The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: We need to discuss the ending of school. You have a number of questions.

The following are discussed: A question about how to handle promoting the students this year. General questions about the tenth and following grades. A request for a course about educating children over fourteen years of age and also the instruction of religion. Questions about “bourgeois methods” in the school and how to eliminate them. A question about teaching instrumental music. A question of whether third graders should write foreign language or only speak it. A question about social studies and social understanding. A question about a special course for eurythmy. Questions about a teachers’ meeting, pedagogical conferences, and a newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: I think we could handle the individual questions more easily if the teachers first discuss promoting the children and the end of the school year. We can then more easily discuss the question of promoting the children. I think we should begin with the ninth grade. I would ask the teachers to present the experiences they had at the end of the school year.

Each class is discussed, beginning with the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was present during the Jean Paul discussion. Were you satisfied with the way the children participated?

What is there to say about eurythmy? That lethargic child, U.A., is not really lethargic. He only makes a lethargic impression.

In the event we create a tenth grade, all the children would have to move on to it.

Now we come to the eighth grade. Are there any students so weak we should hold them back?

A teacher: We should consider H.K. and whether it would be better to keep him in a lower grade so that he will progress better.

Dr. Steiner: My impression is that he does not need to be held back. Is he one of those who is more behind in particular subjects?

A teacher: He literally falls asleep.

Dr. Steiner: He is physically weak. He took part in the Quaker meals.

A teacher: The situation at home is very bad.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you think he will be a disturbance next year in the ninth grade, or whether you will be able to carry him along. With such situations, a shock like that is not exactly desirable.

A teacher: I do not think he will be a disturbance.

Dr. Steiner: Can you achieve something with him in eurythmy? A eurythmy teacher: He is trying. P.R. is deformed. Should we have a look at him specifically?

Dr. Steiner: Do we have a number of such children in the different classes? You need to do the best you can to come to grips with the children in the same groups. We can’t put P.R. aside. Is there anything to say regarding languages?

We should think about H.K. I think there is some doubt we can take him into the ninth grade. Perhaps I will come by the class tomorrow morning or the morning after. We need to have a remedial class. We need to think about that. In a lower grade, such a student would be just as disturbing.

A teacher: The children in my sixth grade class have a poor memory. There must be an error in my teaching.

Dr. Steiner: You can’t say every child’s memory is weak.

A teacher: The children cannot retain things. They don’t have any clear pictures of Egypt, for example.

Dr. Steiner: How do you attempt to teach them a pictorial idea? A report about teaching geography is given.

Dr. Steiner: The children remember the pyramids and the obelisks. You need to ask yourself whether you did everything in detail. Did you give the children a picture of the true situation in Egypt, so that they do not have holes in their pictures of Egypt? If you simply emphasize Egypt and do not give a picture of how the children get from here to Egypt, if they don’t have a living picture, then it is very possible that they cannot remember. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to going into all the details so that the children have a completely living picture, one with no holes in it, about the location of Egypt in relationship to their own. The child would know something about pyramids and obelisks, but not that they are in Egypt. You should really think about whether you did all of these things that come together as a complete picture. Have you had the children draw only Africa? Perhaps you should make a special map, including Europe, which would give them an overview of the connections.

A teacher: I asked in which direction of the compass they would look for Egypt.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you should have them find the cities they would pass through if they went from here to Egypt. This kind of memory problem arises from some kind of holes in what they have otherwise learned. Without doubt, the memory would be better if the children had a complete picture. That was not the situation in Mr. O’s class. The children were interested, they understood everything and were enthusiastic. They remembered nothing, though, because he emphasized specific things and did not give them the overall connections. A good way of improving memory is to create the large overview.

That is true in various ways for other areas of instruction. It is particularly true for such things as geography, but also for certain things in natural history. It is, of course, particularly true for history. In history, it is important that you find every possible way of giving the children concrete images.

When you discuss things like the Persian Wars, never neglect to emphasize some person, at least where there are important connections. Today, you did the Athenian runners. I would never have neglected creating a real picture for the children of how these people lived long ago. You could, for example, go back through the generations, grandfather, son, and so forth. I would construct the series right back to the Athenian runner. The result would be fifty-five or fifty-six people lined up in a row. In that way the children would have an idea of how far back the timeline reaches. I would ask, for instance, which one was a contemporary of the Mystery of Golgotha. Use such pictures and let the children think about them. Speak about Egypt and then show them how they can get from Stuttgart to Egypt. You could stop in Venice, and then try to lighten things a little with a joke about Venice. There should be some humor in the instruction since otherwise memory will suffer.

A teacher speaks about some of the weaker children in the 6a class, particularly W.G. He is so sanguine that he is nearly an idiot. He doesn’t write the letters together nor complete words. He says whatever occurs to him.

Dr. Steiner: In his soul, this is a young child. He is at the age of seven or eight in the development of his soul. The situation is that he would not care very much if you held him back. The question is, how do we handle the whole question of promoting children in principle? This child, W.G., is one who would come under consideration. It would be good for him to go through the material a second time. We should discuss the principles of the question.

A teacher: I would be unhappy to give him up.

Dr. Steiner: He would be the only one of those you have mentioned. We could put E.W. into the extra class.

A teacher: Many of the children cannot write properly yet.

Dr. Steiner: They would all come into the remedial class. W.E. is a clear candidate for that class. He cannot properly collect his thoughts. How is he in music? Most of them will be musical. He will also not be particularly diligent in handwork class. W.E. would be hypnotized by vibrant colors.

We need to give some consideration to forming a class for remedial instruction.

There is some discussion about some of the children in the fifth grade, particularly about E.E.

A teacher: He is not keeping up, but he is gifted in languages. He is clever and sly.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to pay attention to him, to speak with him with particular attention to his individuality. You need to vary that, but give particular attention to him.

A teacher: Shouldn’t he go into the remedial class?

Dr. Steiner: What would he do there? He loves being different. It would affect him deeply if you had him make a pair of shoes. We should do something like make shoes so that he can nail things together. They should be real boots for someone else. We should have him make shoes in the handwork class, that would be something good. He would have fun putting on the soles. He could even double-sole the shoes.

Discussion of the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was in the class, and I have to say it is going well, with the exception of three or four who will quickly catch up on what they cannot do. Some are weak in arithmetic, but others are quite good. I think it is a class that has suffered very little from having had three different teachers.

We can promote the whole class to the fifth grade. The previous teacher was extremely good in discipline. She was what people in bourgeois schools refer to as strict. The children liked her a lot. Then you came. Today, their discipline was exemplary.

A teacher: I made myself strict.

Dr. Steiner: You will see the result only after you have been with them for a longer time.

L.H. certainly has weak eyes and the axes of the eyes need to become more parallel. They converge too much. Try to get him used to holding his book a little further away, just a half finger’s length more than what he is used to now. Move the location of where his vision crosses a little further from his face.

I noticed B.E. He awoke for a day. The children were all very surprised that he said something.

A teacher: M.I.’s mother is quite concerned that he inherited something from his father.

Dr. Steiner: He has a touch of childishness. He is apparently a Prussian, a little one. He is not actually disturbed, but if you wanted, you could call him weakly disturbed. He was born in Berlin and has something sweet about him through the language. With good guidance, he can become quite normal.

A teacher: He is gathering statistics about electrical trains. He keeps himself apart.

Dr. Steiner: You need to guide him lovingly. The only concern is the statistics about railways. You need to try to get him interested in something else and to break him of that. He should learn German writing.

In the second grade, you have several children who are quite good. Your problem is that the class is so large. The disturbed children, G., H.N., and M.H., should also go into the remedial class. B.R. is not quite normal. He should receive particular help in the afternoon. That is difficult with some of your children. His brain is too small. You need only look at him. He is smaller than he should be. We should try to counteract that characteristic. It is not possible for him to completely pay attention. You should call upon him more often and discuss things with him in the corridor or on the street so that he has to think while he listens. His mother is just like him.

A teacher: Many children in the first grade already have new teeth, but some do not.

Dr. Steiner: None of the children in the first grade can have finished teething. That happens only at the age of eight. What is important in connection with school age is only that they have begun to change their teeth.

O.Nr. should also be considered for the remedial class. He transposes words. We could have him for a time in the remedial class where we can work with each child individually.

A teacher mentions T.M.

Dr. Steiner: The problem with T.M. has diminished. He is already healthier.

A teacher: He has asthma attacks at night.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him with moderate amounts of arsenic in the form of Levico Water. The boy has an irregularity in the astral body that we could cure physically. Give it to him twice a week diluted in a quarter glass of water. You will then be taking all of your students into the second grade.

A teacher asks about F.O. in the present 1a class.

Dr. Steiner: The remedial class should help him so that he can come into the present second grade and the future third grade. Now we are all done with the individual classes.

A report is given about foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: You can try to achieve something by dividing into groups. We can put them into groups so that we have all those with the same knowledge and capabilities together.

A teacher: I think it would be good if we gave the sixth grade something printed to read.

Dr. Steiner: How old are they? You would have to look for a moderately long story. You would need to find a short story, something that has some substance and is not superficial. They could read something historical from Mignet. They would also learn quite a bit from it.

We will need to divide the foreign languages differently. It is so difficult to satisfy the children there. You need to ask the children questions often in foreign languages. There is a prevalent opinion that the children are unhappy. They learn the most from the lectures. It is helpful when they find their way themselves into a good lecture. Rote learning is only a crutch. You should proceed sentence by sentence and with the younger ones, only speak.

A teacher: Should the children also write in the third grade foreign languages?

Dr. Steiner: You can begin writing short, easy sentences that express some simple thought.

A teacher asks whether three songs from Dr. Steiner could be printed.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly give these choruses to the publisher in Dornach. They will sell well.

A teacher: Can we count upon having texts for the children?

Dr. Steiner: There is already something for the youngest children. The “Springtime Song.” The instrumental music class is only a substitute, but we will have to leave that for now.

A teacher: I have used some things from curative eurythmy. Should I continue with that?

Dr. Steiner: I was very satisfied with what I saw today. In the fifth grade there are a number of boys who could have a class in gymnastics. Our school program already should include one hour of that. We will make it more spiritually expressive as soon as we can.

A teacher: We have already begun modeling in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was satisfied with what I saw.

Now I would like to ask you if we should prepare the reports as we did last year. Doing the reports that way is good, just as we did last year.

A teacher: We kept them positive.

Dr. Steiner: It is important to phrase the sentences properly. If you are not individual enough, something that is difficult, if you phrase the sentences too harshly, they will put people off. If someone is dawdling, you should write that it would be desirable for him to pull himself together next year. The way you say it is important. You should express deficiencies positively, but be careful about how you say it.

Then we agree that we will do the reports as we did last year. Give as true a picture as possible. At the bottom of each report, write a verse for each child that expresses the child’s individuality, that can act as a leitmotif for the future. I would also like to see, since the child will keep the report, that all of the teachers who worked with the child sign it. I would like each child to have all the signatures. It is important that the children have all the signatures of the teachers who worked with him or her. The class teacher’s name should be first, along with “Class Teacher,” so that the child knows to whom it belongs. The others should be below. It would be good if each teacher wrote some text. The class teacher should write the most and the others should write short remarks.

Concerning the question of promotion.

Dr. Steiner: We actually only have these two P. children, and then there would be almost no one else except F. H.M. could go into the remedial class, all the others would move ahead. Now we come to the question of the remedial class. The question is whether we need another teacher. Dr. Schubert should take it. A list of teachers who are to teach the main subjects is created.

Dr. Steiner: How would it be if we had Dr. Schwebsch from Berlin come by? He is supposed to be coming here on June 11.

In the fall, we will have Dr. Röschl for Latin and Greek. That will certainly be a very good addition. We also need help, a new teacher, for modern languages. Perhaps young Englert. He is still quite young. He should come here on June 11 or perhaps before to Dornach.

A report is given about the independent religious instruction. A class teacher mentions he had attended the religion class of his class to see that they behaved. He felt like a barking dog.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain sense, a kind of exception is possible. We should keep to what is included in our pedagogy. We must assume that the class and the teacher belong together. Since different classes are together in the religion class, I certainly think it is possible that the class teacher be in the classroom while another teacher gives the instruction. We can hardly get around trying to form smaller classes.

A teacher: There is not always an inner participation. There are too many children.

Dr. Steiner: The groups are too large. That is something that should not be if the children are to take in the instruction.

We need to awaken a feeling for the seasons in the children. We also need to pay more attention that the children have a living picture of Christ. That should be the center of their thoughts at all levels. We should always return to that and see that the earthly life of Christ is the center. We must care for the personal relationship to Christ, even at the lowest grades, so that it becomes a kind of inner religion. Care for the personal relationship of the children to Christ. We must create an ideal religion in the period. Symbolism and pictures should play a role so that they strongly carry the feeling along.

As a religion teacher, you are not a part of the school. You give it as though you were a minister in an anthroposophical church outside the school and only came here.

Concerning education from the age of fourteen, that is, the pedagogy for those over fourteen years of age, we will have to see that we have some time when I return on June 10. That relates to what you referred to as “bourgeois methods.”

A teacher: Last year we included social understanding as a part of technology.

Dr. Steiner: That is connected with the academics for the upper grades. We can best teach social studies, but then we would have to drop languages. The older teachers, those who have been here at this school for two years, would have to take on such things.

Concerning a special class for eurythmy.

A eurythmy teacher: The performance was extraordinarily fruitful. It did a great deal to make the Waldorf School known. It appears we will form an extra group.

Dr. Steiner: We can do two different things. Either we can give performances with the children of the Waldorf School, in which case we simply select some from the regular group of children, or we can forego that and form a group. The group would not be the children of the Waldorf School, so we could no longer present that to the public as an achievement of the Waldorf School. We can do those two things. Either we give performances with children from the Waldorf School, in which case we cannot form a special troupe, or we form a special department for eurythmy at the Waldorf School that operates in parallel. That is something we can do quite officially, but then we would say, “Performances with children of the special class at the Waldorf School.”

A teacher: If the children were to sing in a chorus, they would also need to be selected.

Dr. Steiner: It would hardly be positive if we formed a chorus of individual students. Either we accept the achievements as they are or we create a special department for eurythmy. We can do either, perhaps depending only upon sympathy or antipathy. There are a large number of capable eurythmists we can use in that way, but we can no longer claim it is a performance of the Waldorf School.

A teacher: We could form a group from the older girls.

Dr. Steiner: We may well be able to do that if we give performances from the Waldorf School, but the littlest kids have the greatest success. There could be a special group of the more advanced eurythmists. We would, however, excuse those who are also professional eurythmists from normal eurythmy practice. We could do such things. You would have to create something separate from the school.

I think there are some who have a burning desire to do eurythmy. However, I think it would be nice if at least some of the boys were included. In Dornach, we only have S., and he needs half a year to prepare for a performance, so we never see male eurythmists on stage. You can see what eurythmy really is in Munich. There, the men performed. We debuted with four men. But then masculinity moved more and more into the background. The women are more agile. Here, the students are very capable. It is quite curious that women are much better doctors than men.

A teacher: The children in the upper grades who want to develop themselves musically need to begin practicing. Could we excuse them from those classes that inhibit their dexterity with difficult physical work?

Dr. Steiner: We could change the curriculum for individuals. That is certainly possible. We should also think about having special practice rooms. What provides human education should remain, otherwise you can specialize.

A teacher: The children have asked about a student library, and whether they could read Dr. Steiner’s books. Should the older children get something socially directed?

Dr. Steiner: When we have the tenth grade, we can use reading to educate. In general, it is too early to give them such things. On the other hand, perhaps you could give them some cycles if they are appropriately printed. Christianity as Mystical Fact, perhaps. Or, maybe Theosophy. We would have to work out the preliminaries.

A teacher asks whether students could attend Dr. Steiner’s lectures.

Dr. Steiner: Do you think that such a lecture would be helpful? We will probably not be able to get around leaving such things up to the parents. We cannot make any rule about it. The parents need to do that themselves and also be responsible for it.

A question is asked about publishing a newsletter and also about putting on pedagogical conferences for teachers. The discussions with the teachers were quite favorable.

Dr. Steiner: What did you discuss there?

A teacher: We talked about the relationship of the school to the state and also a number of pedagogical things.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be superfluous. People misunderstand the most important points. If you want to progress in the movement, you have to approach the consumers, not the factory owners. You can do that as a pleasant chat, but nothing comes of it. I have never resisted that. If you think you should do it, then go ahead. We have already wasted so much strength by always beginning new things that have no real possibility of success. In Switzerland you can enjoy the luxury of working with teachers. During the Easter course, I had the experience that the Swiss said their schools are independent. But, the Swiss schools are really only slaves. I don’t think that we need to hurry.

