The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My Dear Friends:

The course of observations, upon which we are about to enter, has in view a kind of self-recollection amongst those persons who are met together for Anthroposophy. It will afford opportunity for a self-recollection of this kind,—a self-recollection to which they may be led by a description of the anthroposophic movement and its relation to the Anthroposophical Society. And so you must let me begin to-day by referring to the people to whom this self-recollection applies. And these people are you yourselves,—all those who, through one occasion or another, have been led to find their way to Anthroposophy.

One person has found the way, as though, I might say, by an inner compulsion of the soul, an inner compulsion of the heart; another, maybe, for reasons based in the under-standing. But there are many again, who have come into the anthroposophic movement through some more or less exterior occasion, and have then perhaps, inside the anthroposophic movement itself, been led into profounder depths of the soul, and found more than at first they looked for. One characteristic, however, is common to all the people who find their way to the anthroposophic movement. And if one looks back through all the various years, and sums up what the characteristic feature is amongst all those who come into the anthroposophic movement, one finally can but say: They are people of a kind, who are forced by their particular fate,—their inner fate, their karma, in the first instance,—to turn aside from the ordinary highroad of civilization, along which the bulk of mankind to-day are marching, to abandon this highroad, and to seek out paths of their own.

Let us but clearly consider for a moment, what the way actually is, in which most people in our day grow up into life from their childhood on.—They are born of parents, who are Frenchmen, or Germans, Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews, or belong to some other of the creeds. They are born perhaps of parents who hold peculiar opinions. But in any case, there is always some kind of pre-recognized assumption, directly the people are born at the present day, amongst the parents, amongst the members of the family into which these people are born out of their pre-earthly lives, there exists so to speak a pre-recognized assumption,—not indeed uttered, but which is felt, even though perhaps not thought, (and. thought too, very often, when occasion gives rise to it!) ... looking out generally upon life, they think as a matter of course: We are French Catholics, or German Protestants, and our children will naturally be so too.

And the circumstance, that such a sentiment exists, naturally creates a social atmosphere,—and not a social atmosphere only, but a concatenation of social forces, which do then, in actual reality, work more or less obviously or non-obviously, so as to shove these children into the lines of life already marked out for them in advance by these sentiments, by these more or less definitely conceived thoughts.

And then all rolls on to begin with as though by matter of course in the life of the child. As though by matter of course these children are supplied with their education, their school-training. And all the time again the parents are filled with all sorts of thoughts about the children,—thoughts which again are not uttered, but which give the presuppositions for life, which are extraordinarily determinative for life;—such thoughts, for instance, as, My son will of course be a civil servant with a pension; or, My son is heir to the family estates; or, My daughter is to marry the son of the man who owns the neighbouring property.—Well, of course it is not always so definitely materialized, but it gives a certain prospective outlook, and this again always prescribes a line of direction. And the lines of external life are as a matter of fact so mapped out to-day, that, even down into our present times of chaos (which are felt by people however, for the most part, to be unusual), this life does go on externally in obedience to impulses given to it in this way. And then there is nothing for it, but that the man should, somehow or other, grow up to be a French Catholic, or a German Protestant: he cannot grow up to be anything else, for the forces of life impel him that way. And though it may not come directly from the parents' side with quite such definiteness, yet still, life catches him fresh from school, lays its grip on the man whilst he is still quite fresh, emerging from young life, from a state of childhood, and plants him down in some post in life. The State, the religious community, draw the man into their vortex.

And if the majority of people to-day were to try and account to themselves for how they came to be there, they would find it hard to do so. For too keen reflection on the subject would mean something intolerable. And so this intolerable something is driven as far down as possible into the sub-depths of consciousness,—driven under into the sub-conscious, or unconscious, regions of the soul's life. And there it remains; unless the psychoanalyst happens to fish it up again, if it behave with more than usual pertinacity in these unknown soul-regions down below. But, for the most part, the strength is wanting, to take any sort of stand in proper person, as an individual, in the midst of all this, that one has simply ‘grown into’ in this fashion.

One has moments of revolt perhaps, when of a sudden one finds oneself quite unexpectedly realizing in life that one is, say, a clerk,—perhaps even a town-clerk! But then, most likely, one clenches one's fists in one's trouser-pockets; or,—if it happens to be a woman,—one makes one's husband a scene about a disappointed life, and so forth. ... Well,—there are these reactions against the things which a man simply grows into.

And then very often too, you know, it happens, that there are the little pleasures attached to the various things, which deaden one's sense of the things themselves. One goes to public balls; and then the next day of course is occupied with sleeping them off; and so the time is filled up in one way or another. Or else one joins a strictly patriotic association. Because, being a town-clerk, you know, one must belong to something or other which absorbs one into its ranks. One has been absorbed into the ranks of the State, into the ranks of a religious community; and now one must needs shed a sort of halo in this way over the thing which one has inconsciently grown into.—Well, I need not pursue the description further.

This is, in fact, the way, more or less, in which those people, who follow along the beaten highroad of life to-day, grow into their external lives.

And the others, who are unable to go along with them,—they find themselves on side-tracks;—and this kind of people, who are unable to follow along most of the prescribed routes to-day, are to be found scattered about on any number of paths, possible and impossible. But, amongst these other paths, there is the anthroposophic path too, where the man is bent upon what lies within himself,—where he is bent on living through it in a more conscient fashion,—where he wants to live out his part consciently in something that lies to some extent at least in his own choice.

They are people such as these for the most part, whose path does not lie along the beaten highroad of life, who are Anthroposophists. Whether they find their way to Anthroposophy in youth, or in older years, one form or other, they are people of this kind. And if one examines further what the origin of it is, then again one comes to circumstances connected with the spiritual world:—

The souls, as they come to-day out of their pre-earthly state of life into their earthly one, have, for the most part, spent a long while in that condition preceding their birth, which I have often described in my lectures.—Man, after he has finished travelling over his life's road in the spiritual world between death and new birth, comes next into the region where he enters more and more into the life of the spiritual world, where his own life consists in working in company with the beings of the higher hierarchies, and where everything that he does is a work amidst this world of substantive spirit.

But in the course of this passage from death to a new birth there comes a particular point of time, when the man, as it were, turns his eyes down again towards earth. There, in soul, the man begins, for a long time in advance, to unite himself with the successive generations, at the end of which stand finally the parent pair that give him birth.—So that a man looks down beforehand, not only upon his fathers' fathers, but to his ancestors of faraway back generations, and unites himself with the line of direction, with the current, that runs through the generations of his fore-bears.

And so it happens with the majority of souls at the present day, that during the time when they are making ready to come down to earth again, they have a burning interest already in what is going on upon earth. They gaze as it were from the spiritual world upon the earth below, and are keenly interested in all that goes on with their forefathers on the earth.

Souls of this kind become, in fact, what I have described as being the case with those who follow the stream along the broad highway of modern life.

In contrast to these, there are, especially at the present day, a number of souls, whose interest, when their pre-earthly life begins to tend downwards again towards earth-life, lies less with what is going on upon earth, but for whom the subject of principal interest is: How are we maturing in the spirit-world? They continue to interest themselves down to the very last moment, so to speak, when they take their way back to earth, in the spiritual world.

Whereas the others have a profound desire for an earthly state of existence, these souls have to the last a lively interest in the things that are going on in the spiritual world, and come upon earth accordingly, when they do embody, with a mind that draws its consciousness from spiritual impulses, and affords less inclination to the kind of impulses which I described as existing in the case of the broad highroaders. They outgrow the impulses of their surroundings; in particular, they outgrow their surroundings in their spiritual aspirations. And they are thus pre-destined,—ready prepared,—for going simply their own way.

And so one might divide the souls into two kinds, which come down to-day out of their pre-earthly existence into earthly existence. The first kind, which still at the present day includes the majority of people, are remarkably ‘home-gifted’ souls, who feel so thoroughly at home as souls in their warm nest,—even though at times they may think it uncomfortable; but that is only in appearance, is only maya;—they feel comfortable in this warm nest, in which they have already taken an interest for so long, before coming down to earth.

Others perhaps,—the external maya, is not always a good guide,—others, who may go through their child-life quite acquiescently as souls, are not so home-gifted, are homeless souls, grow out of the snug nest rather than into it.

And to those of this latter species belong undoubtedly those souls too, who afterwards find their way into the anthroposophic movement.

It is therefore certainly a matter, in one way or other, of predetermination, whether one is impelled by one's fate into Anthroposophy.

It may truly be said, however, that the impulse manifests itself in all manner of ways, which leads these souls to search along side-paths, off the track of life's great highroad. And anyone, who has gone through life with a certain conscientness during the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty to thirty of the twentieth, will have observed, that everywhere, amongst the others, there were to be seen these homeless souls—soul-homeless souls, that is,—in numbers,—numbers relatively speaking, of course. A great many souls, in fact, to-day, have what I might call a certain streak of this homelessness.

If the others did not find it so comfortable to keep along the beaten tracks, and did not put such difficulties in the way of the homeless souls, these homeless souls would be much more striking in their numbers to the eyes of their contemporaries. But even so, one can perceive everywhere, I might say, to-day a certain streak of this homelessness in a great number of souls.

Only quite a short while ago, there was a report of an incident, which shows how even such things as this may happen. A professor at a certain university gave a set of lectures, a course of collegiate addresses, announced for schoolmen, with the title, ‘The evolution of mystic-occult philosophy from Pythagoras to Steiner’. And the report says, that when the course was announced, so many people came to the very first lecture, that he was not able to give it in one of the ordinary lecture-rooms, but had to hold it in the Great Auditorium, which as a rule is used only for the addresses on big University occasions.

From facts such as this, one can see how things stand at the present day, and how in fact this tendency to homelessness has spread extremely deep into men's souls. And one could watch this thing, so to speak, which to-day grows week by week to an ever more intense longing in the souls of those who bear about this homelessness within them,—the longing for something which is not a ready planned, ready mapped-out post in life,—this longing for something spiritual,—which shows itself in this corner of life from week to week, one might say, with greater insistence and ever increasing force amid the chaotic spiritual life of the day one could watch all this growing up. And if to-day I succeed in sketching the gradual growth of it for you in a few brief touches, you may be able to find in this sketch, through a sort of self-recollection, just a little perhaps of what I might term the common anthroposophic origin of you all.

To-day I will do no more than pick out some characteristic features by way of introduction.—Look back to the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century. We might quite well take any other field; but let us take a very characteristic field; and here we find coming into prominence at a particular time what one may call ‘Wagnerianism’: the cult of Richard Wagner.

There was, no doubt, mixed up with this Richard Wagner cult, a great deal of fashionable affectation, desire for sensation, and so forth. But amongst the people who showed themselves at Bayreuth, after Bayreuth was started, there were not only gentlemen in the latest cut of frock-coat, and ladies in the newest and smartest frocks; but at Bayreuth there was everything conceivable, side by side. Even then, one might see there gentlemen with their hair very long and ladies with their hair cropped short. People might be seen, who felt it like a sort of modern pilgrimage to travel from long distances to Bayreuth. I even knew one man, who, when he set out for Bayreuth, drew off his boots at a place on the road a very long way off, and pilgrimaged to Bayreuth barefoot.

Amongst the people who turned up like this,—the gentlemen with the long, and the ladies with the short hair, there were undoubtedly many who belonged in some form or other to the homeless-soul class. But amongst those, too, who were dressed, if not in the very latest, yet at any rate in a fairly respectable fashion, there were also such as were homeless souls.

Now, what made such an effect upon the people in this Wagnerianism,—what there actually was in it, (I am not talking now of the musical element only, but of Wagnerianism as a social phenomenon)—what made itself felt in Wagnerianism as a force, was something that in this Wagnerianism stood out quite distinct from anything else that the materialist age had to offer. It was something that went out quite peculiarly, and almost suggestively I might say, from this Wagnerianism, and acted upon people in such a way as to give them the feeling: It is like a door into another and more spiritual world, quite different from the one we usually have round about us.

And round Bayreuth and all that went on there, there sprung up a whole crop of longing aspirations after pro-founder depths of spiritual life.—To understand Richard Wagner's personages and dramatic compositions was at first certainly difficult. But that they were the creations of quite another element than merely the crass materialism of the age,—this at any rate was felt by numbers of people. And if these happened to be persons, who as homeless souls were more particularly impelled in this direction, they were stirred up by what I might call a sort of suggestive force in the Wagner dramas, particularly in the life that the Wagner dramas brought with them into our civilization, and began to have all sorts of hazy, emotional intuitions.

There were also, for instance, amongst the many people who came into this Wagnerian life, the readers of the Bayreuth Papers. It is interesting, historically,—to-day it has already all come to be history,—historically it is interesting to take up one of the annual sets of the Bayreuth Papers, and to look through it and see, how they start out with an interpretation of Tristan and Isolde, of the Nibelung Ring, of the Flying Dutchman even, how they start out from the dramatic composition, take the individual figures in the Wagner dramas, the incidents in them, and thence, in an extremely subjective and unreal way, it is true,—unreal even in the spiritual sense,—but nevertheless with a great yearning of spirit, how they attempt to arrive at a more spiritual aspect of the things and of human life in general. And one can truly say, that in the multifarious interpretations of Hamlet and other interpretations of works of art that have since been brought out by theosophists, there is much that reminds one of certain articles, written in the Bayreuth Papers, not by a theosophist, but by an expert Wagnerian, Hans von Wolzogen. And if you woke up one morning, let us say, and if, instead of a theosophist paper that you read perhaps fifteen years ago, some mischievous fairy had laid beside your bed a batch of the Bayreuth Papers, you might really mistake the tone and style of them for something you had come across in the theosophist paper,—if it happened to be an article of Wolzogen's, or one of the kind.

So that this Wagnerianism, one might say, was for many persons, in whom there dwelt homeless souls, an opening, through which to come to some aspect of the world that led away from the crassly material that led them into a spiritual region.

And of all these people who, not externally out of fashion-able affectation, but from an inner impulse of the soul, had grown into a stream of this kind, it may truly be said of them all, that whatever else they might be in life, whether they were lawyers, or lords, or artists, or M.P.s, or whatever else they might be, who had grown into this stream,—even the scientists, for there were some of these too,—they pursued the direction into the spiritual world from an inner longing of their souls, and troubled themselves no further about hard and fast proofs, of which there were plenty to be found everywhere for the world-conception of materialistic construction.

As said before, I might have mentioned other fields as well, where homeless souls of this kind were to be found; one did find plenty of such homeless souls. But this Wagner field was especially characteristic; there these homeless souls might be found in numbers.

Well, it was my lot, I might say, personally, to make acquaintance with a number of souls of this kind (but in company also with others), who had gone, so to speak, through their spiritual novitiate as Wagnerians, and were as I knew them, again in a different metamorphosis. These were souls whom I learnt to know towards the end of the eighteen eighties in Vienna, amongst a group of people, collected together entirely one might say out of homeless souls.

How this homelessness displayed itself in those days, even on the surface, is something of which people no longer form any true conception at all to-day; for many things, which then required a good courage,—courage of soul,—have to-day become quite commonplace.

This, for instance, is something, which I think not many people at the present day will be able to conceive.—I was sitting in a group of such homeless souls, and we had been talking of all sorts of things, when one of them came in, who either had been kept longer than the others by his work, or else maybe he had stayed sitting at home, busied with his own thoughts. At any rate, he came later, and began talking about Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov [Known in English under the title ‘Crime and Punishment’], and spoke of Raskolnivok in such a way that it struck like lightning into the company,—just like a flash of lightning. A new world opened up, a world which ... well, it was very much as though one were transported all of a sudden into another planet:—that was how these souls felt.

Perhaps I may be allowed to say something:—In all these observations of life, which I am telling you by way of introduction to the history of the anthroposophic movement, during all the time that I was impelled by my fate to make these observations in life, there was for myself never any sort of interruption of the contact with the spiritual world. The direct association with the spiritual world was never in any way broken; it was always there. I am obliged to mention this, because this must form the background of these contemplations: namely, the spiritual world as a self-obvious reality, and the human beings on earth seen accordingly as the images of what they really are as spiritual individualities within the spiritual world. I want just to indicate this frame of mind, so that you may take it as spiritual background all through.

Of course, ‘making observations’ did not mean sniffing about like a dog with a cold nose, but taking a warm, whole-hearted interest in everything, and not with the intention of being an observer, but simply because one is in the midst of it, in all good-fellowship and friendliness and courtesy, as a matter of course. So one really was in it all, and became acquainted with the people, not in order to observe them, but because it naturally came about in the course of actual life. And so I made acquaintance at the end of the 'eighties with a group of this kind, composed in other respects of people of every variety of calling, with every different shade of colouring in life, but who were all homeless souls of this kind; and of whom a number, as I said, had come over from the Wagner region, and were people whose spiritual novitiate, so to speak, had been made in the Wagner region. The man of whom I told you, who took off his boots in Vienna and walked barefoot to Bayreuth, he was one of them, and was, in matter of fact, a very clever man. For a while I used to come together with these people quite frequently, often indeed every day. They were now living, as I might say, in a second metamorphosis. Having gone through their Wagner metamorphosis, they were now in their second one.

There were three of them, for instance; people who knew H. P. Blavatsky well, who had been indeed intimate acquaintances of H. P. Blavatsky, and who were zealous theosophists, as theosophists were at that time, when Blavatsky was still living. About the theosophists of that time,—the time just after Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and Secret Doctrine had appeared,—there was something quite peculiar. They all had a marked tendency to be extremely esoteric. They had a contempt for the external life in which they were placed, and a contempt of course for their own profession in life; but were nevertheless under the obligation of mingling in external existence:—that lay in the order of nature. But, as for everything else,—that is ‘esoteric’; there one converses only with Initiates, and only within a small circle. And one looks upon all the people, who, in one's opinion, are not worthy of conversing on such matters, as the sort of people, to whom one talks about the common things of life;—the others, are the people to whom one talks esoterics. They were readers, and good readers too, of Sinnett's newly-published book, Esoteric Buddhism, but all of them people eminently belonging to the class of homeless souls I have just described: people, namely, who, the moment they stepped into practical life, were engineers, electricians, and so forth, and yet again studied with deep interest, with the keenest eagerness, a book like Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. And with these people too, there was a sort of tendency,—inherited partly from their Wagner phase,—to seize on everything available in the way of myths and legends, and explain, or interpret, them in ‘an esoteric sense’, as they called it.

One might observe, however, as these homeless souls really began more and more to make their appearance with the close of the nineteenth century, that the most interesting of all were not those, who after all, if I may say so, with only nine-tenths honest minds—nine-tenths honest, at most — used to study the writings of Blavatsky and Sinnett, but the others,—those who would listen, but were not willing to read for themselves. (In those days people were still exceedingly shy of such things.) They were not willing to read the things personally, but would listen with open mouths, when the people, who had read, expounded them. And it was very interesting to watch how the listeners, who were often more honest-minded than the narrators, would drink in these things, in the homelessness of their souls, like a spiritual nourishment of which they were in need,—and who indeed, out of the comparative lack of sincerity with which this spiritual nourishment was presented to them, converted it into something absolutely sincere, through the superior honesty of their own souls. And the way they drank it in! One could see the longing there was in them, to hear for once something quite different from what is to be found on the ordinary highroad of civilization. How these people gulped down what they heard! And it was extra-ordinarily interesting to see, on the one side the long arms of the highroad life snatching up the people ever and again in their clutches ... and then again, you know, how these people would turn up afresh in some drawing-room where they used to meet,—often it was a coffee-house,—and there would listen with hungry eagerness to what somebody or other had just been reading in some book of this kind that had newly appeared,—and who often laid it on pretty thick with what he had read. But there were these honest souls there too, most unquestionably, who were tossed in this way to-and-fro by life.

In the early days, especially, towards the close of the nineteenth century, one saw these souls regularly tossed to-and-fro, and unwilling really to admit to themselves their own homelessness. For there would be one of them, you know, listening with every sign of the deepest interest to what was being said about physical body, ether body, astral body, kama-manas, manas, budhi, and so on. And then, afterwards, he must go off and write the article the news-paper expected from him, into which of course he must stick the usual plums,—These people, truly, were the kind of souls that quite peculiarly showed, how difficult it really was, particularly at the commencement of the new spiritual period of evolution (which we must reckon really from the end of the nineteenth century), how difficult it was for many a one to abandon the broad highway of life. For indeed, from the way many of them behaved, it looked as though, when they wanted to go to the really important thing, to the thing which interested them above all else in life, they crept away on the sly as it were, and wanted if possible to avoid any one's knowing where they had crept to.—It really was most interesting, the manner in which, amid this European civilization, the spiritual life,—the spiritual volition,—the seeking for a spiritual world,—made its way in.

Now you must consider: it was the end of the 'eighties, in the nineteenth century, and so much more difficult really even than to-day,—less detrimental perhaps than to-day, but more difficult,—to come out straight away with a confession of the spiritual world. For the physical, sensible world, with all its magnificent laws ... why, that was all demonstrated fact; how could one hope to be any match for it! It had on its side any number of demonstrable proofs. The laboratories testified to it, the physical test-room, the medical clinics,—all testified to this demonstrated world!—But the demonstrated world was, for many homeless souls, one so unsatisfying, one which, for the soul's inner life, was so altogether impossible, that they simply, as I said, crept aside. And whilst in huge masses,—not in buckets, but in barrels,—the great civilization of the age was laid before them, they turned aside, to sip such drops as they might catch from the stream which trickled in as it were out of the spiritual world into modern civilization.—It was, in fact, by no means easy to begin straight away to speak of the spiritual world. It was necessary to find something on to which to connect.

If I may here introduce something which is again a personal remark, it is this: For myself ... one couldn't break so to speak into people's houses with the spiritual world; above all, one couldn't break into the whole civilized edifice with it! I had to take something to connect onto; not for an external reason; something that could be quite honestly internal. At this time, the end of the 'eighties, I took in many places, as connections for the remarks I had to make about more intimate aspects of the spiritual world, Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily. That was something onto which one could connect; because, well, Goethe had, at any rate, a recognized standing; Goethe was, after all, Goethe, you know! It was possible, if one took something which had, after all, been written by Goethe, and where the spiritual influences running through it are so patent as in the Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily, it was possible then to connect onto these things. For me, indeed, it was the obvious course at that time to connect on-to Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily; for I certainly could not connect onto the thing which was then being carried on as ‘Theosophy’, such as a group of at least very enterprising people towards the end of the 'eighties had extracted at that time out of Blavatsky and out of Sinnet's Esoteric Buddhism and similar books. For someone who proposed to carry over a scientifically trained mode of thought into the spiritual world, it was simply impossible to come in any way into association with the kind of mental and spiritual atmosphere which grew up in immediate connection with Blavatsky and the Esoteric Buddhism of Sinnet.

And again on the other side the matter was not easy; and for this reason:—Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism no doubt is a book which one very soon found to be a spiritually dilettante work, pieced together out of old, misunderstood esotericisms. But to a work like Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine as a phenomenon of the times, it was not so very easy to arrive at a definite relation. For it is a work, which betrays after all in numerous passages, that what is said in them proceeds from direct and forceful impulses of the spiritual world; so that in numerous passages of this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky's one finds the spiritual world revealing itself in fact through a particular personality,—which was the personality of Blavatsky.

And here there was one thing above all, which could not but especially strike one, which struck one particularly in the course of the search so intently pursued by the people who had come in this way either to Blavatsky personally, or to Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.

Through this book, The Secret Doctrine, a great mass of ancient truths had been voiced to the world,—old-world truths, obtained by atavistic clairvoyance in the pre-historic ages of mankind. It was like a re-awakening, as I might say, of old-world civilizations. One had there before one, coming to one from the world outside, not merely out of one's own self,—one had there, before one, a thing, of which one could but say to oneself: Here lies unearthed a vast treasure of ancient wisdom, which men once possessed, and which was a wondrous source of light to them. And, patched between it all, pieces of the most incredible kind, which continually amaze one; for the book is a slovenly piece of work, quite dilettante as regards any sort of scientific thinking, and nonsensical with respect to a lot of superstitions and similar stuff. Altogether a most extraordinary book, this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky; grand truths, along with terrible rubbish. It was, one might say ... the sort of thing, which ... very well characterized the kind of soul-phenomena to which those were exposed, who were beginning little by little to grow up into homeless souls in the new age. And I really learnt in those days to know a great number of such souls, one could see these homeless souls gradually growing up on earth.

After this, during the time that immediately followed, I was intensely busy with other things, in my time at Weimar. Although, there too, there was plenty of opportunity for observing such souls on the search. For during my Weimar time especially, every sort of person, if I may say so, came through Weimar to visit the Goethe and Schiller archives, and from all the leading countries of the world. One learnt to know the people quite remarkably, on the good and on the bad sides of their souls, as they came through Weimar. Queer-fish, as well as highly educated men of fine breeding and distinction: one learnt to know them all. My meeting with Herman Grimm, for instance, in Weimar is described by me in the last number but one of the “Goetheanum.” [‘A personal recollection etc.’ ‘Goetheanum’ Year 2. (1923), No. 43.]

With Herman Grimm it was really so,—to my feeling at least,—that when he was in Weimar ... he came very often; for when he was on his way from Berlin to Italy or back, and at other times as well, he frequently came to Weimar; and I had grown to have the feeling: Weimar is somehow different, when Herman Grimm is in the place, and when he has left it. Herman Grimm was something that made one understand Weimar particularly well. One knew, what Weimar is, better when Herman Grimm was staying there, than when he was not there.

One need only recall Herman Grimm's novel, Powers Unconquerable, to remark at once, that in Herman Grimm there is at any rate an unmistakably strong impulse towards spiritual things. Read the conclusion of this novel, Powers Unconquerable, and you will see how the spiritual world there plays into the physical one through the soul of a dying woman. There is something grand—tremendous—about it, that lays hold of one. I have spoken of it in previous lectures.

And then, of course, there were queer fish too, that came through Weimar. For instance, there was a Russian State Councillor who was looking for something. One couldn't make out what it was he was looking for,—something or other in the second part of Goethe's Faust. In what way he exactly proposed to find it in the Goethe Archives, that one couldn't make out. Nor did anyone exactly know how to help him. They would have been very glad in the Goethe Archives to help him. But he always went on looking. He was looking for the Point in the second part of Faust; and no one could succeed in discovering what kind of a point he wanted. All one could ever learn was that he was looking for the Point, the Point. And so one could only let him look. But he was so talkative with this Point of his, that in the evening, when we used to be sitting at supper, and he drew near, the whisper would go round: ‘Don't look round you! The Councillor's prowling about!’ Nobody wanted to be caught by him.

Well, next to him again, there sat a very curious visitor, who was a very clever fellow, an American, but who had the peculiarity that his favourite position was sitting on the floor, with his legs cocked one over the other; and he used to sit in this fashion with his books before him on the ground. It was a weird sight. But, as I said, one met with these things too there, and had, in fact, opportunities of seeing a sort of sample slice out of the life of modern civilization, and in an unusually striking way.

Later on, however, when I went to Berlin, my destiny again led me more especially into a circle, made up of the kind of souls whom I spoke of as being ‘homeless souls’. Destiny led me indeed so deep into it that from this particular circle there came the request that I would give them some lectures, the same which have since been published in my book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought. (In the preface to the book I have also given an account of how these things came about.)

This particular circle happened now to be people who had found their way into the Theosophical Society at a somewhat later period, as I may say, than my Vienna acquaintances. And they occupied a different position towards all that had been Blavatsky. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine was a work to which but few of them gave any study; but they were well-versed in all that Blavatsky's successor, Mrs. Annie Besant, was giving forth in her lectures as the Theosophy of the day. In this they were well-versed, these people, to whom I was saying something quite different in my lectures on ‘Mysticism’. They were very well-versed in it indeed; and I remember still, for instance, hearing a lecture by a member of this same group, which was based upon a little book of Mrs. Annie Besant's, in which Mrs. Annie Besant, on her part, had divided up Man into physical body, ether body, astral body, and so on. I can't help often recalling how awful, how appalling, this description seemed to me at the time, of the human being as drawn from Mrs. Annie Besant. I had not read anything of Mrs. Besant's. The first which I heard of her things was this lecture, given by a lady on the strength of Mrs. Annie Besant's newest pamphlet of the day.—It was quite awful, how in those days the different parts of the human being used to be told off in a string, one after the other, with, at bottom, very little understanding,—instead of letting them proceed out of the whole totality of man's being.

And so once more, as in Vienna at the end of the 'eighties, I was in the midst of such homeless souls, and with every opportunity of observing them. And, as you well know, what since has come to be Anthroposophy first grew up in all essentials then, with as many as were there of these homeless souls,—grew up, not in, I would say, but with these homeless souls, who had begun by seeking a new home for their souls in Theosophy.

I wished to carry our observations to this point to-day, my dear friends, and tomorrow will then continue, and try to lead you further in this study in self-recollection, upon which we have only just embarked to-day.

[ 1 ] In public discussions of the anthroposophy for which I stand there have been mingled for some time past statements and judgments about the course which my life has taken. From what has been said in this connection conclusions have been drawn with regard to the origin of the variations so called which some persons believe they have discovered in the course of my spiritual evolution. In view of these facts, friends have felt that it would be well if I myself should write something about my own life.

[ 2 ] This does not accord, I must confess, with my own inclinations. For it has always been my endeavour so to order what I might have to say and what I might think well to do according as the thing itself might require, and not from personal considerations. To be sure, it has always been my conviction that in many provinces of life the personal element gives to human action a colouring of the utmost value; only it seems to me that this personal element should reveal itself through the manner in which one speaks and acts, and not through conscious attention to one's own personality. Whatever may come about as a result of such attention is something a man has to settle with himself.

[ 3 ] And so it has been possible for me to resolve upon the following narration only because it is necessary to set in a true light by means of an objective written statement many a false judgment in reference to the consistency between my life and the thing that I have fostered, and because those who through friendly interest have urged this upon me seem to me justified in view of such false judgments.

The home of my parents was in Lower Austria. My father was born at Geras, a very small place in the Lower Austrian forest region; my mother at Horn, a city of the same district.

[ 4 ] My father passed his childhood and youth in the most intimate association with the seminary of the Premonstratensian Order at Geras. He always looked back with the greatest affection upon this time in his life. He liked to tell how he served in the college, and how the monks instructed him. Later on, he was a huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos. This family had a place at Horn. It was there that my father became acquainted with my mother. Then he gave up the work of huntsman and became a telegraphist on the Southern Austrian Railway. He was sent at first to a little station in southern Styria. Then he was transferred to Kraljevec on the border between Hungary and Croatia. It was during this period that he married my mother. Her maiden name was Blie. She was descended from an old family of Horn. I was born at Kraljevec on February 27, 1861. It thus happened that the place of my birth was far removed from that part of the world from which my family came.

[ 5 ] My father, and my mother as well, were true children of the South Austrian forest country, north of the Danube. It is a region into which the railway was late in coming. Even to this day it has left Geras untouched. My parents loved the life they had lived in their native region. When they spoke of this, one realized instinctively how in their souls they had never parted from that birthplace in spite of the fate that forced them to pass the greater part of their lives far away from it. And so, when my father retired, after a life filled with work, they returned at once there-to Horn.

[ 6 ] My father was a man of the utmost good will, but of a temper – especially while he was still young – which could be passionately aroused. The work of a railway employee was to him a matter of duty; he had no love for it. While I was still a boy, he would sometimes have to remain on duty for three days and three nights continuously. Then he would be relieved for twenty-four hours. Under such conditions life for him wore no bright colours; all was dull grey. Some pleasure he found in keeping up with political developments. In these he took the liveliest interest. My mother, since our worldly goods were none too plentiful, was forced to devote herself to household duties. Her days were filled with loving care of her children and of the little home.

[ 7 ] When I was a year and a half old; my father was transferred to Mödling, near Vienna. There my parents remained a half-year. Then my father was put in charge of the little station on the Southern Railway at Pottschach in Lower Austria, near the Styrian border. There I lived from my second to my eighth year. A wonderful landscape formed the environment of my childhood. The view stretched as far as the mountains that separate Lower Austria from Styria: [ 8 ] “Snow Mountain,” Wechsel, the Rax Alps, the Semmering. Snow Mountain caught the sun's earliest rays on its bare summit, and the kindling reflection of these from the mountain down to the little village was the first greeting of dawn in the beautiful summer days. The grey back of the Wechsel put one by contrast in a sober mood. It was as if the mountains rose up out of the all-surrounding green of the friendly landscape. On the distant boundaries of the circle one had the majesty of the peaks, and close around the tenderness of nature.

[ 8 ] But around the little station all interest was centered on the business of the railway. At that time the trains passed in that region only at long intervals; but, when they came, many of the men of the village who could spare the time were generally gathered at the station, seeking thus to bring some change into their lives, which they found otherwise very monotonous. The schoolmaster, the priest, the book-keeper of the manor, and often the burgomaster as well, would be there.

[ 9 ] It seems to me that passing my childhood in such an environment had a certain significance for my life. For I felt a very deep interest in everything about me of a mechanical character; and I know how this interest tended constantly to overshadow in my childish soul the affections which went out to that tender and yet mighty nature into which the railway train, in spite of being in subjection to this mechanism, must always disappear in the far distance.

