The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The subject of today's lecture¹³ is one on which widespread confusion prevails. Not long ago I heard a cultured scholar declare that Goethe should be numbered among the mystics, for he had admitted the existence of a dark, inscrutable element, beyond the range of knowledge. And many people would probably agree with that opinion. What indeed is not called mysticism or mystical nowadays? When a person is not clear about something, if his response to it hovers between not-knowing and a dim inkling, he will call it mystical or mysterious. When people are tempted by a certain lack of thought and psychological knowledge to assert that nothing reliable is known about something, and then go on to deny that anyone else may have knowledge of it, as is the wont today, they dismiss it as mystical.

If, however, we study the historical origin of the word, we shall gain a quite different idea of what great men have understood by mysticism and of what they believed it offered them. We shall see that there have been men who, far from regarding that which is obscure and inscrutable as the content of mysticism, have spoken of its goal as attainable only through a higher clarity, a brighter light in the soul; so much so that for them the clarity of science leaves off where the clarity of mysticism begins. That is the conviction of those who believe they have experienced real mysticism.

We find some mysticism in the earliest periods of human evolution, but what was called mysticism in the Mysteries of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Asiatic peoples is so far removed from our conceptual thinking that it is hard to give any idea of mysticism if we go by those old forms of mystical experience.

We can come nearest to present-day concepts if we start with the still fairly recent forms of mysticism found among the German mystics from Meister Eckhart¹⁴ onwards, during the 13th and 14th centuries, up to their culmination in that incomparable mystic, Angelus Silesius.¹⁵ If we examine their mysticism, we find that it sought to reach a true knowledge of the deepest foundations of the world by a purely inward soul-experience; above all, by the liberation of the soul from all external impressions and perceptions, so that the soul would draw back from the outer world and try to plunge into the depths of its own inward life. In other words, a mystic of this type believes that by this means he can find the divine ground of the world, which he would not be able to do if he attempted to analyse natural phenomena, however intensively, and to grasp them with his intellect. His view is that outward sense-impressions form a kind of veil through which human cognition cannot penetrate in its search for the divine foundations of the world. The inward experiences of the soul, however, form a much thinner veil, and it is possible to penetrate through this to the divine ground, which also lies at the foundation of external appearances. This is the mystical way of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler¹⁶ and Suso¹⁷ and other mystics of that century, leading to Angelus Silesius.

We must be clear that these mystics were expecting to find more than only that which could be regarded as the immediate result of their inward search. In the course of this winter's lectures we have dealt with this inward search in all its manifold aspects. We saw that if we look into what is rightly called man's inner being, we come first to the darkest depths of the soul, where the soul is still subject to emotions of fear, terror, anxiety and hope, and to the whole gamut of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. We called this part of the soul the sentient soul. We went on to distinguish in these dark foundations of soul experience what we call the intellectual soul, which is achieved when the ego assimilates external impressions and quietly allows that which emerges in the sentient soul to live itself out and find equilibrium. We said also that inner truth, as we may call it, arises in the intellectual soul. When the ego then works further on what it has gained on its way to the intellectual soul, it raises itself to the consciousness soul, where for the first time a clear knowledge of the ego is possible, and where man is led out from inner life to a real knowledge of the world. If we keep before us these three members of the soul's life, we have the outline of what we find when we sink ourselves directly into our inner being; and we find out how the ego works on the three soul members.

Those mystics who sought for knowledge in the way described, believed that they could find something else through this immersion in the depths of the soul. For the inward experiences of the soul's life were for them only a veil they had to pass through in order to reach the source of being. Above all, they believed that if they attained to that source, they would themselves undergo, as a further inward experience, what is presented in external history as the life and death of Christ.

Now when this mystical descent into the soul occurs, even if only in the mediaeval sense, the process is as follows. The mystic has in front of him the external world, with its realms of light and colour and all the other impressions it makes on his senses, and he works on all this with his intellect. But he remains in thrall to the external world and cannot penetrate through its appearances to their source. His soul retains conceptual images of the outer world, and above all it retains all its experiences, whether as pleasure or pain, sympathy or antipathy, from the impressions it receives. A human being's ego, with his interests and his entire inner life, always directs him towards the outer world and the impressions the latter makes upon him. When, therefore, a mystic first attempts to turn away from the outer world, he has to reckon with everything that the outer world has engendered in his soul from morning till evening. So at first his inner life appears to him as a repetition, a reflected image, of outer life.

Is the soul left empty, then, when it exerts itself to forget everything reflected within it from the outer world, to obliterate all impressions and conceptual images drawn from that world? The true mystical experience depends on the fact that the soul has other possibilities, so that when it banishes not only its memories but its feelings of sympathy and antipathy, it still has some content. The mystic feels that impressions of the outer world, with their brightly coloured pictures and their effects on the soul, have the result of suppressing something which exists in the soul's hidden depths. The mystic feels that when he is open to the external world, its life is like a powerful light which outshines and blots out the finer experiences of the soul. But when all impressions from the outer world are erased, the inner spark, as Eckhart calls it, shines forth. He then experiences in the soul something which had previously seemed not to be there, for it was imperceptible in face of the dazzle of the outer world.

For the sake of clarity, the mystic then asks if what he experiences in the soul is comparable with what he encounters in the outer world. No: there is a radical difference. Our relation to things in the outer world is such that we cannot penetrate into their inwardness, for they show us only their outer sides. When we perceive colours and sounds, it is possible for us to realise that behind them lies something which for the moment we must regard as their hidden side; but with the experiences that arise in the soul it is different once we have obliterated the impressions and conceptual images of the outer world: we cannot say that they show us only their outer side, for we are within them and are part of them. And if we have the gift for opening ourselves to the inner light, they show themselves to us in their true being, and we see them to be entirely different from anything we encounter in the outer world. For the outer world is subject everywhere to growth and decline, to flowering and withering, to birth and death. And when we observe what reveals itself in the soul when the little spark begins to shine, we see that all ideas of growth and decline, of birth and death, are not applicable to it, for here we encounter something independent; and we see that concepts which belong to the outer world, including that of outside and inside, are not relevant to it. Hence it is no longer the surface or outer side of things that we grasp, but the thing itself in its true being.

It is precisely through this inward knowledge that we gain assurance of the imperishable element in ourselves and of its kinship with what we must think of as the spirit, the primal basis of everything material. This experience leads the mystic to feel that he must overcome and kill all his former experiences; that his ordinary soul-life must die, and then his real soul, the victor over birth and death, will arise within him. This awakening of the inner kernel of the soul, after the death of ordinary soul-life, is experienced by the mystic as an inner resurrection, an analogue of the historical life, death and resurrection of Christ. Thus he sees the Christ-event taking place in his soul and spirit as an inner mystical experience.

If we trace out this mystical path, we find that it must lead to what may be called a unity of all experience. For it belongs to the nature of our soul-life that we pass from the multiplicity of sense-perceptions, the flow and ebb of perceptions and feelings and the rich variety of thoughts, to a simplification; for the ego, the centre-point of our life, is always working to create unity in our entire life of soul. It is clear, then, that when the mystic treads the path of soul-experiences, they come before him in such a way that everything manifold and multiple strives towards the unity prescribed by the ego. In all mystics, accordingly, we find an outlook which could be called spiritual monism. When the mystic raises himself to the knowledge that the inner being of the soul has qualities radically different from those found in the external world, he experiences in his inner being the consonance of the soul's kernel with the divine-spiritual ground of the world, which he therefore represents as a unity.

What I have now been saying should be regarded simply as descriptive. It is impossible to reproduce in a modern sense what the mystic reveals except in the form of individual mystical experience passed through by the soul as its most intimate concern. Then the strange things told us by the mystic can be compared with one's own experience. But external criticism is not possible if one has no personal experience, because another person's description of individual experience has to be relied on. But from the basic standpoint of these lectures we can form a clear picture of the mystic's path. It is essentially a path into the inner life, and the history of human development shows it to be one of the paths taken by the human spirit in its search for enlightenment. Various opinions as to which is the right path may be held, but if we are to give a clear answer to the question “What is mysticism?”, we must throw some light on the other path that can be pursued.

The mystic's path leads him to unity, to one divine-spiritual Being. This he does by following the path which leads into his inner being where the ego gives him the unity of soul experience. The other path is the one that the human spirit has always taken when it seeks to pierce through the veil of the external world to the foundations of existence. Here, in conjunction with many other things, it has been above all the human thinking which has tried to reach a deeper understanding of what lies behind the surface of things through that which can be perceived by the senses and grasped by ordinary intelligence. Whither does such a path necessarily lead, in contrast to the goal of mysticism? If all relevant relationships are taken into account, it must lead from the manifold variety of external phenomena to the conclusion that a similar multiplicity of spiritual grounds must exist. In modern times such men as Leibniz¹⁸ and Herbart,¹⁹ who followed this way of thought, have seen that one cannot explain the wealth of external phenomena in terms of any kind of underlying unity. In brief, they found the true antithesis—monadology—to all mysticism. They reached the view that the world is founded on the activities of a multiplicity of monads, or spiritual beings.

Thus Leibnitz, the great thinker of the 17th and 18th century, said to himself: When we look at what comes to meet us in space and time, we go astray if we believe that it all springs from a unity; it must come from many unities working together. And this reciprocal activity of monads, a world of monads or spiritual beings, brings about the phenomena perceived by human senses.

I cannot go further into this today, but a deeper study of spiritual development would show that all those who have sought for unity on the outward path were subject to an illusion, for they projected outwards, like a sort of shadow, the unity which is experienced inwardly in mysticism, and they believed that this unity was the basis of the external world and could be apprehended by thinking. Healthy thinking, however, finds no unity in the outer world, but recognises that its manifold variety arises from the inter-working of a variety of beings, or monads. Mysticism leads to unity because the ego works in our inner being as a single centre of the soul. The path through the external world leads by necessity to multiplicity, plurality, monadology, and thus to the view that many spiritual beings must work together in order to engender our world, while human knowledge of the world is achieved through a multiplicity of organs and observations.

Now we come to a point of far-reaching importance which receives all to little attention in the history of thought. Mysticism leads to unity; but its recognition of the divine ground of the world as a unity derives from the nature of the ego, the inner constitution of the soul.

The ego sets its seal of unity when the mystic looks up to the Divine Spirit. Contemplation of the external world leads to a multiplicity of monads. But it is only our way of observing the outer world and the way in which it comes to meet us that lead to multiplicity and which therefore prompted Leibniz and Herbart to postulate multiplicity as the foundation of the world. Deeper research leads to a realisation that unity and multiplicity are concepts inapplicable to the divine-spiritual ground of the world, for we cannot characterise it as either a unity or a multiplicity. We must say that the divine-spiritual transcends these concepts and cannot be fathomed by them.

This is a principle which throws light on the supposed conflict between monism and pluralism, so often portrayed as opposites in philosophical debates. If the disputants would only realise that their concepts are inadequate for any approach to the divine ground of the world, they might come to see the subject of their debate in the right light.

Now we have learnt what the essence of real mysticism is. It is an inner experience of such a kind that it leads the mystic to real knowledge. He will not be justified in regarding the unity he experiences as objective truth, for its appearance of unity derives from his own ego, but he may truly say that he experiences the substantiality of spirit as one living within it.

If we pass on from this general account of mysticism to individual mystics, we often encounter facts which are called in evidence against mysticism by its opponents. The inner experience of individuals takes various forms, so that the experiences of one mystic may not agree entirely with those of another. But if two persons have different experiences of something, it by no means follows that their reports are untrue. If one person sees a tree from the right and another sees it from the left, and each describes it from his own point of view, it will be the same tree and both descriptions may be correct. This simple example will show why the soul-experiences of mystics differ: after all, a mystic's inner life does not come before him as a complete blank. However much it may be his ideal to obliterate external experiences and to withdraw his attention from them completely, they will yet leave a trace in his soul, and this makes a difference. The mystic will be subject also to some influence from the character of the nation from which he descends. Even if he casts out from his soul every external experience he has had, his inner experience will still have to be described in words and concepts drawn from his own life. Two mystics may experience exactly the same thing, but they will describe it differently as a result of their earlier lives. It is only if we are able through our own personal experience to allow for these individual variations in description and representation that we can come to recognise that fundamentally the reality of mystical experience is always the same. It is just as though we were to photograph a tree from various angles: the photographs would differ but they would all be of the same tree.

There is another point, which might in a sense be considered an objection against mystical experience, and since I must speak quite objectively, with no bias one way or the other, I have to say that this objection is valid and applies to all forms of mysticism. Just because mystical experience is so intimate and inward, and has an individual character derived from the mystic's earlier years, it is extraordinarily difficult for anything he says about his mystical life, closely bound up as it must be with his own soul, to be rightly understood or assimilated by another soul. The most intimate aspects of mysticism must always remain intimate and very hard to communicate, however earnestly one may try to understand and enter into what is said. The point is that two mystics, if both are far enough advanced, may have the same experience—and anyone well-disposed will then recognise that they are speaking of the same thing—but they will have passed through different experiences during their earlier years, and this will give their mysticism an individual colouring. Hence the expressions used by a mystic and his style of utterance, in so far as they derive from his pre-mystical life, will always remain somewhat incomprehensible unless we make an effort to understand his personal background and so come to see why he speaks as he does. This, however, will divert our attention from what is universally valid to the personality of the mystic himself, and this tendency can be observed in the history of mysticism.

With the deepest mystics, especially, we must set aside any idea that the knowledge they have gained can be imparted and assimilated by other people. Mystical knowledge cannot at all easily be made part of general human knowledge. But this only goes to strengthen our interest in the personality of the mystic, and it is endlessly attractive to study him in so far as the universal human image is reflected in him. What the mystic describes and values only because it leads him to the foundations and sources of existence will in itself have little interest for us as regards the objective nature of the world; what interests us will be the subjective side of it and its bearing on the mystic as an individual. In studying mysticism, accordingly, we shall find value in precisely what the mystic tries to overcome—in the personal, the immediate, his attitude to the world. Certainly we can learn a great deal about the depths of human nature if we observe the history of mankind from the aspect of the mystic as it were, but it will be very hard for us—this can never be too strongly emphasised—to find in a mystic's words as he expresses them anything that can have direct validity for us.

Mysticism is the opposite of monadology, or pluralism, which derives from observing and reflecting on the external world which all men have in common. The resulting systems of the latter may contain error upon error, but they can be discussed and something made of them from whatever point of development the individual has reached.

The mysticism I have been describing here can thus be extremely attractive, but we shall recognise its limits quite objectively if we allow our souls to assimilate what has just been said about it.

Further light is thrown on mysticism if we assess it in relation to the method of spiritual science, a method drawn from the deeper levels of present-day spiritual life with the aim of penetrating to the primal foundations of existence. If a subject gives difficulty because of the subtlety of its ideas, the best way of understanding it is often to compare it with some related subject.

You have often heard it said in these lectures that there is a path of ascent to the higher worlds. In a certain sense it is a threefold path. We have described the outward path, and then the inward path taken by the mediaeval mystics, and we have defined the limits of the latter. Now we will turn to what can be called the proper path of spiritual science, or spiritual research.

We have already seen that this way of knowledge does not simply require the student to take either the outward path, leading to the spiritual basis of the sense-world and therefore to plurality, or the inward path leading to the deeper foundations of one's own soul and finally to the mystical unity of the world. Spiritual science says that a man is not bound to follow only those paths which his own immediate knowledge opens for him, but that he possesses hidden, slumbering faculties of cognition, and that starting from them he can find other paths than the two just mentioned.

A person who follows either of these two paths remains as he already is and has become; he may seek to pierce the veil of the sense world and penetrate to the foundations of existence; or he may obliterate external impressions and allow the inner spark to shine out. But in spiritual science it is fundamental that man need not remain as he is today, with his existing faculties of knowledge. Just as man has evolved to his present stage, so, by using the appropriate method, he can develop faculties of knowledge higher than those he has now.

If we are to compare this method with the mystical mode of knowledge, we must say: If we eliminate outer impressions we can discover the inner spark, and see how it shines when all else is extinguished, but we are still only drawing on what is already there. Spiritual science is not content with that; it comes to the spark, but does not stop there. It seeks to develop methods which will turn the little spark into a much stronger light. We can take the outward path or the inward path, but since we are to develop new powers of cognition, we take neither path immediately. The modern form of spiritual scientific research is distinguished both from mediaeval mysticism and from pluralism and also from the old teachings of the Mysteries, by developing inner faculties of cognition in such a way that the outward path and the inward path are brought together. Thus we follow a path that leads equally to both goals.

This is possible because the development of higher faculties by the methods of spiritual science leads man through three stages of knowledge. The first stage, which proceeds from ordinary knowledge and goes beyond it is called Imagination; the second stage is called Inspiration, and the third is called Intuition, in the true sense of the word. How is the first stage attained and what is accomplished in the soul for higher faculties to arise? The way in which they are developed will show you how pluralism and mysticism are transcended along this path. The example most helpful for an understanding of Imagination, or imaginative cognition, has already been mentioned more than once: it is drawn from the methods applied by the spiritual scientist to himself. It is one of many such examples and is best given in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil.

The teacher who wants to educate a pupil in the higher faculties leading to Imagination would say: “Look at the plant; it grows up out of the soil and unfolds leaf by leaf until it is a flower. Compare it with man as he stands before you. Man has something more than the plant, for the world is reflected in his ideas, feelings and sensations; he excels the plant in possessing human consciousness. But he has had to pay for this consciousness by absorbing into himself on his way towards becoming man, passions, impulses and desires which may lead him into error, wrong and evil. The plant grows according to its natural laws; it unfolds its being according to these laws, and it stands before us, pure, with its green sap. Unless we indulge in fancies we cannot attribute to it any desires, passions or impulses which could divert it from the right path. If now we observe the blood as it circulates through man, the blood which is the external expression of human consciousness, of the human ego, and contrast it with the green chlorophyll sap permeating the plant, we shall realize that this streaming, pulsating blood is the expression as much of man's rise to a higher stage of consciousness as it is of the passions and impulses which drag him down.

“Then”—the teacher might continue—“imagine that man develops further; that through his ego he overcomes error, evil and ugliness, everything which tries to drag him down to evil; that he purifies and refines his passions and affections. Picture an ideal which man strives to realise, when his blood will no longer be the expression of any passions, but only of his inner mastery of all that might drag him down. His red blood may then be compared with what the green sap has become in the red rose. Just as the red rose shows us the plant sap in all its purity, and yet at a higher stage than it had reached in the plant, so the red blood of man, when purified and refined, can show what man becomes when he has mastered everything that might drag him down.”

These are the feelings and images that the teacher can evoke in the pupil's mind and soul. If the pupil is not a dry stick, if he is able to enter with his feelings into the whole secret symbolised by this comparison, his soul will be stirred and he will experience something which will come before his spiritual vision as a symbolic picture, The picture can be of the Rose Cross: the black cross symbolising what has been slain in man's lower nature and the roses representing the red blood, so purified and refined that it has become a pure expression of his higher soul-nature. Thus the black cross wreathed with red roses becomes a symbolical summing-up of what the soul experiences in this dialogue between teacher and pupil.

If the pupil has opened his soul to all the feelings and images which can make the Rose Cross a true symbol for him; if he does not merely claim to have placed the Rose Cross before his inner vision, but if with pain and struggle he has won through to a heightened experience of its essence, he will know that this picture, or similar ones, call forth something in his soul—not merely the little spark but a new power of cognition which enables him to look at the world in a new way. Thus he has not remained as he formerly was, but has raised his soul to a further stage of development. And if he does this again and again, he will finally attain to Imagination, which shows him that in the outer world there is more than meets the eye.

Now let us see how this way of knowledge came into being. Did we say to ourselves: We will take the outward path and seek for the foundations of things? To a certain extent, yes. We go out to the external world, but we are not searching for the basis of things, or for molecules and atoms; we are not concerned with what the outer world sets directly before us, but we retain something from it. The black cross could not arise in the soul if there were no wood in the world; the soul could not imagine a red rose unless it had received an impression of one from the world around it. Hence we cannot say, as the mystic does, that we have obliterated everything external and turned our attention away entirely from the outer world. We submit to the outer world and take from it something that it alone can give, but we do not take it just as it comes, for the Rose Cross is not found in nature. How was it, then, that rose and wood, drawn from the outer world, were combined into a symbolic picture? It was the work of our own souls. The experience that comes to us when we devote ourselves to the outer world, not merely staring at it but becoming absorbed in it, and what we can learn from comparing plant with man as he develops—all this we have made into an inner mystical experience. But we have not taken immediate possession of our experience, as the mystic does; we sacrifice it to the outer world, and, with the help of what the world can give outwardly and the soul inwardly, we build up a symbolic picture in which outer and inner mystical life are fused. The picture stands before us in such a way that it does not lead directly either to the outer world or to the inner world, but it works as a force. If we place it before our souls in meditation, it creates a new spiritual eye, and then we can see into a spiritual world which previously we could not find, either in the inner world or in the outer. And then we can discern that what lies at the basis of the external world, and can now be experienced through imaginative cognition, is identical with what can be found in our own inner being.

If now we ascend to the stage of Inspiration, we have to strip away the content of our symbolic picture. We have to do something very similar to the procedure of the mystic who takes the inward path. We have to forget the rose and the cross, to banish the whole picture from our mind's eye. However difficult this may be, it has to be done. In order to bring before us inwardly the symbolical comparison between plant and man, our soul had to exert itself. Now we have to concentrate our attention on this activity, on what the soul had to do in order to call up the image of the black cross as a symbol of what has to be overcome in man. When we thus deepen ourselves mystically in the experience of the soul during this activity, we come to Inspiration, or inspirational cognition.

The awakening of this new faculty not only brings the appearance of the little spark in our inner being: we see it lighting up as a powerful force of cognition, and through it we experience something which reveals itself as closely related to our inner being and yet wholly independent of it. For we have seen how our soul-activity is not only an inner process but has exercised itself on something external. So we have here a knowledge of our inner being, as a residue of mysticism, which is also knowledge of the outer world.

Now we come to a task which is opposed to that of the mystic. We have to do something similar to what ordinary natural science does: we have to go forth into the external world. This is difficult, but essential for rising to the stage of Intuition, or intuitive cognition.

Our task now is to divert our attention from our own activity, forget what we have done to bring the Rose Cross before our inner sight. If we are patient and carry out the exercises long enough and in the right way, we shall see that we are left with something which we know for certain is entirely independent of our own inner experience and has no subjective colouring, and yet shows by its objective being that it is akin to the centre of the human being, the ego. Thus in order to reach intuitive knowledge we go out from ourselves and yet come to something which is closely akin to our inner being. So we rise from our own inward experience to the spiritual, which we no longer experience within ourselves but in the external world. Thus on the path of spiritual science, through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, we overcome the shadow-sides both of pluralism and ordinary mysticism.

