneself a process which is not intended to be significant to oneself only, for then one would call forth one process only; in this case, however, the process is intended in addition to induce a polarity in another person, and this polarity, which naturally depends upon a contact between the healer and the person to be healed, is, in the fullest sense of the word, the sacrifice of a force which is no other than the transmuted action of love. That is what is really active in these psychic healings—a transmuted power of love. We must clearly understand that without this fundamental love-force the healing will not lead to the right goal. But these processes of love need not always run their course [so] that the person is fully aware of them with his ordinary day-consciousness; they run their course also in the region of the subconscious. In that which is considered as the technique of the healing process, even to the way in which the movements of the hands are made, and technically reduced to a system, we have the reflection of a sacrificial act. Therefore even where we do not see the direct connection in a process of healing, when we do not see what is being done, we have, nevertheless, before us an act of love, although the action may be completely transformed to a mere technique.

Since the soul consists fundamentally of love, we can assist with psychic factors. And these processes apparently lie very near the periphery of human nature, and by such factors of healing that which in its essence consists of love is enriched by what it requires in the way of love. Thus on the one side we see how we can help, so that, after being caught in the toils of Lucifer, the sufferer is able to free himself again. Because love is the fundamental essence of the soul, we may, indeed, influence the direction of karma.

On the other hand, we may ask, what has become of the substance woven from light in which the soul dwells?

Take the body—the outer man in his material part. If through a karmic process there had not been imprinted from out of the soul into matter a love substance such as is permeated by Lucifer or Ahriman; if a pure love substance only had poured in, it would not have been impurifying, or damaging to the substance woven out of light. If love alone were to flow into matter, it would then so flow into the human body that the latter could not be damaged. It is only because a love which has absorbed luciferic or ahrimanic forces can penetrate that the substance woven out of light becomes less perfect than it was originally intended to be. Therefore it is only through pouring into man of the luciferic or ahrimanic influences during his consecutive incarnations, that the human organisation is not what it might be. If it were as it ought to be, it would manifest healthy human substance; but because it has absorbed the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman, sickness and disease result.

How can we draw from outside those influences which have flowed in from an imperfect soul, that is, from a wrong love substance? What happens to the body by this influx of something which is faulty? According to Spiritual Science something happens which turns light in some way into its opposite. Light has its opposite in darkness or obscurity. Everything really presenting itself—strange as it may sound—as the defilement of that which is woven out of light, is a darkness woven out of a luciferic or ahrimanic influence. Thus we see darkness woven into the human substance. But this darkness was only thus interwoven because the human body has become the bearer of the Ego that lives on through the incarnations. This was formerly not there. Only a human body can be subject to this corruption, for such a corruption was formerly not contained in that which was woven out of light.

Man today draws the base of his material life out of what he has gradually rejected in the course of evolution—that is, the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. These also contain the different substances woven out of light for earth existence. But in none of these substances are there any of the influences which, in the course of human karma have acted on the organism through the soul. In the three kingdoms around us, therefore, man cannot through his luciferic or ahrimanic influence, as emanating from his love forces, have a defiling effect. Nothing of him is here. And what in man has been defiled is spread around him in all its purity. Let us consider a mineral substance, a salt or any other substance which man has also within him, or might have within him. But in him it is interwoven with the love substance defiled by Lucifer or Ahriman. Outside, however, it is pure. Thus every substance outside is distinguished from that which man bears within him. Externally it is always different from what it is in man, because in him it is interwoven with the ahrimanic or luciferic influence. That is the reason why, for everything of external substance which can be more or less defiled by man, there must be something which can be found externally representing the same thing in its pure condition. That which exists in the world in its purity, is the external cure for the corresponding substance in its damaged state. If you apply this in the right way to the human being, you then have the specific for the corresponding injury.

Thus we find in quite an objective way, what may be applied to the human body as a remedy. Here is the injury characterised as a form of darkness—and that which is not yet dark as the outer woven pure light; and we see why we are able to remove the darkness to be found in man if we bring pure substance woven from light to bear upon him. Thus we have a specific remedy for the injury. Now attention has often been drawn to the fact that Anthroposophists in particular should not fall into the narrow-minded error of denying that in such cases there really is a specific remedy against this or that injury, or which beneficially affects this or the other organ. It has often been said that the organism has within it the forces with which to help itself. Even although the Vienna School of Nihilistic Therapeutics may be right in its assertion that by calling up the opposing forces we can bring about a cure, we may nevertheless help on the cure by specific remedies. Here we see a parallel which one may describe from Spiritual Science.

From what I have said about diphtheria, for instance, you may gather that the karmic causes have in this case particularly affected the astral body. Now closely related to the astral body is the animal kingdom You will always find in those forms of illness closer connected with the astral body, that medical science, unconsciously driven by a dim impulse, seeks for remedies from the animal kingdom. For such illnesses whose causes lie in the etheric body, science seeks for remedies out of the vegetable kingdom. An interesting lecture might be given about the relation of the purple foxglove to certain illnesses of the heart. These are things which, inasmuch as they are based on truth, are not right for five years only—as one doctor states—and then begin to be wrong—as in the case when only external symptoms are taken into consideration. But there is a certain treasure of remedies which can always in some way be traced back to some connection with Spiritual Science, which have been inherited without any knowledge whence they came. Just as today the astronomers do not know that the theory of Kant and Laplace came from the mystery schools of the Middle Ages, so people do not know whence came these real valuable remedies. Causes of illness, which are connected with the nature of the physical body, lead to the use of remedies from the mineral kingdom.

A simple consideration of these analogous views will provide a fingerpost for these matters. Through his connection with the surrounding world, man can be helped from two different sides: on the one hand bringing him transmuted love from the psychic method of healing and on the other hand by bringing him transmuted light in various ways by those processes which are connected with external methods of healing. Everything which can be done is brought about either by inner psychic means—by love—or by the external means of densified light. When one day science has advanced so far as to learn to believe in the super-sensible and in the saying: ‘Matter is a form of condensed light,’ then a spiritual light will be thrown by these words upon the systematic research on external remedies. Hence we see that what during long ages, from the mystery schools of old Egypt and old Greece, was gradually added to the treasure of healing is not mere nonsense, but that in all these things there is a sound kernel. Anthroposophy does not exist in order to attack a certain school of medicine, and to say, ‘There they give people poisons!’ The word poison today works as a suggestion, and people do not reflect how relative this word is. For what is ‘poison’? Every substance may be a poison. It is only a question of the methods of healing and of how much is taken at a time. Water is a strong poison, if one takes ten bucketfuls at one time. The results of this, considered chemically, are not very different from what they would be if one gave a person any other substance. It depends always upon the quantity, for all these ideas are relative.

From what we have gone into today, we can be glad that for every injury we can do to injure our body, there is to be found in surrounding nature, which now appears to us as the world, that which will make it whole again. It is also a beautiful relationship that we have for the external world, and we may rejoice not only because we see the beautiful flowers and the mountains glowing in the sunlight, but also because our surroundings are so intimately connected with what is in man himself, good or bad. We can rejoice in nature, not only for what appeals at first sight, but the deeper we go into what has condensed into external material existence, the more we shall find that this nature which causes us to rejoice has within it at the same time the mighty healer for all the damage man can cause himself. Somewhere in nature the remedy is concealed. It is a question, not only of understanding the language of the healer, but also of obeying it and really carrying it out. Today it is in most cases impossible for us to hear the voice of healing nature because our misunderstanding of light, and the darkness which has penetrated into knowledge has in many respects brought about conditions preventing us from hearing. Therefore we must clearly understand that where in one case no help can properly be given, where, on account of karmic connections, some suffering may not properly be lessened, this does not mean that it absolutely could not be done.

Here again we see a remarkable connection which allows us to perceive the whole great world, inclusive of mankind, as One Being. In the sayings: ‘Matter is woven light,’ and ‘the soul is in some way or other diluted love,’ are to be found the keys of innumerable secrets of earth existence. But these hold good only for the earth existence, and would not concern any other domain of the world existence. Thus we have shown nothing less than that we, if in any way we alter the direction of karma, unite ourselves in one or the other case with the elements composing our earth existence: on the one side with light which has become matter—and on the other side with love which has become soul. We either draw the remedies out of our surroundings, out of the condensed light, or out of our own soul by the healing loving act, the sacrificial act, and we then heal with the soul-forces obtained from love. We unite ourselves with what is most deeply justified upon the earth, when, on the one hand, we unite ourselves with light and on the other with love. All earth conditions are in some way conditions of balance between light and love and everything unhealthy is a disturbance of that balance. If the disturbance is in love, we can then help by unfolding the forces of love; and if the disturbance is in light, we can then help by somehow providing for ourselves, out of the universe, that light which is able to dissolve the darkness within us.

These are the fundamental ways of help, and we see again how everything depends upon the balance of opposites. Light and love are polar opposites and on their being interwoven depend ultimately all the psychic and material processes of our life. Therefore in all the spheres of human life, evolution continues from epoch to epoch with the balance inclining first to one side and then swinging back to the other, so that evolution resembles the surging of waves. This motion of an unstable equilibrium throws light even on the most complex processes of civilisation. Take a period when certain injuries entered into the evolution of mankind because man contemplated only [the] inner and neglected the outer, for example, in the Middle Ages. It was then that through the blossoming of the mystical side, the external remained unheeded and errors occurred not only in knowledge but in action. Then followed the age that was repelled by mysticism, and was attracted by the outer world so as to make the pendulum swing to the opposite side.

Here is the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times and many such disturbances of the balance, manifest in different ways.

In this connection I should like to note that just in such times as our own, a characteristic in many people is that they completely forget, and pay no attention to, that which one may call ‘the consciousness of a super-sensible world.’ They pay no attention whatever to the fact that there is a spiritual world, and they therefore turn away their thoughts from it. In such an age—or in all such ages—there is always in certain respects a counterpart to be found. I should like to show you this in a very simple manner.

When there are people upon the physical plane who are so absorbed in the physical that they completely forget the spiritual, then a contrary tendency appears among those souls who are living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth—a tendency which works over from the physical into the spiritual plane—impelling them to occupy themselves with the influences which act out of the spiritual world into the physical. It is this which brings about in the physical world the intervention by souls who are still in that state before birth. These souls work down into the physical world according to the means which offer and they are able to work indirectly through persons who are more sensitive to such influence from the spiritual world. In order to make this clearer, one must not accept everything that purports to be a revelation from a Spiritual world. We must distinguish the real characteristic cases in which the dead are anxious show in a palpable manner that there is indeed a spiritual world. Because there are so many people completely in the dark, who have woven so much darkness into themselves that they wish to know nothing about the spiritual world, there are, on the other hand, among the dead many who have the impulse to work into the physical world. Such things generally occur when nothing is done deliberately to bring them about on the physical plane and they occur without special preparation.

You will find much proof of these things collected in the book by our friend, Ludwig Deinhard, Das Mysterium des Menschen (The Mystery of Man). Here much has been collected and systematised which is just what one needs, and which in the scientific literature of to-day is so scattered that it is impossible for everyone to gather it together. Therefore it is a good thing to have in this book a collection of these spiritual facts, which, as you now see, are eminently characteristic of one aspect of our age. You will find very aptly described in this book the characteristic fact of an investigator, who by materialistic methods had in his earth life endeavoured to give every possible proof of the spiritual world—I mean the late Frederick Myers—and who after his death was strongly impelled to show to mankind by means of radiations from the spiritual world and by the help of the spiritual world, what he had endeavoured to do when here.

This is intended to illustrate how in the world and in world affairs we see continual disturbances of the balance, and then again the efforts for the restoring of the balance.

This continual disturbance and restoration of the balance between the two elements of light and love is fundamental for us; and in human karma, from incarnation to incarnation, both work to restore the disturbed condition. Karma, working its serpentine way through incarnations is just such a disturbed balance, until man, after all his incarnations, shall at last create the final balance which can be reached upon earth. Having fulfilled his mission on earth, he evolves then into a new planetary form.

I have endeavoured to set forth a few facts, without which a deeper establishment of karmic connections and laws would be impossible. I have not shrunk from touching to-day upon those mysteries for which our modern science will not for a long time be ripe: Matter is in reality woven light, and that which belongs to the soul is in some way or other refined love. These are ancient occult sayings, but they are sayings which will for all time remain true and will prove fruitful for human evolution, not only for knowledge, but also for human work and action.

Second section, volumes 6 and 7

The sixth and seventh volumes of the second section (natural science writings) contain Goethe's morphological works insofar as they relate to botany. What has been transferred from the volumes "Zur Morphologie" (1817-1824) to the "Nachgelassenen Werke" has been combined here with the as yet unprinted treatises and sketches on this subject, of which the archive is particularly rich. As a result, Goethe's "Theory of Plants" is contained in these two volumes in its complete and self-contained form. The essays published in the "Nachgelassene Werke" left many questions unanswered about the principles on which this theory is based and about the consequences Goethe drew from it. The knowledgeable reader first had to round off the matter by inserting hypotheses. Some of the gaps indicated here now appear to have been filled by the publication of the manuscript bequest.

The basis of the sixth volume was considered to be what appeared in the 1831 "Versuch über die Metamorphose der Pflanzen. Translated by Friedrich Soret, together with historical supplements". The archive contains the handwritten documents for most of this part. This is followed by the related material from the unprinted estate in such an order that Goethe's ideas appear in the systematic sequence required by their content, namely: 1. on the morphology of plants in general, containing the principles (pp.279-322 ), 2. special questions and examples from the doctrine of metamorphosis (pp. 323-344); 3. natural philosophical foundations and consequences of the whole doctrine (pp. 345-361); 4. matters relating to border areas between morphology and aesthetics (5.362-363). These essays contain the basic principles of Goethe's views on organics, his thoughts on the nature and relationship of living beings and on the necessary requirements for a scientific systematics of them. Paralipomena I ($. 401-446) comprise preliminary work on the metamorphosis of insects; Paralipomena II ($.446-451) a definition of morphology in the grand style in which Goethe conceived this science, and notes on the individual propositions of the doctrine of metamorphosis, finally sketches on the metamorphosis of worms and insects. Everything under "Paralipomena" has not yet been printed.

The seventh volume contains all of Goethe's botanical works from the period before the discovery of metamorphosis, in which the struggle with this idea is first revealed, then the essays that contain the examination of contemporaneous or historical phenomena from the point of view of the theory of metamorphosis. The first series includes the "Vorarbeiten zur Morphologie" (as yet unprinted), the second the essays on the spiral tendency of vegetation, on the systematics of plants, reviews of botanical works, the work on Joachim Jungius, the aphorisms "Über den Weinbau" (unprinted), the translation of the chapter "De la symetrie vegetale" from de Candolle's "Organographie vegetale" (unprinted), the discussion of the dispute that broke out in the French Academy between Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier and finally the "Versuch einer allgemeinen Vergleichungslehre" (unprinted), which draws the final conclusion of Goethe's organics and takes account of the teleological view of nature. The printed part was again based on the manuscripts in the archive. The "Paralipomena" contain unprinted material throughout, namely: Goethe's notes on botany as he made them on his Italian journey, his studies on infusoria and on the effect of light and color on plants, finally sketches and preliminary work and so on. When it came to the question of what should be included in the text from the manuscript bequest, consideration for formal completion took a back seat to the necessity of including everything that belonged to Goethe's body of thought. Fragmentary and sketchy material was also included if it added something new to Goethe's view or showed ideas expressed elsewhere in a new context. The principle was to compile all available material in such a way that the reader receives a complete, unbroken picture of Goethe's "System of Botany".