We can make the Waldorf School principle only a model. We will not be able to create a second school. It will remain a model, so we need do nothing more than maintain this school as a model until people get angry enough. The only thing that would make sense would be to oppose the school laws through a worldwide movement. It is high time for the World School Association to do something. It is important to bring the World School Association to life so that a gigantic movement for the independence of education and for the freeing of the school system arises throughout the world. For that reason, I think we should make this school with its students inwardly as complete as possible and extend it upward. Add a class each year and extend it upward.

Due to a lack of help, the newsletter will not be possible. Pedagogical conferences are a luxury. Is there something else?

A question is asked about the closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: We can hold the closing ceremony in the main hall of the art building. If it gives the children a closing point and they receive a few thoughts, then it would be good. It is a part of their soul experiences, for otherwise the children would simply leave and then begin a new school year. In the end, they would become indifferent. The closing ceremony is the conclusion of the entire school year. The fact that the holiday is only a week is an exception. Each class will begin a new year. That should not be prosaic.

Why have we not had any more monthly festivals? That is too bad. I think we should have them.

QUESTIONER:
Dr. Steiner has spoken to us about the importance of authority in education, but this is something with which our young people want nothing to do. Every teacher, not to mention every priest, experiences it. Various currents run through our younger generation and one can certainly notice an aloofness on their part toward anything connected with the question of authority, be the authority in the parental home or authority regarding spiritual matters. Parents sometimes have the feeling that they no longer have any say in anything and that one must simply let these young people go their own way. On the other hand, one sometimes also witnesses the disillusionment of such an attitude and it is then painful to see young people not finding what they were seeking. There is something in the air that simply seems to forbid a respectful attitude toward older people, something that is like a deep-seated sting, ever ready to strike against authority in whatever form. Perhaps Dr. Steiner would be kind enough to tell us something about the reasons for this strange ferment among the younger generation. Why are they not happy? Why do they take special pleasure in complaining? It saddens us that we are no longer able to reach them. I have sought help by studying books dealing with this problem, but I have so far not found a single one that could show me the way forward. I would therefore be very happy if Dr. Steiner could say something to give us insight into the soul of a young person.

RUDOLF STEINER:
This is, of course, a subject that, unfortunately, were I were to deal with it in any depth, would require a whole lecture of at least the same length as the one I have just given you—I say unfortunately because you would have to listen to me for such a long time! I would, however, like to say at least a few words in response to the previous speaker’s remarks.

During my life, which by now can no longer be described as short, I have tried to follow up various life situations related to this question. On one hand, I have really experienced what it means to hear, in one’s childhood, a great deal of talk about a highly esteemed and respected relative whom one had not yet met in person. I have known what it is to become thoroughly familiar with the reverence toward such a person that is shared by all members of the household, by one’s parents as well as by others connected with one’s upbringing. I have experienced what it means to be led for the first time to the room of such a person, to hold the door handle in my hand, feeling full of awe and reverence. To have undergone such an experience is of lasting importance for the whole of one’s life. There can be no genuine feeling for freedom, consistent with human dignity, that does not have its roots in the experience of reverence and veneration such as one can feel deeply in one’s childhood days.

On the other hand, I have also witnessed something rather different. In Berlin, I made the acquaintance of a well-known woman socialist, who often made public speeches. One day I read, in an otherwise quite respectable newspaper, an article of hers entitled, “The Revolution of our Children.” In it, in true socialist style, she developed the theme of how, after the older generation had fought—or at least talked about—the revolution, it was now the children’s turn to act. It was not even clear whether children of preschool age were to be included in that revolution. This is a different example of how the question of authority has been dealt with during the last decades.

As a third example, I would like to quote a proposal, made in all seriousness by an educationalist who recommended that a special book be kept at school in which at the end of each week—it may have been at the end of each month—the pupils were to enter what they thought about their teachers. The idea behind this proposal was to prepare them for a time in the near future when teachers would no longer give report “marks” to their pupils but pupils would give grades to their teachers.

None of these examples can be judged rightly unless they are seen against the background of life as a whole. This will perhaps appear paradoxical to you, but I do believe that this whole question can be answered only within a wider context. As a consequence of our otherwise magnificent scientific and technical culture—which, in keeping with its own character, is bound to foster the intellect—the human soul has gradually become less and less permeated by living spirit. Today, when people imagine what the spirit is like, they usually reach only concepts and ideas about it. Those are only mental images of something vaguely spiritual. This, at any rate, is how the most influential philosophers of our time speak about the spiritual worlds as they elaborate their conceptual theories of education. This “conceptuality” is, of course, the very thing that anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to overcome. Spiritual science does not want its adherents merely to talk about the spirit or to bring it down into concepts and ideas; it wants human beings to imbue themselves with living spirit. If this actually happens to people, they very soon begin to realize that we have gradually lost touch with the living spirit. They recognize that it is essential that we find our way back to the living spirit. So-called intellectually enlightened people in particular have lost the inner experience of living spirit. At best, they turn into agnostics, who maintain that natural science can reach only a certain level of knowledge and that that level represents the ultimate limit of what can in fact be known. The fact that the real struggle for knowledge only begins at this point, and that it leads to a living experience of the spiritual world—of this, generally speaking, our educated society has very little awareness.

And what was the result, or rather what was the cause, of our having lost the spirit in our spoken words? Today, you will find that what you read in innumerable articles and books basically consists of words spilling more or less automatically from the human soul. If one is open-minded and conversant with the current situation, one often needs to read no more than the first few lines or pages of an article or book in order to know what the author is thinking about the various points in question. The rest follows almost automatically out of the words themselves. Once the spirit has gone out of life, the result is an empty phrase-bound, cliché-ridden language, and this is what so often happens in today’s cultural life. When people speak about cultural or spiritual matters or when they wish to participate in the cultural spiritual sphere of life, it is often no longer the living spirit that speaks through their being. It is clichés that dominate their language. This is true not only of how individuals express themselves. We find it above all in our “glorious” state education. Only think for a moment of how little of real substance is to be found in one or another political party that offers the most persuasive slogans or “party-phrases.” People become intoxicated by these clichés. Slogans might to some degree satisfy the intellect, but party phrases will not grasp real life. And so it must be said that what we find when we reach the heights of agnosticism—which has already penetrated deeply into our society—is richly saturated with empty phrases. Living so closely with such clichés, we no longer feel a need for what is truly living in language. Words no longer rise from profound enough depths of the human soul. Change will occur only if we permeate ourselves with the spirit once more. Two weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Goetheanum under the heading, “Spiritual Life Is Buried Alive.” In it, I drew attention to the sublime quality of the writing that can still be found among authors who wrote around the middle of the nineteenth century. Only very few people are aware of this. I showed several people some of these books that looked as if they had been read almost continually for about a decade, after which they seemed to have been consigned to dust. Full of surprise, they asked me, “Where did you find those books?” I explained that I am in the habit, now and then, of poring over old books in second-hand bookshops. In those bookshops, I consult the appropriate catalogs and ask for certain chosen books to be delivered to wherever I am staying. In that way I manage to find totally forgotten books of all kinds, books that will never be reprinted but that give clear evidence of how the spirit has been “buried alive” in our times, at least to a certain extent.

Natural science is protected from falling into such clichés simply because of its close ties to experimentation and observation. When making experiments, one is dealing with actual spiritual facts that have their place in the general ordering of natural laws. But, excepting science, we have been gradually sliding into a life heavily influenced by clichés and phrases, by-products of the overspecialization of the scientific, technological development of our times. Apart from many other unhappy circumstances of our age, it is to living in such a phrase-ridden, clichéd language that we must attribute the problem raised by the previous speaker. For a child’s relationship to an adult is an altogether imponderable one. The phrase might well flourish in adult conversations, and particularly so in party-political meetings, but if one speaks to children in mere phrases, clichés, they cannot make anything of them. And what happens when we speak in clichés—no matter whether the subject is religious, scientific, or unconventionally open-minded? The child’s soul does not receive the necessary sustenance, for empty phrases cannot offer proper nourishment to the soul. This, in turn, lets loose the lower instincts. You can see it happening in the social life of Eastern Europe, where, through Leninism and Trotskyism, an attempt was made to establish the rule of the phrase. This, of course, can never work creatively and in Soviet Russia, therefore, the worst instincts have risen from the lower regions. For the same reason, instincts have risen up and come to the fore in our own younger generation. Such instincts are not even unhealthy in every respect, but they show that the older generation has been unable to endow language with the necessary soul qualities. Basically, the problems presented by our young are consequences of problems within the adult world; at least when regarded in a certain light, they are parents’ problems. When meeting the young, we create all too easily an impression of being frightfully clever, making them feel frightfully stupid, whereas those who are able to learn from children are mostly the wisest people. If one does not approach the young with empty phrases, one meets them in a totally different way. The relationship between the younger generation and the adult world reflects our not having given it sufficient warmth of soul. This has contributed to their present character. That we must not blame everything that has gone wrong entirely on the younger generation becomes clearly evident, dear friends, by their response to what is being done for our young people in the Waldorf school, even during the short time of its existence.

As you have seen already, Waldorf education is primarily a question of finding the right teachers. I must confess that whenever I come to Stuttgart to visit and assist in the guidance of the Waldorf school—which unfortunately happens only seldom—I ask the same question in each class, naturally within the appropriate context and avoiding any possible tedium, “Children, do you love your teachers?” You should hear and witness the enthusiasm with which they call out in chorus, “Yes!” This call to the teachers to engender love within their pupils is all part of the question of how the older generation should relate to the young. In this context, it seems appropriate to mention that we decided from the beginning to open a complete primary school, comprising all eight classes in order to cover the entire age range of an elementary school. And sometimes, when entering the school building, one could feel quite alarmed at the apparent lack of discipline, especially during break times. Those who jump to judgment too quickly said, “You see what a free Waldorf school is like! The pupils lose all sense of discipline.” What they did not realize was that the pupils who had come to us from other schools had been brought up under so-called “iron discipline.” Actually, they have already calmed down considerably but, when they first arrived under the influence of their previous “iron discipline,” they were real scamps. The only ones who were moderately well-behaved were the first graders who had come directly from their parental homes—and even then, this was not always the case. Nevertheless, whenever I visit the Waldorf school, I notice a distinct improvement in discipline. And now, after a little more than two years of existence, one can see a great change. Our pupils certainly won’t turn into “apple-polishers” but they know that, if something goes wrong, they can always approach their teachers and trust them to enter into the matter sympathetically. This makes the pupils ready to confide. They may be noisy and full of boisterous energy—they certainly are not inhibited—but they are changing, and what can be expected in matters of discipline is gradually evolving. What I called in my lecture a natural sense of authority is also steadily growing.

For example, it is truly reassuring to hear the following report. A pupil entered the Waldorf school. He was already fourteen years old and was therefore placed into our top class. When he arrived, he was a thoroughly discontented boy who had lost all faith in his previous school. Obviously, a new school cannot offer a panacea to such a boy in the first few days. The Waldorf school must be viewed as a whole—if you were to cut a small piece from a painting, you could hardly give a sound judgment on the whole painting. There are people, for instance, who believe that they know all about the Waldorf school after having visited it for only one or two days. This is nonsense. One cannot become fully acquainted with the methods of anthroposophy merely by sampling a few of them. One must experience the spirit pervading the whole work. And so it was for the disgruntled boy who entered our school so late in the day. Naturally, what he encountered there during the first few days could hardly give him the inner peace and satisfaction for which he was hoping. After some time, however, he approached his history teacher, who had made a deep impression on him. The boy wanted to speak with this teacher, to whom he felt he could open his heart and tell of his troubles. This conversation brought about a complete change in the boy. Such a thing is only possible through the inner sense of authority of which I have spoken. These things become clear when this matter-of-fact authority has arisen by virtue of the quality of the teachers and their teaching. I don’t think that I am being premature in saying that the young people who are now passing through the Waldorf school are hardly likely to exhibit the spirit of non-cooperation with the older generation of which the previous speaker spoke. It is really up to the teachers to play their parts in directing the negative aspects of the “storm and stress” fermenting in our youth into the right channels.

In the Waldorf school, we hold regular teacher meetings that differ substantially from those in other schools. During those meetings, each child is considered in turn and is discussed from a psychological point of view. All of us have learned a very great deal during these two years of practicing Waldorf pedagogy. This way of educating the young has truly grown into one organic whole.

We would not have been able to found our Waldorf school if we had not been prepared to make certain compromises. Right at the beginning, I drafted a memorandum that was sent to the education authorities. In it, we pledged to bring our pupils in their ninth year up to the generally accepted standards of learning, thus enabling them to enter another school if they so desired. The same generally accepted levels of achievement were to be reached in their twelfth and again in their fourteenth year. But, regarding our methods of teaching, we requested full freedom for the intervening years. This does constitute a compromise, but one must work within the given situation. It gave us the possibility of putting into practice what we considered to be essential for a healthy and right way of teaching. As an example, consider the case of school reports. From my childhood reports I recall certain phrases, such as “almost praiseworthy,” “hardly satisfactory” and so on. But I never succeeded in discovering the wisdom behind my teachers’ distinction of a “hardly satisfactory” from an “almost satisfactory” mark. You must bear with me, but this is exactly how it was. In the Waldorf school, instead of such stereotyped phrases or numerical marks, we write reports in which teachers express in their own style how each pupil has fared during the year. Our reports do not contain abstract remarks that must seem like mere empty phrases to the child. For, if something makes no sense, it is a mere phrase. As each child gradually grows up into life, the teachers write in their school reports what each pupil needs to know about him- or herself. Each report thus contains its own individual message, representing a kind of biography of the pupil’s life at school during the previous school year. Furthermore, we end our reports with a little verse, specially composed for each child, epitomizing the year’s progress. Naturally, writing this kind of report demands a great deal of time. But the child receives a kind of mirror of itself. So far, I have not come across a single student who did not show genuine interest in his or her report, even if it contained some real home truths. Especially the aptly chosen verse at the end is something that can become of real educational value to the child. One must make use of all means possible to call forth in the children the feeling that their guides and educators have taken the task of writing these reports very seriously, and that they have done so not in a onesided manner, but from a direct and genuine interest in their charges. A great deal depends on our freeing ourselves from the cliché-ridden cultivation of the phrase so characteristic of our times, and on our showing the right kind of understanding for the younger generation. I am well aware that this is also connected with psychological predispositions of a more national character, and to gain mastery over these is an even more difficult task.

It might surprise you to hear that in none of the various anthroposophical conferences that we have held during the past few months was there any lack of younger members. They were always there and I never minced my words when speaking to them. But they soon realized that I was not addressing them with clichés or empty phrases. Even if they heard something very different from what they had expected, they could feel that what I said came straight from the heart, as all words of real value do. During our last conference in Stuttgart in particular, a number of young persons representing the youth movement were again present and, after a conversation with them lasting some one-and-a-half or two hours, it was unanimously decided to actually found an anthroposophical youth group, and this despite the fact that young people do not usually value anything even vaguely connected with authority, for they believe that everything has to grow from within, out of themselves, a principle that they were certainly not prepared to abandon.

What really matters is how the adults meet the young, how they approach them. From experience—many times confirmed—I can only point out that this whole question of the younger generation is often a question of the older generation. As such, it can perhaps be best answered by looking a little less at the younger generation and looking a little more deeply into ourselves.

A PERSON FROM THE AUDIENCE:
Perhaps, at this point, a member of the younger generation might be allowed to speak up. Please forgive my speaking plainly, but the truth is that we younger people have lost all respect for authority, for older people. Why? because our parents, too, have lost it. When talking to them or to other adults, we find that all that they can do is to criticize all kinds of unimportant, niggling things in others—thus showing their own generation in a bad light. We young people sometimes feel that those who are trying to educate us have become walking compromises, incapable of making up their minds on which side they stand, unable to state from the fullness of their hearts what their opinions are, unable to stand up for what they believe in. And we all the time have the feeling that our parents and educators do not in fact want to learn what we young are really like. Instead, they keep criticizing and condemning us. I need only to think of how we in our youth circle work together and what kind of things we study. For instance, we have read and discussed together Blüchner and Morgenstern. Just imagine those two polar opposites! This sort of thing happens with us all the time. Events in the world buffet us and nowhere can we find a center to give us a firm grasp. Nowhere can we find a really living person who can stand above it all with a comprehensive viewpoint—not even a person who can do so conceptually. How is it possible to teach unless behind everything that is taught there is a real living human being, whom one can feel coming through his or her teaching? . . . If that were to happen, it would rouse our enthusiasm. But, as long as our teachers do not approach us as human beings, as long as they are afraid even, sometimes, to laugh at themselves, we simply cannot feel the necessary confidence in them. I can say with complete conviction that we young people are really seeking adults to whom we can look up as authorities. We are looking for a center, for a firm grip with which we can pull ourselves up and that would enable us to grow into the kind of life that has an inner reality. That is why we throw ourselves into everything new that appears on the horizon: we always hope to discover something that could have a real meaning for us. But whenever this happens, we find nothing but a confusion of opinions and attitudes. We find judgments that are not real judgments at all, but are at best only criticisms.