Now we can give an answer to the question—What is mysticism? It is an endeavour by the human soul to find the divine-spiritual source of existence through immersing itself in its own inner being. Fundamentally, spiritual-scientific cognition also must take this mystical path, but it is well aware that it must first prepare itself and not set out prematurely. Mysticism is thus an enterprise which springs from a justified urge in the human soul, thoroughly justified in principle, but undertaken too early if the soul has not first sought to make progress in imaginative cognition. If we try to deepen our ordinary life through mysticism, there is a danger that we may not have made ourselves sufficiently free and independent of ourselves, so that we are unable to form a picture of the world not coloured by our personality. If we rise to the stage of Inspiration, we have poured out our inner being into something drawn from the outer world; and then we have gained the right to be a mystic. All mysticism should therefore be undertaken at the proper stage of human development. Harm is done if we try to achieve mystical knowledge before we are ready for it.

In justified mysticism, accordingly, spiritual science can recognise a stage which enables us to understand the real aim and intention of spiritual-scientific research. There is hardly anything from which we can learn as much in this respect as we can from a devoted study of the mystics. It must not be thought that the spiritual scientist, when he recognises something justified in mysticism, is denying the need for further progress. Mysticism is justified only if it is raised to a certain level of development, so that its methods yield results which are not merely subjective but give valid expression to truths concerning the spiritual world.

We need not say much about the dangers which a premature devotion to mystical methods can incur. They involve a descent into the depths of the human soul before the mystic has prepared himself in such a way that his inner being can grow out into the external world. He will often then be inclined to shut himself off from the outer world, and fundamentally this is only a subtle, refined form of egotism. This often applies to mystics who turn away from the outer world and indulge in those feelings of rapture, exaltation and liberation which flood into their souls when this golden mood pervades their inner life. This egotism can be overcome if the ego is constrained to pass outside itself and make its activity flow into the external world by the creation of symbols. In this way an imaginative symbolism leads to an experience of truth which strips away egotism. The danger incurred by a mystic who strives after knowledge too early in his development is that he may become an eccentric or a refined egoist.

Mysticism is justified, and what Angelus Silesius says is true:

If you transcend yourself in God's prevailing,
Then in your spirit will ascension reign!²⁰

It is true that by developing his soul man attains not only to his own inner being but to the spiritual kingdoms which underlie the outer world. But he must take in full earnest the work of transcending himself, and this must not be confused with a mere brooding within himself just as he is. He must take seriously the words of Angelus Silesius, both the first line and the second. We fail to do this if we withdraw from any aspect of the divine revelation; we let God hold sway only if we are able to sacrifice our inner being to all that can flow into us as revelation from the outer world. If we bring this way of thinking into relation with our spiritual-scientific cognition, we shall be taking the second line in the right sense. We let the divine-spiritual ground of the outer and inner worlds hold sway in us, and only then can we hope that we shall be “on Heaven's way.” This means that we shall come to a spiritual realm which is coloured neither by our own inner world nor by the outer world—a realm which has the same ground as the infinite world of stars shining in on us, as the atmosphere which envelops the earth, as the green plant-cover, as the rivers flowing into the sea; while the same divine-spiritual element lives in our thinking, feeling and willing and permeates our inner and outer worlds.

These examples will show that to read a saying such as this one by Angelus Silesius is not enough; we must take it up at the right stage, when we are first able to understand it truly. Then we shall see that mysticism, because it has the right kernel, can indeed lead us to the point where we shall be ripe for learning gradually to see into spiritual realms, and that mysticism in the highest and truest sense can make real for us what can be found in the beautiful words of Angelus Silesius:

When you raise yourself above yourself and truly let the divine spiritual ground of worlds hold sway in you, you will tread the heavenly way to the divine-spiritual sources of existence.

• 13. On this subject and the mystics mentioned in the lecture cf. also Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Multimedia Publishing Corp., New York, 1980.
• 14. Meister Eckhart, 1260–1327.
• 15. Angelus Silesius, 1624–1677.
• 16. Johannes Tauler, c. 1300–1361.
• 17. Heinrich Suso, c. 1300–1366.
• 18. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, 1646–1716. Cf. for example his Monadology, a short treatise which he wrote in 1714 (without title) as a summary of his philosophy of unities.
• 19. Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841. Philosopher and pedagogue.
• 20. Angelus Silesius, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Book 4, Verse 56.

Yesterday I tried to describe how the first part of a lecture on the threefold social order could be dealt with in the case of a certain audience; I called attention to the fact that it is above all necessary to call forth a feeling for the special character of the spiritual life that stands independently on its own. In the second part it will be a matter of making it even comprehensible to present-day humanity that there can be something like a democratic-political connection that has to strive for equality. For it is actually a fact—and you must take this into consideration when preparing for such a lecture—that modern man has no feeling at all for a state structure that is built upon rights as upon its very foundation. This part, the political part referring to the state, is especially difficult to deal with within Swiss conditions. It will have to be specially emphasized that lecturers, who want to represent the threefold social order within Swiss conditions, proceed from the thus given Swiss conditions, and that in the middle part concerning the political, public life, they take into consideration how one must speak out of the Swiss context. After all, generally it is like this: Because of the conditions of the recent development of humanity, public life as such, which was to express itself in the life of rights, has in the main disappeared. What expresses and lives in the configuration of the state, is really a chaotic union of the spiritual elements of human existence and the economic elements. One could say that in the modern states the spiritual elements and the economic elements have gradually become mixed together; whereas the actual political life has fallen away in between, has in fact vanished.

This is particularly noticeable within the conditions of Switzerland. We are dealing there everywhere with a seeming democratization of the spiritual life, impossible in its actual formulations, and a democratization of economic life and the fact that the public believes that this apparent democratic mixture of the spiritual and the economic life is a democracy. Since people have formed their concepts of democracy out of this mixture, since they therefore have an absolute illusory concept of democracy, it is so difficult to speak of true democracy particularly to the Swiss. Actually, the Swiss know least of all about real democracy.

In Switzerland, one thinks about how to democratize the schools. This is about the same as if one were supposed to think about and gain an idea out of real, true concepts on how to turn a boot into a good head covering. In a similar manner, the so-called democratic political concepts are treated. It serves no purpose to speak of these matters in a—let me say—pussy-footing manner in order to speak politely to a mainly Swiss audience; for then we could not understand each other. Politeness in such matters can never lead to an understanding. Well, just because of this it is so necessary to discuss the concept of rights and the equality of men in face of a people like the Swiss nation.

One has to accustom oneself to speak differently in each locality if one wants to be active as a lecturer. When, as was the case beginning in April 1919, one spoke about the threefold social order in Germany, one spoke under totally different conditions from those here in Switzerland, and also completely different conditions than those under which one can speak in England or in America about the threefold order. Especially in that spring, in April 1919, directly after the German revolution, everybody in Germany, the proletarian as well as the middle class—the first naturally in a more revolutionary, the second in a more resigned manner—were convinced of the fact that something new would have to come. One actually spoke into this feeling, this mood, that something new had to come. One spoke at that time to relatively prepared, receptive people; naturally, one could speak in Germany quite differently from the way one could speak there today. A whole world lies between today and that spring of 1919 in Germany as well. Today, one can at most hope to call forth some sort of idea by means of something resembling the threefold order of how the spiritual life as such can be structured independently—especially how it would have to be formulated under the conditions presently existing in Germany today, and how, under certain conditions, the inner-political life of rights within the state could be constituted. In Germany today, one naturally cannot speak of a formulation of the economic life completely in the sense of the threefold order, for the economic life in Germany is in fact something that is under rules of duress, under pressure and such as that. It is something that cannot move freely, that cannot conceive ideas concerning its own free mobility. This is quite obvious in the completely different form of life of, for example, the Futurum and the Kommende Tag. The Kommende Tag exists as if in a strait-jacket, and its task is to function under such conditions; the Futurum must work under Swiss conditions in the way it develops,—conditions of which we shall speak further directly. Therefore, a speech must be formulated in different ways depending on whether it is delivered in Switzerland, Germany, or even at different times. Again, one would have to speak completely differently in England or in America. What can be accomplished from here, in Europe, in regard to these two countries, can only be a sort of substitute. It is alright, for example, if “The Threefold Social Order” is translated, it is fine if the book is widely distributed, but, as I have said from the beginning, in the final analysis the really effective way would be if the ideas of this book were set down in a totally different style for America and England. For both Switzerland and Central Europe, it can be taken literally word for word, the way it was written down. But for England and America the ideas would indeed have to be rendered in a completely different form because in those countries one addresses people who basically have the opposite attitude of what existed, for instance, among Germans in April of 1919. In Germany, the opinion prevailed that something new would have to come and to begin with it would suffice if one knew what this consisted of. One didn't have the mental strength to comprehend it but one had the feeling that one ought to know what this sensible innovation might be. Naturally, in all of England and America nothing like this feeling exists anywhere. The only concern there is how to hold on to and save the old traditions. The only worry is how to properly secure the past because the old values are good, so one thinks, and one must by no means shake the traditional foundations!

I am certainly aware that the above can be countered with the statement that there are so many progressive movements in the Western hemisphere. Still, all these progressive movements, regardless of whether their inner content is new, are reactionary and conservative insofar as their management is concerned. The feeling that things cannot continue the way they have gone 'til now, has to be called into being over there in the West in the first place.

This can certainly be noticed by individual examples. Let us take a terrible, horrible, I could say the worst problem that could have arisen from a purely human standpoint, the question of starvation in Russia. Although the views are ever so chaotic within Germany, even though for reasons of agitation one acts contrary to what would be sensible, and although, out of humane reasons, homage is paid to pity in a matter-of-fact manner,—and naturally, we are not saying anything against pity holding sway,—within Germany, at least in some circles, one is finally more or less reaching the conclusion that it is nonsense for the whole course of humanity's evolution to do something for the starvation of Russia in the form of subsidies, by gifts, as it were, from the West. People are getting the idea that this is quite certainly demanded even from a humane standpoint, but that what is done in this direction is so self-evident that nobody should say that it has anything to do with the tasks posed today by the starvation conditions in Russia. In the West, only a few theorists—but then only on the basis of something theoretical—might arrive at such views. It is therefore natural that one must first call forth a feeling in the West for the fact that the world needs a new form, a reformation.

Switzerland's position during the dreadful catastrophe of recent times (the First World War) was such that it only participated in a theoretical way, namely by means of journalistic theory in the events, also by means of what influenced the cultural and economic conditions from outside. The Swiss population therefore has no actual feeling at all, neither of the fact that something new should come into being, nor that the old ought to remain. If today, depending on one or the other party consideration, a Swiss speaks about something new having to come into being, or something old having to remain, one has the feeling: He only tells one what he has heard, heard on the one hand from Central Europe, on the other from England and the West. He only speaks of what has reached his ears, not of what he has actually experienced. This is why it appears so like the Swiss, when those individuals, who don't like to engage themselves to the right or to the left—and leading Swiss are very often like this today,—that such people say: Well, when this happens, it happens in this way, and when the other takes place, it occurs that way! If something new comes into being, matters take their course thusly, if the old remains, matters run that way!—One figures out, as it were, what one must put on one or the other side of the scale.

It is like this: When one tries to make somebody in Switzerland take an interest in something that is bitterly needed for the world today, one can become quite desperate, for it doesn't really move him at all, for it bounces right back because in reality his heart is not in it. It is too distasteful to him for him to become interested, and he has too little experience concerning these matters for them to become in some way appealing to his sympathy. He wants to have his peace. On the other hand, he wants to be a Swiss. This signifies: If all sorts of progressive reports that include “freedom” and “democracy” resound across the border, and since one has through many centuries called oneself democratic, one cannot turn around and say that one doesn't want democracy! In short, one really has the feeling that people in Switzerland have an exceedingly well-built canal between the right and the left ear, so that everything that goes in one side goes out on the other without having reached common sense and the heart.

One will have to at least take hold at those points where it can be shown that a political system like that of Switzerland is really something quite special. It is indeed something quite special. For, first of all, Switzerland is something like a gravity-point of the world—which was already noticeable during the war, if one wanted to take notice of it. Particularly its non-alliance in regard to the various world conditions could be utilized by Switzerland to achieve free, independent judgment and actions in regard to its surroundings. The world is literally waiting for the Swiss to note in their heads what they note in their pockets. In their pockets they notice that the franc has not been affected by the rise and fall and corruption of currency. The Swiss realize that the whole world revolves around the Swiss franc. That this is also the case in a spiritual regard is something the Swiss don't notice at all. Just as they know how to value the unchanging franc, which, as it were, has become the regulator of currency the world over, the Swiss should learn to understand their independent position, brought about by world conditions, whereby Switzerland could indeed be a kind of lever for world conditions. It is therefore necessary that one makes this comprehensible to them.

It is almost similar to the way one had to speak at one time about Austria. People who knew something about such matters in Austria have often pondered the question why this Austria, which only had centrifugal tendencies, remained in existence, why it didn't split apart. In the 1880's and in the '90's, I never said anything else but: What occurs in Austria itself has to begin with no significance for the cohesiveness or the splitting apart (of the state structure), what happens around it, does. Because the others—Germany, Russia, Italy, Turkey, and those interested in Turkey, France and Switzerland itself—because these political systems that surround Austria on all sides do not let Austria split apart, and instead hold it centrally together for the reason that each (country) begrudged the other a part of it! Each took pains that the other would not acquire anything: by these means Austria held together. It was held together from outside. One could clearly see this if one had an eye for such things. Only when this mutual watch of the surrounding powers was obscured in the World War by the smoke of the cannons, only then did Austria naturally split apart. Basically, this picture says it all.

Well, it is similar in the case of Switzerland, yet it is different. All around, there are all sorts of diverse interests, but these interests left out one small spot where they do not confront each other. And today, where there is the life of the world economy, of the cultural life, matters are such that this small spot is maintained by virtue of being something quite special. What does it represent? It is something that is held together within its borders by purely political conditions. You can see this from the history of Switzerland. Swiss history is seemingly completely political, just as Swiss thinking is seemingly completely democratic. It is the same, however, in politics in Switzerland as I explained it earlier concerning democracy. It is a form of politics that is no politics; on a small spot of the world it governs the cultural and the economic life, but in reality is not politically active. Compare what is politics in Switzerland and what it is elsewhere! Occasionally, one or the other matter must be done in a political sense, because one must enter into correspondence with other countries. But genuine Swiss politics—you would have to turn things upside-down, if you wanted to discover real Swiss politics. That doesn't really exist. But this makes it evident that here a national configuration was created in which the cultural and the economic life are governed in a political sense, but in which there actually does not exist a true feeling, a true experience of the existence of rights.

Therefore, it is a matter of especially emphasizing here that rights are something that cannot be defined, as red or blue cannot be defined, and that rights need to be experienced in their self-evident quality, something that must be experienced when a person, who has become of age, becomes conscious of himself as a human being. Therefore, it would be a matter of trying to work out this human relationship of feelings and sensations in the life of rights, in the political life for Swiss conditions, to show that equality must dwell in the individual person if there is to be a life of rights. For it is Switzerland that is actually called upon—and I would like to say that the angels of the whole world look upon Switzerland to watch whether the right things take place here, to create a system of rights by letting go, freeing the cultural and the economic life; for Switzerland is, if I may put it this way, quite virginal in regard to the political life.

Roman jurisprudence, which moved in a quite different way into France and Germany and the other European countries, was really stopped by the Swiss mountains for the hearts of men. It only moved into external elements, not into the feelings of men. Therefore, this is virginal soil for rights, soil on which everything can be created. If only people will come to the realization what infinite good luck it signifies to be able to live here between the mountains, to be able to have a will of their own, independent of the whole world that revolves around this tiny country! Just because of world conditions, the elements of rights can be brought out here, worked purely out of the human being.

Now I have indicated to you how one must take into consideration the particular locality, the specific area for the preparations of such a lecture, how one must be completely sure within oneself about what the essence of the Swiss character is. Naturally, I can only outline it now; but anybody who wants to lecture in Switzerland should really try hard to fully understand what specific form the Swiss character consists of.

Now it is true, you might say: We are, after all, Swiss—just as the English could say we are English—and you want to tell us how a Swiss is to become acquainted with the Swiss character, and what all an Englishman might not have of such feelings, and so on.—Certainly, one can say that. But those who today belong to the educated class, nowhere have a truly experienced education, an education that has emerged out of the directness of experience. This is the reason why, especially in reference to rights, this direct experience must be specifically pointed out.

With this we arrive at a consideration of how human beings have gradually come into the mutual, social relationships in modern civilization in the area, where rights should really develop. Rights should develop from man to man. Anything else, all parliamentary debates, are basically only a surrogate for what should take its course from one man to the next in a truly correct realm of rights.

If one now ponders the area of rights, one has the opportunity—but now in a more realistic manner—to go into what the concepts of the proletariat consist of and the feelings of the bourgeois. But now, one can lead what the proletariat has developed in its concepts in a more realistic way into the feelings of the bourgeois. I say: concepts of the proletariat, feelings of the bourgeois. The explanation for it you can find in my Towards Social Renewal.

Out of the four concepts, which I developed here yesterday, the proletariat has certainly evolved the feeling of class consciousness; it must appropriate what is in the possession of the bourgeois, namely the state. To what extent the state is a true state of rights or not is something that did not become clear naturally to the proletariat either. But what has developed as a state of rights is something that Switzerland has least of all been touched by; therefore it could comprehend a true state of rights most readily without any prejudices. What has developed as a real state of rights, actually lives only between the expressions of the main soul life of people almost the world over today, but not in Switzerland! Everywhere else in the world, the element that is the political state of rights lives an underground-existence, so to speak, whereas the element that is really experienced between person and person is based on something quite different, namely on something that is through and through a middle-class element. What man actually seeks in public life, what he carries into the whole of public life, whereby an obscuration of the actual life of rights takes place for him—that is something that one can only grasp if one focuses a bit on the concrete relationships.

You see, the cultural, the spiritual life has gradually been absorbed by the life of the state (the government). The cultural life, however, when one confronts it as an element standing on its own ground, is a very stern element, an element in regard to which one must constantly preserve one's freedom, which therefore cannot be organized in any other way except in freedom. Just let one generation unfold its spiritual life more freely and then organize it any way it wants to: it will be purest slavery for the following generation. Not only according to theory, but according to life, the spiritual, cultural life must really be free. The human beings who stand within it must experience this freedom. The cultural life turns into a great tyranny if it spreads out anywhere on earth, for without being organized it cannot spread, and when organization occurs, the organization itself becomes a tyrant. Therefore, there must be a constant battle in freedom, in living freedom, against the tyranny to which the cultural life is inclined.

Now, in the course of the nineteenth century, the cultural life has been absorbed by the life of the state. This means: If one divests the life of the state of the toga in which it is still very much clothed in memory of the ancient Roman age,—although judges are even beginning to discard the robe, but all in all one can still say that the life of the state still wears the toga,—if one disregards this toga, looks instead at what is underneath, one sees everywhere the constrained spiritual life that is present in the state and the social life of the state. It is the restrained spiritual life! It is constrained but ignorant of the fact that it is constrained; therefore it does not strive for freedom, although it does constantly fight against its constraint. Much has emerged in recent times out of this fighting against the constraint of spiritual life. Our whole public cultural life really stands under the influence of this constraint of cultural life, and we cannot attain to healthy social conditions if we do not acquire a feeling for awareness of this constraint. One must have a feeling for how this constraint of the spiritual life meets one in everyday life.

One day, I was invited by a number of ladies in Berlin, who had heard lectures of mine in an institute, to give a lecture in the private apartment of one of these ladies. The whole arrangement was really for the purpose of the ladies' working against a certain relatively harmless attitude of their husbands. You see, the ladies arrived around twelve o'clock noon in the institute where I gave my lectures. When such a day recurred—I think it was once a week—the husbands said, “There you go again into your crazy institute today; then the soup will be bad again, or something else won't be in its usual order!”—So the ladies wanted me to give a lecture on Goethe's Faust—this was selected as the subject—the husbands were also invited. Now I gave the lecture on Goethe's Faust before the ladies and gentlemen. The men were a bit perplexed afterwards and said, “Why yes, but Goethe's Faust is a science; Goethe's Faust is not art. Art, well that's Blumenthal!”¹—I am quoting word for word—“and there one doesn't have to make such an effort. After working so hard in our professional life, who wants to exert an effort in our leisure time!” You see, what has become a substitute for enthusiasm for freedom in cultural life confronts us in the social life as a mere desire to be lightly entertained.

In the country-side, where one could still observe this well, I once saw how these old traveling actors, who always had a clown among them, sometimes presented really fine acts. I watched how the clown, who had been doing his clownish acts for some time and had entertained the people with them, threw off the clown's costume, because he now wanted to act out something that was serious to him,—and there he stood in black trousers and black tails. This image always turns itself around in my mind: First I see the man in his formal black attire, afterwards I see the man in his clown's costume. To me it's like black trousers and tails when, somewhere in a window-display, I see a book by Einstein about the theory of relativity; and I see a clown, when, next to it, I have before me a book by Moszkowski on the theory of relativity. For, indeed, there is much that's maya in outer life. But one couldn't imagine that the whole pedantry of thinkers could inwardly appear other than in black trousers and well-cut tails, I mean in the theory of relativity. And again: It is bothersome to adjust to such stern processes of thinking, such consistent sequences of thoughts, which are really cut like a well-fitting formal suit; that must confront people in a different manner as well. So, Alexander Moszkowski, especially gifted feuilletonistically as a philosopher-clown, gets busy and writes a voluminous book. From it, all the people learn in the form of light literature in the clown's costume, what was born in coat and tails! You see, one cannot do other than translate things into something that requires no effort and where no great enthusiasm need be engendered.

It is namely this overall mood that must be opposed in people's feelings, if one wants to speak about concepts of rights, for there, the human being with all his inner worth confronts the other person as an equal. What does not allow the concepts of rights to arise, is—to put it this way—the Alexander-Moszkowski-element. One must seek for the concrete facts in any given situation.

Naturally, I am not saying that if one needs to speak of concepts of human rights, one has to talk about tails and clowns' costumes. But I would like to show how one has to possess an elasticity of concepts in all matters, how one has to point out both sides of a question, and how one's own mind needs to be disposed in order to gain the necessary fluency to lecture to people.