Second section, volume 9

The ninth volume of Goethe's scientific writings contains all of Goethe's works, which are arranged in such a way as to give an outline of his geological ideas. Studies on individual questions and further explanations of his fundamental ideas have been excluded here and relegated to the tenth volume. Volumes 9 and 10 are intended to complement each other in terms of geology, just as volumes 6 and 7 complement each other in terms of morphology. The distribution of the material in this volume was carried out according to the way in which Goethe's thoughts naturally coalesce into a systematic whole. The observations on the empirical foundations form the beginning, followed by theoretical considerations on the formation of individual geological formations, and the comprehensive views on the formation of the earth and the world form the conclusion: world formation. The first section includes the essays: "On the knowledge of the Bohemian mountains and those in other regions"; the second the works on the origin and significance of granite and other rocks; the third Goethe's contributions to the major questions of volcanism and Neptunism, his remarks on atomism and dynamism in geology and his schematic and sketchy notes on higher geology and cosmology. With regard to the second series, it should be mentioned in particular that the treatise on granite first published in Hempel's edition, which Goethe wrote in 1784, is followed by a previously unpublished one which expresses the ideas of the first in a more scientifically rigorous form. In the third chapter, the disposition for a treatise on the formation process of the earth and the agents at work in this process, also first printed in Hempel's edition, is supplemented by handwritten works in the archive (draft of a general history of nature, scheme for the geological essay, rock storage), which are to be understood as preparatory work for a "general history of nature". The manuscript material in the archive also yielded the important sketches for Goethe's relationship to the Vulcanists and Neptunists: "Ursache der Vulkane wird angenommen" and "Vergleichs-Vorschläge, die Vulkanier und Neptunier über die Entstehung des Basalts zu vereinigen".

The Paralipomenis contains: 1. a summary of Goethe's work with critical remarks: "Kritik der geologischen Theorie, besonders der von Breislak und jeder ähnliche", which is important for the understanding of Goethe's own views. 2. supplementary sketches to the essays on the mountains of Bohemia and other regions.

The need for a new arrangement of the essays in this volume arose from the fact that they were printed in Goethe's booklets "Zur Naturwissenschaft" in the random order in which they were written. This sequence, which was then also retained in the Nachgelassene

Writings, however, by no means corresponds to the content.

Second section, volume 10

The ninth and tenth volumes deal with Goethe's geological works in a similar way to the sixth and seventh volumes. Everything that forms a systematic whole, characterizing Goethe's geological views in general, was incorporated into the ninth volume; everything that fell outside the systematic development of ideas was included in the tenth volume. This volume therefore contains the essays and sketches that supplement and extend the content of the ninth volume. They are of three kinds: 1. developments of Goethe's thoughts on basic mineralogical and geological concepts, in connection with corresponding natural objects ($.1-71); 2. views on the basic laws of the action of inorganic natural forces, beginning with the laws of crystal formation and ending with the causes of mountain formation ($. 73-97); 3. descriptions of geological objects and phenomena in their dependence on certain local conditions (pp.99-207). The most important essay in the first section is the previously unpublished one on the term "porphyry-like" (pp. 7-17). Goethe began dictating it on March 12, 1812, inspired by von Raumer's "Geognostische Fragmente" (see diary note). It contains a terminological discussion of the most important concept for Goethe's geological approach: the original indistinguishable unity of the individual mineral masses that form a particular rock, from which the constituent parts have emerged through differentiation over time. Further explanations of this idea, which is opposed to the materialistic-atomistic view of the aggregation of the originally separate constituents of a rock, are contained in pp. 18-45, where the conditions under which the separation of the constituents of a rock mass takes place and the disturbances that this process can suffer are described. This is followed by the essay "King Coal" (pp. 46-50), which is a kind of explanation of the relationship between the individual rocks. The section concludes with Goethe's remarks on the accompanying phenomena of glaciers, stratification of mountain masses, gangue formation, rupture of inorganic masses. Everything here, with the exception of.46-50, is previously unpublished.

The second section contains discussions on the formation of inorganic forms of solid ($. 75-82) and solid-liquid matter (coagulation, pp.83-84). This is followed by the essay on the "Formation of Precious Stones" (pp. 85-87), which Goethe wrote in response to a request from the geologist Leonhard in March 1816. The thoughts he expresses here on the formation of a particular type of natural body lead on to the remarks on the chemical forces involved in the formation of rocks and mountains, to which the chapter "Chemical forces in the formation of mountains" ($.88--89) is devoted. The essays on "Ice Age" (pp.90-97) contain the data that Goethe was able to compile as an inductive basis for the ideas developed purely deductively from his world view in general in the essay "Geological Problems and Attempts to Resolve Them". The essays in this section are also previously unpublished.

The last main part of the volume begins with remarks on the geological conditions of the Leitmeritz district, especially on the tin formation (pp. 101-126). This chapter appears here as a self-contained unit because Goethe himself saw it as such. He had it stapled together into a file fascicle and sent it to Knebel for review on January 3, 1814, together with an introductory letter (which is included in Paralipomena p.251). P.129-182 contain what belongs to the field of purely topographical geology. Mere lists of collections of minerals and rocks have not been included here, but only that which is based on an idea rooted in Goethe's geological views as the principle of listing individual objects or to which such an idea is linked as a conclusion. The notes on "Mineralogie von Thüringen und angrenzender Länder" (p. 135 ff.) are taken from a fascicle dating from the beginning of the 1980s. The information on Bohemian minerals (pp. 142-150) was written down in Eger in 1822 (Tagund Jahreshefte 1822).

An appendix was placed at the end of the volume, which could not be accommodated in any of the three sections, such as the thoughts on a letter and a book by the geologist von Eschwege (pp. 183-185), a paleontological essay (pp. 186-188) and the treatise on the natural phenomenon to be observed at the temple of Jupiter Serapis near Puzzuoli, finally a discussion of geological methods. The latter belongs here because it indicates how Goethe recognized the deductive and inductive methods as one-sided and demanded that they merge into a higher view of nature. In this way, the essay combines volumes 9 and 10 into a whole. Of this last section, pp. 99-150, 174-176, 185-188, 205-207 are unpublished. The paralipomena of the volume contain Goethe's preliminary geological work and notes of individual thoughts that could not be incorporated into the structure of the text.

Second section, volume 11

The eleventh volume of the natural scientific writings is intended to provide a picture of Goethe's natural philosophical ideas and his ideas about scientific methods. Two points of view were decisive in the arrangement of the essays and sketches: firstly, the context of the ideas themselves, and secondly, to illustrate the methodical treatment that natural science undergoes under his influence. Trained in the study of organic life, Goethe's ideas on scientific methodology only took on a firm form when he began to deal with the less complex phenomena of inorganic nature. This is why he wrote his essays on this subject with reference to his physical works.

The principle of arrangement for pp.1-77 is: the essays on general intentions in natural philosophy (pp.1-12) are placed first; then follow the arguments on scientific methods (pp. 13-44: Fortunate Event, The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject and the unprinted essays: Experience and Science, Observation and Thought); concluding this part are the essays in which Goethe sought justification in contemporary philosophy for his initially naively observed method in organic science ($.45-55: Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie, Anschauende Urteilskraft); pp.56-77 (Bedenken und Ergebung, Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistiges Wort, Vorschlag zur Güte, Analyse und Synthese, Ernst Stiedenroths Psychologie zur Erklärung der Seelenerscheinungen) contain what Goethe had to cite to justify his going beyond the foundations provided by the philosophy of the time, namely the teleological approach prevalent in organicism.

If the latter stood in the way of Goethe's view of organic life, then in the field of physics it was the sole dominance of mathematics. The essays. 78 102 contain Goethe's views on the applicability of mathematics in the natural sciences and on the limits of this application. pp. 103-163 contain the quintessence of Goethe's view of nature in individual aphorisms. The majority of these are printed in the "Nachgelassene Werke". Eckermann's arrangement has been retained; only in two places (pp. 132, 6-10, and 132, 16 to 133, 2) have previously unpublished sayings been inserted, which must necessarily find their place here. All other unpublished material has been appended to the already printed mass as a special chapter. The arrangement of these aphorisms in the "Nachgelassene Werke" has been retained because it is clear from the dates found on the existing manuscripts that Goethe himself was largely responsible for editing them together with Eckermann. It does not seem possible to determine what is Goethe's contribution and what is Eckermann's later work. pp. 164-166 deal with polarity as a general primordial phenomenon; pp. 167-169 with the significance of linguistic expression for primordial phenomena; pp. 170-174 with the series of physical effects, arranged according to the principles of polarity and intensification;.175 with a general physical observation; pp. 176-239 with Goethe's system of physical phenomena. Goethe was prompted to write down this system by the lectures he gave to a circle of Weimar ladies in the winter of 1805/06. Since Goethe did not allow the intention of offering an easy-to-understand presentation to interfere with the scientific demands he was making and, for the stated purpose, worked through physics in the individual form that it had to take according to his principles, the scheme of these lectures is given here as an example of how he wanted his methodological points of view to be implemented in particular. The schematic representation of the theory of color appears here because it belongs here as an integral part of the physical scheme. The essays: Polarity (pp.164-166), Symbolism (pp.167-169), Physical Effects ($.170-174), General (5.175), the table of physical effects between pp.172 and 173 and the physical scheme were previously unprinted. The physical schematizations are followed by the essay on a "physical-chemical-mechanical problem" (pp.240-243). The essays on the inner (factual) context of scientific ideas are followed by those on the origin of these ideas within the development of the human mind (Influence of the origin of scientific discoveries pp. 244-245, Meteors of the literary sky pp. 246-254, Invention and discovery. 255-262). Of the aphorisms in the last chapter, the following have not yet been printed: p. 259, 1 to p. 261, 5 - "Naturphilosophie" (pp. 263-264) and "Eins und Alles" (pp. 265-266) belong in the natural scientific writings, the first because of its content, the second because Goethe himself included it in the morphological booklets (II, 1). They form the conclusion of the essays included in the "Allgemeine Naturlehre" because they contain thoughts that go beyond the boundaries of the view of nature in the narrower sense and lead from this to Goethe's general world view. The study after Spinoza printed on pp. 313-319 serves the same purpose; because of its purely epistemological content, it cannot form part of the essays on the natural sciences, but should be regarded as a kind of appendix to them. The essay is published in the XII. volume of the Goethe-Jahrbuch by Bernhard Suphan. Attached to the essays on natural philosophy are the psychophysical ones: "Das Sehen in subjektiver Hinsicht" (pp. 269-284) and the previously unpublished "Tonlehre" (pp. 287-294). The volume concludes with the essays first printed here: Naturwissenschaftlicher Entwicklungsgang (pp.295-302), die biographische Einzelheit (p.303), and the sketches belonging to the general Wissenschaftslehre: Dogmatismus und Skeptizismus ($p.307308), Induktion (8.309-310), In Sachen der Physik contra Physik (pp.311-312). The latter table distributes the empirical material relevant to physics to the mathematical and chemical fields. These are purely didactic points of view; therefore they cannot be incorporated into the ongoing development of ideas.

Second section, volume 12

The most important part of this volume is Goethe's work on meteorology. Its content is made up of the following pieces. The first is the essay "Wolkengestalt" (pp. 5-13), which is based on Luke Howard's "On the Modifications of Clouds. London 1803". When Goethe wrote his notes, he was only aware of a paper on Howard's work, which was included in Gilbert's Annalen 1815 and to which he was referred by the Grand Duke (cf. p.6 of the text). The essay was written in the fall of 1817; it was first printed in the third issue of the first volume "Zur Naturwissenschaft". This work is followed in the same volume by the text of our volume pp. 15-41. The following from.4245, 3, is in the fourth issue of the first; pp.45--58, 10, in the first issue of the second volume "Zur Naturwissenschaft". Only p.5-13, line 15, of this part of the text is in manuscript form in the archive. The second part of the text is the treatise "Über die Ursache der Barometerschwankungen" (p.59-73). It is in the second volume of the second volume "Zur Naturwissenschaft" and contains a preliminary statement on the hypothesis, particularly important for Goerhe's entire scientific approach, that the causes of barometric fluctuations are not cosmic, but telluric, and that this cause is to be sought in a lawfully changing strength of the Earth's gravitational pull. The detailed exposition of this view can only be found in the "Nachgelassene Werke" under the title: "Versuch einer Witterungslehre". This essay contains a systematic sequence of Goethe's thoughts on meteorological phenomena, their mutual relationships and causes. We have made it the third part of the text (pp. 74-109). It is in manuscript form, in a transcript that is partly by Eckermann and partly by Goethe's scribe John. Goethe himself carefully corrected most of it. This transcript and the printed version in the "Nachgelassene Werke" form the basis for our text. These already printed parts of the volume are followed by the unprinted essays "Karlsbad" (pp. 110-114), Zur Winderzeugung (p. 115), Wolkenzüge (pp. 116-117), Konzentrische Wolkensphären (pp. 118-119), Witterungskunde (5.120), Bisherige Beobachtung und Wünsche für die Zukunft ($. 121-122), Meteorologische Beobachtungsorte ($.123-124). The last essay relates to Goethe's meteorological works in the same way as the methodological sketches at the end of the seventh and tenth volumes relate to the morphological and geological works. It is a methodological justification of Goethe's way of looking at things. The meteorological parts are followed by the "Natural Scientific Details": Betrachtungen über eine Sammlung krankhaften Elfenbein, Über die Anforderungen an naturhistorische Abbildungen im allgemeinen und an osteologische insbesondere, Johann Kunckel, Jenaische Museen und Sternwarte. These essays cannot be categorized in one of the usual natural science subjects. They are therefore already included in the "Nachgelassene Werke" in the special chapter "Naturwissenschaftliche Einzelheiten". The text concludes with a number of sketches that follow on from the contents of earlier volumes but were only discovered after the latter were printed. The "Paralipomena" begin with the "Instruction" which Goethe used as a basis for his meteorological observations. He worked it out in 1817 with the help of the Jenens meteorologists and improved it in 1820. He wanted the observations to be made at individual locations according to these instructions (cf. p. 123). The remaining part of the Paralipomena consists of details that belong to the field of meteorology and could not be integrated into the systematic whole of the text.

The twelfth volume concludes the second, larger half of the natural science section, the collection of writings on morphology, geology and meteorology. At the request of the editors, an index of names and subjects covering volumes 6-12 is therefore appended to this volume.

The course of the year has its own life. With this life the human soul can unfold a feeling-unison. If the soul opens itself to the influences that speak so variously to it week by week, it will find the right perception of itself. Thereby the soul will feel forces growing within that will strengthen it. It will observe that such inward forces want to be awakened—awakened by the soul's ability to partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes to life in the rhythms of time. Thereby the soul becomes fully aware of the delicate, yet vital threads that exist between itself and the world into which it has been born.

In this calendar a verse is inscribed for each week. This will enable the soul to participate actively in the progressing life of the year as it unfolds from week to week. Each verse should resound in the soul as it unites with the life of the year. A healthy feeling of “at one-ness” with the course of Nature, and from this a vigorous “finding of oneself” is here intended, in the belief that, for the soul, a feeling-unison with the world's course as unfolded in these verses is something for which the soul longs when it rightly understands itself.

—Rudolf Steiner
Foreword to the Second Edition

On the Corresponding Verses by Hans Pusch

It is apparent that the Calendar of the Soul is composed of corresponding verses which divide the year into two halves, from Easter to Michaelmas, and back again to Easter. For the translator, the most important task is to bring the corresponding verses into harmony with each other. By printing them side by side, each verse can be experienced with its ‘octave’ of the corresponding one.

But something else comes to expression in letting them speak side by side. Their relationship follows a certain law of evolution. Out of the whole evolve the parts, and this is the meaning of subtraction. We number the verses from 1 to 52 according to the weeks of the year, Easter to Easter. And now a double subtraction has to take place. We have one verse, say Number 5 for the fifth week; to find its correspondence, we must subtract 1 from our 5, which leads to 4 ... and then subtract the 4 from 52, resulting in 48, the verse we are looking for. It is necessary each time to subtract from the verse number and then from the whole.