If I may say something to the first speaker, who asked for a book to explain why young people behave as they do, I say: Don’t read a book. To find an answer, read us young people! If you want to talk to the younger generation, you must approach them as living human beings. You must be ready to open yourself to them. Young people will then do the same and young and old will become clear about what each is looking for.

QUESTIONER:
As a teacher, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner whether he himself does not believe what the first speaker in today’s discussion brought up; namely, that a quite new mood and spirit are stirring among young people today. This might perhaps be more evident in the larger cities, where even teachers with a deeply human attitude are no longer able to cope with difficulties as they were able to some fifty years ago. The source of the problem has been rightly sought in the older generation. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that today’s youth, under the influence of social-democratic ideas, is pervaded by skepticism to the extent that a teacher of Dr. Steiner’s persuasion might not be able to imagine the kind of insolence and arrogance with which we have to put up. Socialistic contradictions are rife among the young, creating a false urge for independence in them that makes the teachers’ tasks far more difficult than they were some time ago. Indeed, our job is now often almost impossible. What Dr. Steiner said gave the impression that the behavior of our youth merely reflects the shortcomings of their teachers. Certainly, teachers must take their share of the blame, but is it all the teachers’ fault? Are all teachers to blame? That is the question. Is it not the case that the few good teachers, who are not to blame, nevertheless bluntly state that a new and different kind of youth has appeared and that lack of faith and skepticism among them makes the teacher’s task far more difficult?

RUDOLF STEINER:
Well, if you put the question in this way, it is impossible to move forward. Putting it thus will not produce anything fruitful. It is the wrong way to begin. To declare that young people have changed and that it might have been easier to deal with them fifty years ago is not the point at all; the crux of the matter is to find ways and means of coping with the problem. After all, the younger generation is there, growing up in our midst. Nor is it productive to speak of our youth as being led into skepticism by social-democratic prejudices. That is as futile as if one were to criticize something in nature because it was growing in an undesirable way—and that is what is happening with the young. They are growing up among us like products of nature. Rather than stating the fact that the young have changed, and that perhaps it was easier to deal with them fifty years ago, the only way forward is to find ways and means of enabling the older generation to cooperate with the young again. We shall find no answer if we merely point out that today’s youth is different from what it was fifty years ago, as if this were something to be accepted more or less fatalistically. That kind of attitude will never lead us to find an answer to this problem. Of course, the young have changed! And, if we observe life, we can see that the change has its positive aspects, too—that we could speak of it as a change toward something greater. Let me remind you, for instance, of the generational conflicts that we find expressed in literature. You can read them or see them performed on the stage. You still sometimes come across performances of plays from the late 1880s when the relationship between the younger and older generation was vividly portrayed. You will see that what we are discussing is an age-old problem. It has been regarded for centuries as a kind of catastrophe. By comparison, what is happening today is mere child’s play! But, as I said before, merely to state facts will not lead us further.

The question everywhere is how to regain the lost respect for authority in individual human beings that will enable you as teachers and educators to find the right relationship to the young. That it is generally correct to state that young people do not find the necessary conditions for such a respect and sense of authority in the older generation and that they find among its members an attitude of compromise is in itself, in my opinion, no evidence against what I have said. This striving for compromise can be found on a much wider scale even in world events, so that the question of how to regain respect for human authority and dignity could be extended to a worldwide level. I would like to add that—of course—I realize that there exist good and devoted teachers as described by the last speaker. But the pupils usually behave differently when taught by those good teachers. If one discriminates, one can observe that the young respond quite differently in their company.

We must not let ourselves be led into an attitude of complaining and doubting by judgments that are too strongly colored by our own hypotheses, but must be clear that ultimately the way in which the younger generation behaves is, in general, conditioned by the older generation. My observations were not meant to imply that teachers were to be held solely responsible for the faults of the young. At this point, I feel rather tempted to point to how lack of respect for authority is revealed in its worst light when we look at some of the events of recent history. Only remember certain moments during the last, catastrophic war. There was a need to replace older, leading personalities. What kind of person was chosen? In France, Clemenceau, in Germany, Hertling—all old men of the most ancient kind who carried a certain authority only because they had once been important personalities. But they were no longer the kind of person who could take his or her stance from a direct grasp of the then current situation. And what is happening now? Only recently the prime ministers of three leading countries found their positions seriously jeopardized. Yet all three are still in office, simply because no other candidate could be found who carried sufficient weight of authority! That was the only reason for their survival as prime ministers. And so we find that, in important world happenings, too, a general sense of authority has been undermined, even in leading figures. You can hardly blame the younger generation for that! But these symptoms have a shattering effect on the young who witness them.

We really have to tackle this whole question at a deeper level and, above all, in a more positive light. We must be clear that, instead of complaining about the ways in which the young confront their elders, we should be thinking of how we can improve our own attitude toward young. To continue telling them how wrong they are and that it is no longer possible to cooperate with them can never lead to progress. In order to work toward a more fruitful future, we must look for what the spiritual cultural sphere, and life in general, can offer to help us regain respect and trust in the older generation. Those who know the young know that they are only too happy when they can have faith in their elders again. This is really true. Their skepticism ceases as soon as they can find something of real value, something in which they can believe. Generally speaking, we cannot yet say that life is ruled by what is right. But, if we offer our youth something true, they will feel attracted to it. If we no longer believe this to be the case, if all that we do is moan and groan about youth’s failings, then we shall achieve nothing at all.

We will now speak of some further details of method, though of course in this short time I can only pick out a few examples to give you.

When we consider the whole period between the change of teeth and puberty we can see that it divides itself again into three sections, and it is these three sections that we must bear in mind when we have to guide the children through these early years of school life.

First we have the age up to the point of time which I have described to you here, when the child begins to differentiate himself from his environment and makes a distinction between “subject”—his own self, and “object”—the things which surround him in the outside world; up to this point of time it is essential for us to teach in such a way that everything within the child or without him bears the character of a unity. I have shown you how that can be done artistically. Then, in the second period, we saw how the transition to descriptions of the outside world can be made through our teaching of plant and animal life. You can treat these things in quite an elementary way up till the twelfth year. The third section extends from the twelfth year up to puberty, and it is really only at this time that we can pass on to lifeless nature, for it is only now that the child really begins to understand the inanimate world.

We might indeed say that from the seventh year to about nine-and-a-half or nine-and-one-third the child takes in everything with his soul. There is nothing that the child would not take in with his soul. The trees, the stars, the clouds, the stones, everything is absorbed by the child's soul life. From about nine-and-a-third to about eleven-and-two-thirds the child already perceives the difference between the soul quality which he sees in himself and what is merely “living.” We can now speak of the whole earth as living. Thus we have the soul quality and the living quality. Then from eleven-and-two-thirds to about fourteen the child discriminates between what is of the soul, what is living, and what is dead, that is to say, what is based on the laws of cause and effect.

We should not speak to the child of Inanimate things at all before he approaches his twelfth year. Only then should we begin to speak about minerals, physical phenomena, chemical phenomena and so on. We must make it clear to ourselves that this is really how things are: in the child between the change of teeth and puberty it is not the intellect but the fantasy that is predominantly active; we must constantly be thinking of the child's fantasy, and therefore, as I have often said, we must especially develop fantasy in ourselves. If we do not do this, but pass over to all kinds of intellectual things when the child is still quite young, then he cannot go through his development rightly even in his physical body. And much that is pathological at the present day arises from the fact that in this materialistic age too much attention has been paid to the intellect in children between the change of teeth and puberty.

We should only very gradually introduce the lifeless world when the child is approaching his twelfth year, for this lifeless world must be grasped by the intellect. At this time we can introduce minerals, physical and chemical phenomena and so on. But even here we should connect it up with life as far as possible, not simply start, for instance, with a collection of minerals, but start from the earth, the soil, and first describe the mountain ranges, how they bring about the configuration of the earth; then we can speak of how the mountains are surrounded with soil at their foot, and the higher we go the more bare they become and the fewer plants there are. So we come to speak of the bareness of the mountains and point out that here there are minerals. Thus we start with the mountains and lead on to the minerals.

Then when we have given a clear description of the mountains we can show the children a mineral and say: this is what you would find if you were to take this path up the mountain. This is where it is found. When you have done this with a few different minerals you can pass on to speak of the minerals themselves. But you must do the other first, here again proceeding from the whole and not from the part. This is of very great importance.

For physical phenomena also it is just as important to start from life itself. You should not begin your teaching of Physics as set forth in the text books of today, but simply by lighting a match for instance and letting the children observe how it begins to burn; you must draw their attention to all the details, what the flame looks like, what it is like outside, what it is like further in, and how a black spot, a little black cap is left when you blow out the flame; and only when you have done this, begin to explain how the fire in the match came about. The fire came about through the generation of warmth, and so on. Thus you must connect everything with life itself.

Or take the example of a lever: do not begin by saying that a lever consists of a supported beam at the one end of which there is a force, and at the other end another force, as one so often finds in the Physics books. You should start from a pair of scales; let the child imagine that you are going to some shop where things are being weighed out, and from this pass on to equilibrium and balance, and to the conception of weight and gravity. Always develop your Physics from life itself, and your chemical phenomena also.

That is the essential thing, to begin with real life in considering the different phenomena of the physical and mineral world. If you do it the other way, beginning with an abstraction, then something very curious happens to the child; the lesson itself soon makes him tired. He does not get tired if you start from real life. He gets tired if you start from abstractions.

The golden rule for the whole of teaching is that the child should not tire. Now there is something very strange about the so-called experimental education of the present day. Experimental psychologists register when a child becomes tired in any kind of mental activity, and from this they decide how long to occupy a child with any one subject, in order to avoid fatigue.

This whole conception is wrong from beginning to end. The truth of the matter is as follows: you can read about it in my books, especially in the book Riddles of the Soul and in various lecture courses; all I shall do now is to remind you that man consists of three members—the nerve-senses man, that is, all that sustains man in the activity of his mind and spirit; the rhythmic man, which contains the whole rhythm of breathing, the circulation of the blood and so on; and the metabolic-limb man, in which is to be found everything that is metamorphosed by means of the different substances.

Now if you take the physical development of the child from birth to the change of teeth you will find it is specially the head-organisation, the nerve-senses organisation that is at work.¹ The child develops from the head downwards in the early years of his life. You must examine this closely. Look first of all at a human embryo, an unborn child. The head is enormous and the rest of the body is still stunted. Then the child is born and his head is still outwardly the largest, strongest part, and out of the head proceeds the whole growth of the child.

This is no longer the case with the child between the seventh and fourteenth year. Rhythm of breathing, rhythm of the blood, the whole rhythmic system is what holds sway between the change of teeth and puberty. Only rhythm!

But what is the real nature of rhythm? Now if I think a great deal, particularly if I have to study, I get tired, I get tired in my head. If I have to walk far, which is an exertion for my limb organism, I also tire. The head, or the nerve-senses organism, and the metabolic-limb organism can get tired. But the rhythmic organism can never tire.

For just think; you breathe all day long. Your heart beats at night as well as in the day. It must never stop, from birth to death. The rhythm of it has to go on all the time, and cannot ever tire. It never gets tired at all.

Now in education and teaching you must address yourself to whichever system is predominant in man; thus between the change of teeth and puberty you must address yourself to rhythm in the child by using pictures. Everything that you describe or do must be done in such a way that the head has as little to do with it as possible, but the heart, the rhythm, everything that is artistic or rhythmic, must be engaged. What is the result? The result is that with teaching of this kind the child never gets tired, because you are engaging his rhythmic system and not his head.

People are so terribly clever, and in this materialistic age they have thought out a scheme whereby the children should always be allowed to romp about between lessons. Now it is certainly good to let them romp about, but it is good because of the soul qualities in it, because of the delight they have in it. For experiments have been made and it has been found that when the children are properly taught in lesson time they are less tired than when they play about outside. The movement of their limbs tires them more, whereas what you give them in their lessons in the right way should never tire them at all. And the more you develop the pictorial element with the children and the less you exert the intellect, by presenting everything in a living way, the more you will be making demands on the rhythmic system only, and the less will the child become tired. Therefore when the experimental psychologists come and make observations to see how much the child tires, what is it they really observe? They observe how badly you have taught. If you had taught well you would find no fatigue on the part of the children.

In our work with children of Elementary School age we must see to it that we engage the rhythmic system only. The rhythmic system never tires, and is not over-exerted when we employ it in the right way, and for this rhythmic system we need not an intellectual but rather a pictorial method of presentation, something that comes out of the fantasy. Therefore it is imperative that fantasy should hold sway in the school. This must still be so even in the last period of which we have spoken, from eleven-and-two-thirds to fourteen years; we must still make the lifeless things live through fantasy and always connect them with real life. It is possible to connect all the phenomena of Physics with real life, but we ourselves must have fantasy in order to do it. This is absolutely necessary.

Now this fantasy should above all be the guiding principle in what are called compositions, when the children have to write about something and work it out for themselves. Here what must be strictly avoided is to let the children write a composition about anything that you have not first talked over with them in great detail, so that the subject is familiar to them. You yourself, with the authority of the teacher and educator, should have first spoken about the subject with the children; then the child should produce his composition under the influence of what you yourself have said. Even when the children are approaching puberty you must still not depart from this principle. Even then the child should not just write whatever occurs to him; he should always feel that a certain mood has been aroused in him through having discussed the subject with his teacher, and all that he then himself writes in his essay must preserve this mood.

Here again it is “aliveness” that must be the guiding principle. “Aliveness” in the teacher must pass over to “aliveness” in the children.

As you will see from all this, the whole of your teaching and education must be taken from real life. This is something which you can often hear said nowadays. People say that lessons must be given in a living way and in accordance with reality. But first of all we must acquire a feeling for what is actually in accordance with reality. I will give you an example from my own experience of what sometimes happens in practice even when in theory people hold the most excellent educational principles.

I once went into a classroom—I will not say where it was—where an Arithmetic example was being given which was supposed to connect addition with real life. 14 2/3, 16 5/6 and 25 3/5 for example, were not simply to be added together, but were to be related to life. This was done in the following way: The children were told that one man was born on 25th March, 1895, another on 27th August, 1888, and a third on 3rd December, 1899. How old are these three men together? That was the question. And the sum was quite seriously carried through in the following way: from the given date in 1895 to 1924 [The date of this Lecture Course.] is 29 3/4; this is the age of the first man. The second one up to 1924 is about 26 1/2 years old, and the third, from 1899, as he was born on 3rd December, we may say 25. The children were then told that when they add up these ages they will find out how old they all are together.

But my dear friends, I should just like to ask how it is possible that they can make up a certain sum together with their ages? How do you set about it? Of course the numbers can quite well be made up into a sum, but where can you find such a sum in reality? The men are all living at the same time, so that they cannot possibly experience such a thing together in any way. A sum like this is not in the very least taken from life.

It was pointed out to me that this sum was actually taken from a book of examples. I then looked at this book and I found several other ingenious examples of the same kind. In many places I have found that this kind of thing has repercussions in ordinary life, and that is the important thing about it. For what we do at school affects ordinary life, and if the school teaching is wrong, that is if we bring such an unreality into an arithmetical example, then this way of thinking will be adopted by the young people and will be taken into ordinary life. I do not know if it is the same in England, but all over Central Europe when, let us say, several criminals are accused and condemned together, then you sometimes read in the papers: all five together have received sentences of imprisonment totalling 75 1/2 years. One has ten years, another twenty and so on, but it is all added up together. This you can find repeatedly in the newspapers. I should like to know what meaning a sum like that can have in reality. For each single prisoner who is sentenced, the 75 years together certainly have no meaning; they will all of them be free long before the 75 years are over, so that it has no reality at all.