[ 10 ] In the midst of all this there was present the influence of a certain personality of marked originality, the priest of St. Valentin, a place that one could reach on foot from Pottschach in about three-quarters of an hour. This priest liked to come to the home of my parents. Almost every day he took a walk to our home, and he nearly always stayed for a long time. He belonged to the liberal type of Catholic cleric, tolerant and genial; a robust, broad-shouldered man. He was quite witty, too; had many jokes to tell, and was pleased when he drew a laugh from the persons about him. And they would laugh even more loudly over what he had said long after he was gone. He was a man of a practical way of life, and liked to give good practical advice. Such a piece of practical counsel produced its effects in my family for a long time. There was a row of acacia trees (Robinien) on each side of the railway at Pottschach. Once we were walking along the little footpath under these trees, when he remarked: “Ah, what beautiful acacia blossoms these are!” He seized one of the branches at once and broke off a mass of the blossoms. Spreading out his huge red pocket-handkerchief – he was extremely fond of snuff – he carefully wrapped the twigs in this, and put the “Binkerl” under his arm. Then he said: “How lucky you are to have so many acacia blossoms! “My father was astonished, and answered: “Why, what can we do with them?” “Wh-a-a-t?” said the priest. “Don't you know that you can bake the acacia blossoms just like elder flowers, and that they taste much better then because they have a far more delicate aroma?” From that time on we often had in our family, as opportunity offered from time to time, “baked acacia blossoms.”

[ 11 ] In Pottschach a daughter and another son were born to my parents. There was never any further addition to the family.

[ 12 ] As a very young child I showed a marked individuality. From the time that I could feed myself, I had to be carefully watched. For I had formed the conviction that a soup-bowl or a coffee cup was meant to be used only once; and so, every time that I was not watched, as soon as I had finished eating something I would throw the bowl or the cup under the table and smash it to pieces. Then, when my mother appeared, I would call out to her : “Mother, I've finished!”

[ 13 ] This could not have been a mere propensity for destroying things, since I handled my toys with the greatest care, and kept them in good condition for a long time. Among these toys those that had the strongest attraction for me were the kind which even now I consider especially good. These were picture-books with figures that could be made to move by pulling strings attached to them at the bottom. One associated little stories with these figures, to whom one gave a part of their life by pulling the strings. Many a time have I sat by the hour poring over the picture-books with my sister. Besides, I learned from them by myself the first steps in reading.

[ 14 ] My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of “teaching school” was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him. I had no faith whatever that I could ever learn anything from him. For he often came to our house with his wife and his little son, and this son, according to my notions at that time, was a scamp. So I had this idea firmly fixed in my head: “Whoever has such a scamp for a son, nobody can learn anything from him.” Besides, something else happened, “quite dreadful.” This scamp, who also was in the school, played the prank one day of dipping a chip into all the ink-wells of the school and making circles around them with dabs of ink. His father noticed these. Most of the pupils had already gone. The teacher's son, two other boys, and I were still there. The schoolmaster was beside himself; he talked in a frightful manner. I felt sure that he would actually roar but for the fact that his voice was always husky. In spite of his rage, he got an inkling from our behaviour as to who the culprit was. But things then took a different turn. The teacher's home was next-door to the school-room. The “lady head mistress” heard the commotion and came into the school-room with wild eyes, waving her arms in the air. To her it was perfectly clear that her little son could not have done this thing. She put the blame on me. I ran away. My father was furious when I reported this matter at home. Then, the next time the teacher's family came to our house, he told them with the utmost bluntness that the friendship between us was ended, and added baldly: “My boy shall never set foot in your school again,” Now my father himself took over the task of teaching me; and so I would sit beside him in his little office by the hour, and had to read and write between whiles whenever he was busy with his duties.

[ 15 ] Neither with him could I feel any real interest in what had to come to me by way of direct instruction. What interested me was the things that my father himself was writing. I would imitate what he did. In this way I learned a great deal. As to the things I was taught by him, I could see no reason why I should do these just for my own improvement. On the other hand, I became rooted, in a child's way, in everything that formed a part of the practical work of life. The routine of a railway office, everything connected with it, – this caught my attention. It was, however, more especially the laws of nature that had already taken me as their little errand boy. When I wrote, it was because I had to write, and I wrote as fast as I could so that I should soon have a page filled. For then I could strew the sort of dust my father used over this writing. Then I would be absorbed in watching how quickly the dust dried up the ink, and what sort of mixture they made together. I would try the letters over and over with my fingers to discover which were already dry, which not. My curiosity about this was very great, and it was in this way chiefly that I quickly learned the alphabet. Thus my writing lessons took on a character that did not please my father, but he was good-natured and reproved me only by frequently calling me an incorrigible little “rascal.” This, however, was not the only thing that evolved in me by means of the writing lessons. What interested me more than the shapes of the letters was the body of the writing quill itself. I could take my father's ruler and force the point of this into the slit in the point of the quill, and in this manner carry on researches in physics, concerning the elasticity of a feather. Afterwards, of course, I bent the feather back into shape; but the beauty of my handwriting distinctly suffered in this process.

[ 16 ] This was also the time when, with my inclination toward the understanding of natural phenomena, I occupied a position midway between seeing through a combination of things, on the one hand, and “the limits of understanding” on the other. About three minutes from the home of my parents there was a mill. The owners of the mill were the god-parents of my brother and sister. We were always welcome at this mill. I often disappeared within it. Then I studied with all my heart the work of a miller. I forced a way for myself into the “interior of nature.” Still nearer us, however, there was a yarn factory. The raw material for this came to the railway station; the finished product went away from the station. I participated thus in everything which disappeared within the factory and everything which reappeared. We were strictly forbidden to take one peep at the “inside” of this factory. This we never succeeded in doing. There were the “limits of understanding” And how I wished to step across the boundaries! For almost every day the manager of the factory came to see my father on some matter of business. For me as a boy this manager was a problem, casting a miraculous veil, as it were, over the “inside” of those works. He was spotted here and there with white tufts; his eyes had taken on a certain set look from working at machinery. He spoke hoarsely, as if with a mechanical speech. “What is the connection between this man and everything that is surrounded by those walls?” – this was an insoluble problem facing my mind. But I never questioned anyone regarding the mystery. For it was my childish conviction that it does no good to ask questions about a problem which is concealed from one's eyes. Thus I lived between the friendly mill and the unfriendly factory.

[ 17 ] Once something happened at the station that was very “dreadful.” A freight train rumbled up. My father stood looking at it. One of the rear cars was on fire. The crew had not noticed this at all. All that followed as a result of this made a deep impression on me. Fire had started in a car by reason of some highly inflammable material. For a long time I was absorbed in the question how such a thing could happen. What my surroundings said to me in this case was, as in many other matters, not to my satisfaction. I was filled with questions, and I had to carry these about with me unanswered. It was thus that I reached my eighth year.

[ 18 ] During my eighth year the family moved to Neudörfl, a little Hungarian village. This village is just at the border over against Lower Austria. The boundary here was formed by the Laytha River. The station that my father had in charge was at one end of the village. Half an hour's walk further on was the boundary stream. Still another half-hour brought one to Wiener-Neustadt.

[ 19 ] The range of the Alps that I had seen close by at Pottschach was now visible only at a distance. Yet the mountains still stood there in the background to awaken our memories when we looked at lower mountains that could be reached in a short time from our family's new home. Massive heights covered with beautiful forests bounded the view in one direction; in the other, the eye could range over a level region, decked out in fields and woodland, all the way to Hungary. Of all the mountains, I gave my unbounded love to one that could be climbed in three-quarters of an hour. On its crest there stood a chapel containing a painting of Saint Rosalie. This chapel came to be the objective of a walk which I often took at first with my parents and my sister and brother, and later loved to take alone. Such walks were filled with a special happiness because of the fact that at that time of year we could bring back with us rich gifts of nature. For in these woods there were blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. One could often find an inner satisfaction in an hour and a half of berrying for the purpose of adding a delicious contribution to the family supper, which otherwise consisted merely of a piece of buttered bread or bread and cheese for each of us.

[ 20 ] Still another pleasant thing came from rambling about in these forests, which were the common property of all. There the villagers got their supplies of wood. The poor gathered it for themselves; the well-to-do had servants to do this. One could become acquainted with all of these most-friendly persons. They always had time for a chat when Steiner Rudolf met them. “So thou goest again for a bit of a walk, Steiner Rudolf” – thus they would begin, and then they would talk about everything imaginable. The people did not think of the fact that they had a mere child before them. For at the bottom of their souls they also were only children, even when they could number sixty years. And so I really learned from the stories they told me almost everything that happened in the houses of the village.

[ 21 ] Half an hour's walk from Neudörfl is Sauerbrunn, where there is a spring containing iron and carbonic acid. The road to this lies along the railway, and part of the way through beautiful woods. During vacation time I went there every day early in the morning, carrying with me a “Blutzer.” This is a water vessel made of clay. The smallest of these hold three or four litres. One could fill this without charge at the spring. Then at midday the family could enjoy the delicious sparkling water.

[ 22 ] Toward Wiener-Neustadt and farther on toward Styria, the mountains fall away to a level country. Through this level country the Laytha River winds its way. On the slope of the mountains there was a cloister of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. I often met the monks on my walks. I still remember how glad I should have been if they had spoken to me. They never did. And so I carried away from these meetings an undefined but solemn feeling which remained constantly with me for a long time. It was in my ninth year that the idea became fixed in me that there must be weighty matters in connection with the duties of these monks which I ought to learn to understand. There again I was filled with questions which I had to carry around unanswered. Indeed, these questions about all possible sorts of things made me as a boy very lonely.

[ 23 ] On the foothills of the Alps two castles were visible: Pitten and Frohsdorf. In the second there lived at that time Count Chambord, who, at the beginning of the year 1870, claimed the throne of France as Henry V. Very deep were the impressions that I received from that fragment of life bound up with the castle Frohsdorf. The Count with his retinue frequently took the train for a journey from the station at Neudörfl.

Everything drew my attention to these men. Especially deep was the impression made by one man in the Count's retinue. He had but one ear. The other had been slashed off clean. The hair lying over this he had braided. At the sight of this I perceived for the first time what a duel is. For it was in this manner that the man had lost one ear.

[ 24 ] Then, too, a fragment of social life unveiled itself to me in connection with Frohsdorf. The assistant teacher at Neudörfl, whom I was often permitted to see at work in his little chamber, prepared innumerable petitions to Count Chambord for the poor of the village and the country around. In response to every such appeal there always came back a donation of one gulden, and from this the teacher was always allowed to keep six kreuzer for his services. This income he had need of, for the annual salary yielded him by his profession was fifty-eight gulden. In addition, he had his morning coffee and his lunch with the “schoolmaster.” Then, too, he gave special lessons to about ten children, of whom I was one. For such lessons the charge was one gulden a month.

[ 25 ] To this assistant teacher I owe a great deal. Not that I was greatly benefited by his lessons at the school. In that respect I had about the same experience as at Pottschach. As soon as we moved to Neudörfl, I was sent to school there This school consisted of one room in which five classes of both boys and girls all had their lessons. While the boy who sat on my bench were at their task of copying out the story of King Arpad, the very little fellows stood at a black board on which i and u had been written with chalk for them. It was simply impossible to do anything save to let the mind fall into a dull reverie while the hands almost mechanically took care of the copying. Almost all the teaching had to be done by the assistant teacher alone. The “schoolmaster” appeared in the school only very rarely. He was also the village notary, and it was said that in this occupation he had so much to take up his time that he could never keep school.

[ 26 ] In spite of all this I learned earlier than usual to read well. Because of this fact the assistant teacher was able to take hold of something within me which has influenced the whole course of my life. Soon after my entrance into the Neudörfl school, I found a book on geometry in his room. I was on such good terms with the teacher that I was permitted at once to borrow the book for my own use. I plunged into it with enthusiasm. For weeks at a time my mind it was filled with coincidences, similarities between triangles, squares, polygons; I racked my brains over the question: Where do parallel lines actually meet? The theorem of Pythagoras fascinated me. [ 27 ] That one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself, entirely without impression upon the external senses – this gave me the deepest satisfaction. I found in this a solace for the unhappiness which my unanswered questions had caused me. To be able to lay hold upon something in the spirit alone brought to me an inner joy. I am sure that I learned first in geometry to experience this joy.

[ 28 ] In my relation to geometry I must now perceive the first budding forth of a conception which has since gradually evolved in me. This lived within me more or less unconsciously during my childhood, and about my twentieth year took a definite and fully conscious form.

[ 29 ] I said to myself: “The objects and occurrences which the senses perceive are in space. But, just as this space is outside of man, so there exists also within man a sort of soul-space which is the arena of spiritual realities and occurrences.” In my thoughts I could not see anything in the nature of mental images such as man forms within him from actual things, but I saw a spiritual world in this soul-arena. Geometry seemed to me to be a knowledge which man appeared to have produced but which had, nevertheless, a significance quite independent of man. Naturally I did not, as a child, say all this to myself distinctly, but I felt that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry.

[ 30 ] For the reality of the spiritual world was to me as certain as that of the physical. I felt the need, however, for a sort of justification for this assumption. I wished to be able to say to myself that the experience of the spiritual world is just as little an illusion as is that of the physical world. With regard to geometry I said to myself: “Here one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences.” In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced, even as, so to speak, for the physical. And in this way I talked about this. I had two conceptions which were naturally undefined, but which played a great role in my mental life even before my eighth year. I distinguished things as those “which are seen” and those “which are not seen.”

[ 31 ] I am relating these matters quite frankly, in spite of the fact that those persons who are seeking for evidence to prove that anthroposophy is fantastic will, perhaps, draw the conclusion from this that even as a child I was marked by a gift for the fantastic: no wonder, then, that a fantastic philosophy should also have evolved within me.

[ 32 ] But it is just because I know how little I have followed my own inclinations in forming conceptions of a spiritual world – having on the contrary followed only the inner necessity of things – that I myself can look back quite objectively upon the childlike unaided manner in which I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world “which is not seen.”

[ 33 ] Only I must also say that I loved to live in that world For I should have been forced to feel the physical world as a sort of spiritual darkness around me had it not received light from that side.

[ 34 ] The assistant teacher of Neudörfl had provided me, in the geometry text-book, with that which I then needed – justification for the spiritual world.

[ 35 ] In other ways also I owe much to him. He brought to me the element of art. He played the piano and the violin and he drew a great deal. These things attracted me powerfully to him. Just as much as I possibly could be, was I with him. Of drawing he was especially fond, and even in my ninth year he interested me in drawing with crayons. I had in this way to copy pictures under his direction. Long did I sit, for instance, copying a portrait of Count Szedgenyi.

[ 36 ] Very seldom at Neudörfl, but frequently in the neighbouring town of Sauerbrunn, could I listen to the impressive music of the Hungarian gipsies.

[ 37 ] All this played its part in a childhood which was passed in the immediate neighbourhood of the church and the churchyard. The station at Neudörfl was but a few steps from the church, and between these lay the churchyard. [ 38 ] If one went along by the churchyard and then a short stretch further, one came into the village itself. This consisted of two rows of houses. One row began with the school and the other with the home of the priest. Between those two rows of houses flowed a little brook, along the banks of which grew stately nut trees. In connection with these nut trees an order of precedence grew up among the children of the school. When the nuts began to get ripe, the boys and girls assailed the trees with stones, and in this way laid in a winter's supply of nuts. In autumn almost the only thing anyone talked about was the size of his harvest of nuts. Whoever had gathered most of all was the most looked up to, and then step by step was the descent all the way down – to me, the last, who as an “outsider in the village” had no right to share in this order of precedence.

[ 39 ] Near the railway station, the row of most important houses, in which the “big farmers” lived, was met at right angles by a row of some twenty houses owned by the “middle class” villagers. Then, beginning from the gardens which belonged to the station, came a group of thatched houses belonging to the “small cottagers.” These constituted the immediate neighbourhood of my family. The roads leading out from the village went past fields and vineyards that were owned by the villagers. Every year I took part with the “small cottagers” in the vintage, and once also in a village wedding.

[ 40 ] Next to the assistant teacher, the person whom I loved most among those who had to do with the direction of the school was the priest. He came regularly twice a week to give instruction in religion and often besides for inspection of the school. The image of the man was deeply impressed upon my mind, and he has come back into my memory again and again throughout my life. Among the persons whom I came to know up to my tenth or eleventh year, he was by far the most significant. He was a vigorous Hungarian patriot. He took active part in the process of Magyarizing the Hungarian territory which was then going forward. From this point of view he wrote articles in the Hungarian language, which I thus learned through the fact that the assistant teacher had to make clear copies of these and he always discussed their contents with me in spite of my youthfulness. But the priest was also an energetic worker for the Church. This once impressed itself deeply upon my mind through one of his sermons.

[ 41 ] At Neudörfl there was a lodge of Freemasons. To the villagers this was shrouded in mystery, and they wove about it the most amazing legends. The leading role in this lodge belonged to the manager of a match-factory which stood at the end of the village. Next to him in prominence among the persons immediately interested in the matter were the manager of another factory and a clothing merchant. Otherwise the only significance attaching to the lodge arose from the fact that from time to time strangers from “remote parts” were visitors there, and these seemed to the villagers in the highest degree unwelcome. The clothing merchant was a noteworthy person. He always walked with his head bowed over as if in deep thought. People called him “the make-believe,” and his isolation rendered it neither possible nor necessary that anyone should approach him. The building in which the lodge met belonged to his home.

[ 42 ] I could establish no sort of relationship to this lodge. For the entire behaviour of the persons about me in regard to this matter was such that here again I had to refrain from asking questions; besides, the utterly absurd way in which the manager of the match-factory talked about the church made a shocking impression on me.

[ 43 ] Then one Sunday the priest delivered a sermon in his energetic fashion in which he set forth in due order the true principles of morality for human life and spoke of the enemy of the truth in figures of speech framed to fit the lodge. As a climax, he delivered his advice: “Beloved Christians, beware of him who is an enemy of the truth: for example, a Mason or a Jew.” In the eyes of the people, the factory owner and the clothing merchant were thus authoritatively exposed. The vigour with which this had been uttered made a specially deep impression upon me. [ 44 ] I owe to the priest also, because of a certain profound impression made upon me, a very great deal in the later orientation of my spiritual life. One day he came into the school, gathered round him in the teacher's little room the “riper” children, among whom he included me, unfolded a drawing he had made, and with the help of this explained to us the Copernican system of astronomy. He spoke about this very vividly – the revolution of the earth around the sun, its rotation on its axis, the inclination of the axis in summer and winter, and also the zones of the earth. In all of it I was absorbed; I made drawings of a similar kind for days together, and then received from the priest further special instruction concerning eclipses of the sun and the moon; and thence-forward I directed all my search for knowledge toward this subject. I was then about ten years old, and I could not yet write without mistakes in spelling and grammar.

[ 45 ] Of the deepest significance for my life as a boy was the nearness of the church and the churchyard beside it. Everything that happened in the village school was affected in its course by its relationship to these. This was not by reason of certain dominant social and political relationships existing in every community; it was due to the fact that the priest was an impressive personality. The assistant teacher was at the same time organist of the church and custodian of the vestments used at Mass and of the other church furnishings. He performed all the services of an assistant to the priest in his religious ministrations. We schoolboys had to carry out the duties of ministrants and choristers during Mass, rites for the dead, and funerals. The solemnity of the Latin language and of the liturgy was a thing in which my boyish soul found a Vital happiness. Because of the fact that up to my tenth year I took such an earnest part in the services of the church, I was often in the company of the priest whom I so revered. [ 46 ] In the home of my parents I received no encouragement in this matter of my relationship to the church. My father took no part in this. He was then a “freethinker.” He never entered the church to which I had become so deeply attached; and yet he also, as a boy and as a young man, had been equally devoted and active. In his case this all changed once more only when he went back, as an old man on a pension, to Horn, his native region. There he became again “a pious man.” But by that time I had long ceased to have any association with my parents' home.

[ 47 ] From the time of my boyhood at Neudörfl, I have always had the strongest impression of the manner in which the contemplation of the church services in close connection with the solemnity of liturgical music causes the riddle of existence to rise in powerful suggestive fashion before the mind. The instruction in the Bible and the catechism imparted by the priest had far less effect upon my mental world than what he accomplished by means of liturgy in mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. From the first this was to me no mere form, but a profound experience. It was all the more so because of the fact that in this I was a stranger in the home of my parents. Even in the atmosphere I had to breathe in my home, my spirit did not lose that vital experience which it had acquired from the liturgy. I passed my life amid this home environment without sharing in it, perceived it; but my real thoughts, feelings, and experience were continually in that other world. I can assert emphatically however, in this connection that I was no dreamer, but quite self-sufficient in all practical affairs.

[ 48 ] A complete counterpart to this world of mine was my father's political affairs. He and another employee took turns on duty. This man lived at another railway station, for which he was partly responsible. He came to Neudörfl only every two or three days. During the free hours of the evening he and my father would talk politics. This would take place at a table which stood near the station under two huge and wonderful lime trees. There our whole family and the other employee would assemble. My mother knitted or crocheted; my brother and sister busied themselves about us; I would often sit at the table and listen to the unheard of political arguments of the two men. My participation, however, never had anything to do with the sense of what they were saying, but only with the form which the conversation took. They were always on opposite sides; if one said “Yes,” the other always contradicted him with “No.” All this, however, was marked, not only by a certain intensity – indeed, violence – but also by the good humour which was a basic element in my father's nature.

[ 49 ] In the little circle often gathered there, to which were frequently added some of the “notabilities” of the village, there appeared at times a doctor from Wiener-Neustadt. He had many patients in this place, where at that time there was no physician. He came from Wiener-Neustadt to Neudörfl on foot, and would come to the station after visiting his patients to wait for the train on which he went back. This man passed with my parents, and with most persons who knew him, as an odd character. He did not like to talk about his profession as a doctor, but all the more gladly did he talk about German literature. It was from him that I first heard of Lessing, Goethe, Schiller. At my home there was never any such conversation. Nothing was known of such things. Nor in the village school was there any mention of such matters. There the emphasis was all on Hungarian history. Priest and assistant teacher had no interest in the masters of German literature. And so it happened that with the Wiener-Neustadt doctor a whole new world came within my range of vision. He took an interest in me; often drew me aside after he had rested for a while under the lime trees, walked up and down with me by the station, and talked – not like a lecturer, but enthusiastically – about German literature. In these talks he set forth all sorts of ideas as to what is beautiful and what is ugly.

[ 50 ] This also has remained as a picture with me, giving me many happy hours in memory throughout my life: the tall, slender doctor, with his quick, long stride, always with his umbrella in his right hand held invariably in such a way that it dangled by his side, and I, a boy of ten years, on the other side, quite absorbed in what the man was saying.

[ 51 ] Along with all these things I was tremendously concerned with everything pertaining to the railroad. I first learned the principles of electricity in connection with the station telegraph. I learned also as a boy to telegraph.

[ 52 ] As to language, I grew up in the dialect of German that is spoken in Eastern Lower Austria. This was really the same as that then used in those parts of Hungary bordering on Lower Austria. My relationship to reading and that to writing were entirely different. In my boyhood I passed rapidly over the words in reading; my mind went immediately to the perceptions, the concepts, the ideas, so that I got no feeling from reading either for spelling or for writing grammatically. On the other hand, in writing I had a tendency to fix the word-forms in my mind by their sounds as I generally heard them spoken in the dialect. For this reason it was only after the most arduous effort that I gained facility in writing the literary language; whereas reading was easy for me from the first.

[ 53 ] Under such influences I grew up to the age at which my father had to decide whether to send me to the Gymnasium or to the Realschule ¹ at Wiener-Neustadt. From that time on I heard much talk with other persons – in between the political discussions – as to my own future. My father was given this and that advice; I already knew: “He likes to listen to what others say, but he acts according to his own fixed and definite determination.”

• 1. The Gymnasium and the Realschule are secondary schools, the curriculum of the former giving more prominence to the classics and that of the later to science and modern languages.

It will be apparent to you that what I have put forward here and elsewhere about the present social problems has its source in the foundations of Spiritual Science. And further, that there has been an endeavour to let flow into the Appeal I recently read out to you, the practical ideas which must arise from a deeper insight into the existing world situation. We should never tire of bringing before our souls ever and again the most important thing, and that is how ways and means may be found to call up the clearest possible understanding for what must enter into mankind, to promote deeds and actions, when there is right thinking about the essential nature of the social organism. You will have realised how radically different man's whole thinking, feeling and willing have become since the middle of the fifteenth century, and how the whole of our history, if it is to be made fruitful for mankind, must be revised from the standpoint of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch with its fundamental change in man's attitude of soul, The characteristics of the evolution during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch have had the result that in people endowed with a certain will – be it regarded as right or wrong, good or bad – that the thinking underlying these people's will, takes on a definite form. And from this thinking that has a definite form, in essentials the whole of our social movement is built. The social movement has its foundation in those thoughts that people are able to formulate in accordance with the fundamental character of our time.

In the threefold division of which we have often spoken, and which is the subject of the Appeal, the actual political State is really but one department, one member, of the threefold organism, though most people believe it to embrace the whole social organism, confusing it indeed with the social organism. When on the one hand you understand what the threefold social organism amounts to, and on the other hand you try to grasp how in modern life there has been a one-sided tendency to centralise the social organism, to let the State swallow up everything, then putting together these two things you have something important for understanding the matter. And to understand the present social movement from a serious standpoint is today the most vital necessity for man. For a long time people will still be groping in uncertainty as to what is to happen. It cannot be otherwise. The way it must be regarded, however, the way it must be worked for, is by widening the understanding of the social organism, creating the possibility for it really to be understood. From this standpoint it is extraordinarily interesting to observe the kind of thinking of the men who, in some particular direction, are active in social matters. Things must depend more and more upon our observing the way, the form, the structure of men's thinking, and upon our paying less heed to the content. On the most various occasions we have had to emphasise that what people really think matters very much less than how they think, and how their thinking is directed. Finally, it is not of such great importance for what is penetrating and decisive in the present world movement whether anyone is a reactionary in the original sense or liberal, democratic, socialist or bolshevik. What people say is not very important, but what is important is how they think, in what way their thoughts are formed. We can see today how personalities arise whose thought content and programmes are thoroughly socialistic, but who in the form of their thought are not very different from those who, over a large area of the earth, have just been overthrown.

We must therefore look deeper into what lies behind all this. For, as I recently said in Basle, as time goes on very little will depend upon the programmes that go around as if they had been mummified. Much will, depend upon people learning to think differently, to form their thoughts differently. Up to now there is only anthroposophical thinking that can guide men's thinking today in another direction, and for this reason it is regarded by many as something fantastic. It is, however, the people who call it so who themselves are fantastic, even if materialistically fantastic, for all the same they are theorists who cannot face reality. But what is developing will come from the way in which men think. It is just this that I want to dwell upon today.

Whoever pays heed to the ways in which the views of the proletarian movement have gradually been formed and developed up to now, must see how very various these views are. One fact should be of special interest to us today – that by far the greater number among the proletariat wholeheartedly profess Marxism in either its original or its more mature form. It is very characteristic how Karl Marx, having become acquainted with French social Positivism and then, from London, having studied the world of socialism and its development, built up on these foundations his extraordinarily arresting socialist theories which have gradually caught hold of the whole proletarian world. It is actually the Marxist thought that has spread abroad and has flamed up into the conflagration of this last catastrophe, as we have it today, and as it will continue to spread. Many even among the socialists refer to Karl Marx as if they themselves were Marxists. The one maintains that his standpoint is orthodox Marxism, another says that he represents advanced Marxism, and so on but everything goes back to Marx.

Now a statement by Karl Marx himself throws great light on certain aspects of this matter. Speaking of Marxism he once emphasised that he himself was no Marxist. Particularly in these times one should not forget this statement. For it is only by paying dire heed to such things that one notices how everything depends not on what is said but on the way in which thoughts are formed. Especially in our hard times the easy way of just building programmes will never meet human needs. And there is a way, even if a long one, that leads from Marx to Lenin who now regards himself as a true Marxist. To speak of Lenin is not to speak of a single personality but of a movement, which, if you like, is fundamentally open to criticism but from which the impulse is spreading widely. This movement, however, is also extended through certain methods considered by its adherents as actually being true Marxism.

Now the problem we have here is most easily approached when in the centre of our considerations we place the now prevalent one-sidedness that consists in handing over everything to the State, when in reality we have to do with a threefold organism of which the State is only one member. It is indeed interesting to follow up how Karl Marx formed his thoughts, and, quite apart from what he says with regard to their content, to look more at the thought structure. Whoever, for example, goes to his writings and reads them in the hope of finding some conception of how the social organism will be moulded, will be greatly disappointed. Statements such as those imparted by Spiritual Science about the social organism, in Karl Marx will be sought in vain. In the way he develops his thoughts there is nowhere a trace of anything of the kind. If in his writings you follow his national-economic views on the formation of the social order, you come to the conclusion that Karl Marx has thought out nothing new about the social organism. He has done no original thinking whatever about what the future of the world should be. He seeks to discover how those men thought who brought about the age of capitalism, and how the questions of wage, capital, ground-rent, and so on, were matured under the rule of capitalism. He pulls to pieces the national-economy of the capitalist rule. The most important ideas given by Karl Marx to the proletariat can already be found in Ricardo and elsewhere. Karl Marx says: In the capitalistic economic order, gradually built up in recent times, men have held the opinions from which have arisen the modern wage conditions, the modern capital conditions, the modern ground-rent conditions. And now he tries to think further. Not that he tells us what shall be put in place of this social membering that has arisen under capitalism; he only shows that under this capitalist system the proletariat necessarily developed as a special class
of human beings. That is so; that is a reality. He then goes on to show whither the capitalist rule is leading. He proves that it is leading to an absurdity, that having reached its peak it is obliged to change into its opposite. Capital is increasingly gathered into the hands of the individual until it reaches what is most individual, which at the same time is the community. However Marx and Marxists strive against the recognition of the word, according to Marx capital passes over to the control of the State, so that the State becomes the one great capitalist. But this then includes in the representation of the people created by the State, all the human beings taking part in that State.

It is on this statement that the most varied socialistic ideas of recent times have been formed. Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels worked for a long time limiting, modifying, elaborating, the original expression of these thoughts, as must happen with men who do not remain stationary but, in observing the world, develop themselves. And because Karl Marx' thoughts appealed deeply to the souls of the proletariat there now arose on the basis of Marxism a great movement which has taken the most varied forms in the different countries. The socialism that has developed on the foundation of Marxism is of one shade in England, another in France; it finds its most definite expression in Germany, and this has passed on to Russia. But the essential question of principle, the relation of the proletariat to the State, has become more or less nebulous. Thus the people have formed a number of parties within the framework of socialism, and these parties fight each other to the knife because they regard in such different ways this recent historic development, namely, the relation of the proletariat to the State. The most varied streams play their part here, upon which today we do not wish to touch. We will merely indicate the way that leads from Karl Marx to Lenin. For Lenin claims to be the most orthodox Marxist who best understands Marx, whereas numerous other socialists calling themselves Marxists are stigmatised by Lenin as deserters and traitors, and given many other names besides. Many, because of their attitude during the so-called world war, are given the name Social-Chauvinists, and so on.

As I have just said, an essential feature of Karl Marx' thought-structure is the lack of positive ideas on how the matter should develop, the lack in his thought of any solution. Marx only says: you capitalist thinkers have spoken and acted in such a way that it must bring about your undoing. Then the proletariat will be supreme. I do not know what they will do then, nor does anyone, but we shall soon see. What is certain is that you capitalist thinkers, by your own measures and by what you have made of the world, have prepared your own downfall. What will then happen if the proletariat are there, what they will do, neither I nor any of the rest of you know, but it will soon be seen.

If you take all this as I have just been picturing it, you will see the form of the thought. What is showing itself everywhere in the external world is simply being absorbed and thought-out. But when we have come to the end of the thought it nullifies itself, comes to nothing, fades away. This must come as a shock to anyone with feeling for such things. Studying Marxism one always finds that it is all the result of certain thoughts, not however Marx' thoughts but the thoughts of modern times. Then one is driven into an eddying confusion of thoughts leaning to what is destructive, leading to no firm ground. It is most interesting how this thought-structure, really striking even in Marx, in Lenin comes to its highest potency, one might almost say to the point of genius. Lenin points to Marx as if to an absolute opponent of the State, as if Marx had really started out with the idea that when once the suppression of the proletariat ceased, the State, as it has developed historically, would have to came to an end. This is interesting, because it is just those who regard Lenin as opponent who would like to throw everything on to this State in its historically developed form. So that in present-day socialist circles we have this contrast—on the one hand the strict fanatic of the State, wanting everything state-controlled, on the other hand Lenin, the absolute opponent of the State, who sees salvation for mankind not in the abolition—he would consider that a Utopia—but in the gradual dying away of the State. And just by observing how Lenin thought about this, we arrive at the form of the thought living in him. Lenin thinks thus: The proletariat is the only class that can come to the top when the others have arrived at what is absurd and are ripe for their downfall. This proletarian class will bring to its highest perfection what has developed as a bourgeois State.—Please give due heed to the form of the thoughts. For example, Lenin does not say as the anarchists do: Away with the State! That would not occur to him. He is opposed to Anarchism and would consider it pure madness to abolish the State. Rather would he say: Should evolution advance on the lines laid down by the bourgeoisie, then the bourgeoisie will soon come to an end. The proletariat will take over the machinery of the State, and will bring to perfection this State founded by the bourgeoisie as an instrument to suppress the proletariat; they will make of it the most perfect State. But, Lenin now asks, what are the characteristics are of the most perfect State? And he thinks himself a true Marxist in saying: What will be characteristic of the perfect State when it comes into being—and it will be brought into being by the proletariat, as the logical conclusion of what has been set up by the bourgeoisie—is that it will lead to its own decay. The present State can only exist as a State created by the bourgeois class, because it is imperfect; when the proletariat have brought to completion what the bourgeoisie began, then the State will have received an impulse in the right direction, that consists in its bringing about its own end.

That is the particular form of Lenin's thinking. Here you see in greater potency what is to be found already in Marx. The thought when developed comes to nothing. Lenin is, however, a very realistic thinker who, by reason of the historic course of events, has arrived at the conclusion that the State must be brought to fulfillment; so far it has not died because, not having come to full development, it has preserved its life-forces. When the proletariat have perfected it, the ground will have been prepared for its gradual disappearance.