This tracing of the related weeks is a gesture akin to the process of evolution. Out of the majestic un-folding of macrocosmic forces, the microcosmic worlds came into being. We ourselves followed this same process of subtraction by evolving by degrees the consciousness of self. It was a process of diminution by which we slowly exchanged our ancient clairvoyant vision, embracing totality, for our present earth-bound sight and mind, geographically conditioned by the existence in a physical body.

Subtracting means, therefore, on the one hand a diminishing, but on the other it creates a new principle of evolution, that of polarity. Not only are the parts a contrast to the whole, but also the parts themselves form opposites. There is no better description of the process than the one Emerson gave in his essay “Compensation:”

“Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ... If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation ... Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law.” What lived in Emerson's mind underlies the style and composition of these weekly verses. And it is the human being who must reach a stage of compensation, of balance between the opposites, enhancing the polarities to forces of inner growth and maturity. It is a most invigorating development when it is practiced year after year in faithful succession. By combining the two corresponding verses in the mind, we gain a new insight into the workings of that which is outside and that which lives within.

My dear friends,

For this “Pastoral Medicine” course we are bringing together for the first time the members of two distinct circles of spiritual work. This is of quite special importance. We must inquire, therefore, first of all into the reason for the combination, from the intended content of the course itself. In the first place I would like to point out that perhaps this course will be an example of how ancient traditions must be renewed through a particular form of spiritual activity in our time. For what has so far developed under the name “pastoral medicine” has lost its original content. We will see that this is so in the course of our study. Yet out of the very foundation of this present age there arises a most significant task that as it takes shape may be allowed to bear the name of pastoral medicine. We have made the strict requirement that this course be mainly for real theologians and real physicians, including those who are training to be real physicians, in the sense in which that title can be given them from the standpoint of the Medical Section of the Goetheanum. How this standpoint is to be understood will become clear during the course. We have admitted a few individuals who are exceptions to the general requirement, and these for reasons based on the opinion of the Medical Section of the Goetheanum.

First and foremost, dear friends, there must be an absolutely clear understanding in the part of the theologians and on the part of the physicians what is now going to be made possible by their working together: namely, a new pastoral medicine. Their working together has indeed often been discussed; it has even been pointed out that the anthroposophical movement should try to bring it about. But things have come to light that must be corrected during this course. A proper working together must certainly not be understood to mean any dilettantish interference by one side into the work of the other side. It certainly does not mean that the theologians are to become physicians, or that the physicians are to become in the slightest way theologians. It is purely a matter of the two professions working together hand-in-hand. The course will stress very strongly the importance of preventing any kind of confusion by, for instance, the theologians trying to get their hands into various medical measures that cannot possibly lie in their sphere of work. On the other hand, physicians must be clearly aware of the position they must always hold—in the sense just described—toward theologians. It is tremendously important that this should be thoroughly understood by both sides. A great deal will depend upon it.

Apparently the thought has even been entertained that theologians should actually acquire medical knowledge. Well, of course, it is always good to acquire knowledge. But the important thing here is to realize absolutely clearly that physicians, in addition to the cultivation of their thinking, feeling, and willing, have had specific medical training. People should not play with the idea that they can push their way into the world with bits and pieces of medical knowledge without this specific medical training—even if they are theologians! On the other hand, physicians must develop a special conception of their profession; they must learn through pastoral medicine that something essential is expressed when it is said: The flame of offering belongs to the priest, the Mercury staff to the physician. And only through the working together of the flame of offering and the Mercury staff is a healthful cooperation possible. One must not want to heal with the flame of offering, or to celebrate ritual with the Mercury staff. But one must realize that both are divine service. The more fully this is realized, the better their cooperation will be, with physician remaining physician and priest remaining priest, and the more healing will be their work in the world. Our anthroposophical movement must not be allowed to become an area where everything is thrown together in chaotic fashion: the seriousness that we should be cultivating so strongly within our movement would suffer thereby. One can have knowledge of the general procedure for a foot operation, but one should certainly not think that therefore one can perform the operation. And this holds true for all medical matters. Above all, Anthroposophy must not become propaganda for quackery. Theologians must not be allowed to become quacks.

The Medical Section at the Goetheanum will handle with extreme seriousness whatever is going to give an individual a position out in the world as an anthroposophical physician. But the following must also become an established procedure: that physicians who want to work with the same impulses as the Medical Section at the Goetheanum will have their status and their relation to the Section properly defined by the Section. There will be no progress unless this procedure becomes a complete reality—so complete, in fact, that in the future someone will be acknowledged as a physician if the requirements of the Medical Section at the Goetheanum are filled. From this point of view also, we are justified in not having admitted to this course healers who are not physicians. Those who are here today (with a very few exceptions) can lay full claim in the outside world to membership in the medical profession. Perhaps we have made ourselves clear. I have been speaking more from the administrative angle. But the matter will be the concern of pastoral medicine itself. When the theologians recently raised the question of whether something of a medical nature could be given them, I could not do otherwise than say that I would give a course on pastoral medicine in which theologians could participate. And so the course has been organized by the Medical Section of the Goetheanum, and the theologians are taking part in it. It must be quite clear why we have structured it in this way.

Up to now, pastoral medicine has not been a subject in the medical faculties, but in the theological faculties. And the pastoral medicine that has been taught in the theological faculties has really not contained anything specifically medical. Or perhaps I should ask, have any physicians here who have gone through the academic training had any pastoral medicine in their medical courses? It is not offered in any catalogue of a medical faculty. It hardly appears any more in Protestant theological faculties, but it does have a role in Catholic theological faculties—and for a good reason. Only it contains nothing of a medical nature. In the main it contains, first, the knowledge priests need in order to work as pastors, not only with healthy people who are given into their care, but also with those who are sick. There is a difference in whether one has the care of the soul of a sick person, particularly one who is seriously sick, or of a healthy person. With the sick, perhaps severely sick individuals, the question is how one shapes the soul care, how one relates to it. But I have never yet found a book on pastoral medicine that did not stress repeatedly that the first task of the pastor is to make certain by word and deed that a real doctor is found, and that the pastor should refrain from all medical measures.

A second important subject of pastoral medicine has to do with the hygienic aspects of certain ritual measures. For instance, the healthfulness or unhealthfulness of fasting required for ceremonial reasons is explained for the lay person; also what medical science has to say, for instance, about circumcision and similar matters. For priests themselves—this, of course, has just to do with Catholic faculties—it sets forth clearly what is to be said from a hygienic standpoint about asceticism. This is spoken about very fully.

A further subject has to do with what measures should be taken, for instance, in a parish where there is a doctor, what connection there should be between the medical care and the sacraments. When a religious community bases its activity on the reality of the sacraments, the priest must be prepared to meet the medical treatment that is being given. There is, for instance, the anointing that the priest must perform at the sickbed by the side of the doctor. We have also to consider what significance the earlier pastoral medicine attributed to a person's receiving communion while recovering from a severe illness. Looking at the spiritual aspect, one has to ponder on the working of the sacrament in relation to the processes of healing in a human being.

A further subject examines how the pastor has to relate to the physician in psychopathic cases, cases of mentally handicapped or psychically abnormal individuals. The pastoral work is varied for such cases. This was the principal task confronting pastoral medicine in its earlier days, and it was taken care of through the centuries rather extensively by calling on the authority of the Church Fathers' writings.

That is a field of work that cannot appear in the same light to us who are involved in a renewal of spiritual life. Indeed, from fundamental anthroposophical views we are aware of very important tasks in that field for a new pastoral medicine. And we can discover the extent of such tasks if we consider the subject from two sides.

First, let us consider it from the medical point of view. What are we doing when we apply a therapy? When we give a medicine or apply some healing measure to a sick person, there is always the fact that in the healing process we want to set in motion, whether physical or spiritual or pertaining to the soul, we are going beyond the so-called normal relation of that person to the surrounding world. No matter what therapy we use, in every instance we are going beyond what the person has normally in everyday life, whether it is taking of nourishment, or exposure to light and air, or exposure to soul influences. In every circumstance we are going beyond all of that in our therapy. Even if we simply prescribe a small change of diet, we have gone a small step beyond what the person had permitted in his or her own everyday relation to the surrounding world.

Say we prescribe a medicine. If it's a physical substance, its effect will be that a different process takes place than would take place if the patient were merely eating food. And it is the same with other therapeutic measures. In using any therapeutic measure we are intervening in the life of the patient in a way that is different from the way life usually works upon that person. For what is the normal intervention in human life? How does a person take hold of his or her own life? We can distinguish three kinds of processes that intervene, or can intervene, in human life. First, the process that is active in the person in the same way that physical-chemical forces are active in outer nature. Second, the process that is active in the realm of a person's life forces, in life itself. Third, the process that takes immediate hold of the person in the sphere of consciousness:

1. Physical-chemical
2. Life
3. Consciousness

Here we must grasp an important concept. In ordinary life there are three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. The moment we apply an active therapeutic measure, we are intervening in the sphere of consciousness to a greater or lesser degree depending on what the measure is. Such intervention never occurs in such a direct way in the so-called normal course of life. A person who is eating, for instance, is surrendering to the usual process of taking nourishment; then, if this has proceeded normally, waking, dreaming, and sleeping follow in normal fashion. At the most, we might vary a diet for the purpose of bringing about better sleep, but there the boundary is already shifted. Therapy has already begun.

It is quite another matter if you intervene with some therapy when, for instance, a patient has a fever. If you were to apply the same therapy to a healthy person you would alter the person's condition of consciousness. Thus a physician has to work fundamentally with the various states of consciousness. A human being's ordinary relation to the outer world has to do with life forces, but in medical work one is intervening in the states of consciousness. You will find this is so in every single therapeutic measure. And it is the specific characteristic of a therapeutic measure that it does enter into what has to do in some way or other with the variability of consciousness. In fact the only effective therapy is one that takes such deep hold of our human constitution that it penetrates to the source from which our various states of consciousness come. But thereby you are intervening as physician, as therapist, directly in the ordering of the spiritual world. Your alteration of someone's condition of consciousness means that you are intervening directly in the ordering of the spiritual world. And when you have a really active cure, through this penetration into the state of consciousness, even though it may be into subconsciousness, you are always drawing the soul of the person into the therapeutic process. You do not remain in the physical sphere. Ordinary consumption of food, ordinary breathing, and other ordinary processes remain in the physical sphere, and the higher members work indirectly through the physical sphere. Higher forces are active through the physical organism. In contrast, when you are working as a physician or therapist you draw the patient's soul directly into his or her physical body. Indeed we can say if physicians understand their profession properly, they realize that they enter directly into the realm of the spiritual. It only seems that therapy is merely a physical or biological process. True therapeutic measures always involve the patient's soul, even though at first this may remain unknown to the ordinary consciousness. You should observe what actually takes place in a patient when, let us say, a fever is suddenly lowered by some therapeutic means. In this event processes are introduced into the innermost depth of the patient's being—just as the illness itself had worked into this depth—beyond the merely physical and biological realm. So we have looked at the picture from the medical point of view. We have seen how doctoring, healing, by its very nature leads from the physical realm into the spiritual.

Now let us examine the priest's profession just as carefully. Priests whose calling is not one of teaching, if they are truly active priests, then they are connected with the ritual, and the ritual includes the sacraments. But the sacraments are not symbols. What are they? They consist of the fact that external events take place, which are not exhausted, in chemical or biological processes. They contain orientations which are embodied in the physical-biological sphere, but which have their origin in the spiritual world. Sense-perceptible actions are performed, and spirit streams into the actions. Spiritual reality is present in the ritual on the level of sense perception. And what takes place there in front of the congregation takes place first of all before their conscious observation. Nothing is permitted to take place except what does take place in that way. Otherwise it would not be ritual, not sacrament, but suggestion. The sacraments—if they are done right—are never allowed to contain any element of suggestion. All the more, therefore, they are able to contain what is spiritual. They take place before the waking consciousness of the participants, but they work into the sphere of the life forces.

In communion a person is not just eating the material substance; in that case it would not be a sacrament. Nor is it a matter of symbols. Rather it has to do with reaching into a person's life, because a sacrament is enacted, is celebrated, through an orientation toward the spiritual world. Therefore one can say therapy leads from life to consciousness; the ritual with its sacraments leads from consciousness to life.

Therapy: life to consciousness
Ritual (sacraments): consciousness to life

There you have the two activities in polarity: therapeutic activity and the celebration of the sacraments. In therapeutic measures, the course leads from life to consciousness, and consciousness becomes a helper, at least (in ordinary consciousness) an unconscious helper, in the healing process. In the celebration of the sacraments life is made a helper for what is enacted before the consciousness. Both of these activities have to be grasped spiritually in deep inwardness—not merely diagrammatically as it is now being presented to you. They require the involvement of the total human being if that individual wants to make one or the other a vocation. In our present civilization therapy has left behind the spiritual element, and theology has left behind the concrete world. In our present civilization therapy has taken a false path into materialism and theology a false path into abstraction. For these reasons their true relationship has become completely veiled. This true relationship must be reestablished. It must become active again.

Again it must become clear that for diagnosis physicians need a trained observation that enables them to see a biological or physical process in the human organism as a spiritual process. For all processes in the human organism are spiritual. For diagnosing, and still more for treatment, physicians need an observation that is trained to see the lighting up of the spirit within the physical. Priests need an observation that is trained to see the lighting up of the physical reflection of a spiritual event. There is a polarity again. But there must always be polarities working together in this world, and these are no exception.

To see how they are to work together will be a task within the sphere of Anthroposophy and based on Anthroposophy, a task also to be fulfilled within anthroposophical spheres of activity. So one can think that out of this gathering for a pastoral medicine course there may actually be created future anthroposophical physicians—physicians who will hold the right relation to priests because of their own relation to the spiritual world. The priests themselves will have come out of the Movement for Religious Renewal. Something quite special will develop out of this course for the physician and the priest so that they will work together in a true way.

For what in this case can it mean that they work together? Surely not that the priest does dilettantish doctoring and that the doctor is a dilettante priest! If their working together were to consist of priests knowing a few medical facts and physicians vesting themselves as priests, then I'd like to know why they should work together. Why should an experienced physician be interested in half priest-half doctor dilettantism? It makes no sense. And why should a priest want to interfere in medical matters except when the physician asks for a pastor? On the other hand, if the physician is a good physician standing squarely within the medical profession, and if the priest is a real priest, they can work together. It means that one offers help to the other out of professional abilities, not that one pushes into the other's professional domain.

Such an association will bring about a profoundly important result for our culture. The physician will truly understand the priest, and the priest the physician. The priest will know as much about being a doctor as is needed to know and the physician as much about the vocation of the priest as is needed to know. And then in time we will see to what extent physician and priest can work with the teacher to accomplish something beneficial to humanity.

In that area, too, people will have to work together—and in the most manifold ways, because education is also something that must be looked at from a fresh point of view. The priest cannot be a physician, nor the physician a priest, but they can both in a certain sense be teachers. But all the details of these new associations will have to be thought out quite concretely. Therefore I would like to ask you from the very beginning to count this earnest request as part of all that this pastoral medicine course is going to present: that everything be worked out on a professional and expert basis. Priests will truly help actual physicians if they reject all thought of medical dilettantism. That will be one of their responsibilities. And physicians will be able to do very much at the sickbed to bring the mission of the priests to proper fulfillment—precisely at the sickbed, where often a priest has to intervene in life in a really essential way.