You see, that is the important thing, to make straight for the reality in everything: you simply poison a child to whom you give a sum like this which is absolutely impossible in real life.

You must guide the child to think only about things that are to be found in life. Then through your teaching reality will be carried back into life again. In our time we suffer terribly from the unreality of men's thinking, and the teacher has need to consider this very carefully.

There is a theory in this age which, though postulated by men who are considered to be extraordinarily clever, is really only a product of education. It is the so-called Theory of Relativity. I hope you have already heard something of this theory which is connected with the name of Einstein; there is much in it that is correct. I do not want to combat what is right in it, but it has been distorted in the following way. Let us imagine that a cannon is fired off somewhere. It is said that if you are so many miles away, after a certain length of time you hear the report of the cannon. If you do not stand still but walk away from the sound, then you hear it later. The quicker you walk away the later you get the impression of the sound. If you do the opposite and walk towards the sound you will be hearing it sooner and sooner all the time.

But now if you continue this thought you come to the possible conception, which is however an impossibility in reality, that you approach the sound more quickly than it travels itself, and then if you think this out to its conclusion you come to the point of saying to yourself: then there is also a possibility of hearing the sound before the cannon is fired off!

That is what it can lead to, if theories arise out of a kind of thinking which is not in accordance with reality. A man who can think in accordance with reality must sometimes have very painful experiences. For in Einstein's books you even find, for instance, how you could take a watch and send it out into the universe at the speed of light, and then let it come back again; we are then told what happens to this watch if it goes out at the speed of light and comes back again. I should like to get an actual sight of this watch which, having whizzed away at this speed, then comes back again; I should like to know what it looks like then! The essential thing is that we never lose sight of reality in our thinking.

Herein lies the root of all evil in much of the education of today, and you find, for instance, in the “exemplary” Kindergartens that different kinds of work are thought out for the child to do. In reality we should make the children do nothing, even in play, that is not an imitation of life itself. All Froebel occupations and the like, which have been thought out for the children, are really bad. We must make it a rule only to let the children do what is an imitation of life, even in play. This is extremely important.

For this reason, as I have already told you, we should not think out what are called “ingenious” toys, but as far as possible with dolls or other toys we should leave as much as we can to the child's own fantasy. This is of great significance, and I would earnestly beg you to make it a rule not to let anything come into your teaching and education that is not in some way connected with life.

The same rule applies when you ask the children to describe something themselves. You should always call their attention to it if they stray from reality. The intellect never penetrates as deeply into reality as fantasy does. Fantasy can go astray, it is true, but it is rooted in reality, whereas the intellect remains always on the surface. That is why it is so infinitely important for the teacher himself to be in touch with reality as he stands in his class.

In order that this may be so we have our Teachers' Meetings in the Waldorf School which are the heart and soul of the whole teaching. In these meetings, each teacher speaks of what he himself has learnt in his class and from all the children in it, so that each one learns from the other. No school is really alive where this is not the most important thing, this regular meeting of the teachers.

And indeed there is an enormous amount one can learn there. In the Waldorf School we have mixed classes, girls and boys together. Now quite apart from what the boys and girls say to each other, or what they consciously exchange with each other, there is a marked difference to be seen in the classes according to whether there are more girls than boys or more boys than girls or an equal number of each. For years I have been watching this, and it has always proved to be the case that there is something different in a class where there are more girls than boys.

In the latter case you will very soon find that you yourself as the teacher become less tired, because the girls grasp things more easily than boys and with greater eagerness too. You will find many other differences also. Above all, you will very soon discover that the boys themselves gain in quickness of comprehension when they are in a minority, whereas the girls lose by it if they are in the minority. And so there are numerous differences which do not arise through the way they talk together or treat each other but which remain in the sphere of the imponderable and are themselves imponderable things.

All these things must be very carefully watched, and everything that concerns either the whole class or individual children is spoken of in our meetings, so that every teacher really has the opportunity to gain an insight into characteristic individualities among the pupils.

There is one thing that is of course difficult in the Waldorf School method. We have to think much more carefully than is usually the case in class teaching, how one can really bring the children on. For we are striving to teach by “reading” from the particular age of a child what should be given him at this age. All I have said to you is directed towards this goal.

Now suppose a teacher has a child of between nine and ten years in the class that is right for his age, but with quite an easy mind he lets this child stay down and not go up with the rest of the class; the consequence will be that in the following year this child will be receiving teaching which is meant for an age of life different from his own. Therefore under all circumstances we avoid letting the children stay down in the same class even if they have not reached the required standard. This is not so convenient as letting the children stay in the class where they are and repeat the work, but we avoid this at all costs. The only corrective we have is to put the very weak ones into a special class for the more backward children.²

Children who are in any way below standard come into this class from all the other classes.

Otherwise, as I have said, we do not let the children stay down but we try to bring them along with us under all circumstances, so that in this way each child really receives what is right for his particular age.

We must also consider those children who have to leave school at puberty, at the end of the Elementary School period, and who cannot therefore participate in the upper classes. We must make it our aim that by this time, through the whole tenor of our teaching, they will have come to a perception of the world which is in accordance with life itself. This can be done in a two-fold way. On the one hand we can develop all our lessons on Science and History in such a manner that the children, at the end of their schooling, have some knowledge of the being of man and some idea of the place of man in the world. Everything must lead up to a knowledge of man, reaching a measure of wholeness when the children come to the seventh and eighth classes, that is when they have reached their thirteenth and fourteenth year. Then all that they have already learnt will enable them to understand what laws, forces and substances are at work in man himself, and how man is connected with all physical matter in the world, with all that is of soul in the world, with all spirit in the world. So that the child, of course in his own way, knows what a human being is within the whole cosmos. This then is what we strive to achieve on the one hand.

On the other hand we try to give the children an understanding of life. It is actually the case today that most people, especially those who grow up in the town, have no idea how a substance, paper for instance, is made. There are a great many people who do not know how the paper on which they write or the material they are wearing is manufactured, nor, if they wear leather shoes, how the leather is prepared.

Think how many people there are who drink beer and have no idea how the beer is made. This is really a monstrous state of affairs. Now we cannot of course achieve everything in this direction, but we try to make it our aim as far as possible to give the children some knowledge of the work done in the most varied trades, and to see to it that they themselves also learn how to do certain kinds of work which are done in real life.

It is, however, extraordinarily difficult, in view of what is demanded of children today by the authorities, to succeed with an education that is really in accordance with life itself. One has to go through some very painful experiences. Once for instance, owing to family circumstances, a child had to leave when he had just completed the second class and begun a new year in the third. He had to continue his education in another school. We were then most bitterly reproached because he had not got so far in Arithmetic as was expected of him there, nor in Reading or Writing. Moreover they wrote and told us that the Eurythmy and Painting and all the other things he could do were of no use to him at all.

If therefore, we educate the children not only out of the knowledge of man, but in accordance with the demands of life, they will also have to know how to read and write properly at the age at which this is expected of them today. And so we shall be obliged to include in the curriculum many things which are simply demanded by the customs of the time. Nevertheless we try to bring the children into touch with life as far as possible.

I should have dearly liked to have a shoemaker as a teacher in the Waldorf School, if this had been possible. It could not be done because such a thing does not fit into a curriculum based on present-day requirements, but in order that the children might really learn to make shoes, and to know, not theoretically but through their own work, what this entails, I should have dearly liked from the very beginning to have a shoemaker on the staff of the school. But it simply could not be done because it would not have been in accordance with the authorities, although it is just the very thing that would have been in accordance with real life. Nevertheless we do try to make the children into practical workers.

When you come to the Waldorf School you will see that the children are quite good at binding books and making boxes; you will see too how they are led into a really artistic approach to handwork; the girls will not be taught to produce the kind of thing you see nowadays when you look at the clothes that women wear, for instance. It does not occur to people that the pattern for a collar should be different from that of a belt or the hem of a dress. People do not consider that here for example (see drawing a.) the pattern must have a special character because it is worn at the neck. The pattern for a belt (see drawing b.) must lead both upwards and downwards, and so on.

Or again, we never let our children make a cushion with an enclosed pattern, but the pattern itself should show where to lay your head. You can also see that there is a difference between right and left, and so forth. Thus here too life itself is woven and worked into everything that the children make, and they learn a great deal from it. This then is another method by which the children may learn to stand rightly in life.

We endeavour to carry this out in every detail, for example in the giving of reports. I could never in my life imagine what it means to mark the capacities of the children with a 2, or 3, or 21-. I do not know if that is done in England too, giving the children numbers or letters in their reports which are supposed to show what a child can do. In Central Europe it is customary to give a 3, or a 4. At the Waldorf School we do not give reports like this, but every teacher knows every child and describes him in the report; he describes in his own words what the child's capacities are and what progress he has made.

And then every year each child receives in his report a motto or verse for his own life, which can be a word of guidance for him in the year to come. The report is like this: first there is the child's name and then his verse, and then the teacher without any stereotyped letters or numbers, simply characterises what the child is like, and what progress he has made in the different subjects. The report is thus a description. The children always love their reports, and their parents also get a true picture of what the child is like at school.

We lay great stress upon keeping in touch with all the parents so that from the school we may see into the home through the child. Only in this way can we come to understand each child, and to know how to treat every peculiarity. It is not the same thing when we notice the same peculiarity in two children, for it has quite a different significance in the two cases.

Suppose for instance that two children each show a certain excitability. It is not merely a question of knowing that the child is excitable and giving him something to help him to become quiet, but it is a question of finding out that in the one case the child has an excitable father whom he has imitated, and in the other case the child is excitable because he has a weak heart. In every case we must be able to discover what lies at the root of these peculiarities.

This is the real purpose of the Teachers' Meetings, to study man himself, so that a real knowledge of man is continually flowing through the school. The whole school is the concern of the teachers in their meetings, and all else that is needed will follow of itself. The essential thing is that in the Teachers' Meetings there is study, steady, continual study.

These are the indications I wanted to give you for the practical organisation of your school.

There are of course many things that could still be said if we could continue this course for several weeks. But that we cannot do, and therefore I want to ask you tomorrow, when we come together, to put in the form of questions anything which you may have upon your minds, so that we may use the time for you to put your questions which I will then answer for you.

• 1. Dr. Steiner is here speaking of the process of organic development, not of the child's mental growth. There is no question of approaching the child's intellect during this first period of childhood when the head and nerves system is performing a function entirely different from later years. See Rudolf Steiner: The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.
• 2. Dr. Steiner then added that these children were at that time being taught by Dr. Karl Schubert who had a very special task in this domain and was particularly gifted for it.

I must begin with the gratifying observation that upon my return¹ I encountered a great many friends who are here in Dornach for the first time. They have come to inform themselves about what goes on in Dornach and what is meant to proceed from here into our anthroposophical movement. I cordially welcome all the newly arrived friends and hope that because of their stay with us they can carry back with them many new inspirations. Among the friends we can greet once again are many we have not seen for years. This fact along with much else undoubtedly indicates the difficulties of the age in which we live. I have just returned from a visit in Stuttgart, which was filled with the manifold tasks generated within our anthroposophical sphere of work. Among other matters, it included the ending of the first academic year of the Waldorf School² founded in Stuttgart. This Waldorf School belongs to those establishments which manifest most prominently the ideas of our anthroposophical spiritual movement. Even though one sets high standards for it, the completion of the first school year has demonstrated that there is cause for satisfaction. I can say this because it is possible to remain objective even if one is wholeheartedly involved in the project and even if, in a certain sense, one has been its instigator.

Above all it is gratifying to see how the Waldorf School teaching staff definitely understood how to proceed from a completely anthroposophical basis, as had always been the intention. Present-day conditions necessitated that this basis in anthroposophy should not produce a school that teaches a certain world view, a school in which anthroposophy would be taught. That was never the intention. With this in mind, therefore, we arranged the religious instruction so that children of Protestant parents, who wished them to have Protestant religious instruction, could be taught by a Protestant minister; Catholic children, by a priest. Only those who did not care to be numbered among the existing denominations were separately taught a form of anthroposophical religious instruction. Except for this, we certainly never considered the founding of an institution that teaches a specific world outlook. All efforts were directed toward the creation of a school in which the practical teaching impulses arising from the viewpoint and will of our spiritual science could for once be directly applied in the education and instruction of youth. It was our aim that the anthroposophic impetus should be expressed not in the content of the classes but in the way classes were taught, in the manner in which the whole school system was handled; that this impetus be manifested in the specific kind, and the different methods, of instruction. Once an anthroposophist has stimulated his classes through his anthroposophic will, the fertilization of the teaching process shows precisely what a vitalizing effect anthroposophy has when it is implemented in this way.

Throughout its first year, I always had the opportunity to observe the progress at the Waldorf School. Again and again, I was there for one or two weeks. I could supervise instruction and was able to watch the development of the different classes. I could see, for instance, how our friend, Dr. Stein,³ succeeded in enlivening his history class for older students by bringing anthroposophic impulses into history. Anthropology, as taught by Fräulein Dr. von Heydebrandt in the fifth grade, was lifted from the tedium prevailing ordinarily in our schools by imbuing it truly with anthroposophic will. I could cite many other instances from which you could clearly see that without in any way teaching abstract anthroposophy the subject matter comes alive by the method and the way it is treated and fertilized by anthroposophy. This practical application of anthroposophic strength of purpose shows that anthroposophy need not remain an abstract, remote philosophy, but can definitely influence human activity, even though we unfortunately have little opportunity to penetrate human affairs, except in limited areas like the Waldorf School. Now, when we ended the first year something happened that seemed to be only an exterior matter, but, as I am about to explain, it was an event that had great inner significance. A complete innovation took place. It concerned the report cards.

The report card system is truly one of the most miserable aspects of our schools. In a superficial, groping manner, teachers must grade their students from 1, 2, 3, 4 to 5 and so on,^T1 a procedure that stifles the very nature of schools in a most appalling way. Our report cards are based on actual educational psychology, on an absolutely practical application of human psychology. At the end of the first school year, the teachers were at the point where they were able to write a report card for every child corresponding to its own character and capabilities, individually indicating the possibility for continued growth and progress. No report card was like any other. There were no numbers indicating grades. Instead, through the teacher's individual insight into his pupil, the student received a characterization of his personality. Already in the course of the first school year, the teachers had so intimately sought to deepen their understanding of every child's soul that they were able to write into the report card an accompanying verse suited to each recipient's individual character.

These report cards are an innovation. Do not conclude, however, that it can be imitated or readily introduced somewhere else, because this change has been brought about by the whole spirit of the Waldorf School and is based on the fact that the most intensive educational psychology was practiced during the first school year. We carefully studied what was causing certain intimate manifestations in the faster or slower progress of a class, and already in the course of the first school year, we made a few discoveries that were in some ways surprising. We learned, for example, that the whole configuration of a class takes on a specific form if the number of boys and girls in that class is equal. The configuration is a quite different one if boys are in the majority and girls in the minority, and it changes again when there are more girls than boys in a class We have had all these examples in our classes. These imponderables, which elsewhere are not taken into consideration at all, are in many ways the essential element in a class.

When one attempts to express certain aspects of psychology, trying to define them in so many words, he is then already past the point that really matters. It is just the predominant and nonsensical custom of our time that one attempts to express things too rigidly in words. One cannot study matters thoroughly if one wants to express them in this constrictive word structure. One must be aware that by expressing things in this manner they can only be indicated approximately.

Of course, we always find ourselves in an odd position when we talk about the results of our anthroposophically oriented movement of spiritual science. The Waldorf School, whose teachers have proven themselves eminently suited to their tasks, could only justify itself because a group of human beings was gathered together who were most competent and pedagogically most qualified. It is unfortunate that in any effort to carry something out in a practical sense today, one encounters, much more than is generally realized, the one great obstacle, namely, a lack of qualified people. Today, the world has a paucity of people who are qualified for any real tasks in life. In our case the difficulty would be compounded should a second school be established. To find suitable, really proficient individuals capable of working in the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would be much more difficult because the one existing school has, of course, already attracted all those who could seriously be considered. Yet there can be no doubt that, for once, something has been accomplished in a certain area. I must say, however, that this is like an island. There, in the course of the first school year, a spiritual system of education has become manifest which truly evolved from the fundamentals of anthroposophy. It is an island, however, enclosed within its shores. Beyond these shores, the financial and economic connections of the school are affected by the great decline in the economic and political life of the present. This is where the problems lie. We can see that our prospects are not what they should be; they are not as good as they should be considering the nature of our achievement. Yet does anyone have even a slight understanding of what the Waldorf School has created based on the spirit?