Thus you see a conception that has been formed out of reality, and this conception has the tendency to extend its reality over a great part of eastern Europe. It is no mere conception, it passes over into reality. The proletarian says: You bourgeois have made this State arise; you have used it as an instrument for suppressing the proletariat; it is the State of a privileged class. It serves you for the suppression of the proletarian classes and owes to this its ability to live. Now the proletariat will arise, will do away with class rule and bring the State to full maturity; then the State will no longer be able to live, then it will die.—And something will arise that should arise, but as Lenin says, no one can tell what. Social ignorabimus—this is what comes of this socialism. It is very interesting; for the way of thinking that has grasped the social conception today has developed out of science, and as science from its one-sided standpoint, has justly arrived at its ignorabimus, (we can know nothing) socialistic thinking, too, has come to the socialistic ignorabimus. This connection should be duly recognised. Without all that is being taught at the good bourgeois Universities about the scientific outlook on the world, there would be no socialism. Socialism is a child of the bourgeoisie; so too is bolshevism. There lies the deeper connection that must above all be understood. Now that these forms of thought have been made clear, we are able to refer to important points in the kind of outlook of such a man as Lenin. He lays special weight, for example, on the fact that within the bourgeois State bureaucracy has developed—the military machine, as he calls it. This bureaucratic military machine has arisen because it is needed by the leading classes to suppress the proletarian classes. Bolshevism, the most advanced wing of socialism, is quite clear that it can only realise its aims through an armed proletariat. Without arms there would be no hope of this, as can be seen in the historic example of the French Commune, which could act only so long as those who were in power had arms. The moment they were disarmed they were powerless. That is one thing to be remembered—the organisation of the proletariat as an armed force. And then what should be done with than? To some extent it is happening even, now. It is supposed to teach us that many who have long been sleeping deeply should awake where social matters are concerned. And what should happen? Before all else, the State as a class government is to cease. What the bourgeoisie have founded as a class State is to be taken over by an armed labour force. Again it is interesting that in clear and plain terms those who have developed the form of modern socialistic thought, to a point amounting almost to genius, make evident what, through historical evolution, has been placed in the souls of the proletariat.

Lenin shows, for example, that instead of officials and a military hierarchy there would have to be a kind of managing body composed only of elected members. He further shows that in the present condition of things all the education needed for this State management would be what is given in ordinary schools. Lenin himself uses a remarkable expression which says much. He says that what today is called the State should be transformed into a great factory with public book-keeping. To bring that about, to control it and so on, all that is needed would be the four rules of arithmetic, learnt at any ordinary school.

One should not just make fun of these things but see clearly how such an outlook is nothing but the final consequence of bourgeois evolution. Just as the modern social structure is given up entirely to economics, we have to own that capitalists, those who direct capital, mostly have no more in their heads than what Lenin asks of the modern overseer of labour.

Had there been men to whom the proletarian, as he has recently evolved, could have looked, in whose special capabilities he could have believed, and to whom he could have looked up as to certain justified authority, everything would have taken a different form. But there is no one of the kind to whom he can turn. He can look only to those who, when all is said and done, are no different in spiritual qualities from himself, but have only been before him in acquiring capital. He finds no difference between himself and those who are directing. That becomes evident in Lenin's words in a very theoretical form.

In Lenin's radical formulas it can be seen how things have gone. And this exclamation will undoubtedly be on the tip of your tongues: Yes, but such dreadful things come to light in all this, it is all horrible!—Nevertheless it is our duty to look squarely at the matter and to make a real effort to enter into men's thoughts. When what is happening here or there in the ranks of the more advanced socialists is reported, one may often meet with bourgeois indignation, which in many cases becomes bourgeois cowardice. For the urge to understand is not yet very great.

Now in any case the following must be understood, namely, what is in part already happening and what is still to happen. Lenin, who regards himself as a true Marxist, indicates how already through Marx a definite outlook on the recent and future evolution of the social ordering has been brought about. These people think that actually the new social formation must be accomplished in two phases. The first phase is when the proletariat take over the bourgeois State, which Lenin considers must, when matured, die a natural death. The proletariat will step in and bring to its end what, out of their own outlooks and impulses, they will have been able to make of the bourgeois State. According to Marx himself, it cannot at present lead to any desirable conditions. And in the sense of both Leninism and Marxism where will this first social stage lead? If we express it in a simple fashion, but as the people themselves would express it, it leads to this—that no man can eat who does not work, that everyone has special work to do and by virtue of this work has a claim to the articles essential to support life. The people are, however, quite clear that no possible equality between men would be promoted in this way, but that inequality would continue. Neither would a man receives thus the proceeds of his labour. Both Marx and Lenin have emphasised this. All that is necessary for schooling, for public services, and so on, must be withheld by the community, that is, by the State—or whatever we shall call what remains of the middle-class ordering of the world. According to this kind of socialism, Lasalle's old ideas of right to the full proceeds from labour will naturally have to go by the board. No equality results from this either, for conditions bring it about that even those who do the same work have different claims to make on life. This socialism naturally accepts that, but again inequality is immediately created. In short, these socialists take the view that in the first phase the socialist order simply continues the bourgeois order, only this bourgeois order is run by the proletariat. How outspokenly Lenin expresses himself about it is of great interest. For example, in a passage of his work State and Revolution he says: Something like a bourgeois order, a bourgeois State will arise, but without the bourgeoisie.

From these words of Lenin's, that a bourgeois State will be there without the bourgeoisie, you can see what I am always emphasising and what I regard as particularly important, that is, that those who today are thinking on socialistic lines are only taking over the heritage of the bourgeoisie. Their thoughts are bourgeois thoughts. A man who has such a genius for putting his thoughts into form as Lenin, says that the next phase will be a bourgeois State without the bourgeoisie, who will be either exterminated or made into a caste of servers. This will never bring equality, for it only means the proletariat coming to the fore and being elected instead of being nominated and decorated by something in the nature of a monarchy. The proletariat will govern and at the same time pass laws. It is still, however, the bourgeois State, but with no bourgeoisie.

This by no means produces an ideal condition. If anyone asks what these people will have made of the ordering of human society Lenin will simply answer: we have promised you nothing more than a first phase, in which we shall carry to its final conclusion what you founded as a bourgeois State; but it is we who now run it, we as proletarians. Formerly you did it, now it is for us to do. We, however, shall run this bourgeois State that you have made without the bourgeoisie. Everyone will earn according to his labour, but inequality will still remain.

Lenin says that the bourgeois State without the bourgeoisie will lead to the dying-out of the State. It will be completely extinct when the community has once realised the ordering considered as the ideal, and when an end will have been made of the narrow concept of justice held by the middle-class where, with the hard-heartedness of a Shylock, account is taken as to whether one man has worked a half-hour less or been paid more than another. This narrow outlook will be overcome only at the end of the first phase. Until then the Shylock attitude of the bourgeoisie State will persist and naturally become intensified. Thus it will prevail during the first phase of socialists.

Here you have all that these people promise to begin with: What you made for your caste we will use for the proletariat. It is nonsense to speak of democracy, for democracy would lead merely to the suppression of the minority. The proletariat will do the same as you have done. But by doing so it will bring to an end everything to which you gave a semblance of life. Then only can the second phase come.

Karl Marx already alluded to this second phase; Lenin has done so also but in a remarkable way. I consider it most important to bear this in mind. Marx in the person of Lenin says: We will drive the bourgeois order to its logical conclusion, then what is now the State will die out and the people will have became used to no longer needing a constitutional State, or any form of State; it will just cease. Everything the State has to do will have ceased to be necessary. The age will then be past in which wages are paid in accordance with the principle that whoever does not work may not eat. That is just the first phase of socialism. The time will then come when everyone will be able to live according to his capacities and his needs, and not according to the work he does. That will be the higher stage to which everything now striven for is merely a preparation. When it is no longer asked exactly how long a man has worked, the time will have come when the value of spiritual work and the work of the artist will be rightly assessed; each man will find his right place in the social order, that is in accordance with Nature, each out of his own capacities will not only be able but also willing to work. For through the civilising influence of the first phase men will have become accustomed to regard work not as a mere necessity but as something they feel the urge to do. Thus everyone will receive his livelihood according to his needs. The middle-class ordering of rights in the spirit of Shylock will no longer be needed, nor the question whether a half hour more or less has been worked; it will be seen that whoever has a certain piece of work to do may perhaps need to work two whole hours less. In short, everyone will work according to his capacities and be maintained according to his needs. That is the higher order. The intermediate stages needed at present—because the bourgeois State in order to perish must go on developing—lead to conditions in which people on the one hand say: Ignorabimus, we do not know, and on the other hand affirm that these conditions would bring about a second higher stage of socialism.

What Lenin says about this higher phase of socialism is most interesting. He calls it ignorance to maintain the possibility of people, as they are today, being able to realise a social order in which everyone could live according to his capacities and needs. For it does not occur to anyone who is a socialist to promise that the more highly developed phase of communism is bound to come about. Those times foreseen by the great socialists presuppose a productivity and a race of men far removed from those of today, far removed from present-day man who is calmly capable of stealing underclothing and who cries for the moon. This is extraordinarily significant. We have a first phase—socialism with present-day man, and the logical end of the bourgeois world-order, of the State that dies by reason of its inherent qualities. We have a higher phase with people who will have become quite different from what they are today, in effect a new race.

You see here the ideal in abstraction. First the bourgeois order will come to an end by developing into what is absurd. The State will thus be brought to an end, and through this process a new human race will be bred, the members of which will be accustomed to work according to their capacities and live according to their needs. Then it will be impossible for anyone to steal because, just as today the respectable rebel when some lady is insulted, then, the respectable will rebel of themselves. No military or bureaucratic caste will he needed to interfere, and so on and so forth. And upon what is this belief based? On the superstitious belief in the economic order! Capitalism, for its part, has produced an economic order with only an ideology and no spiritual life as counterbalance. This state of things the socialists want to carry to extremes. Away with everything except the economic life! Then they think this will produce a different race of men.

It is most important to be alive to this superstition where the economic life is concerned. For today, in accordance with all this, a tremendous number of people imagine that when the economic life, in their sense, will have been set up, not only a desirable social order will arise but even a new human race will be bred—a race fitted for this desirable social order.

All this is the modern form of superstition, which is unable to accept the standpoint that behind all external economic and materialistic actuality there lies the spiritual with its impulses. And men must receive this as something spiritual. What I have been referring to is a misunderstanding of the spiritual. If mankind is to be healed, this is possible only by spiritual means, by men receiving into themselves spiritual impulses as spiritual knowledge, as social thinking and social feeling established on the foundations of Spiritual Science. The new man will never be brought forth through economic evolution, but entirely from within outwards. For that, the spiritual life must be free and independent. A spiritual life as developed during recent centuries, formerly chained to the financial State as now to the economic, will never be able really to create the new man.

For this reason, on the one hand freedom in the life of spirit must be striven for by giving this spiritual life its own department. On the other hand there must be an effort to guide the economic life purely as such, so that the State, which has to do only with the relation of man to man, should not be concerned with economy. For the economic life will use up anything that presses into its sphere. In so far as man stands within the economic life he too will be used, and he must continually be rescuing himself from this fate. He will be able to do so when he sets up en appropriate relation between man and man, and that is brought about in a rightly organised State. Unbiased observation of things as they are today, enables us to say that what is fundamental in the impulses developed by the modern social movement is that these impulses are full of a thinking that leads to nothing. Just picture this to yourselves! Anyone properly applying this kind of thought would argue in the following way: I want to think out the most perfect form of modern educational method. I come to see that human beings must be so instructed that they absorb as much as possible of the principle of death, so that when they come to maturity they may begin at once to die. That thought if really grasped would nullify itself. But take Lenin's thoughts about the State—as soon as it is matured it prepares to die. Thus you see that modern thinking can arrive at nothing productive, nothing fruitful, nothing for the spiritual life. For the spiritual life has become a mere ideology, only surrounded by thoughts, or natural laws which are themselves just thoughts, and because of this, because the spiritual life is at the mercy of the economic life or of the political life, it has become unfruitful. This has been made particularly evident by the war catastrophe. Just consider how much depended upon this spiritual life. And everywhere on earth, in the most dreadful way, its fetters have been shown.

And now consider the sphere of the life of the State. The socialists, thinking to their logical conclusion the half-thoughts of the middle-class, think out a State with the peculiar characteristic of bringing about its own death. And in the sphere of economic life everyone indulges in the worn-out superstition that this economic life—that in reality consumes life, for which reason the other two departments are necessary to help the economy too to keep its place—that this economic life will bring forth a new human race.

In no sphere has modern thinking succeeded in arriving at anything capable of producing conditions for a prosperous life. But what is sought on the grounds of Spiritual Science in this domain is to shape conditions worthy of life out of those deserving death. Then, however, it will not be enough—as many hope and as here and there it has already been done—that those who were formerly the underlings should now he supreme, and those formerly supreme the underlings. Those now underlings, when at the top thought in reactionary terms, bourgeois terms; those now supreme think socialistically. But the form of the thoughts is fragmentally the same. For it is not a question of what one thinks but of how one thinks. Once this is understood it gives the initial impulse towards understanding the threef0ld nature of the social organism, which enters right into reality and has to do with all that must develop as a healthy social organism. The most important thing for these times must be produced out of anthroposophical knowledge, and we must guard ourselves from misunderstanding this most deeply serious and significant side of our Anthroposophical Movement. But we do misunderstand it when we allow ourselves, especially in this sphere of Anthroposophy, to be carried away by any kind of sectarianism. Everyone should take counsel with himself concerning the question: How much sectarianism is there still in me? For the modern human Movement must aim at driving out everything sectarian, at not being sectarian, at not being abstract but interested in humanity, at not having a narrow but a broad outlook. In so far as, from a certain side, our Movement has grown out of the Theosophical Movement, it retains the seeds of sectarianism. These seeds must be crushed. What is sectarian must be cast out. Above everything there is need for wide horizons and an unprejudiced contemplation of reality.

I said recently that those who cut off coupons must clearly realise that in the cut-off coupons there lies the labour power of men, and that in so far as human labour power is enslaved by the capitalist economic order, the cutter of coupons is taking part in this enslavement. The answer to this should not be “How shocking”, or anything of that kind, for “how shocking” is dreadfully theoretic and something that can easily land one in modern sectarian tendencies. I have often put this in another way—people hear of Lucifer and Ahriman and say to themselves: keep well out of the way; have nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman; I'll stand fast by God:—To deal with the matter in this abstract manner is to be only the more deeply drawn into the toils of Lucifer and Ahriman. We must have the sincerity and honesty to acknowledge that we are part of the present social process, from which we do not escape by deceiving ourselves. We should instead do our utmost to make it more healthy. At the present stage of mankind's development, the individual cannot help all this; but he can play his part in cooperating with his unfortunate fellowmen. Today it is not a matter of saying: be a good fellow, nor of sitting down to send out thoughts of universal love, and so on. The important thing is that being within this social process, we should come to an understanding with ourselves, and develop the capacity of even being bad with the bad—not that it is a good thing to be bad, but because a social order that is due to be overthrown forces the individual to live thus. We should not wish to live in the illusion that we are good and splendid, priding ourselves that we are better than others, but we should recognise that we are part of the social order and not be deceived about it. The less we give way to illusion, the greater will be the impulse to work for what will lead to the salvation of the social organism, to strive to acquire capacities, and to awake from the deep sleep of present-day humanity. Nothing can help here save the possible recourse to the energetic and penetrating thinking given by Spiritual Science, which may be contrasted with the feeble, lazy and half-hearted thinking of present-day official science.

This makes me think of how, eighteen or nineteen years ago, speaking at the Working Men's Club at Berlin, I said that science today is a bourgeois science and that it must evolve by freeing thinking, freeing knowledge, from the bourgeois element. The leaders of the proletariat today do not understand this, being convinced the bourgeois science they have adopted is something absolute—that what is true is true. Socialists do not consider how it all is connected with bourgeois development. They talk of the impulses, the emotions, of the proletariat, but their thinking is entirely bourgeois. Certainly many of you will say at this point: All the same, what is true is true! Indeed a certain amount of the truths, let us say, of chemistry, physics, mathematics, is of course true and these truths cannot be true either in a bourgeois sense or a proletarian sense. The theorem of Pythagoras is most certainly not true in a bourgeois sense or in a proletarian sense, but simply true. This however is not the point, the point is that the truths enclose a certain field; if one remains in this field what is contained within it can certainly be truths, but they are truths that are useful, convenient and suitable just for middle-class circles, whereas outside are many other truths which can also be known but remain unnoticed by the bourgeoisie. Thus, the point is not that the truths of chemistry and mathematics are true but that there exist besides other truths able to throw on the former the right light, and then a quite different shade of meaning is revealed. Then knowledge is given a wider scientific horizon than is possible for the bourgeoisie to give. It is not whether these matters are true or not but how much truth man wants. And the whole affair is coloured by the quality of the truth. Certainly the Professors of Chemistry at the Universities will not be able to make any remarkable sudden transitions, for in the laboratory it is he who has the knowledge about things and he knows that he is the last to do the thinking, that is done by the method. But as soon as this same thinking passes over into history, or into the history of literature, into all that men rescue from the economic life and bring into a sphere worthy of human beings, it immediately becomes free. History as we now have it is nothing but a middle-class fiction, as are philosophy and the other sciences. People, however, have no idea of this and accept it all as objective knowledge.

A healthy life can only take root when scientific research is given back its autonomy, in short, when the threefold order of which I have so often spoken is established.

I have here to add a small correction. Recently, in drawing your attention to the German Committee formed for our Appeal, I mentioned that Dr. Boos, Herr Molt and Herr Kühn had formed it. I have been notified that in Stuttgart our friend Dr. Unger is working with it in an essential way. This ought not to be forgotten.

Today I have been trying to throw light for you on things of contemporary history. I have it very much at heart that our friends should try to go more deeply into the social problem, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. You have the basis for an understanding of this social problem, and this understanding is what is of most importance. Whoever looks into present-day history will not imagine that we can hope for success in the Appeal and all connected with it, in the course of a few days. The lectures given in Zurich, extended and supplemented by certain definite questions, will shortly appear in book-form, so that the details of what is in the Appeal can be had in a few concise sentences. [ Note 01 ]

The next thing will be for the movements today devouring the social organism to be brought to the point of absurdity. These must first develop, however, into complete helplessness and calamity. But, at the right time, something must be ready which can be grasped when what is old has reached this point. Therefore it is so infinitely important that when once these impulses are taken to your hearts they should not be allowed to cool, but that each of you should help, as far as he is able, to bring about what must of necessity happen.

Today we want to look at something that I would like to call the relationship that can develop between the individual human soul and what we mean by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Today, wherever one hears about this spiritual science, one often does not yet look hard enough at how different this relationship of the human soul to spiritual science is supposed to be from the relationship of any other knowledge, any other insight, to this human soul. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, is indeed such that it speaks to the human soul in a completely different way than any other knowledge. Through any other knowledge, one gets to know this or that; one learns something about one or the other in the world; one then knows more than one knew before. Spiritual science does not relate to the human soul in such a way that it would only convey something that one knows afterwards. Spiritual science appeals to much deeper impulses of the human soul than mere knowledge, than mere thinking. Spiritual science seizes, or at least wants to seize, the deepest being in us, which, coming from spiritual worlds, moves into our human earthly being at birth and which this human earthly being then leaves in death to pass over into the spiritual worlds to other tasks. Only when we have a true intuitive grasp of this relationship between spiritual science and the outer world, and between the spiritual science and human life, shall we be able to comprehend the full significance of spiritual science for the human soul.

We do not understand the human being fully if we do not realize: that which lives in me as a human being, that which develops in me as a human being through the fact that I have taken on a physical body through birth, that which accompanies me in the course of my life, first as an inexperienced child, then more experienced, more skillful, what takes place in me as fate, everything that is present in my body and in my life, it is actually the transformation of a spiritual-soul being that lived in the spiritual-soul before the human being was conceived or born. And it is this spiritual-soul element that dwells in the body that is actually addressed by what is meant as spiritual science.

Now one might perhaps believe that it is not necessary for a person to occupy himself with this spiritual-soul element within him, because this spiritual-soul element will already find its way in the world. But that is not the case. That which is spiritual and soul in us takes hold of us and is in us, and is to some extent wrapped in our body, in part in our abilities, in part in our destiny. And one could say: It is precisely in the present developmental cycle of humanity, in which humanity has now arrived and in whose sense it will continue to develop towards the future, precisely in the sense of this present and the future, that the human being, as a spiritual principle of his body, as a spiritual principle of his life and his abilities, as a spiritual principle of his destiny, redeems what has become incarnate in him. We cannot escape the spirit. The spirit lives in us. We can leave it out of consideration, but it still lives in us. We can look at the laziest, most comfortable, most casual person who has never made an effort in his life to bring something that lies as a religious or spiritual disposition in his mind to independent development, who has remained quite dull, so to speak. We can look at him: he is not spiritless. To speak of people as spiritless is just an incorrect word. There are no spiritless people; nor is it possible to be spiritless in life. For the spiritual and the soul are our endowment when we enter the physical world from the spiritual worlds; they are allotted to us according to what we have gone through before we descended to this present life on earth. We cannot be without spirit, but we can disregard the spirit within us. We can, as it were, sin against it, we can refuse to want to redeem it. We can want it to merely slip into us, to shroud itself within us: then it is present in us, but we have not liberated it within us, we have not redeemed it.

In this way, too, we must gradually learn to look at people's lives. And our view of life will become quite different, and in the course of time it must become quite different. We can find people in life who have become dull and unfeeling. We will not say that they are spiritless, but we will say that they have committed the sin of burying their spirit during their lifetime, of leaving the spirit in its enchantment, of letting the spirit slip into the flesh, into the merely outward course of life, of letting the spirit degenerate in fate. When we are born, we can only become human beings if the spiritual-soul individuality descends from spiritual-soul worlds. And when the child appears in its first organization, it is still an imperfect image of the spiritual individuality. This lies within him. It can be ignored, or it can be disenchanted, or it can gradually be brought out of the flesh, out of the course of life, out of fate. But it is man's task, and in the future it will increasingly become man's task, not to let the spirit degenerate. We cannot kill the spirit, but we can let it go to rack and ruin by forcing it to take a different path than the one it takes when we bring it out.

If we endeavor from one day on to learn something about the spiritual worlds, to feel something about the spiritual worlds: we actually bring it out of ourselves. The other is just a suggestion. We get it out of ourselves. Whatever you have ever said to yourself about spiritual science, you have drawn from within yourself, because it is within your deepest inner being and wants to come out. And it is meant to come out, and it is a sin against the order of the world to leave the spirit within mere flesh, because there it goes astray; there we abandon it to a fate that it should not take. We liberate the spirit by bringing it out of the flesh. And by consciously permeating ourselves with the spirit, we release that which wants to be released from the underground of existence. One will understand this more and more. It will be increasingly recognized that materialism does not simply prevent the emergence of a [different] theory or allow a false theory to emerge, but that materialism consists in allowing that which wants to enter into the knowledge and perception of the human soul to flow down into coarse matter and to proliferate in coarse matter. This is the question that humanity must decide in the near future: whether it wants to let the spirit proliferate in matter – in which case the spirit becomes a deformity, it leads to diabolical, devilish, Ahriman delusion, or whether humanity will want to transform the spirit into thoughts, into feelings, into impulses of will: then the spirit will live among people and achieve what it wants to achieve by entering into the life of the earth through people. For that is what the spirit wants: to enter into the life of the earth through man. We should not hold it back. And every time we resist becoming acquainted with the spirit, we hold it back: it must, as it were, plunge down into matter, must make matter worse than it is. For the spirit has its allotted task: it is to enter into earthly life through the development of the human soul; there it has a beneficial effect. If it is pushed back into matter, then it has a devastating effect in matter, then it has a bad effect.

If you take this as the essence of spiritual science, you will see that it has a lot to do with our human life. Spiritual science does not want to be a theory like other theories, but wants to give people the opportunity to release and liberate the spirit that is enchanted in human nature, to work in the world what wants to be worked by the spiritual worlds. That is certainly also the reason why many people still very energetically reject spiritual science today. People gladly accept other science because this other science flatters the pride, the vanity of people, but it does not make the claim to be something real, but it merely makes the claim to give thoughts, to to educate the intellect, perhaps also to teach people some useful moral concepts; it does not claim to get to the core of the human being, to be brought from worlds in which a task is assigned to the spirit. I would like to say: only through spiritual science does human knowledge become serious, and people shy away from that. They would also like to have spiritual science only as something that splashes along at the surface of existence. People are afraid that it will get to the core and essence of man. That is why they do not want to accept spiritual science. If they would accept spiritual science, then many things in social life, in historical life, would have to change in the very near future, then people would have to think differently in the most everyday life. And that is what matters. That is why it is also the case that one can take in the other science, but one remains the same throughout one's life, one only becomes richer in knowledge. One should not take in spiritual science without it transforming one, and one cannot take it in without it transforming one. It slowly and gradually makes one into a different person. One must have patience, but it makes one into a different person, because it appeals to completely different human tasks, and it appeals to something completely different in human nature.

Let us take a look at human nature and see how diverse this human life is. The human being devotes himself to three currents: as a conceiving human being, as a feeling human being and as a willing human being. In imagining, feeling and wanting, what we can experience is actually exhausted. Now, all three impulses of the human soul, imagining, feeling and wanting, stand in a very specific relationship to what spiritual science actually wants to address in the human soul, in the core of the human soul.

Let us first take imagining. Imagining is certainly shaped by ordinary science and by what is increasingly being taken from this ordinary science and applied to child-rearing and is therefore so important for the whole development of human destiny, including for practical life, because it is intended to permeate the child. Imagining is not shaped by ordinary science. It is not so very long ago, a few centuries, that this has been the case in the most eminent way, which is why people do not notice it today. But it will not be long before what I am saying now can be observed in an almost comprehensive way. Scientific concepts, as they are taught today to the youngest people, to children, can be absorbed throughout one's entire life without becoming different in terms of one's imagination through absorbing so many concepts in the sense of today's science. One remains the same. Not only that, but it cannot be denied that one becomes more and more limited, even in intellectual terms, through the ordinary scientific concepts that are increasingly becoming part of general education. The mind, in so far as it is a thinking one, loses the flexibility to adapt to living conditions that are much more complicated than what a person can absorb through ordinary knowledge.

You see, it goes deep into the heart when you have some opportunities to see into life today. Those who have become completely accustomed to the concepts that science can provide today are increasingly unable to grasp the vital social interrelations and social demands. They are virtually pushed aside by real life. And that is why I have said here and elsewhere in recent days: Make parliaments and state assemblies out of people who are educated in the sense of today's world view. You will see what these scholars decide, who think scientifically! This is quite certainly suited to corrupting people in terms of social institutions, because in this area of social life, only unfruitful thinking can be done from a scientific point of view. It is the same in many, many respects. One loses a certain flexibility of mind through this merely intellectual knowledge. This will change as soon as you engage with the concepts of spiritual science. Try to realize how differently you have to tune your mind if you want to grasp what is offered in spiritual science and if you want to grasp what is offered in the education of the outer world today. Certainly, spiritual science encounters so much resistance because it requires more agility, more fluidity of mind, to find one's way into it. In what is available today in popular literature - or even its offshoots, which flow through the channels into journalism, where people then absorb information in their Sunday papers - people can move around with extraordinary ease. And if they go to today's lectures, where people are spoon-fed information in words and pictures, so that they don't even have to think, don't even have to set their minds in motion, you will find nothing in all of this that frees the mind to think, to imagine. It loses its freedom. The mind becomes narrow and limited. Our intellectual education is the path to spiritual limitation. Certainly, our intellectual education has made great strides in the fields of science and technology, but it is the path to limitation; it narrows thinking, imagination. And one must appeal to something quite different in the imagination if one wants to understand spiritual science. Therefore, when people approach spiritual science today, they are afraid to take the first step! When they have read only a few pages, some say: I lose myself there, I do not get any further, it goes into fantasy! - It does not go into fantasy at all, but the person in question has only lost the opportunity to really free his thoughts, to plunge into reality with his thoughts, when they are not leading the external sense world by the hand.

That is one thing: spiritual science appeals to the power in human nature that frees us from narrow-mindedness and enables our thinking and imaginative life to grasp not only a little but a great deal. I meant it very seriously when I said in a public lecture in Stuttgart these days: For the spiritual researcher, it makes no difference whether one is a materialist or a spiritualist; that is not the point, that is irrelevant. What is important is to develop sufficient spiritual strength to make real progress. Those who have this strength, this spiritual power, may be materialists, they find the spirit in matter and its processes if they are only consistent. And those who are spiritualists do not stop at saying: spirit and spirit and spirit...! but they delve into material life, into practical life as well, they allow their thinking to bear fruit even in their actions. Versatility, as demanded by today's life - and the life of the future will demand it even more - versatility is what will become of spiritual science in the near future. And that is what humanity needs as it works towards the future. Anyone who is familiar with life today and looks at the catastrophic events that are happening around us knows that one of the deeper causes of today's catastrophe is that people have become one-sided, despite all their high scientific education, that they lack the opportunity to penetrate things in a versatile way. They lack the flexibility of mind to immerse themselves in reality. Versatility is what is gained through spiritual science for the imagination.

Something is also gained for feeling through spiritual science. For the one who wants to think as spiritual science makes necessary, who must become accustomed to this much more mobile world, releases something that otherwise only lives [hidden] in the human being, so that it unfolds out of the human being. In our feeling, as we brought it with us at our birth, the rhythm of the world lives. More than we realize, the entire rhythm of the world lives in us. This can even be proven mathematically, but very few people know about these secrets of existence. Do not be afraid to join me in considering how the entire rhythm of the world lives in our own organism, in what goes on within us. You know that the sunrise moves a little further each year. If we go back in time, the so-called vernal point of the sun was in Taurus; then it came into Aries, but in Aries it moved further every year; now it is in Pisces. The sun does not rise at the same point every year on March 21; that's how it comes around the whole circle. And after about 25,920 years, the sun goes all the way around, apparently, of course, describing the whole ellipse. If it rises today at a certain point in Pisces, it will return there in 25,920 years. The strange thing is: if you consider these approximately 25,920 years as the great cosmic year, as the ancient Greeks did, and you now look for one day of this cosmic year, you have to divide by 365. What is one day of this great cosmic year? That is approximately 70 to 71 years. That is, on average, a human life when a person grows old. If you think of a human life as it is spent here on earth as one day, and take the whole Platonic year, it is 365 times as much. That is how long it takes the sun to make one revolution around the world: 365 days, of which a person lives through one in an earthly life. It is a beautiful rhythm, but this rhythm goes much further. Consider that we take about 18 breaths in one minute. These 18 breaths multiplied by 60 give the number of breaths in one hour; this multiplied by 24 gives the number of breaths in one day and one night. If you calculate 18 times 60 times 24, you get: 25,920. That means you take as many breaths in one day as the sun takes [Earth years] to go through its own year. The same rhythm is in your breathing inside that is in the course of the sun outside. And again, the strange thing is: you spend a day breathing 25,920 times in one day. Take a day and treat it as if it were a breath: in a sense, a day is a breath, because in the morning our body and our etheric body breathe in our ego and the astral body, and in the evening, when we fall asleep, we breathe out our ego and the astral body; it is one inhalation and one exhalation. How often do we do this in a single day, in about 70 to 71 years? We do this breathing, which means that we live – calculate it in a day – almost exactly 25,920 times. That is how many days we live in 71 years. The individual breath is therefore related to the breaths of the whole twenty-four-hour day like the advance of the vernal point in one year to the advance of the sun through 25,920 years. In relation to the great solar year of 25,920, a single human life on earth is like a day, a day of our life, a twenty-four-hour day occurs as many times in our 71-year life as there are years in the solar cycle. Imagine what it actually means that we are part of the wonderful rhythm of the sunlit cosmos, that our life, insofar as it is inner human life, is purely mathematically expressed in the great music of the spheres of the cosmos!

When a person begins to immerse himself in these things emotionally, only then does he feel like a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm. Only then does he feel how this whole great and infinite world of God has created its image in his human nature. But this is something to be sensed, to be felt. This sensing, this feeling, this feeling of oneself in the universe, this feeling of oneself in the whole spirituality of the world, that is something that ultimately comes to us from spiritual science! We open ourselves up to the world, whereas otherwise we close ourselves off in our narrowly limited ego. We are an image of God, but otherwise we know nothing; we begin to feel ourselves as the image of the divine world, as the microcosm in the macrocosm. We learn to know ourselves through feeling. This happens bit by bit, slowly. I would like to say: just as we go through this slow sequence of days through our lives, so does feeling with spiritual science bring forth this sense of the world. But man must acquire this sense of the world. For this feeling for the world will in turn inspire him to the great tasks that lie before humanity in the future. However strange it may still sound today, in less than fifty years people will no longer be able to build factories or cultivate the soil according to the requirements that will be placed on humanity if they do not have this feeling! The catastrophe we are currently facing is only an expression of the impasse into which humanity has entered. The world has moved on, but people have not yet come far enough with their thoughts and feelings; therefore, their thoughts and feelings are not sufficient to truly penetrate this world and make the work of humanity harmoniously concordant. Humanity will be condemned to develop more and more disharmony in social coexistence and to sow more and more seeds of war across the world if it does not find its way into harmony with the cosmos in feeling, in order to carry this into everything it does, even into the most mundane. Therefore spiritual science is already connected with that which must intervene directly in the course of the most extreme culture, or humanity will not come out of the impasse. In the future, factories and schools will not be maintained if concepts from the great tasks of the universe are not developed. These were already tasks today, but people have not taken them into account; that is why this catastrophe has come. The deeper causes already lie in what has just been said. These signs of God, which express themselves in these catastrophic events, must be taken into account by humanity. People must learn to develop a conscious relationship with the cosmos, because otherwise it will no longer be possible.