My dear Friends:—The separation which exists to-day between the Life-Ether and the earthly elements, did not as yet exist in the Graeco-Latin age, because at that time they were much more intimately united. As you know, the earthly element only exists in man's body up to 6 per cent. 90 percent of man's body is water; and so you see, man is, really a pillar of water. In the course of evolution, the Life-Ether has, as it were, withdrawn from, the earthly elements, and thereby it has become possible for free spiritual Imaginations to arise in the soul of man through the Life-Ether, and the firm solid earthly elements then exist in man's body as a basis for grasping these Imaginations.

Now with the help and application of certain inner methods we can show that these facts are correct. A Greek statue or drama, or even a poem of Homer is not comprehensible without something further, because at that time the relationship between the Etheric body and Earthly elements was quite different from that existing to-day. Anyone who works with occult methods knows that a person living in that age was quite different from a man of to-day. Whoever experiences, for instance, what Goethe experienced in Italy,—knows that the Greeks created from Nature in a way, a secret way, one absolutely strange to humanity to-day. Without something further, it is not even possible to understand the elements of Greek civilisation. If one really attempts to penetrate into the elements of Greek civilisation, even into their philosophy, one must bring about that fine inner union between the etheric body and the earthly elements; and then one finds that one's etheric body streams through the whole organism—one sees colours quite differently, feels warmth quite differently, one feels everything bound up with the life of the soul in an absolutely different way from what one feels to-day. Then at last one understands such figures as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Heraclitus, and even Aristotle. As I have told you, the Greeks saw colours quite differently; blue was then far more complicated,—it was a kind of dark veil which had utter darkness behind it. Peelings then were more complicated. A warm object, for instance, felt as if something were spreading over the whole of one's hand when one grasped it. You can understand that the Greeks experienced the whole world of nature in a different way from the way it is experienced to-day. If one understands this, one can understand how it is that the Greeks spoke differently concerning colours than we do now. Evolution has pressed forward since then, and expresses itself in the most different impulses.

Now unless one has Spiritual Science behind one, one is forced to live in the polarities. That is of great significance for the external civilisation, because these polarities work both in the unconscious as well as the conscious faculties of man. As you know, in the West there is a striving to draw the spiritual into the service of purely external physical existence, of which I have given you a shocking example in the Bureau of Julia of William Stead. (For instance, after Dr Steiner had given a lecture, questions used to be written on a piece of paper and passed up and laid on the desk, which Dr. Steiner then answered; but he found after certain lectures that one person or another was even advised through this Julia-Bureau in London to apply to him for material utilitarian aims.) Now practically this whole direction was followed by Spiritualism, which tries to grasp the spirit in a material way. Ordinary science is far more adapted for this,—even earnest science,—than it is for the understanding of Spiritual Science;—the real working and weaving of the spirit in the external world. When scientists have investigated these things, they have often shown this so simply, no less simply than ordinary lay people. One scientist relates what he has experienced with mediums, but we can see how he then let himself be deceived; there has been a pretty play of conjuring before him which he has not understood—and far less has he understood the medium himself. These mediums are often far cleverer than the average learned person to-day because it is a question with them of a sub-conscious cleverness. You see that the same principle of utility plays into all these spheres.

In the West people are seeking after secrets which relate to Birth, to Heredity and so on. That same principle of natural selection which meets us in Darwinism, is applied to man himself. This application I think is called Eugenics, and the question is discussed as to how the healthy man can find a healthy wife, in order to produce a most healthy line of descendants. Even Psycho-Analysis is under the influence of the same impelling forces;—Psycho-Analysis, which is seeking to drag certain complexes out of the human organism, reckons chiefly with sexual relationships, or with relations of power. But behind all these things there are spiritual elements. Through these one comes into contact with certain spiritual beings who are working behind existence. These beings have a one-sided power, i.e. thinking, reasoning; and they seek to form a union with the lower impelling forces of man. These beings attract forces for man's lower desires, sexual and otherwise; and through them the lowest powers of man are stimulated. Thus, we see that Psycho-Analysis comes under the stimulus of beings who excite the lower nature of man. They direct their attention to the impulses of the lower nature, and hence arose the experiments which seek to explain everything from the aspect of man's lower desires, right on from Freud to the greatest, most significant and most spiritual: Laurence Oliphant, born 1822. In his books “Sumpneumata” or “Evolutionary Forces now active in Man,” 1884 and “Scientific Religion,” although these forces are sympathetic and purified, nevertheless all World-History is there turned to a sexual aspect. One can learn a great deal from these extraordinary books, but only the one pole is expressed in them. It is not an attempt to rise from the normal powers of man to a spiritual world, but only an attempt to develop all impulses towards phenomena. Thereby can arise this mystic materialistic character of the will, which expresses itself in an attempt to climb up into the spiritual world, not in a normal way but by placing everything in the service of utility. One thereby seeks to satisfy the spirit in another way.

Now in occult Brotherhoods, Freemasonry, and so on, the attempt is made to insert the other pole, symbolism and ceremonialism,—that which has remained behind through decadent races from earlier times. Now in H. P. Blavatsky's soul there was poured an Indian element of this nature, after she had been rejected by the occultists in the West because she put too high a demand on them, and was therefore excluded. In the Brotherhoods this coupling together of what is taken over from other ages with what exists as a limitation to nationalistic principles, all this has the aim of acquiring power. In these Brotherhoods, it is a question of gaining power. This impulse is then placed also at the service of this lower world. It is used within the Brotherhoods for developing power, and not for a health-giving knowledge. Now if a person has remained behind in connection with former civilisations, he speaks quite differently from one who has taken up ancient knowledge through occult brotherhoods. Hence Ku Hung Ming is far more full of insight then these Europeans; he is an educated Chinaman, at the summit of Chinese culture. He himself has taken into his soul Tibetan substance. The Chinese are the descendants of the last phases of Atlantean evolution, and what stands in this book of Ku Hung Ming is really reminiscent of that, even as the book appears in translation. Ku Hung Ming, stands in quite a different position from the European to-day. He sees certain things far more exactly than we do, therefore many things in his book are worthy of regard, because he is far more unprejudiced than many Europeans, Ku Hung Ming draws a sharp limit between uneducated and educated people. You see, in China the half-educated does not come in between; a man is either educated or not educated. That sharp limit has disappeared in Europe; it began to disappear when Latin was no longer a language only for the educated—and Ku Hung Ming has a sharp eye for such things as this. He has an interesting chapter concerning language, in which he distinguished between the language one writes and the language one speaks; and he describes how this half-educated state belongs to Europe. As a matter of fact, it was not Militarism that was the cause of the war, but this great realm of half-educated people who are the danger for our civilisation m Europe to-day. For instance, a half-educated person will speak concerning such things as materialism, civilisation, and so on. without understanding them. If one reads this interesting book of Qo Ho Ming one can see that his intellect works quite differently from ours. How willingly he makes quotation from Carlyle: -

“The policeman is employed at 15/- a week and he is necessary for the ordering of society. Why does not the policeman turn himself into an Anarchist, for which he has the tendency? Because the concept of honour which is injected into him advocates other people: they require the policeman, but he does not require them. A millionaire is not secure without this `15/- worth.' He is necessary for the protection of the possessor, and that is also injected into him. And so we see how European civilisation rests on deception.”

Ku Ho Ming lets fall there a judgement which is well worth considering. It is necessary that European people should [pay attention] to this Chinaman, who is really considering human nature very well; the judgement of an atavistic man may be far more unprejudiced than the judgement of a man here in the West. The man of the second pole strives for the conquering of that which is the higher thing to the man of the first pole. At the first pole, it is utility which is valuable—Utility, the god of the real bourgeois; at the second pole, it is Sacramentalism which is valuable—Sacramentalism in its widest scope. One has to see the reality from the spiritual aspect. That second pole is more at the beginning, more symbolic, it will observe the world in such a way that it seeks for spiritual connections behind external appearance. That second pole leads into the neighbourhood of spiritual beings also, but it leads into the realm of spiritual beings whose lower powers and forces are related to the highest powers of man, and they seek to tear the higher powers of man away from his lower nature. One has to keep in mind that man is in connection both with super-sensible and sub-sensible forces, while he lives in the world of the senses. We know how beings send down their forces into a sub-sensible region. In Sacramentalism, for instance, in symbolical actions, there streams down forces from a super-sensible into a sub-sensible world. The other polaric impulse leading to one relating oneself to special beings allied to man's lowest powers lead to sexuality in Psycho-Analysis. It is distasteful to go into further details. A synthesis must arise in the union of these two one-sidednesses, these two poles, while one learns to overcome them. One must will to overcome the forces of nature sacramentally. These polaric impulses are playing into everything to-day without man knowing it, and second pole, the pole of Sacramentalism, so often shines into the first pole, that of Utilitarianism. If we return to H. P. Blavatsky, she started from that second impulse that impelled her towards a Sacramental side. The first impulse however led to the materialism of the Theosophical Society, and so we see a tornado of both impulses working round H. P. Blavatsky.

Yesterday I showed a connection between two branches of science which according to our modern ideas are widely separated. I sought to show that the science of Astronomy should provide certain items of knowledge which must then be turned to account in quite a different branch of science, from which the study and method of Astronomy is completely excluded nowadays. In effect, I sought to show that Astronomy must be linked with Embryology. It is impossible to understand the phenomena of cell-development, especially of the sex-cells, without calling to our aid the realities of Astronomy, which lie apparently so far removed from Embryology.

I pointed out that there must come about a regrouping of the sciences, for a man specializing nowadays along certain lines finds himself hemmed in by the circumscribed divisions of science. He has no possibility of applying his specialized knowledge and experience to spheres which may lie near to hand but which will only have been presented to him from certain aspects, insufficient to give him a deeper understanding of their full significance. If it is true, as will emerge in these lectures, that we can only understand the successive stages in human embryonic development when we understand their counterpart, the phenomena of the Heavens; if this is a fact—and it will turn out to be so—then we cannot work at Embryology without working at Astronomy. Nor can we occupy ourselves with Astronomy without bringing new light to the facts of Embryology. In Astronomy we are studying something which reveals its most important activity in the development of the human embryo. How, then, shall we explain the meaning and reason of astronomical facts, if we bring into the kind of connection with these facts the very realm in which this meaning and reason are revealed?

You see how necessary it is to come to a reasonable world-conception, out of the chaos in which we are today in the sphere of science. If, however, one only accepts what is fashionable nowadays, it will be very difficult to grasp, even as a general idea, anything like what I said yesterday. For the evolution of our time has brought it about that astronomical facts are only grasped through mathematics and mechanics, while embryological facts are recorded in such a way that in dealing with them anything of the nature of mathematics or mechanics is discarded. At most, even if the mathematical-mechanical is brought into some kind of relation to Embryology, it is done in a quite an external way, without considering where lies the origin of what, in embryonic development, might truly be expressed in mathematical and mechanical terms.

Now I need only point to a saying of Goethe's, uttered out of a certain feeling—a ‘feeling knowledge’ I might call it—but indicating something of extraordinary significance. (You can read of it in Goethe's “Spruche in Prosa”, and in the Commentary which I added to the publication in the Kurschner edition of the Deutsche National-Literatur, where I spoke in detail about this passage.) Goethe says there: People think of natural phenomena so entirely apart from man that they are tending ever more and more to disregard the human being in their study of the phenomena of Nature. He, on the contrary, believed that natural phenomena only reveal their true meaning if they are regarded in full connection with man—with the whole organization of man. In saying this, Goethe pointed to a method of research which is well-nigh anathematized nowadays. People today seek an 'objective' understanding of Nature through research that is completely separated from the human being. This is particularly noticeable in such a science as Astronomy, where no account at all is taken of the human being. On the contrary, people are proud that the apparently ‘objective’ facts have shown that man is only a grain of dust upon an Earth which has somehow been fused into a planet, moving first round the Sun and then, in some way or other, moving with the Sun in space. They are proud that one need pay no attention to this ‘grain of dust’ which wanders about on Earth,—that one need only pay attention to what is external to the human being in considering the great celestial phenomena.

Now the question is, whether any real results are to be obtained by such a method.

I should like once more to call attention, my dear friends, to the path we must pursue in these lectures. What you will find as proof will only emerge in the further course of the lectures. Today we must take a good deal simply from observation in order to form certain preliminary ideas. We must first build up certain necessary concepts; only then shall we be able to pass on to the verification of these concepts.

From what source, then, can we gain a real perception of the celestial phenomena merely through the mathematics which we apply to them? The course of development of human knowledge can disclose—if one does not take up the proud position of thinking how ‘wonderfully advanced’ we are today and how all that went before was childish—the course of human development can teach us how the prevailing points of view can change.

From certain aspects one can have great reverence for the celestial observations carried out, for instance, by the ancient Chaldeans. The ancient Chaldeans made very exact observations concerning the connection of human time-reckoning with the heavenly phenomena. They had a highly develop ‘Calendar-Science’. Much that appears to us today as self-evident really dates back to the Chaldeans. Yet the Chaldeans were satisfied with a mathematical picture of the Heavens which portrayed the Earth more or less as a flat disc, with the hollow hemisphere of the heavenly vault arched above, the fixed stars fastened to it, and the planets moving over it. (Among the planets they also included the Sun.) They made their calculations with this picture in the background. Their calculations for the most part were correct, in spite of being based upon a picture which the science of today can only describe as a fundamental error, as something ‘childish’.

Science, or more correctly, the scientific tendency and direction, then went on evolving. There was a stage when men pictured that the Earth stood still, but that Venus and Mercury moved round the Sun. The Sun formed the central point, as it were, for the motions of Venus and Mercury, while the other planets—Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—moved round the Earth. Thereafter, men progressed to making Mars, Jupiter and Saturn also revolved around the Sun, but the Earth was still supposed to stand still, while the Sun with its encircling planets as well as the starry Heavens revolved round the Earth. This was still the fundamental view of Tycho Brahe, whereas his contemporary Copernicus established the other concept, namely, that the Sun was to be regarded as standing still and that the Earth was to be reckoned among the planets revolving round the Sun. Following hard one upon the other in the time of Copernicus were the two points of view, one which existed in ancient Egypt, of the stationary Earth with the other planets encircling the Sun, still represented by Tycho Brahe; the other, the Copernican concept, which broke radically with the idea of the center of coordinates being in the center of the Earth, and transferred it to the center of the Sun. For in reality the whole alteration made by Copernicus was nothing else than this,—the origin of coordinates was removed from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun.

What was actually the problem of Copernicus? His problem was, how to reduce to simple lines and curves these complicated apparent motions of the planets,—; for so they appear as observed from the Earth. When the planets are observed from the Earth, their movements can only be described as a variety of looped lines, such as these (Fig. 1). So, when taking the center of the Earth as the center of coordinates it is necessary to base the planetary movements on all sorts of complicated curves. Copernicus said, in effect: ‘as an experiment, I will place the center of the whole coordinate system in the center of the Sun.’ Then the complicated planetary curves are reduced to simple circular movements, or as was stated later, to ellipses. The whole thing was purely the construction of a world-system which aimed at being able to represent the paths of the planets in the simplest possible curves.

Now today we have a very remarkable fact, my dear friends. This Copernican system, when employed purely mathematically, supplies the necessary calculations concerning the observed phenomena as well as and no better than any of the earlier ones. The eclipses of the Sun and Moon can be calculated with the ancient Chaldean system, with the Egyptian, with the Tychonian and with the Copernican. The outer occurrences in the Heavens, in so far as they relate to mechanics or mathematics, can thus be foretold. One system is as well suited as another. It is only that the simplest thought-pictures arise with the Copernican system. But the strange thing is that in practical Astronomy, calculations are not made with the Copernican system. Curiously enough, in practical Astronomy,—to obtain what is needed for the calendar,—the system of Tycho Brahe is used! This shows how little that is really fundamental, how little of the essential nature of things, comes into question when the Universe is thus pictured in purely mathematical curves or in terms of mechanical forces.