The Waldorf School was founded by our friend Molt⁴ so that the children of the Waldorf Astoria Works could receive an education. Already in the first year, many children from the outside, who were unconnected to the factory, became students at the school; there must have been around 280 of them. Now, many new students have been registered, but from the Waldorf Astoria Works we have no more than were previously here, as well as the few who have meanwhile reached school age. If everything goes really well, and if economic and other problems can be solved, we shall, judging from the present applications, have more than four hundred students in our school. This means we shall have to build, hire more teachers, establish parallel classes. All this must happen! In a certain sense it will be a crucial test as to whether the financial understanding of our needs by those involved can keep pace with what induces so many people from the outside to bring us their children. It was somewhat ironical to me when the mother of one of our students was introduced to me in the school corridor as Frau Minister So and So. Even those connected with the present government are bringing their children to the Waldorf School now!

Some of these matters actually should be studied more closely in their social context as well. Then, perhaps, it would be possible to perceive the real needs of our society and how they are met by institutions such as the Waldorf School.

Now and then the Waldorf School was beset by a certain superficiality that is a characteristic of our times, as I have often pointed out. The leadership of the school was naturally confronted with people here and there who wanted to visit for a while, that is to snoop around a bit. Yet there is really not all that much to see. What does matter is the whole spirit at work in the school, and that is simply the anthroposophical spirit. People who can't make the effort to read anthroposophic books and who hope to set something from scouting round in the Waldorf School would be better served by deepening their knowledge of anthroposophy. For what bestows spirit on the Waldorf School and lies at its very foundation can only be seen in the spiritual impulses that are the Basis of anthroposophical spiritual life. I have often pointed out to those who have been attending my lectures for some time that today the anthroposophic spiritual life is not directed only toward the individual who seeks the way out of his soul's distress and life's afflictions in the spiritual forces of the world. Today, spiritual science must address itself to the need and decline of our time. Then, however, the comprehension of what spiritual science has to offer will be met by that special kind of understanding that a person today can generally bring to anything of a spiritual nature. When talking about spiritual science, it is often necessary to speak in an entirely different language than is customary. One could say that in a certain sense words acquire a new meaning through spiritual science. It is absolutely necessary to feel and to sense this.

Today I would like to acquaint you with some things that can illustrate how essential it is not only to be willing to hear a somewhat different world view expressed in customary terminology, but to learn to receive the words differently with one's feelings.

Let us begin with a specific case. When speaking about any ideology today, it is designated by an abstract name: materialism, idealism, spiritualism, and so forth, and people are quite sure that they can say which is correct, and which is incorrect. A materialist comes to a spiritualist, for example, and explains to him his way of thinking, how he sees man's thoughts and feelings as products of the brain. The spiritualist answers, “You think incorrectly. I can refute that logically!” Or, perhaps, “That is contradicted by the facts!” In short, the crux of the matter is that today, when people talk about issues concerning world views, one ideology is said to be right and the other one wrong. The spiritualist presumes that only he has the correct philosophy, and wishes to prove the materialist wrong and convince him that he would be better off if he became a spiritualist.

Spiritual science has nothing to do with such a way of proceeding. It does not wish to lead to a different logical insight from that of other world views. Spiritual science, if it really fulfills its task, must become action based on insight. In spiritual science, knowledge must turn into action, action in the whole cosmic world context. I will explain this by using a few definite examples. Today, when people look at the world naively but with a slight materialist tendency, when they direct their eyes and ears outward, hear sounds, notice colors, experience warmth and similar sensations, they perceive the external material world. Should they become scientists, or merely absorb through popular means what science wishes to represent, they will then form or simply accept certain concepts that have originated through the combination of all the color, sound and warmth elements and others that are to be observed in the external world. Now, there are people who maintain that everything one sees is, in the first place, only an external phenomenon. Yet this idea is generally not gone into thoroughly enough. People see a rainbow, for example. As a result of their education, when they look at the rainbow, they are already convinced that the rainbow is only an apparition, that they cannot go to the place where the rainbow is, neatly put a foot on it and march along the rainbow bridge as if it were a solid object. People are sure that it cannot be done, that the rainbow is merely an apparition, a phenomenon that arises and then disappears again. They are convinced that they deal only with apparitions because they cannot come into contact with this aspect of the external world through their sense of touch and feeling. According to their view, as soon as something can be grasped or touched, it is no longer a phenomenon to the same degree, even though recent philosophy may in some instances claim that it is. In any case, the impressions of the sense of touch, for instance, are intuitively taken as something that guarantees a different external reality than the phenomenal realities of the rainbow.

This notwithstanding, all that our external senses perceive comprises merely a world of phenomena, modified perhaps in respect to the apparition of the rainbow, but a world of phenomena nevertheless. Regardless of how far we direct our gaze, how far we can hear, in whatever is seen, heard or otherwise perceived, we deal only with phenomena. I have attempted to explain this in the introduction to the third volume of Goethe's scientific writings.⁵ We deal with a tapestry of phenomena. Whoever makes an effort through experimentation or any combination of pure reasoning to find matter in the realm of appearances is pursuing a dead end.^T2 There is no matter out there. One deals only with a world of phenomena.

This is precisely what the whole spirit of spiritual science reveals: In the external world, one deals only with a world of appearances. An exponent of a current world outlook will therefore conclude that it is wrong to look for matter at all in the realm of phenomena. Anthroposophy cannot agree with this attitude; it must put it differently by saying: Because of the whole configuration of man's mind, he comes to the point where he wants to seek for matter in the moving tapestry of phenomena, to seek out there for atoms, molecules and so on, which are resting points in the phenomenon. Some picture these as tiny, miniature pellets, others imagine them to be points of energy and are proud of the fact; others, prouder still, think of them as mathematical fiction.

What is important, however, is not whether one thinks of them as small pellets, sources of energy, or mathematical fiction, but whether one thinks of the external world in atomistic terms. This is what is important. For a spiritual scientist, however, it is not merely wrong to think atomistically. The kind of concept determining rightness or wrongness may be sound logic, but it is abstract, and spiritual science has to do with realities. I urge you to take it very seriously when I say that spiritual science has to do with realities!

This is why certain concepts that have become merely logical categories for today's abstract world-view must be replaced by something real. This is why, in spiritual science, we not only say that one who seeks atoms or molecules in the external world thinks in the wrong way; we must consider this manner of thinking an unhealthy, sick thinking. We must replace the merely logical concept of wrongness with the realistic concept of sickness, of unhealthiness. We must point to a definite sickness of soul—regardless of how many people it has seized—which expresses itself in atomistic thinking. This condition is one of feeblemindedness. It is not merely logically wrong for us, it is an expression of feeblemindedness to think atomistically; in other words, it is feebleminded to seek in the external world something other than phenomena which, when it comes right down to it, are an a par with the phenomenon of the rainbow. It is relatively easy for people with other world outlooks to set things straight: they do it by refutation. To have been able to refute something is considered an accomplishment. Yet, in a spiritual-scientific sense, no final conclusion has been reached by refutation; it is important to refer to the healthy or unhealthy soul life, to actual processes expressed in man's whole physical, soul and spiritual being. To think atomistically is to think unhealthily, not merely erroneously. An actual unhealthy process takes place in the human organism when we think atomistically. This is one thing we must become clear about regarding the phenomena of the external world and its character of appearance.

We must also become clear about our inner life. Many people seek the spirit inwardly. To begin with, the spiritual cannot be found in the inner realm of man. Truly objective evaluation of every abstract form of mysticism bears this out. What today is sometimes—nay, often—called mysticism consists of brooding over one's inner self, attempting to seek self-knowledge by introverted brooding. What is discovered by practicing such one-sided mysticism? One certainly finds interesting things. When we look into the human being and find all those inwardly pleasant experiences arising which we call mystical—what are they really? They are just the very things that point us toward material existence. We do not discover matter in the external world where the sense phenomena are found; we come upon matter in our inner being. This brings us to the point where we can characterize these things correctly. Regarded from the most comprehensive point of view, it is the body's metabolism that seethes and boils there within the human interior and which flames up into consciousness as one-sided mysticism, mistaken by many to be the spirit that can be found in the inner self. It is not the spirit, it is the flame of metabolism within man. We find matter not in the external world, we find it in ourselves. We find it precisely through one-sided mysticism. That is why a great many people who do not want to be materialists deceive themselves. They excuse their not wanting to be materialists by saying, “Out there is base matter; I shall rise above it and turn to my inner being, for there I will find the spirit.”

Actually, spirit is neither without nor within. Outside are the interweaving phenomena; within ourselves is matter, constantly seething and boiling substance. This metabolic processing of matter kindles the flames that leap into consciousness and form the mystic impressions. Mysticism is the inwardly perceived corporeal matter of the metabolism. That is something that cannot be logically refuted, but must be traced back to actual processes when man yields in a one-sided way to the metabolism.

Just as the belief that it is possible to find traces of matter in the external world indicates feeblemindedness—that is, a real illness of the spirit, soul and bodily being of man—so does one-sided preoccupation with mysticism indicate a corporeal indisposition. It points toward something that sounds somewhat insulting if put bluntly. Yet we must use an expression that is, as it were, spoken from yonder side of the Guardian of the Threshold and means, “Childishness.” In the same way that one incurs feeblemindedness through atomistic thinking concerning the outer world, one becomes childish when yielding to a mysticism that wants to feel the spirit in the seething of the inner metabolism.

Childishness, of course, has a good side, too. When we observe the child we see a lot of spirit in it, and geniality in many instances consists in man's preserving the childlike spirit all the way into advanced age. When we look at the world from the other side of the threshold we can see that it is the spirit which, for instance, forms the child's brain, that spirit which accompanies us from the spiritual world when we enter the physical world through conception or birth. This spirit is most active in the child. Later, it is lost. Therefore, the word childishness is not meant as an insult in this instance, it merely denotes that spirit which forms the brain out of a more or less chaotic mass. Later on, however, if this spirit, which actually shapes the child's brain, does not pour itself sufficiently into logicality, into experience, into what life presents; if, instead, it acts in a one-sided manner and excludes the individual physical experiences; if it goes on working in the way it did during the first seven years, then instead of becoming intellectually mature one becomes childish. Childishness is frequently found to be a characteristic of a great many mystics, particularly arrogant ones. They wish to weave and live in that spirit which is really what should be active in the child's organism. They have retained this spirit, however, and, greatly impressed by their own accomplishment, they gaze at it in wonder in their consciousness, believing, in their one-sided, abstract mysticism, that they are perceiving a higher spirituality, when it is only the matter of their own metabolism.

Again, we do not need merely to refute the one-sided mystic if we are really well grounded in an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We must show that it is the sign of an ailing constitution of the spirit, soul and body when man broods one-sidedly within his inner being, thereby attempting to find the spirit.

I have drawn these two examples, familiar to you from anthroposophical literature, in order to point out to you how serious from a certain viewpoint matters can become when, leaving the ordinary spiritual life of today, one immerses oneself in anthroposphical spiritual life. There, one no longer deals with something as insignificant as “right” or “wrong.” It now becomes a question of “healthy” or “sick” conditions in the organic functions. Thus, on a higher level, something that goes in one direction must be considered healthy, while something going in another direction must be considered sick. I would like you to understand from these implications how spiritual science is an active knowledge; how it cannot stand still on the level of the nature of ordinary knowledge but becomes something real. The process of knowledge, insofar as it expresses itself in spiritual science, is something that actually takes place in the human organism.

In a similar manner we must define the element that lives in the realm of will. When we talk of the realm of will in our age—an age permeated by that grandiose decline we have often discussed—when we speak of what develops into human will impulses and try to define their character, then we say: Man is good or evil. Again, we are dealing with ethical categories—good and evil—which are just as necessary, of course, as logical categories. Yet, from what arises out of the impulses of spiritual science, it is not merely a question of what is meant when one action of man is designated as good and another as evil. When one calls a human action good, even in a karmic connection, it is a question of balancing in some way or other the good with the evil. We refer to something that pertains to an ethical judgment of man.

Whenever we rise into the realm of the spiritual scientific, it is much more a question of recognizing that what is at work there is a certain manner of thinking, feeling and willing for human beings which leads upward to a fruitful development, to progress in evolution. On the one hand, we have abstract goodness. It is of outstanding moral value, but even that is ethically abstract. When it is a matter of spiritual-scientific impulses, however, man must not only do good, or only do the good which lets him appear as an ethically good person. He can do, think or feel only that which advances the world in its development in the external sense world; or he can do something that is not merely evil, leading to an ethical condemnation, but has a destructive effect on the world forces. This was already meant to be indicated in the Portal of Initiation,⁶ where Strader and Capesius are speaking and the following is pointed out: Everything that is done here in the sense world and is subject to ethical judgments of good and evil turns into phenomena behind the curtains of existence, having either a progressive, constructive effect or a destructive one, leading to decline. Just try to experience this entire scene that is permeated with thunder and lightning, where things are happening in a most realistic manner in the soul world while Capesius and Strader are discussing one or the other matter. Try to re-experience this scene and you will see how what we experience as the ethical sphere here on the physical plane is in reality very different there.

All this is to show you how serious world aspects become in that instance when, upon leaving today's customary way of judging by logical or outward human categories only, one ascends to the realities that confront us when we view the world from the spiritual scientific standpoint. Things become serious, yet they must be mentioned today because the world now demands a new kind of spiritual life. Things are happening in the world today that everyone sees but that nobody wishes to comprehend in their actual significance because one cannot take the step from external abstraction to reality. I want to give you a few other examples.

You find today that you live in a world where, among much else, there exist, for example in the social field, a great many party organizations—liberal, conservative and many other parties. Human beings are unaware of the actual nature of these parties. When they have to vote, they decide on one or the other party. They do not give much thought to what it really is that exists as party policy, pulsating through all of public life. They are incapable of taking these things seriously. There are quite a number of people who, in the nicest superficial manner, repeat all sorts of Orientalisms about the external world as Maya, but when it really comes to doing something in this external world they do not stick to what they repeat so abstractly. Otherwise, they would ask, “Maya? Then these parties must be Maya too. Then what is the reality to which this Maya points?”

If this matter is pursued in a spiritual-scientific way in more detail—and tomorrow we shall go deeper into this topic—one finds that these parties exist in the external world by having programs and principles, that is, they pursue abstract ideas. Everything that lives in the external physical world, however, is always the replica, the reflection of what is present as a reality in a much more intense form in the spiritual world. Here is the physical world (see drawing, red), but everything in it points toward the spiritual, and only above, in the spiritual world, can the actual reality of these physical things be found (red). Down here, for instance, you find the parties (orange). On the earth, they oppose each other, seeking to gather a great number of people under the umbrella of an abstract program. Then what are these parties a reflection of? What is up there in the spiritual world if these parties down here are Maya? No abstractions exist in the spiritual world above, only beings. Yet, political parties are rooted in abstraction. Above, one cannot profess adherence to a party program; there one can only be a follower of this or that being or hierarchy. There one cannot just subscribe to a program on the basis of the intellect; that cannot happen there. One must belong with one's whole being to another entity. What is abstract down here is being above that is, the abstract below is only the shadow of beingness above. If you consider the two main categories of parties, the liberal and conservative, you know that each has its own program. When you look above to see what each is a reflection of, then you discover that ahrimanic being is projected here (see drawing, lower part) into the conservative views, luciferic being in the liberal thoughts. Down here, one follows a liberal or conservative program; up there, one is a follower of an ahrimanic or a luciferic being of some hierarchy.

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It can happen, however, that the moment you pass across the threshold it becomes necessary really to understand all this clearly, and neither be fooled by words nor succumb to illusions. It is quite easy to assume that one belongs to a certain good being. Just because you call a being good, however, does not make it so. Anyone can say, for instance, “I acknowledge Jesus, the Christ,” but in the spiritual world, one cannot follow a program. The whole manner in which the concepts and images of this Jesus, of Christ, fill such a person's soul indicates that it is merely the name of Jesus, the Christ, that he has in mind. Actually he is a follower of either Lucifer or Ahriman, but calls whichever it is by the name of Jesus or Christ.