There is another reason why a modern lecturer must be aware of such things as these. Most of the time, he is compelled to speak in the evening, when he wants to present something important concerning the future, for example. This means that he has to make use of the time when people prefer to attend either the theater or a concert. Therefore, the lecturer must realize that he is speaking to an audience that, according to the mood of the hour, would be better off in the concert hall, the theater, or another place of entertainment. So the audience is really in the wrong place if it finds itself in a lecture hall listening to a speaker who discourses from the platform on some important topic. As a speaker, one must be aware of what one is doing, down to the last detail.

What does one in fact accomplish when forced to address such an audience? Quite literally, one ruins the listener's digestion! A serious speech has the peculiar effect of negatively reacting on the stomach juices, on pepsin. A serious lecturer causes stomach acidity. And only if the speaker is in the proper frame of mind to permeate his address at least inwardly with the necessary humor, can the digestive juices function harmoniously after all. One has to present a speech with a certain inner lightness, modulation, and with an amount of enthusiasm, then one aids the processes of digestion. This way, the adverse effects on people's stomachs, caused by the time of day when one is normally forced to lecture, are neutralized. One is not promoting social ideas but instead medical specialists if one speaks pedantically, with heavy, expressive emphasis. The style must be light and matter-of-fact, or else one does not further the ideas of the threefold social order but the medical specialist's practice! There are no statistics available about the number of people who end up at the doctor's office after they have listened to pedantic speeches, but if there were, one would be astonished at the percentage of people among patients of gastro-intestinal specialists who are eager listeners of lectures nowadays.

I must draw attention to these facts because the time is near when one must be familiar with the actual constitution of the human being. We must know how seriousness or humor affect the stomach and the digestive juices; how, for example, wine acts like a cynic who does not take the human organism seriously but plays with it, as it were. If the human organization were to be viewed with human concepts rather than with the confused, indecisive concepts of today's science, one would certainly realize how every word and word-relationship causes an organic, almost chemical, reaction in the human being.

Knowing such things makes lecturing easier too. The barrier that otherwise stands between speaker and audience ceases to exists if one becomes aware of the damage that a pedantic speech causes the stomach. One frequently has occasion to observe that; though that is less the case in a lecture-class at a university, there, the students protect themselves by not paying attention!

From all this, one can readily understand how much depends on the mood in lecturing. It is much more important to prepare the whole mood-atmosphere and have it in hand than to get the speech ready word for word. A person who has prepared himself for the correct mood need not concern himself with the verbal details to a point where, at a given moment, the latter would cause the listeners discomforts.

Several different aspects go into the makeup of a correctly trained speaker. I want to mention this at this particular point because a discussion of justice, of rights, demands much that has to be characterized in this direction. I want to bring this out now before I shall talk tomorrow about the relationship of speaking and the economic elements.

An anthroposophist once brought the well-known philosopher, Max Dessoir (1867–1947), along to an evening-lecture I was giving at the Architektenhaus in Berlin. This one-time friend of Max Dessoir's said afterwards, “Oh, that Dessoir didn't go along with the lecture after all! I asked him how he had liked it and he replied that he was a public speaker himself, therefore, being one himself, he could not listen properly and form a judgment about what another lecturer was saying.” Well, I did not have to form a judgment about Dessoir following this statement, I had other opportunities for that. Indeed, I wouldn't have done so based on this utterance because I couldn't be sure whether it was really the truth or whether Dessoir, as usual, had lied here too. But assuming it was the truth, what would it have proven? It would have been proof that a person holding such an opinion could never be a proper speaker. A person can never become a good speaker if he enjoys speaking, likes to hear himself talk, and attaches special importance to his own talks. A good speaker always has to experience a certain reluctance when he has to speak. He must clearly feel this reluctance. Above all, he should much prefer listening to another speaker, even the worst one, to speaking himself.

I know very well what I imply with this statement and I realize how difficult it is for some of you to believe me in this, but it is so. Of course, I concede that there are better things to do in life than to listen to poor speakers. But one's own speaking must by no means be included among the better things! Instead, one has to feel a certain urge to hear others, even enjoy listening to others. It is not love for his own speeches but listening to others that makes a person into a good speaker. A certain fluency is acquired by speaking but this has to happen instinctively. What makes one a speaker is basically listening, the development of an ear for the specific peculiarities of the other orators, even if they are poor ones. Therefore, I tell anybody who asks me how to best prepare to become a good speaker, to listen to and to read the speeches of others! Only by doing this one acquires a strong feeling of distaste for one's own speaking. And this distaste is the very thing that enables one to speak realistically. This is extremely important. And if people are as yet not successful in viewing their own speeches with antipathy, it is good if they at least retain their stage-fright. To stand up and lecture without stage-fright and with sympathy for one's own speech is something that ought not to be done because, under any circumstances, the results thus achieved would be negative. It contributes to rigidity, petrification and lack of communication in speech and belongs to the elements that ruin the sermon!

I would indeed not be speaking in the spirit of the aims of this speech-course if I would enumerate on rules of speech to you taken from some old book on rhetoric or copied from dusty rhetorical speeches. Instead, from my own living experience I want you to take to heart what one should always have in one's mind when one wants to influence one's fellow-men by lecturing.

Things change quite a bit if one is forced into a debate. In a sense, a certain rights-relationship between person and person comes up in a discussion. But in the debate through which one can learn most beautifully about human rights, the projection of general concepts of rights into the relationship existing between two people in a discussion hardly plays a role today. Yet here it is indeed important not to be in love with one's own way of thinking and feeling. Instead, in a debate one should feel antipathy for one's own reaction and replies. Because then, by suppressing one's own opinion, annoyance or excitement, one can instead project oneself into the other person's mind. Thus, even if one has to take exception to something in a debate, this attitude has positive results. Of course one cannot simply reiterate what the partner has stated but one can take the substance of an effective rebuttal from understanding him in the first place.

An example that best illustrates this point is the following exchange that took place in the German Parliament between the delegate Rickert and Chancellor Bismarck. Rickert gave a speech in which he accused Bismarck of changing the direction of his political leanings. He pointed out that Bismarck had gone along with the Liberals for a time and then had changed to the Conservatists. He summed it all up with the metaphor that Bismarck's politics amounted to turning his sails to the wind. One can imagine what an effect such a statement had in a place where everybody is ready to talk! Bismarck, however, rose and with a certain air of superiority, to begin with, presented what he had to say in reply to Rickert's remarks. And then, projecting himself into the other like he always did in similar cases, he said, “Rickert has accused me of turning my sails to the wind. But politics is somewhat like navigating a ship on sea. I would like to know how one can hold a steady course if one does not adjust to the wind. A real pilot, like a successful politician, must certainly adjust to the wind in steering his course—unless, possibly, he wants to make wind himself!”

One sees that this metaphor is put to use, turned in such a direction that the verbal arrow hits back at the archer. In a debate it is a matter of picking up the points made by the opponent and quite seriously using them to counter him. Thus, one undoes him with his own arguments. As a rule it doesn't help much if one simply sets one's own reasons against those of the opponent.

In a debate one should be able to evoke the following mood: The moment the debate begins one should be in a position to turn off everything one knew up to now, push it down into one's subconscious mind, and retain only what the speaker, whom one has to reply to, has said. Then can one properly exercise one's talent of setting straight what the other speaker said. Setting matters straight is what's important! In a discussion it is important to take up directly what the other has said, not to oppose him with something one knew some time ago. If one does that, as happens in most debates, the end-result will indeed be inconclusive and fruitless. One has to realize that in a discussion one can never successfully argue the opponent down. One can only demonstrate that he either contradicts himself or reality. One can only go into what he has set forth. If this attitude is developed as the basic rule for debates it will be of great significance for them. If a person only wants to bring out in a debate what he has known previously, then it will certainly he of no significance that he does so after the opponent has stated his case.

I once experienced a most instructive illustration of the above. During my last trip to Holland, I was invited to give a lecture before the Philosophical Society of the University of Amsterdam. Of course, the chairman there had a different opinion from mine already, no doubt about that! And if he participated in the debate he would differ from my viewpoints greatly. But it was equally clear that whatever he would have to say would have no effect on my lecture, and that my views would have no special influence on what he would say based on what he had known beforehand. Therefore, I thought that he was quite clever, he brought out what he had to say not afterwards, during the debate, but before my lecture. What he did add later to what he had said at the start might just as well have been said at the beginning too, it wouldn't have changed matters one bit.

One shouldn't have any illusions concerning such things. It is most important that an orator be very, very strongly attuned to human relationships. But, if matters are to have results, one cannot afford having illusions about human relations. And as a foundation for the following lectures, let me say that, above all, one should have no illusions about the effectiveness of speeches.

I always find it extremely humorous when well-meaning people say all the time that words don't matter, deeds do! I've heard it proclaimed at the most unsuitable times, during discussions and from the rostrums, that it isn't words but actions that count!

Everything that happens in the world in regard to actions depends on words! One who can see through things knows that nothing takes place that hasn't been prepared in advance by somebody through words.

But one will understand that this preparation is a subtle, delicate process. If it is true that theoretical, pedantic speaking affects the digestion, one can imagine how indigestion in turn affects actions, and how public actions are the results of such poor speeches. And if, on the other hand, speakers try to be humorists and only act funny, this results in an overproduction of digestive juices that act like vinegar. And vinegar is a terrible hypochondriac. But the general public is constantly entertained by what flows through public life as continuous fun-making. The jokes of yesterday are not yet digested when the fun of today makes its appearance. And so, the digestive juices turn into something like vinegar. Oh, man is already being entertained again today and maybe he is quite cheerful about it. But the way he places himself into public life is influenced by the hypochondria of this vinegar-like substance at work in him.

One must know how the dimension of speaking fits into the world of actions. The most untrue expression concerning speaking, born of a false sentimentality that is in itself wrong, is,

“The words you've bandied are sufficient;
'Tis deeds that I prefer to see ...”

verse">Faust, Prelude on Stage)

Certainly, this can be said in a dramatic play, and rightly so in its place. But when it is taken out of context and made into a general dictum, it might be true but it certainly will not be good. And we should learn to speak not only beautifully or correctly but effectively as well, so that good will come of it. Otherwise, we lead people into the abyss and can certainly never speak to them about anything that has lasting value for the future.

• 1. Oskar Blumenthal, 1852–1917; author of light comedy.

When, after repeated requests, I decided to speak about some aspects of most recent history leading up to the present, I expressly stated that my concern was the understanding of the facts and that there was no question of entering into politics or anything to do with politics. I frequently repeated this statement. Despite this, it seems to me that a definite carelessness—not to use a stronger word—is gaining ground amongst us in this respect. People do not consider that when someone is speaking the truth with the intensity that has been the case, he has a right to claim that attention is also paid to the manner of its expression. It appears that here and there people have been speaking about these lectures as if they were political lectures. Lack of consideration has for a long time been the order of the day among some of our members—only a few, of course; I refer only to those who are meant. Everything I have said and repeated over and over again out of anxiety for our concerns has fallen on deaf ears in some quarters. It is perfectly apparent that again and again the matters we speak about here are reported to outsiders in the strangest manner.

As such, I have nothing against reports if they remain within the obvious bounds. But it is clear from various recent publications—among them a most scandalous compilation from the Vollrath camp—that matters are not reported in a manner befitting the way they are discussed here, but in a manner—perhaps from want of a better understanding—that enables the most horrible distortions to be fabricated. I know very well that the source of this is to be found in our midst, and if again and again I hold my peace and refrain from taking steps against those so-called members who behave in this way, it is out of love for our whole Movement and our whole Society. It is surely not possible to hold a constant succession of hearings. It would, however, be possible for members who understand what is going on, to approach in a suitable manner those of whom it is known that their attitude to the spiritual content given here is not what it ought to be. I do not even want to maintain—though sometimes it is indeed the case—that there is a direct lack of morality in people's behaviour, but there is certainly a lack of insight into the way one might behave. If someone wants to speak about what he has heard, it is incumbent upon him to ask himself with honest—let me say—self-knowledge, whether he has really understood it in a way which enables him to pass it on.

It is necessary, unfortunately, to draw attention to this from time to time. I assure you that I am not doing so without good reason. If things go on as they are, it will become necessary to remain silent about certain matters, and it is easy to see what would then become of our Movement. And a share in bringing this about would lie with those members who again and again fail to prevent themselves from using the most awful expressions which can then lead to frightful distortions. Surely it is not necessary to speak about these things in places where they can be overheard by people who do not belong amongst us, and to use expressions which might come easily to the tongue, but which in no way correspond to the whole purpose on which these lectures are founded!

I must admit that having decided after repeated requests to give these lectures, I can only view as entirely personal attacks the instances in which they have been described as ‘political lectures’.

Now that we have discussed the many considerations contained in the lectures of the past few weeks, it will today be possible to draw some of them together in order to throw light on aspects which can help us to understand what is happening today. I shall first endeavour to recount quite baldly, in the most external fashion, the historical sequence of events as they occurred, and then, on the basis of the insights gained over the past weeks, I will point out some of the deeper-lying causes. I want to state expressly that, particularly today, I shall attempt to weigh carefully every single expression so that each one provides an exact delineation within which the view it expresses can come to light. Let me start, then, by describing quite externally and briefly certain events, viewpoints and impulses.

As you of course all know, the present painful events have come about in connection with the murder in June 1914 of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. This assassination was followed in the whole of Europe by a newspaper campaign which showed, in what might be called surging waves, the degree to which passions had been aroused in every quarter. All this led to the well-known ultimatum from the monarchy of Austria-Hungary to Serbia which, in the main, was rejected by Serbia; then on to the Austro-Serbian conflict which was intended by the leading Austrian statesmen to consist of a military entry into Serbia, without any annexation of Serbian territory, for the purpose of exerting military pressure in order to force an acceptance of the ultimatum. The purpose of the ultimatum was to prevent Serbia from inciting unrest against the stability of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy via Austria's southern Slav population.

As you know, Austria comprises quite a number of nations—there are thirteen recognized languages and many more than thirteen distinct peoples. In the southern region the population is Slav; more to the West are the Slovenian Slavs; to the East, adjacent to them, the Dalmatian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Serbo-Croat population; then also the various groups who live in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were annexed by Austria in 1908, though occupied by her long before that. Serbia borders on the territories populated by these southern Slavs. Austria believed it could be proved—and evidence of this proof can be found all over the place by anyone who cares to seek it—that Serbia was inciting unrest with the aim of founding a Southern Slav kingdom under the sovereignty of Serbia and entailing the detachment of the southern Slav population of Austria.

At all costs the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had to be linked with these things, for the following reason: From 1867 onwards, the monarchy of Austria-Hungary was a dual state comprising, in accordance with a not very concise description ‘the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat’, and secondly ‘the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen’. Among the lands represented in the Reichsrat were Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Istria, Dalmatia, Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Bukovina. To the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen belong first and foremost the Magyar regions to which was annexed what had formerly been Transylvania, which is inhabited by a number of peoples; further, Croatia and Slavonia, the latter enjoying a kind of limited self-government within the Hungarian state. A dual monarchy, in other words.

Now it was known that Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, wanted to overcome the drawbacks of the dualism of Austria-Hungary and replace this dualism with a ‘triadic’ reorganization. This triadic structure was to come about by making the southern Slav territories belonging to Austria self-governing, in the way the lands and kingdoms represented in the Reichsrat and also the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen were self-governing. This would have put a triadic structure in place of the existing dualism. You can see how, had it been realized, this would have led to an individualization of the separate southern Slav peoples within a kind of southern Slav community in the Austro-Slav regions. It would have meant a step closer to the aim of assimilating the western Slavs with western culture, thus working against what I have called Russianism in these lectures. This could quite well have worked out, for the structure of the Austrian state is entirely federalistic, not centralistic, and before the war it tended anyway increasingly to grant federal status to the different peoples. From 1867 to 1879 centralism was the aim; from 1879 onwards the efforts to centralize had to be seen as a failure, and from then on federalism was the aim.

In opposition to this were the efforts on the part of Serbia to found a confederation of southern Slavs under the hegemony of Serbia. This did not arise from within the Serbian people, but I have described to you how peoples are, in a way, led simply by means of suggestion. For this to happen, the southern Slav territories would, of course, have to be wrested from Austria-Hungary.

This concludes my brief summary of what lies behind the Austro-Serbian conflict. What I have just been telling you is all to do with the Austro-Serbian conflict. It is thinkable that this conflict could have been ‘localized’—I have used this expression once before. Had this come about—I am speaking hypothetically—the European world war would have been avoided. What would have happened if the strictly circumscribed intentions of the Austrian statesmen had been realized? Part of the Austro-Hungarian army would have marched into Serbia and stayed there until Serbia agreed to accept the ultimatum which would have quashed the possibility of a southern Slav conferation under Serbian hegemony, and, of course, Russian supremacy. If no other European power had interfered in this matter, if they had all done nothing more than stand to attention, as it were, then nothing would have taken place except the acceptance of this ultimatum. For Austria had guaranteed that she had no intention of annexing any parts of Serbian territory in any way. As a result, such assassinations as took place many times—that of Franz Ferdinand was only the last in a whole sequence incited by Serbian agitators—such assassinations would not have taken place, and without such agitation the establishment of a southern Slav confederation under the supremacy of Russia is, or rather would, of course, have been impossible. If events had taken this course—I speak hypothetically again—this war need never have broken out.

So what is the connection between this Austro-Serbian conflict and the World War? To comprehend this connection it is necessary to pass beyond an understanding of the external situation and, if I may say so, enter the deeper secrets of European politics. It is not politics we want to enter; we want to understand in our soul what it was that lived in these politics. I want to answer the question: How did a European conflict arise out of the Austro-Serbian conflict? What is the link between the Austro-Serbian question and the European question?

We must turn our attention to what I have just said about the southern Slav confederation. It was the British Empire, the more it took on a conscious form, that was interested in a southern Slav confederation, independent of Austria, but under the supremacy of Russia. In the societies I have mentioned it was the establishment of what was termed the Danube confederation—by which was meant this southern Slav confederation, which was to comprise the southern Slav peoples together with Romania and include the southern Slavs of Austria—that was expressly discussed. In the nineties of the nineteenth century we find everywhere in the occult schools of the West, under the direct influence of British occultists, indications that such a Danube confederation would have to come into being. Attempts were also made to manipulate the whole of European politics towards the creation of this Danube confederation, which would entail the relinquishing of the Austro-Slav territories.

Why was the British Empire interested in this Danube confederation, a project which was anti-Austrian and pro-Russian? The powers which have been in opposition to one another most strongly in recent times as a consequence of the imperialism which has broken out across the world, those powers which actually coexist with the greatest hostility, are the British Empire and the Russian Empire. Such hidden hostilities can indeed manifest outwardly as friendships and alliances. When there is such bitter hostility between countries outwardly coexisting peacefully, a certain consequence results from the fact that our earth has a specific characteristic: namely, that it is spherical in shape. If our earth were a flat plain stretching in all directions, such conflicts could not come about. But since our earth is round, not only do we eventually arrive back at our starting point if we walk long enough in a straight line, but something else also happens: Expanding empires come up against each other at a certain point, and when they collide they have to follow through with their opposing interests. This occurred between the British and the Russian Empires. Among many other situations, it became most obviously apparent when they collided with great force in Persia. The question was: Should Russia succeed in moving down against India and there gradually hem in the British Empire, or would the British Empire erect defences?

When your aim is to gain sovereignty, you can pursue it by means of war, or by other means, depending on which seems the most favourable. For the British Empire it seemed for the moment—in the case of states, only limited periods of time are reckoned with—more favourable to prevent Russia from proceeding against India by providing a different channel, by diverting her attention in another direction in which she could achieve the satisfaction of her natural ambition. Empires are always ambitious. This was to be brought about by conceding to Russia the sovereignty over the so-called Danube confederation. Thus the British Empire was indirectly interested in making the Danube confederation as extensive as possible, for the Slavs in the South wanted to belong together, and this feeling of belonging was stirred up in the way I have described to you. Thus the confederation of southern Slavs was to be played into Russia's hand so that she might withdraw her attention from other directions. This was why the confederation of southern Slavs, to be set up under Russian sovereignty, was in the British interest. It was a long story, prepared well beforehand.

Here we see one of the threads linking the Austro-Serbian question to the question of sovereignty on a world scale. This is how the whole relationship between the British and the Russian Empires was drawn into the matter. It was not a matter of Austria and Serbia, for the whole Austro-Serbian question necessarily became the question: Should Austria take the step towards a triadic structure, thus diverting the confederation of southern Slavs from its path, or should steps be taken towards a Russian-dominated southern Slav confederation? In this way the Austro-Serbian question became coupled with the European question.

When such situations exist—for what I have just described lived in human beings as absolutely real impulses—it is like an electric charge which will at some point have to be discharged. This, then, was one of the threads.

It is still, however, highly questionable whether the Austro-Serbian conflict would have led to the World War, if there had not been further aspects in addition to those we have just discussed. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that it would have done, if there had been no other causes. But there were plenty of other impulses, all of which reinforced the situation. First and foremost among these was the Franco-Russian alliance within the general European situation. This Franco-Russian alliance had existed since the nineties of the nineteenth century and, looking at the situation objectively, it could not have been more unnatural. No one will doubt that France had entered into this alliance with a view to winning back Alsace-Lorraine, for there is no other imaginable reason for this alliance. All other reasons would only have spoken against such an alliance. In the end, though, those other reasons carry little weight in comparison with the driving forces, for the fact is that an alliance such as this exists; through its very existence it represents a real force. It is there. Much more important than the actual aim of this alliance is the fact that here are a western and an eastern state who in combination constitute a monstrous military power. And between them lies Germany who could not but feel permanently threatened militarily by the scale of this combined French and Russian military might. It was this encirclement of Germany to West and East by the Franco-Russian alliance which became one of the driving forces in European affairs.

To discover further influences which played a part we must look at the following: In recent decades, imperialism has led to a general desire for expansion. You need only look, for instance, at the monstrous growth of the British Empire. Or think of France, whose territorial expansion over the last few decades has been incomparably greater than at any earlier time, when France, as she herself said, marched at the head of European civilization.

The events of recent decades have been like a chain reaction: In every case what came next could not have taken place without what had gone before. The most recent point of departure—of course we could go back further—lies in the British Empire's seizure of sovereignty over Egypt. For today's way of thinking it is perfectly reasonable to justify such an action by claiming the necessity of rounding off and securing one's assets. The expansion of British sovereignty over Egypt was justified by saying that a bridge to India was needed. The hope was that Arabia could be gained too, thus creating a direct link with India.

The expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt provided, to some extent, a protective barrier against any awkward expansion of the Russian Empire westwards; any such expansion westwards need not have harmed the British Empire to any great extent if Egypt had been able to provide the necessary link with India.

Now since the earth is spherical, there is insufficient territory for unlimited expansion outwards by empires because eventually they will clash. In consequence the expansion of one empire generates in the other an equal lust for expansion. Thus the expansion by France to include Morocco, in two stages in 1905 and 1911, was nothing other than a consequence of the expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt. The mutual recognition of these expansions—France's recognition of British dominion over Egypt and British recognition of France's dominion over Morocco—provided the threads with which an Entente Cordiale between the French and the British Empires could be spun. But because Germany was in the middle, efforts were made, as you know, to establish the Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria, Italy.

However, the distribution of Morocco and Egypt, and what followed this, meant that, at the Algeciras Conference, and particularly with the help of an elderly Italian politician who was well versed in these things, Italy was even then successfully drawn into the sphere of influence of the western entente between France and England. After the Algeciras Conference sensible people in Central Europe no longer believed that Italy would be able to remain faithful to the Triple Alliance. Because of the way she had behaved there had to be consequences for her, resulting from the seizure of Morocco by France. And the consequence was that Italy was permitted to establish herself in Tripoli. In effect this meant that Italy had been given permission by the West to wage war on Turkey. So Egypt led to Morocco, and Morocco to Tripoli. Then, because Tripoli meant a new weakening of the Turkish position, Tripoli led to the Balkan War. These events took place like a chain reaction, Egypt-Morocco-Tripoli-Balkan War; each is unthinkable without its predecessor.

Turkey having been weakened by the Italo-Turkish, or Tripoli War, the southern Slav peoples, with the others in their wake, and also the Greek peoples, believed themselves strong enough to win the Balkan peninsula for themselves. As a result of this, the trend towards a southern Slav confederation became linked with the national aspirations of the Balkan countries. The linking of these two chains gave the Balkan War an outcome in which Serbia was the strongest winner. Serbia has grown very powerful, incomparably more so than she was before. In consequence there came a revival of the ideal of founding the southern Slav confederation under the hegemony of Serbia and the overall sovereignty of Russia. This led to the agitations which culminated in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which in turn led to the Austro-Serbian War. Now we have brought the two links together: The Austro-Serbian question was linked with the European question as a consequence of the whole historical process.

Those who followed these events with understanding were able to see under these circumstances many years ahead to the coming war, hanging like a sword of Damocles over European culture and civilization. Wherever these things were discussed you could hear how people realized that Russia's pretensions would lead to a conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. This conflict was inevitable. No one who studies the realities of history will say that this conflict between Central and Eastern Europe was not based on what may be called a spiritual necessity. Just as in ancient times conflict arose between the Roman and the Germanic peoples, so in modern times there had to be conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. There were manifold forms it could have taken, but conflict there had to be. Everything else, in so far as it had to do with the East, was included in this conflict.

It was the pretensions of Russianism that led to the expectation that somewhere or other these pretensions would lead to an attempt by Russia to impose sovereignty on the Balkan league. This was expected. The geographical situation made it inevitable that there would be a clash between Russia and Austria. And when this clash occurred—so said all those who had been contemplating these things over the years—everything else would automatically follow.

How, it was asked, would the situation be shaped by the existing structure of alliances at the moment of Russia's attack on Austria? Obviously no one expected Austria to attack Russia of her own accord. This was unthinkable; Austria could not possibly find herself in a position to launch an attack on Russia. It had to be supposed, therefore, that matters would arrange themselves in a way that would enable Russia to attack Austria. Well and good! Because of the alliance between Austria and Germany, Germany could be expected to stand by Austria and attack Russia in her turn. And as a result of Germany's attack on Russia—I am telling you what was presumed—the Franco-Russian alliance would come into action. France would be obliged to take Russia's side and attack Germany. And because of the relationship between France and England—whether laid down in a treaty or not—England would have to join in the attack on the side of Russia and France. These things were foreseen. The structure of treaties and alliances would automatically lead to a sequence of events.

In the end, the sequence was not quite what had been expected by those who concerned themselves day in, day out, with the future of Europe. What form did it take? Let us see. I have already described to you the history of the ultimatum, the rejection of the ultimatum, the resulting insistence by Austria on acceptance of the ultimatum. But the European powers did not remain indifferent to all this, for Russia immediately made ready to enter the fray as Serbia's protector. This made the localization of the Austro-Serbian question unthinkable. From the British quarter came all sorts of meaningless suggestions of the kind made by those who either want to take a hand in affairs without thinking things through properly, or who want to build up for themselves from the start a world-wide reputation of having endeavoured to settle the matter by peaceful means. This is not actually the aim, but it has to be possible later on to say that it was.

So the meaningless suggestion was made to call a conference made up, of all things, of England, Germany, France and Italy, to decide about the questions pending. Just imagine what would have been the outcome of such a conference! A majority verdict would have been required on whether Austria's demands to Serbia were justified or not. On the basis of the real situation, imagine, please, how the voting would have gone! Italy had inwardly deserted the Triple Alliance, France was on Russia's side, Russia was obviously only satisfied if Austria was refused the right to insist on acceptance of the ultimatum, England was in favour of the Danube confederation. Leaving aside Austria, the majority would have gone to Italy, France and England. Germany would obviously have been out-voted at all costs. This conference could not possibly have led to anything other than a refusal for what Austria, from her position, was compelled to demand. That means that if this conference had been held it would have been nothing but a farce, for Austria would either have been forced to give up her pretensions, or, regardless of the outcome of the conference, she would have continued to demand acceptance of the ultimatum. In other words, the conference would have been nothing but a bluff, as they say. A thorough study of the documentation reveals, however, that from the start Russia's pretension was to interfere in the Serbo-Austrian question. So it is really irrelevant whether the World War came about as the result of an automatic sequence of events or of deliberate scene-setting leading inevitably to the War.

It was the scene-setting that took place for, in addition to the various impulses, you must also take into account a quite particular mood. Maybe no other world event, no other historical event but this, has ever been quite so dependent on a certain mood. The mood of soul of those participating in the outbreak of the War at the end of July 1914 was certainly one of the most important causes. Of course there were also agitations at the outbreak of earlier wars, but they did not sweep in with such stormy, such hurricane force, as did the events between 24 July and 1 August 1914. Within a few days a monstrous agitation had gathered over the participants, an agitation in which was concentrated all the accumulated anxiety of the many years during which this coming event had been foreseen. This mood must definitely be taken into account. Those who do not do so can only speak in empty phrases.

All kinds of points could be brought in to characterize this mood, but I shall draw your attention to only one. An event had taken place which was indirectly, though in fact very strongly, connected with the outbreak of the War. If it is to be evaluated properly it will, and must, be seen in its proper place amongst the other events in Europe. This was the German defence bill, laid before Parliament after the Balkan War, which budgeted for an enlargement of the German army by means of a single large defence payment. This enlargement of the German army, which, by the way, was not anywhere near completion by the time the War broke out, can be studied by anyone in connection with the results of the Balkan War. These results showed that for an uncertain time in the future the clash between Russia and Austria was being manipulated. It was only because of certain situations, which I do not want to go into here, that Russia was prevented as early as 1913 from attacking Austria in order to gain sovereignty and dominion over the Balkan confederation. The enlargement of the German army was undertaken for no other reason—as I said, I am choosing my expressions very precisely today—than the threatened dispute with the East. Yet the French reaction followed promptly: If Germany is enlarging her army, then we must do something about strengthening ours. What this means is that the destiny, the inevitable necessity for Central Europe to take precautions with regard to the East, always produced reinforcements in the West, which naturally produced further reactions in their turn.

In this way matters progressed. In particular, everything connected with the defence bill after the Balkan War generated terrible anxiety in Central Europe because the whole of the European periphery was seen to have turned against Central Europe. Opinions differed only in the matter of Italy: Some still thought she would somehow throw in her lot with Central Europe, while others no longer held this to be possible.

Let us still assume—hypothetically—that the World War did not break out. There was only one precondition that could have prevented it. Russia would have had to refrain from immediate war threats—in other words mobilization, which under the prevailing circumstances could only be regarded as a war threat. Central Europe could not for one moment have thought that France would not go along with Russia, so an assault on two fronts had to be reckoned with. The only course of action open to those in positions of responsibility was to paralyse this assault in some way. No one in a responsible position could have thought: Let us spend the next fortnight at a conference! Not only could this conference have led absolutely nowhere, as I said, but it would have meant certain defeat. But no one can be expected to accept certain defeat from the outset. So the only possibility was to match the monstrous military superiority of West and East by means of speed.

For this the only possible course of action, as I showed earlier, was to violate international law and march through Belgium. Any other solution could only have led to the involvement of most of the German army in a long war of defence in the West while leaving the way open to invasion from the East. This was one of those historical moments at which—whether you can express it aptly or not—a state is forced to enter into a breach of the law in self-preservation. There is no other course of action open to those responsible for that state. In Central Europe it was—and I am choosing my words very carefully today in order to make my meaning quite clear—for some of those in responsible positions utterly monstrous to attempt war on two fronts at once.

So the attempt was made to restrict the matter to a single front. Careful, carefully intentioned, attempts were made to keep France neutral, and it was believed that France could be induced to remain neutral. No one in Central Europe had any intention of harming France. With a feeling of total responsibility it is possible to say that absolutely no one in Central Europe, no one in Germany, had any intention of harming France. What was done was done only with a view to tying matters up as quickly as possible in the West in order to prevent the threatened invasion from the East. It therefore never ceases to be astonishing that so much talk persists in the world about all the atrocities Germany has committed towards the West. None of the atrocities would have occurred if only France had declared her neutrality.

France was perfectly capable of protecting herself and Belgium against any attack. That France was forced to keep her agreement with Russia is her own affair and should not be trotted out in the same breath as the atrocities committed by Germany, for the allegiance of one state to another is no business of her enemies.

Since it proved impossible to keep France neutral by direct means, the attempt was then made via England—here, too, without success. I have touched a number of times on how England could have saved Belgium and, equally well, France. These things must be viewed absolutely objectively. Please accept as totally objective the statement that, once the war between Austria and Serbia could no longer be localized because Russia would not allow this, every effort was made at least to prevent it from spreading to the West. Truly, no one in Central Europe was seized with the madness of wanting to make war on two fronts, let alone subsequently on three.

That all the other universal untruths followed on from this is really not surprising now, when every day astonishes us with new lies, spoken, written and printed. Before coming here today I found someone had put on my desk a pamphlet by one of the participants engaged in the neutrality debate with Georg Brandes. Here, on the English side, you have William Archer, in whose pamphlet you find juxtaposed the black infamy of Germany and the pure innocence of the allies. Ten points illustrate the black infamy, and the angelic, utter innocence of the allies; we need consider only one of these, the second. The second point states that in Germany there exists a notable faction which is openly agitating for further territorial expansion, either in or outside Europe. In contrast it is said of the allies—in English, mark you: The allies have no desire for any territorial expansion, least of all at Germany's expense; even France's feelings for Alsace-Lorraine are exclusively peaceful.

My dear friends, much can be both printed and spoken these days! The other nine points are in similar vein. Just think of the expansion undertaken by England and France over recent decades; and then read that these countries have no desire for territorial expansion. It is quite possible nowadays to say and print the exact opposite of the truth, just as it is possible for countless people to believe it. People do indeed believe these things.

Here, then, you have the historical view of these events. Now we must link this external historical process with what we can discover through our knowledge of the impulses from the West which have been at work for a long time. Not all the impulses that make use to a greater or lesser degree of occult forces—such as we have discussed—are included in what might be called the outer ramifications: namely, Freemasonry, though as we have seen, a great deal is indeed brought about by western Freemasonry. Many strings are pulled by those involved there. And as I said, account is taken of long stretches of time.

Now add to the points I have been making the fact that modern Freemasonry undergoes a process of consolidation in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, on foundations, of course, which are older. Within Britain, not the Empire, but the United Kingdom, Freemasonry remains—let me use the correct expression—essentially respectable in the interests it pursues. But everywere else, outside Britain, chiefly—or indeed exclusively—political interests are pursued by Freemasonry.

Such political interests, to the most marked degree, are pursued for instance by the French Grand Orient, and also by other Grand Lodges. You could ask: What business is it of the English if political trends in other countries are pursued by certain orders of Freemasonry which possess an occult background? In reply you might remind yourself that the first Grand Lodge in Paris was founded under the jurisdiction of England, not France! Englishmen, not Frenchmen, founded it; and then they let the French in. Then also remind yourself that after the founding of this Grand Lodge in Paris in 1725, this Grand Orient in turn sanctioned the founding of a lodge under its own jurisdiction in Paris in 1729. There were, under the jurisdiction of England, foundations in Gibraltar in 1729, Madrid in 1728, Lisbon in 1736, Florence in 1735, Moscow in 1731, Stockholm in 1726, Geneva in 1735, Lausanne in 1739 and Hamburg in 1737. I could carry on for a long time with this list. I could show you how a network was founded of these lodges, which were to act as the external tools for certain occult, political impulses. They differed in character from those in the United Kingdom itself. In addition to the breathtaking sequence of changes as we see them in history, such as the Jacobins and the furore they created, the Carbonari and their political activities, the Cortes in Spain and others, they also have a strong influence on the culture of their time and send out shoots which even show in the works of the greatest spirits of their time. We need only think of Rousseau's natural philosophy, or the critical philosophy of Voltaire, which became ever more cynical though its aim was to enlighten, or the efforts of the Illuminati, who wanted to overcome the prevailing cynicism, and similar circles. These progressive circles were crushed by reactionary streams, but continued to work in manifold ways underground.

So here you have the source of much that I have been describing. And you must attach a degree of importance to the following: The English Freemasons can maintain today that their lodges are entirely respectable and that any others are none of their business; yet if you look beyond the historical connections and the interplay of opposing currents, you are sure to find high-level British politics hiding in the background.

To understand the deeper meaning of these politics it is necessary to draw a little on recent history. Preparations having been under way from the sixteenth century onwards, there has been a tendency ever since the seventeenth century towards the democratization of society—in some countries more quickly, in others more slowly—by taking power away from the few and giving it to the broad masses. I am not here involved in politics and I shall not therefore express myself in favour of either democracy or anything else. I simply wish to state facts. The impulse towards democracy is having its effect in modern times at varying speeds, and so different streams are coming into being. It is a mistake, where several streams are apparent, to follow the course of only one. The way streams flow in the world is such that one always forms a complement to the others. Let us say a green and a red stream are flowing along side by side. Nothing occult is meant by these colours—it is simply to illustrate that there are two streams flowing side by side. Usually people are, let me say, hypnotized into looking at only one of the streams, while they fail to see the other flowing beside it during the same period in history. As you know, if you push a hen's beak into the ground and then draw a line leading away, the hen will always walk along this line. In the same way people today, especially university historians, see only the one side, and can therefore never really understand the historical process.

Parallel with the democratic stream there came into being the use of occult motives in the various secret societies—in isolated cases, also Masonic orders. In their purposes and aims these are not, of course, spiritual, but there developed, let us call it, a spiritual aristocracy parallel to that democratic stream which was at work in the French Revolution; the aristocracy of the lodges developed. To see clearly as a human being today, to be open to the world and to understand the world, it is necessary not to be dazzled by democratic logic—which has a place only in its own sphere—by empty phrases about democratic progress and so on; it is necessary also to point to that other stream which asserted itself with the intent of gaining power for the few by means that lie hidden within the womb of the lodge—the ritual and its suggestive influence. It is necessary to point to this also.

This has been forgotten during the age of materialism, but before the fifties of the last century people did point these things out. Study the philosophical historians prior to 1850 and you will see that they pointed to the connection between the lodges and the French Revolution with all that followed it. During the period that can be seen as preparatory for today, western historical development, the western world, never emancipated itself from the lodges. The influence of the lodges was always strongly at work. The lodges knew how to find channels through which to impress certain directions on people's thoughts. Once a web like this has been spun—of which I have shown you merely a few strands—the button need only be pressed for things to be set in motion.

Emancipation from all these situations, and the impartial embracing of humanity as such, only really came about under the influence of such great spirituality as developed in German philosophy beginning with Lessing, and developing through Herder and Goethe. Here you have a spiritual stream which took account of all that lives in the lodges, but in such a way that the mystery was brought out of the obscurity of the lodges and transformed into a purely human matter. You need only glance at Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, at Wilhelm Meister and other of Goethe's writings. This was material with which the step to emancipation could be taken and which still today makes emancipation possible. So you may view that whole part of German cultural history portrayed in my book Vom Menschenrätsel as a forgotten reverberation which is entirely independent of all the intrigues of the lodges.

In western culture over the last few centuries preceding our own day you will easily find many ways of demonstrating how the character of ideas in the exoteric world stemmed from the esoteric thinking of the lodges. Obviously this does not apply to the time before Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare but it is certainly true of what came later. But the spiritual culture linked with Lessing, Herder and Goethe has no such connections. You might ask: What about German Freemasonry—in Austria it is proscribed, so there is none there—or Magyar Freemasonry? Well, the others did not allow them to join in. They are quite an innocuous crowd. Though they might appear as thick as thieves with regard to their secrets, this is nothing but show.

The real, mighty impulses emanating from the quarters I have described to you are truly not found in German Freemasonry, which I have no wish to offend. So you can easily understand how it was possible for some rather strange occurrences to take place. Suppose, for instance, someone were to make known in Germany the things I have told you about societies, their secret connections and their external branches—the lodges of Freemasonry. It could be rather useful to make these things known there, but what would be the consequence? Experts would be asked to corroborate these things, and in this case the experts are the Freemasons themselves. But it would never occur to any Freemason in Germany to say anything other than that the English lodges do not concern themselves with politics, that they are concerned only with entirely respectable matters. This is all he knows, for he is ignorant of anything else. You can even be told—and this has actually happened—if you ask about specific names, that they are not on the list of members. They have the list but are unaware that perhaps the most important of all are not included in the list. In short, German Freemasonry is a quite innocuous society.

This does not alter the fact, though—and this may truly be said without any kind of arrogance or nationalistic affectation—that the spiritual life cultivated by certain western secret brotherhoods actually stems from Central Europe. Look at this historically. Robert Fludd: pupil of Paracelsus; Saint-Martin in France: pupil of Jakob Böhme. The origin of the movement itself is to be found in Central Europe. From the West comes the organization, the establishment in degrees—some western lodges have ninety-two degrees; just imagine how elevated you can become if you rise to the ninety-second degree—the use of knowledge for political aims, and the introduction of certain external elements.

We have just had an example which is quite typical, one to which I drew your attention. I am only describing these things in order to make you aware of their objective nature, just as the facts of natural history can be described; not from any nationalistic affectation. I drew your attention to the recent appearance of a book by Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he reports on communications he has received through various mediums from his son who was killed in action. A book like this, written by such a distinguished scientist, is sure to cause quite a sensation. Now that I have read the book there is no need for me to retract anything I said to you a little while ago. I said at the time that I would return to this subject. The strongest proof offered by Sir Oliver Lodge is the following: Seances with various mediums result in the manifestation of the soul of Raymond Lodge, who died in action. These seances tell us nothing people do not know already and would be unlikely to make any strong impression on anyone. But one thing did make a strong impression on the eminent scientist Sir Oliver Lodge and his whole family, who up to that point had been very sceptical about such things. At one of the seances a group photograph was mentioned, showing Oliver Lodge's son together with other people. This photograph, one of several, was described as showing the same people at the same place, but in varying arrangements; the same people are seen, but with differing gestures. Raymond Lodge described this photograph through the medium at that seance in England. But Sir Oliver Lodge and his family knew nothing about this picture, for it had been taken at the Franco-Belgian front at the end of Raymond Lodge's life and sent by him to his family, though it had not yet arrived. So this medium described a group photograph which existed but was unknown to the family: the participants in the seance. They only saw it after it had been described by the medium.

For those who dabble in the occult, this is naturally tremendously convincing. What should you make of the fact that a group photograph is described at a seance, the participants of which know nothing about it? The family, the participants in the seance, know nothing of it and nor do the mediums, because it has not yet arrived in England. It is still on the way. It only arrived later. Yet an exact description is given of where Raymond Lodge is sitting in relation to the others and even of the way he has laid his hand on a friend's shoulder. What could be more convincing than this?

However, Sir Oliver Lodge's interpretation can only have been reached by someone who merely dabbles in the occult. If he had known nothing much but had investigated the literature—for instance Schubert or similar people who still wrote about such things in Germany around the first half of the nineteenth century—he would have found countless examples of something that every genuine occultist knows: When consciousness is damped down even slightly, future events can be seen. The most simple case of seeing a future event is when someone experiencing a moment of lowered consciousness sees a funeral procession which will not take place for several days. A person has not even died, yet someone sees his funeral. Something in the future is seen. This is quite normal when consciousness is lowered. So this is what took place: A photograph has been taken in Flanders and is on its way to England. The time will come when the family will focus their eyes and their understanding on it, when they will bear it in their thoughts. The medium foresees it as an image of the future. Whether you foresee a funeral procession, or whether you foresee how a family receives such and such a photograph of their son in a few days' time—it is the same phenomenon: that of seeing a future event in advance. This is just a phenomenon.

If he had known something about real occult facts, he would not have interpreted the event as he did. Such an interpretation arises because occult values, occult laws, are seen from a materialistic standpoint. It comes about because people avoid undertaking that form of development which would enable them to comprehend the spiritual world in an inward process. Instead they want to see the spiritual realm by laboratory means, purely materialistically. The spirit is made materialistic, whether by Sir Oliver Lodge or anybody else. But this is only one example of what happens to everything that is spiritual. These things can be observed, just as you can observe the progression from Paracelsus to Fludd, from Jakob Böhme to Saint-Martin; everywhere the spirit is made more materialistic.

As the Anthroposophical Society we only succeeded in saving ourselves from becoming materialistic by emancipating ourselves from the Theosophical Society. For impulses emanating from the kind of society I have described penetrate deeply into the social fabric. Naturally, here again I must beg you not to misunderstand me. I am not saying that this is a natural characteristic of the western nations. But it exists and has succeeded in influencing the course of history and is not even without influence on the untruthfulness which is now playing such a devastating part.