Now there is another very remarkable fact which I will only indicate today, so that we shall understand each other about the aim of these lectures. I shall speak further about it in succeeding lectures. Copernicus in his deliberations bases his cosmic system upon three axioms. The first is that the Earth rotates on its own North-South axis in 24 hours. The second principle on which Copernicus bases his picture of the Heavens is that the Earth moves round the Sun. In its revolution round the Sun the Earth itself, of course, also revolves in a certain way. This rotation, however, does not occur round the North-South axis of the Earth, which always points to the North Pole, but round the axis of the Ecliptic, which, as we know, is at an angle with the Earth's own axis. Therefore the Earth goes through a rotation during a 24-hour day round its own N. S. Axis, and then, inasmuch as it performs approximately 365 such rotations in the year, there is added another rotation, an annual rotation, if we disregard the revolution round the Sun. The Earth, then, if it always rotates thus, and then again revolves round the Sun, behaves like the Moon as it rotates round the Earth, always turning the same side towards us. The Earth does this too, inasmuch as it revolves round the Sun, but not on the same axis as the one on which it rotates for the daily revolution. It revolves through this 'yearly day' on another axis; this is an added movement, besides the one taking place in the 24-hour day.

Copernicus' third principle is that not only does such a revolution of the Earth take place round the North-South axis, but that there is yet a third revolution which appears as a retrograde movement of the North-South axis round the axis of the Ecliptic. Thereby, in a certain sense, the revolution round the axis of the Ecliptic is canceled out. By reason of this third revolution the Earth's axis continuously points to the North celestial Pole (the Pole-Star). Whereas, by virtue of revolving round the Sun, the Earth's axis would have to describe a circle, or an ellipse, round the pole of the Ecliptic, its own revolution, which takes the opposite direction (every time the Earth proceeds a little further its axis rotates backwards), causes it to point continually to the North Pole. Copernicus adopted this third principle, namely: The continued pointing of the Earth's axis to the Pole comes about because, by a rotation of its own—a kind of ‘inclination’ (?)—it cancels out the other revolution. This latter therefore has no effect in the course of the year, for it is constantly being annulled.

In modern Astronomy, founded as it is on the Copernican system, it has come about that the first two axioms are accepted and the third is ignored. This third axiom is lightly brushed aside by saying that the stars are so far away that the Earth-axis, remaining parallel to itself, always points practically to the same spot. Thus it is assumed that the North-South axis of the Earth, in its revolution, remains always parallel to itself. This was not assumed by Copernicus; on the contrary, he assumed a perpetual revolving of the Earth's axis. Modern Astronomy is therefore not really based on the Copernican system, but accepts the first two axioms because they are convenient and discards the third, thus becoming lost in the prevarication that it is not necessary to suppose that the Earth's axis itself must move in order to keep pointing to the same spot in the Heavens, but that the place itself is so far away that even if the axis does move parallel to itself it will still point to the same spot. Anyone can see that this is a prevarication. To-day therefore we have a ‘Copernican system’ from which a most important element has actually been discarded.

The development of modern Astronomy is presented in such a way that no one notices that an important element is missing. Yet only in this way is it possible to describe it all so neatly: “Here is the Sun the Earth goes round in an ellipse with the Sun in one of the foci.” (Fig. 2)

As time went on it became no longer possible to hold to the starting-point of the Copernican theory, namely that the Sun stands still. A movement is now attributed to the Sun, which is said to move forward with the whole ellipse, perpetually creating new ellipses, so to speak (Fig. 3). It became necessary to introduce the Sun's own movement, and this was done simply by adding something new to the picture they had before. A mathematical description is thus obtained which is admittedly convenient, but few questions are asked as to its possibility or its reality. It is only from the apparent movement of the stars that the Earth's movement is deduced by this method. As we shall presently see, it is of great significance whether or no one assumes a movement—which indeed must be assumed—namely the aforesaid ‘inclination’ (?) of the Earth's axis, perpetually annulling the annual rotation. Resultant movements, after all, are obtained by adding up the several movements. If one is left out, the whole is no longer true. Thus the whole theory that the Earth moves round the Sun in an ellipse comes into question.

You see, purely from these historical facts, that burning questions exist in Astronomy today, though it is seemingly a most exact science because it is mathematical. The question arises: Why do we live in such uncertainty with regard to a real astronomical science? We must then ask further, turning the question in another direction: Can we reach any real certainty through a purely mathematical approach? Only think that in considering a thing mathematically we lift the observation out of the sphere of external reality. Mathematics is something that ascends from our inner being; in mathematics we lift ourselves out of external reality. It must therefore be understood from the outset that if we approach an external reality with a method of investigation that lifts itself out of reality, we can, in all probability, only arrive at something relative.

To begin with, I am merely putting forward certain general considerations. We shall soon come to the realities. The point is that in regarding things purely from the mathematical standpoint, man does not put reality into his thought with sufficient energy, in order to approach the phenomena of the outer world rightly. This, indeed, demands that the celestial phenomena be brought nearer to man; they must not be regarded as quite apart from man, but must be brought into relationship with man. It was only one particular instance of this associating of the heavenly phenomena with the human being, when I said that we must see what takes place out there in the starry world in its reflection in the embryonic process. But let us look at the matter at first somewhat more generally. Let us ask whether we cannot perhaps find another approach to the celestial phenomena than the purely mathematical one.

We can indeed bring the celestial phenomena, in their connection with earthly life, somewhat nearer to man in a purely qualitative way. We will not disdain to form a basis today with seemingly elementary ideas, these ideas being just the ones that are excluded from the foundations of modern Astronomy. We will ask the following question: How does man's life on Earth appear, in relation to Astronomy? We can regard the external phenomena surrounding man from three different points of view. We can regard them from the standpoint of what I will call the solar life, the life of the Sun; the lunar life; and the terrestrial, the tellurian life.

Let us think first in quite a popular, even elementary way how these three domains play around man and upon him. Clearly there is something on the Earth which is in complete dependence upon the Sun-life, including also that aspect of the Sun's life which we shall have to look for in the Sun's movement or state of rest, and so on. We will leave aside the quantitative aspect and today merely consider the qualitative. Let us try to be clear as to how, for instance, the vegetation of any given region depends upon the solar life. Here we need only call to mind what is very well known with regard to vegetation, namely, the difference in the vegetation of spring, summer, autumn and winter; we shall be able to say that we see in the vegetation itself an imprint of the solar life. The Earth opens herself in a given region to what is outside her in heavenly space, and this reveals itself in the unfolding of vegetative life. If the Earth closes herself again to the solar life, the vegetation recedes.

There is, however, an interplay of activity between the terrestrial or tellurian and the solar life. There is a difference in the solar life according to the variation of tellurian conditions. We must here bring together quite elementary facts and you will see how they lead us further. Take, for example, Egypt and Peru, two regions in the tropical zone.—Egypt, a low-lying plain, Peru a table land, and compare the vegetation. You will see how the tellurian element, simply the distance from the center of the Earth in this instance, plays its part in conjunction with the solar life. You only need study the vegetation over the earth, regarding the Earth, not as mere mineral but as incorporating plant-nature as well, and in the picture of vegetation you have a starting-point for an understanding of the connection of the earthly with the celestial. But we perceive the connection most particularly when we turn our attention to mankind.

We have, in the first place, two opposites on the Earth: the Polar and the Tropical. The Polar and the tropical form a polarity, and the result of this polarity shows itself very clearly in human life.

Is it not so that life in the polar regions brings forth in man a condition of mind and spirit which is more or less a state of apathy: The sharp contrast of a long winter and a long summer which are almost like one long day and one long night, produces a certain apathy in man; it is as though the setting in which man lives makes him apathetic. In the Tropics, man also lives in a region which makes him apathetic. But the apathy of the polar region is based upon a sparse external vegetation—sparse and meager in a peculiar way even where it develops to some extent. The tropical apathy of man is caused by a rich, luxuriant vegetation. Putting together these two pictures of environment one can say that the apathy which affects man in polar regions is different from that affecting him in tropical regions. He is apathetic in both regions, but the apathy results from different causes. In the Temperate Zone lies the balance. Here the human capacities are developed in a certain equilibrium.

No-one will doubt that this has something to do with the solar life. But what is the connection: (I will, as I said, first make a few remarks based on observation and in this way arrive at essential concepts.) Going to the root of things, we find that in the life around the Poles there is a very strong working-in of the Sun-forces upon man. In those regions the Earth tends to withdraw from the life of the Sun; she does not let her activity shoot upward from below into the vegetation. But the human being is exposed in these parts to the true Sun-life (you must not only look for the Sun-life in mere warmth). That this is so, the vegetation itself bears witness.

We have, then, a preponderance of solar influence in the Polar zones. What kind of life predominates in the Tropical? There it is the tellurian, the Earth-life. This shoots up into the vegetation, making it rich and luxuriant. This also robs man of a balanced development of his capacities, but the causes in the North and in the Tropics come from different directions. In Polar regions the sunlight represses man's inner development. In the Tropics, what shoots up from the Earth represses his inner powers. We thus see a certain polarity, the polarity shown in the preponderance of the Sun-life around the Poles, and of the tellurian life in tropical regions—; in the neighborhood of the Equator.

If we then observe man and have in mind the human form, we can say the following. (Please do not object at once if it seems paradoxical, but wait a little. We shall be taking the human form seriously.) The head, the part of the human form which in its outer configuration copies universal space,—namely the sphere, the spherical shape of the Universe as a whole—the head is exposed by life in polar regions to what comes from the Cosmos outside the Earth. In the Tropics, the metabolic system in its connection with the limbs is exposed to the Earth-life as such.

We come to a special relationship, you see, of the human head to the cosmic life outside the Earth and of the human metabolic and limb-system to the Earth-life. Man is so placed in the Universe as to be more co-ordinated with the cosmic surroundings of the Earth in his head, his nerve-senses system, and with the Earth-life in his metabolic system. And in the temperate zones we shall have to look for a kind of perpetual harmonizing between the head-system and the metabolic system. In the temperate zones there is a primary development of the rhythmic system in man.

You see then that there exists a certain connection between this threefold membering of man—nerves-and-senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic system—and the outer world. The head-system is more related to the whole Cosmos, the rhythmic system is the balance between the Cosmos and the earthly world, and the metabolic system is related to the earth itself. Then we must take up another indication, which points to a working of the solar life upon mankind in a different direction.

The connection of the solar life with the life of man which we have just been considering can only be related to the interplay of the earthly and extra-earthly life in the course of the year. But as a matter of fact, in the course of the day we are also concerned with a kind of repetition, even as in the yearly course. The yearly course is determined by the relation of the Sun to the Earth, and so is the daily course. In the language of purely mathematical astronomy we speak of the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis, and of the revolution of the Earth round the Sun in the course of the year. But we are then confining ourselves to very simple aspects. We have then no justification for assuming that we are really starting from adequate premisses, giving an adequate basis for our investigations. Let us call to mind all that we have considered with regard to the yearly course. I will not say ‘the revolution of the Earth round the Sun’, but the course of the year with its alternating conditions. This must have a connection with the three-fold being of man. Since through the earthly conditions it finds different expression in the Tropics, in the Temperate Zones and at the Poles, this yearly course must be connected in some way with the whole formation of man—with the relations of the three members of the threefold man. When we bring this into consideration, we acquire a wider basis from which to proceed and can perhaps arrive at something quite different from what we reach when we merely measure the angles which one telescopic direction makes with another. It is a matter of finding broader foundations in order to be able to judge the facts.

Speaking of the daily course, we speak in the astronomical sense of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. But something rather different is here revealed. There is revealed a far-reaching independence of man upon this daily course. The dependence of man on the yearly rhythm, namely on what is connected with the yearly course, the shaping of the human form in the various regions of the Earth, shows us a very great dependence of man on the solar life,—on the changes that appear on Earth in consequence of the solar life. The daily course shows it far less. True, very much of interest will also be revealed in connection with the daily course, but as regards the life of mankind as a whole it is relatively insignificant. The differences appear in individual human beings. Goethe, who can be regarded in a certain respect as a normal type of man, felt himself best attuned to production in the morning; Schiller at night. This points to the fact that the daily rhythm has a definite influence upon certain subtler parts of human nature. A man who has a feeling for such things, will tell us that he has met many persons in his life who have confided to him that their really important thoughts were worked out in the dusk, that is, in the temperate period of the day-to-day rhythm, not at midday nor at midnight, but in the temperate time of the day. It is however, a fact that man is in a way independent of the daily course of the Sun. We have still to go into the significance of this independence and to show in what way a certain dependence does nevertheless exist.

A second element is the lunar life, the life that is connected with the Moon. It may be that a great deal of what has been said on this subject in the course of human evolution appears today as mere fantastic nonsense. But in one way or another we see that the Earth-life as such, for example in the phenomena of tidal ebb and flow, is connected quite evidently with the movement of the Moon. Nor must it be overlooked that the female functions, although they do not coincide in time with the Moon's phases, coincide with them in their periodicity, and that therefore something essentially concerned with human evolution is shown to be dependent in time and duration upon the phases of the Moon. It is as though this process of the female function were lifted out of the general course of Nature, but has remained a true image of Nature's process; it is accomplished in the same period of time as the corresponding natural phenomenon.

Just as little must it be overlooked—only people do not make rational, exact observations of these things if they turn aside from them at the very outset—just as little must it be overlooked that as a matter of fact, man's life of fancy and imagination is extraordinarily bound up with the phases of the Moon. If anyone were to keep a calendar-record of the upward and downward flow of his life of imagination, he would notice how much it had to do with the Moon's phases. The fact that the Moon-life, the lunar life, has an influence upon certain lower organs should he studied in the phenomenon of the sleep-walker. In the sleep-walker, interesting phenomena can be studied; phenomena which are overlaid by normal human life, but are present in the depths of human nature and point in their totality to the fact that the lunar life is just as much connected with the rhythmic system of man as is the solar life with his nerves-and-senses system.

This gives a sort of crossing of influences. We have seen how the solar life, in its interplay with the forces of the Earth, works on the rhythmic system in the temperate zones. Crossing this influence, we now have the direct influence of the lunar life upon the rhythmic system.

When we now look at the tellurian, the Earth-life as such, we must not disregard a domain in which the earthly influence makes itself felt; though, to be sure, this is not ordinarily taken into account. I ask you to turn your attention to such as phenomenon as home-sickness. It is difficult to from any clear ideas about home-sickness. It can no doubt be explained from the point of view of habit, custom, and so on. But I ask you to note that real physiological effects can be produced entirely as a result of this so-called home-sickness. Home-sickness can go so far as to make a man ill. It can express itself in such phenomena as asthma. Study the complex of the phenomena of home-sickness with its consequences, asthmatic conditions and general ill-health, a kind of emaciation, and it is possible to come to the following conclusion. One comes to see that ultimately the feeling of home-sickness results from an alteration of the metabolism—the whole metabolic system. Home-sickness is the reflection in consciousness of changes in the metabolism—changes entirely due to the man's removal from one place, with its tellurian influences from below, to another place, with different influences coming from below. Please take this in connection with other things which, unfortunately, Science as a rule leaves unconsidered.

Goethe, I said, felt most inspired to poetry, to the writing of his works in the morning. If he needed a stimulant however, he took that stimulant which in its nature takes least hold of the metabolic system, but only stirs it up via the rhythmic system, namely wine. Goethe took wine as a stimulant. In this respect he was, indeed, altogether a Sun-man; he let the influence of the solar life work upon him. With Schiller or Byron this was reversed. Schiller preferred to write his poetry when the Sun has set, that is to say when the solar life was hardly active any more. And he stimulated himself with something which takes thorough hold of the metabolic system—with hot punch. The effect was quite different from that obtained by Goethe from wine. It worked into the whole metabolism. Through the metabolism the Earth works upon man; so we can say that Schiller was essentially tellurian—an Earth-man. Earth-men work more through the emotions and what belongs to the will; the Sun-man works rather through calm and contemplation. For those persons, therefore, who could not endure the solar element, but only liked the tellurian, only what is of the Earth Goethe increasingly became “the cold literary Greybeard” as they called him in Weimar—“the cold, literary greybeard with the double chin.” That was the name which was so often given to Goethe in Weimar in the 19th century.