I ask you: How many people today know that party opinions are shadows of realities in the spiritual world? Some do know and act according to their knowledge. I can point to some who know. The Jesuits, for instance, they know. Do not think that the Jesuits believe that when they write something⁶ against anthroposophy in their journals, for instance, they have hit upon something special and logically irrefutable. Refutations are not what counts there. The Jesuits know very well how their refutations could be countered. They are not concerned with a rational fighting for or against something, but with being followers of a certain spiritual being which I do not wish to name today, but which they call Jesus, their Leader, to whom they belong. Whoever this being may be, they call it Jesus. I do not wish to go into the facts more closely, but they call themselves soldiers and him their Leader. They do not fight to refute, they fight to recruit adherents for the companies, the army of Jesus—that is, the being they call Jesus. And they know very well that as soon as one Looks across the threshold, abstract categories, logical approval or disapproval no longer matter, only the hosts following one or the other being. Down on earth it is a matter of mere figures of speech. This is what mankind today is hardly willing to understand, namely, that if we wish to escape from the decline of our age it can no longer be a question of abstractions or merely of what one may think, but that we must deal with realities. We shall begin to ascend to realities when we stop talking about right or wrong and begin speaking about healthy or sick. We begin to rise to realities when we cease talking about programs of parties or world views, and instead speak about following real beings whom we encounter as soon as we become aware of what exists an yonder side of the threshold. It must be our concern today actually to take that serious step that leads from abstraction to reality, from merely logical knowledge to knowledge as deed. This alone can lead us out of the chaos now gripping the world.

The world situation, about which we shall speak tomorrow and the day after, can be judged in a sound way only by someone who examines it with the means that spiritual science is prepared to give him. Otherwise one will be unable to see in the right light the significant, existing contrasts between East and West. All that outwardly manifests itself in visible realities—what else is it but the inherently absurd expression of what lives as thoughts in people's heads? How, then, do these thoughts manifest themselves to us?

To answer this question and to conclude today's presentation, I would like again to call our attention to an obvious example. More than once, I have pointed out how Catholic clerical factions, especially here in Switzerland, are now resorting to a web of lies in order to destroy spiritual science. Those of you who have been here have witnessed a number of examples of what the Catholic Jesuits come up with in the attempt to destroy anthroposophy. Consider the attacks made by Jesuit seminarists with weapons that are certainly not nice. I need not characterize this; those who have not informed themselves can easily do so.

For Switzerland and Central Europe, where these things happen, are all part of the world. So, too, is America. I recently received a magazine published in America in which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is characterized, while, at the same time, the Jesuits in Europe denounced spiritual science as a threat to the Catholic Church and to Christianity. You know by now that Reverend Kully⁷ stated that there are three evils in the world. One is Judaism, the other Freemasonry, but the third—worse than all of them, even worse than Bolshevism—is what is taught here in Dornach. This originates from the Catholic side, and is how anthroposophy is characterized.

What about America? I want to read you a small paragraph from an American publication written at the same time Catholic journals over here printed their view of anthroposophy:

Just as the Catholic hierarchy has always insisted that the Roman church is the only one with any authority,

—Protestant sects do not come into consideration; according to the Roman church, these sects stand outside the gates; they are viewed merely as a great number of heretics?

so it is self-evident that the church which Steiner's glib tongue alludes to can be none other than the Roman Catholic church. This assumption is reinforced and indeed any doubt about the matter ceases, when one reads Steiner's other occult books. They all point to the same thing, namely, his writings are purely misleading; the sheepskin of a superficial occultism covering the wolf of Jesuitism.

So you see that in America anthroposophy is taken for Jesuitism, while in Europe the Jesuits strongly oppose anthroposophy as the biggest enemy of the Catholic church. That is how the world thinks today! That, however, is also how people think in Europe where they are living side by side; they are just not aware of it.

The American article concludes with several more nice sentences:

Steiner claims to be an initiate. That may be; but whether he is of the White Lodge or belongs to the Brothers of Shadow is something one can only decide when it is realized that he stood on the side of men of “blood and iron” ... and that a number of his students here (in America) were interned as German spies.

So you see, sometimes the wind blows from the Roman Catholic corner, sometimes from the American side! It just shows you how things are inside the heads of our contemporaries. Yet, from the thoughts hatched inside human heads, there developed what has led into the decline of the present, and the ascent must truly be sought in a different direction from the one where many seek it today.

Tomorrow, we shall continue with this subject.

• 1 . Reference to Rudolf Steiner's return from Stuttgart where, from July 24 until August 1, 1920, he had been giving lectures for the teachers of the Waldorf School, for the general public and the Anthroposophical Society.
• 2 . The Waldorf School: Founded by Emil Molt (1876–1936) in the year 1919 for the children of the workmen in the “Waldorf-Astoria” cigarette factory and the public as a coeducational elementary and high school under the leadership of Rudolf Steiner, who had also appointed the teachers and had given them preparatory courses.
• 3 . Dr. Walter Johannes Stein: 1891–1957, Dr. Caroline van Heydebrandt: 1866–1938; both teachers in the Waldorf School from 1919.
• T1. In the German educational system, the grade of 1 is equivalent to an A; 4 is a D and 5 would indicate a failing grade.
• 4 . See Preface and Introduction to Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner. Introductions to all the volumes written by Rudolf Steiner under the same title, Dornach, 1926.
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner: “The Portal of Initiation” contained in Four Mystery Play, GA 14 (Toronto, Steiner Book Centre, 1973).
• T2. The “dead end” alluded to here is the translation of the German expression “Holzweg,” literally, “wooden path.” Like all such expressions in a language, it springs from real experience. The “Holzweg” is a rough timber road, or a system of such roads, proceeding into the forest and used by woodcutters. It leads nowhere and may dead-end suddenly. Hence, it would be easy to get lost on it.
• 6 . “Stimmen der Zeit,” Freiburg i. Br., 1918–1920, Otto Zimmermann SJ, Josef Kreitmaier SJ, Konstantin Nopels SJ.
• 6 . “Stimmen der Zeit,” Freiburg i. Br., 1918–1920, Otto Zimmermann SJ, Josef Kreitmaier SJ, Konstantin Nopels SJ.
• 7 . Max Kully: 1878–1936, Catholic minister of Arlesheim near Basle. Reference to a calumnious article against Rudolf Steiner that he wrote in a Catholic Sunday paper, July 6, 1920.

DR STEINER greets those present with the words:

My dear friends!

Let the first words to resound through this room today be those which sum up the essence of what may stand before your souls as the most important findings of recent years.^A

Later there will be more to be said about these words which are, as they stand, a summary. But first let our ears be touched by them, so that out of the signs of the present time we may renew, in keeping with our way of thinking, the ancient word of the Mysteries: ‘Know thyself.’

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man !
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

My dear friends! Today when I look back specifically to what it was possible to bring from the spiritual worlds while the terrible storms of war were surging across the earth, I find it all expressed as though in a paradigm in the trio of verses your ears have just heard.^B

For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness of man which enables him in the wholeness of his being of spirit, soul and body to revive for himself once more in a new form the call ‘Know thyself’. For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness. But only in the last decade have I myself been able to bring it to full maturity while the storms of war were raging.³⁸ I sought to indicate how man lives in the physical realm in his system of metabolism and limbs, in his system of heart and rhythm, in his system of thinking and perceiving with his head. Yesterday I indicated how this threefoldness can be rightly taken up when our hearts are enlivened through and through by Anthroposophia.

We may be sure that if man learns to know in his feeling and in his will what he is actually doing when, as the spirits of the universe enliven him, he lets his limbs place him in the world of space, that then—not in a suffering, passive grasping of the universe but in an active grasping of the world in which he fulfils his duties, his tasks, his mission on the earth—that then in this active grasping of the world he will know the being of all-wielding love of man and universe which is one member of the all-world-being.

We may be sure that if man understands the miraculous mystery holding sway between lung and heart—expressing inwardly the beat of universal rhythms working across millennia, across the aeons of time to ensoul him with the universe through the rhythms of pulse and blood—we may hope that, grasping this in wisdom with a heart that has become a sense organ, man can experience the divinely given universal images as out of themselves they actively reveal the cosmos. Just as in active movement we grasp the all-wielding love of worlds, so shall we grasp the archetypal images of world existence when we sense in ourselves the mysterious interplay between universal rhythm and heart rhythm, and through this the human rhythm that takes place mysteriously in soul and spirit realms in the interplay between lung and heart.

And when, in feeling, the human being rightly perceives what is revealed in the system of his head, which is at rest on his shoulders even when he walks along, then, feeling himself within the system of his head and pouring warmth of heart into this system of his head, he will experience the ruling, working, weaving thoughts of the universe within his own being.

Thus he becomes the threefoldness of all existence: universal love reigning in human love; universal Imagination reigning in the forms of the human organism; universal thoughts reigning mysteriously below the surface in human thoughts. He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being. Out of the signs of the present time he will re-enliven the ancient words: ‘Know thou thyself!’

The Greeks were still permitted to omit the final word, since for them the human self was not yet as abstract as it is for us now that it has become concentrated in the abstract ego-point or at most in thinking, feeling and willing. For them human nature comprised the totality of spirit, soul and body. Thus the ancient Greeks were permitted to believe that they spoke of the total human being, spirit, soul and body, when they let resound the ancient word of the Sun, the word of Apollo: ‘Know thou thyself!’

Today, re-enlivening these words in the right way out of the signs of our times, we have to say: Soul of man, know thou thyself in the weaving existence of spirit, soul and body. When we say this, we have understood what lies at the foundation of all aspects of the being of man. In the substance of the universe there works and is and lives the spirit which streams from the heights and reveals itself in the human head; the force of Christ working in the circumference, weaving in the air, encircling the earth, works and lives in the system of our breath; and from the inmost depths of the earth rise up the forces which work in our limbs. When now, at this moment, we unite these three forces, the forces of the heights, the forces of the circumference, the forces of the depths, in a substance that gives form, then in the understanding of our soul we can bring face to face the universal dodecahedron with the human dodecahedron. Out of these three forces: out of the spirit of the heights, out of the force of Christ in the circumference, out of the working of the Father, the creative activity of the Father that streams out of the depths, let us at this moment give form in our souls to the dodecahedral Foundation Stone which we lower into the soil of our souls so that it may remain there a powerful sign in the strong foundations of our soul existence and so that in the future working of the Anthroposophical Society we may stand on this firm Foundation Stone.

Let us ever remain aware of this Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, formed today. In all that we shall do, in the outer world and here, to further, to develop and to fully unfold the Anthroposophical Society, let us preserve the remembrance of the Foundation Stone which we have today lowered into the soil of our hearts. Let us seek in the threefold being of man, which teaches us love, which teaches us the universal Imagination, which teaches us the universal thoughts; let us seek, in this threefold being, the substance of universal love which we lay as the foundation, let us seek in this threefold being the archetype of the Imagination according to which we shape the universal love within our hearts, let us seek the power of thoughts from the heights which enable us to let shine forth in fitting manner this dodecahedral Imagination which has received its form through love! Then shall we carry away with us from here what we need. Then shall the Foundation Stone shine forth before the eyes of our soul, that Foundation Stone which has received its substance from universal love and human love, its picture image, its form, from universal Imagination and human Imagination, and its brilliant radiance from universal thoughts and human thoughts, its brilliant radiance which whenever we recollect this moment can shine towards us with warm light, with light that spurs on our deeds, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.

The proper soil into which we must lower the Foundation Stone of today, the proper soil consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world. This will cast its light on us like a reminder of the light of thought that can ever shine towards us from the dodecahedral Stone of love which today we will lower into our hearts.

Dear friends, let us take this deeply into our souls. With it let us warm our souls, and with it let us enlighten our souls. Let us cherish this warmth of soul and this light of soul which out of good will we have planted in our hearts today.

We plant it, my dear friends, at a moment when human memory that truly understands the universe looks back to the point in human evolution, at the turning point of time, when out of the darkness of night and out of the darkness of human moral feeling, shooting like light from heaven, was born the divine being who had become the Christ, the spirit being who had entered into humankind.

We can best bring strength to that warmth of soul and that light of soul which we need, if we enliven them with the warmth and the light that shone forth at the turning point of time as the Light of Christ in the darkness of the universe. In our hearts, in our thoughts and in our will let us bring to life that original consecrated night of Christmas which took place two thousand years ago, so that it may help us when we carry forth into the world what shines towards us through the light of thought of that dodecahedral Foundation Stone of love which is shaped in accordance with the universe and has been laid into the human realm.

So let the feelings of our heart be turned back towards the original consecrated night of Christmas in ancient Palestine.

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine Christ-Sun !
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

This turning of our feelings back to the original consecrated night of Christmas can give us the strength for the warming of our hearts and the enlightening of our heads which we need if we are to practise rightly, working anthroposophically, what can arise from the knowledge of the threefold human being coming to harmony in unity.

So let us once more gather before our souls all that follows from a true understanding of the words ‘Know thou thyself in spirit, soul and body’. Let us gather it as it works in the cosmos so that to our Stone, which we have now laid in the soil of our hearts, there may speak from everywhere into human existence and into human life and into human work everything that the universe has to say to this human existence and to this human life and to this human work.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
And in the echo of the depths
The secret of the heights, resounding
Speaks:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul:
Through the spirits: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai,
Let there be fired, ye spirits, from the East
What through the West is formed,
And the fire of the East,
As it receives form from the West
Speaks:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light:
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted,
And when it is rightly understood
How it rings forth from Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi,
When from the depths is prayed
What in the heights can be answered,
Then speaks it through the world:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

My dear friends, hear it as it resounds in your own hearts! Then will you found here a true community of human beings for Anthroposophia; and then will you carry the spirit that rules in the shining light of thoughts around the dodecahedral Stone of love out into the world wherever it should give of its light and of its warmth for the progress of human souls, for the progress of the universe.

• A. In the 1985 German edition, from which this translation is made, the verses spoken here and in the subsequent sessions are given as shown in the shorthand report. See the Note on the Verses.
• B. At this point, and again in the final words of this meeting at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner changed for a moment from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)
• 38. For the first time in the public lecture in Berlin on 15 March 1917 in Rudolf Steiner Geist und Stoff, Leben und Tod (Spirit and Matter, Life and Death). GA 66, and in the chapter ‘Die physischen und die geistigen Abhängigkeiten der Menschenwesenheit’ ‘Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Being of Man’ in Rudolf Steiner Von Seelenrätseln (Of the Riddles of the Soul) GA 21.

In this [German] Edition the verses are given as Rudolf Steiner spoke them during the Christmas Conference of 1923, as shown by the complete and reliable record in shorthand made by Helene Finckh. Previous editions [in German] contained variations in some of the verses, especially in the rendering of 25 December. This is explained as follows:

Rudolf Steiner gave the verses in two versions, both of which are recorded in his own handwriting (see Facsimiles 1 and 4 in the Supplement). The first version was used during the Conference. The second version was made for the printed record in the report ‘Die Bildung der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft durch die Weihnachts-tagung 1923’ (The Formation of the General Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Conference of 1923) in the first number of Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht. Nachrichten für deren Mitglieder (What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for Members) of 13 January 1924. In this second version there are certain divergences from the text as spoken during the Conference. The most important of these are that the hierarchies are not named but approached under a general designation, and that the Rosicrucian motto is given in German and not in Latin.

The reason which moved Rudolf Steiner to make this alteration was given on a number of occasions by Marie Steiner, and recorded by one of her colleagues, Günther Schubert, as follows: ‘She spoke repeatedly about her memory of the great difficulty Rudolf Steiner experienced in reaching the decision to publish the verses of the 1923 laying of the Foundation Stone. In the end he toned down the direct approach to the hierarchies by making the salutation more abstract. He wanted this toned-down version to be the one used exclusively within members' circles too, for he said that there was a law attached to esoteric mantrams of such a cultic nature: The force with which they return equal to that with which they are sent forth, and it is therefore necessary to ask oneself whether one will be strong enough to endure this.’

Marie Steiner originally wanted to take this into account when she published this record of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. However, it was only possible in respect of the words spoken on 25 December, for on 29 December the call to the hierarchies by name was included in Rudolf Steiner's subsequent discussion of the ‘rhythms’. The relevant lines were not spoken on the other days.

In the present [German] edition the verses, including that of 25 December, are given as they were spoken and recorded in the shorthand report.

My dear friends!

We are gathered together for the last time in this Conference from which much that is strong and important is to go forth for the Anthroposophical Movement. So now let me shape this final lecture in a way that connects it inwardly, in its impulse, with the various prospects thrown open to us by this series of lectures as a whole,⁷⁹ but also in a way that will allow us to gain a sense for the future, especially the future of anthroposophical endeavour.