Let me give you an example that many people today will still consider foolish, some will denounce as insane: we have certainly made great progress, say in the field of chemistry, but we have done so without such a sense of the world as I have just expressed. In the future, this sense of the world will have to be developed as well: the laboratory bench will have to become an altar. The service to nature that is being developed, even in chemical experimentation, must be conscious of the fact that the great cosmic law is present over the laboratory table whenever one dissolves any substance with another in order to obtain a precipitate or the like. One must feel at home in the whole universe, then one will go about it differently, and then something quite different will be found from what people have found today, which is great but will not be able to bear the right fruit because it is found without reverence, without the feeling that permeates the harmony of the universe. How many people have abstracted what was called the music of the spheres in Pythagoras! Here you have a sense of the music of the spheres in the experience of the rhythm that runs through the universe. You don't have to imagine anything abstract, but something that goes into the living feeling (see note).

Do you know what would happen if this broad-mindedness of the soul did not enter into the feeling? We have just said: flexibility of thinking, versatility of thinking and imagination, that is one thing that helps thinking and imagining. For feeling, broad-mindedness, an open mind towards the world, should prevail. The opposite – you can already see it approaching if you just look at the world with a little courage – is philistinism. What has the great, for many materialistically thinking people 'blessed' culture of modern times brought to people? At the bottom of the soul lies philistinism. Philistinism and banality will only be overcome by that open-mindedness, that broad-heartedness of soul, which feels itself as a microcosm within the macrocosm, which can have reverence for everything that, as divine-spiritual, permeates and pulses through the world. Just as narrow-mindedness, intellectual narrow-mindedness in the life of the intellect must be conquered by spiritual science, so philistinism and vulgarity in the sphere of feeling must be conquered by spiritual science. And a third aspect presents itself to us when we look at the will. In many cases, things are in their initial stages as far as the will is concerned. Only the psychologist, the expert on the soul, can see what is being prepared, but it will come! Of course, many people today believe otherwise, but anyone who is able to see through the deeper course of human development already notices that nothing is as widespread in general human life in the realm of will — much more so in modern times than in older times — as clumsiness. Clumsiness is something that threatens to develop into a terrible evil for the development of humanity in the future. I think that today we can already see it quite clearly: people are taught to do this or that in a one-sided way. If they are to prepare to do something that they have not learned by rote, they will not be able to manage it. How few people today are capable - if you will allow me to mention such things - of sewing on a trouser button if necessary in special situations. Few people are able to do anything else that is not directly related to what they have learned in the narrowest sense. This is something that must not befall humanity. People would allow what was in them as spiritual heritage to wither away when they descended from the spiritual world through birth to existence if they became as one-sided as the “blessed” culture demands in many ways. Those who only look at things theoretically do not see the connections. But anyone who truly embraces spiritual science with a sense of life is an enemy of one-sidedness, for spiritual science gives rise to a mood in the human soul that also tends towards versatility. If you do not merely take up spiritual science with your head, but if you put yourself in a position to absorb spiritual science so that this spiritual science pulsates in your soul like blood in the body, you will certainly also gain a certain versatility in adapting to your surroundings. You will gain the ability to do things that you would otherwise not be skilled at doing. The skill in the will develops, and the person becomes adaptable to the environment. Of course, you can say, if you want to say this: We certainly do not notice that the anthroposophists, who are united in the society, have become terribly more skilled or more able to cope with life. Many say that. Not I say it, but it is said. Yes, that stems from something else. The anthroposophical life in the soul does not yet pulsate in people as blood pulsates in the body, but the bad habit of taking everything only into the mind, into the intellect, has been brought in from outside. Spiritual science, too, becomes only a theory for many; it becomes only something that they think, but that is not their nature. If you only think spiritual science, it does not matter whether you read a spiritual science book or a cookbook. Perhaps a cookbook will be more useful. Spiritual science must become so serious that it really seizes the whole person in his whole soul. Then it goes out to the limbs, then the limbs become agile, the person becomes more capable of living. Then it is a matter of gaining an inner power of conviction, of not being satisfied with the outer conviction, but of gaining an inner conviction.

Those who are familiar with the inner value of spiritual science know that it is indeed capable of extending the physical life of a person, provided it is taken up with freshness and vitality. Of course people may come and say: Well, there is someone who only reached the age of forty-five, or even twenty-seven! Yes, but just ask the counter-question: How old would the person who reached the age of forty-five through spiritual science have become if he had not taken it up in the twenties? Just ask the counter-question! The external forms of proof do not apply to these internal things. Statistics and the like have no value if you want to take the inner being into account. Statistics are of great value in external life, but even there they are limited to the external and do not grasp what is the principle of life. You can see this quite simply: it is completely justified to set up insurance companies according to statistics and arithmetic; they base themselves on how long a person is expected to live and then they insure people accordingly. But it would not occur to you to then have to die when, according to the probability calculation, your year of death for the insurance company arrives! So for reality, you do not consider what is decisive for the external life to be decisive. All that statistics and probability calculations possess of value for the outer life ceases to have significance when the value of conviction for the spiritual begins. But you will only gain this if you take spiritual science itself as a living elixir of life. But then it becomes such an elixir of life that the human being fits into the circumstances.

Then the opposite will take place. I was once extremely saddened - you can say: that's a strange person to be saddened by it! - when I once lived in a house and the master of the house always had to weigh himself on a scale to determine exactly how much meat and how much vegetables he had to eat. He had to weigh every single meal! Imagine the loss of instinct that would ensue for humanity if everyone wanted to weigh their rice and cabbage at every meal. This uncertainty of instinct would come from purely intellectual science, because it can only show the external statistically. But it is not a matter of losing our instinct - and through intellectual education we do lose it - but of spiritualizing it; of becoming as sure as instinct usually is, but spiritually.

This is what I have to characterize as particularly significant, taking into account the will. Spiritual science creeps into the will, prepares it, so that the human being is prepared for his surroundings, without even noticing how he actually grows into what is around him. By growing together with the spirit, he grows into the environment.

You see, you have to learn to experience the spirit. But you do that through spiritual science. And humanity will need it more and more in the future to experience the spirit.

For how does man experience what is given to him through conception or birth? Imagine: a cannon is fired at some distance from you. You hear the bang. You see the light a little earlier. But now imagine the following: You are standing next to the cannon and, due to some event, you are shot out as fast as the sound. You would fly through the air at the speed of sound: you would not hear the sound; you would stop hearing the sound the moment you move at the speed of sound. That is why man does not notice the spirit, because he moves from birth to death at the same speed as the spirit works. The moment you absorb spiritual truths, you put yourself at a different speed than the body. Therefore, you begin to perceive the world in a different light. Just as you perceive sound because you do not have the same speed, so you perceive the spirit in the course of your life by bringing yourself to a different pace, creating inner peace, as you can read in my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds'. Not living with the body, but creating a different pace! But this is something that humanity must acquire in the first place, something that is of tremendous importance.

People today take no account of how it actually was in earlier times. History is really a kind of fable convenante, but that is not what concerns us today. People were educated differently in earlier times. In earlier education, much more consideration was given to the life of the mind. This purely intellectual life has only really emerged in the last four or five centuries. In this, no consideration is given to the fact that the human being is a multi-part entity. The intellect is very capable of being educated in humans; it can develop, but unfortunately it is not capable of development throughout the whole of a person's life, and especially not in our present time cycle. It is bound to the human head, and the head remains capable of development only up to the age of twenty-eight at the most. A person needs to live three times as long as their head is capable of developing. Of course, we are intellectually capable of development in our youth, but we only remain so until around the age of twenty-eight. The rest of our organism remains capable of development throughout the rest of our lives; it also demands something from us throughout our lives. What is given to people today is only head knowledge, not heart knowledge. I call heart knowledge that which speaks to the whole organism, head knowledge that which is only intellectual and speaks only to the head. Now the head must stand in a continuous interrelationship with the heart, morally and spiritually as well. This cannot take place today because we give our children so little for the heart, so to speak, for the whole of the rest of the organism, and only give them something for the head. A person reaches the age of thirty-five. At most, he now has head knowledge; if he is lucky, he has the memory of the head knowledge he absorbs. He remembers purely intellectually what he has acquired. But ask whether today's teaching is able to achieve that later in life one not only remembers by heart what one has learned, but that one lovingly transfers oneself back to what one took in during one's youth with feeling; that one really still has something of what one was taught there, so that one can refresh it anew. But this must become the ideal of spiritual science in education, so that one does not just remember back. Now, today, people do not even do that. They take their exams and then forget what they have studied. But let us assume that people do remember back: is what people had at school a paradise to which one likes to be transported? Do you go back so far that you can say: As I think back, the morning of life shines in for me, and as I have now grown older, becoming older transforms it within me into something new; I have been taught in such a way that I can transform it, I not only remember it, I transform it, it becomes new to me.

The soul content of human beings will become full of life when the principles of spiritual science renew our entire education and our entire spiritual culture. And then the effects of early aging in humanity will become increasingly rare. Anyone who follows the development of humanity knows that before the 15th century, the oldest people were not as old as the youngest people today. The prevalence of old age is increasing to a devastating extent. This old age can only be controlled by creating the right mood, by giving us in our youth what can be transformed in old age, what can become new to us; what we not only remember but transform because we think back to a paradise. As a real elixir of life, spiritual science will also bring this into our immediate lives. The school will become something completely different. The school will become a place where people are aware that they have to take care of the whole of human life. Because what is offered to the child comes out in a completely different way in old age. Certain things are offered to the child in the form, let us say, of learning to look up with admiration and reverence. This comes to expression in later life. In middle age it remains more withdrawn, but in old age it comes to expression in that it gives us the power to have a beneficial effect on children. Or as I once said in a public lecture: Those who have not learned to fold their hands in childhood cannot bless in old age. The inner feeling that is connected with folding the hands reappears in us, as if transformed, in later life in the ability to bless. Today, if we only follow today's education, we have no idea what we are giving the child for later life, in the age from seven to fourteen and even earlier, and especially beyond the age of fourteen, with what is offered to today's youth. This is terribly serious, because it lays the foundation for all the megalomania that is being instilled in young people today, for all the arrogance and prejudice, as if one could somehow already have a “point of view”! Today, even the youngest people say, “That is not my point of view.” Everyone has a point of view. Of course, it is not possible for someone to have a point of view at the age of twenty. This awareness is not encouraged today.

All these things can be summarized by saying that what lives in the human being will in turn be brought to reality. Reality is placed in a healthy relationship to the human soul. This is what the ideal of spiritual science must become in relation to the human soul and reality. Especially on the big plan of life, people today speak without any relationship to reality. Those who understand the relationship that must live in the human soul in relation to reality can sometimes suffer torments purely because of the form that today's thinking has. The child then, when the teacher thinks like that, endures these torments unconsciously. An example: a very famous professor of literature gave a lecture on taking up his post, at which I was present. He began: We can ask this, we can ask that. He listed a series of questions that were all to be answered during the semester, and then he said, “Gentlemen!” I have led you into a forest of question marks. I had to imagine a forest of question marks! Imagine what it is like for a person to stand before a forest of question marks without being able to visualize it! This is something that is often underestimated. What must be aimed at is a vital relationship to reality.

Recently a statesman said the words: Our relationship with the neighboring monarchy is the point that must become our political direction in our entire future life. - So imagine: the relationship of one country to another country is a point, and the point becomes a direction. One cannot think more unrealistically! But imagine what a configuration the entire inner life has, which is so far removed from reality as to turn out such empty phrases! But such an inner life is also just as far removed from the outer social life; it does not merge into the social life. What it dreams up does not become real. In spiritual science it is impossible to think as unrealistically as the conceptual shells that have been gradually developed in recent times. The present time is so conceited that it imagines itself to have become particularly practical. But it has only become schoolmasterly, out of touch with life. And a future age will characterize our age by the fact that, strangely enough, the world schoolmaster had a highly impressive effect on so many people: Woodrow Wilson, who is not connected to reality by a thin thread in his thinking either, but for whom all words correspond to unreality. But they are admired by those who are only a little hindered by the fact that they are at war with him. But there are many members of the Central Powers today who admire Woodrow Wilson! In the future it will be especially difficult to understand how political programs, without any relation to reality, can be found in which the crazy ideas of world treaties and peace treaties between nations and so on are laid down. If only it could have been done so easily! The abstract thinkers since the Stoics have been thinking about these things! What today emerge as Wilsonian ideas were there for those who know the subject, ever since there have been human beings. A healthy mind says, of course: because it was always there and could not be realized, it is unhealthy! Today's thinking has become alien to reality, which is why it takes no pleasure in such unreal thoughts.

Things are connected with the deepest principles and impulses of life. And the fact that there is so much confusion and chaos today stems from the fact that humanity has arrived at a way of thinking that it believes can master the practice of life, but which is basically very far removed from true reality. A union with true reality in a vigorous thinking, which develops such strong powers that it can penetrate into reality, that is what must come to mankind from spiritual science as an ideal. But to do this we must begin with the small. We must develop in the child not only an understanding of the abstract concept, but also of the real, the conceivable. We ourselves must first have the connection with it. He who wants to teach the child the idea of immortality in the image of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, but who does not himself believe in this immortality, teaches the child nothing. But anyone who is familiar with the field of spiritual science knows that the butterfly is the real image of immortality created by the spirit of the world. We ourselves believe in this image, and we choose nothing other than that in which we ourselves believe because we know it or strive to know it. In this way we seek to submerge ourselves in reality, to overcome the egoism that still wants to have something abstract in thinking. We seek to penetrate the spirit of reality, and in doing so we will find the paths that are necessary for newer humanity, and are all the more necessary because they have been most abandoned by those who call themselves practical people. They are not the practical people, but those who have become impoverished and who impose their impoverishment on humanity through brutality. Help in this difficult situation will only come if humanity seeks the spirit and through the spirit, reality.

This is what I wanted to share with you today as something that we must appropriate as a feeling for the relationship of the human soul to the world, as it arises from spiritual science as the fundamental mood of the soul. And more important than the individual spiritual-scientific truths is this fundamental mood with which we then go through life when it has been kindled in us through spiritual science.

The first lectures on spiritual science in Munich were given by Rudolf Steiner in November 1904 at the invitation of the two leaders of the later Munich main branch, Sophie Stinde (1853-1915) and her friend Pauline Gräfin von Kalckreuth (1856-1929). Sophie Stinde, sister of the then well-known writer Julius Stinde and a talented landscape painter herself, from that point on put all her strength into the service of Rudolf Steiner's movement; in his own words, in a truly “exemplary” way. “There is so much,” he said at her cremation ceremony, ”when the path of spiritual work is taken, which must be placed in human hands, of which one can be sure that they will carry it out in such a way that one might not even be able to carry it out oneself... And Sophie Stinde was one of those people who helped in the most vigorous way when action was needed (Ulm, November 22, 1915, in library no. 261 “Unsere Toten” [Our Dead]).

In this way, Sophie Stinde not only built up the actual Munich work, but she also became - renouncing the practice of art she loved - the main bearer of the organizational burden for the large Munich events: the Munich Congress in 19 07 - to whose art exhibition some of her landscape paintings also belonged - and the summer festival events that emerged from it, held annually from 1909 to 1913, with the premieres of Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas. In this context, however, she was also the “first” to have the “bold” idea of tackling the realization of the central building, in accordance with Marie Steiner's statement. She created the necessary documentation to enable the project to be developed, and thus became the founder and first chairwoman of the Munich and then the Dornach building association.

When Rudolf Steiner spoke at the building site in Dornach for the first time since her death, he said that it was only through her deep artistic sense that she, who was “most intimately connected” to the building, was able to “unfold the will that then spreads and takes hold of many, the will for development that finds expression in this our building.” Sophie Stinde was among the very first to whom the idea of this building arose, and one can feel that we would hardly have found the way to this building from our Munich mystery thoughts if her strong will had not been at the starting point of the idea of this building.” And continuing, he said: ”Her place in the outer physical world will be empty in the future. But for those who have learned to understand her, the idea of exemplary, dedicated, sacrificial work within our ranks will emanate from this place. And this idea must live in particular in the rooms under the double dome, in the rooms in which Sophie Stinde's soul already worked during her earthly incarnation as her co-work. If we grasp our relationship to her in the right sense, it will be impossible to turn our gaze to our forms without feeling connected to her, who turned her gaze first and foremost to him to whom she dedicated her own work and in whom Sophie Stinde's soul will continue to work.” (Dornach, December 26, 1915, in Bibl. No. 261 ‘Our Dead.’)

The following chronicle illustrates how Rudolf Steiner, together with Marie von Sivers and the Munich friends, carefully prepared the 1907 congress over a long period of time in order to inaugurate the renewal of the mysteries in the modern Rosicrucian sense, in the spirit of harmonizing science, art and religion. The dates, however, mark only the most essential points in the context of the congress preparations. In between, Rudolf Steiner constantly traveled all over Germany to give lectures at various locations.

June 1906
The 1907 congress is to take place in Germany.

This was decided at the third congress of the Federation of European Sections in Paris on June 3-5, 1906.

June / July 1906
Marie von Sivers' initiative to combine the congress with a mystery play

Marie von Sivers had already conceived the idea of staging a mystery play at the congress while she was still in Paris, as can be seen from the letter to Schur dated July 18, 1906, quoted below: “The Sacred Drama of Eleusis” in Edouard Schure's reconstruction. Schure had just met Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers in person for the first time in Paris, after Marie von Sivers had already corresponded with him for seven years. It was through him that she had become aware of Theosophy and had thus met Rudolf Steiner in Berlin in 1900. Marie von Sivers wrote the letter quoted below from Landin in Mark Brandenburg, where she was staying with Rudolf Steiner and a few other friends for a short rest. Sophie Stinde, who had been appointed secretary of the congress, and Countess Kalckreuth, who had been appointed treasurer, also came there to “discuss the affairs of the Munich Congress with Dr. Steiner and Fräulein von Sivers.” The easiest opportunity for this is there... There will be a winter full of exhausting work. Pentecost is very early next year.” (Sophie Stinde to Ludwig Kleeberg, July 5, 1906.

Marie von Sivers to Edouard Schuré, from Landin, July 18, 1906: ¹

”... If the inn near your house still exists, it would be nice to see you again and rest a little in your surroundings. Then you could talk to Dr. Steiner instead of asking him questions in writing. And we could talk about staging your mystery drama. For example, the Persephone scene with the choir of nymphs in the chapter on Plato is a very beautiful prelude to the Eleusinian mystery. We have a member in Stuttgart who is very earnest and very musical.² Perhaps Theosophy will inspire him to compose the choruses. They would deserve it..."

September 1906
The Eleusis performance is discussed again with Schuré.

Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers stay with Schuré in Barr in Alsace for five days.

”... Stimulating conversations took place during the walks to the ruins of old castles, to Mont St. Odile, to the Heidenmauer. It was there that I, moving from a review of the time of the Druid mysteries to the Greeks, dared to ask Schur& the question that Dr. Steiner, as far as he was concerned, had already answered in the affirmative: whether we might dare to present his drama of Eleusis at the congress to be held in Munich next year. Schure was very pleasantly surprised...

October 1906
The time and place of the conference and its form are officially announced.

At the general assembly of the German Section in Berlin on October 21, 1906, Rudolf Steiner announced the proposal to hold the congress in Munich for “purely practical reasons,” since “only there” were the suitable forces available “for the long and demanding work.” Pentecost seemed the most appropriate time.

In answer to a question about the organization, he replied that all previous congresses should be seen as “experiments”. The task of the German Section should be to bring everything into “intimate harmony”, so that works of art, music and speech interact with the rest of the arrangements in a way that evokes a particular mood and resonates with it, striving to “evoke the ancient mysteries”, which is why the performance of a mystery play is planned.

October / November 1906
The exact congress schedule is drawn up and the necessary rooms are rented. The mystery play is to be performed by members of the society under the direction of Rudolf Steiner.

From October 27 to November 6, 1906, Rudolf Steiner gave three public lectures in Munich and a cycle of eight lectures for members of the Society. Marie von Sivers reported on it Edouard Schuré:

"We have just returned from Munich, where Dr. Steiner gave one of his cycles entitled ‘Theosophy as Illustrated by the Gospel of John’. It was magnificent. During the twelve days we were there, we also drafted the plan for the congress and rented the halls. They are to our taste – dignified, spacious, well-proportioned and free of ornamentation, so the decoration will be our responsibility. We can try to approach the idea of a temple. The stage is also large, and we will be far enough away from the audience to achieve the illusion of mystery, which is very important to us. Now we would like to ask you for permission to perform “The Sacred Drama of Eleusis”, not with actors, but by distributing the roles among members of our society. Dr. Steiner does not want any 'theater routine'; he will be our director and open up the deeper meaning of our roles for us. Since he can do everything, he will be able to do that too. He will also know how to select those who have special abilities for certain roles with a sure eye. I believe that you are not taking much of a risk, especially since the performance will not be public. Only members of the Theosophical Society will be present and the newspapers will not interfere. Only in the event of an unexpected success could one consider repeating the performance in public, provided you agree.

Now, as you said yourself, some changes would have to be made and then the finished translation given to the composer. So we have to get to work right away, because the congress is taking place at Whitsun (on May 19). Sometimes, when you take things in hand with energy and goodwill, the stars come to your aid. They inspire us and send us the good spirits. Who knows whether such an undertaking, carried out with courage and faith, might not open the door to greater successes. If you are not active yourself, you cannot expect others to take risks. Of course, you have to be prepared for a huge task. If you refuse, Dr. Steiner himself will write something in the spirit of the ancient mysteries, because we value mystery; but we would very much like yours.

It is true that Dr. Steiner wants to give me the role of Demeter, and that frightened me. I would have chosen Persephone rather than the mother of the gods. But Dr. Steiner says that this mother must have something of a nun about her and that even my mouth is particularly suitable for this role, but not for that of Persephone. I can't exactly be the one to resist; I just think that I now have the most difficult role and at the same time the one on which most depends. Above all, the scene between Zeus and Demeter would have to be changed, because it is not written for profane people, and perhaps the narration of Hecate, when she announces the will of Zeus to Demeter, would also have to be retouched a little, because in German the things are immediately much rougher.

Perhaps one could also string together individual scenes with living pictures or pantomimes, interrupted by music. In the big scenes, the choruses of the nymphs, the blessed and the mystics must alternate beautifully with the spoken word.

Of course you are overworked, I know that. But maybe the genius of the drama will take hold of you and you will succeed in combining it into a whole, which is created in individual parts.

I often return in thought to the peaceful valley of the Vosges, where we found such warm and understanding hospitality. I hope to see you and Madame Schure in Munich... If you only knew how Dr. Steiner has to work! I don't think anything like it has ever happened before...

December 1906 to February 1907
The congress program is printed and sent out.

December 8: Rudolf Steiner writes to Marie von Sivers from Stuttgart: “What about your translation of the Eleusinian Mysteries? We need to have it soon... At the beginning of January we must be able to send out the congress programs. So we will probably have to be in Munich then.

December 11th and 12th: Rudolf Steiner gives lectures in Munich.

December 20, 1906 and January 4, 1907: Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers make a private stopover in Munich on a short vacation to Venice.

January 13: Marie von Sivers writes to Edouard Schuré:

”... I understand your horror at the thought of our undertaking. I share your fear, only I have the impression that there is a necessity here. It is as if it had to happen. For us, it is a sword of Damocles hanging over the Congress, because we have now linked it in an organic way with a mystery play, and all the coincidences and potential misfortunes that threaten this performance also threaten our Congress. But we have to stick our necks out and take on the burden, without, however, losing sight of the stars. The composer has not yet said his last word, but the idea inspires him. He is now in the process of reading the work. It is Mr. Stavenhagen in Munich...

January 21: Letter from Rudolf Steiner to Marie von Sivers in Erlangen regarding the congress program.³

”... I am sending you the congress program. I have now finished it in a state that can be sent to the printer... Please have it printed immediately and exactly according to the manuscript...

I escaped for a few hours here in Erlangen today. I couldn't get off anywhere on the way from Karlsruhe to Nuremberg, and if I had been in Nuremberg this morning, you probably wouldn't have received this urgent congress matter either. Because wherever it is, the people are always there.

Please give the printer a copy of the Congress Program from last year so that he doesn't make an impossible size. And impress upon him that he should really make the text in two columns – facing each other – German-English, as it is in the manuscript.

Key passages from the program text:

The intention of the congress program is to express a unified theosophical idea. Since the theosophical worldview represents an ideal of the 'future, it is self-evident that such an idea cannot be fully expressed in the present. But perhaps it can be achieved through the organization and distribution of what is to be presented that in the whole of the congress the Theosophical guiding principles: concentration and clarity of ideas, and in particular the Theosophical mood: calm and inner composure, are expressed.

The content of the events should include: lectures in the field of the Theosophical world view, artistic performances, purely social gatherings.

The artistic performances should be chosen from the fields of visual, musical and poetic art in such a way that the individual pieces combine with the Theosophical world view to form a harmonious whole. Therefore, an attempt should also be made in one of the events to present a mystery in a dramatic way.

Essays and lectures

These will, in accordance with the practice of the congresses to date, cover:

1. All matters relating to brotherhood and the great goals of society.

2. Religion, mysticism, philosophy and science.

Including:
a) comparative religious studies,
b) mythology,
c) folklore,
d) art history,
e) historical, etc.

3. administration, propaganda, etc.

4. occultism.

The papers should be in the hands of the Secretary of the Congress by April 10. They can be written in any of the languages of the federated sections.

The visual arts

The intention is to link everything that is to be presented in this field with the entire event to create a harmonious whole. Therefore, an exhibition will not take place in a separate room, but in the spacious and pleasant congress ballroom itself. And in the choice of the works of art to be exhibited, as well as in the decorative connecting elements, a harmony is to be created that will provide a basic mood for the rest of the room. Therefore, from the fields of fine art and arts and crafts, only those achievements will be considered that fit into the framework thus defined. However, the underlying idea will be so broad that it will encompass many things.

Music

The musical performances will be in keeping with the other events and, where possible, at least in spirit, related to the Theosophical world view. They will also take place in the congress hall itself.

The Poetic Arts

These are to be emphasized through recitations and a stage presentation with a mystery play character. It is to be hoped that the efforts of the German committee will succeed in overcoming the great difficulties that this part of the program in particular will present. But it would still be desirable if, even on a modest scale, it could be shown how the Theosophical world view is able to invigorate the artistic.

The important thing about all these events is to express that 'Theosophy must not remain just a sum of theoretical views, but can be transformed into something that can be perceived by the senses and that is in keeping with the mood. In this way, it must indeed have a fertilizing effect on the rest of culture.

January 25-26, 1907: Rudolf Steiner returns to Munich for two public lectures.

February 17: Death of the founding president of the Theosophical Society, Henry Steel Olcott.

February 25: Rudolf Steiner writes to Marie von Sivers in this context:

“... However things turn out, everything will be fatal for the T. S. [Theosophical Society], but not unfavorable for the spiritual movement. Even the decline of the T. S. as such must not frighten us in any way...” (Library Assn. Nr. 262, page 106).

March 17-19: Rudolf Steiner is in Munich again and gives lectures.

April/May 1907
The rehearsal period in Munich and the design of the hall

April 6: Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers arrive in Munich. In between, Rudolf Steiner travels alone to Berlin for a short time to arrange the necessary matters for the upcoming election of the new president of the T.S.¹ On April 29, he returns to Munich. During the six-week stay, work continues non-stop on the performance of the drama and the decoration of the rooms. Marie von Sivers translates the drama into prose, which Rudolf Steiner then sets to free rhythms. He distributes the roles, directs and the scenery and costumes are also made according to his specifications. He supervises the decoration of the hall, draws sketches for the planetary seals, sculpts the capitals for the planetary seals for the actual congress program, and so on.

May 18-21, 1907 (Whitsun)
The congress as an attempt to renew Western mystery

The conference, with approximately 600 participants, was opened at 10 o'clock on May 18 by Rudolf Steiner, who was serving as the president of the conference. Annie Besant, as honorary president, spoke after the various general secretaries. During the artistic evening event, Marie von Sivers recited the Ariel scene from Goethe's Faust, Part J.

On Pentecost Sunday, May 19, Rudolf Steiner will give his first congress lecture “The Initiation of the Rosicrucian” in the morning; in the afternoon at 5 p.m., the “Sacred Drama of Eleusis” will be performed, a mystery by Edouard Schur with music by Bernhard Stavenhagen.

The following overview was enclosed with the program:

Short summary of Edouard Schuré's Sacred Drama of Eleusis

Presented at the Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society on May 19, 1907.

1. Prologue: Persephone is admonished by her mother Demeter not to let Eros move her to pluck the seductive Narcisse, but to weave at the veil of the world, in which the destinies of the world down to chaos are incorporated, but not yet the conscious life of men. The nymphs act as a warning element, they seek to persuade Persephone to fulfill the vow. Eros appears as a seducer. Persephone plucks the Narcisse of “desire” and can thus be stolen by Pluto.

Act 1, Scene 1. Demeter appears before Hecate, lamenting her pain and asking about her daughter's whereabouts. After she has heard that she has been abducted by Pluto, she wants to know where she can live among a free people and give herself over entirely to her grief. Hecate directs her to Eleusis, where the king has just died. In order to enter there unrecognized, she is transformed by Hecate into an old beggar woman.

2nd scene. Metanira, the widow of the deceased king of Eleusis, is surrounded by her three daughters, who are mourning their father's death; but she herself is only concerned that her son Triptolem should persuade the people to elect him as his father's successor. He does not want to obtain the crown by persuasion, but only to have it if the people choose him without influence. (Act 3.) Then Demeter enters (Act 4) in the guise of an old beggar woman. She is well received by the daughters and by Triptolemus, but sharply rejected by Metanira. Since Demeter (Act 5) speaks to Triptolemus alone, sparks become visible under her robe. She tells Triptolem about the loss of her daughter, and he promises to descend into the underworld to bring her back. Demeter recognizes his great nature and says that she wants to make him “the most divine of heroes”. She touches him, causing a light to appear. Metanira rushes up (Act 6), cursing Demeter, who then reveals herself and ordains Triptolem as the future priest of sacrifice at Eleusis. Metanira, however, is expelled from the sanctuary. She therefore curses Triptolem.

Act 2. Pluto on the throne, next to Persephone. He wants to persuade her to drink from his goblet the fruit of the pomegranate. Lamenting shadows appear before Persephone, who is tossed to and fro by her fate. They want to prevent Persephone from enjoying the fruit. A chorus of demons wants to seduce her to do so. Triptolemus appears (Act 3) with Hecate to fetch Persephone.

Act 3. Zeus laments the fate of Persephone and Triptolemus, who is now also imprisoned by Pluto. He says that only Dionysus in a new form could accomplish the work of liberation. Demeter appears. Zeus tells her that a new Dionysus must arise to liberate the damned, and that this can only come about through his, Zeus', fire combined with Demeter's light. At first, Demeter does not want to accomplish this work because she does not want the Dionysus in his new form to be torn apart again by the wild Titans. But Zeus says: this Dionysus will be stronger. Demeter sinks into sleep. From her dream, the new Dionysus is created in union with the power of Zeus. Before he appears, a “choir of invisible blessed ones” solemnly proclaims the mystery of becoming. Then Triptolemus and Pythagoras appear in a chariot drawn by fiery dragons. Persephone recognizes in Dionysus the god with whom she has always been united through longing, Dionysus in Persephone the sister to whom he belongs for all eternity. Zeus sends Triptolem as an initiated priest to Eleusis. A choir of invisible heroes speaks of the secret of initiation.

The choruses are:

Nymphs:
O Persephone! O virgin!
Heaven's chaste bride
In thy veil thou weavest
The gods' bright forms
Earth's vain delusion
Be ever far from thee!
Truth's pure radiance
Only shine for thine eye!
In the empyrean lives for you
Dionysus, the consort,
Chosen by heaven itself
Like a distant sun's chaste ray
His kiss touches you only.
From your breath he lives,
In his light you breathe —
There is no greater good
To be found in the wide universe.
Do not think of that.
Withdraw from
the vain question.

Do not search further!
Escape dangers,
threatening to humans
and also to the gods.

O divine maiden!
It is only a dream,
but it becomes a being when When guilty desire
Weaves the veil further,
Calls it into your soul.
In radiance must fade
Heaven's bliss for you,
When the promise of salvation
Sounds in vain,
Forget what Eros unchaste
May reveal to you.

Unhappy one, stop.

Beware, Petsephone,
disaster can easily
arise from magic.

Choir of invisible demons in Tartarus

Persephones Besieger,
Dem großen Pluto,
Ihm sei Ehre!
Hell rejoices
At your wedding feast.
In a thousand bonfires
Tartarus glows.
Until now,
Earth's children escaped him
In their innocence.
They were too easy
For the realm of darkness.
But now, possessed by
the goddess of the heights,
in countless numbers
we shall conquer them for ourselves.
For they will draw
the errors of their lives
and the beauty of their forms
into our realm.
This must be populated
with vain shadows,
You Stryges, Harpies
You monsters, rejoice
In the tree of lies.
Glory to Pluto!
Hell trembles with joy
And will hold
Its prey
The dark Tartarus.

Forget, forget,
You shall drink
From this chalice
And give us
The drink to
Drink the strength of life
We desire
From this chalice!
It burns in us
Hell's thirst,
It alone
Can quench it.