Now I should like to bring something rather different to your notice. We have observed how man is set into the universal connections of Earth, Sun, Moon: the Sun working more on the nerves-and-senses system; the Moon working more on the rhythmic system; the Earth, inasmuch as she gives man of her substance as nourishment and makes substance directly active in him, working upon the metabolic system, working tellurically. We see something in man through which we can perhaps find starting-point for an explanation of the Heavens as they exist outside man, upon broader foundations than merely through the measurement of angles by the telescope and so on.

This is especially so if we go yet further, if we now consider Nature outside of man,—but consider it so as to see more in it than a mere register of external data. Look at the metamorphosis of insects. In the course of the year it is a complete reflection of the external solar life. I would say that with man we must make our researches more in the inner being in order to follow what is solar, lunar and tellurain in him, whereas in the insect-life with its metamorphoses, we see the direct course of the year expressed in the successive forms the insect assumes. We can now say to ourselves: Maybe we have not to only proceed quantitatively, but should also take into account the qualitative impression which such phenomena make upon us Why always merely ask what a phenomenon of the outer Universe looks like in the objective of the telescope? Why not ask what relation is given, not merely by the objective of the telescope, but by the insect? How does human nature react? Is anything revealed to us through human nature regarding the celestial phenomena? Are we not led in this way to broader foundations, making it impossible that on the one hand, theoretically, we should be Copernicans when desiring to explain the world philosophically, while on the other we use Tychonic System as our basis for calculating the calendar etc., as practical Astronomy still does to this day. Or that we are Copernicans, but set aside the most important part of his theory, namely his third axiom Can we not overcome the uncertainties which create burning problems even in the most fundamental realms of Astronomy today, by working on a broader basis—working in this sphere too from the quantitative to the qualitative?

Yesterday I sought to point out the connection of the celestial with the embryonic phenomena; today, the connection with fully developed man. Here you have an indication towards a necessary regrouping of the sciences. Now take another thing to which I have also referred to in the course of today's remarks. I indicated the connection of human metabolism with the Earth-life. In man we have the faculties of sense-perception mediated through the nerves-and-senses system, connected as a whole with the solar and cosmic life. We have the rhythmic system connected with what lies between Heaven and Earth. We have the metabolism related especially to the Earth, so that in contemplating metabolic man we should be able to get nearer to the real essence of the tellurian. But what do we do today if we want to approach the tellurian realm? We behave as we habitually do, and investigate things from the outside. But things have an inner side also! Will they perhaps only show it in its true form when they pass through the human being?

It has become an ideal nowadays to regard the relationship of substances quite apart from man and to rest there; to observe by experimentation in chemical laboratories the reciprocal actions of substances in order to arrive at their nature. But if the substances only disclosed their nature within the human being, then we should have to practice Chemistry in such a way as to reach man. Then we should have to form a connection between true Chemistry and the processes undergone by matter within man, just as we see a connection between Astronomy and Embryology, or between Astronomy and the whole human form—the threefold being of man. Thus do the things work into one another. We only come to real life when we perceive them in their interpenetration.

On the other hand, inasmuch as the Earth is poised in cosmic space, we shall have to see the connection between the tellurian and the starry realm.

Now we have seen a connection between Astronomy and the substances of Earth; also between the Earth and human metabolism; and again a direct influence of the solar and celestial events upon man himself. In man we have a kind of meeting of what comes directly from the Heavens and what comes via earthly substance. Earthly substances work on the human metabolism, while the celestial influences work directly upon man as a whole. In man there meet the direct influences for which we are indebted to the solar life, and those influences which, passing indirectly through the Earth, have undergone a change by reason of the Earth. Thus we can say: The interior of the human being will become explicable even in a physical, anatomical sense as a resultant of cosmic influences coming directly from the Universe outside the Earth, and cosmic influences which have first passed through the earthly process. These flow together in man (Fig. 4).

You see how, contemplating man in his totality, the whole Universe comes together. For a true knowledge of man, it is essential to perceive this.

What then has come about by scientific specialization? It has led us away from reality into a purely abstract sphere. In spite of its 'exactness', Astronomy—to calculate the calendar—cannot help using in practice something other than it stands for in theory. And then again, Copernican though it is in theory, it discards what was of great importance to Copernicus, namely the third axiom. Uncertainty creeps in at every point. These modern lines of research do not lead to what matters most of all,—to perceive how Man is formed from the entire Universe.

An esoteric who meditates and is approached by things from outside could ask: Would this have happened to me if I hadn't become an esoteric? An esoteric should make it his duty to observe life and himself very intimately. The fact that he has set out on this path should stand at the center of his life, for him, for he is a small center of spiritual life, and this radiates out into his environment—more of less unconsciously for him—and brings about the things that approach him. Through his higher development, a pupil leaves his lower self that connects him with the outer world alone—at least for a short time. During meditation he leaves it to itself and qualities that we thought we had overcome already crawl out from all corners of our nature and can make us worse if we don't keep ourselves under firm control. Certain exercises have been given us to support us here, in addition to our meditations.

As you know, everything runs cyclically, and this is also true of development. If we begin an esoteric training now, then after seven years all kinds of qualities that were slumbering in us can emerge strongly and set one back. But this can't happen if a man pays enough attention to himself, his life and his surroundings.

Anyone who has a hidden opposition to his teacher will find that this feeling soon breaks through and adversely influences the effect of meditation. In an esoteric's daily meditations he should keep it in mind that he's mainly trying to get through to his higher self, and he should reflect on what this higher self is. He shouldn't think that he's supposed to bring something to this higher self—he should have an expectant attitude towards him and expect everything from him. Usually there are three ways in which it approaches a pupil on his path. The first way is a rather flitting one and it requires the attentiveness that an esoteric should have for all things. Namely, this is in a dream, and what happens there is what one calls a doubling of the I. For instance, one has a problem or wants to do something. Then someone appears to one in a dream who tells one what to do or who solves the problem, one who is better and cleverer than oneself. One should pay attention to such dreams. Then in the course of development it may happen in helpless moments or at times when one has made a decision that one hears a quiet voice that, for instance, advises one not to do what one has decided on. It's often a decision that one has made with the best knowledge and conscience, and if one follows the voice that nevertheless advises against it, it may seem as if one has done the wrong thing, but in by far the most cases, one will immediately notice that one did the right thing in following the voice. Now, if one practices paying attention to this, one will notice that one has something in one that's higher than one's own reason, that's cleverer than one is oneself. And the third time that one confronts one's higher self is a very important and sacred one. This is during meditation. One will only unite with him for short moments there. But to attain this, one must silence one's whole lower nature. We must eliminate everything that fills us with antipathy or petty feelings for the world and life. In observing himself, a pupil must always keep the polarity law in mind, that is, if he has a bad quality and wants to get rid of it, he must also look for the opposite quality in himself. It's certainly there. The presence of one quality definitely conditions the existence of the opposite one, whether one believes it or not, and this must be eradicated—then the other one also disappears. For instance, if one feels then there's also the polar hate in one, be it ever so hidden, and one has to drive this out. Then the fear disappears by itself. The higher self will only unite with us if such qualities are eradicated in meditational moments.

This union with the higher self is beautifully depicted in the saga of Lohengrin and Elsa. Lohengrin comes to save Elsa, to unite himself with her. Distrust, a negative quality is sown in her soul, and the higher self, Lohengrin, must withdraw to higher worlds, can't unite with her.

These are the greatest riddles of existence, where sympathy, antipathy and all sorts of other feelings so easily cloud the view. As far as human thinking reaches, this question has always been thought of. When the spiritual researcher looks at what has been thought, said and researched in this regard by those who take the modern point of view, a point of view that is already over 200 years old, he finds that scholars and non-scholars, the educated and the uneducated, have very peculiar views on the character traits of women and men.

Lombroso's description of woman caused a particularly great stir. He attributes to woman a sense of devotion that permeates the entire female character. Others, in turn, emphasize the feeling of domination and rule in woman: the most important thing in woman's character, as history has shown, is the desire to rule. Two judgments are juxtaposed here. A completely different direction attributes humility and gentleness to the woman's character, and energy to the man's. Others claim that the woman's basic character is patience. Finally, a neurologist describes the female as a pathological nature: “On the Physiological Imbecility of Women”. Some describe the woman as a conservative, Hippel as a revolutionary element in history.

But perhaps it is not reasonable to ask the question at all. Let us limit ourselves to the objective observation of the facts. There are similarities between men and women that are actually much more similar than between men and men or women and women. If you look at life from this point of view, what stands out to you the most, what stands out to you in the strongest way? The female or male character – or other qualities that have nothing to do with male or female characteristics? And is it not perhaps a sign of higher education to be able to recognize that we can also look at a person of the opposite sex and consider them in terms of qualities that have nothing to do with their gender?

Is it justified to attach such great importance to gender in human relationships, as is the case today, or is it not perhaps one of the many consequences of materialism that gender characteristics are given such a prominent role today?

Let us look at the matter objectively! Those who consider human beings only from the external, sensual point of view have only the external in mind. But there is also a supersensible. If we were to turn to the invisible, then perhaps something could arise that stands highly exalted above mere sexual relations. For the one who observes with all the powers of the soul, it is clear that the great importance attached to sexuality, which would like to make everything else devour these sexual relations, is the result of the materialistic way of thinking of our age.

Let us see where the truth about the masculine and the feminine lies! Spiritual science sees many members in the human being: the physical body and the etheric body fight against the disintegration of the human being, the astral body against overwork. The plant, which has no astral body, does not tire either. The astral body is the constant fighter against fatigue; sleep is called upon to remove the fatigue of the etheric and physical bodies. We are confronted here with an extraordinarily important fact!

It is easy to laugh and find it grotesque when naming what is at stake here, but on the other hand it is something that has a deep, deep significance for the knowledge of the true human being and of life on earth. Every human being, whether man or woman, consists of the four elements, but now we have a strange contrast in human nature: the physical body of man is male, the physical body of woman is female; but it is different with the so-called ether or life body: in man the ether body is female, in woman it is male, so that each sex continually carries the other within itself.

As I said, however grotesque this may appear to those who know nothing of these facts, it is all the more enlightening for those who are aware of these things. How profoundly significant this is for many, many phenomena in our everyday and social lives. When we look at the individual human being, can we not see the beautiful harmony of masculine qualities, harmonized by his feminine qualities coming from his etheric body, and vice versa in women? Why is it that the strongest men in particular have certain feminine qualities in certain respects? Or do we not also see heroic qualities in women? Are they not qualities that they develop in war, for example? This fact, which is an ancient spiritual one, is sensed by some people, but how they utilize it is quite characteristic of our materialistic age.

Perhaps most people know that an unhappy young man's book – Weininger's book “Sex and Character” – made a big impact not only because it contains many paradoxes, but also because of the fate of the unfortunate author, who soon after the book was published took his own life. No matter how capable one is, one cannot have judgment at such a young age; one must have patience to form an opinion on these matters. It is not for nothing that the great poet Dante says that he reached the middle of life at the age of 35. Before the age of 35, it is not at all possible to have a sound judgment on this important matter. Well, this Weininger had some inkling of the dual nature of every human being, of the masculinity of women and the femininity of men. However, he conceived this in a materialistic sense, quite literally, by seeking twofold substantiality in every germ cell, a male and a female character in every cell! Thus the visible had to contain the invisible in a mysterious way! One can hardly imagine anything more grotesque! Because he knew nothing of the etheric body, he attributes the invisible to the visible! He does not know that there are higher links, and so he tries to characterize people as falling into two categories: male and female. This leads Weininger to the conclusion that there is a certain difference between the female and the male: the female is physical, and the male is spiritual. He draws the conclusion that women do not have an ego or individuality, personality or freedom, character or will! But then he must also deny the same to the other half! Then he attributes half of this to every woman and takes it away from every man! This is what happens when one wants to apply materialistic theories directly in practice.

Let us now consider other human qualities, for example, the I! Let us look at the sleeping person. When we have a sleeping person in front of us, then all sentient life sinks down into an indefinite darkness; the physical and life bodies remain in bed; from this, the astral body rises with the I. It is in this spiritual world. If we now consider this astral body and the ego in relation to gender, what then emerges? Only spiritual science can provide information here. What we call man and woman here in this world in the physical world and also in the world to which our ether body belongs is not recognized by the astral body, and not by the ego. Masculine and feminine remain connected to the physical and etheric bodies when the person is alive, and without the sexual the person is in a state of sleep, in his actual home, in the so-called astral and spiritual worlds: initially, neither feminine nor masculine is the human astral body and the I.

Now we ask ourselves: Is there nothing at all in this astral world, where we are at night, that corresponds to gender? Here lies a great and significant mystery that man must understand if he dares to make a judgment about it at all! The question is this: What is there in the world that is in the same space as we are here, in a world that we call astral or spiritual, that corresponds to the masculine and the feminine of physical nature? After all, bear in mind that this spiritual or astral world is not in a cloud cuckoo land, but around us. If we now ask what corresponds to the opposition of male and female in this world, we find two essential words that penetrate deep, deep into our soul. If we understand them correctly, they can solve many, many secrets of the astral world.

There, the opposition of life and death, of destruction and development, corresponds to the sexual opposition.

This polar contrast corresponds to it! Two elemental forces are indicated, which go through the whole cosmos and must be there. If man wants to understand here, only the horrors and all the peculiar feelings that are associated with the words death and life in man must cease! He must see the great significance of death and life! Goethe said: “Nature has invented death in order to have many lives!”

What does death mean for a person? Spiritual science shows us that a person does not just die this death once, but that they go through it repeatedly! This life is a repetition of many lives that have preceded it, and many follow the present one, in the alternation between birth and death. And each embodiment means progress for the person in some respect: with each embodiment, the person rises higher. At that time, when the Earth planet emerged from the darkness of life, man first came into the stages of existence in which he now is, into his first physical embodiment, into his first earthly existence. His limbs were imperfect, his ego was a slave to the astral body. Man would never ascend to the higher stages of development if he did not pass through death. Only that can make him ascend.

He had to destroy this body, but what remained for the person from the first form of embodiment? What he had heard and seen went into the spiritual world from which he had come, and now he builds the foundation for his second embodiment in this spiritual world. If he remained in the first, he could never use what one has conquered here in the spiritual world as a creator.

So one must always pass through death again, and an image of death is the solidification of form, the hardening of form. Consider what is called life and death out in nature, look at the tree! How does it approach death? It becomes woody, it dries up. And so it is with everything that must succumb to death! You can follow it in your own human life! You can see very clearly in a person an ascending line of life up to the middle of life, where more and more of the forces developed in the previous incarnation come out, and then the descending line in old age, a hardening. Compacted matter is deposited in various places and so on. Here on this earth, every life is subject to hardening, and hardening is the sister of death.

But hardening is nothing other than that which one side presents, the form, the figure. Imagine life being taken out of a person – what remains? Figure! Study a wonderful picture of life, and what remains is only a picture without life, which you admire, for example, in the great, significant Zeus, and so on. There you have the form, the work of art without life, the image of life, but not filled with life. The form eternally strives to emancipate itself from life, and this emancipation of the form can be seen in the astral world at every moment, there it is what the seer perceives as the image, as the rigid image of life, as the dead form of life. It is a power, like positive magnetism, like electricity; and so this form leads through the astral world.