When we look out into the world today we see something that has already been there for many years: a tremendous amount of destructiveness. There are forces at work that give us an inkling of the abysses into which western civilization is still to plunge. Looking at those individuals who externally are the cultural leaders in the various fields of life, we notice how they are enmeshed in a terrible cosmic sleep. They think, and until recently most people thought, that until the nineteenth century mankind was childlike and primitive in its insights and views, and that now that modern science has entered into all the various fields truth has at last arrived, truth that must be upheld forever.

People who think like this are, without knowing it, living in a state of tremendous arrogance. On the other hand, here and there amongst mankind today there are some inklings that things are perhaps not as the majority would like to imagine.

Some time ago I was able to give a number of lectures in Germany organized by the Wolff agency.⁸⁰ The audiences were exceptionally large, so that people here and there began to notice that Anthroposophy was something for which people were looking. All kinds of foolish voices were raised in antagonism, among them one which was not much more intelligent than any of the others but which nevertheless expressed a kind of presentiment. It consisted of a note in a newspaper referring to one of the lectures in Berlin. This notice in the newspaper said: Listening to stuff like this you get the impression—I am quoting the article approximately—that something is happening not only on the earth but also in the whole of the cosmos that is calling mankind to a form of spirituality that is different from what has existed so far; even the forces of the cosmos, not merely earthly impulses, are demanding something of mankind; a kind of revolution in the cosmos which must lead man to strive for a new spirituality.

So there was this voice, which was in its way quite remarkable. For it is true: The proper impulse for what must now go forth from Dornach must, as I have emphasized from various angles over the last few days, be an impulse arising not on the earth but in the spiritual world. Here we want to develop the strength to follow the impulses coming from the spiritual world. In the evening lectures during this Christmas Conference I have spoken about manifold impulses present in historical development so that your hearts might be opened to take in spiritual impulses which still have to stream into the earthly world and are not taken from the earthly world itself. Everything that has hitherto borne the earthly world in the right way has had its source in the spiritual world. And if we are to achieve something fruitful for the earthly world, we must turn to the spiritual world for the appropriate impulses.

My dear friends, this encourages me to point out that the impulses we are to bear away with us from this Conference must be linked to a great sense of responsibility.

Let us spend a few minutes on the great responsibility that is now incumbent on us as a result of this Conference. In recent decades it has been possible for someone with a sense for the spiritual world to wander, in spiritual observation, past many personalities, gaining bitter sensations with regard to the future destiny of mankind on earth. It has been possible to wander past one's fellow human beings in the manner available to spiritual insight, observing how they lay aside their physical and etheric bodies in sleep and live in the spiritual world with their ego and astral body. Wandering among the destinies of those egos and astral bodies while human beings slept has, in recent decades, given rise to experiences which can point to a heavy responsibility incumbent on the one who can know such things. These souls, having left behind their physical and etheric bodies between going to sleep and waking up, were often to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold.

The Guardian of the Threshold has entered the awareness of human beings in many and various ways during the course of human evolution. Many a legend and many a saga—for this is the form in which the most important things are preserved, rather than that of historical records—many a legend and many a saga tells of the approach by one personality or another to the Guardian of the Threshold in order to receive instruction on how to enter the spiritual world and then return once more to the physical world. Entering rightly into the spiritual world must bring with it the possibility of returning to the physical world at any moment with the full ability to stand on both feet as a practical and thoughtful human being, not as a dreamer, not as a dreamy mystic.

Throughout all the thousands of years during which human beings have striven to enter the spiritual world, this has been the fundamental stipulation of the Guardian of the Threshold. But especially in the final third of the nineteenth century hardly any human beings were to be seen approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of wakefulness. And even more so in our own time, when mankind as a whole has the historical task of passing by the Guardian of the Threshold in one way or another, do you find, when wandering in the spiritual world, that souls are asleep when they approach the Guardian of the Threshold as egos and astral bodies. This most significant picture meets us today: There stands the Guardian of the Threshold surrounded by groups of sleeping human souls who do not have the strength to approach him in a waking state but who approach him instead while they are asleep.

Witnessing this scene, you become aware of a thought which is bound up particularly with what I would like to call the germination of a necessary great responsibility. The souls who thus approach the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep demand entry into the spiritual world. They demand to be allowed to wander across the threshold in a state of sleep; their consciousness is that of a sleeping human being—which so far as the waking state is concerned remains unconscious or subconscious. And countless times the voice of the grave Guardian of the Threshold is heard: For your own good, you may not cross the threshold; you may not gain entrance to the spiritual world. Go back! For if the Guardian of the Threshold were to allow them to enter without more ado, they could come over into the spiritual world with all the concepts passed on to them by today's schools, today's education, today's civilization; with all those concepts and ideas with which human beings have to grow up nowadays from their sixth year onwards right, you could say, until the end of their earthly lives.

These concepts and ideas have a particular characteristic: If you enter into the spritual world with them, with the way you have become with them through present-day civilization and schooling, you become paralysed in your soul. And on returning to the physical world you would be void of thoughts and ideas. If the Guardian of the Threshold did not gravely reject these souls, if he were not to reject many, many of today's human souls but were to let them step over into the spiritual world, then, waking up on their return, waking up at the decisive moment on their return, they would have the feeling: I cannot think; my thoughts do not grasp my brain; I have to live in the world without thoughts. For the world of abstract ideas which human beings today attach to everything is such that one can indeed go into the spiritual world with them but one cannot bring them out again. And when you watch this scene, which is experienced today by more souls than you would ordinarily imagine, you say to yourself: If only these souls could be successfully protected from experiencing also in death what they are now experiencing in sleep. For if the inner condition experienced before the Guardian of the Threshold were to endure for a sufficiently long period of time, if human civilization were to remain for a long time under the influence of what can be taken in in schools by way of what is traditionally passed down by civilization, then sleep would become ordinary life. Human souls would pass through the portal of death into the spiritual world and then be incapable of bringing any strength of ideas with them into their new life on earth. For though you can enter the spiritual world with today's thoughts, you then cannot leave it with them. You can only leave it in a state of soul paralysis.

You see, present-day civilization can be founded on the kind of cultural life that has been nurtured for so long. But life cannot be founded on it. It would be possible for this civilization to endure for a while. During their waking hours, the souls would have no inkling of the Guardian of the Threshold; then while they slept they would be turned away by him so that they should not become paralysed; and the final consequence would be that a human race would be born in the future without any understanding, without any possibility of applying ideas to life when they were born in this future time, so that the faculty of thinking and living in ideas would have disappeared from the earth. A sick human race, living only in instincts, would have to populate the earth. Terrible feelings and emotions alone, without orientation through the force of ideas, would come to dominate human evolution.

Indeed, the soul failing to gain entry into the spiritual world, and being turned away by the Guardian of the Threshold in the way I have just described, is not the only sad sight to meet the one who has spiritual vision. If such a one were to take with him a human being from eastern civilization on his journeyings to where the sleeping souls can be observed approaching the Guardian of the Threshold, then such an eastern human being would be heard to utter spirit words of terrible reproach towards the whole of western civilization: See, if this goes on, then the earth will have fallen into barbarism by the time those living today return for a new incarnation; people will live by instincts alone, without ideas; this is what you have brought about by falling away from the ancient spirituality of the orient.

Thus a glimpse like this into the spiritual world bears witness to a strong sense of responsibility for the task of man. And here in Dornach there must be a place where it is possible to speak, to those who wish to listen, about every important direct experience of the spiritual world. Here there must be a place where the strength is found to point to those little traces of the spirit not only in the cleverly put together dialectical and empirical scientific manner of the present time. If Dornach is to fulfil its task, then it must be a place where human beings can hear openly about what is going on historically in the spiritual world and about the spiritual impulses which then enter into the world of nature and govern it. Human beings must be able to hear in Dornach about genuine experiences, genuine forces and genuine beings of the spiritual world. This is where the School of true Spiritual Science must be. And we must henceforth not shy away from the demands of modern scientific thought which causes human beings to approach the earnest Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep in the way I have described. In Dornach it must be possible to win the strength, spiritually, to look the spiritual world in the eye, to learn about the spiritual world.

Therefore we shall not let loose a tirade of dialectics on the inadequacy of present-day scientific theory. Instead I had to draw your attention to the position in which this scientific theory, and its consequences in ordinary schools, places the human being with regard to the Guardian of the Threshold. If we can face up to this in our soul in all earnestness during this Conference, then this Christmas Conference will send a strong impulse into our souls which can carry them away to do strong work of the kind needed by mankind today, so that in their next incarnation human beings will be able to encounter the Guardian of the Threshold properly, or rather so that civilization as a whole will measure up to the Guardian of the Threshold.

Compare today's civilization with that of former times. In all former civilizations there were ideas, concepts, which were turned first of all towards the super-sensible world, towards the gods, towards the world which engendered, which created, which brought forth. Then with those concepts, which belonged above all to the gods, it was possible to look down onto the earthly world in order to understand it with concepts and ideas which were worthy of the gods. And if souls then approached the Guardian of the Threshold with these ideas which had been formed in a manner that was worthy of the gods and that had a value for the gods, then the Guardian said: You may pass, for you are bringing with you into the super-sensible world something that is directed towards this super-sensible world even during the time of your life on earth in a physical body; therefore when you return to the physical, sense-perceptible world sufficient strength will remain to prevent you from becoming paralysed through having seen the super-sensible world. Nowadays human beings elaborate concepts and ideas which, in accordance with the genius of the times, they want to apply solely to the physical, sense-perceptible world. These concepts and ideas deal above all with anything that can be weighed and measured, but they are not at all concerned with the gods. They are not worthy of the gods and they are of no value to the gods. That is why the souls who have fallen entirely under the spell of the materialism of these ideas which are unworthy of the gods and valueless for the gods are met, when they cross the threshold in sleep, by the thundering voice of the Guardian of the Threshold: Do not step across the threshold! You have misused your ideas for the sense-perceptible world; therefore you must remain with them in the sense-perceptible world; if you do not want to become paralysed in your soul, you cannot enter with them into the world of the gods.

Such things have to be said, not because it is necessary to brood upon them but so that heart and mind and soul may become filled to the brim with them. Then we may come into the mood that will be the right mood to bear away from this solemn Christmas Conference of the Anthroposophical Society. The most important thing of all is the mood of soul we bear away with us, a mood of soul for the spiritual world that gives us the certainty: In Dornach a central point for spiritual knowledge will be created.

That is why it was so good to hear Dr Zeylmans speak this morning about a field which is to be cultivated here in Dornach, the field of medicine, and to hear him say that it is no longer possible to build bridges from ordinary science to what is to be founded here in Dornach. If we have the ambition to make what grows in the soil of our own medical research into something that can stand the scrutiny of present-day clinical requirements, then we shall never achieve any definite goal in the things that really make up our task, for then other people will simply say: Well, yes, here is a new method; we too have initiated new methods once in a while.

The important thing is that a branch of practical life, such as medicine, should be taken up into anthroposophical life. I think I understood rightly this morning that this is what Dr Zeylmans longs for. Did he not say in connection with this goal that someone who today becomes a doctor longs for impulses from a new corner of the universe. Let me tell you that in the field of medicine the work here in Dornach is to be carried on just as has that in a number of other fields of anthroposophical work which have remained within the bosom of Anthroposophy. With Dr Wegman as my helper, work is already in train on a system of medicine based entirely on Anthroposophy, a system which is needed by mankind and which will be presented to mankind quite soon. Equally it is my purpose to bring about the closest ties between the Goetheanum and the Clinic in Arlesheim which is working so beneficially. In the very near future such ties are to be brought about so that all that is flourishing there may be truly oriented towards Anthroposophy, which is indeed the intention of Dr Wegman.

In what he said, Dr Zeylmans was indicating with reference to one particular field what the Vorstand in Dornach will make its task in all the fields of anthroposophical work. Thus in future the situation will be clear. No one will say: Let us first show people eurythmy; if they hear nothing about Anthroposophy, then they will like eurythmy; and then, having taken a liking to eurythmy, if they hear that Anthroposophy stands as the foundation for eurythmy, they will take a liking to Anthroposophy as well. No one will say: First we must show people how the medicines work in practice so that they see that they are proper medicines, and will buy them; then, if they later hear that Anthroposophy is behind the medicines, they will also approach Anthroposophy.

We must have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest. Not until we have the courage to regard such a method as dishonest, not until we inwardly detest such a method will Anthroposophy find its way through the world. So in future here in Dornach we shall fight for the truth, not fanatically but simply in an honest, straightforward love of the truth. Perhaps this will enable us to make good some of what has so sinfully been made bad in recent years.

With thoughts which are not easy but which are grave we must depart from this Conference that has led to the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. But I do not think that it will be necessary for anybody to go away with pessimism from what has taken place here this Christmas. Every day we have had to walk past the sad ruins of the Goetheanum. But as we have walked up this hill, past these ruins, I think that in every soul there has also been the content of what has been discussed here and what has quite evidently been understood by our friends in their hearts. From all this the thought has emerged: It will be possible for spiritual flames of fire to arise, as a true spiritual life for the blessing of mankind in the future, from the Goetheanum which is being built anew. They shall arise out of our hard work and out of our devotion. The more we go from here with the courage to carry on the affairs of Anthroposophy, the better have we heard the breath of the spirit wafting filled with hope through our gathering. For the scene which I have described to you and which can be seen so frequently, that scene of present-day human beings, the products of a decadent civilization and education, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in a state of sleep, is actually not one which is found amongst the circle of sensitive anthroposophists. Here on the whole the circumstance is such that only a warning, one particular exhortation, resounds: In hearing the voice from the land of the spirit you must develop the strong courage to bear witness to this voice, for you have begun to awaken; courage will keep you awake; lack of courage alone could lead you to fall asleep.

The exhortation to be awake through courage is the other variation, the variation for anthroposophists in the life of present-day civilization. Those who are not anthroposophists hear: You must remain outside the land of the spirit, you have misused ideas for merely earthly objects, you have not gathered ideas which have value for the gods and which are worthy of the gods; you would be paralysed on your return to the physical, sense-perceptible world. But those souls who are the souls of anthroposophists hear: Your remaining test is to be that of your courage to bear witness to that voice which you are capable of hearing because of the inclination of your soul, because of the inclination of your heart.

My dear friends, yesterday was the anniversary of the day on which we saw the tongues of flame devouring our old Goetheanum. Today we may hope—since a year ago we did not allow even the flames to distract us from continuing with our work—today we may hope that when the physical Goetheanum stands here once more we shall have worked in such a way that the physical Goetheanum is only the external symbol for our spiritual Goetheanum which we want to take with us as an idea as we now go out into the world.

We have here laid the Foundation Stone. On this Foundation Stone shall be erected the building whose individual stones will be the work achieved in all our groups by the individuals outside in the wide world. Let us now look in spirit at this work and become conscious of the responsibility about which I have spoken today, of our responsibility towards the human being who stands before the Guardian of the Threshold and has to be refused entry into the spiritual world.

Certainly it should never occur to us to feel anything but the deepest pain and the deepest sorrow about what happened to us a year ago. But let us not forget that everything in the world that has any stature has been born out of pain. So let us transform our pain so that out of it may arise a strong and shining Anthroposophical Society by dint, my dear friends, of your work.

For this purpose we have immersed ourselves in those words with which I began, in those words with which I wish to close this Christmas Conference, this Christmas Conference which is to be for us a festival of consecration not merely for the beginning of a new year but for the beginning of a new turning point of time to which we want to devote ourselves in enthusiastic cultivation of the life of spirit:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being.
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
Speaking:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul.
Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai!
Let there be fired from the East
What through the West is formed
Speaking:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South,
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light.
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted
Speaking:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.^A

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men:
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

And so, my dear friends,^B bear out with you into the world your warm hearts in whose soil you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, bear out with you your warm hearts in order to do work in the world that is strong in healing. Help will come to you because your heads will be enlightened by what you all now want to be able to direct in conscious willing. Let us today make this resolve with all our strength. And we shall see that if we show ourselves to be worthy, then a good star will shine over that which is willed from here. My dear friends, follow this good star. We shall see whither the gods shall lead us through the light of this star.

Light Divine
Christ-Sun,
Warm thou
Our hearts,
Enlighten thou
Our heads!