Choir of Shadows

You see only souls in us
Bowed down by the power of misfortune,
Wandering on this shore,
We implore

Salvation, O Queen
From you, asking you

To lead us up
Into Elysium's fields.

Do not drink, Persephone,
The red blood
In the black chalice.
And let us rise
From Hekates' darkness,
Into the Elysian realm.

Choir of the Invisible Blessed

When in the realm of dreams the spirits float
The goddess of all earthly fertility,
Then powers of creation stream through the universe,
The fervor of the gods spiritualizes the world
And people tremble to the depths of their souls.
Creation struggles out of the twilight of the senses.
New divine beings come into existence.
Men shall bow in reverence
When the holy reign of the spirits is revealed.
Forms without number stream into life
When the eye of the god sends a glance
Into the immeasurable realm of space.
Worlds germinate out of nothingness into being,
They sink out of being into nothingness,
And thus create the gods' days,
As light and darkness do for men.
But you, seed of the abyss, you souls,
Who see yourselves scattered in the realm of the dead,
The control that was previously lacking to you shall
be given into your own hands! The fiery hearth from which you once arose, was hidden from your soul until now...It will now reveal itself to you! The power of the Mother of the Gods will give life to what the Father of the Gods forms. And from the living form shall arise The new God, the strong light bearer.
And you shall receive him in your souls,
So that from his power can change,
What was mortal in you, into immortal being.

Choir of Invisible Heroes

You witnesses of deeply hidden science!
What lies at the world's deepest bottom, In the depths of the heart as a secret treasure
This sanctuary must still be closed,
Like a gem that rests in the rock.
To carry the pure ray of wisdom into the world
Is the seer's high duty,
But to betray where it lies,<
May only he who wants to lose it,

Monday, May 20: Rudolf Steiner gives his second congress lecture “Planetary Evolution and Human Evolution”.

Tuesday, May 21: Rudolf Steiner speaks about educational issues in the morning and about the hall design in the afternoon. In the evening, the congress concludes with musical performances and closing speeches.

May/June 1907

Marie von Sivers reports to Edouard Schuré on the performance of his mystery

A vivid impression of the performance and the work problems is conveyed by what Marie von Sivers reported to Edouard Schuré, who had not come to Munich himself:

"Munich, May 26, 1907. This is the first day on which I have had a few quiet hours in my room; soon people will be flocking in, but I will try to give you, if not an aperçu, then at least a few scraps of information. My long silence before the congress was most painful to me. I did not dare to ask you to come, because if the event had failed, you would have experienced embarrassing moments and undertaken a long journey with hardships to receive unpleasant impressions. And then, until the last moment, we really did not know if we would make it. The obstacles were very great. You have to bear in mind that the actors came from different cities and were only able to come together very late. One of two ladies whom we regarded as our stars and who promised to be excellent in the roles of Persephone and Hecate had to leave to care for a sister-in-law in Brussels who had suddenly gone mad. ; the other became mentally ill herself, and for a week we had her here without being able to send her to her mother, from whom she inherited the illness and from whom she was tormented throughout her life. Finally, she had to be taken to a mental hospital; it was truly a catastrophe. So the chances of the performance being a success had become very slim. After much hesitation, we decided to try a very poor young girl who has an extremely difficult life and seems quite hopeless in moments of despondency because she lacks energy. She then sits down, puts her hands in her lap and says, “I can't do it to myself.” Fortunately, she could “offer” herself the role of Persephone. That had been the question. Then the spark that had once lain dormant in her was ignited, and she became happier every day. Her voice, which was initially very weak and always slid down into her chest, grew stronger every day; but it was only in the last week that we could be sure that she would be understood. Even now, this young girl is still completely transfigured and she still has the airs and graces of a princess. These days will have been the most beautiful of her life. On the whole, the rehearsals were a source of delight and harmony for many. We always had quite a number of listeners who could never get enough and who liked the play so much that they would have liked to hear it every day. The nymphs and the phantoms were very eager, but gave us a lot to do. All these people had never acted before. Except for Triptolem, who is a professional actor but a member of the company, and me, who used to perform in amateur theaters, none of our people had ever seen the limelight. Enthusiasm replaced everything. Metanira was disappointing. The one who was supposed to play this role had to take on the role of Hecate, and the new actress, a very clever lady, showed no understanding of the stage at all. The role of Triptolemus had initially been entrusted to a young man who really wanted to act, a very pleasant fellow who looked like an ephebe, but so bleak in his gestures and so incapable of any kind of upturn in his speech that for a while we thought we would have to give up on the whole thing because of him, until the actor who was originally supposed to play Pluto arrived and replaced him with some success. Dionysos was a delightful young girl, half Italian, half Polish, who was the last to arrive and initially spoke with an accent that made us jump. She was nice, but extremely clumsy, and the final apotheosis was in danger of falling through because of her. So we had to work with her intensively every day and teach her the essence of German pronunciation. As a result, my voice, already exhausted by a cough and constant speaking during rehearsals, was in such a state that during the last week I was completely hoarse and feared that I would not be able to speak at the performance, especially since I had no opportunity to take care of myself and withdraw from all my other obligations. Apart from my duties as secretary of the German Section and of the Congress Bureau, we had to organize, just for this performance: two painting studios (for the scenery), a tailor's studio (even the costumes were all made by our members according to Dr. Steiner's specifications), and finally two further studios where our painters worked on the decoration of the hall (of the later Temple, based on drawings by Dr. Steiner). There was a flurry of activity like an anthill – feverish haste everywhere, because people only plunged into the big expenses when they were really sure – more or less – that they could play.“

”May 28. Mr. Stavenhagen (who, by the way, is not Dutch) only finished his music three days before the performance and he didn't even make it to the planned final chorus. The music was beautiful, though; I don't know what the foreigners thought of it, but the Germans thought it was “like the harmony of the spheres”. And the acting company also thought it was very beautiful: dignified, strong and ethereal – thoroughly religious.

I believe that it was beneficial for the poetry not to be mixed with music. The beautiful preludes created a mood of religious contemplation; then the word alone prevailed and the idea could emerge all the more clearly.

The Germans were truly enthusiastic; they did not make banal compliments, but they were deeply moved by the drama itself and urgently requested a repeat performance; however, this was not possible. The foreigners were more critical and reserved, but as you yourself suspected, a large number of them came with hostile feelings, determined to resist the progressive spirit, to treat with irony what went beyond their understanding, and to reject anything they considered unorthodox. But it was strange to observe how gradually their resistance diminished, and some were finally moved. The Blechs and Mr. Pascal ³ will certainly never give up their reserved attitude, but the latter is at the end of his , and the Blechs are extremely narrow-minded; I also think that it has made a strange impression on them that we emphasize the importance of your work so strongly, while they have probably passed it by through their English education. Their feelings are therefore very mixed.

You were right to recognize Dr. Steiner's hand in the translation. I don't know why Mr. Sauerwein ⁴ told you that it was mine. Incidentally, I don't know Mr. Sauerwein and have never seen him. Mr. Steiner spoke to me about him as a theosophist whom he once met in Vienna, who was at the congress on the day of the performance and who is known to you. Since he went to Paris, he asked him to greet you from us. Perhaps Mr. Sauerwein saw the two works that I translated on the book table and concluded that I am also the translator of The Sacred Drama.

I did the prose translation and only here, over the last month, has Mr. Steiner set to work to bring it into rhythms. With what difficulties! He was constantly interrupted, constantly called upon. He would leave, come back for five minutes, continue his poetic work, and then leave again, called by someone else. He worked in all the arts and crafts, and instructed everyone: painters, sculptors, musicians, carpenters, upholsterers, actors, seamstresses, theater workers, electricians. If he had had the necessary materials and workers at his disposal, he would have achieved something fabulous in a short time: the temple of the future. As it was, he could only sketch out ideas, but they will have a fertilizing effect.

With all of this, the final scenes of the drama could only be completed in a moment that already seemed highly critical to me. I had faith that they would make it, but I didn't want to rely on it; it would have been foolhardy. It would have pleased and frightened me at the same time if you had written that you were coming, but I didn't dare encourage you to do so. One does not want to challenge the protecting spirits, but only cautiously ask for their help. What has amazed me most is that I have found my voice again for the performance – as calmly and confidently as if it had never been tormented by coughing and exhausted by tiredness."

"Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, June 17, 1907. I... deeply regret not having sent you these sheets written in Munich, which I believed I would still be able to supplement in full detail. But every day brought something unexpected. For the cycle by Dr. Steiner in Munich, ⁵ About two hundred people had stayed, who simply blew us away. It was very difficult to leave. During the last days, we had ten people waiting to be received at nine o'clock in the evening. If we take the morning train, as in this case, we pack our bags between two and six o'clock in the morning without going to bed. Mr. Steiner then went directly from the train to a public lecture in Leipzig, and another followed the next day... On the morning of June 15, we had to take the train to Kassel, where a two-week cycle is now taking place....

^{6With the title “Theosophy and Rosicrucianism”, contained in Library No. 100 “Human Evolution and Christ Consciousness”.}

The Munich Congress as the starting point for the separation from the Theosophical Society

Rudolf Steiner's esoteric and artistic design of the Munich Congress also had a strong impact on social history. From the point of view of social life, it meant a large-scale attempt by Rudolf Steiner to place the Western-Christian-Rosicrucian esotericism, which he had advocated from the very beginning, in the international context of the 'Theosophical Society'. However, as he describes in his 'Autobiography' (see page 33 of this volume), this was rejected by the non-German Theosophists. This 'inner attitude' was the 'real' reason why the Anthroposophical Society could not continue as 'a part' of the Theosophical Society.

Due to the decline of the Theosophical Society, which Rudolf Steiner had already foreseen at the time, he had a long conversation with the new president, Annie Besant, during the congress, with Marie von Sivers as interpreter. Marie von Sivers later reported that in this conversation Rudolf Steiner had tried to point out to Annie Besant “in a warmly respectful but deeply insistent way” many things in this context and at the same time explain to her that from now on he was obliged to base his “own esoteric work, independently of hers, entirely on the soil of Western Christian mysticism”. She listened to this in silence.⁷ Rudolf Steiner himself once commented on this conversation to the effect that “Annie Besant said in Munich in 1907, in front of a witness [Marie von Sivers] who is always willing to testify to it, that she was not competent in relation to Christianity. And so, at that time, she ceded the movement to me, so to speak, insofar as Christianity was to be incorporated.” ⁸

Annie Besant wrote to the German Theosophist Wilhelm Huebbe-Schleiden on June 7, 1907, shortly after her return from Munich to London, in the context of this conversation: ⁹ “Dear Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, Dr. Steiner's occult training is very different from ours. He does not know the Eastern way and therefore cannot teach it. He teaches the Christian Rosicrucian way, which is a help for some people, but it is different from ours. He has his own school and is also responsible for it. I consider him a very good teacher in his own direction and a man with real insights. He and I work in perfect friendship and harmony, but in different directions. Always your Annie Besant.” In reality, this ‘friendship and harmony’ was by no means as ‘perfect’ as Annie Besant expressed it in this letter. In the course of the following years, this became more and more apparent, until in 1912/13 the German Section of the Theosophical Society transformed itself into the independent Anthroposophical Society.

H.W.

• 1. Marie von Sivers and Edouard Schuré corresponded with each other in French. Translation by Robert Friedenthal.
• 2. Adolf Arenson, who did not write the music for the Eleusinian drama, but did write the music for Rudolf Steiner's four mystery dramas from 1910 to 1913.
• 3. This congress program must have been sent out soon afterwards. For the conference itself, Rudolf Steiner designed a different “programme booklet that was given to the visitors.” Pages 193-201 and Plate I of this booklet are reproduced in facsimile.
• 1. Immediately before the Munich Congress, H.S. Olcott's successor was elected. Annie Besant was elected.
• 3. Prominent French Theosophists.
• 4. Jules Sauerwein, who translated, among other works, “Secret Science”.
• 5. 22 May to 6 June 1907, announced in the Congress Program as “A Course on Theosophy according to the method of the Rose-Cross», printed under the title «The Theosophy of the Rose-Cross», Library No. 99.
• 7. Marie Steiner, Foreword to “Study Material from the Meetings of the Circle of Thirty, Stuttgart 1922/23”, private reproduction . Dornach 1947.
• 8. Rudolf Steiner, Address Berlin December 14, 1911, intended for Bibl.-Nr. 251; also contained in excerpts in “Aus dem Leben von Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Biographische Beiträge und eine Bibliographie” by Hella Wiesberger, Domach 1956.
• 9. The original letter in English is reproduced in facsimile in Emil Bock, “Rudolf Steiner, Studien zu seinem Lebensgang und Lebenswerk”, Stuttgart 1961.

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question?

Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack.

I have another question, something completely different.

Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too.

Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children.

The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world.

Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet.

The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family.

Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being.

Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context?

Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense.

However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that.

There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is.

Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter.

You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire.

You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body.

Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about.

Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death.

If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium.

Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!)

So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life.

But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see.

Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about.

As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history.

I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past.

But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands.

Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea.

Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England!

Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again.

Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe.

Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life.

Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place.

The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later.

So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time.

There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said.

Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge.

You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way.

Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being.

Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden.

What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it.

Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan.

There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other.

But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.

From my father I have the stature,
The serious way of life,
From my mother, a cheerful disposition
And the desire to tell stories.

Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother.

I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved.

Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars.

His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other.

And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have.

And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way.

Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book.

On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that.

I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible.

But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture.

If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people!

It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys.

I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere.

Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other.

From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts.

So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty.

Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge.

Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him.

Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred.

Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process.

In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn.

The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion.

And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world.

And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out!

When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking.

Out of the whole spirit of our anthroposophical work, you will have seen, in the course of years, that its aim is not to work on, as it were, something directly sensational, but to follow tranquilly those facts connected with spiritual happenings, the knowledge and cognition of which can be important for our life. One does not merely serve the day, spiritually, by always speaking on what concerns the day, but one also serves it by assimilating a knowledge of the great connections of life. Our own individual life is fundamentally connected with the great events of existence, and we can only rightly judge our own life, when we estimate it by the greatest phenomena of life. Hence it arises, that within our seven-yearly cycle in the German Section of the Theosophical Society, for four years we have occupied ourselves with the foundation of our views, of our knowledge, and in the last three years we have tried to deepen these basic views with reference to world-embracing questions. And you will have seen from what has come to you in the explanations given in various lecture-cycles, that considerations concerning the Gospels belonged to the latter. Not merely because the material and content of the Gospels should be brought close to us, but because through their study, many things touching human nature can be learnt. And so today, something can be said about the Gospels, with various applications to the personal life of man.

These Gospels are regarded less and less by external science as a historical document for the knowledge of the greatest Individuality, of the greatest Impulse, which has entered the evolution of humanity—of Christ Jesus. The attitude to the Gospels in the first Christian centuries, and for a long time through the middle ages, was quite different from what it has become in recent times. The Gospels are first felt today as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing appears more natural today than to say: How can four documents be historical, when they contradict each other, as the four Gospels do, each of which professes to give us an account of what happened at the beginning of our era in Palestine.

Yet one thing could strike human thinking, unless it tries today to avoid seeing the most important matters. For example, it might be said: It does not really need very much today to realise that if the four Gospels are read consecutively they do indeed contradict themselves in that sense as one understands it today. Any child could see that, one might retort! But it might be added: Now the Gospels are in all hands, now everybody occupies himself with them. But there was a time before the invention of printing, before the modern spread of books, when these Gospels were by no means in all hands, when they were really read only by very few, and these few, they were just the people who stood at the peak of the spiritual life. Fundamentally, in the first centuries, only those had the Gospels in their hands who stood at the summit of the spiritual life. The content was imparted to the others, brought near so that they could grasp it. One might ask: Were then these few, who stood at the summit of the spiritual life, really such terrible fools, such mightily stupid people, that they could not see what any child can see today: that they do contradict each other, in the ordinary sense? Were then all those people, who endeavoured to grasp the gigantic Christ Event in the sense of the four Gospels, really such fools, such terribly stupid men, that they did not see what the critic sees, working in the modern sense with these contradictions? This is a question for oneself.

If we pursue such a question, we soon notice something else: i.e., that the whole world of man's feeling towards the Gospels stood differently to them than it does today. Today it is the critical intellect, which has learnt its whole training, its whole manner of thought, at the hand of external sense-reality, it is this which attacks the Gospels, and for this it is truly not difficult to find these intellectual contradictions; for they are childishly easy to find.

How, then, did those who stood at the summit of the spiritual life and centuries ago took the Gospels in hand get on with what one today calls contradictions? You see, these men of old had an infinite reverence, unthinkable today, for the great Christ Event through the four Gospels, and they felt extraordinarily that because they had four Gospels, they had all the more to revere and value this event. How is that possible? That was because these old judges of the Gospels kept in mind something quite different from what is kept in mind today. The modern critics do not proceed more cleverly than one who, perhaps, photographs a nosegay from one side—he thus gets a certain photograph of the nosegay. He now goes through the world with this photograph. People notice what the photograph looks like, and say: Now I have an exact idea of the nosegay. But then someone comes who photographs it from another side. The picture is quite different. He shows the picture of the same nosegay to people, but they say: That can't be a picture of the nosegay. The pictures contradict each other. And if the nosegay is photographed from four sides, then the four pictures do not appear similar, yet they are four views of the same thing. This was how the old judges of the four Gospels felt. They said: the four Gospels are representations of one event, from four different points of view, and because this is the case, they give us thereby a complete picture, because they are not alike—and first when we are in a position to form a complete representation from the four sides, do we then get a complete idea of the events of Palestine. And so these people said: We must look up with all the greater humility, when we see the events of Palestine presented from four sides. For this event is so great, that one cannot understand it, if it is only described from one side. We must be thankful that we have four Gospels, which describe this great event from four sides. We must only understand how these four different points of view have come together, and then, when we have convinced ourselves of this, can we form a perception of what the individual person can have from the four Gospels.

That which we call the Christ Event is a mighty happening in the spiritual evolution of mankind. How can we insert what took place then in Palestine in the whole of human evolution? We can regard it in such a way that we say: Everything, all that mankind previously experienced spiritually, which humanity had gone through spiritually, all that flowed together streamed together into the event of Palestine, in order from then to flow on farther in one common stream.

There we have—just to mention but one thing—let us say, the old Hebrew teaching, as is laid down in the Old Testament, if we understand it aright. That is one contribution. It flowed in, as the event of Palestine took place.

There was then another stream which proceeded from Zarathustra. This flowed into that which from then streamed on through the world as Christianity as a main stream.

There is that which we can call the Oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That also flowed into the one great main stream, and still others, in order then to flow on together. All of these single streams are today within Christianity.

You are not shown what Buddhism is today by one who warms up again the teachings which Buddha gave out 600 years before our era. These teachings have flowed into Christianity. You are not shown what Zarathustrianism really is by one who takes the old Persian documents, and from thence will show the nature of Zarathustrianism today; for he who taught in ancient Persia what exists in the ancient Persian documents has evolved further, and has let his contribution flow into the spiritual life of mankind, and we must seek Zarathustrianism also within Christianity, as well as Buddhism, and the old Hebrew stream.

And now we must ask ourselves, in order to have, in a slight degree, a picture of the real relationship: How have these three streams of Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and ancient Hebrewism, flowed into Christianity.

If we will understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, then we should call to mind something which has often been mentioned here: that that individuality whom we mention as Zarathustra, was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and first taught in the so-called ancient Persian people, and then incarnated again and again. After he ascended higher and higher through each incarnation, he appeared about 600 years before our era as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the old Chaldean-Babylonian sphere of culture. This Zarathustra was incarnated there, he was the teacher there of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea, in order to perfect himself in the right manner. Then this Zarathustra, who at that time 600 years before our era appeared under the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was born again at the beginning of our era, reborn so that he appeared in a body which sprang from the parental pair called Joseph and Mary, mentioned and described in the Matthew Gospel. We designate this child of Joseph and Mary, of the so-called Bethlehem parents, as one of the two Jesus children who were then born at the beginning of our era. Zarathustra incarnated in him. Therewith we have implanted in that old Palestine the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism, the one significant spiritual stream.

But not only this spiritual stream has to live again, in order to be able to stream into Christianity in a new form, but other spiritual streams also. Many different things had to come together and combine for this. For instance, it had to happen also that Zarathustra was born in a body, which as a body, through its physical organisation, made it possible for Zarathustra in that incarnation at the beginning of our era, to develop those faculties which he possessed, through having ascended so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must permit ourselves to say: If such a high individuality descended and found an unsuitable body (which could happen through his being unable to find a suitable body), then he would not be able to express the faculties which he possessed in soul and spirit, because the instruments were not there, in order to express on earth the corresponding powers. One must have a definitely formed brain, if one will express such powers as Zarathustra possessed. That means, one must be born in a body, which, as a body inherited from forefathers, has those qualities which render it a suitable instrument for the faculties which come over from an earlier incarnation. And so, in the case of that Jesus child described in the Matthew Gospel, care had to be taken, that he did not merely have inwardly, in that which reincarnated such a high psychic-spiritual organisation, that he could exercise that mighty effect which had to be exercised, but that also, this soul could be born in a perfect physical organisation, which was inherited. Zarathustra had to find forthcoming this suitable physical brain.

What was thus worked out as a perfectly adapted physical organisation was now the contribution which the ancient Hebrew people had to make to Christianity. A suitable physical body had to be created out of it with the utmost conceivable perfect physical instruments. A suitable body had to be created through purely physical heredity for him who incarnated here. Preparation had to be made for this throughout all the generations lying far back, so that the right qualities could be passed on to that body which was born at the beginning of our era. To transmit the right body was again the mission of the ancient Hebrew life.

Now we will form for ourselves an idea of how this life flowed into the great main stream of our present spiritual life. That means, just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, so we will now seek the mission of the ancient Hebrew people for the entire civilisation of our earth.

Here it must be said that the more spiritual science progresses, the more it sees in the Bible, compared with what we have today as external history. What is unearthed in the latter really appears childish compared with what stands in the Bible, only one must read it rightly to understand it. This is really the more correct, to the eyes of true spiritual investigation. And so, among other things, it is correct that in a certain connection, that which was the later Judaism, arose from a tribal father, from the father Abraham or Abram. Something absolutely correct lies behind that if we go back along the generations, we come to a tribal father, to whom quite special powers are imparted from out of the spiritual world itself. And in the sense of spiritual science, we can speak of a tribal father of the Jewish people, of Abraham or Abram. Quite special powers were imparted to him from out of the spiritual world. What were these? If we want to understand what special faculties were imparted to him, then we must call to mind a little the various things we have already said here.

We have said: If we go back to earlier times, we find that human beings had other powers of soul, which we can designate as a kind of dim clairvoyance compared with those of today. They could not look out into the world in such a self-conscious intellectual way as modern human beings, but they still had the faculty to see the spirit which exists in the outer world, spiritual phenomena, facts and beings; even if this seeing, because it occurred in a dimmed consciousness, was more like a living dream, yet it had a living connection with reality. This old clairvoyance had to become weaker and weaker, so that man could educate himself to our present modern perception and intellectual culture.

The whole evolution of mankind is a kind of education of humanity. The various faculties are gradually acquired. Our present way of seeing, without our perceiving, for instance the astral body winding round a flower, when we behold it in ordinary consciousness—whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body round it—this modern perception, which beholds objects with the sharp contours of the intellect, had to be trained in man, through the disappearance of the old clairvoyance. But one definite law prevails in spiritual evolution. Everything which man acquires must take its starting point from one individuality. Faculties which are to become common to a large number of people must, as it were, first begin in one. Those faculties which relate especially to a combination turned away from clairvoyance, to the judging of the world according to measure, number, and weight, these faculties which tend especially not to see into the spiritual world, but to combine sensible phenomena, were first implanted from out of the spiritual world in that individuality who is designated as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen first to develop especially those powers which are bound in the most eminent degree to the instrument of the physical brain. Abraham or Abram is not for nothing called the discoverer of arithmetic, that means, that faculty which judges and combines the world according to measure and number. He was, as it were, the first of those, in whose soul-powers the old dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished, and whose brain was so prepared as a perfect instrument, that just that faculty which makes use of the brain, comes most to the fore.

And so in Abraham or Abram, there was a man, in whom the physical brain was so developed, that it was applied most of all to external perception on the physical plane, whereas all human beings earlier made less use of the physical brain, while they saw clairvoyantly in the outer world the spiritual world, without always using the physical brain. That was a significant, mighty mission which was especially allocated to Abraham.

And now this faculty, which was laid as a seed from out the spiritual world in Abraham, like any other seed, had to develop more and more. You can easily conceive that whatever appears in the world must develop. Similarly this power of considering the world through the physical brain had gradually to develop from the seed. The evolution of this faculty now occurred through the succeeding generations, while that which was given to Abraham was carried over to the succeeding generations through the times which followed. But something else had to happen than formerly when the mission of older people was carried over to the younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical body; the greatest missions especially were not bound to a physical brain. Let us take Zarathustra. What he gave to his disciples was a higher clairvoyant vision than other people had. That was not bound to a physical instrument; that was carried over from teacher to pupil, the pupil again became teacher, carried it over to his pupils, and so on. Now it was not a question of a teaching, of a method of clairvoyant perception, but of something bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Something of this nature can only be implanted into later times by being inherited physically. Therefore, what was given to Abraham as mission was bound up with its being inherited physically from one generation to the other. That means, this perfect organisation of the physical brain must be inherited from Abraham by his descendants from generation to generation. Because his mission consisted in the physical brain becoming more and more perfect, this had to happen from generation to generation.

Thus the mission of Abraham was something bound up with procreation, in order to become ever more perfect in the course of physical evolution. But now something else was united with this contribution which the old Hebraic people had to perform. This we will understand if we consider the following.

If we take the other people in other civilisations, with their old dim clairvoyance, then we must say: How did they receive that which was most important, which they venerated most of all in the world? They received it in such a way that it shone as Inspiration in their inner being, shone entirely inwardly. One did not have to investigate so far afield as today. Today man acquires his science by investigation outwardly, by experimenting, he derives his laws by combining external facts. The ancients did not experience what they sought to know in this way, for it shone in them as inspiration. They received it in the inward being. The soul had to give birth to it inwardly. They had to turn the gaze away from the outer world if they let the highest truths arise as inspirations. This had now become different in that people who derived their mission from Abraham or Abram. Abraham had to bring to men just that which can be won through observation outwardly, and through combination. If then a member of other civilisations, which were built on the old clairvoyance, looked up to the highest, then he said to himself: I am thankful to the God Who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away from outside, and the God becomes present to me in the spirit, if, without looking outwards, I let the inspirations of the Divinity shine within. That people which arose from Abraham, however, had to say: I will renounce the inspirations which merely come from within. I will prepare myself to turn my gaze into the world around. I will observe what reveals itself in the air, and water, in mountain and plain, in the starry world, there will I send my gaze, and then I will be able to ponder how one thing stands by another. I will combine the things outside with each other, and will see how I can win an all-embracing thought. And when I comprise what I see in the outer world with an all-embracing thought, bringing it into one single thought, then I will name that which the outer world says to me Jahve, or Jehova. I will receive the highest through a revelation from outside, through a revelation which speaks through the outer world. That was the mission of the Abrahamitic people: to give mankind that which came as revelation from outside, in contrast to that which the other peoples had to give. Therefore this instrument of the spiritual life had to be inherited so that it corresponded in its formations to the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner soul-powers had to correspond to the revelations from within.

Now let us ask ourselves: What happened there, when the old clairvoyants gave themselves to the revelations from within? Then they turned their gaze from outside, for what revealed itself in the external world could say nothing to them about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze from sun and stars, for they listened solely to what was within, and then the great inspirations about the secrets of the world revealed themselves. Then the perceptions appeared concerning the structure of the world. And that which they knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, about the spiritual worlds, was not acquired by them through external observation, these members of the ancient civilisations. They knew something of Mars, Saturn, etc., because the nature of these stars revealed itself in their inner being. Thus it was the laws of the entire cosmos, which as it were, were inscribed in the stars, were at the same time inscribed in the souls of these people. They revealed themselves there through inspiration. As the laws of the world which dominate the hosts of the stars revealed themselves in the soul, so now the external laws which rule the world should reveal themselves through external combination to the Abrahamitic people, which now should be won through external observation. For this, heredity had to be so guided that thereby the brain got those qualities through which it could see the right combinations there outside. That wonderful conformity to law was implanted in the seeds which were transmitted to Abraham, which could so develop through i.e. generations, that their development corresponded with the great world-laws. The brain had to be inherited so that its inner powers, its configuration, developed like the laws of number of the stars, out there in the cosmos. Therefore, it was said by Jahve to Abraham: Thou wilt see generations arise from thee, which in their ordering are arranged as the number of stars in the heavens. As the stars in the sky are arranged in harmonious relationships of number, so should the generations also be arranged in harmonious relationships of number. That means these generations should carry laws in themselves, like the starry laws in the heavens, There we have twelve constellations. An image of this had to appear in the twelve tribes, as they arose from Abraham, so that the corresponding faculties, which were implanted as seed in Abraham, could be led down through the generations. And so, in the whole organic structure of this people developing from age to age, an image was created of the number and measure in the heavens. A translation of the Bible has rendered this by saying: Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in heaven.... Whereas in truth, the passage should run: Thy descendants shall be arranged regularly in the blood relationship, so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens. O, the Bible is deep! But what is today offered as Bible is coloured by the modern view of the world. There it runs, “Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it is said: Everything shall be so regular in thy descendants that, for example, twelve tribes result, which correspond to the number twelve in the constellations of heaven.

And so the individual characteristics had to appear that all the time there came to expression the mission of the Abrahamitic people: I get as a gift from outside—not as something which shines in my innermost—that which forms my mission. There is given to me from outside that which I have to bring to the world. That is wonderfully expressed in the Bible, that the mission of Abraham is something given to him from outside, in contrast to the old revelations which were given from within. What had the mission of Abraham to be? The mission of Abraham had to be this: to provide the blood, and what flows through the blood, to Christ Jesus. That is the mission of Abraham. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be permuted in this. That had to work as if it came from outside, a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the old Hebrew people. That is his mission. If that is to correspond to the whole nature of his mission, then this people itself, which is his mission, this people itself must be a gift from outside, must be given by him as a gift. Abraham had a son—Isaac—whom he had to sacrifice, as related in the Bible. And as he came to sacrifice him, this son was given anew to him by Jahve. What is thus given him? From Isaac originate the entire people. If Isaac had been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The whole people were thus given him as a gift. In the sacrifice of Isaac is this character of gift wonderfully expressed. The people itself is the mission of Abraham; and with Isaac, he receives the entire Hebrew people from Jahve as a gift.

The presentations in the Bible are thus deep, and all correspond in detail to the inner character in the progressive evolution of humanity. This old Hebrew people had to give up bit by bit the old clairvoyance, which the other civilisations comprised within themselves. This old clairvoyance was bound to faculties which came out of the spiritual world. One designated these clairvoyant faculties, according to their nature, by expressions derived from the starry constellations. The last faculty which was given up, for the old Hebrew people to be bestowed on Abraham, was the one connected with the starry sign of the Ram. Therefore a ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac. That is the external expression for the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power so that the old Hebrew people could be bestowed on Abraham. Thus this people was chosen to develop just those powers which depend on the observation of the outer world. But atavistic relics of the earlier appear in all, and so it came about that again and again the old Hebrew people was forced to exclude what did not lie purely in the blood. The carrying over of these faculties directed externally that which still remained of the old clairvoyance. That which came as an inheritance from other peoples had always to be excluded.

We here touch a chapter which is only described with difficulty today, because it contains a truth which lies as far as possible from modern thinking. But it is nevertheless a truth, and one may make the demand, that those who have worked a longer time in anthroposophical groups, can bear such truths, withdrawn somewhat from modern habits of thought.

We must be clear that for certain human classes in ancient times, they retained older faculties into later ages, especially with reference to knowledge; the old clairvoyant powers were once with them in the soul. Man was more united with spiritual beings; they revealed themselves in him. That expressed itself in certain people, who represented as it were decadent products of this older humanity, that they maintained a lower form of this connection with the spiritual outer world. Whereas the really clairvoyant people were more bound up with the entire universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, the human beings who were in decadence, were lower human types, who in their decadence developed their ancient connection with the surrounding world. They were not independent; the I-ness or Ego-hood, Ego-nature, did not come out in them, but also, the old clairvoyant faculties were no longer at their corresponding height. Such human beings constantly appeared, and in them was shown the connection between certain physical human organs, and the so-called ancient clairvoyant organs. And now comes that truth which must sound so strange. What one calls the old clairvoyance, this shining of world secrets in the innermost, must come by some path or other into the soul. What shone in man must stream in; that means, we have to conceive that “streamings-in” (influxes) occur in people. The ancient human being did not perceive these streams, but when they took place and shone in him, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Certain streams thus flowed into man from out his environment. These were later transformed in him. These streams in ancient times were purely spiritual streams, were, for instance, perceptible to a clairvoyant as pure astral-etheric streams. But later, these pure spirit streams dried up, as it were, condensed to etheric-physical streams. And what arose thus? The hair arose in this way. The hair is a result of the ancient streams. The hair today on a human body was formerly spiritual stream in man, coming from outside into his inner being. Our hair is a dried-up astral-etheric stream. And such things are only preserved where—one might say—the old truths have remained, purely externally, in writing, through tradition. Therefore, in Hebrew, the word HAIR and the word LIGHT are designated by approximately the same signs, because one had a consciousness of the relationship between the astral in-streaming light, and the hair; as, in general, in old Hebraic writings, originally, purely in the words themselves, the greatest truths are contained.

Thus one can say: there is a progressive evolution of mankind. With those human beings, however, who retained the old faculties in decadent form, these streamings-in indeed transformed themselves, dried up, as it were, but no new faculties appeared instead. They were in an old way bound with the new, and yet again, not bound, because these streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy, because new powers appeared instead of those which later condensed to hair.