It is particularly to this untruthfulness that I am obliged to draw you attention, for this untruthfulness always takes the form of accusation, of blaming others. That dismal New Year's Eve note is really nothing but an accusation based on a distortion of the facts, just as is the article by Mr Archer which I read to you here. But you see such things are beginning to be believed, they are beginning to play their role. In a few weeks' time people will have long forgotten that an opportunity to achieve peace was present in a form that could not be overlooked by the world, and that this opportunity was thwarted by the powers of the periphery. People in Europe will once again begin to believe that the offer of peace was refused by the powers of the Entente on purely humanitarian grounds, on the basis of the extraordinary reasoning that if one wants peace one must prevent it from coming about. Even such grotesque untruths as this are believed nowadays. That they can be believed at all derives from preparations made by the kind of occultism I have been describing to you. It is indeed a sign of an arrant corruption of the soul when it becomes possible to write down side by side the two sentences I mentioned about the black and the white raven. And this corruption of the soul comes about as a consequence of an atmosphere tampered with by organizations such as I have described.

In this connection, too—I can say this quite objectively—there has been a tendency for Central Europe to emancipate itself. In all the Central European spiritual life thrown open by Lessing, Herder, Goethe, such as we have spoken about during the course of our anthroposophical life, you have seen clearly enough how the direction was towards a gradual evolution into the spiritual world. What it is not inclined to do, is enter into any kind of permanent compromise with what lives in the western streams such as those I have described to you. This is impossible. That is why things appear in a different way.

Let us look back for a moment to Fichte, so disparaged in the West today; let us turn to his Reden an die deutsche Nation. What is Fichte aiming at? That the German nation should educate itself! What he says in Reden an die deutsche Nation is not aimed at other nations; he is endeavouring to inspire Germans to improve themselves. But others seem to have what we might call a real ‘genius’ for misunderstanding whatever comes into being in Germany. That harmless national anthem Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, which, if you take the trouble to read the next few lines, speaks of nothing more than loving one's fatherland above all others—for only the different parts of the fatherland are named—is made into something utterly grotesque. In the same way, if one wants to, one can misunderstand Fichte, since he begins Reden an die deutsche Nation with the words ‘I speak for Germans as such, and about Germans as such’. Why does he say this? Because Germany is divided into a whole number of small individual states, and he does not want to address the Prussians, or the Swabians or the Saxons, or the people of Oldenburg, Mecklenburg or Austria and so on, but Germans as such. He wanted to unite all the individuals. So he is talking to Germans and only to Germans. I do not want to praise the Germans, but such things may justifiably be included in a description of them.

I have brought up this matter today because there is definitely a tendency to sound a note in the centre, a note differing from that of the periphery. And if our anthroposophical work can contribute to this other note, there is no reason why we should not say so amongst ourselves. Just today I received a pamphlet by our friend Ludwig von Polzer, who as you know worked here: Thoughts during Wartime. Whether you agree in detail with what he says or not, it is interesting to note that he is not particularly concerned with attacking and insulting others but rather with reading the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. It is to them he speaks. Obviously he has come to be an Austrian as a result of his karma, but he nevertheless reads the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. He does not say: We are blameless, we never did this or that, we are pure white angels and all the others are black devils. No, he says:

‘Why does mankind hate itself and tear itself to pieces? Are external political differences of opinion really the cause of so much suffering? Every party to the fray claims to know what it is about, but in reality none of them know.
A declining, decadent culture is fighting its deathly struggle. The Central Powers, who are fighting for the first germination of a new culture, have not recognized it as yet; they fight for something they do not know, for something unknown to them; and they are themselves still filled with the convictions against which their own soldiers are bleeding in battle.
The old degenerate ways must be, as it were, vomited forth and that is why in their final fling they are running so wild.
Do we not come up against it amongst ourselves wherever we turn, this attitude of the Entente which bears the old, decadent culture? Has it not infected us as well? We see it on the streets in the latest fashions, it is embodied in modern architecture, it grins down at us from the hoardings, in commerce it runs to orgies, it inflates itself in bureaucratic madness, in its self-important untruthful humanism it lies to itself, our press seeks to outbid its colleagues of the Entente in devotion to the truth, and so on.
The Entente is here among us, fuming and raging, claiming to work for our honest soldiers and compatriots, almost all of whom have meanwhile died a sacrificial death.
All these things running so horrifyingly wild in our own country—let it be hoped for the last time before the end—are not deutsch.’

So all those things worthy of censure in his own country he calls ‘not deutsch’. His main aim is to appeal to the conscience of his own compatriots. There are further, similar passages in this booklet. It is good that such a thing is said for once in connection with our own endeavours. There is no need for us to be in total harmony with every sentence that is written amongst us. The most wonderful achievement will be to work on all these things independently, preserving our individuality and taking nothing as dogma or as the word of a higher authority. Those things which are meant to come to the fore are quite able to do so without the help of any authority. But to give our Society meaning we need to stand together in unanimity. In part this means, of course, that we should be alert to what goes on amongst us and should recognize those who work alongside us and who endeavour to place before the world what goes on within our Anthroposophical Society in such a way that it really reflects the intentions of our Society. The main thing we can do to help our age is to work with understanding through the impulses of this age from our viewpoint. We need not lose heart, for however unfavourable conditions become in time, we may recall Lessing's words: Is not the whole of eternity mine? This is a thought that concerns every single human being.

We should be particularly careful to develop good practices with regard to the proper evaluation and estimation of all that comes to the fore amongst ourselves. In this connection I hope you will not mind my mentioning something, without wishing to say anything unpleasant to anyone. The periodical Das Reich, produced by Alexander von Bernus, makes every endeavour to move within our stream. So what does it matter if we agree or disagree with one or another of the articles it publishes? It is quite possible to disagree with a good deal. But many mistakes have been made on the part of our members with regard to this periodical. Seeing how it has been berated from all sides, I have to say that it is really not right to throw obstacles in the path of efforts which genuinely endeavour to work in harmony with our Movement. Of course everybody is entitled to his own opinion about the verses which Alexander von Bernus composed in connection with certain historical occult teachings which may be found amongst us. But I do consider things have been taken too far when floods of blatently rude letters start to arrive from our members. Where will it lead if we ill-treat those who are on our side while taking very little notice of those who insult us, just letting them go on doing so?

I wanted to bring up the matter of this periodical Das Reich, which strives to promote our endeavours, because I want to reply to the question that could be asked: What can we do? The very reason why these lectures have been given is to find a reply to this question: What can we do? What we can do is maintain an understanding attitude, in accordance with our anthroposophical spiritual science, towards everything going on at present! For what would be the significance of this spiritual science for us if we could really not transcend the attitude prevalent all over Europe today of people who speak of national aspirations and the like, and shape events in accordance with these national aspirations. Within the Society which serves anthroposophical spiritual science no one need become a faithless son of his nation, or deny anything he ought not to deny because he is firmly united with a particular nation as a result of his karma. But no one can be a true anthroposophist if he turns a blind eye towards the enormity of what is going on just now and allows himself to be deafened by all those means which some of those in power use today to stun us in order to avoid having to state what they are really playing at. So let me point out those things that are easily believed when they come towards us in a sentimental form, whereas what has always been hidden by the screens behind which occult events take place still has to remain hidden away behind these screens.

It must become clear to us that a time could come again—I am choosing my words very warily today, so I say could come again—in which the battle grows extremely terrible because peace is definitely not wanted. It could grow even more terrible than it has hitherto been if something is not introduced from one side or the other which can prevent this terror. Then there will once again be an opportunity to speak about the atrocities of Central Europe; then under the rubble and ashes will be buried the fact that these atrocities could have been prevented if people had not roared like a bull against moves towards peace. It was within the power of countries of the periphery to bring about peace. Yet the time will come—it is by no means unlikely that the time will come—when it will be said once again: The Germans are doing this or that and flouting every international law.

Indeed, my dear friends, it is once again fashionable for the encircling powers, having failed to bring about what could have held such actions in check, to accuse those who are encircled of protecting themselves on all sides. We must come to see this clearly in all its enormity. Beside all that may very well have happened, for instance in Belgium, must be placed the fact that the British Empire could have prevented all that has happened in Belgium.

Harsh though it might sound, it has to be said that it is untruthful to speak about the atrocities in Belgium without taking into account how easily they could have been prevented by the English. And it goes without saying that we feel the tragic destiny of France. Yet France was truly in a position which could have enabled her not to participate in the war.

The Central Powers were not in a position to avoid waging a defensive war once it became obvious that France would take part in any case. It is all very well to say the two could have faced each other, frontier to frontier. This is the very thing that was not possible, because Franco-Russian militarism so greatly outweighs what is called Prussian militarism.

However strongly we feel we belong to one group or another, we can surely resolve to look at these things squarely—I say ‘can’, not ‘must’. Then, when we work through this and make it a part of our lives, each in his own way will be able to do whatever he wants to do, in answer to the question: What can the individual do? Unless ever more and more people come to nurture the idea of making a united European stand against the belligerence of powers now at work invisibly, the collapse of European culture will indeed be inevitable. Even now a belligerent wave from the East is threatening to engulf us—from Japan, where a form of imperialism is in preparation which might turn out to be far mightier than any imperialism the world has so far known. The will to conquer is expressed in the cry of the new national anthem which, reminiscent of the English hymn, ‘Rule Britannia’, now resounds in ‘Rule Nippon’. To show you that the powers of Europe would have good reason not to mock the word ‘peace’, not to mock the content of the peace idea, let me read to you this hymn, now quoted in Japanese newspapers:

When Nippon, at the Lord's command,
Rose from the sea at dawn,
There sounded throughout all the world
A call from heaven's blue dome:
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule the world.
Torn by hate and blinding rage
Europe drowns in her own blood,
But you, devoid of blame or fault,
Shall be the guardian of the earth.
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule my world.

This is what is now booming across the world from the East. This is the Orient's answer to Europe, bathed in blood. Yet despite this, there are people in Europe who want to scorn the call for peace! This is a fact to which we cannot give too much thought.

In the introductory lecture yesterday our attention was drawn to the fact that certain events in the more ancient history of mankind can be rightly understood only when we not merely observe the forces and faculties of the personalities themselves, but when we realise at the outset that through the personalities in question, as through instruments, Beings are working who allow their deeds to stream down from higher worlds into our world. We must realise that these Beings cannot take direct hold of the physical facts of our existence because, on account of the present stage of their development, they cannot incarnate in a physical Body which draws its constituents from the physical world. If, therefore, they desire to work within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being—of his deeds, but also of his intellect, his powers of understanding. We find the influence and penetration of such Beings of the higher world the more clearly in evidence the farther back we go in the ages of the evolution of humanity. But it must not be imagined that this downpouring of forces and activities from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased; it continues even into our own time.

To the spiritual scientist who for years now has been absorbing principles which lead his feelings and ideal to accept the existence of higher worlds—to him a fact such as this will certainly, from he outset, be to some extent comprehensible; for he is accustomed always to draw the connecting threads which link our knowledge, our thinking, our willing, with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But from time to time the spiritual scientist is also in the position of having to guard against the materialistic conceptions which are so prevalent in the present age and make it impossible for those who stand aloof from the development of the spiritual life even to enter into what has to be said about the working of higher worlds into our physical world.

Fundamentally speaking, it is considered an antiquated attitude in our time even to speak of the influence of abstract ideas in the events of history. Many people to-day regard it as quite impermissible, in face of the genuinely scientific approach, to speak of certain ideas, abstract ideas which properly speaking can live only in the wind, taking effect in the successive epochs of history. A last semblance, at least, of belief in the influence of abstract ideas—although how they are to work is incomprehensible precisely because they are abstract ideas!—was still in evidence even in the 19th century, in Ranke's exposition of history¹⁰ But even this belief in ideas as factors in history is gradually being discarded by our progressively materialistic development, and in a certain respect to-day it is regarded as the sign of an enlightened mind in the domain of history to believe that all the characteristic features of the several epochs merely represent the convergence of physically perceptible actions, outer needs, outer interests and ideas of physical human beings. The time is now past when spirits such as Herder, as if through a certain inspiration, still portrayed the development of human history in a way which enables one to perceive that it is based on the assumption, at least, of the existence of living powers, living super-sensible powers manifesting through the deeds and the lives of men.¹¹ Those who want to be accounted very clever to-day, will say: “Well yes, a man such as Lessing certainly had many really intelligent ideas, but then, at the end of his life, he wrote nonsense such as you find in The Education of the Human Race, where the only way in which he could help himself out of his difficulties was by linking the strict conformity to law shown by the flow of historical development with the idea of reincarnation.” In the last sentences of The Education of the Human Race,¹² Lessing has actually expressed what is described by Anthroposophy on the basis of occult facts—namely, that souls who lived in ancient epochs and then absorbed active, living forces, carry over these forces into their new incarnations, so that behind physical happenings there is not an abstract onflow of ideas but an actual and real onflow of the spirit. As I said, a clever ass will insist that in his old age Lessing hit upon ideas as confused as that of reincarnation, and that these ideas must he ignored.—This reminds one again of the bitterly ironic yet brilliant note once written by Hebbel in his diary, to the effect that a fair motif would be that a master, taking the subject of Plato in his school, has among his pupils the reincarnated Plato, who understands what the master is teaching so little that he has to be severely punished!

The conception of the historical evolution of humanity has lost much of the earlier, spiritual insight, and Spiritual Science will really have to guard against the onslaught of materialistic thinking which comes from all sides and regards communications which are based on the spiritual facts as so much lunacy. That things have come to a pretty pass is shown, for example, in the fact that all those mighty pictures, those grand symbolical conceptions which emanated from the old clairvoyant knowledge and are expressed in the characters of legends and fairy-tales, have interpreters of the very oddest kind. The most curious production in this domain is undoubtedly Solomon Reinach's little book Orpheus, which has caused a certain furor in many circles in France. Everything from which the ideas of Demeter, of Orpheus, and of other mythological cycles are supposed to have sprung, is traced back in this book to purely materialistic happenings and it is often utterly grotesque how the historical existence of this or that figure, standing, let us say, behind Hermes or Moses, is alleged to have originated, and with what superficiality an attempt has been made to explain these figures as the inventions of poetic license, of human fantasy. According to Solomon Reinach's method it would be easy, sixty or seventy years hence, when outer memory of him will have faded somewhat, to prove that there never was such a man, but that it was simply a matter of popular fantasy having transferred the old idea of Reinecke Fuchs to Solomon Reinach. According to his method this would certainly be possible. The absurdity of the whole book is on a par with what is said in the Preface—that it has been written “for the widest circles of the educated public, even for the very young.” “For the very young”—since he emphasises that he has avoided everything that might cause a shock to young girls—although he has not avoided tracing back the idea of Demeter to a pig! He promises, however, that if his book gains the influence he hopes for, he will write a special edition for mothers, which will include everything that must still be withheld from their daughters.—That is the kind of thing we have come to!

One would like to remind students of Spiritual Science particularly, that it is possible to prove on purely external grounds that spiritual powers, spiritual forces have worked through human beings right up to our own century—and this quite apart from the purely occult, esoteric research with which we shall be mainly concerned here. But in order that we may understand how it is possible for Spiritual Science to maintain, on purely external grounds, that super-sensible powers exercise sway in history, let me point to the following.

Anyone who gains a little insight into the development of modern humanity, let us say in the 14th and 15th centuries and on until the 16th, will realise how infinitely significant in this outer development was the intervention of a certain personality, one in respect of whom it can be proved from completely external evidence that spiritual, super-sensible Powers worked through her. In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history ... then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point—I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who—one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit's end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something—he wanted to test her by it—of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith—it would be better to say, through her actual vision—and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history?—None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history. It is possible that someone may say to himself: “If I had guided these deeds I would have guided them more wisely!”—because he finds one thing or another in the procedure of the Maid of Orleans at variance with his own way of thinking. Adherents of Spiritual Science, however, should not wish to correct the deeds of gods through human intellect—a very common practice in our so-called civilisation. There have also been people who quite in the Spirit of the present age, have wanted, as it were, to unburden modern history of the deeds of the Maid of Orleans. A characteristic modern work with this materialistic trend has been written by Anatole France. One would really like to know how materialistic thinking manages to reconcile itself with much irrefutable evidence—I am still speaking only of actual historical documents. And so because we are in Stuttgart and I sometimes like to take account of local matters, I want to quote from a document to which reference has already been made here.

Those who belong to Stuttgart certainly know that there once lived here a man¹³ who carried out important research on the Gospels. As spiritual scientists we certainly need not agree with the things—some of them extremely clever—that were brought forward by Gfrörer—that was his name—and we may be quite sure that if he had heard what is now being given in the domain of Spiritual Science he would have used terms he was often wont to apply to his opponents—whom he, with his stubborn-headedness, by no means always let off lightly. He would have said that these Theosophists, too, are people who are “not quite right in the head.” But this was before the time when, as is the case to-day, historical documents can be passed over for purely materialistic reasons if they happen to deal with inconvenient facts and obviously point to the working of higher forces in our physical world. And so I will again quote from a short document—a letter published in the first half of the 19th century. I will read you just a few paragraphs from this letter, which was quoted by Gfrörer at that time in justification of his belief. I will read a passage characterising the Maid of Orleans, and then ask you to think of the implications of such a vivid description.

After the writer of this letter has set forth what the Maid of Orleans accomplished, he continues:

“This and much more has the Maid brought about, and with God's help she will accomplish still greater things. The girl is of appealing beauty and manly bearing; she speaks little and shows remarkable sagacity; when she speaks she has a pleasing, delicately feminine voice. She eats little and abstains from wine. She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons and admires well-accoutred and noble men. To be obliged to meet and converse with large numbers of people is abhorrent to her; her tears often overflow; she loves a happy face, endures unheard of toil, and is so assiduous in the manipulation and bearing of weapons that she remains uninterruptedly for six days—day and night—in full armour. She says that the English have no right to France, and therefore—as she says—God has sent her to drive them out and conquer them, but only after previous warning. For the King she shows the deepest veneration; she says he is beloved by God, is under special protection, and will therefore be preserved. Of the Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be delivered in a miraculous way, but only after a demand for his release has been made to the English who hold him prisoner.

“With that, revered Duke, I bring my report to a conclusion. Still more wonderful things are happening and have happened than I can write of or describe to you in words. While I write this, the afore mentioned Maid has already gone to the neighbourhood of the city of Rheims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set off for his anointing and crowning under God's protection. Most respected and powerful Duke, and greatly venerated master! I commend myself to you in all humility, while praying the Almighty to protect you and fulfil your desires. Written at Biteromis, the 21st day of June in the year 1429.

verse"> Your humble servant
PERCEVAL
Lord of Bonlaninth. Counsellor and
Chamberlain of the King of the French
and of the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal of
Berry.”

This letter¹⁴ was written by one who knew the Maid and was in close contact with the King. It is indeed amazing when one discovers all these things on purely occult grounds and with occult means of proof—for they are indeed to be found in the Akasha Chronicle—and then sees how, in cases like this, actual historical documents can also be produced. In short, it seems almost madness to doubt what was working through the Maid of Orleans. And when we also take into consideration the fact that through her deeds the whole history of modern time assumed a different aspect, this gives us the right to say that here, verified by documentary evidence, we can see the direct intervention of the super-sensible worlds. When the spiritual researcher goes further and seeks in his own way for the one who was the real Inspirer of the Maid of Orleans, he finds something very remarkable as he investigates the successive epochs of time. He finds that the same Spirit who worked through the Maid of Orleans as his instrument at that time had inspired—in a quite different form, a quite different way—another personality who was a philosopher at the Court of Charles the Bald. This was Scotus Erigena, through whose philosophical and theological ideas in an earlier period Europe had been so deeply influenced. And so we see that the same Powers work in different epochs in a different way through human beings who are their instruments; that there is continuity, an onflowing stream of happenings in what we call history.

I showed you yesterday how a significant myth of Babylonian-Chaldean times points to the penetration of the spiritual worlds into men upon whom much depended for the third Post-Atlantean period, for the whole of historical development in ancient Chaldea, in ancient Babylonia. But we must now also observe from the standpoint of occult science the two personalities hidden behind the legendary names of Gilgamish and Eabani. In the Sense of occult history we have to see in them personalities who stand at the starting-point of the Babylonian-Chaldean epoch of culture. The impulses proceeding from them are to be discerned again in the development of the really spiritual culture of ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.—Now Gilgamish was a personality who had many incarnations behind him and may therefore be called an “old” soul within the evolution of humanity.

You know from the book Occult Science that during the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution, that only a few remained on the earth during the Lemurian epoch; that before the actual danger of the mummification of everything human began, the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, arid so forth. Then, from the end of the Lemurian epoch and during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies under the changed earthly conditions, and to appear in ever new incarnations. Thus there are souls who came down comparatively early from the planetary worlds and others who came down late; indeed not until the later periods of Atlantean evolution. The souls who came down early have therefore more incarnations behind them in earth-evolution than those who came down later; hence we can call these latter, in contrast to the former, “younger” souls—souls who have taken less into themselves.

The individuality hidden behind the name Gilgamish was an old soul, and a younger soul was incarnated in Eabani, at the starting-point of the Babylonian civilisation. Indeed, in connection with human souls being younger or older in this sense, something very remarkable discloses itself—something that might almost be said to cause astonishment even to the occultist. If someone has reached the point to-day of giving a little credence to the truths of Spiritual Science, but otherwise still clings to the prejudices and criteria of the external world, it will seem plausible to him that modern philosophers or scholars, for example, should be accounted among the older souls. But, strangely enough, occult research finds just the opposite; and for the occultist himself it is surprising to find that in Kant, for example, there lived a young soul. Yes, the facts show that it is so ... it cannot be gainsaid. It can also be intimated here that younger souls—the majority at any rate—incarnate in the coloured races, so that it is the coloured races, especially the negro race, which mainly brings younger souls to incarnation. The characteristic quality of that kind of thinking which comes to expression in erudition, in the materialistic science of to-day, calls for younger souls. And it can be shown that in the case of many a personality where one would not in the least expect it, the preceding incarnation was in an uncivilised race. That again is what the facts tell us! It must be kept strictly in mind, for it is so. Naturally this does not in the least detract from the significance or value of the opinions we have formed about the world around us; nevertheless it must be grasped in order fully to understand the essentials here. In this sense, in Eabani we have to do with a young soul and in Gilgamish with an old soul in ancient Babylonia. The whole nature of an old soul will enable it early in life to grasp not only the essential element, the essential factor, in the existing culture, but also that which strikes into it as a new impulse, opening up a wide vista into the future.