If it seeks to embody itself here in the physical world, it is beauty! The opposite poles constantly repel each other, push and push, every form that arises is immediately dissolved and transformed into a new one, an eternal metamorphosis. This is brought about by the other pole; it is that which confronts man in the night: will, energy. Form and beauty are the two phenomena here in the physical world, and they surround us in the astral as death and life. Form comes and goes, and life is eternal. The principle of dissolution and that of crystallization are eternally at work. These are two fundamental forces, and in man the images of these two fundamental forces must prevail: the pure astral body is surrounded by death and life in the astral world, and when it enters this world of day, of waking, it is absorbed by the physical body and the etheric body.

The female aspect of the human being is the image of the form, of that which on the astral plane is continually seeking to shape everything into existence; the male aspect of the human being is the image of that which continually seeks to shape everything into something eternal.

In this physical world, the relationship between death and life is determined. What are two poles on the astral plane – death and life, is here an ongoing struggle. The image of all physical life is embodied in the female form - when the progressive principle triumphs, death comes. Here, man's life is determined as dividing between birth and death, in the feminine, which is the image of the formed, of that which pushes towards the solid, that wants to become permanent. If only the feminine were to work, then the human being would have the tendency to live in the physical body for as long as possible, to remain in the form. Through the influence of the masculine, death is instilled into the form. This is the secret of the work between man and woman – through this, life and death are judged in the relationship between the feminine and the masculine. The feminine gives us life, and the masculine limits this life, sets death against life. Thus that which in ordinary life is called an expression of love touches directly on the mystery of death. As a sign of this, beings exist that, in the moment when they love and bring forth a new being, also depart from this world with death.

Thus we have come, as they say in spiritual science, to the edge of a great mystery. The mingling, and what is connected with it, death, shows us the possibility that the sexual antagonism – male and female – is only a specialty, only something special of a great antagonism. We see this antagonism arising on the astral plane as eternally changing life – powerful will and formed beauty. Sexual polarity is a special case. There is a law in the world that is much more significant than sexual polarity. Such laws are present in all worlds, and they work their way down into this world of ours. If people only knew about the most important riddles of existence, they would see that these laws are there, for their consequences are there in the ordinary world. There is the same measure of the masculine and the feminine on earth, of great cosmic forces flowing through the world. Man is immersed in many worlds, and whether a male or a female child is born somewhere does not depend on the parents, but on the forces that are outside of them.

Imagine, for example, two vessels; one filled with a red liquid and the other with a blue liquid. If you immerse any object in the vessel with the blue liquid, that object must come out blue, and vice versa. It is the same with the sexuality of human beings.

The physiologists are doing good research; if they are unable to see and investigate more than what their eyes can see, the secret will never be revealed to them.

Remember the words: In heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. (Matt. 22,30; Mark 12,25; Luke 20,35f.) Therefore man, by his nature, which is neither male nor female, reaches into the higher world, thereby transcending the opposition between male and female, and each of us carries, in addition to our own, a super-male or super-female nature, through which we stand face to face with another human being. The more the higher part of us develops, the more we can stand face to face with another human being in this way.

Theosophy is not about preaching asceticism, not about deadening the senses, but about allowing the feminine and the masculine to flow through and permeate everything. Spiritual science is called upon to bring this back to consciousness in people, and that will be the future coexistence of men and women longed for by the best of men today, when people will be aware of what stands above gender, what carries the highest interests and connects man and woman in itself. Then it will be impossible for the relationship between man and woman to resemble a struggle. And the spiritual-scientific current will be one that will flow through the development of humanity and take hold of people. Then the time will come when people will no longer talk idly and in clichés about whether there is a difference between men and women. The difference cannot be denied in many respects, because we are firmly on this physical plane: if we are a man, we are in the male physical body; if we are a woman, we are in the female physical body. This gives the shading to our outer existence; but when we recognize that we have an innermost core of being, then we will accept this shading with joy, for it gives us the delightful diversity and multiplicity. And precisely when we understand how to find the eternal, the essence, then we can also rejoice in the temporal. Then a great, practical perspective opens up and we see how spiritual science can intervene in life, in art, education and so on. We see that spiritual science is not a gray theory, but a living weaving and working. Those who take it up permeate their whole being with it and ennoble, beautify and uplift the relationships of people, which express themselves in the generations of humanity, by bringing them into harmony, into a collaboration for the great progress and forward movement of the human race.

Someone might say that the spiritual scientific reflections touching on the problem of vocation are among the least interesting. But such is not the case. This must be recognized, especially in our fifth post-Atlantean period, because in this period all human relationships will be essentially modified in comparison with those that prevailed in earlier periods of the earth. They will be so modified that man must, out of his own freedom, bring more with him than in earlier ages when his mission in the evolution of earth could be carried out almost instinctively; that is, when he received by inspiration the direction into which he had to go.

When we look back, for example, to the Egypto-Chaldean culture or to other cultures of earlier times, we shall find that the measure of freedom now given to man toward forging his external destiny—and this freedom will constantly increase—was not given him in earlier times. During the Egypto-Chaldean period, the fact that each person belonged to a certain class into which he or she was forced similar to the way an animal is forced into its species, though not so irrevocably, removed from the sphere of man's freedom much that at present belongs there. To be sure, there was a compensation for this limitation of freedom. Students of the external history of culture who are generally quite shortsighted in their thinking, usually assume that conditions in ancient times were such that those who were then guiding human affairs did so with the same impulses as the leading personalities today. But you must bear in mind that there were quite definite processes in the mysteries in ancient times whereby the guiding personalities acquainted themselves with what was willed by beings who guide life from regions outside the earth. I have told you that at certain times—we do not need now to review them—sacrificial priests carried out specified mystery rituals. As a result, certain personalities in the temples who were suited for such purposes were brought into contact with the universe, the cosmos, the extraterrestrial relationships. The consciousness of these specially qualified personalities was then inspired by beings who guided the earth from extraterrestrial regions, and what was learned from these beings determined the course of action.

I will show you through a hypothetical case how things took their course in earlier times. Suppose that today the Christmas festival was not more or less an external holiday for most people, but that in its form and time of occurrence men knew that our earth is especially fitted to receive ideas into its aura that cannot enter, for example, in summer. I have explained how the earth is awake during the winter and that Christmas time is one of the most brilliant points of this waking state. At that time the aura of the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth ponders the outer universe, just as we men, while in the waking state of day, reflect in our thought on what is around us. In summer the earth sleeps, so it is not possible then to find certain thoughts in it. In winter the earth is awake, and most wide awake at Christmas; then the earth's aura is interpenetrated with thoughts, and it is possible to read the will of the cosmos for our earthly events from them.

Now the sacrificial priests educated some individuals in such a way that they became sensitive and receptive to what was alive in the earth's aura. By putting these individuals into contact with the earthly thoughts that gave expression to the cosmic will, the sacrificial priests in the temples could learn it from them. What they learned was to them, in a sense, the will of heaven, and from this they were able to determine who should remain in a particularly worthy position and who should be taken into the mysteries in order that he might assume a leading position in ancient government or priestly life. Humanity has now outgrown such things and is exposed to chaos in this respect; we must simply recognize this fact. The transition from the ancient, quite definite conditions in which men learned from the will of the gods what was to happen here on earth has already occurred. During the fourth post-Atlantean period, in which the individual freed himself from the will of the cosmos, these ancient customs passed over into our present more chaotic conditions. Everything tends to be handed over more completely to man. Thus, it is all the more necessary that the will of the cosmos shall penetrate earthly conditions in another way.

It would require much time to make clear how in the third Egypto-Babylonian culture period something still lived and wove in earthly life from the various vocations of men—to use a term adapted to our present conditions—that was in large measure a reproduction of the will of the cosmos. This came about as described and was disappearing during the fourth post-Atlantean period. It has vanished completely in our fifth post-Atlantean period which began, as we know, approximately in the fifteenth century. If men would pay more attention today to what is happening and stop offering a fable convenue in place of history, they would be able to recognize, even from external conditions, how man's relation to his vocation has changed since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They would recognize from present conditions how everything will increasingly become different in the future. But a sort of anarchy would inevitably overtake mankind if no one were to grasp these deeper connections and impart to the intellectual community ideas that take into account the modifications produced by the natural course of evolution. What it has been possible to establish even from external history regarding the emergence of what we might call the modern vocational life since the fifteenth century would cause astonishment to those who are at all able to observe human life. If they would submit to the influence of all that it is possible to recognize, they would find fault with themselves, in a way, for living in such a somnolent state and for having no conception of what is connected with evolving human destiny.

Last time, I called your attention to the fact that what constitutes real vocational life is by no means so insignificant for the cosmic complex as it may at first appear. I pointed out that, as men, we have gone successively through the Saturn evolution, where the first potentialities of the physical body were prepared; the Sun period, in which the etheric man was prepared; the Moon period, in which the astral man was prepared, and that we are now passing through the earth period in which the ego develops. But other periods are to follow: The Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan times. We may say that the earth is, in a way, the fourth stage of Saturn; likewise, Vulcan is the fourth stage of the earth. The earth is, in a sense, the Saturn of Vulcan. Just as on ancient Saturn processes occurred so intimately bound up with evolution that we owe the first potentiality of our physical body to them, which still continues to work in us, so must something happen on earth that will continue to work on in our evolution. On Vulcan it will attain a fourth stage of development, just as certain processes on Saturn have reached a fourth stage of development of earth. I pointed out that those processes that would correspond to Vulcan correspond to what we have on earth from the Saturn evolution; they represent, therefore, what works and lives in the various vocations that men take up on earth. As humans pursue vocational lives, something develops on earth within their vocational activity that will be the first potentiality for Vulcan, just as the Saturn activity was the first potentiality for our physical body.

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If you add to this reflection the fact that vocational life has undergone a tremendous transformation since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, you will understand how increasingly important it will become to conceive of it as a component of the entire world evolution provided you do this by means of those points of view that may be developed through spiritual science. Only by learning first to recognize the objective aspects of vocational life can we form suitable concepts regarding the karma of vocation. Of even greater interest will be the question where vocational life is going and what it will develop into from our age onward because from this we shall derive more clear-cut concepts than from today's conditions.

As can easily be recognized when we take a common sense look out into the world today, the future evolution of vocational life will consist in the ever increasing differentiation and specialization of vocations. It is not too intelligent for people to criticize the fact that, in recent times, vocations have become more specialized and that not so many centuries ago a person could find in his vocation the connections between what he was producing and what this meant for the world. He thereby would take an interest in the forming and shaping of his product because he saw clearly what his product became in life. In our times, this is no longer the case for much of humanity.

To take a radical example, a man is placed by his destiny in a factory where he perhaps makes, not a whole nail, but only part of one; this piece is then joined with another part by another man. Thus, the man who makes only part of the nail can develop no interest in how what he produced from morning until night takes its place in the relationships of life. If we compare the earlier handicraft life with the factory life of today, we are immediately aware of a radical difference between what is contemporary and what existed not too long ago. What has already come to pass in the various branches of human activity will continue to develop, and more specialization and differentiation of vocational life will necessarily occur. It is by no means especially intelligent for people to criticize this because it is a necessity in evolution; it simply will happen, and will happen more and more.

What sort of outlook is opened to us by this fact? Fundamentally, it is that men must increasingly lose interest, as we can readily imagine, in the work that occupies the greater part of their lives; in a way, they must surrender like automatons to their work in the world. But the most essential point is something else. Man's inner nature must obviously acquire the color of his outer work. Anyone who observes the historic development of humanity will certainly discover to what a large extent the men of the recent fifth post-Atlantean period have become reproductions of their vocations and how their vocational lives influence their soul lives, specializing them. This does not apply to the majority of those who live today within our Anthroposophical Society, however. They are often in the fortunate position of having detached themselves from the interconnections of life. In the fortunate position? I might just as well say in the unfortunate position! This is good fortune often only for subjective egoistic feeling. For the world, it is often bad fortune because the world will demand increasingly of men that they excel in special fields and become specialists.

But what must happen in addition to this? Their specialization will be a necessary by-product of world evolution, and this question will soon become one of the weightiest of family problems; anyone who wishes to educate children will have to understand it. To place oneself rationally within the course of evolution then will depend altogether upon an understanding of the question: How shall I place my child into the evolution of humanity? What is still possible in many cases today, even though it is only a residue left over from ancient times that people routinely cling to, will soon prove to be empty phrases; that is, the fine manner of speaking so much admired today, according to which children must be allowed to become what corresponds to their observed talents. This will soon prove to be an empty phrase. In the first place, people will see that those who are born from now on will give indications of their previous incarnations in a more complex way than was the case with people in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. They will show complex potentialities that no one would have dreamed of before since these potentialities were far simpler in earlier times. Those who consider themselves especially clever in testing the potentialities of grown children to determine whether or not they are fitted for this or that vocation may learn that the insights derived from these tests are nothing but their own fantastic imaginations.

In the near future, however, life will be so complicated that the word profession will take on an entirely different meaning. Today we still often associate something quite inward with the word, calling it “vocation,” although for most people their vocations do not at all represent anything inward. We conceive vocation (calling) as something toward which a person is called by his inner qualities. However, if we would question people about their calling, especially in our cities, many would say, “I am in my profession because I am convinced this is the only one that corresponds to my talents and inclinations that I have had since childhood.” Yet, closer inspection of these cases would reveal that the answers given did not correspond with the facts, and I imagine they are not congruent with your own observation of life. Today, a vocation is increasingly that to which a person is called by the world's objective course of development. There outside of men is the organism, the interconnection; you may call it, if you please, the machine—this is not important—that gives orders, that calls him.

All this will constantly intensify and, as a result, what humanity accomplishes through vocational activity is also detached from man himself; it becomes more objective. Through this detachment, vocational activity grows increasingly into something that, in its further development through Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, goes through a process of development similar to what has taken place for the earth through Saturn, Sun, and Moon. It is a peculiar fact that when one speaks as a spiritual scientist it is not possible to flatter human beings if the subject is related intimately to their lives. Spiritual science will be less and less exposed, you see, to the danger of expressing itself according to the model of wisdom to be found in the words:

At best a pompous moralistic play
With wonderfully edifying quips,
Most suitable to come from puppets' lips.⁶⁷

Spiritual science will certainly not be in a position to do this. It will often be compelled to set forth as something significantly great for the evolution of the world the very thing that people would prefer not to hear. It will therefore be inevitable that some people today who consider themselves exceedingly bright because their philistinism has crept into their brains will glibly declare, “Oh, professional life is a prosaic, mundane matter.” The way vocational life appears to true spiritual science compels us to declare that through the very fact that this life becomes detached from human interests, it contains the necessity to develop relationships possessing a cosmic significance. Many people might think that a depressing view of the future results from this: increasingly people are caught in the treadmill of life and spiritual science cannot even console them that this has happened.

It would, however, be a great deception should one draw such a conclusion from what has been said since the nature of the universe requires things to be unified through polar opposites. Just consider how these polarities thrust themselves upon you in the world! It is, for example, in their mutual relationship that positive and negative electricity produce their unified effects. Positive and negative electricity are necessary to each other. Male and female are necessary for the propagation of the human race. It is from polarities that unity evolves in the evolution of the world.

Now, the same principle is at the bottom of what has been said. When vocational labor is separated from the human being, we necessarily create the first cosmic potentiality for a far-reaching cosmic evolution. Everything that happens in the evolution of the world is related to the spiritual, and in what we create within the sphere of our vocations, whether by bodily or by mental labor, there lies the possibility for the incarnation of spiritual beings. At present, during this earth stage, these spiritual beings are, to be sure, still of an elemental kind; we might say an elemental kind of the fourth degree. But they will have become elemental beings of the third degree during the Jupiter evolution, and so on. The labor in the objective vocational process is detached from us and becomes the external sheath for elemental beings who thereby continue their development. But this occurs only under a certain condition.