• 79. See Rudolf Steiner World History in the Light of Anthroposophy, op. cit.
• 80. See Note 3.
• A. According to the shorthand report, the final words of the verse were not spoken on this occasion.
• B. In the following sentences, as in the gathering on 25 December 1923 at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner once again changed from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)

at the beginning of the evening lecture

[No minutes were kept of the discussions on company matters that took place. The founding of a Czech national company did not take place until a year later, on March 30, 1924, in the presence of Rudolf Steiner, as can be seen from his letter to Edith Maryon in Dornach dated April 1, 1924 (GA 263/1), which states: “Sunday [March 30] was almost entirely taken up from morning to evening by the meeting at which the Bohemian Landesgesellschaft was formed.” There is also no record of this meeting.]

My dear friends! I will report briefly on our trip to Prague. I gave two public lectures and two branch lectures. The public lectures were exceptionally well attended. The first took place in the local Urania Institute. The eurythmy performance took place on Sunday morning in front of the large and sold-out Deutsches Theater in Prague.

This occasion also truly showed how deeply the longing is everywhere for a spiritual life, for a new spiritual life, and that it would only be a matter of finding the paths to the many people who today are seeking such an approach to a new spiritual life. On such occasions, one can indeed find through experience that there are truly, today in the world — and indeed in all nations — an extraordinary number of them.

Unfortunately, Dr. Steiner was unable to recite the verses herself this time due to her indisposition, and she will also be unable to do so at the eurythmy performances in Breslau, Nuremberg, Heidenheim and so on, which will now follow the Prague and Stuttgart performances.

after the lecture

Now, my dear friends, having shared this with you, I also feel obliged to briefly share something that will help us to find our way back to the earth even more so than plants can. I will only share it very briefly, so that you know, because I do feel obliged to substantiate some of what is always said. I will start by putting together two facts that deserve to be thought of together, as you will see in a moment.

I don't know if you saw that it was announced here too – which, by the way, is announced in many places in America and Europe – that lectures in Basel and the surrounding area were announced in the newspaper issues around the 20th. Here is an example of the ad: “All nations marching to Armageddon. Six million now living will never die. Public lecture Monday, October 21, 8 p.m. at the Hans Huber Hall of the Basel City Casino. Free admission. International Association of Serious Bible Researchers.”

You can also find the same announcement in the Birsecktagblatt: “All nations marching to Armageddon. Six million now living will never die. Public lecture Saturday, October 20, 8 p.m. at the Hotel Bahnhof Münchenstein, Monday, October 21, Gasthof Zum Ochsen Arlesheim. Free admission. International Association of Serious Bible Researchers.”

Hold on to the title of this announcement; you may have been able to read it in the Birsecktagblatt, as it is pointed out there that the Bible is now to be interpreted correctly according to the Book of Daniel and according to the Apocalypse and so on. It is promised to the people who will be the victors in the great struggle that is to unfold until the year 1927 that they will not die in their physical bodies at all. And I was approached by people during the performance of our Vienna Congress last year, asking how one can ensure that one will not die in the Battle of Armageddon. You know that many such lectures are given in Switzerland. So this is about the subject that is linked to the Battle of Armageddon.

Now I would like to read to you from a little booklet called “The Antichrist. The prophetic secrets of the biblical end times, especially for 1924-1927”, by Paul Westphal - a book that is not available through ordinary bookstores, but is widely distributed through those channels that lead precisely to the population that does not go to bookstores to buy books, but receives the books in other ways. Their education then flows from what comes from such books.

Now I will just tell the introduction, the main chapter, because of which this writing is actually written, because I cannot read to you for hours. The main chapter is called “In the Footsteps of the Antichrist”. And then it is told how the sowing was. In the description of this sowing, the following is told: Once, in the years 1897 to 1900, a man who later became a modern Dr. Faust edited the “Magazin für Literatur” (Magazine for Literature), and in this “Magazin für Literatur” a novel “Aus der Dekadence” (From Decadence) was published.

And it really was published. It was written by the son of a member who had died in Stuttgart a long time ago. This novel was published. Of course, I had no part in it other than that of the editor, who had to judge the matter artistically and according to its literary value, and otherwise the bitter aftertaste that that particular novel earned me a lawsuit with the publisher of the magazine at the time, a lawsuit that lasted for years, which is not a pleasant memory. But this novel is taken up again as a sign that the person who edited the “Magazin für Literatur” back then had already begun to use the aberration of the times to his own ends.

Then it is further shown what transformations it has undergone, how it has become a kind of Faust Secundus, a kind of second Faust, and in fact in a sometimes highly remarkable style, from year to year: “Around 1900, a not well-fed man of about forty looks at those old sculptures with a strange interest and is suddenly struck by a premonition. Despite his extensive knowledge, he has not yet achieved bourgeois security; since he is half a foreigner, he has the fate of the superfluous. Yet he is ambitious in the greatest style, power-hungry, almost too aware of his abilities – somewhat vain.

Then this man is ascribed all kinds of other characteristics that are supposed to be connected with his lust for power. For example: “He senses and scents in all directions where success is to be found; his appearance” – it is very interesting – “his appearance at that time somewhat resembles that of Napoleon when he was ‘available’ in 1793.”

“At the beginning of his main activity, Faust is at the age given in Dan. 6:1, he is about 62 years old. Just as Darius, mentioned in Dan. 6, Darius creates a tripartite division of functions in his empire (verse 3), so Dr. Faust begins by following the ‘triad of the state powers’...”, and so on. “When Satan tempted the Lord in the wilderness, he also took into account the needs of these three parts by not giving the bread, the miracle and the power, but holding them out as a prospect...”

“Among his followers are the ladies, those unsatisfied ones who suffer from their emptiness and long for something positive or masculine to fill them up. The firm demonic will gives them content and turns them into self-acting power centers that work exactly according to the mechanical formulas implanted in them by suggestion. Particular efforts are made with young people; the master lets them practise dance rhythms and lurkingly monitors them to see who might be brought to ecstasy by the rapid movements. He then selects them as tools for his magical purposes; the rest may just continue to dance and naively believe that they are thereby performing cultural achievements. The false prophet often ponders how he should relate to the church. Initially, he tried to make his system palatable to the more intellectually demanding as “esoteric Catholicism.” The pope, cardinals, archbishops, and prominent church teachers may be subjected to long-distance magical treatment. From the success of this occult influence it will depend whether the false prophet the pliable parts of the church harnessed to his service or will strike against the whole church with the fury of the apocalyptic beast.”

And now the more detailed description, as far as it is given, of what is described by this side about the effectiveness:

Well, there are more descriptions like this. And then comes the following:

“According to the prophecy, when the rule of the Antichrist comes to an end after three years, i.e. in late autumn of 1927, and the false prophet dies in the great battle of Armageddon, he will have reached the exact age of 66.6 years. One should check whether the number of people in Rev. 13:18 means the years of the false prophet's life.”

You see, in this way the lower classes are being worked on! You see that it has been said that it is necessary to wake up. This is not without significance, because on the opposite side, people are very vigilant. There they know the method of how to manipulate all sections of the population in an appropriate way.

As for how to manipulate the middle, the so-called intelligent section of the population, I would like to read another example. It is from the fourth volume of Fritz Mauthner's “Atheism and its History in the Occident”. Perhaps you will be interested in my review, which I granted to the first two volumes of Fritz Mauthner's “Atheism” when the third and fourth volumes – that is, this “Atheism” – had not yet been published; and you can make a curious comparison there. In the fourth volume of Fritz Mauthner's “Atheism” the following can be found: “The concern of the pacifists and freethinkers was not entirely unjustified, that the agony of the world war could trigger a resurgence of medieval popular superstition; only that the epidemic broke out quite differently than the church servants had hoped and their opponents feared. After the first shock, the fourth estate no longer wanted to be driven back into the church by the fear of death; doubt and disbelief had become too strong. But the third estate, the semi-educated middle class, also preferred to grasp at a more recent superstition than at one of the oldest. The tangible effect of the war emergency was mostly a surge of enthusiasm for spiritualism, which may also be called a form of religious need. The number of spiritualists and theosophists increased in England and Germany. Delusion drew new strength from despair. Unconcerned about the fact that history is not a science, prophets arose who predicted the future, as ingenious and as scientifically as Spengler in his Decline of the West, as stupid and as insolent as his vulgar imitators. Of course, the mood was also used by common impostors: A housepainter presented himself as a savior, as the Jesus of Düsseldorf, and is said to have booked an annual income of several million; another savior of the world, a wine traveler, was motivated less by love of money than by love of women and was finally beaten up; yet another “Christ II” made trouble in the Frankfurt am Main area and was expelled from Germany only as a very rich man. Perhaps the Jewish mystic Eliphas Levi (not a Jew by birth), whom Meyrink should have introduced with more humor, also belongs to this group of swindlers. But the fat skimmed off the wallets of miracle-seeking little men and women was skimmed off by Rudolf Steiner, the theosophist who evasively calls himself an anthroposophist, who, when extolling his superhuman gifts of remote viewing with the most brazen pseudoscience, refers to Buddha, Christ, Goethe and everything else of high value and has found considerable favor with the gawky. A refutation of this new Cagliostro would be more difficult for a healthy logic than one might think; the witchcraft is not to be refuted, only laughed at. A strong comedy writer would have to take possession of the material.

And the footnote to this reads:

You see, all sections of the population are well provided for, and anyone who can follow the lies that emanate from there to the powers that cause them, may say that more vigilance is really needed than is found in our ranks and that more interest could actually be developed for what I have to say from time to time about these things. It is hard to believe that hatred of the truth is currently increasing to an extent never seen before in the world and that therefore those whose duty it is to represent the truth might find some understanding when they speak of the need for vigilance.

Now, I do not want to go into the details of this lack of vigilance today, but I did want to give you at least a picture of the current state of those things that are in the works; one can already say: that are in the works. I always have to wait until there is some interest in the things that I have to sprinkle into the lectures as episodes, so that the things do not remain completely unconscious.

The next lecture will be tomorrow at 8 o'clock .

The meeting was opened by the chairman, Dr. Emil Grosheintz, with the following address:

Dear friends.

On behalf of ¹ the board of the Association of the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, I warmly welcome you to our tenth ordinary General Assembly today. We open this General Assembly in a spirit of mourning, because the last day of the year, which would have been reported here today, robbed us of the Goetheanum, the fruit of ten years of work. The first Goetheanum is no more. It is not only we who have lost it, but all of humanity, because it belonged to humanity. We did not build it for ourselves, but for humanity yearning for spiritual truth. The Goetheanum was a place for cultivating the new spiritual knowledge that Rudolf Steiner gave to the world through Anthroposophy, a place of truth. The Goetheanum was a unique and irreplaceable work of art. In the harmony of the spatial design and the harmony of forms and colors, a new realm of beauty revealed itself to the wondering soul. The Goetheanum was an act of universal humanity. People from many different nations built it at a time when the peoples of the world brought misery, death and bondage to each other. It was a work of human love in a world of hatred between nations.

The Goetheanum was a work of Rudolf Steiner. The Goetheanum now belongs to history.

The foundation stone of the Goetheanum was laid on September 20, 1913. Seven years later, in September 1920, the first event took place in it, the first anthroposophical university course.

It was introduced by a simple provisional opening. In his opening speech, Dr. Steiner pointed the way for the School of Spiritual Science by speaking of the synthesis of science and art and religion, how it once existed and how it is to be brought about again through spiritual science.

In addition to numerous events and courses that took place in the adjoining buildings, and many beautiful eurythmy performances, the following took place at the Goetheanum: a second college course; a summer course for English artists in 1921; a pedagogical course in the winter of 1921; the so-called French Week in the summer of 1922; and a science course at Christmas 1922, during which the great misfortune of the fire occurred.

The course and the events that were taking place at the time were not interrupted. The spiritual work continued. This made a certain impression on some people, including the local population. The day after the fire, a respected citizen of Dornach expressed his condolences for the loss of the Goetheanum and said: “No matter what one thinks of the Anthroposophical Society, the hard work and willingness to make sacrifices that the Goetheanum stands for must inspire admiration. But what I admire most,“ he said, ‘is that you have not interrupted your activities despite your great misfortune. And there,’ he said, ‘I had to think of Geibel's verses, which Felix Dahn put forward as a motto in his novel ’A Struggle for Rome'.” And he quoted these verses to me. They refer to those who were defeated in this struggle for Rome. They read: “If there is anything mightier than fate, it is the courage to bear it unwaveringly.”

But, my dear friends, we need more than this passive courage to bear a blow of fate. We must develop an active courage. The destruction of the Goetheanum is a call to action.

Just as the Anthroposophical Society has already done, the Association of the Goetheanum today also expresses its will to build a new Goetheanum and approaches Dr. Steiner with the request to give us and the world a new Goetheanum and to let us participate.

If this is your will, I ask you to rise from your seats.

(All those present rise from their seats.

And now I turn to all those in our movement and ask them to join the Goetheanum Association as members. The cause of our association is your cause. Those who are members of the Goetheanum Association are helping to build it.

On December 31, 1922, the association had 1059 members, compared to 1015 in the previous year. The increase in 1922 is 44 members. Of these 1059 members, 496 are extraordinary and 563 contributing members. Of these, 694 belong to Central Europe, which is weak in currency, and only 365 to Switzerland and the other countries.

Our first task will be to create the necessary building fund, which we are making available to Dr. Steiner. The sum paid to us by the insurance company, which amounts to three million one hundred and eighty-three thousand francs, is not enough for this purpose. Rather, as Dr. Steiner has already informed us, this sum will amount to about half of what is likely to be needed as a total sum for the completion of the work. We have gained experience and times have changed since the first Goetheanum was built. And so the money should be there before construction begins; at least a percentage of it should be there before construction begins.

The initiatives taken so far have also brought in some money, perhaps around 150,000 francs.

Now, at the suggestion of our English friends, an international assembly of delegates will meet here on July 22 and discuss the further financing of the construction. But without the significant efforts of each individual in our movement, the matter will not go forward.

My dear friends! To report to you on the construction work of the past year now that the building is no longer standing would be just as painful as it is fruitless. We will therefore refrain from doing so this year. Our gaze is fixed on the future, our will unswervingly forward.

Minutes of the last general assembly are available. I ask whether

you would like to have them read. If not, I would like to ask our business manager to present the cash report. Mr. Binder will briefly summarize the main expenditures and revenues in the past fiscal year and present the balance sheet that results after deducting the fire damage.

In 1922, the following expenses were incurred:

Construction costs for the Goetheanum, for the expansion of the paths, for loan and mortgage interest, exchange rate losses, depreciation Fr. 371,197.28
General expenses for security, lighting, heating of the building, including maintenance costs. Fr. 116,414.94
= Fr. 487,612.22

On the other hand, the following was received:

Donations......................................Fr. 239,929.34
Loans..............................................Fr. 35,000.--
Membership fees....................................Fr. 24,459.60
Interest income etc.................................Fr. 5,863.35
............................................... = Fr. 305,252.29

From bank reserves, Fr. 182,59,93

The Goetheanum was insured before the fire for...Fr. 5,657,101.39
The fire insurance sum is...........................Fr. 3,500,000.--
so that without taking into account the non-material
values, a fire loss of..............................Fr. 2,157,101.39

Of the fire insurance sum, CHF 3,183,000 is to be paid out, while the remainder of CHF 317,000 is considered to be the estimated value of the concrete base that is still standing.

After taking this depreciation into account, the following

balance sheet as of January 1, 1923:

Assets

Real estate......................Fr. 265,411.47
Goetheanum concrete base............Fr. 317,000.--
Goetheanum adjoining buildings......Fr. 275,469.92
Houses and properties...............Fr. 334,731.67
............................... = Fr. 1,192,613.06
Inventories and materials...........Fr. 145 754.--
Accounts receivable.................Fr. 128,739.85
Banks:
a) Current account...................Fr. 24,598.80
b) Sum insured....................Fr. 3,183,000.--
Cash..................................Fr. 4,656.70
............................... = Fr. 4,679,362.41

Liabilities

Foundation capital.............Fr. 5,471,952.50
(from fire damage)................Fr. 2,157,101.39
............................... = Fr. 3,314,851.11
Loans.............................Fr. 1,022,047.83
Liabilities..........................Fr. 78,463.47
Mortgages...........................Fr. 264 000.--
............................... = Fr. 4,679,362.41

The auditors confirmed that the books were properly kept and requested discharge of the accounts, which was then given by the meeting.

The auditors were reelected for the following year. There being no further business, Dr. Steiner spoke on the following subject: [See p. 146]

• 1. Protocol probably by Helene Finckh. The stenogram is not available.