There will be many, of course, who will protest if one tries to make it plausible to them that the Theosophists whom they are wont to look down upon are, generally speaking, older souls than people who deliver scientific lectures. Investigation shows, however, that this is so; and although spiritual research must not be misused for the purpose of forcing people to change their criteria of judgment, or of scoffing at what is after all part of the very make-up of our civilisation, nevertheless the truth must be faced fairly and squarely. Gilgamish, then, was a personality who, owing to his particular condition of soul, participated in the most progressive spiritual elements and spiritual factors of the age—in everything that threw light far into the future and at that time could be attained only if such a personality went through a kind of initiation. Through the imparting of something that can be received only through a certain initiation, Gilgamish was to be enabled to provide a kind of leaven for the Babylonian culture. He had to experience an initiation up to a certain degree.

Let us think of this Gilgamish at the point where he stood in the evolution of humanity before this initiation. He was a man of the third Post-Atlantean epoch. But in this epoch twilight had already fallen over the natural human clairvoyance, over what men were able to achieve through forces that were innate in them. These forces were no longer present to the degree that could enable any great number of men to look back into their earlier incarnations. If we were to go farther back, into the second or into the first Post-Atlantean epoch, we should find that the majority of human beings then on the earth could look back into their earlier incarnations, into the course of their soul-life before their present birth. But that faculty had been lost. In the case of Gilgamish, the Being who was to reveal himself through him, and who could do so only by leading him presently to a kind of initiation, kept a guiding hand upon him from the outset and set him at the place where he came to recognise his own position in the history of the world. As it were through super-sensible events, presented to us in the pictures of the myth I outlined to you yesterday, a friend was placed at the side of Gilgamish, a friend whose barbarity and uncivilised nature are indicated by the statement that his outer form was half animal. It is said that this friend had skins of animals on his body, which means that he was still covered with hair like the men of primeval times, that his soul was so young that it built for itself a body which showed the human being still in a savage state. Thus the more advanced Gilgamish had in Eabani a man at his side who, because of his young soul and the bodily Organisation conditioned by it, still possessed ancient clairvoyance. This friend was given to Gilgamish in order that he might find his own bearings in life. With the help of this friend he was then able to achieve certain things, such as the retrieval of that spiritual Power presented to us in the myth in the picture of Ishtar, the Goddess of the city of Erech. I told you how this Goddess had been stolen by the neighbouring City and that for this reason Gilgamish and Eabani together waged war against this city, vanquished its king and brought the Goddess back.

If we are to understand in the true historical sense such things as are presented to us in these old myths, we must investigate their occult background. Behind this rape of the City Goddess there lies something similar to the rape of Helen, who was carried off to Troy by Paris. We must realise that there are good grounds for what is stated in my little book, Blood is a very special Fluid. It is pointed out there that in the peoples of ancient times there was a kind of collective consciousness. A man did not merely feel his personal ego within his skin, but he felt himself as a member of the tribe, of the city-community. Just as the individual human soul is felt to be the centralising factor for our organism as a whole, uniting fingers, toes, hands, legs, so did man in very ancient times feel himself a member of the group-soul. Something of the kind still persisted in the early city-communities, even in ancient Greece. One common spirit, a folk-egohood, a tribal egohood, lived and weaved through the single personalities of the tribe or folk. But whatever could come to men's consciousness from this collective egohood had to be under the guidance of the Mysteries in the secret temples, where the priests directed the common spiritual affairs of a city or a tribe. And it is not a mere figure of speech, but in a certain sense an actual reality, to say that such a temple-sanctuary served as a dwelling-place for the city-ego, for the group-soul. There this group-soul had its habitation, and the priests of the temple were its servants. It was they who received the instructions of this group-soul through inspiration—through what was known as an Oracle—and bore them out into the world in order that one thing or another might come to pass. For we must think of the Oracles exactly in the sense I have indicated.

Now the direction of these temple-sanctuaries was bound up with certain secrets, and many conflicts in ancient times arose because the temple-priests of one city were carried off by the neighbouring city, so that in this way, together with the priests, the most important secrets of a city came into the hands of the neighbouring one. There you have the reality behind the picture of the abduction of Ishtar, the city Goddess, the group-soul of Erech, by the neighbouring city. The priests, the trustees of the temple secrets were made prisoners, because the neighbouring city hoped in this way to come into possession of the holy secrets and therewith of the power of the city in question. That is the real background.

In the condition of soul at first prevailing in him, Gilgamish could not himself be aware of such things; he did not see their full implications. But a younger soul could be for him as it were the clairvoyant sense which enabled him to recapture the temple treasure for his own city. Gilgamish now realised that in human life, especially in times of transition, there is such a thing as is described in the legend of the blind man and the cripple: each is helpless alone, but together they can make progress inasmuch as the blind man carries the cripple on his shoulders and the cripple lends the blind man his power of sight. In Gilgamish and Eabani, whose respective gifts differed so greatly, we see the same kind of co-operation transformed into the spiritual. In the historical facts of ancient times we find this at every turn. And it is important to understand it, for only then do we realise why it is that myths and sagas so often tell of friends who have to achieve something together—friends who are generally as unlike in their nature of soul as were Gilgamish and Eabani. But what Gilgamish also acquired through his friend Eabani was this: he was as it were “infected” by Eabani with a clairvoyant power of his own, so that to a certain extent he could look back into his own earlier incarnations. This would certainly have been beyond his normal faculties. And now let us picture vividly how Gilgamish must have been influenced by this vision of his past incarnations.

What was he able to experience from the moment when it became possible for him to look back into what his soul had lived through in earlier incarnations? At first it all seemed alien to him. He could not penetrate fully into what he himself had been in these earlier incarnations; he did not, as it were, recognise himself. So it would be with any human being if he began to look back into his previous incarnations. In most cases things would be different from what they are in the vain imaginings which are always so much in evidence when there is talk of some person or other being an incarnation of this or that individual. We may well come across a person who cites a whole series of great names in history as those of his former incarnations ... in fact numbers of people are convinced that they were never below the rank of a queen or a princess! In these matters, which should be treated with great earnestness, there must be no unlawful play of fancy, no misusage.

Now one who, like Gilgamish at that time, begins to look back on his successive incarnations, may also now and then be veritably astonished. Gilgamish himself looked back to incarnations when he was still involved in all kinds of conditions determined by the sway of the group-soul. To be sure he had, in a certain respect, as a person, worked his way out of these connections; through Eabani he had also come to know for the first time the whole import of what is symbolised in the myth through the figure of the city Goddess. But when he looked back there was much in his earlier incarnations that did not please him, that went against the grain. He found, for example, that in these incarnations his soul had had unusual friendships, human connection, of a kind which in his present life he would have regarded as shameful. Thus, in face of what the City Goddess had revealed to him indirectly, through Eabani, he began in a certain way—as the myth indicates—to upbraid, to reproach his own soul. In the myth it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her lovers, for he is jealous of them. He is looking as it were across the horizon of his own soul and the visions are living realities before him, as real as human beings who stand around someone in the physical world, eliciting feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards them. In the reproaches leveled by Gilgamish against the Goddess we perceive that he is really speaking in terms of what is happening in his own soul. Thus, for example, when it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her previous relationship with one who is called Ishullanu (Ischlanu) in the myth, this signifies that his own friendship with a certain person who had been his master's gardener in the preceding incarnation was not pleasing to him.¹⁵ What took place in the soul of Gilgamish and which first imparted to it that inner content, that inner realisation, which he needed in order to become the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation—all this is shown to us in the picture of the regaining of a certain clairvoyance, of the ascent into super-sensible worlds which, because he was an old soul, were in a certain sense lost to him. This is shown to us in the myth.

And then Gilgamish was to undergo a kind of initiation by being led back to that kind of vision which his own soul had possessed during Atlantean incarnations. What the myth presents as the journey over the sea, and the wanderings of Gilgamish to the West, is nothing else than the inner path towards initiation by which his soul is led upwards to spiritual heights where it can perceive its ancient Atlantean surroundings, when, still clairvoyant, it had gazed into the spiritual world. The myth tells that an this, his spiritual journeying, Gilgamish was brought to the great Atlantean Being, Xisuthros, This was a Being who belonged to certain higher Hierarchies and who during the Atlantean time lived in the sphere of humanity but was afterwards transported from the world of men to dwell in higher regions. Gilgamish was to meet this personality in order that through beholding him he might come to know the condition of souls when they are able to look into the spiritual worlds. Thus he was to be led upwards again into the spiritual spheres by being transported in his life of soul into Atlantean times. And when he is bidden not to sleep for seven nights and six days, this signifies nothing else than an exercise which was to make the soul capable of penetrating fully into the corresponding spiritual regions. When we are now told that he was not able to endure the test, Isis again signifies something of great importance, namely that Gilgamish is represented as a personality who was brought to the very brink of Initiation—who was destined, as it were, to look through the portal of Initiation into the mysteries of the spirit but owing to the conditions of the times was not able to penetrate fully into their depths. In short, this is intended to indicate that the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation had remained at the portal of Initiation, that he could not look with full clarity into the higher worlds, with the result that he gave Babylonian culture the stamp that is a sign of no more than a glimpse into the secrets of Initiation.

We shall now see that the nature of external Babylonian culture was indeed such that it confirms what has just been said. Whereas, for example, everything points to the fact that Hermes was a personality who gazed into the very depths of the holiest secrets of Initiation and could therefore become the great inaugurator of ancient Egyptian culture, it must be said that the Babylonian culture was prepared in the way I have just described: through a leading personality who had in his soul all those qualities which develop when penetration into the innermost essence of Initiation has not been fully achieved. Hence historical development in ancient Babylonia gives clear evidence of an external culture and an inner, esoteric culture running parallel to one another. Whereas in the life of ancient Egypt there was greater interplay between these two aspects, in the ancient culture of Babylonia they fell apart. And within what must be regarded as the Babylonian culture inaugurated by Gilgamish, there was enshrined the content and substance of the most sacred, most hidden Mysteries of the Chaldeans.

The Initiates of these Mysteries were indeed initiated into the innermost secrets, but this influence flowed through the external culture only as a tiny stream. This external culture proceeded from the impulse given by Gilgamish. Everything that has been said points to the fact that Gilgamish, as a personality, had not actually reached the point where he could have experienced complete Initiation. But just because at the time in which he was working he did not give effect to his own, personal impulses, did not impart his own personal forces to the world, he was very specially able to let one of the spiritual Beings we place in the rank of the Fire-Spirits, the Archangeloi, work through him. Such a Being did indeed work through Gilgamish, and it is in a Fire-Spirit that we must see the source of the ordering of Babylonian life and its impelling forces, for which Gilgamish was the instrument. So we shall rightly conceive of this Gilgamish in a picture that suggests the symbol of the ancient centaur. Such ancient symbols correspond more closely to reality than is generally supposed. A centaur—half man, half animal—was always intended to represent how in the more mighty of men of old the highest spiritual manhood and that which united the single personality with the animal organisation in a certain sense actually fell apart. Gilgamish gave the impression of a centaur to those who were capable of judging what he was, and it is the same to this day.

Remarkably enough, this picture of the centaur is cropping up again in the field of modern scientific thought. There has recently been published a book which sets out to base itself entirely on scientific facts, and yet goes to work with a certain absence of prejudice, hence it does not produce such an amateurish, senseless hotch-potch as do those who call themselves Monists. The author makes a genuine effort to understand man, and how, as an independent being of soul-and-spirit, he is related to the physical organism. And then this author, who bases himself on natural science, comes out with a remarkable picture. Quite certainly he was not thinking of the centaur when he conceived this picture, but referring to what results from natural-scientific ideas about the relation of the soul to the body, he says: This may be likened to a horseman riding upon his horse. The facts of natural science, when rightly understood, compel one to say: The soul is independent and uses the body as its instrument, as a rider uses his horse.—Yes, the centaur is here again; things will develop rapidly, and before people are aware of it, spiritual-scientific ideas will take root in our contemporaries under the compulsion of the facts of natural science itself. Not long ago I was talking to a philosopher who sets great store by materialistic ideas, and he said to me: “Of course the picture of the centaur arose because the old inhabitants of Greece saw certain tribes coming down from the North on their horses, and as it was generally misty, they thought that horse and rider were a single form. With all their superstition they might easily imagine this.”

That is a really ingenuous idea—perhaps not exactly philosophical—but certainly ingenuous! This picture of the centaur, which did not arise because the Greeks could not distinguish the rider how his horse but because the earlier peoples inevitably thought of the spiritual being of man as independent of the bodily nature—this idea of the centaur is again cropping up in our time out of the very concepts of natural science. It must therefore be said that despite all materialistic ideas we are coming to the point to-day when materialism itself, if only it will take the facts as they really are, will lead by and by to what Spiritual Science has to say from its occult sources. But if, in line with our studies, we want to focus our occult observation upon a figure such as Gilgamish—who has already become an object of interest to external research—we must realise that there we have to do with penetration by a Being of the spiritual Hierarchies. So that while we must in truth see every human being, in respect of his spirituality, in the picture of the centaur, in the case of one who works as Gilgamish worked, we must recognise, in addition, that the spiritual part of the centaur is directed by higher Powers who are sending down their forces to further the progress of humanity. And we shall find an going farther back into history that this is revealed even more clearly. We shall also see how modification takes place in the course of the ages up to our own time and how spiritual forces, when they work through human beings, assume constantly different forms the nearer we come to the immediate present.

---

• 10. Leopold von Ranke, 1795–1886. See Rudolf Steiner, Karmic-Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. II, lecture XIV.
• 11. J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, written between 1784 and 1791. Tr. by T. Churchill; Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man. (London, 1803.)
• 12. G. E. Lessing. The last paragraphs of The Education of the Human Race, published in 1780, are as follows:
  
  “But ... why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world?
  “ Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human widerstanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
  “Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards ?
  “And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us?
  “Why should I not come back as often. as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from one, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
  “Is this a reason against it? Or, because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would perrnit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?
  “Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost?—And how much then should I miss?—Is not a whole Eternity mine? "
  
  Tr. F. W. Robertson (1872).
  Reprinted (1927) by Anthroposophical
  Publishing Co.
• 13. August Friedrich Gfrörer, 1803—1861.
• 14. Letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, 21st June, 1429. See: Procés de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d' Arc, ed. Quicherat, Tome V, pages 114—21. (Paris, 1849) where the text is in Latin. The name Boulainvilliers is said to have been incorrectly rendered in several of the earlier translations.
• 15. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 33. (Gilgamish is reproaching Ishtar):
  
  Lovest thou, too, Ishullanu, the gardener he of thy Sire, Bringing delights to thee ceaseless, while daily he garnish'd thy platter...."
  
  (From the Sixth Tablet.)

At the close of yesterday's exposition we indicated the intention to consider next the cardinal issue within the Christ impulse: the Death on the Cross and its significance. But before turning to a delineation of the death of Christ, and thus to the climax of this study cycle, we must discuss today the true meaning and significance of much that we find in the John Gospel itself, as well as its relation to what the other Gospels offer. In the last few days we have been endeavoring to comprehend the Christ impulse and to establish it as an actual event in human evolution by means of quite a different source: by clairvoyant reading of the akashic record; and in a sense we referred only to those passages in the Gospels which appear to confirm what clairvoyant research justifies us in stating as truths.

Today, in order to follow up our studies, we shall consider the John Gospel itself and characterize this important document of mankind from a certain aspect. We said yesterday that the theological research of our time, in as far as it is affected by materialism, can find no points of contact with this John Gospel, is unable to see its historical value; but regarded with the vision of spiritual science this Gospel proves to be one of the most marvelous documents possessed by the human race. It is not too much to say that not only as a religious document but—to use a profane expression—among all purely literary works in existence it is one of the greatest. Let us now approach it from this literary angle.

From the very first chapters—if rightly understood and if one knows what all lies concealed in the words—this Gospel of St. John shows a rounded beauty of style equal to any in the world, although a superficial study does not reveal this fact. What superficial observation discloses first is that in enumerating the miracles the writer of the John Gospel, whose back-ground we now know, mentions precisely seven up to the Lazarus event proper. (The significance of the number seven will be treated in the following lectures.) What were these seven signs?

1. The sign in connection with the Marriage in Cana in Galilee.

2. The sign given in the healing of the nobleman's son.

3. The sign given in the healing of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda.

4. The sign given in the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

5. The sign given in the vision of Christ walking on the sea.

6. The sign given in the healing of the man born blind. And finally:

7. The greatest of the signs, the initiation of Lazarus, the transformation of Lazarus into the writer of the John Gospel.

These are the seven signs. But now we must ask ourselves, What about these signs, this question of miracles? If you listened attentively to a number of things that were told you in the foregoing lectures you will remember having heard that the state of human consciousness has kept altering throughout the entire course of evolution. We cast our gaze back to remote times and found that men did not issue from a merely animalistic stage of development, but from a form in which they possessed the power of clairvoyance as a congenital endowment. People of that time were clairvoyant, even though their consciousness still lacked the ability to say “I am”. The capacity for self-consciousness was something they had to acquire gradually, and for this they had to forfeit their old clairvoyance. In the future the time will come again when all men are clairvoyant, but without loss of self-consciousness, of the “I am”. Those are the three stages which humanity has in part passed through, in part still has ahead of it.

In Atlantis men still lived in a sort of dream consciousness, but this was clairvoyant. Then they gradually achieved self-consciousness, outer objective consciousness, in exchange for which, however, they gave up the old gift of dim clairvoyance. And finally, what man will have in the future is clairvoyant consciousness coupled with self-consciousness. Thus man traverses the path from an ancient dim clairvoyance through an opaque objective consciousness, finally ascending to conscious clairvoyance.

But in addition to consciousness, everything else about man has changed as well. The belief that conditions must always have been as they are today is due to nothing but human shortsightedness. Everything has evolved. Nothing has always been as it is today, not even men's relation to each other. You have already gathered from intimations in the last lectures that in older epochs—up to the time when the Christ impulse entered human evolution—the influence of soul upon soul was much stronger. Such was human disposition at that time. A man did not merely hear what was told him in externally audible words: in a certain way he could feel and know something that the other felt and thought vividly, livingly. Love meant something quite different from what it does today, albeit in those times it was largely a matter of blood ties. Nowadays it has taken on more of a psychic character, but it has lost its strength. Nor will it regain this until the Christ impulse shall have entered all human hearts. In olden times active love possessed at the same time a healing property, a powerful balm, for the soul of its recipient.

Coincident with the development of the intellect and of cleverness, qualities that came into being only gradually, these ancient direct influences of soul upon soul dwindled away. The gift of acting upon the other's soul, of causing one's own soul force to stream into it, was unquestionably peculiar to the older peoples; and you must therefore imagine the force that one soul could receive from another as much greater, the influence one soul could exert upon another as much stronger, than is the case today. The external historical documents may report nothing of all this, the tablets and monuments may not mention it; but clairvoyant study of the akashic record nevertheless discloses the fact that in olden times the healing of the sick, for example, was extensively accomplished through a psychic influence passing from the one to the other. And the soul possessed many other powers as well. Though today it sounds like a fairy tale, it is a fact that in those times a man's will, if he so desired and had specially trained himself for the purpose, had the power to act soothingly upon the growth of a plant, to accelerate or retard it. Today but scanty remnants of all this are left.
Human life, then, was very different at that time. No one would have been surprised—given the right mutual relationship—at the passing over of a psychic influence from one person to the other.

It must be kept in mind, however, that two or more are needed if the exercise of a psychic influence of that sort is to take effect. We could imagine the possibility of a man imbued with the power of Christ entering our midst nowadays; but those with the requisite faith in him would be very few in number, so that he would not be able to achieve all that can be accomplished by the influence of one soul upon another. For not only must the influence be exerted: someone must be present who is sufficiently developed to be affected by it. Remembering that formerly those who could receive such influences were more numerous, we should not be surprised to learn that for the healing of the sick there indeed existed the means by which psychic influences could take effect; but also, that influences which today can be transmitted only by mechanical means were at that time applied psychically.

We should keep in mind that the Christ event entered human evolution at a very special point in time. Only the very last remnants, so to say, of those soul currents that flowed from man to man were left as a heritage of the old Atlantean age. Humanity was about to descend ever deeper into matter, and the possibility for such psychic currents to be effective constantly diminished. That was the moment at which the Christ impulse had to enter, the impulse which in its nature could accomplish so very much for those who were still sufficiently receptive.

Those who are really familiar with evolution as it applied to mankind will therefore find it quite natural that the Christ Being, having once entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in about the thirtieth year of His life, could unfold very special powers in this sheath, for the latter had been developing since time immemorial. We mentioned yesterday that this individuality of Jesus of Nazareth had in one former life been incarnated in ancient Persia, and then, passing through one incarnation after another, had continued to rise in its spiritual development. That is why the Christ could dwell in such a body, and why this body could be sacrificed to Him. This the Evangelists knew well, hence they presented the entire narrative in such a way as to be wholly comprehensible for spiritual research. Only, we must take everything in the Gospels literally—that is, we must first learn to read them. As has been said, the deeper meanings of the miracles we shall learn in due time; but here we can ask, for example, why, precisely in the first of the miracles, it is specially emphasized in dealing with the Marriage in Cana of Galilee that this took place in Cana “of Galilee”. Seek as you will, you can find in old Palestine within the radius then known no second Cana; and in such a case it would seem superfluous to specify the locality. Why, then, does the Evangelist tell us that this miracle occurred in Cana "of Galilee"? Because the important point to be stressed was that something occurred which had to take place in Galilee. It means that nowhere else but in Galilee could Christ have found just those people whose presence was indispensable. As I said, an influence implies not only the one who exerts it, but the others as well—those who are appropriately fitted to receive it. Christ's first appearance would not have been possible within the Jewish community proper, but it was possible in Galilee with its mixture of many different tribes and groups. Just because members of so many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot, there was far less blood relationship, and above all, far less faith in it, than in Judea, in the narrow circle of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogenous racial mixture.

But what was it to which Christ, in view of His impulse, felt Himself particularly called? We have said that one of His most significant utterances was,

Before Abraham was, was the I am

;

and the other,

I and the Father are one

.

By this He meant: among those who cling to the old forms of life the ego is entrenched in a system of blood relationships. The words I and Father Abraham are one aroused a very special feeling in the true confessor of the Old Testament, a feeling nowadays very difficult to share. What a man calls his own self, circumscribed by birth and death, he sees as transitory. But one who had true faith in the Old Testament, who was influenced by the widespread teachings of that time, asserted—not allegorically, but as a fact: As regards myself I am isolated; but I am a member of a great organism, of a great living whole reaching back to Father Abraham. Just as my finger can remain a living member only as long as it is part of my body, so my memory is contingent upon my feeling myself a member of the great folk organism that goes back to Father Abraham. I am part of the great complex, exactly as my finger is part of my body. Cut off my finger and it ceases to be a finger: it is safe only as long as it is part of my hand, my hand part of my arm, and my arm part of my body; it ceases to have meaning if severed from my hand. And in like manner, I myself have meaning only when I feel myself a member of all the generations through which the blood flows down from Father Abraham. Then I feel sheltered. My individual ego is transient and fleeting, but not so this whole great folk organism way back to Father Abraham. When I sense and feel myself wholly embraced by it I conquer my temporally transient ego: I am sheltered in one great ego, the ego of my people that has come down to me from Father Abraham through the blood of the generations.