Science will only come again to these significant truths after a long time. In the Bible they stand. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, still standing at the childish stage guarding its A.B.C. Just read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob is he who has progressed a stage, who has developed the faculty of the later age, Esau has remained at an earlier stage. It is he who is the simpleton, as it were, compared with Jacob. As the sons are presented to Isaac, the mother has covered Jacob with false hair, so that Isaac confuses the younger son with Esau. We should thereby be shown that the old Hebrew people still had something in them as an inheritance from other civilisations which had to be stripped off. Esau is thrust out; through Jacob is implanted what should live on as external combination.

And just as that which had been retained in a form remaining behind was thrust out in Esau, so were the old clairvoyant powers, which came to expression as an atavistic remnant in what Joseph represents, thrust out by his brothers, towards Egypt. He had dreams, and could interpret the world through them; that is the faculty which should not develop in the mission of the Abrahamitic people. Therefore he is thrust out, and must go to Egypt.

So we thus see how a stream is worked out in the old Hebrew people, which is built on blood relationship through the generations, and out of which by stages that which remains over as relics is expelled. The old Hebrew has this as its own peculiar tendency, to make that which is inherited down through the generations into an ever more and more perfect instrument, so that when the whole generations have run their course, that body can be evolved from it which can furnish the instrument for him who is to be incarnated again. If the old Hebrew people could not receive revelations from within, they must receive them from outside. Even that which the other peoples received through direct inspiration, had to be received by the old Hebrew people through an external revelation. That means, the Jews had to go over to another people—led by Joseph—who had the old inspirations. And while Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, they attained through external means what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something which shone to them from within. That was the mission of the old Hebrew people. Then, after they had assimilated what they had to absorb from outside, they withdrew with an externally acquired revelation—they returned back again to their Palestine.

And now, after this old Hebrew people had undergone all this, there should be shown how it gradually developed from generation to generation, so that finally the body which became the body of Jesus could be born from this people, whereby the old Hebrew stream flowed into Christianity.

Remember how we have discussed the development of tendencies in the case of single human beings. The life of the individual falls into periods of seven years. The first period extends from birth until the change of teeth, at the age of seven, and in this the physical body simply builds its forms. Then we have the second seven-yearly period to the age of puberty, in which the etheric body is active in the growth of form, in enlarging the forms. The forms are made definite till the age of seven, then the already definite forms merely enlarge, letting those tendencies prevail down in them. From 14 to 21, the astral body is especially predominant. And so we see in the twenty-first year the real “I” of man is first born, and becomes independent. Thus the life of the individual runs its course in certain periods, till the birth of the human “I” or Ego. Similarly, those germs or aptitudes must gradually develop in that people which as people had to provide a body for a most perfect Ego or “I.” In this case, what appears in man in the course of years, so develops here that it appears in the course of generations. A following generation must have developed other tendencies than a previous generation. Everything cannot develop all at once merely in one generation. To explain why this is so from occult bases would lead too far, but one can call to mind a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that in heredity, certain qualities are not immediately inherited, but leap over one generation and it is the grandson who appears similar to the grandfather in inherited qualities. Thus it is in the inheritance of qualities in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. One generation had always to be leaped over. And so what corresponds in the single individual to one period of age, corresponds in the successive generations to two. We can therefore say: This people, like a great individual, must so develop from generation to generation, that what occurs in the case of the individual from birth to change of teeth, here requires 2 x 7 = 14 generations. Then a second period comes, again comprising 2 x 7 generations. This corresponds to the period between the change of teeth and puberty. Then a third period, again comprising 2 x 7 generations, corresponding to the age between 14 and 21, where the astral body is especially prominent. Then the “I” or Ego can be born. The “I” or Ego could be born in the Hebrew people after 3 (2 x 7) = 3 x 14 generations had elapsed. He who wanted to describe to us the body which was given as instrument to Zarathustra, had to show how, through 3 (2 x 7) generations, the seed which was given to Abraham developed, so that after 3 x 14 generations, the “I” could be born, just as in the individual, the “I” could be born in its threefold corporality after 3 x 7 years. The writer of the Matthew Gospel does this. He describes 3 X 14 generations, the generations from Abraham to David, those from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus.

Thus from the depths of knowledge, out of the Matthew Gospel, we have pointed to the mission of the old Hebrew people, how gradually the forces were developed which made it possible for the most perfect Ego or “I” which Zarathustra had attained to be born in a body from this people.

And if we now see what the destinies were of this old Hebrew people, we find that the Captivity appeared to the entire people where, in the individual after the fourteenth year, preparation takes place for individual life, where that springs up which can be accomplished in life, and what man absorbs between the ages 14 and 21; the hopes of youth; that the Captivity was the time when, as it were, the astral body of the old Hebrew people came into consideration, where that was implanted through the last fourteen generations, which gives it its impulse. Therefore the old Hebrew people are led into the Babylonian Captivity—there, where, 600 years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was then in his incarnation, at that time the teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. Those who were the most prominent leaders of the old Hebrew people then came into contact with the great teacher of ancient times, with Zarathas. He there became their teacher, united himself with them, they took up there the great impulse which so worked that in the last fourteen generations this people were prepared for the birth of Jesus.

Events then went on further, as you know. And then we see something noteworthy. We see a law observed in the spiritual sphere by the writer of the Matthew Gospel, which will be recognised more and more as a law significant for all life. This is the law, that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. Modern science has it already in a somewhat distorted form when it declares that what has been undergone at a lower stage throughout long epochs is repeated shortly in each single being. The writer of the Matthew Gospel shows us this in a magnificent way. He shows it by saying: The Ego of Zarathustra had to incarnate in a body which was gradually developed within the Abrahamitic people. Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, from the place where Babylonian civilisation started, and took his path through Asia Minor towards Palestine. His descendants were led farther south through the dreams of Joseph, towards Egypt, and after they had here received the Egyptian Impulse, returned to Canaan. That is the fate of the entire people. First, the whole people are led through Canaan, towards Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. What thus transpired as the fate of a people, had now shortly to be repeated. There, where the Ego is born for whom the vehicle had been thus prepared, after all had been developed that was laid down in Abraham, there this Ego again takes its starting point from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra was the secret teacher in his last incarnation, his spirit was united with Chaldea. What path does the soul of Zarathustra take, when it will incarnate in Bethlehem? Zarathustra had remained united with those who had been initiated in the Chaldean secret schools, with the Magi. They called well to mind how they had heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul who from the beginning was designated as Zarathustra—the golden star—would take his path at a definite point of time towards Bethlehem. And as the time came, they followed the path which this soul took, repeating the path of the old Hebrew people. As Abraham followed the path to Canaan, so that star took this path to Canaan: that means, the soul of Zarathustra; and the three Magi followed the star Zarathustra, and he led them to that place where he was born in that body destined for him from out the Abrahamitic people. Thus Zarathustra, the Ego of Zarathustra, was led along that path—repeating in spirit—which Abraham had traversed to Palestine. Then the old Hebrew people had had to seek the path to Egypt. It had been led over through the dreams of the elder Joseph. And now, that Ego which was born in the Bethlehemitic Jesus, was led through the dreams—again of a Joseph—led to Egypt, the same path which the Abrahamitic people had pursued through the dreams of the elder Joseph. This Ego of Zarathustra, repeating in Spirit, undergoes the whole destiny of the old Hebrew people in the body of Jesus. He goes to Egypt, and then again back to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit which is undergone by the soul of the Ego of Zarathustra. And that is an image of the fate of the old Hebrew people.

In the Matthew Gospel, out of the knowledge of the law, we have that faithfully described, that what appears at a higher stage, is a repetition in short of what was there earlier. Oh, how deeply these gospels describe the event that stands at the beginning of our era, that is so mighty, that four writers have said: Each one of us can only describe from his standpoint this great event. Each of these four has described the one event according to his own limited power. As when we picture a being from four sides, we retain but one picture, and through the combination of mutually contradictory pictures know the total being, so has the writer of the Matthew Gospel described what he knew about the law of 3 (2 x 7), about the preparation of the body for the great Ego of Jesus through the mission of the old Hebrew people, according to these secrets, of which he was conscious just through his initiation. The writer of the Luke Gospel has described according to the initiation of which he was conscious, whereby he presented how in another way the Buddha stream flowed into Christianity, in order to flow on farther into it. And the other gospel writers have described from out of the presuppositions of other initiations. The event they describe is so great, that we must be thankful when we find it described from four sides, from the aspects of four initiations.

Today we have only been able to indicate the inflow of the Zarathustra stream, and the contribution of the old Hebrew people. Next time we will discuss something else, which has been transmitted as a contribution in order to stream further into Christianity at a newly-arisen stage. Only some details were mentioned today from the spirit of the origin of Christianity, to show how our knowledge of the world grows, our knowledge of man grows, if we follow the greatest event in humanity. An idea should be awakened of how deeply this event is to be taken, and how deep the gospels are, when we really understand how to read them.

The world appears in bewildering variety to the human being looking around at first, both the external nature and the human life. He directs his look up to the starry heaven and tries to fathom the sense of the marvellous, but at first mysterious variety of the stars of the luminous sky. The thoughtful human being will probably try to recognize the sense of the ways of the stars and the elements working during the day.

If we look down at our earth,

If we try to understand our mountains with their coloured variety of rocks, woods and vegetation,

If we try to understand the things that surround us as plants, animals, and human beings, and try to see in the phenomena of nature that approach us more or less dark, briefly,

If we try to see reason and sense in everything,

Then we probably feel a kind of faint at first towards all bewildering, which faces us. However, the most bewildering is that for us which faces us in the real life of the human being, in the historical development of the human being since millennia. Science, religion, and other human striving, feeling, intellect, and reason have always tried to introduce sense and coherence into the coloured variety of the stars, into life and into the activities of the beings on our earth.

Who could deny that the human mind has brought it so far in this respect and that it can hope to go farther and farther. However, also a legitimate sense, a kind of spiritual coherence is included in it what we call human development in history. Nevertheless, this seems to somebody rather doubtful, if he looks at the course of destiny with all misery which single human beings, tribes and peoples experience undeservedly, with all luck which meets the single or also many apparently undeservedly, with all sequences of historical experiences of the single peoples, races and nations. If we look into all that, then it probably appears to us as the pure chaos sometimes. There some people probably believe to look in vain for sense or coherence, believe to be unable to understand all that.

Great, astute spirits never doubted that the human mind is able to find sense and reason, lawful necessity also in the course of the historical events. I need to draw your attention only to the fact that our great German poet and thinker, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781), in the testament of his life, in his last work, explained this human development as an education of the human race. He represented the antiquity as the childhood of humanity with the Old Testament as the first elementary book, the following age as a kind of youth from which we have the possibility to look at the future that should bring us something mature and male. I would still like to remind you that another great German thinker whom, admittedly, only a few know, even those who are destined to study him, the great German philosopher Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770-1831) called history an education of the human being to become conscious of freedom. We could still add a hundred examples, and we would see everywhere that those human beings who look ingeniously into this activity, in this bewildering, apparently chaotic activity never doubted that there is also a lawful necessity, above all a higher order than outdoors in nature, in the world of the stars, plants, animals and physical beings generally.

If we let our eyes wander over the development of humanity, one thing faces us that is no longer felt with that liveliness with which it should be felt: a duality, a drastic division in two parts. It is this apparently something quite trivial that it seems so trivial, however, because the human beings are used to it. We reckon with the long period before Christ's birth and with the long period after Christ's birth. One no longer feels this as anything significant because humanity is used to it. However, is it not anything significant in the highest sense that our whole history was split after this sole event in two parts? That anything must have worked so incredibly as a strength that it was recognised by a big part of humanity? The fact that this could happen shows us that something of the consciousness of the unique, immense significance of the action of Christ Jesus is deeply hidden in the human breast. Who could deny, however, that today this significance has become somewhat questionable to many people, so that few of those who count themselves to the most sophisticated persons can really account to themselves why this is in such a way from which infinite depth, actually, humanity was induced to this division of history?

This question should occupy us today, the Christian doctrine of wisdom from the point of view of a detailed spiritual worldview. Among other things, the theosophical movement that spreads out more and more since thirty years in the educated world also tries to deepen the Christian doctrine of wisdom. Those who have already occupied themselves a little bit with the anthroposophic spiritual science know that the second principle of the spiritual-scientific movement is to search for the core of wisdom in all great religions. Just concerning the anthroposophic view of Christianity there are the conceivably biggest misunderstandings, and among those who are called to teach and explain Christianity are just only a very few who show real understanding of the anthroposophic striving. One said repeatedly, anthroposophy wants to transplant some Eastern teachings, a new Buddhism to Europe. This would be the most un-anthroposophic that one can imagine. If we mean it sincerely with the principle of searching for the core of wisdom in all religions, then we must be aware that we have to search for this core of wisdom in Christianity above all, in the religion by which the whole culture of Europe was created and from which the noblest currents of the West originated.

Who does not understand Christianity today, does not understand himself, and if Christianity has to perform anything great for Europe in the future, it has to be deepened. If spiritual science shall have a share of this big achievement, it has the task to penetrate into the depths of Christianity and to search there for those springs which are able to flow in the future which are able to wake cultural hopes for the future.

When I spoke in a city of South Germany some time ago (Colmar, 21st November 1905, no transcript) about the teaching of wisdom of Christianity, about our subject today, also various Protestant pastors and Catholic priests were there. After the talk, the Catholic priests said to me, what you have said to us is the choicest Christianity, but it is only for the choice ones who want to have Christianity in such detailed way. However, we announce Christianity in a form in which everybody understands it and which it is accessible to all.—There I said, if you were right, you could be sure that it would never have occurred to me to speak about the core of wisdom of Christianity, because I would consider it as superfluous in the world. If you were right, could then there be a human being who felt compelled to secede from the way you teach? Then the number of those people could not increase with every day who find no satisfaction with the way you teach. Indeed, there are many for whom you can speak today. However, the fact that it is possible that numerous human beings do no longer find their satisfaction with you proves that there are human beings to whom one has to speak differently. It does not depend on the fact that we imagine that we find the way to everybody. We can do this easily and mean that we communicate in such a way that we find the way to everybody. However, it does not depend on it which opinions we have about what we regard as the right way. It depends not on our imaginations, but on the facts. If you observe this and let not speak what you put as your subjective confession, then you realise that you do no longer speak to many people. To those one has to speak in a new form. They are those to whom the spiritual scientist speaks.

However, spiritual science has not only to speak to those. It will also speak to those who remain in full Christian devoutness in old Christian traditions, and to those it will be a deepening, a spiritualisation of the truthful teachings of Christianity. The spiritual-scientific saying, nothing is higher than truth, is surely often misunderstood by such like the priest whom I have quoted. One believes, it is sufficient if one only has the belief that something is true. No, that is not enough that we have the subjective conviction and imagine we would have the right way. Just the spiritual-scientific world movement should overcome this. Truth is not in our opinion, but in the facts. The observation of the facts must be higher for us than our belief. This is the sense of the saying. What we believe is our personal affair. Transpersonal is that which speaks to us by the world of the facts. We have to submit to it, we have to follow it.

Indeed, it is true that the human development was split by the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and, hence, we have to look a little deeper into this way of the human development. Who penetrates only somewhat into a spiritual investigation of existence will soon recognize how vapid and superficial any materialist worldview is, that any material is only the expression of the spiritual, that the spiritual is the origin and spring of any external sensuous existence.

The earthly human being as this sensuous being, who developed since the times about which history, the human thinking generally reports, is only the expression of a supernatural spiritual being. I do not have the time today to explain these great thoughts in a complete, possibly scientific way. This has oftener happened here in these talks. Today I can show it only figuratively, and Christian and pre-Christian thinkers showed it always figuratively in such a way that the supersensible human being who was not yet touched by the matter descended and embodied himself in the sensuousness. We consider that human being who comes from other spiritual worlds into this sensuous world as the Adam Kadmon of the Jewish secret doctrine, the kabbalah. This coming in is called “fall.” However, you must not misunderstand this. Great Christian authors understood this as a fall, and the action of Christ Jesus was understood as a rise from this fall to a new spiritual height. We shall still see how Paul's remark that Christ Jesus is the reverse Adam has a deep spiritual sense (1 Corinthians 15:44ff). If we understand the human being quasi—I ask you not to tip the scales at the word “quasi” because it should be only an indication of the true relation—quasi descended from spiritual heights and embodied in the sensory world, then we also understand which task the human being had initially in the first times of historical development.

What had the human being to do on this earthly scene in the first times of historical and prehistoric development? His sensuous members were the tools whose use he had to learn in the first times. Now the high spiritual human being was embodied in the sensory world. He learnt there in the first epoch of his existence, which I would like to call the instinctive epoch of human development, to use his own tools. This was the first task of the first quarter of human development—we do not want to go back to the very old times.

The human being gradually learnt to use his hands and the remaining limbs; he learnt to fit into the world and nature surrounding him. He needed no intellect for that; this was an instinctive empathising and settling in existence. When humanity learnt to control itself and acquired the use of the limbs as tools, it lived in the tribal history. The people were that within which the human being lived. It was a natural coherence, which was given by blood relationship. A sort of an animal instinct kept humanity together. Only the great masters were beyond the instinctive life. In the most different way, the human beings learnt to use their limbs, according to the state of the countries, regions, and times in which the peoples lived. The development generated a big variety in the human structure. That which was given to the human being developed most diversely. We can go back everywhere: we find this instinctive epoch of development with all peoples.

Then we find the second epoch. There the human being learns something that the Bible and other worldviews comprise with a certain word, with a word that is exceptionally important to understand properly. We understand this word properly if we realise what the first period of human development preferably had to produce. The instinct had taught the human beings most diversely to use their limbs, in one area in this way, in the other that way. People developed in the hot zone with a rampant plant growth where without effort the food was supplied, another developed in a cold, inhospitable area where it had to produce his food and create the conditions of existence with big trouble and that is why the human being had to form his limbs with big trouble. Because the human beings had so little intellect, they faced each other as it resulted from the different instinctive development. Something new took place due to the law, which the intellect created. The instincts of the peoples are different, the intellect is the same, and at the moment, when the uniform intellect was applied to the human living together, that appeared in the world which also the Bible calls the law.

The human being learnt to control his whole body as his tool first. Then the lawful period occurred where the human being tried to harmonise and order his community where he tried to compensate the instincts in the mutual action where he wanted to create conditions on this earth as they correspond to the intellect. The intellect was introduced by the way how the human being lived together. Thus, humanity developed in the first two quarters of existence. However, humanity was there not without guidance. The instinct developed to bigger and bigger brightness, until the law took on the form of the intellect widespread in the farthest circles.

Where from did all that come? Humanity would never have come so far without such brothers who were way ahead of their fellow men. At all times, always and everywhere there have been human beings, who developed the stages of existence faster to be able to lead the other human beings. Spiritual science calls such personalities, such individualities the guardians of wisdom, the guardians of human progress. There were always such guardians of human progress. Even today, there are some. These great persons, these personalities who have arrived at a stage of existence today where the majority of humanity will come only in a very distant future existed also in the pre-Christian times, in the first two quarters of human development.

They led the world; they were the shepherds of humanity and introduced order and coherence into humanity. Where from did those leaders of the human race get their knowledge, their wisdom? What did this wisdom consist of?—One led the visible by the invisible, the sensory by the extrasensory. One led the material connections by that which slumbers invisibly in the material. Does it slumber invisibly in the material? A simple reflection can convince you. Look up at the cloud. It appears bright and dark to you. It announces a thunderstorm. Moreover, while you are still looking upwards, the flash streaks through the cloud, the thunder rumbles. Where was the flash, where was the thunder? They slumbered; they slept as concealed material forces. As well as flash and thunder slumbered, a lot of concealed forces slumber in the visible as something invisible, in the sensory as something extrasensory. As well as our external civilisation has reached its present state, because the human being has learnt to wake up forces and abilities slumbering in the matter, the great spiritual culture comes from the fact that the guardians of humanity are able to wake up the supersensible forces slumbering in the sensuous and to control the lower by the higher.

As well as the master builder uses the force of gravity to lay the beam on the column, so using a force slumbering in the matter to erect our buildings by the different combination of columns and beams,

As the electrician controls our engines and other electric apparatuses with the invisible electric power,

The guardians of wisdom and human progress control the earthly forces by that which is not perceptible by the senses.

The visible is controlled not by the visible, but by the invisible. None is unworldly who rises by the invisible above the visible, but someone who is stuck in the visible. The true realist is that who controls the world by that which slumbers in him, so that he forms and builds up reality and introduces it into the service of human progress. As well as the master builder and the electrician use the forces slumbering in the matter to build houses, to create mechanical civilisation, the great guardians of wisdom and human progress use the forces existing in humanity to lead the human beings to their aim to order that which whirls chaotically in the outside world and to give it significance. Never was the advancement sensory from the instinctive, then lawful periods up to ours.

However, the wise guardians of humanity had to find out and to experience this at first; they had to be steeped in it completely, not due to blind faith, not due to vague convictions, but due to spiritual experience. They had to be clear in their mind

That there is something extrasensory, something extrasensory inside and outside the human being

That that which happens between birth and death is only one side of our existence and

That an essence outreaches birth and death

That there is something in the human being that is more comprehensive than all sensuous and is the creator of the form and the preserver of everything sensuous, and this not based on a supposition, but based on the immediate extrasensory, everlasting view.

Out of this view, the guardians of humanity had to act, then out of the knowledge that death is to be defeated, that a consciousness is to be gained that there is something that lets death appear as an event like other events of life. Only from such an experience the force arises to the human being to control the sensory from the extrasensory, the visible from the invisible. Had I to say with few words what the big secret of the great guardians of humanity is, I would say, these guardians of wisdom and human progress knew that there is something in the human being that defeats death.

They had to go behind the scenery of existence, to look behind the regions of existence, which the human being enters after death. What exists behind the sensuous had to be accessible to the students by experience. They learnt to know that in the temples of initiation of the ancient Egyptian priests and teachers of occultism, in the Eleusinian and other Greek schools or temples of initiation. Those who were mature to acquire these convictions were initiated into these secrets. Only with few words—I explain the other matters in the next talks—I can indicate what was imparted to the human beings in these temples of initiation, in these high schools of spiritual life.

There the human being went through death at first; he already experienced within this life that rise which takes place in the human being if he passes the gate of death. If he passes the gate, which leads to the other world with his natural death, he enters another land, the land on the other side of existence. One can enter it also already during this life, one can enter it by another state of consciousness, awakening the abilities which slumber in the human breast, which enable us not only to experience the unconscious state during sleep in the spiritual environment, but to enter the beyond using the spiritual qualities, to be a citizen of the spiritual world. One called this death, resurrection, and ascension.

They experienced the great initiates. If I may express myself in such a way, they experienced death with the living body, for three and a half days, they were dead, so to speak, they came out of their physical bodies and experienced the facts of a higher world, a spiritual world, that world to which the human being belongs according to his deeper nature. This happens to that part of the human being that enters the extrasensory existence. After the human being had passed this higher world, those who were already initiates recalled him to his earthly existence. Then he was a new human being whom one called a risen one. As a symbol of it, he got a new name that had a deeper meaning. Such a human being who had come into the mysteries and the temples of initiation to behold spoke a new language, and in his words, the spiritual world sounded which he had experienced during his initiation. He was a messenger of higher worlds, his words had wings because of the experiences in the spiritual world, and he spoke another language. He was one of those who talk the language of the gods, as one said, he talks the wisdom which the gods know. This is fundamentally theosophy, the divine wisdom.

One called such a human being a blessed (German: selig) one if one translates the word in German. The words have a deep meaning if one understands them in the right sense; they did not originate by chance. About such a man, who felt sympathy for the spiritual world because he had beheld it, one said, he is blessed. Those who know something about that great bliss, about those marvellous experiences of another world tell about it, even if they write profane writings about it. The most important of these matters was never written down and can never be written down.

However, those who tell and write down something of it write about it in tones that sound quite different from those who say something about a sensuous existence. Those who knew something of initiation speak of a renewal of the whole human being. One of them said, that only has become a human being in the true sense of the word who was blessed with his everlasting essence in the mysteries, while the others have still to wait, until they also get this mercy.—Plato, the unique Greek philosopher, says: those walk in the mud who got to know nothing of the divine of initiation.

Thus, we could still state many voices of antiquity and of the pre-Christian time, which emphasise the holiness, the power, and greatness of initiation, so that it resonates in our souls. Only a few, choicest ones could be blessed with the higher spiritual life in such a way, immediately beholding. The crowd received nothing but the announcements of such initiates.

Then Christianity appeared and changed these conditions completely. The depth of this change of humanity is expressed in a powerful saying, and that is: “Happy (Blessed) are they who find faith without seeing me” (John 20:29). The secret of Christianity is contained in this saying, and we understand it only if we take it as literal as possible. What does it mean? We know that somebody who had experienced initiation in the temple knew that he defeated death that he took part in the entombment and was blessed by the vision. Now a great individuality came who carried out this great event on the external plane of history in front of all, as far as they wanted to see it or could take up it by faith, by the union with the unique personality. That happened once on the historical plane, which had often happened to the initiates in the deep darkness of the mystery temples. This event took place in Palestine in the year 33.

What was received and protected till then more or less symbolically in the depths of the temples had become historical truth, historical reality on the big stage of life. One must understand this, because this is important. I entitled my small writing about Christianity really with full care not Mysticism of Christianity but Christianity as Mystical Fact (CW 8). I wanted to show not the mysticism of Christianity, but Christianity itself should be understood as a mystical fact. It should be understood that the event in Palestine is a fact of deep symbolism and at the same time something that is actual reality, actual truth. We should understand each other just concerning this point, because it belongs to the most important points of the knowledge of Christianity. If one speaks of the fact that in Palestine the event of death, resurrection, entombment and ascension took place as a historical event in 33 and says that this event has happened also before so and so often in the mystery temples, then one does not regard that as something real, then one does not believe in the real Christ. On the other side, other people who believe in Christ think that death, entombment, and resurrection are profound symbols. It is hard to understand that something can be fact and symbol at the same time.

Somebody never understands who explains history “really” and considers it indifferently that a fact also has deep symbolic significance. He has never grasped that there are high and low mountains in history, high mountains that outreach the high that they are facts and symbols at the same time. That is the point. Now we have put an event before all human beings, which pronounces before them that death can be defeated and that there is a spiritual life, which outreaches death, because the only One had defeated death. In front of all human beings, he had experienced what the initiates experienced in the mysteries. Now, one did no longer need to go into the mysteries to behold, now, one could believe and feel connected with Him who experienced the great event of the victory of life over death in the physical world. Now, one could believe even if one did not behold. That understands the religious books correctly who brings himself to a literal understanding again. Beholding means literally the beholding in the mysteries, and faith is the faith in the fact that death was defeated by Christ's life. Hence, we are allowed to say that the greatest teaching of wisdom of Christianity is that the teachings of wisdom of the various religions became fact in Christianity.

What were the teachings of wisdom of the various religions? Deepening really in the spiritual-scientific teachings you can convince yourselves that the religions comply with each other concerning their teachings. Take the teachings of Hermes, Pythagoras, and Zarathustra or also of other religious founders: in that which they expressed and taught one can find a deep consistent core of wisdom. All teachers who announced the great teachings of wisdom could say, I am the way and the truth.—For truth flowed out of their mouths; that truth which they had experienced in the mystery temples, they had become messengers of the divine truth. With Christ Jesus, it was another matter.

He could say more of himself. He became that which is expressed in the great and beautiful saying: I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He taught that in front of everybody, which the other religious founders said, living concealed to the rest of humanity in the twilight of the mysteries. The life by which experience was won inside of the mystery was invisible. It became visible because of the event in Palestine.

Thus, Christianity outranks the old pre-Christian religions. That wisdom which was won by the concealed life of the initiate came out to the public, and we have in the newer time in Christianity the truth that became person, life, and existence. Hence, it does often not depend with the old religions on telling how the religious founders lived. We do not hear telling, how the Egyptian Hermes, the Indian Rishis, how Zarathustra, how Buddha lived. If we receive the teachings and raise our hearts and our senses in them, the blessing flows from them to us. However, if we want to understand Christianity, we have to consider that Christ did not speak only that way, but also that he went his own way. Hence, no book by him, but only books about him are preserved. The good news, the Gospels, is not the wise language of Jesus. They are the stories of the life of Jesus. Others spoke about him. If the disciples of Buddha and Hermes spoke, they would say, we have heard this, these are his holy words, and we want to echo them to you.—However, if the disciples of Jesus moved into the world, they emphasised that He was there that they were connected with Him that they were His companions. They attempted to keep up the tradition, to reproduce it from generation to generation: we ourselves heard the word on the holy mountain together with Him; we laid our hands in His wounds.—It was the truth element of the living together that should transfer the liveliness to the future generations. This is somewhat different from that which existed before in the other religions. This is new.

If we want to imagine the whole significance of this new, we have to realise the difference that existed between the first quarter of human evolution and what happened now. What happens now? What does Christianity prepare humanity for, actually? Why had somebody to experience the great event in such a way that the human beings could look at him, could look up at him as evidence of the victory of life over death? One needed such evidence because now another historical epoch of humanity began, because now the intellect, the strength of mind was used for something different for centuries, even for millennia. With the propagation of Christianity, that approximately begins which we can call the triumphal procession of humanity about our material world. Christianity had to prepare for it first. In the middle of the Middle Ages, the material victory of humanity begins, the laws become more and more perfect with which the human beings found it. The human being becomes the master of nature by the perfection of his mechanisms, establishes a big system of, traffic and trade. The human intellect wins over our earth.

That did not exist in the pre-Christian times. Try to realise how our science begins in the times when also Christianity arises. You know that Thales (~624-~547 B.C.) was the first philosopher. Then Christianity prepares the ground for the use of the human strength to control the external nature. It was necessary that the conviction of a spiritual life comes from quite a different side so that humanity is not completely isolated from spiritual life. Now the efficient personality had to be used to conquer the globe in a material respect. Hence, science had to separate from the feeling, from faith. It was the characteristic feature of those who were initiated into the mysteries that science and faith, feeling and faith were one. For that who comes out of the material there is no separation between faith and knowledge, between truth and feeling. The forms in which the stars were arranged were the letterings of the godhead with the Chaldean initiates. This had to change in the new time. At first, the human being directed his look up at the starry heaven, and a science divested of divine feelings encompassed the skies and the earthly existence in all its phenomena. The knowledge of the world could no longer go the same way as faith and wisdom.

Because both had to separate, an event had to take place that guaranteed faith that founded such a firm feeling in humanity that faith could found itself besides the material science and that faith lived on throughout the material time. Thus, we have the firmly founded faith and science side by side, which does not have faith, but looks at the personality, at Christ. A personal relationship to the only One establishes itself besides the material striving. Thus, that which was put in Palestine in 33 was the bulwark to preserve the everlasting, the consciousness of the spiritual during the development of humanity towards materiality. Those had to be blessed who could believe in the only One, while they had to use their looking for the achievement of the material life. Thus, the second epoch of antiquity points prophetically to Christ Jesus. Not without good reason the teachings of the Old Testament are interpreted as predictions of Christ Jesus. Any initiation was such a prediction. What the initiate experienced, he experienced it spiritually first, then symbolically, then it was there in the world. Then it was a fulfilment, the fulfilment of the Old Testament was the New Testament. In addition, this word appears to us in its full significance if we grasp it in its depth. Thus, I have described three epochs of human evolution that go side by side, of faith, knowledge, and wisdom.

Let us carry our mind back to the times in which the poor Egyptian slaves dragged the big, massive boulders and worked themselves to blood on huge stone giants. The modern worker cannot imagine that labour. Bliss and contentment were the feelings, which penetrated the soul of the wretched slave. However, this slave knew one thing. He knew that the life that he lived in such a hard work was one life of many. The initiate often said it to him to make humanity aware of the fact that the human being embodies himself repeatedly and that he experiences that which he prepared himself, and that he is recompensed in future lives. Thus, the riddle of human destiny is solved for him really. Among the hard working slaves, bliss and religious feeling prevailed. The slave said to himself, he who commands me today was once as I am and I become once, as he is if I carry out all that now.—The prudent men who conquered the material world later, who dealt with the merely material science would not be able to achieve this, as overwhelming the teachings of Galilei and Copernicus, the teachings of the modern investigation of the sensory material existence may be.

Indeed, nothing should be said against these teachings and nobody can estimate its greatness and power more than I do. Nevertheless, it is true and one has to say also that the materialistic researchers could not find those fiery words, that spirit which opens the souls which gives the human being hope forever which gives the human beings the certainty of the mental-spiritual life. However, this certainty came from the personal connection with the unique Christ. The external science was also gradually deepened again. Science became wisdom bit by bit again, and the result of the fact is that this external science claimed to appear again as founder of a religion. What then are the enlighteners, the freethinkers? What do they want? They are, actually, religious natures. They want to found a religion; they want to conjure up such a religion from the modern science. In particular, Moleschott (Jacob M., 1822-1893, Dutch physiologist and philosopher), Haeckel and others with their books which founded a kind of materialistic Gospel for many are nothing else than founders of a materialistic religion. Because the worldly-sensuous has won such an immense strength and authority that the human being wants to gain the highest by science and its wisdom, the scientists have turned away from Christ Jesus, also those who feel only a bit of the power of science and have something to inform of the greatness and the power of science. Thus, we have the separation of science. However, Jesus spoke a word, a word that we cannot grasp deeply enough, and this is, I will be with you always, to the end of time (Matthew 28:20).