If it be said that we must first begin to understand the meaning of what is often belittled as the prosaic part of life, we must also understand that this meaning is not clarified until we comprehend it completely in its comprehensive cosmic connection. What we produce in our vocational life can become meaningful for the Vulcan evolution, but something else is prerequisite to this. Just as positive electricity is necessary for negative, and the male necessary for the female, so also what will be released continuously from humanity as activity will require an opposite pole. A polarity of opposites was also present for humanity in its earlier evolutionary stages. Something absolutely new, of course, does not come into existence here because something similar was already present before. But when you look back at earlier cultural periods, if only two or three centuries ago, you will find that the human being was still far more immersed in his professional life with his feelings and passions, in fact with all his emotions, than today. When you compare the joy that a human being could still experience in his or her profession even a hundred years ago with the dissatisfaction of many people today who have nothing but their profession, you will be able to form an impression of what really needs to be said.

Such things are really considered rightly far too infrequently for the simple reason that those who discuss the character and choice of vocation are those who can least afford to talk about this subject matter. Schoolmasters, literary scholars, parsons—the very people who least experience the dark side of vocational activity in the modern world—write about these things. Thus you will find in ordinary literature and even in pedagogical books that people express themselves on this subject like the blind discussing colors. Of course, someone who has finished elementary and high school, and then looked around a little in a university because that's the thing to do, may easily consider himself unusually clever with the ideas he has absorbed; that is, if he now plays the role of a reformer of humanity who can tell us how everything should be done. There are, indeed, many such individuals. A person who has gained a proper perception of life knows that they are the ones who usually talk most stupidly about what must come about. This is ordinarily not observed simply because those who have acquired such educational credentials are at present highly respected. The time is yet to come when the feeling will develop that the so-called men of letters, the journalists and narrowly educated schoolmasters, understand the interrelationships of life least of all. This must gradually develop as a general opinion.

It is important that we come to see more clearly how in earlier times man's emotional life was intricately related with his professional life and how subsequently the latter has increasingly become disengaged from man's emotional life and must continue to do so. For this reason, the polar opposite of vocational life must become something different from what it was earlier. What was this element that was added earlier to vocational life? You have it before you today when you consider what constitutes the shell of culture. The buildings in which professions are practiced and in the midst of these, the church, have become the sheath and shell of culture; the days of the week reserved for work, and Sunday reserved for the needs of the soul. These were the two poles: the vocational life and the life dedicated to religious conceptions.

It would be one of the greatest mistakes that could be made to suppose that this other pole as it is still conceived today by the religious denominations could remain as it is, since it was made to fit a vocational life still bound up with the emotions of men. All of human life will deteriorate unless understanding increases in this sphere. So long as the elemental spirit that an individual creates in his vocation, as I have described, was not separated from him, the old religious conceptions still sufficed to some extent. Today they are no longer sufficient, and they will become less so the farther we advance into the future. The very idea that is most vociferously opposed by certain people must be revived; that is, the opposite pole, consisting of the fact that men shall be able to form concrete concepts regarding the spiritual worlds, should enter into evolution.

The representatives of the religious sects will often say, “Oh, there they are in spiritual science talking about many spirits and gods, but it is the one God that is important; with Him alone we have enough.” Thus, we can still make an impression on people today if we present them with the great advantage of coming into contact with one god, especially during after-dinner coffee and family music, when contemptuous remarks are made about other more recent endeavors, and ideas are expressed in an especially egotistic and philistine fashion. But what is really important is that human horizons should be broadened; that is, that we should learn to know that everything is permeated not just by a single divine spirit conceived in the vaguest way possible, but that spirit is also omnipresent in a concrete, special sense. People must learn to know that when a workman stands at his vice and the sparks fly about elemental spirits are being created which pass over into the world process and there have their significance. Those especially clever ones will claim that this is stupid. These elemental spirits, however, will certainly come into existence even though the one working at the vice is unconscious of them. Nevertheless, they will still be created, and it is important that they shall come into existence in the right way since elemental spirits both destructive and helpful to the world process can come into being.

You will most clearly understand what I mean if you consider it in a special context because in all these things we are standing today at the threshold of new evolutionary developments. Many people already have an inkling of this. Should it be transformed into reality and people fail to have spiritual scientific aspirations, it would be the worst thing that could happen to the earth. What has come about primarily during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is that the human being has been liberated from the external, inorganic world which he embodied in his tools. Eventually, he will be reunited with what he has embodied in them.

Today, machines are constructed. Of course, they are at present objective, containing little of the human element. But it will not always be so. The course of the world tends to bring about a connection between what the human being is and what he produces and brings into existence. This connection will become ever more intimate. It will appear first in those areas that furnish the foundation for closer relations between one person and another—for example, in the treatment of chemical substances that are used in medicines. People still believe that when sulphur, oxygen, and some other substance—hydrogen or something else—have been combined, the product of this combination possesses only those effects that are derived from the individual substances. Today this is still true to a large extent, but the course of world evolution is tending toward something different. The subtle pulsations lying in the human being's life of will and disposition will weave and incorporate themselves gradually into what he produces. Thus, it will not be a matter of indifference from whom a certain preparation is received.

Even the most external and cold technical development tends toward a quite definite goal. Anyone who can form a vague conception of the future of technical development knows that an entire factory will operate in a completely individual way that will be in keeping with the one who directs it. His or her attitude of mind will enter into the factory and will pass over into the way in which the machines work. Human beings will blend with this objectivity. Everything that they touch will gradually come to bear a human impression. No matter how stupid it may seem today to the clever people—in spite of St. Paul having said that what men consider to be clever is often foolishness in the eyes of God⁶⁸—people will realize that the time will come when an individual will be able to step up to a mechanism standing at rest and will know that to set it in motion he must move his hand this way, that way, and another way. Through the vibrations of the air caused by this signal, the motor,⁶⁹ adjusted beforehand to respond to it, will be set in motion.

Then, national economic development will become such that to patent machines will be quite impossible; such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. Thus, everything will be excluded that has no relation to human nature, and by this it will be possible to bring about something quite definite. Just imagine what a truly good person who has reached an especially high level of morality will in future be able to do. He will construct machines with signals that can be governed only by individuals like himself. Evil minded people will produce quite different vibrations when they make these signals, and the machine will not respond.

People already have a faint inkling of this. It is not without purpose that I have called your attention to certain individuals who study flames dancing under the influence of definite tones. Further research in this direction will reveal the way to what I have just indicated. We might, indeed, say that it is the path back to those times when an alchemist who only wished to stuff money into his pocket could accomplish nothing, whereas another, who wished only to set up a sacrament for the glory of the gods and the welfare of humanity, would be successful.

In a sense, so long as what arose from human work bore the aura of the emotions and joys that men transferred into it, it was not accessible to the kind of influence that I have just described. But to the extent that the products of vocational labor can no longer be produced with special and absolutely necessary enthusiasm, what thus flows away from men and streams forth from them can become a motor force. The truth is that through the fact that individuals can no longer unite their emotions with the world of machinery, they, in a way, restore to this world the purity that arises from or serves their labor. In the future it will no longer be possible for people to bestow the warmth gained from the enthusiasm and joy derived from their work on the things produced. But these things themselves will be purer as they are put into the world by workers. They will also become more susceptible to what will emanate from, and be predetermined by, man as a motor force, as I have described.

Such a direction to human evolution can only be given by concrete knowledge of the spiritual forces that can be discovered by spiritual science. In order that this development may occur, it is necessary for an ever greater number of individuals in the world to gradually find the opposite pole. This consists in uniting one human being with another in what rises far above all vocational labor, while at the same time illumining and permeating it. Life in the spiritual scientific movement furnishes the foundation for a united life that can bind all professions together. If there were only an external advance of vocational evolution, this would result in a dissolution of human ties; people would become less able to understand one another or to develop relationships according to the requirements of human nature. They would increasingly disregard one another, seek only their own advantage, and have only competitive relationships with one another. This must not be permitted to come to pass lest humanity thereby fall into complete decadence. To prevent this from happening, spiritual science must be propagated.

It is possible to describe truly what many people are today unconsciously striving for, even though they deny it. There are many today, you know, who say, “This talk about the spiritual is ancient twaddle! The true advance that will really bring about human progress is to be found in the development of the physical sciences. When men get beyond all this twaddle about spiritual things, we will then, in a way, have a paradise on earth.”

Should nothing prevail in humanity except competition and the compensatory acquisitive instinct, however, it would not be paradise on earth but hell. After all, there would have to be another pole if real progress were to take place. If a spiritual pole were not sought for, there would have to be an ahrimanic pole. Then the following argument would prevail: “Should vocations continue to be specialized, there would always be a certain unity in that one person would be this, another that, but all would have the common characteristic of acquiring as much as possible through their jobs.” True, all would be made alike, but this is simply an ahrimanic principle. It is incorrect to think that the world can reach its goal through such a one-sided evolution, proceeding purely in the external sphere as we have described it. To follow this line of thinking would be tantamount to a woman's arguing that men had gradually become worse, were really utterly unfit for the world, and should be completely exterminated, and that then we would get the right evolution of the physical world.

It would require a weird person, indeed, to hold such a view since nothing whatever could be achieved by getting rid of all the men. Because this applies to the sensory world, people understand it, but they do not understand such foolishness in reference to the spiritual world. Yet, it is the same for spiritual relationships as if someone were to suppose that mere external evolution could continue to progress; it cannot. Just as the earlier evolutionary periods required the abstract religions, so this new stage requires a more concrete spiritual knowledge as it is striven for in the spiritual scientific movement. The elemental beings that are created and released through the vocational labor of men must be fructified by the human soul with what it takes into itself from impulses striving upward to the spiritual regions. Not that this is the only mission of spiritual science, but it is the mission related to the advancing and changing vocational life. Therefore, world evolution demands that as professions become more specialized and mechanized, people feel the need for the opposite pole to become proportionately more intensely active in them. This means that each human being should fill his soul with what brings him close to every other human being, no matter what their specialized work may be.

All this leads to much more. As we will hear in due course, a new age will emerge from what we may describe as our own time's indifference to and withdrawal from life, which is frequently the experience of working people these days. In the new age, human beings will again perform their work from different impulses. These will really be no worse than those good old vocational impulses that cannot be renewed, but must be replaced by others of a different sort. In this connection we can already point today, not merely abstractly but quite concretely, to a human ideal that spiritual science will develop. This will show what even a vocation may become to human beings when they understand how to observe the signs of the times in the right manner.

We shall continue our reflections regarding the significance of these matters for the individual, and for karma.

• 67. Kaufmann's translation. See footnote 21.
• 68. I Corinthians, 1:20: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?“
• 69. Rudolf Steiner says in the third lecture of “Weltwesen und Ichheit“ [The Essence of the World and Selfness], Bibl.-No. 169, CE (1963) that the American Keely invented such a motor in the 19th century.

The primary task of the fourth race was to develop the inner self. Before that, people had lived very generally. Human kama was very closely related to general kama. It had not yet become separate.

We understand what warm-blooded kama actually means when we look for the opposite pole, because in nature everything arises in polarity. While the Kama for the human being - in the middle of the Lemurian race - was separating, something else had to arise in the world; this other is the natural fire, the fire in the world. The two are therefore in an occult connection, and the misuse of Kama in man meant a disturbance in the fiery element of the earth. For the relationship was a much closer one than it is now, when the separation is complete. Just as people were still able to control fire through their Kama, to draw fire out of stone, they could misuse fire to destroy themselves. The downfall of Lemuria was caused by the misuse of fire in its connection with the kamic element. Sin meant much more then than it did later.

When the Kama had become more and more isolated, resulting in a soul that was more and more withdrawn into itself, the Atlantean race emerged. But the prana was still in the same context, and the Atlanteans were able to use this power, were able to apply the germinating power to industrial endeavors. The first races, the Rmoahals and the Tlavatlis, still possessed the magic word, the mantra-like sounds developed by the Lemurians, which had a direct effect on the forces of life. When language came more to the fore, knowledge of the magic word was gradually lost. During the Toltec race, it had less and less effect on the outside world. However, some retained it as an art.

In the past, people paid less attention to this control over life. Now some wanted to systematize this, and in a sense they also obtained mastery over death. The patriarchal age known to us from the Bible is based on the art of prolonging human life to an extraordinary degree. This thus became an art; and in the case of the fourth, the Turanian sub-race, it led to a terrible black magic, inasmuch as life has an occult connection with everything that is an aqueous element. It was this source material that the Atlanteans used to gain such high mastery over; they had the same power over it as the Lemurians had over fire, and in this way their downfall was also brought about by water. There is a deep macrocosmic connection between nature and man. Thus, the fauna and flora are also different depending on the root races and sub-races. For example, in the case of the fourth sub-race of the Aryans - in which the ideal, Romanesque Christianity arose - the fauna and flora that still remained corresponded to those countries. The materialistic Germanic race, in turn, has its own. Appearance depends on what a person develops within themselves. Today, people are not yet aware of this; they control nothing but what their minds control. During the sixth sub-race, however, they will learn again to control the power of life; during the seventh, they will learn to control fire, the inner fire, the kundalini fire, which only the adept now controls. During the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans, the pre-Semitic one, the mind had been established, as we know, through the former branching of certain animals, the ungulates, the horse. The capacity for logic, for combination, for personal right-mindedness arises; personal conflict arises, arises, arising from the opposition of convictions and opinions; the special being that finds its external expression in the fifth, the Aryan root race. This is a necessary point of passage; but it is natural that this will also lead to the downfall of the fifth root race. Through the war of all against all, the Aryans will perish, as once the Atlanteans perished through water and the Lemurians through fire.

Man was not yet able to guide this intellect himself, so the leading Manu was still a supermundane one. The group that was led into the Gobi and Shamo deserts was now singled out, namely by the Ursemites. Above all, this group was to have pure bodies, so that a selected plant diet was ordered by the Manu. This is the origin of the decadent food laws that still remain. But the Manu's intention was, above all, to leave people free – to leave them to the influence of a luciferically educated priesthood. That is why only a small group remained faithful, while the others fell away. This is why the stages of development are so different. The Master differs from all other leading forces of humanity in that he reaches the highest development in the same way, only faster.

When the Masters are openly acknowledged as the leaders of humanity, the sixth sub-race will emerge. The seventh sub-race will actually perish. On the other hand, the small group of ‹Homines religioses› will be gathered into the sixth sub-race, which will have the necessary temperament in its blood. The small group that remained faithful was the foundation for the Aryan race; hence the wonderful, pure, brilliantly spiritual teaching of the Indian sub-race that moved south. The uniformly divine is recognized and worshipped. Through the mind, which reaches up to Devachan, the Devas were first recognized and worshiped. The Vedas are only later formations; they originated at the time when the third sub-race was already present. Of the original Rishi religion there are only traditions. It is a repetition of what the Lemurians still instinctively felt; the unified religion is here relived with the mind.

The dualistic [religion], with the separation into good and evil, was a repetition of what had been experienced by the Atlanteans and was relived in the consciousness of the Persians.

In the third sub-race, the result of the monistic and dualistic religions emerges: the Trinity - the service of Osiris and Mithras. It is only from the third race onwards that three Logoi are recognized. Under this influence, the Indian Trinity was also formed. The child is personified for the first time in Horus. The personal is now possible, in which Christ immerses himself. God appears under the mask of man. The Trinity becomes the three persons.

In the fifth sub-race, everyone wants to decide for themselves, the poly-personality asserts itself, the culmination of which takes place in the French Revolution. Liberty, equality, fraternity are the guiding abstract ideas that replace the gods.