That represents the conviction of the Old Testament adherents: all the great events narrated in the Old Testament, everything that today seems miraculous, occurred through the power of the inner experience contained in the words, I and Father Abraham are one. But the time came when men were destined to relinquish this state of consciousness for another, hence it gradually disappeared. That is why Christ could not address those who, on the one hand, had lost the magic power of influencing by means of blood ties, and on the other, still believed only in the common bond with Father Abraham. Clearly, among these Christ could not find the faith necessary for enabling His soul to flow actively into other souls; and for this purpose He had to turn to those who, owing to their mixed blood, no longer clung to this old belief: to the Galileans. That is where His mission had to commence. Even though the old state of consciousness was generally on the wane, still He found in Galilee a medley of peoples that stood at the beginning of the era in which blood became mixed. From all quarters tribes assembled here that had previously been governed solely by the forces of the old blood ties. They were on the point of finding the transition. They vividly retained the feeling that their fathers were still endowed with the old consciousness states, that they possessed the magic powers which act from soul to soul. Among these people Christ could inaugurate His new mission, which consisted in endowing man with an ego consciousness no longer bound to blood relationship; an ego consciousness which could say, It is within myself that I shall find the connection with the spiritual Father Who, instead of letting His blood flow down through the generations, radiates His spiritual force into each individual soul. The ego which is within me, and which is in direct communion with the spiritual Father, was before Abraham was. It is for me, then, to infuse into this ego a force that will be strengthened through my being aware of my connection with the spiritual Father force of the world. I and the Father are one. No longer I and Father Abraham—that is, a physical ancestor.

Such were the people to whom Christ turned, people who had arrived at the point of understanding this, people who, having broken away from the blood ties by intermarriage, needed to find the strong force—not in consanguinity, but in the individual soul: the force that can lead men gradually to express the spiritual in the physical.—Do not ask, Why do we not see things happening today as they happened then? Aside from the fact that he who has the will to see them can see them, we must remember that men have emerged from that state of consciousness and descended into the world of matter; that the period in question represented the boundary line; and that Christ used the last representatives of the previous epoch of human evolution in whom to demonstrate the power of spirit over matter. The signs that were done while the old state of consciousness was still present, but disappearing, were intended as an example and a symbol—a symbol of faith.

Now let us turn to this Marriage in Cana of Galilee itself. If I were to develop in detail all the implications indicated in the John Gospel, in the entire Gospel content, fourteen lectures would certainly not suffice: several years would be needed. But such a literal development of the subject would only serve to confirm what I can suggest in brief elucidations.

The first thing we are told in connection with this first sign is:

There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee

.

Here we must stop to realize that the John Gospel contains not one word that has not a definite meaning. Well, then: why a marriage? Because a marriage brings about on a single occasion what the Christ mission effects with such far-reaching results: it brings people together. And then, a marriage “in Galilee”? It was in Galilee that the ancient blood ties were severed, that mutually alien bloods came to mingle. Now, Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood, so we are here dealing with intermarriages having the object of creating progeny among people who are no longer related by blood.

What I am now about to say will seem very strange to you. What would people have felt in such a case in very old times when there still prevailed the close or endogamous marriage, as one is inclined to call it in the spiritual-scientific sense? We must realize that the transformation of this close marriage into a distant or exogamous marriage is very much a part of human evolution, and that what I have already said explains what an endogamous marriage means. Among all people of ancient times it was contrary to law to marry outside of the tribe, away from consanguinity. People related by blood, members of the same tribe, intermarried; and this custom of marrying within the tribe, within blood relationship, resulted in the marvel of engendering intense magical force. This can be verified at any time by means of spiritual-scientific research. The descendants of a blood-related tribe possessed, as a consequence of such intermarriage of relatives, magical powers that permitted one soul to act upon another.

Let us imagine that in ancient times we had been asked to attend a wedding, and that the customary drink—in this case, wine—had given out. What would have happened? Provided the right relations existed among the blood-related members of this wedding party, it would have been possible, through the magical power of love arising out of consanguinity, for the water—or whatever was offered later in place of wine—to be sensed as wine as a result of the psychic influence of the people present. Wine is what they would have been drinking if the right magical influence had been exerted by the one person on the rest. Do not tell me this wine would still have been but water! A sensible person would reply to that: For the human being, things are of the nature in which they communicate themselves to his organism: they are what they become for him, not what they look like. I believe that even today many a wine lover would like water if, by means of some influence or other, it appeared to be changed into wine; that is, if it tasted like wine and produced the same effect in his organism. Nothing else is necessary than that a man should take water for wine.—What, then, was required in olden times to render possible such a sign as that of the water in the vessels becoming wine when it was drunk? The magical power deriving from blood relationship, that is what was required. And furthermore, those assembled at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee possessed the psychic capacity for sensing that sort of thing. Only, a transition had to be brought about.

The story continues in the John Gospel:

And the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And since they lacked wine, the mother of Jesus drew attention to this, and said to Him:

They have no wine.

I said that a transition must be effected if such an event is to take place: the psychic force had to be assisted by something. By what, then? Here we come to the utterance which, as it is usually translated, is really a blasphemy; for I believe it will strike any sensitive person as offensive when, to the statement “they have no wine”, Jesus replies: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” From any angle it is impossible to accept that in a document of this sort. Imagine the ideal of love, as the Gospels describe the relations between Jesus of Nazareth and His mother, and then try to imagine Him using the expression, "Woman, what have I to do with thee"! It is not necessary to say more: the rest must be felt. But the point is, these words are not in the text. Examine this passage in the John Gospel and then look up the Greek text. This contains nothing more than the words employed by Jesus of Nazareth in indicating a certain event:

Woman, this passeth over from me unto thee.

What He referred to was that subtle, intimate force which passed from soul to soul, from Him to His mother; and that is what He needed at this moment. Greater signs He was as yet unable to perform: for this the time must gradually ripen. Therefore He says: My time—the time when I shall work through my own force—is not yet come.—For the present, that magnetic psychic union between the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and His mother was still indispensable.

“Woman, this now passeth over from me unto thee.” Otherwise—well, after an utterance like “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” why would she turn to the servants and say, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”? She had to possess the old forces of which nowadays people can have no conception; and she knew that He referred to the blood tie between them, to the bond that should then pass over into the others. Then she knew that something like an invisible spiritual force held sway, capable of effectuating something.—And here let me beg you to read the Gospel—really to read it. I ask how anyone can come to terms with the Gospel who believes that something happened at that wedding—I really don't know what—that six ordinary jars stood there “for the purifying of the Jews”, as we are told; and that according to ordinary observation—without reference to anything such as we have just been considering—the water turned into wine. How could such a thing have come about externally?

What is the meaning of this miracle? And what is the belief in it held by him who stands before you—in fact, the only faith anybody can have in a miracle? Can it be that here one substance was transformed into another for the benefit of those present? No ordinary interpretation will get us far.—We must assume that the jars which stood there contained no water, for nothing is said about their being emptied. But it says they were filled, so if they had been emptied and then refilled—assuming the water had really been changed to wine as by a sleight of hand trick—one would really have to believe that the water which had previously been in the jars had been turned into wine. You see, this does not help: nothing squares.

We must understand that the jars must obviously have been empty, because a special significance attached to the filling of them. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” the mother had told the servants. What sort of water did Christ need? He needed water fresh from the sources of nature; and that is why it was necessary to specify that the water had just been drawn. The only water suitable for Christ's purpose was such as had not yet lost the inner forces that are inherent in any element so long as it is united with nature. As has been said, the John Gospel contains not one word that is not fraught with deep meaning. Freshly drawn water had to be used because Christ is the Being Who had but recently approached the earth and become associated with the forces that work in the earth itself. Now, when the living forces of the water work, in turn, with “that which flows from me unto thee”, it becomes possible for the event described in the Gospel to take place. The governor of the feast is called, and he is under the impression that something unusual has occurred. He does not know what this was—it is specifically stated that he had not seen what happened—only the servants had seen it; but under the influence of what has taken place he now takes the water for wine. That is stated clearly and distinctly, so we know that through psychic force even an outer element—that is, the physical component of the human body—was affected.

And what did the mother of Jesus of Nazareth herself have to possess in order that at this moment her faith might be sufficiently great to produce such an effect? She needed just what she did indeed possess: the realization that He Who was called her son had become the Spirit of the Earth. Then her strong force combined with His, with that which acted from Him upon her, developed so mighty an influence as to produce the effect described.

Thus we have shown, through the whole constellation of conditions surrounding this first sign, how the unison of souls which results from blood ties produces an effect even in the physical world. It was the first sign, and the Christ force is shown at its minimum: it still needed the intensification resulting from contact with the mother's psychic forces, as well as the additional strength residing in certain forces of nature that remained intact in the freshly drawn water. The active force of the Christ Being is here shown at its least; but what is stressed as especially important is its influence upon the other soul and its calling forth from it an activity which the latter is fitted to perform. The essential point is that the Christ force had the power to render the other soul capable of exerting influences: it engendered in the wedding guests as well the ability to taste the water as wine.—But every real force increases through its own exercise, and the second time it is called upon it is already greater. Just as any ordinary force increases with exercise, so is especially a spiritual force strengthened when it has once been successfully applied.

The second of the signs, as you know from the John Gospel, is the healing of the nobleman's son. By what means was he healed? Here again the right answer will be found only by reading the Gospel in the right way and by concentrating on the crucial words of the chapter in question. In the fiftieth verse of the fourth chapter, after the nobleman had told Jesus of Nazareth his story of distress, we read:

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth.
And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken
unto him, and he went his way.

Again we have two souls in accord, the soul of the Christ and that of the boy's father. And when Christ said, Go thy way, thy son liveth, what effect did this have? It enkindled in the other soul the force to believe all that Christ's words implied. These two forces worked together. Christ's utterance had the power so to kindle the other soul that the nobleman believed. Had he not believed, his son would not have recovered. That is the way one force acts upon another: two are needed. And already here we find a greater measure of the Christ force. At the Marriage in Cana it still required the support of the mother's force in order to function at all. Now it has progressed to the point of being able to impart the kindling word to the nobleman's soul. We behold an intensification of the Christ force.

Passing to the third sign, the healing at the Pool of Bethesda of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, we must again seek the most important words that throw light on the whole subject. They are these:

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

Speaking of his being forced to remain prone, the sick man had previously said that he could not move:

Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

But Christ spoke to him—and it is important that it was on the Sabbath, a day of general rejoicing and great brotherly love—clothing His injunction in the words, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. This utterance we must take in conjunction with the other equally important one in which He tells him:

Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

What does that mean? It means that there was a connection between the man's sickness that had persisted for thirty-eight years, and his sin. We need not enquire at the moment whether the sin had been committed in this life or in a former one. The point is that Christ infused into the other's soul the force to accomplish something that reached right down into his psycho-moral nature. Here again we see an intensification of the Christ force. Previously, all that was involved was something intended to produce only a physical effect; but here it is a question of a sickness of which Christ Himself said that it had to do with the man's sin. At this moment Christ was able to intervene in the sick man's very soul. The previous sign still required the presence of the boy's father, but here the Christ force acts directly on the sick man's soul.

A special magic is lent this event by reason of its having been enacted on the Sabbath. Present-day man no longer has any feeling for such things, but the fact that this happened on the Sabbath meant something to a believer in the Old Testament: it was something out of the ordinary; hence the reason why the Jews were so indignant at the sick man was that he carried his bed on the Sabbath. That is an extraordinarily significant detail—people should learn to think when they read the Gospels. They should not consider it a matter of course that the sick man could be cured, that one now walked who for thirty-eight years had not been able to walk. What they should do is ponder a passage such as the following:

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

What struck them was not that the man had been cured, but that he carried his bed on the Sabbath.

So it was an integral part of the healing of this sick man that the whole scene should play on the hallowed day. Christ Himself harbored the thought, If the Sabbath is indeed to be dedicated to God, the souls of men must enjoy special strength on this day by virtue of the divine force.—And it was by means of this force that He worked upon the man before Him; that is, it was transmitted to the sick man's own soul. Hitherto the latter had not found in his soul the force that would overcome the consequences of his sin, but now he has it as an effect of the Christ force. Another intensification.—As I have said, the essential nature of the miracles will be dealt with later, and for the moment we will pass on.

The fourth sign is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Again seeking the most significant passage, we must bear in mind that an event of this sort should not be viewed in the light of present-day consciousness. Had those who wrote about Christ at the time the John Gospel was written believed what our materialistic age believes today, their narratives would have been very different, for quite other things would have struck them as important. In this case they were not particularly surprised even at the phenomenon of five thousand being fed from so small a supply; but what is most important and specially emphasized is the following passage:

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

Just what is it that Christ Jesus does here? In order to bring about what was to take place He makes use of the souls of His disciples, of those who had been with Him and had by degrees matured to the level of His stature. They are a part of the procedure. They surround Him; and in their souls He can now evoke the power of charity: His force flows forth into that of the disciples. Of the manner in which this event could take place we will speak later, but here we must again observe an increase in the Christ force. At the previous sign He infused His force into the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, whereas here it acts upon the force of His disciples' souls. What is active here is the intensification of forces that proceeds from the soul of the master to the souls of the disciples. The force has expanded from the one soul to the souls of others: it has grown.

Already at this point, then, there dwells in the disciples' souls the same principle that dwells in the soul of Christ. Anyone inclined to ask what happens as a result of such an influence should observe the facts, should consider what actually occurred when Christ's powerful force acted not alone but kindled the force in other souls, so that it then worked on. There are none today with such living faith: they may believe theoretically, but not with sufficient strength. But not until they do so will they be able to observe what occurred there. Spiritual research knows very well what occurred.

So we observe a step-by-step increase of the Christ force.—The fifth sign, told in the same chapter, begins:

And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

Modern publishers of the Gospels assign to this chapter the highly superfluous title, “Jesus walks on the sea”—as though that were stated anywhere in this chapter! Where does it say, “Jesus walks on the sea”? It says, “The disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea.” That is the point. The Gospels must be taken literally. It is simply a case of the Christ force having again increased in strength. So powerful had it become as a natural result of its exercise in the previous deeds that not only could it now act from one soul upon another—not only could the soul of Christ communicate itself, in its force, to other souls—but the Christ could live in His own form before the soul of another who was ripe for it.

The event, then, occurred as follows: Someone who is absent possesses so great a force that it acts upon men at a distance, far away. But the influence of the Christ force is now so powerful that it does more than set free a force in the disciples, as had been the case with those who had sat with Him on the mountain: there the force had merely passed over into the disciples in order that the miracle might be performed. Now, although their physical sight could not reach the Christ, they had the power to see Him, to behold His very form. Christ could become visible at a distance to those with whose souls His own had united. His own form is now sufficiently advanced to be seen spiritually. At the moment when the possibility of physical vision disappeared, there arose in the disciples all the more intensely the ability to see spiritually—and they saw the Christ. But the nature of this seeing at a distance is such that the image of the object in question appears in the immediate vicinity.—Again an increase of the Christ power.

The next sign is the healing of the man born blind; and this narrative, as it appears in the John Gospel, is again particularly distorted. Doubtless you have often read the story:

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did this sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

And then He healed him.

We need only ask, could any Christian attitude interpret the matter as follows? Here is a man born blind; his blindness is not a result of his parents' sin, nor of his own; but he was rendered blind by God in order that Christ might come and perform a miracle for the glory of God. In other words, in order that a miraculous act might be ascribed to God, God had first to make the man blind.

The original passage was simply not read correctly. It does not say at all that “the works of God should be made manifest in him”. If we would understand this miracle we must examine the old usage of the word “God”. You can do this most readily by turning to another chapter in which Christ is positively accused of asserting of himself that He and God were one. How does He reply?

Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods?

What Christ meant by this answer was that in the innermost soul of man there is the potential nucleus of a God: something divine. How often have we not pointed out that the fourth principle of the human being is the potential human capacity for the divine! “Ye are Gods.” That is, something divine dwells in you. It is not the human being but something different, not the person of a man as he lives on earth between birth and death; and it is different also from what man inherits from his parents. Whence derives this element of divinity, this human individuality? It passes through repeated earth lives from incarnation to incarnation: it comes over from an earlier earth life, from a previous incarnation. Hence we read, not the man's parents have sinned, nor has his own personality—the personality one ordinarily addresses as “I”; but in a previous incarnation he created the cause of his blindness in this life. He became blind because out of a former life the works of the God within him revealed themselves in his blindness. Christ Jesus here points clearly and distinctly to karma, the law of cause and effect.

What principle in man had to be worked upon if this kind of sickness was to be healed? Not upon what lives as a transitory ego between birth and death: the forces must penetrate deeper, must enter the ego that continues from one life to another. Again the Christ force has increased. Hitherto we have seen it influencing only what is directly before it; now it acts upon the principle that survives human life between birth and death, that continues from life to life. Christ feels Himself the representative of the I Am. As He pours His force into the I Am—as thus the exalted God of Christ communicates Himself to the God in man—the blind man receives the force enabling him to heal himself from within. Now Christ has penetrated to the innermost being of the soul. His force has acted upon the eternal individuality of the sick man and strengthened it by causing His own force to appear in this individuality, thereby influencing even the consequences of former incarnations.

What intensification still remains for the Christ force to achieve? None but the ability to approach another and awaken in him the capacity for enkindling the Christ impulse in himself, so that his whole being is saturated with it and he becomes another, a Christ-permeated man. And that is what occurred in the Raising of Lazarus, where we find still another increase in the Christ force. It has progressed step by step throughout.

Where else in the world could you find a lyrical document of such glorious composition? No other author has mastered composition on such a plane. Who would not bow down in reverence when reading the marvellous step-wise upbuilding in the narrative of these events! Even contemplating the John Gospel only as an artistic composition we cannot but feel deep reverence. It all grows step by step and rises steadily.

One point remains to be elucidated. We have pointed out a number of isolated features tending to show the intensification in the sequence of signs, of miracles; but the narrative embraces a great deal in between, and we must examine the organization of the whole. Tomorrow it will be our task to show that, in addition to the admirable intensification in the miracles, there is definite purpose in the way all the connecting links are embodied: we realize that these could not possibly have been filled in better than was done by the writer of the John Gospel. Today we have considered its artistic composition and found it unthinkable that a work of art could be more perfectly or beautifully composed than is the John Gospel up to the description of the Raising of Lazarus; but only one who can read aright and knows what is essential senses its great and mighty meaning. It is the mission of anthroposophy to bring this meaning before our souls. But this John Gospel contains more. Our expositions of it will be followed by others imbued with a wisdom loftier than ours; but this wisdom will in turn serve to find fresh truths, just as during the past seven years our wisdom has served to find what cannot be found without anthroposophy.

Today I'd like to add a few things to our various spiritual scientific discussions relating to Christianity. In the first place we are going to consider the interpretation and explanation of Christian parables. Then I'd like to say a few things, just touching on the subject lightly, on the Book of Revelation, which I also spoke of in the public lectures.¹¹⁷

The first parable I want to consider is the one of the untrustworthy agent.¹¹⁸ As you know, this parable is a puzzle to many people. Let us look at it, at least in so far as we want to consider it today. I am going to present it in the literary translation¹¹⁹ and we'll then consider it in esoteric terms.

He also said to his disciples: ‘There was a rich man who had an agent of whom he heard complaints that he was wasteful with his property. So he called him and said to him:” What is this that I hear about you? Render an account of your management, as you cannot be agent any longer.” The agent said to himself: “What shall I do now that the lord takes the management away from me? I have not the strength to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what to do so that when I have been dismissed as agent they will accept me into their homes.” And he called his lord's debtors, one at a time, and said to the first: “How much do you owe my lord?” And he answered: “A hundred measures of oil.” So he said to him, “Sit down at once, take your account and write fifty.” Then he said to another: “And you, how much do you owe?” And he answered: “A hundred measures of wheat.” So he said to him: “Take your account and write eighty.” And the lord praised the untruthworthy agent because he acted with forethought, and said: “The sons of this age show more forethought in their own generation than the sons of light.” ’

This parable has been a great puzzle to many people, and rightly so. Before we go into it, let us just consider that parables like this have been explained in all kinds of different ways through the ages. We have known people to say that there is profound meaning behind such a parable. Many have tried to find explanations according to their own ideas. It is perfectly clear that if people come and explain such parables according to their own ideas, something intelligent will result if the individual concerned is intelligent, and something unintelligent if he's not. If people bring in their own ideas, there can of course be no guarantee that theirs is the right interpretation. The situation is completely different from the spiritual scientific point of view. What matters to us is to explain such parables the way it was done in the original Christian mysteries; that we know the profound significance which they hold and out of which they have arisen.

Such Christian mysteries existed and I have referred to them on several occasions. I said that Paul went forth to speak of Christianity, and that he founded the esoteric Christian school under Dionysius in Athens. We are going to explain the parables in the way they were explained at that time. We are not going to speak of our own ideas but of things we are truly able to know. The teachers at those Christian schools drew on the things they had received from Christ Jesus himself.

It is especially today that parables of this kind have suffered greatly because people's—and even theologians'—thinking is generally materialistic. To demonstrate what is actually possible in this regard, let me read you something about this parable from a small book published as part of a series.¹²⁰ The author is considered to be one of the most outstanding representatives of the Hamack approach; he was appointed associate professor at Jena University and a few days ago to the chair of New Testament studies. These are therefore the ideas presented by a university professor. What is more, his wisdom is available to everyone, for the book only costs a few pence. The best way of disseminating ideas like these is to present them in cheap books of this kind. Everything suggests that the matter is more important than one would generally think, for that is how the materialistic thinking of theologians reaches the hearts and minds of people.

The way of explaining such a parable is more or less like this: ‘The things people say regarding a deeper meaning to these parables are nothing special; it is something which simply is not there behind the parables. We need to go back to our original, childlike way of thinking.’ It is as if the Christ merely intended to tell an artfully composed story. What he said in the story is of so little importance that it is entirely in accord with modern thinking, where things cannot be reduced low enough, to bring them down to the level of the most ordinary commonplace.