We do not need to borrow this wisdom only from traditions and books, but if we rise into the higher worlds, we have the greatest experience in ourselves again, which can be experienced only in the higher worlds beyond the gate of death. Then He speaks again to us, then He shows us that He is there today that we can hear Him immediately in the present. Hence, we need such a deepening of humanity again that the human being has the experience of Christ in himself and that the human being can find out something similar like the initiates in the ancient mysteries again in himself. At least a reflection of the great, significant experience of the mystery temples should be delivered gradually to those who turn to anthroposophy. They enter the spiritual region, the other side of life already here during this life. Thus, they can experience what Goethe expressed significantly in his poem, which begins: “Tell nobody except the wise, because the mob is immediately scornful,” and closes: “And so long as you don't have it, this “Die and be transformed!,” you will only be a gloomy guest on the dark earth.”

Today it concerns this passing away and becoming. There are methods of spiritual development with which we can wake the inner divine essence in ourselves, with which we can outgrow into the spiritual world. Our eyes are opened there for the spiritual world; our ears become active, so that we hear something higher speaking. We are able to become citizens of a higher world; we find that Christ is with us to the end of the world. Then we can also hear that language again, which spoke to the disciples on the mountain. This is indicated in the deepest mystery of Christianity.

Let us consider this great mystery at the end. Christ had initiated pupils too; he also led them away from the crowd. When he wanted to explain what he had said to the crowd in parables, he led his three initiated disciples: Peter, James, and John on the Mount Tabor. They beheld the transfiguration there (Matthew 17). Who understands the transfiguration recognizes the deepest mystery of Christianity. The disciples are translated from the sensuous existence. What faces them? Elijah and Moses. Elijah is the word meaning way or aim, Moses is simply the esoteric word meaning truth, and Jesus is life. While eternity appeared to them in temporality, while those who are dead long since appeared to them, before their spiritual eyes, it means that they had ascended to the spiritual world. Peter says to Jesus, it is good that we are here. Would you like me to make three shelters...? You can read the expression “make shelters” where a pupil attains the second stage of chelahood. One says of him that he makes shelters in the beyond.

The great truth in the religious documents is recognized everywhere by that who recognizes the so-called key words. The saying “I am the way, the truth and the life” faces you there. When they descended from the mountain, Jesus forbade them to tell anyone about the vision, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. They questioned themselves: what is “rising” from the dead?—They said to Jesus, the scribes say that Elijah must come first.—He answered, Elijah is to come and set everything right.—The disciples, in the most intimate sanctum, speak here about reincarnation as about something that is a matter of course to them. The Lord Himself spoke about it like about a matter of course, saying, Elijah has already come, John the Baptist is Elijah, but they failed to recognise him.—This is the testament on the mountain. “Mountain” is the key word for initiation. Where initiation is concerned, the term “on the mountain” is applied. What means: do not tell anybody that I come again? That is, until I speak again to you, until you yourselves are there again in such figure that humanity can again perceive the word of truth. Christ Jesus was as a deputy on earth. Looking at his death, humanity should feel the victory of life over death. The faith by which even the Egyptian slave knew of the beyond should be substituted by the faith that the everlasting is in the essence, which passes through the physical. Now they had to start the triumphal procession through the world. Nothing material remains to us of that which is wisdom, immediate knowledge of the beyond. Nothing of reincarnation should be taught to humanity during the following two millennia. Jesus determined this as his testament. Not before the human beings have gone through the third epoch of development, they have gained this material victory over the globe; they will have applied intellect and reason to the external civilisation. Then only a new epoch is permitted to begin, then wisdom can understand that again which lived uniquely. Then Christ appears again on earth, so that He can be grasped immediately.

Then the human being does no longer need the life on Tabor, and then he experiences the initiation in himself, finds the divine human being in himself. Then he will look up again at the divine life that was common property of humanity in the pre-Christian times. The anthroposophic teaching has introduced this new epoch. What Christ left on the mountain Tabor, the spiritual-scientifically striving human beings feel this as their mission, as their vocation. Christian mystics of the Middle Ages already indicated this. You find it expressed by Angelus Silesius, the great Silesian initiate: “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you still are lost forever.” As the blind person experiences the awakening of light, somebody who arrives at the new condition can experience the apparition like that on Tabor. This is the future. Thus, we had a Christianity of faith in the third epoch of humanity, and we shall have a Christianity of wisdom in the fourth epoch. What did humanity perform in the third epoch? The instinctive period is the pre-Christian time. We have had the period of the external material civilisation, and now we enter the fourth period of human development.

The human being has encompassed the world with industry and trade; without distinction of nation and race industry and trade work. The machine prepares the same goods in Japan, Brazil, and Europe. The same railways cross the globe in all areas without distinction of race, nation, and class. The differences within humanity have fallen in our civilisation. The cheque, which is written here in Berlin, can be redeemed in Tokyo. Everything in our civilisation has taken place in such a way that we can put up as a principle of the third period what no one could have put up as a principle in the starting point of our civilisation: we want to found a civilisation that encompasses the globe, without distinction of race, gender, occupation, and confession. This material civilisation has encompassed the world under this motto. This civilisation must receive soul. It is the task of the fourth epoch of humanity; it is the task of anthroposophy and of our lifestyle to introduce this cultural soul into humanity. We have a material civilisation, and we need a spiritual culture with the same qualities. The human beings are strong where they founded the moral connection. The Japanese trader understands the traders of all other countries. The human beings must understand each other in their souls.

This will be if these achievements are also made fruitful for the human science. The cultural body has three epochs. It needs a soul. The fourth epoch has to bring cultural spirit. This is the great basic idea, the big aim, which the big cultural movement must have, if it wants to be something else than a mere play for those who deal with nothing but brooding over mystic thoughts. If the Theosophical Society continues to exist, it manages this. Hence, it has to understand Christianity in its deepness. It has to understand its deepest teachings of wisdom and must also have the strength to practice these teachings of wisdom not in old traditional form, but to reshape them so that they live on usefully at all times. With it, Christianity is not anything past, but has the living strength to work on future more and more. Thus, anthroposophy, the anthroposophically understood Christianity is no doctrine, no dogma, no sectarianism, but it is something else. It is something that makes hearts leap for joy in the best sense of the word; it is something that raises the soul to the biggest tasks of the present because the biggest tasks can only correspond to the beneficial hope for the future.

Then we have understood Christianity if it gives us life for the future. Then we understand the high spirits correctly if they become our future teachers. We are their right pupils if we do not want to reproduce authoritatively what they themselves had said, but if their words, their actions have become the energy for the new that we create. This is the great secret, the big lawfulness and necessity that shall fulfil us in the progress of human evolution and that shall constitute our life in the highest sense of the word. This is the true education of humanity that we receive the strength of creating in the future and the hope for a beneficial effect in the future from a real knowledge of the great actions of our ancestors.

While it is of vital importance in Spiritual Science to study the whole spiritual life of humanity as it advances from one epoch to another, rising slowly to the surface from hidden depths, it is perhaps of still greater significance to study the culture and civilisation of ancient Egypt. We realise this the more strongly when we try to penetrate deeply into this ancient Egyptian spiritual life.

The echoes sounding to us across the ages seem at first to be as full of mystery as the Sphinx itself, standing there as a memorial of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. The mystery grows deeper still when we find that even external research has recently been compelled to go back to ages more and more remote in order to explain the culture of later Egyptian times of which certain physical evidence is still available. According to external research the prime of Egyptian culture must be dated at least seven thousand years before our era, perhaps even earlier still. This may be one reason for the great interest evinced to-day in Egyptian culture, but another is that man of the present day feels, whether he likes it or not, that there is a mysterious connection between this ancient civilisation and his own aims and purposes. It is not without significance that Kepler, at the very dawn of the development of modern Natural Science should have spoken of the achievements of Science up to that time and his own contributions to knowledge, in words like these: “When I have endeavoured to unravel some of the mysteries of the course of the planets round the Sun, I have tried to peer into the secrets of cosmic space. And it has often seemed to me as though I have actually penetrated to the mysterious sanctuaries of the Egyptians and brought their holy vessels into our modern age. I have felt then that the significance of my message to the world will only be understood in the future.” So strongly did one of the greatest minds of modern times feel himself related to ancient Egyptian culture that he could only express the keynote of his knowledge by speaking of it as a renewal of the wisdom given to the disciples in the secret sanctuaries and places of learning in ancient Egypt, although it was clothed, naturally, in different words. It must therefore be of great interest to us to understand how these ancient Egyptians themselves conceived of their whole culture, of their whole nature as human beings.

A certain very significant incident has been preserved by Greek tradition. It indicates not only what the Egyptians themselves felt but the way in which Egyptian culture was regarded by the civilised world in general in olden times. An Egyptian sage once said to Solon: “You Greeks are still children. All you know is the outcome of your own contemplation and vision; you have no ancient traditions, no wisdom hoary with age, and children you will remain.” Wisdom hoary with age—the significance of this expression only dawns upon us when the light of Spiritual Science is cast upon the whole mode and nature of Egyptian thought and feeling.

In the successive epochs different forms of consciousness have unfolded in humanity. Our consciousness to-day, the way in which we grasp the outer world by means of our senses and the combining of intellect and reason, in short, our scientific mode of thought, has not always been in existence; consciousness has ever been subject to the laws of evolution. Not only is the external world of form subject to these laws but man's qualities of soul and consciousness also. This is an indication of the fact that we can only understand ancient centres of culture if we begin by admitting what Spiritual Science tells us, namely, that in olden times, in the place of our present intellectual consciousness, men possessed a clairvoyant consciousness unlike our waking consciousness and yet unlike the complete absence of consciousness during sleep. Traces of this consciousness of prehistoric man are now only retained atavistically as a waning heritage, in the picture world of dreams. But whereas our dreams are chaotic and meaningless in ordinary life, the picture consciousness of the Ancients was “clairvoyant,” although, indeed, of a hazy, dreamlike nature. The pictures referred not to the physical world but to the spiritual world behind. In reality, all clairvoyant consciousness, that of prehistoric man, as well as the clairvoyance acquired by true discipline in this age, works in pictures and not in the concepts and ideas of outer physical consciousness. The pictures must be related to the spiritual realities lying behind the sense-realities of the physical world.

The marvellous pictures that have come down to us in the mythologies are not merely phantastic concepts of Nature, as materialistic consciousness imagines to-day. On the contrary, these pictures indicate an actual vision of the spiritual world. If we study the old mythologies and legends—not with the materialistic consciousness of to-day, but with a true feeling for man's spiritual achievements—the strange stories related in the mythologies will reveal a wonderful connection with cosmic laws higher than our laws of physics, chemistry and biology. A note of spiritual reality permeates the old mythologies and religious systems.

Now it must be clearly understood that the several peoples built up this world of pictures in different ways, according to their own nature, temperament and race. These picture-worlds represented, to the several peoples, the higher forces underlying the purely external forces of Nature. We must also realise that in the course of evolution there have been many transitional stages between the old clairvoyant consciousness and the objective consciousness of modern man. The ancient clairvoyance grew dim and gradually faded away. Clairvoyant powers decreased little by little in the different peoples and the pictures arising before the souls of those still able to gaze into the spiritual world contained less and less of spiritual force. The higher worlds gradually closed their doors until only the lowest stages of spiritual activity were perceptible to lower clairvoyance. Then, so far as humanity in general was concerned, the old clairvoyance died out entirely. Waking consciousness was limited to the physical world around and to ideas and conceptions of physical phenomena. Thus arose our modern science. The old clairvoyant powers gradually faded as the development of present-day consciousness proceeded—although of course the process varied in the different peoples.

All that we know from olden times, even what external documents have told us in recent Egyptian research (if we understand aright) proves the truth of what Spiritual Science asserts, namely, that the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was to look back to still earlier times when their leading Individualities were able, with their wonderful powers of clairvoyance, to gaze into the spiritual worlds. In the people of Egypt a somewhat feebler clairvoyant power was preserved on into relatively late times. The later Egyptians—down to the last millennia before the Christian era—knew from actual experience of another mode of vision besides that of ordinary daily life, a vision enabling man to see into the spiritual world. But they only knew the lowest images of the realm of which this vision made them aware, and they looked back to olden times when their Priest-Sages were able, in the golden prime of Egyptian civilisation, to gaze into the very depths of the spiritual world.

The mysteries of the spiritual worlds were preserved, more especially by the earlier Egyptians, with great piety and reverence for thousands of years. Those who lived in the later Egyptian epoch could say: “Even now we can still perceive a lower spiritual world; vision of the spiritual world is possible and to doubt it would be as senseless as to doubt that our eyes can behold the external world.” These later Egyptians had, it is true, only a dim perception of the spiritual worlds, but they felt that there had once been an age when their predecessors had gazed more deeply into all that lies behind the physical world. And this old Wisdom-teaching—of which the Egyptian Sage spoke to Solon—was preserved in wonderful scripts in the Temples and on the columns, bearing witness to deep and all-embracing clairvoyant powers in days of hoary antiquity. The Being to whom the Egyptians looked up as the embodiment of the primal glory of that old clairvoyant wisdom, was called by the name of HERMES. And when in later times a man came forth with a message which was to renew the ancient wisdom, he also (according to the custom of Egyptian sages) called himself “Hermes,” and his disciples, believing that he had revived the primeval wisdom of the old Hermes, called this first Being, “the Thrice-Greatest,” “Hermes Trismegistos.” (It was of course, only the Greeks who called him Hermes; among the Egyptians he was known as Thoth). We can only understand this primeval Being if we realise what the Egyptians, under the influence of the later teachings of Hermes or Thoth, took to be the true Mysteries of the Cosmos.

Such beliefs as have been handed down to us from Egyptian times by external evidence seem very strange. Various Gods, of whom the most important are Osiris and Isis, are represented in forms not wholly human; we often find human bodies and animals heads, or an amalgamation of human and animal forms. Wonderful legends of this world of Gods have come down to us and there is something very remarkable in the Egyptian animal-worship, the worship of the cat and so forth. Certain animals were even recognised as being sacred animals; deep veneration was paid to them for they were regarded as the embodiment of higher beings. It is even said that cries of lamentations were uttered at the death of cats. Again, we are told that if an Egyptian saw a dead animal, he dared not approach for fear of being accused of having killed it, in which case he would have been severely punished. It is said too, that in the age when Egypt was subject to Rome, any Roman who had killed a cat was in danger of death, because his act aroused such fury among the Egyptians. This animal-worship is an enigma in the sphere of Egyptian thought and feeling. And again—what a curious impression is made on modern man by the Pyramids, standing on their four-cornered bases, with their triangular sides! Strange indeed are the Sphinxes and everything that is being continually excavated and brought to our knowledge from the depths of Egyptian civilisation. And now we will ask ourselves: of what nature was the life of feeling and ideas among the ancient Egyptians? What had Hermes taught them? How did they acquire all these strange conceptions?

We must realise that all these Legends, especially the more significant, contained a deeper wisdom and their purpose was to convey in picture form, knowledge of definite laws of spiritual life, laws higher than those of external Nature. The Egyptian legend of the God and Goddess, Osiris and Isis, is a case in point. According to the legend, Osiris was a Being who lived in dim primeval times in regions later inhabited by human beings. Osiris is represented in the legend as the benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him, dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin and threw it into the sea. Isis, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in different places in the land where Temples were then erected. Then, after the death of Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray descended upon Isis from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life, which, proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind.

Such a legend must not be analysed merely in the sense of allegory or symbol. It should be used as a means whereby we are led into the whole world of feeling and perception of the old Egyptians; for only so can our understanding of such figures as Osiris and Isis become really living. It is not right to state crudely that Osiris is the Sun, Isis the Moon and so forth. An astronomical interpretation of this kind leads men to believe that the legend only contains symbolical images of certain occurrences in the Heavens. This is not the case. Rather must we go back to the feelings living in the ancient Egyptians and envisage the nature of their upturned gaze to super-sensible, invisible Powers underlying the world of sense, and typified in the figures of Osiris and Isis.

Let us try to conceive what the names of Osiris and Isis conveyed to the ancient Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I realise that I have a longing for the Spiritual, a yearning towards the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial Osiris-powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a super-sensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of Spirit. And although this being of Spirit has but a dim and instinctive life, although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by this being lived a purely spiritual existence.”

According to the ancient Egyptian conception, human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis”—this was the duality. Let us consider our own being, as we now exist. The idea of a triangle, for instance, must have been preceded by active thinking. After having been active in soul, we may then be passive as regards the result of our thinking and conceptual activity. Ultimately we perceive in our soul the form that has been built up by our active thinking. Now the act of thinking bears the same relation to the final thought, the conceptual act to the final concept, the active principle to the product of the active principle there before us, as Osiris to Isis. In short, activity per se is a Father-Principle, a masculine Principle. The Osiris-Principle is male, active—filling the soul with thoughts and feelings. The old Egyptian said to himself: “Man as he stands here to-day has within him substances living in his blood or forming his bones, but these substances were not always within his blood or bones, they were spread over cosmic space. This physical body is a combination of substances which have now passed into the human form, whereas they once filled the Cosmos. The same is true of the powers of thought. The active principle of thought has become the power of ideation in man. Just as the substances in the blood now live in the human form but were formerly spread over cosmic space—so the Osiris-power now living within us as the active principle of thought was once spread over the spiritual universe as the Osiris-power that permeates and weaves in the Cosmos, pouring into human beings, just as in the case of the substances composing blood and bones in the bodily nature of man. Into the thoughts and ideas there flow, from out of the Cosmos, the living and weaving Isis-Powers.”—This is how we must envisage the attitude of soul in the ancient Egyptians towards Osiris and Isis.

This old consciousness could find no expression for such ideas in the world surrounding physical existence on Earth; for everything here was known to be of the world of space and it could offer no outer image of the super-sensible world. And so, in search of some form of language, some kind of script in which to clothe such conceptions as “the Osiris-Power is active within me”—men reached out to the script placed by heavenly bodies in cosmic space. They said: “The super-sensible power of Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the sunlight reflected by the dark Moon—just as the soul is dark when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” But when the old Egyptian said—“The Sun and Moon out there show me how I can best picture the activities of my soul,”—he knew at the same time: there is no mere chance connection between the Sun with its outpouring light and the reflecting Moon, but this radiating and reflected light has some inner connection with the super-sensible forces I feel within my soul.

Although we would not describe a clock as something that drives its hands with the help of little demons, but as a mechanical contrivance, we realise, nevertheless, that the thought of the inventor, the thought proceeding from the soul of a human being is at the back of the construction of the clock. Something spiritual, therefore, is responsible for its mechanism. Just as the hands of a clock are interrelated and dependent upon each other, so did the Sun and Moon appear to the Egyptians as the expressions of a mighty cosmic clock. When we gaze at this mighty clock in space, it seems at first sight to be subject to mechanical laws, yet in the last resort it is subject to those laws which a man felt in his soul when he spoke of the powers of Osiris and Isis. The old Egyptian did not merely say: “Sun and Moon are images of the relation between Osiris and Isis.” He also felt: All that lives in my being was once subject to the mysterious relationship between light and the Sun and Moon.

Again, a relation similar to that between Osiris and Isis and the Sun and Moon was seen to exist between the stars and planets and the other Gods. The Egyptians saw in the positions of the Heavenly Bodies, images of their own super-sensible life, or of traditional experiences of ancient Seers, but in these expressions of the mighty cosmic clock they saw a portrayal of forces within their own souls. Thus the great cosmic clock, with the movements of its stars and the relation of its moving stars to the fixed stars, was a revelation of underlying spiritual, super-sensible forces—forces which had determined the positions of all the stars and had created in a cosmic script, an expression of super-sensible activities.

Such were the feelings in regard to this higher world, feelings which had been handed down to the Egyptians by their traditions of ancient clairvoyance. They knew of the existence of this spiritual world because they themselves still possessed the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance. But now they said: “We have descended from this spiritual world and we are now placed in a world of matter manifesting in physical phenomena, physical processes. We come from the world of Osiris and Isis; the highest qualities within us, the qualities which make us strive towards higher perfection, came forth from Osiris and Isis. These qualities live invisibly within us as energy and power. The physical part of man's being is derived from external circumstances, is taken from the outer world. This physical part of man is but the vesture of Osiris-Isis.”

Now this conception of primeval wisdom was the one dominating feeling in the soul of the old Egyptian; it filled his whole life of soul. A man may imbue his soul with abstract ideas and yet remain untouched in his moral and ethical life; his sense of destiny or his happiness may be quite unaffected. Abstract and mathematical concepts of Natural Science may be so deeply absorbed that a man can discuss electricity and other forces of a similar nature without feeling any need to concern himself at the same time with problems of destiny. Now the feeling of kinship with Osiris and Isis, the vision of the spiritual world existing in ancient Egypt—these things could not be conceived of apart from thoughts of destiny, happiness and moral impulses. For the ancient Egyptian said to himself: “I bear a higher Self within me, but since I have entered into a physical body this higher Self withdraws to the background and is at first not wholly manifest. Osiris and Isis are the primal source of my being; but Osiris and Isis belong to the archetypal worlds, to the golden, holy ages of long ago. The Osiris-Isis nature is now subject to the forces which have condensed outer physical substances into man's body. Osiris and Isis are fettered within the corruptible body, and this body is subject to decay even as the outer forces of Nature.”

The legend of Osiris and Isis must thus be interpreted in terms of the inner life. Osiris, the higher power in man, spread over cosmic space, is overcome by forces which are subject to destruction in the realm of human nature. The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon—fettered within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by the power of the intellect, it may again reach the well-springs of man's being. Thus there lives in man a hidden quality which strives to bring Osiris to life again. The Isis-power lives in the human soul in order gradually to lead man back again to Osiris. So long as man remains a physical being he cannot of course be separated from the world of matter, yet it is the Isis-power which enables him, while he remains a physical being in the outer physical world, to maintain in his inner being a striving towards a higher Ego. And according to every true thinker, this higher Ego is there, deeply concealed in all the powers of man. This being—who is not the outer physical man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces—appears as the earthly son of One who did not arise in the earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris who remained in the spiritual worlds. This invisible being—the being who strives to reach the Higher Self, was known by the name of Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris.

Thus the old Egyptians looked up with a certain sadness to the Osiris-origin of man, but at the same time they gazed into their innermost being, saying: “The soul has retained something of the Isis-power and this Isis-power gives birth to Horus who has the urge to strive towards spiritual heights. In these heights man finds Osiris.” Man can attain to Osiris in a twofold way. The Egyptian said: “I came forth from Osiris and to Osiris I shall again return. Osiris, my spiritual origin is within me: Horus will lead me back to Osiris his Father; but Osiris can only be attained in the spiritual world. He could not enter into the physical nature of man. In the physical nature of man he was vanquished by the Typhon-forces which are subject to decay because they are forces of external Nature.”

Osiris can therefore only be reached along two paths. One is the path leading through the Portal of Death; the other is the path through the Portal leading not to physical death but to Initiation. The Egyptian therefore said: When man passes through the Portal of Death and has passed the stages of preparation, he comes to Osiris. When he is freed from the sheaths of his earthly body in the spiritual world, the consciousness of his kinship with Osiris awakens within him. The dead man feels that in the spiritual world he may himself be called “Osiris.” And so, after death, everyone was an “Osiris.”

The other path to Osiris—the other path into the spiritual world—is through Initiation. To the Egyptian this path was a means whereby man could learn to know the Invisible, the Supersensible in human nature—Isis, or rather the Isis-power. In the knowledge gleaned from everyday life man does not penetrate to the depths of his soul, he does not reach the Isis-power. Yet there is a means whereby he can pierce through to this Isis-power, whereby he reaches the true Ego and realises that it is enveloped in physical matter. If we follow this path we reach the spiritual home of the Ego. This, then, was the teaching of ancient Egypt: Man must descend into his own innermost being; there he first understands his physical nature—the expression of his Ego. He must force his way through this physical nature. He beholds the outer world, the creation of spiritual, super-sensible Powers, in the three kingdoms of Nature: in the stones with their forms based on mathematical laws, in the plants with their life-filled forms which are the dwelling place of Divine Powers, and in the animals. But when he beholds Man he must penetrate through the outer form to the Isis-powers of the soul.

Part of the Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries, therefore, consisted in showing man how he was clothed in matter. The processes enacted when a man thus plunged into his own nature, were practically the same as occur at death but they were enacted in a different way. The aspirant had to pass in actual life through the Portal of Death, to learn of the transition from physical to super-physical vision, from the physical to the spiritual world—in short the transition experienced in actual death. He had to follow this path of descent into his own inner being, to learn what can only be experienced there. And in this region he learnt, in the first place, how the blood, the physical instrument of the Ego, is formed from Nature. Now the system of nerves is the physical instrument for the soul-activities of Feeling, Willing and Thinking and the instrument of the Ego is the blood. If a man would descend into his instruments—so thought the old Egyptians—he must descend into his physical-etheric sheaths, into the etheric qualities of soul. He must learn to be independent of the forces in his blood upon which he otherwise depends, and, after having first freed himself from these forces, he must then enter into the marvellous processes of his blood. He must learn to know his higher nature in its physical aspect. This he can only do when he is able to contemplate himself as he contemplates an outer object. Now man can only know an object as object if he himself is outside it; thus if he wishes to perceive himself, he must stand outside his own being. That is why Initiation develops forces which enable the soul-powers to have real experiences without making use of physical instruments. The physical instruments are there objectively before man, just as after death his spiritual being looks down at his physical body.

And so the pupil in the Isis-Mysteries was first taught the secrets of his own blood. He passed through an experience which may be described as an approach to the Threshold of Death. This was the first stage of Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries. The pupil had to behold his own blood, to behold himself as object, to plunge down into the sheath that is the instrument of his Isis-nature. In the sanctuaries of Initiation he was led to two Portals, where he was shown in picture form the processes taking place in his inner being. Two doors stood before him, one open, the other closed. These teachings, echoing down to us across the ages, harmonise most wonderfully with what man believes at the present day, although he now gives a materialistic interpretation to everything. The old Seers of Egypt said: “When man is in the underworld he comes to two doors; through two doors he enters into his blood and his inner being.” The modern anatomist would speak of the two entrances lying beside the valves of the heart. If the pupil wished to penetrate into his body he would have to pass through the “open” door, for the “closed” door is there to prevent the blood stream from taking a wrong path. These anatomical phenomena are material images of what the ancient sages experienced in clairvoyant form. The forms were of course not so exact as the structures confronting the modern anatomist, yet they represented what clairvoyant consciousness perceived when it gazed at the inner being of man from without.

The next stage of the Isis-Initiation may be described as follows: The pupil was led through the tests of Fire, Air and Water—that is to say he learnt to know the nature of the sheaths around his Isis-nature. He learnt to know Fire as it courses through his body, using the blood as its instrument; he learnt to know how air enters the body in the form of oxygen; he learnt to know his watery nature. Fire, Air and Water—the warmth of the breath, the fluidity of the blood. And his knowledge of the sheaths, of Fire, Air and Water purified him until he finally attained to his Isis-nature. This again may be expressed by saying: Only when the pupil reached this stage did he feel that he had really “come to himself,” realising his spiritual existence, no longer limited to the human faculties pertaining to the outer world but able to gaze into the spiritual world. In the outer world we can only see the physical Sun by day; at night it is hidden from us by matter. In the spiritual world, however, it is not so; in the spiritual world man beholds the spiritual Powers at the very time the physical eyes are not functioning. In the Isis-Initiation it was said: When a man is purified he beholds the spiritual beings face to face; he can see the Sun at Midnight. That is to say, when darkness prevails, the spiritual life and the primal spiritual Powers behind the Sun are visible to those initiated in the Isis-Mysteries.

Such was the path of the soul to the Isis-powers, the path which might be traversed by those who while still living sought to energise their deepest forces of soul. There were still higher Mysteries—the true Osiris-Mysteries. In these Mysteries man learnt how through the Isis-power he might find himself one with the spiritual super-sensible Power whence he himself had come forth.—He knew Osiris and Osiris arose within his soul.

Now when the old Egyptian wished to depict the relation between Isis and Osiris, he used a script drawn from the movements of the Sun and Moon in the Heavens; he used the relationships of the other starry bodies to express the activities of the other spiritual Powers. His script was drawn from the Zodiac in its condition of comparative rest, and from the Planets moving across the constellations. In all the mysteries thus revealed, the ancient Egyptian saw a spiritual script. He knew: Nothing that is on the Earth can help me to express what man experiences if he goes forth to seek Osiris with the Isis-power within him. The starry constellations themselves must be the script.

Hermes, or Thoth, the mighty Sage of antiquity, was revered by the Egyptians as having had the most profound insight into this relation of man to the Cosmos. It was Hermes who expressed with the greatest sublimity the relation of the stars to these spiritual Powers and to events in the Cosmos. The language of Hermes was the language of the stars themselves. The relation of Osiris to Isis, for instance, could be explained exoterically to the people in the form of legends. Those who were preparing for Initiation were taught in greater detail of the light proceeding from the Sun, its reflection by the Moon, and the marvellous processes enacted by the light passing from the new Moon through different phases to the full Moon. The primal forms of writing were derived from processes taking place in the Heavens. Man little knows to-day that the consonants are images of the Zodiacal constellations, of a cosmic element that is at rest; the relations of the vowels to the consonants are images of the connections between the moving Planets and the Zodiac. The earlier forms of the letters of the alphabet were in this sense derived from the Heavens.

The ancient Egyptians felt that the great Hermes had himself been taught by the Powers of the Heavens and that he expressed, in his own being, the deepest soul life of man. All that was expressed in the deeds of man, even in daily pursuits where mathematical sciences, geometry (which Pythagoras afterwards learnt from the Egyptians), land-surveying and the like, were needed—all these things were traced back to the wisdom of Hermes who had seen the processes and phenomena of Earth to be reflections of heavenly activities as expressed in the stellar script. This script was brought down by Hermes into mathematics and geometry and he taught the Egyptians to find, in the stars, the counterpart of earthly happenings.

Now we know that the whole life of Egypt was deeply bound up with the floods of the Nile, with the deposits swept down by the Nile from the mountainous lands in the South. And we can realise how necessary it was for the Egyptians to know in advance when these floods would occur. They reckoned time according to the stellar script in the Heavens and when Sirius, the Dog Star, was visible in the Sign of Cancer, they knew that the Sun would shortly enter this Sign and that its rays would charm forth all that the flooding of the Nile bestowed upon the soil. They said: “Sirius is the Watcher; it is he who tell us what is to come.” And they looked up in gratitude to the Dog Star, to Sirius, for it was he who enabled them to cultivate their land aright and provide for the needs of their daily life. They looked back to ages of hoary antiquity when mankind had first been taught that the movement of the stars is the expression of the mighty cosmic timepiece.

Thus did the Egyptians take counsel from the stellar script. Hermes, or Thoth, was the great Spirit who, according to the oldest traditions, had given the original script of the Cosmic Wisdom and with the inspiration flowing into him from the stars, had built up the alphabet, had taught men the principles of agriculture, geometry, land-surveying—in short all they needed for their physical life. Physical life, however, is but the body of a spiritual life, a cosmic spiritual life whence Hermes drew his inspiration. Thus all culture and civilisation came to be bound up with the name of Hermes, and indeed the Egyptians felt themselves connected with him in a still more intimate sense.

Suppose, for example, that an Egyptian living in the year 1322 before our era, were looking up to the Heavens. He would behold a certain constellation. The ancient Egyptians had a convenient method of reckoning time-conditions, convenient, that is to say, for purposes of calculation; twelve months of thirty days each, with five additional days—making three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. They had reckoned thus for centuries, for the method was really a mathematical convenience. After three hundred and sixty-five days a year had run its course. Now as we know from Astronomy, this leaves a quarter of one day unaccounted for; that is to say, the Egyptian year fell a quarter of a day too early. If you reckon it out, you will see that every successive year began a little earlier than the last. So month by month the year receded until, after a lapse of four times three hundred and sixty-five years it returned to the beginning. Thus it always happened after a period of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years that the heavenly relationships were readjusted with the earthly calculation. In the course of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years the year receded through a complete cycle. If you reckon this back three times from the year 1322 before our era, you have the epoch to which the Egyptians ascribed their holy primal Wisdom. They said: “In those ancient times men possessed the very highest clairvoyance. Each of the great Solar Years denoted a stage in the waning of clairvoyant power. We are now living in the fourth stage. Our culture has reached a point where we have only traditions of the teaching of antiquity. But we look back through three great Cosmic Years to an age when the greatest of our Sages taught his pupils and successors what we to-day possess—though in much changed form—in writing, mathematics, geometry, the science of land-surveying and astronomy.” At the same time the old Egyptians said: “Our human calculations—which adhere to the convenient numbers of twelve times thirty plus five supplementary days—bear witness how the divine-spiritual world must correct our affairs, for our intellect has estranged us from Osiris and Isis. We cannot reckon the year accurately. But we look up to a hidden world where the Powers guiding the stars correct us.”

Thus even in their Chronology the old Egyptians looked up, as it were beyond the feeble quality of the intellect, to spiritual Beings and Powers living in hidden worlds, who in accordance with deeper laws, supervised protected and watched over all that man has to experience on Earth. And in Hermes, or Thoth, they revered the Being whose inspiration flowed from these watchful Powers of Heaven. Hermes was not only a great Teacher, but a Being to whom the old Egyptians looked up with feelings of deepest gratitude and reverence, saying: “All that I possess comes from Thee! Thou wert there in days of old and lo! Thy blessings stream into the world for the healing of men through those who have been Thy messengers.” Thus both the original source of Power—Osiris—and Hermes, or Thoth,—the Guardian of that Power—were not only known to the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, but their souls were filled with a deep moral feeling, a feeling of reverence and gratitude. All external evidence shows that the wisdom of the Egyptians (especially in very ancient times, and later to a less and less degree) was permeated with religious feeling. All human knowledge was bound up with feelings of holy awe, all wisdom with piety, all science with religion. In the later Egyptian epoch this no longer appears in its purest form. For just as in the successive epochs it is the mission of the several peoples to express the Spiritual in different forms, so do the several civilisations begin to fall into decadence when their prime has been reached. Most of what has been preserved from ancient Egyptian culture belongs to the period of decadence and one can only surmise what lies behind the marvellous pyramids, for instance, and the strange animal cults. The Egyptians knew: The age when wisdom itself was working was preceded by another, when all beings—not only man—descended from divine-spiritual heights. If we would understand the innermost nature of man we must not look at his outer form, but penetrate to his inner being. What we see externally are stages at which primordial creation has remained stationary; such stages are to be seen in the three kingdoms of Nature. The first stage is the world of the minerals and stones—the forms of which are expressed in the Pyramids. The second stage is the world of plants and the inner forces of this world are expressed in the Lotus flower. The third stage is represented by the animal forms, strewn, as it were, along the path to man. Divine forces which have not attained to the human stage have poured and crystallised into the different animal forms. Such were the feelings of the old Egyptian when he beheld the retarded forces of the Gods. He looked back to primeval ages when all creation sprang from Divine Powers. He felt that Divine Powers had remained at an earlier stage of development in the beings of the three lower kingdoms of Nature and had finally risen to human form in his own being. We must always be mindful of the feelings, the consciousness of the old Egyptians, for then we shall realise that their wisdom had a moral effect in their souls. Their conception of the Divine world and Supersensible forces gave rise to a relation to the animals, which only assumed a grotesque form when Egyptian culture entered upon its period of decline. The imperfections of later Egyptian culture were not there at the beginning when it was filled with spiritual revelation. We must not—as is so often done to-day—ascribe primitive and simple conditions to the early stages of civilisations. On the contrary, primitive conditions belong to periods of decadence which set in after the original spiritual treasures have been lost. Barbaric conditions are not to be regarded as the original states of civilisation; they are in reality the result of the decadence of civilisations which have fallen from their spiritual prime.

Such a statement may be a cause of irritation to the science that describes all civilisations as having originated from old primitive conditions such as survive in savage tribes to-day. Primitive states of culture still in existence are to be regarded as stages of decadence; at the beginning of human life on Earth the early civilisations were directly inspired from the spiritual world by the Spiritual Beings standing behind external history. This is what we are told by Spiritual Science.

Again it may be asked: Does the science of to-day, representing as it does, the heights of modern culture, come into collision with this statement of Spiritual Science? I should like here to quote from a recent work by Alfred Jeremias, The Influence of Babylon on the Understanding of the Old Testament, which shows that outer research too has found its way back to an ancient culture permeated with sublime and far-reaching conceptions and that the so-called barbaric civilisations must be regarded as the outcome of decadence. This point is clearly made in the book:

The oldest records, as indeed the whole cultural life of the Euphratean civilisations, postulate the existence of scientific and at the same time religious conceptions not only in the secret lore of the Temples but according to which the State organisation was regulated, justice declared, property administered and protected. The further back we go into ancient times, the more do we find the domination of these conceptions; only when the ancient Euphratean culture enters on its period of decadence do other forces make themselves felt.

External science is here beginning to open up paths which can unite with what Spiritual Science has to introduce into modern civilisation. If it advances along these paths it will gradually abandon the dead image of primitive conditions at the starting-point of human civilisations and will come instead to the Great Individualities. And they appear before us in all sublimity because it was their task to transmit to men who still possessed the power of clairvoyance, the greatest blessings in every branch of culture. And so we look back to mighty figures—to Zarathustra, to Hermes—who appear so sublime because they were the first to give the great spiritual impulses to mankind in those remote ages of which the Sage spoke to Solon. Hermes stands there as a great Guide of mankind. As we contemplate these great Individualities, we feel a strengthening of our own powers. We realise that the Spirit not only lives in the Cosmos but flows into cosmic deeds, into the evolution of man himself. Our own life is fortified, we have greater confidence in our own actions, our hopes and purposes are strengthened by the contemplation of these great Individualities. We who are born in after ages look up to Them, seeking the fulfilment of our own existence in Their mighty powers of soul, understanding our own actions in the light of the eternal Spirit pouring into humanity through Them.

What I am going to say today is intended to deal with primary and secondary education, and to deal with it in such a way that what is of essential value can be useful for the present time, the grave times, in which we are now living. I believe you will have seen for yourselves that what could be given only as outline in my book The Threefold Commonwealth has many deep contributing factors—indeed very many, if we take into consideration all that arises from the new shaping of the world. So that actually in everything that must be said on this subject, preeminently where fresh activity has to be aroused, only guiding lines can be given to begin with instead of anything of an exhaustive nature.

When we look at the times in which we are living—and we need to do so for we have to understand them—it must constantly strike us what a gulf there is between what must be called a declining culture and a culture that may be described as chaotic, but all the same on the up-grade. I expressly draw attention to the fact that today I am wanting to deal with a special aspect of my subject, and therefore ask you to take it in connection with the lectures as a whole, once they are brought to completion.

I should like to start by drawing your attention to something that is clearly noticeable, namely, how the culture based on bourgeois social contract is in rapid decline, whereas we are witnessing the dawn of another culture based on what is largely not understood and represented by the proletariat. If all this is to be understood—it can be felt without being understood but will then lack clarity—we must grasp it in its symptoms. Symptoms are always a matter of detail; I ask you to remember this in what I am saying today. I shall naturally be forced by the subject itself to take details out of their context, but I shall take pains so to shape this symptomatology that it will not be able to work in the way of agitators or demagogues, but will really be shaped by the relevant circumstances. We may meet with much misunderstanding in this direction today, but that we shall have to risk.

Now in the course of years I have often asked you to bear in mind that, on the ground of the world-outlook represented here, it is perfectly possible to be a real upholder and defender of the modern natural scientific approach to the world. You know how frequently I have referred to all that can be said in defense of this approach! At the same time, however, I have never failed to point out what a fearful counterpart it has. Quite recently I reminded you that this can be seen at once when anyone, as a result of what we call here the symptomatic method of study, points to some particularly telling example and goes to work quite empirically. Now in another connection I have had to sing the praises of a recent remarkable work by the outstanding biologist Oskar Hertwig, Das werden der Organismen—Eine Wiederlegung der Darwinischen Zufallstheorie. Then, to avoid misunderstanding after the publication of a second book of his, I have had to remark how this man has followed up a really great book on natural science with a quite inferior work on social conditions. This is a fact fraught with meaning for the present time. It shows that even on the excellent foundation of the natural scientific approach to the world, what is pre-eminently necessary for an understanding of the present times cannot arise, namely, knowledge of the social impulses existing in our age. I want today to give you another example to bring home to you with greater emphasis how, on the one hand, bourgeois culture is on the decline and can be saved only in a certain way; how, on the other hand, there exists something that is on the ascent, something that must be carefully tended with understanding and judgment if it is to be a sarting point for the culture of the future.

Now I have before me a book that is a symptomatic and typical product of the declining bourgeoisie. It appeared immediately after the world war with the somewhat pretentious title The Light Bearer. This light bearer is admirably adapted to spread darkness over everything which today is most necessary for social culture and its spiritual foundation. A remarkable community of people have foregathered, who in separate articles have written remarkable things about a so-called rebuilding of the social organism. Naturally I can quote only certain passages from this rather voluminous work. To begin with we have a scientist named Jakob von Uexkull, really a good typical scientist who—and this is the important point—has not only a certain knowledge of natural science, is not merely well versed in it, but in his research work is recognised as an accomplished scientist of the day. He feels impelled, however, like others bred in the scientific tradition, to treat us to his views upon organising the world socially. He has learnt about the 'cell-state' as the organism is often called in scientific circles. He has certainly learnt to develop his mind, with which he then observes the social life. I want to refer you just to a few instances from which you may be able to see how this man, not from his knowledge of natural science but as a result of his scientific method of thinking—really quite correct but wholly absurd for practical life—how he now looks at the structure of modern society: he turns to the social organism, to the natural scientific organism, the organism as it is in nature, and finds that "the harmony in a natural organism can at times be disturbed by processes of disease"—and referring to the social organism goes on to say:

“All harmony can be disturbed through disease. We call the most terrible disease of the human body cancer. Its characteristic is the unrestrained activity of the protoplasm which, without considering the preservation of the organs, goes on producing more and more protoplasmic cells. These press upon the bodily structure; they cannot, however, fulfil any function themselves for they are lacking in structure.

“We recognise the same disease in the human community at large when the people's motto: liberty, equality, fraternity, replaces the motto of the state: compulsion, diversity, subordination.”

Now here you have a typical scientific thinker. He looks upon it as a cancerous disease when the impulse towards liberty, equality and fraternity arises out of the people. In place of freedom he wants to put compulsion, in place of equality, diversity, in place of fraternity, subordination. This is what from the 'cell-state' he has learnt to adopt as his method of viewing things, and which he then applies to the social organism. The rest of what he puts forward too is not without significance when considered from the symptomalogical point of view. He goes so far as to find something in the social organism that corresponds in the natural organism to the circulation of the blood, not at all in the way I have described it in various lectures, but as he himself pictures it. He goes to the length of looking upon gold as blood circulating in the social organism and says: “Gold possesses the faculty of circulating independently of commodities, finally reaching the collecting centres represented by the great banks (Gold heart)”. Thus this scientist seeks a heart for his social organism and finds it in the collecting centres of the great banks, “which can exercise an overwhelming influence on the movements of both gold and commodities”.

Now I particularly stress that I have no intention of making fun of anything here. I want just to let you see how a man, who from this point of view has the courage to think things out to their logical conclusion, is actually obliged to think. If today many people deceive themselves about our having during the last three or four centuries brought evolution to the point of making this kind of thinking quite intelligible, then it is evident that these people are asleep in their souls, that they give themselves up to cultural narcotics which prevent their looking with wide awake souls at what is concealed in bourgeois culture. For this reason I have shown you a symptom that sheds light on this light bearer, sheds light on the elements of present-day culture, in so far as, out of the scientific method of thinking, this culture understands the social life. In a further examnple I want to show you how different a result we experience from what we meet within the spiritual sphere.

Among those belonging to the society just mentioned there is a man with a more spiritual bent, by name Friedrich Niebergall. Now this Friedrich Niebergall is quoted because his attitude towards certain things we consider of value is most sympathetic. But I should like to say here that what matters is the nature of the sympathetic attitude with which from such a side certain matters are approached. If we know this, and if we are not mere egoists but understand the great social impulses, perhaps we do not value this sympathetic attitude very highly; and it would be good if in these matters we were not to give ourselves up to illusion. We know, some of us at least could know, that what we carry on here and call spiritual science, or anthroposophy, we have for some time considered to be the true spiritual foundation of what today is on the ascent. Here, it is true, extremes meet; and I have always been forced to experience how some of those very people who participate in our anthroposophical endeavors turn to other movements they feel to be closely akin, but which differ from our endeavors in that they belong to the worst phenomena of the bourgeois decline, whereas spiritual science has from the first been strongly opposed to all that is behind this. So we find confused together in a certain Johannes Müller, who has no power of discriminating the different streams—like Niebergall for example—we find in this Johannes Müller a phenomenon showing just the characteristics of our decadent culture; and on the other hand (you know I do not say these things out of mere foolishness) you find mention of my name. It is true that all kinds of elegant things, most elegant things, are said about what I try to accomplish. You must, however, realise how in all that is put forward in anthroposophy my every effort is directed towards taxing man's understanding and fighting in a pronounced way against anything in the way of nebulous mysticism or so-called mystic theosophy. This could be done only by approaching the highest spheres of knowledge with clear insight, lucid ideas, which will be striven for when through natural science we have learnt, not the natural scientific outlook of today, but true thinking. After the gentleman in question has declared how fine much of anthroposophy is, he adds: “Round this basis of practical truth there then springs forth a confused medley of alleged knowledge concerning the life of the soul, of mankind and of the cosmos—as once was the case in the all-embracing gnostic systems offered out of the secret wisdom of the East to an age seeking in like manner inner depths and peace of soul.” It is not possible to say anything less to the point than this. For the fact that the author describes this as confused nonsense, a confused medley, rests solely on his lacking the will to adopt the mathematical method of our spiritual science. This is generally the case with those wishing to gain conceptions from a knowledge that is on the decline. The result of disciplining inner experience by mathematical method appears to this author therefore to be a confused medley. But this conf used medley that brings into the matter mathematical clarity, perhaps indeed mathematical dryness, is what is essential, for it preserves what is meant to be pursued here from all fantastic mysticism, all nebulous theosophy. Without this so-called confused medley there can be no real foundation for the future life of spirit. It is true that by reason of our social conditions there had to be a struggle to make it possible for spiritual science to be carried on in the very modest dimensions it has reached today. We had to struggle with what very often appears as a result of most people—who now have time, and nothing but time, for the affairs of spiritual science—still having those old habits of thinking and perceiving which are on the decline. Hence, we have to struggle so hard against what easily spreads in a circle such as ours, namely, sectarianism, which naturally is the very opposite of what is meant to be cultivated here, and against every kind of personal wrangling which, it goes without saying, leads to the systematic slandering that has flourished so exuberantly on the soil of this movement.

Now whoever studies the life of spirit today from symptoms such as these will soon come to the point of saying: What is particularly needed in the sphere of spiritual endeavour is a return to original sources. The clamor for a new form of social life is always heard at a time when people harbor the most widespread anti-social impulses and anti-social instincts. These anti-social impulses and instincts are particularly evident in people's private intercourse. They are to be seen in what men give or do not give—to each other. They are to be seen in the characteristic way people ignore the thoughts of others, talk others down, and finally pass them by. In our day the instinctive capacity really to understand the people we meet is extraordinarily rare. The following also is a disappearing phenomenon—the possibility of people nowadays being convinced of anything unconnected with their social status, education or birth. Today people have the most beautiful thoughts, but it is very difficult for them to be enthusiastic about anything. In thought they pass by all that is best, and this is a deeply rooted characteristic of our age. As consequence of this fact—you know that recently I have talked of logic based on fact as being important for the present time in contrast to mere logic of thought—as consequence of this a longing exists in men today to have recourse to authority and the pronouncements of feeling rather than by their own inner activity to work through to things. Those today who talk a great deal about freedom from authority are the very people who, at heart, believe in it most firmly and long to submit themselves to it. Thus we see, only it is generally unnoticed because most people are asleep, a rather questionable tendency among those who, without finding any way out of it, are involved in this cultural decline, namely the tendency to sink back into the bosom of the old Catholic Church. Were people to realise what lies in this tendency to return to the Catholic Church they would be much astonished. Under the present conditions, if this tendency were to increase, at no very distant date we should have to witness a mighty swing over to the bosom of the Catholic Church by masses of the people. Whoever is able to observe the special features of our present culture knows that this is threatening us.

Now whence does all this arise? Here I must draw your attention to an essential phenomenon of our present social life. The special feature of what in the last few centuries has increased to ever wider dimensions, and will increase further in those lands which will preserve their civilisations throughout the present chaos—this special feature is the technical coloring of the culture, the particular technical shade taken on by the culture of recent times. Were I to speak exhaustively on this subject, I should have to point in detail to all that now is referred to just in passing; and one day I shall do so. This technical culture has indeed one quite definite quality; this culture in its nature is through and through altruistic. In other words there is only one favourable way for technical accomplishments to be wide­spread, namely, when the men actively engaged in them in contrast to egoism, develop altruism. Technical culture makes it increasingly necessary—and those who are able to observe these things see the necessity on every fresh advance of technical culture—for work organised on a technical basis to be entirely free from egoism. In contrast to this there has developed at the same time what has had its origin in capitalism, which must not necessarily be linked to technical culture or remain so linked. Capitalism, when it is private capitalism, cannot work other than egoistically, for its very being consists in egoistic activity. Thus in recent times two streams meet in diametrical opposition to one another: modern technical life which calls upon men to be free from egoism, and, coming from the past, private capitalism, which can prosper only by the assertion of egoistic impulse. This is what has made its way into our present situation, and the only means of extricating ourselves is to have a life of spirit which has the courage to break away from the old traditions.

Now today there are many people concerned with the problems of future primary and secondary education, school education, and of professional training for human beings. Especially when we are studying the question of primary and secondary education we must say to these people: Well and good, but with the best will in the world, can you interest people at large in primary and secondary education if you do nothing to change present conditions of education and matters of the spirit? Have you the material for the work? What actually are you able to do? With your principles—perhaps socialistic in a good sense—you may be able to found schools for a great mass of the people and to found institutions for their higher education. You may organise everything of this kind to which your good will impels you. But have you the material really to organise for the benefit of the people what you want with good will to extend to them? You tell us that you found libraries, theatres, concert halls, exhibitions, lecture courses, and polytechnics. But the question must arise: What books do you have in your libraries? What kind of science is dealt with in your lectures? You place on your library shelves those very books which belong to the bourgeois culture that is on the decline; you hand over the scientific education in the polytechnics to men who are products of that bourgeois culture. You give the nature of education new forms, but into these new forms you cast what you have absorbed of the old. For instance you say: For a long time we have been trying to give primary and secondary education a democratic form; up to now the various states have been against this for they want to educate men to be good civil servants.—True you are opposed to this education of good civil servants; you allow the people to be educated by them, however, for up to now you have nothing else in mind but these civil servants whose books are on the shelves of your libraries, whose scientific method of thinking you propagate by means of your lectures and whose habits of thinking permeate your colleges.—You see from this that in these serious times the matter must be taken far more profoundly than it generally is today.

Now let us just look at certain details to have at least something clear before us. We will begin with what we may call primary and secondary education. Under this heading I include everything that can be given to the human being when he has outgrown the education to be acquired in his family, when to this must be added the education and instruction obtained at school. Those who know the nature of man are clear that school education should never be a factor in the evolution of the human being until approximately the change of teeth has taken place. This is just as much a scientific law as any other. Were people to be guided by the real nature of human beings instead of by mere dummies, they would make it a regulation that school instruction should not begin till after the change of teeth. But the important question is the principles upon which this school instruction of children is to be based. Here we must have in mind that whoever is able to bring his thoughts and efforts into harmony with the ascending cultural evolution can really do nothing today bµt recognise, as inherent in the principles holding good in school education and instruction, what lies in the nature of the human being himself. Knowledge of human nature from the change of teeth until puberty must underlie any principles in what we call primary and secondary education. From this, and from a great deal of the same nature, you will realise that, if we take this as our basis, the result will be the same education for everyone; for obviously the laws which hold good in human evolution between approximately the seventh and fifteenth years are the same for all human beings. The only question we need answer concerning education and instruction is: To what point have we to bring human beings by the time they reach their fifteenth year? This alone may be called thinking in terms of primary and secondary education. At the same time this alone is thinking in a modern way about the nature of instruction. The consequence of this today will be that we shall no longer ignore the necessity of making an absolute break w1th the old school system, that we shall have in all earnest to set to work on organising what, during the years specified, is to be given to children in accordance with the evolution of the growing human being. Then a certain basis will have to be created—something that , when social goodwill exists , will not be a nebulous idea for the future but something practical which can be immediately acted upon. The basis for this will have to be created in the first place by a complete change in the whole nature of examination and instruction of the teacher himself. When today the teacher is examined, this is often done merely to verify whether he knows something that, if he is at all clever and doesn't know it, he can read up in a text book. In the examination of teachers this can be entirely omitted, but with it will go the greater part of such examinations in their present form. In those that will take their place the object will be to discover whether the man, who has to do with the education and instruction of the developing human being, can establish with him a personally active and profitable relation; whether he is able to penetrate with his whole mentality—to use a word much in fashion—into the soul of the growing human being, into his very nature. Then the teacher will not just teach reading, arithmetic or drawing; he will be fit to become a real moulder of the developing human being.

Thereupon, from all future examinations, which will take a very different form from their present one, it will be easy to discover if the school staff are really creative in this sense. For this means that the teacher will know: I must help this pupil in some particular way if he is to learn to think; another in another way if he is to unfold his world of feeling.—For the world of feeling is intimately bound up with the world of memory, a thing few people know today, most modern professors .being the worst possible psychologists . The teacher must know what to give to his pupil if the will is to unfold in such a way that the seeds, sown between his seventh and fifteenth years, may bring about the strengthening of the will for the whole of his life. The cultivation of will is brought about when everything that has to do with practical physical exercises and artistic pursuits is adapted to the developing being. Whoever is a teacher of those who are in process of development will concentrate all his effort on enabling the human being to become man. In this way he will discover how to utilise all that is conventionally called human culture—speaking, reading and writing. All this can best be utilised in the years between seven and fifteen for the development of thinking. However strange it may seem, thinking is the most external thing in man, and it must be developed on wha tever establishes us in the social organism. Consider how the human being on coming into the world through birth lacks any propensity towards reading and writing and how these belong to his life as a member of a community. Thus, for the development of thinking we must, comparatively early, have good instruction in languages, naturally not in what was spoken formerly but in languages as used today by the civilised peoples with whom we have contact. This efficient teaching in languages would naturally not consist in teaching the grammatical anomalies as is done today in the grammar school; it must be started in the lowest classes and continued. It will be important too that teaching should be given in a conscious way to unfold the feeling and the memory bound up with it. Whereas everything relating to arithmetic and geography—of which children can absorb an extraordinary amount when it is given them rightly—stands between what has to do with thinking and what has to do with feeling, everything taken into the memory has more to do with pure feeling, for instance, the history that is taught, the myths and legends that are told. I can only touch on these things.

But it is also necessary in these first years to give particular attention to the cultivation of will. Here it is a matter of physical exercises and artistic training. Something entirely new will be needed for this in these early years. A beginning has been made in what we call eurythmy. Today we witness a great deal of physical culture that is decadent and belongs to the past; it pleases many people. In its place we shall put something that so far we have had occasion to show only to the employees of the Waldorf—Astoria factory through the sympathetic help of our good Herr Molt; we shall put what—if it is given to the growing human being instead of the present gymnastics—promotes culture in both body and soul. It can so develop the will that the effect remains throughout life, whereas cultivation of the will by any other means causes a weakening of it when vicissitudes and various experiences are met with in the course of life. In this sphere particularly, however, we shall have to go to work with common sense. In the way instruction is given, combinations will have to be made little dreamt of today; for instance drawing will go hand-in-hand with geography. It would be of the greatest importance for the growing pupil to have really intelligent lessons in drawing; during these lessons he would be led to draw the globe from various sides, to draw the mountains and rivers of the earth in their relation to one another, then to turn to astronomy and to draw the planetary system. It goes without saying that this would have to be introduced at the right age, not for the seven-year-olds but certainly before they reached fifteen, perhaps from the twelfth year onwards, when if done in the right way, it would work on growing youth very beneficially.

What in a didactic and pedagogical way I have just now been discussing concerning primary and secondary education will, in accordance with the logic of facts, have a quite definite consequence, namely that nothing will play a part in teaching that is not in one form or another retained for the whole of life. Today, as a rule, only what is included among the faculties plays its part rightly—what is done by learning to read is concentrated in the faculty of reading, what is done in learning to count is concentrated in the faculty of arithmetic. But just think how it is when we come to things having rather to do with feeling and memory. In this sphere children today learn a great deal only to forget it, only to be without it for the rest of life. In future, stress must be laid on this—that everything given to a child will remain with him for life.

We should then come to the question: What is to be done with the human being when having finished with the primary and secondary school he goes out into life? Here it is important that everything unsound in the old life of spirit should be overcome, that at least where education is concerned the terrible cleft made by class distinction should be abolished.

Now the Greeks, even the Romans, were able to devise for themselves an education that had its roots in their life, that was bound up with their way of life. In our time we have nothing which binds us in our most important years with our quite different mode off living. Many people, however, who later take up positions of authority, learn today what was learnt by the Greeks and Romans, and thus become divorced from life today; added to which this is spiritually the most uneconomical thing possible. Besides, we are today at a point in human evolution—if people only knew it—when it is quite unnecessary for preserving our relation to antiquity that we should be brought up in their ideas. What people in general need of the old has for a long time been incorporated in our culture, in such a way that we can absorb it without years of training in an atmosphere foreign to us. What we should imbibe of Greek and Roman culture can be improved upon, and this has also been the case; but that is a matter for scholars and has nothing to do with general social education. What is to be imbibed from antiquity for our general social education, however, has been brought to such a stage through the work of great minds in the past, and is so much in our midst, that if we rightly absorb what is there for us we have no need to learn Greek and Latin to deepen our knowledge of antiquity; it is not in the least essential and is no help at all for the important things in life. I recall how, to avoid misunderstandings, I found it necessary to say that, though Herr Wilamowitz is most certainly a Greek scholar of outstanding merit, he has nevertheless translated the Greek plays in a way that is really atrocious; but, of course, these translations have been acclaimed by both the press and scholars. Today we must learn to let people participate in life; and if we organise education so that people are able to participate in life, at the same time setting to work on education economically, you will find that we are really able to help human beings to a living culture. This, too, will enable anyone with a bent towards handicraft to take advantage of the education for life that begins about the fourteenth year. A possibility must be created for those who early show a bent towards handicraft or craftsman ship to be able to participate in what leads to a conception of life. In future, pupils who have not reached their twenty-first year should never be offered any knowledge that is the result of scientific research and comes from scientific specialisation. In our day, only what has been thoroughly worked out ought to have a place in instruction; then we can go to work in an out-and-out economic way. We must, however, have a clear concept of what is meant by economy in didactic and pedagogical matters. Above all we should not be lazy if we want to work in a way that is economic from the pedagogical point of view. I have often drawn your attention to something personally experienced by me. A boy of ten who was rather undeveloped was once given over into my charge, and through pedagogical economy I was enabled to let him absorb in two years what he had lacked up to his eleventh year, when he was still incapable of anything at all. This was possible only by taking into account both his bodily and his soul nature in such a way that instruction could proceed in the most economical way conceivable. This was often done by my spending three hours myself in preparation, so as in a half-hour or even in a quarter to give to the boy instruction that would otherwise have taken hours—this being necessary for his physical condition. If this is considered from the social point of view, people might say that I was obliged in this instance to give all the care to a single boy that might have been given to three others who would not have had to be treated in this way. But imagine we had a social educational system that was reasonable, it would then be possible for a whole collection of such pupils to be dealt with, for it makes no difference in this case whether we have to deal with one or fourteen boys. I should not complain about the number of pupils in the school, but this lack of complaint is connected with the principle of economy in instruction. It must be realised, however, that up to his fourteenth year the pupil has no judgment; and if judgment is asked of him this has a destructive effect on the brain. The modern calculating machine which gives judgment the place of memorising and calculating is a gross educational error; it destroys the human brain, makes it decadent. Human judgment can be cultivated only from and after the fourteenth year when those things requiring judgment must be introduced into the curriculum. Then all that is related, for example, to the grasping of reality through logic can be begun. When in future the carpenter or mechanic sits side-by-side in school or college with anyone studying to be a teacher, the result will certainly be a specialisation but at the same time one education for all; but included in this one education will be everything necessary for life. If this were not included matters would become socially worse than they are at present. All instruction must give knowledge that is necessary for life. During the ages from fifteen to twenty everything to do with agriculture, trade, industry, commerce will have to be learnt. No one should go through these years without acquiring some idea of what takes place in farming, commerce and industry. These subjects will be given a place as branches of knowledge infinitely more necessary than much of the rubbish which constitutes the present curriculum during these years. Then too during these years all those subjects will be introduced which I would call world affairs, historical and geographical subjects, everything concerned with nature knowledge—but all this in relation to the human being, so that man will learn to know man from his knowledge of the world as a whole.

Now among human beings who receive instruction of this kind will be those who, driven by social conditions to become workers in a spiritual sense, can be educated in every possible sphere at schools specially organised for such students. The institutions where people today are given professional training are run with a terrible lack of economy. I know that many people will not admit it but there is this lack of economy; above all validity is ascribed to the most curious conceptions belonging to the world-outlook that is on the decline. Even in my time I have experienced this—people have begun to press where it is a question in the universities of historical and literary subjects, for fewer lectures and more "seminars"; today we still hear it said that lectures should be given as little space as possible on the programme but seminars encouraged. One knows these seminars. Faithful followers of a university tutor gather together and learn strictly in accordance with the ideas of this tutor to work scientifically. They do their work under his coaching and the results of the coaching are forever visible. It is altogether another matter if a man, in the years when he should be learning a profession, goes of his own free will to a course of intelligent lectures, and then has the opportunity of embarking upon his own free exposition—though certainly this would be connected with what the lectures contained. Practical application can certainly be included in the programme but this exaggerated emphasis on seminars must be stopped. That is just an undesirable product of the second half of the nineteenth century, when the emphasis was on the drilling of human beings rather than on leaving them to develop freely.

Now when we are discussing this stage in education it must be said that a certain educational groundwork ought to be the same for everyone, whether he is destined to be a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher; that is one aspect of the matter; in addition to this, everyone must receive what contributes to the general culture of man, whether he is to become a doctor, a machine maker, architect, chemist or engineer; he must be given the opportunity of receiving general culture, whether he is to work with his hands or his head. Today little thought is given to this, though certainly in some places of higher education many things are better than they were. When I was at the Technical College in Vienna a Professor was giving lectures on general history. Each term he started to give his general history; after three or perhaps five lectures he ceased—there was no longer anyone there. Then, at this college, there was a Professor of history of literature . Thus there were the means to receive what was universally human besides specialised subjects. To these lectures on the history of literature, which included exercises in rhetoric and instruction on how to lecture, like those given, for example, by hand—to these lectures I always had to drag someone else, for they were held only if there was an audience of two. They could be kept going, therefore, only by a second being dragged in, and this was someone different practically every time. Except for this, the only attempt to provide students with the information they needed about conditions in life was by lectures on constitutional law or statistics. As I said, these things have improved; what has not improved is the driving force that should exist in our whole social life. This will improve, however, when there is a possibility for all that constitutes the universally human not to be made intelligible only to those with a definite professional view but intelligible from a universally human aspect. I have often been surprised how distorted my lectures on anthroposophy have been by my audience; for if they had taken them in a positive way they could have said: we won't bother about the anthroposophy in these lectures, but what is said about natural science, which receives great praise when coming from the ordinary natural philosopher—that is enough for us. For as you all know these lectures are always interspersed with general information about nature. But there are many people who are not interested in taking things from a positive angle, preferring to distort what they have no wish to accept. What they refused to accept, by the very way in which the thoughts were formed, by the whole mode of treatment, as well as the necessary interspersing of natural science, could be taken as contributing to universal human knowledge, which the manual worker could receive just as well as the scholar, and which was also generally intelligible as natural science. Just consider other endeavors towards a world-outlook. Do you imagine that in monistic gatherings, for instance, people can understand anything if they have not a scientific background? No, and if they have not, they merely gossip. What here we pursue as anthroposophy is something that can change all knowledge of nature, and even of history, so that everyone will be able to understand them. Just think how intelligible to everyone what I have shown to be a great leap historically in the middle of the fifteenth century can be. That, I think, is intelligible to everyone. But it is the groundwork without which there can be no understanding at all of the whole social movement in our time. This social movement is not understood because people do not know how mankind has developed since the middle of the fifteenth century. When these things are mentioned people come forward and declare: Nature does not make leaps, so you are wrong to assume there was such a thing in the fifteenth century. This foolish proposition that nature never makes a leap is always being harped upon. Nature continually makes leaps; it is a leap from the green leaf of a plant to the sepal which has a different form—another leap from sepal to petal. It is so too in the evolution of man's life. Whoever does not teach the history that rests on senseless conventional untruth, but on what has really happened, knows that in the fifteenth century men became different in the finer element of their constitution from what they were before, and that what is brought about today is the development of what they have grasped in the centre of their being. If there is a desire to understand the present social movement, laws of this kind in historical evolution will have to be recognised. You have only to call to mind the way in which matters here are dealt with and you will say: To understand all this no special knowledge is necessary; there is no need to be a man of culture; everyone can understand it. This indeed will be what is demanded in the future—that no philosophies or world-conceptions should be propagated which can be understood only by reason of a form of education belonging to a certain class. Take up any philosophical work today, for example, by Eucken or Paulsen, or anyone else you want information about, take up one of those dreadful works on psychology by university professors—you will soon drop it again; for those who are not specially trained in the particular subject do not understand the language used. This is something that can be set right only by universal education, when the whole nature of education and instruction will be absolutely changed in the way I have tried to indicate today.

You see, therefore, that in this sphere too we can say: here we have a big settling-up—not a small one. What is necessary is the development of social impulses or, rather, social intincts, through instruction, through education, so that people do not pass by one another. Then they will understand each other so that a practical living relation is develcped—for nowadays the teacher passes his pupil by, the pupil passes his teacher. This can happen only if we run our pen through what is old—which can be done. The facts of the case do not prevent this; it all goes back to human prejudice. People cannot believe that things can be done in a new way; they are terrified that their life of spirit may lose what was of value in the old way. You have no idea how anxious they are on this score. Naturally they are unable to take all this in; for instance they cannot see all the possibilities created by having an instruction that is economical. I have often told you that provided this is done at the right age it is possible from the beginning of geometry—the straight line and the angle—up to what used to be called the pons a sinorum, the Pythagorean theorem. And on my attempting this you should have seen the joy of the youngsters when, after three or four hours work, the theorem of Pythagoras dawned upon them. Only think what a lot of rubbish has to be gone through today before young people arrive at this theorem. What matters is the enormous amount of mental work wasted, which has its effects in later life; it sends its rays into the whole of life, right into its most practical spheres. Today it is necessary for people to come to a decision in these matters—fundamentally to re-organise their way of thinking. Otherwise—well, otherwise we simply sink deeper into decline and never find the path upwards.