His actual words are: 'Let us take the parable of the untrustworthy agent, for this often causes problems. We'll take it on its own, up to the words: "The lord praised the untrustworthy agent because he acted with forethought." The reason why we leave away the rest of the verses will be clear later on; one thing is certain and that is that they can no longer all be used for the interpretation, for they are about completely different ideas. If we take the parable as a parable again, all it is intended to say is that the agent knew that there would be an accounting followed by dismissal. He therefore considered what he might do in this situation, and right away took the only course he could think of. That was an intelligent way of doing things. Even his lord, whom he had cheated, had to admit this.

Now to what it was meant to tell Jesus' contemporaries: "You, too, know and believe that God will call you to account one day. Be intelligent, therefore, and prepare for this!' 'At least be intelligent about if, the parable is meant to say. Jesus was not concerned in this case with goodness, nor with the longing in human hearts. A harsh, ironical mood prevails. Nothing here of 'Blessed be they who bear pain, blessed those of a pure heart!' Instead we have: 'If you won't listen to everything, at least be as intelligent as that untrustworthy agent!' There's a note of sharpness in this parable, and this is why we have such a strange choice of image. Jesus did not consider it necessary to add that we cannot prepare for God's judgement by committing further villainies the way the agent did.

You see that Weinel himself compared the lord in the story with God. The last three lines clearly show that the parable could be seen to relate to this, for the author says that God might one day call the soul to account. So there should surely be the words: 'at least be good'. But if we then read what the lord says to the untrustworthy agent, using the words 'you should at least be as intelligent as such an untrustworthy agent', it means we have not understood the parable.

Such ideas are presented in popular books today and implanted in the minds of young students. It is not the kind of materialism which explains the outside world in materialist terms which is worst, but the materialism of people who do not want to know of any deeper insight into theological things. It is the kind of materialism which is the cause of the other, scientific materialism. Here materialism enters deeply into human souls, and then one cannot help oneself but interpret the facts of modern science in a materialistic way. We'll have to learn again to understand things of the spirit And this can only happen through the approach where it is truly possible to explain the Bible and other religious documents.

We come to understand such a parable if we enter more deeply into its meaning. One thing to be considered from the beginning is that it is in Luke's gospel and does not appear in the other gospels. What does it mean to say it is only in Luke's gospel? It means a great deal. If you study the gospels, for instance those of Mark and Luke, and compare them, you'll find that each has a particular mood. In yesterday's lecture I said these were canonical works coming from different initiation centres. Luke goes back to the initiation gone through by the Essenes and Therapeutists. You therefore have a medical aspect to it, seeking to restore balance for people, to bridge differences between them and make it come true that in the eyes of the world of the spirit, all human beings are equal. Luke's gospel often seems like a gospel for people who are oppressed and burdened. It will help them to stand up straight, for they are equal in the eyes of the world of the spirit. This needs to be considered, and then we shall find the basic note, the mood, which is to be found in the gospel of Luke.

In earlier times, the different gospels were in fact declared to be different even in tone. Let us hold on to this for a bit. Here we have to consider an important basic quality of Christianity, which you'll remember from earlier lectures. You know that I often reminded you of the words: ‘Anyone who does not disregard his wife, child, mother and brother, cannot be my disciple.’¹²¹ You know that these words refer to a major step forward in the evolution of the human race. It refers to the fact that in earlier times we had a love in the world that was founded on blood bonds; this love had to go, however, as soon as the bonds of blood were broken. In earlier times, in the past, blood relative loved blood relative. The Christ taught the love which will be such that one human being loves the other, irrespective of how their blood relates. This bond of brotherhood will mean that people are equal not in the greatest possible external sense, but in what Christianity teaches to be equality in the worlds of the spirit.

The coming of the Christ thus brought a decisive change in human evolution on earth. It gave the impulse for humanity to progress towards a great bond of brotherhood that encompasses the whole world. Christ Jesus has made it possible for human beings to be guided by the power that comes from his words, guided to that all-encompassing love for which we use the term 'bond of brotherhood'. The gospels give us the strength and power we need to establish this bond. This is something we need to understand clearly.

Seeing things in this way, we perceive the great profundity of a word we find in the gospels in many ways, a word which always refers to the old law, the law pertaining to the early times described in the Old Testament. Jesus did say¹²² that neither the dot on an i nor anything else should be gone against in this law, but he put something completely new in place of this law, something which has not yet become real. He put the free, loving attitude people have to one another in place of things that are governed by law today. Laws regulate the ways people live together and the things one person has to do for another. A time will come, however, when each individual will know, having an immediate feeling for this, what he needs to do for, and give to, his human brother.

Let us now consider the parable from the point of view of Christianity. If we take it seriously we'll grasp the profound significance and understand that the rich man may indeed be compared to the divine regent of this world. The analogy does indeed exist—rich man and divine regent of the world. But how? Putting the question like this, one might easily be asking why the agent was untrustworthy. It is generally assumed that it is because he let people put down 80 instead of 100 measures, and so on. People think the agent was untrustworthy because he put something down for people that was not in accord with their debt certificates. This was veiy wrong. Truth is that he was called untrustworthy because he had demanded excessively high prices for the grain and other produce which he had sold to the people. We can now understand why people would not support the agent if his lord dismissed him. If that were not the case, we'd have to assume that the rich man himself wanted to be untrustworthy. But the parable says nothing of the kind. And if we take the sentences that follow—the ones Weinel was arbitrarily leaving out—we'll find that we have no need to think the rich man to have been someone who would ask his agent to cheat people. The agent thought he'd serve his lord well by getting the best possible prices for him. Yet in spite of this he stood accused of not having acted in his lord's interests.

Let us approach the parable in the light of the above and get a clear picture. It was said of the agent that he had wasted his lord's property. He knew that people would not stand by him because of the way he had done things, asking high prices. So he thought: 'What am I to do? My master wants an accounting, and he'll dismiss me from my office. The others, he said to himself, won't accept me into their homes.' So what did he do? He made up for some of the things he had done wrong earlier, as an untrustworthy agent. He let people off a bit, that is, he now asked more humane prices. He let some of the mammon go which he had wrongly demanded for his lord.

If we take the parable like this, we may indeed compare the rich man with the divine regent of the world, and the agent with someone who was appointed to govern the old world at the behest of the divine regent, when life was regulated by laws. We may then also say that there was to be an accounting as to how affairs had been managed. It was found that the agent had grown untrustworthy. The same may be said of the law. It had been good originally, but had gradually become unfair. Class distinctions were made and rights established that could no longer be upheld. And so someone who had said that neither the dot of an i nor anything else should be gone against in this law, now had to demand an accounting from the Pharisees and Scribes who were administering the law. The parable was about the Pharisees; they were the untrustworthy agents, administrators of the law. It was they who must not imagine that if they were not accepted by the one they thought to be their god they would be welcome in the huts of those who were subject to the law.

We can now also see why there is no need to make the rich man in the parable untrustworthy. He actually praised the agent for having cut prices. If a rich man wants to cheat people, surely he's not going to praise someone who returns some of the money where prices have been too high. The agent thought to serve his lord and grew unjust towards others. In the same way the people whose task it was to guard the law believed they were serving their lord and grew unjust towards other people.

This changed the moment the Christ came. We also see that those who have been handling those laws needed to restore to rights anything they have done wrong in the process. The law had grown unjust. Now, when love of all people was demanded, those who wanted to gain the huts—meaning the souls—of people must put the just law in place of a law which in specific areas had become unjust. They have to write something off where things had become unjust. In the gospel, therefore, the old Scribes and Pharisees are divided into those who in rigid orthodoxy go on calling themselves ‘children of God’. They are the ones whom Christ Jesus condemns, saying he wants to have nothing to do with them. They are the ones of whom he says that they continue to be far removed from him; who say: ‘We serve God who has given us the laws.’ They were the ‘children of light’ because they held fast to the law, which was a technical term for the servants of God who were later compared to the untrustworthy agent The others, who lived among the people, who had to be involved with human inclinations, were the ‘children of the world’. They did not insist on the letter of the law; they let people off because one could no longer do things in an unjust way. They are people who were unjust before, but having to be in close touch with life they were forced to change. Because of this the 'children of the world' were wiser than the 'children of light'.

The parable refers to the way the world is ruled. What was good before may become a torment, and something else must take its place. So what is the situation now concerning the law, and the honesty of those who administer it? Where are the people who no longer base themselves on the old law? And those who have reason to fear that they will not be welcome in the huts of others, because they have been unjust? The parable is now easily understood, for we have given the old esoteric interpretation from which the parable originally arose. One should not interpret the parable in a materialistic, theological way, but very simply. These parables exist in order to show the profound significance of humanity’s great mission.

The other parable is the parable of the lost son. You know it. It also presents difficulties for some. It would be taking us too far to read out the whole parable. You know what it is about. A father had two sons. One asked for his inheritance so that he might go out into the world; the other stayed at home, was a good boy and helped to run his father’s affairs. The one who had gone out into the world lost everything, grew poor, and ended up in the greatest misery and dire want. When he came home, his father received him most lovingly. When the older son heard this, he grew angry and would not enter the house. His father went outside and asked him to come in. But he said to his father: 'Look, I have been serving you for so many years, but you've never given me a ram so that I might have a pleasant time with my friends. But now that this son of yours has come, having wasted his inheritance on bad girls, you have killed a fatted calf for him.' He said to him, however: *My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But you should be happy and delighted for your brother was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found again.'

Imagine now that someone plays a part in the parable of the lost son today and that it is not covered with the dust of millennia of venerable tradition. Don't think that there aren't also people today who consider it to be extremely unfair that the father receives his runaway son with open arms, putting his other son at a disadvantage. Don't think that people are going to say anything else! And they do say it. There are people who do not venerate the Bible the way the faithful do. To some, the Bible is an ordinary book known the world over. A few lines from someone who sees it like this, a thoroughly bourgeois freethinker, will show you. The book is entitled Finsternisse (darknesses).¹²³ It says: 'Our sympathies are entirely with the older son... The way the father treats his younger son is extremely unfair to the older son,' and so on.

This is uninspired, but many people would think the same if the parable were to be written today. Consider, however, that there's something behind these things. Consider that we can understand the whole nature of these things out of what lies behind them. We can see, therefore, that we merely have to give them a deeper meaning. The most important of these parables may also be found in a kind of canon of the mysteries, taking different forms among different nations. Let me tell you one from the Hebrew Canon,¹²⁴ and then you can make the comparison.

A king had to accept the fact that his son left him and went away. He sent the tutor who had power over his son, that he might bring him home. The tutor did soften the son's heart. But the son said: 'How am I to face my father again?' And his father sent word: 'Surely it is me, your father, whom you'll be facing,' and so on. But it also says something else, and that is: 'This also happened to the people of Israel who had grown sinful and turned away from their father, the regent of the world. They had lost faith.' The story then goes on: The King sent messengers after his son. The son said, however: How can I face my father? His father replied: Surely it is your father whom you'll be meeting face to face?

The parable is not the same as in the gospel but it came into existence centuries before the Christian era, with definite similarities, and has been preserved in Hebrew tradition. The difference is merely that a deeper explanation is given. It is spelled out for people that the story refers to the nation which needs to return to the father. Jesus merely gave the images in the parables, interpreting them only for the disciples. The Jewish parable relates to the nation, a single nation connected by blood bonds; the Christian parable relates to the evolution of the whole of humanity.

Let us now remember how souls came down from the keeping of the divine spirit in ancient Lemurian times, how the soul entered into the human being, and how it was only because of this that he became an individual person. Let us follow the way the soul grew more and more individual; let us remember that animals still have group souls today and not individual souls—a group soul on the astral plane. If we go back in the evolution of the human race we find that humans also had group souls once, being closer to the divine spirit then than they are today. Human beings had not yet descended and entered into bodies at that time. They brought about what the god in them brought about. Once they had entered into human bodies they grew more and more individual, their own masters in the habitation of a human body. Others remained behind at the original level and at other early stages. Because of this we have the different types of human beings side by side. We have people who today still have almost a generic soul. We cannot perceive individual impulses in them, and they act less of their own accord and more in a generic way. The god instilled the group soul. It continued like this until the independent human being evolved who seeks the way back to his god again.

The process of evolution was such, therefore, that originally the human being was a group soul in the keeping of the divine spirit. Looking at an individual today and at human evolution, we are able to say: Primitive man still remains with the father; he has not left his father’s habitation. The other one, however, has gone out into the world, has asked for his inheritance, so that he may develop freely. A moment comes when the developing human being feels isolated, deprived of spiritual goods. He then seeks to find his way back to God again. That is the process of evolution—descent from the god into matter and then the re-ascent, returning to his father’s house. If we find the way back out of our own resources, we return having first grown poor, hungering for spiritual goods. We do, however, return as independent individuals, and the higher we advance in the spirit the more do we return home. Candidates felt themselves to be returning to the house of their divine father. What they said came from the group soul. It will become clear to us if we consider this in its occult sense.

It is not easy to study the human organism esoterically. The way people are today, they have a physical body, an ether body, an astral body and the actual I. All these bodies do not exist on their own; they are not yet independent entities. Please forgive the not very appetizing comparison, but it will show things a bit more clearly. Spirits that are more or less alien by nature are present in all these bodies, like maggots in a cheese. They move in and out. The influences to which human beings are subject come from the outside and from very different spirits. The spirits that move into and out of the physical body are called 'phantoms'. The human being becomes unfree because of this. The spirits present in the ether body are called 'spectres'. And the spirits present in the astral body are called 'demons'. As you know, people who were not superstitious but knew something of these things, were familiar with this. And the entities that have to do with the I are called 'ghosts'.

How does the human being grow individual? By purifying himself. He is most powerfully purified by becoming a companion to the world of the spirit. He then works on his astral body to free it from demons. When he is working on his ether body he frees himself from spectres. Working on the physical body he gets rid of his phantoms. Once this is done, he returns to the pure, divine realm. He will have won something in the process. He had been unfree. But now, having freed himself, he returns to his father’s house a free man. This will make it easier for you to understand the reports of Jesus driving out demons.

In the parable of the lost son, you need to think of the whole of human evolution. The spirits will be delighted at the soul's return, for it will not have remained the way it was when it went away. The individual has changed, has become free. This delights his companions. We should not see the sphere to which the parable relates as something lowly or small; we need to see it as the great cosmic tableau. You will penetrate even more deeply if you recall that everything is the other way round on the astral plane, as I told you. Remember I said that even figures have to be read the other way round in the astral world, in their mirror images. So if we come to the figure 64, we should read 46, not 64. When your passions take their leave of you, it seems to you that they are all kinds of spirits rushing towards you. If you want to create a parable with a profound, ethical core for the most sublime worlds, you use numerous images that appear the other way round in the physical world. This shows you the deeper reason why some parables, ethical in the world of the spirit, will sometimes offend in the physical world. You have to think of many things in parables. You are driven by them, through your feelings, into the world of the spirit. And that is also the mood, the tone, which lives in such parables. And it is in fact characteristic of such parables that they offend in their physical form.

Another parable I would like to mention briefly is the one of the wise and foolish virgins.¹²⁵ This also makes us think. Let us recall. The realm of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, however, and five were wise. The foolish virgins took their lamps but no oil with them. The wise virgins carried oil in their vessels as well as their lamps. The bridegroom was delayed and they all grew sleepy and went to sleep. At midnight, however, voices were heard: “Lo, the bridegroom is coming; go forth to meet him!” The virgins all rose and prepared their lamps. The foolish ones then said to the wise ones: “Give us of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” The wise virgins replied: “No, for then both we and you will not have enough; but go to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.” Yet as they went away to buy some the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him for the wedding, and the door was closed. Finally the other virgins also came and said: “Lord, lord, open up for us!” He said, however: ‘Truly, I tell you I do not know you. Watch and wait, therefore, for you will know neither the day nor the hour at which the Son of Man will come.”'

Here an indication is given that the parable has something to do with the Christ's future coming. Let us make this clear. We can do this if we once again consider the parts of the human being. If I work on my astral body, the Holy Spirit arises in Christian terms. If the I works on the ether body, budhi arises, or Christ, the logos. In my Theosophy, the Holy Spirit is called ‘spirit self,’ the Christ, the logos, is called ‘budhi’ or ‘life spirit’.

We look at people today and see the way they are living now that they have developed physical body, ether body, astral body and I. If the I works on the astral body, the Holy Spirit, spirit self, manas develops from the astral body. And because the I has already done some work on the astral body, people also have some manas, some Holy Spirit. This manas acts into the human being in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit A time will come when humanity will enter into the sixth of the root races. Manas will then have developed in those who have really done something for their development They will have developed manas. They will be ready to receive budhi, the Christ, the sixth basic part.

In the sixth race human beings will develop the Christ, and that will be the majority of people. We are moving towards that time. It will be the time when Christ Jesus will come. At that time human beings will be given the power to move to the place where they can receive the Christ in a new form, as a fruit, the place where the Christ laid down the seed, as it were, like a mustard seed that will grow ii the soul. The Christ will be visible to them, that is, to those who have developed the inner Christ eye.

A parable, a symbol, is used to describe what human beings are inwardly developing. Just as the physical human being comes into existence through the male and female principles coming together, so the idea is that the other parts of the human being were also inseminated, that the different parts were inseminated in a particular way. This was during the Saturn period. Then the ether body developed, and then the astral body. The coming of these new developmental aspects was thought to be like an insemination. This example can also show you how deeply the words of the Bible must be taken. It is not for nothing that it says in the Bible: 'And Adam knew his wife,'¹²⁶ when referring to an insemination, for at the back of it all is the idea of insemination out of the spirit. To know1, 'gain insight', is to be inseminated with the divine self. 'Know yourself means 'Let yourself be inseminated with the divine self which is present throughout the world'.

Something similar to this lies behind the parable of the foolish and wise virgins in Christian esotericism. The image of insemination is the lamp which has been given oil. Thus each of these parts of the human being is seen as a virgin who has not yet been inseminated, and the inseminated bodies of the human being are the virgins who have poured oil into their lamps. The undeveloped part of humanity remains where it is, with no oil in its lamp, and does not take its bodies up to the budhi level. The developed part has allowed the spirit to influence its bodies, pouring oil into the lamp, as it were. The others have poured no oil into their lamp, they have not developed their five bodies. The others did develop them, preparing for the important moment of the Christ's coming. The time of the Christ's coming then arrives. Some will have poured oil into their lamps; their souls will be illumined and ready to receive the Christ. Others, who have remained dark in themselves, will see that others have developed and they'll go to receive the wisdom from the others. They will need to go to the merchants to get their oil. But they'll be too late. And what will the Christ say to the wise virgins? ‘I know you.’ And what will he say to the foolish virgins? 'I do not know you.'

Applied to insemination the parable thus means: He will come to inseminate the sixth basic part, and he'll enter into the sixth basic part. 'Adam knew his wife, and she came to be with child.' And then the bridegroom says to the unwise virgins: 'I do not know you.' Such words taken from the profundity of Holy Writ will always be true. If we were to proceed in this way we would find that letter by letter the Bible contains the science of the spirit, and that we can learn the truths of that science by studying it. We need no other book. Anyone who says that the Bible contradicts the science of the spirit, does not know the Bible, and it does not matter if they are theologians who consider themselves to be at a very high level. Life in the spirit has to be found again in this ancient document.

Now a few comments on the things I was referring to in my public lectures on the Book of Revelation. You know that the sun once separated from the earth, and that it will unite again with the earth in the far distant future. The quality which makes it possible for human beings to become so spiritual that they are able to reunite with the sun is in occult terms called 'the sun's intelligence'. This good spirit in the sun has an adversary, the demon in the sun. The two are not only active in the sun but also send their influences down to the earth. The powers of the good sun spirit enter into plant, animal and human being; they bring forth life on earth. The adversary principle of the sun demon, the power which opposes the union of earth and sun, is active in man's evil powers.

Occult symbols of this have existed through the ages.¹²⁷ A seven-cornered sign is the symbol of the good sun spirit. The seven corners symbolize the seven planets. The pentagram is the symbol for the human being. In occultism, the stars are drawn into the figure [heptagram] in the form of seven eyes. They bind it all together. At the same time we also have the days of the week if you follow this line here (Fig. 21).¹²⁸

In the distant past, time could not yet be measured by external methods based on the way the sun moves around the earth. Early occultists thought of special regents for the orbit of the sun, and they were right in their thinking. The whole system was orbiting, and time was determined in relation to the twelve signs of the zodiac—Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, and so on. As you know, one cycle in the evolution of a cosmic system is called a manvantara, and this is always followed by a pralaya, a state of rest. They alternate like day and night, with both night and day of 12 hours duration. Those 12 hours correspond to the vast periods of time in the cosmic day that were regulated by the ancient rulers of the circling of the zodiac. I would need to draw 24 masters of rotations around this sign. If I were to draw it for you, you'd have the heptagon here (Fig. 21), then the seven eyes for the seven stars, and the 24 ancient rulers, 12 for the night and 12 for the day.

The good sun spirit is also called 'the lamb'. We have already referred to the pentagram as the symbol of the human being. A black magician uses it with the two 'horns' pointing upwards and the single peak pointing down. On completion of this development, the 'good' will have developed seven 'horns'. That is the sign of the Christ spirit.

Having gained this occult insight, read the passage where John receives the book sealed with seven seals. Let us read it as it is given in chapter 4 of the Book of Revelation. 'And immediately I was in the spirit And behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone ... And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting'—I have presented them to you in the twenty-four hours of the cosmic day, night and day. And then, moving on to chapter 5: ‘And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of god sent forth into all the earth.’ This occult sign forms the background to John's writing of the secrets of cosmic existence in his Book of Revelation. You need to know these if you are to have some feeling for the profundity of this work, and what it signifies when the adversary of the lamb is spoken of as the two-homed beast. The symbol of the sun demon is drawn like this:

The Book of Revelation is all in occult writing, which is given expression in words.

One of its secrets also lies in the 'number of the beast', 666,¹²⁹ also 'the number of a man'. According to Aramaic occult teaching, the figure should be read like this: 400, 200, 6, 60. These four figures¹³⁰ are represented by the Hebrew letters:

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Hebrew writing is read from right to left:

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These letters symbolize the four principles that cause man to harden completely unless he is able to transform them. Sameh represents the principle of the physical body, vav that of the ether body, resh that of the astral body, and tav the lower I which has not developed into higher I. The whole word reads ‘Sorat’, which is the occult name of the sun demon, the adversary of the lamb.

This is the secret which in more recent theology has been turned into: It means ‘Nero’.¹³¹ I can’t think of anything more fanciful. The individual who invented this Nero story is considered to be one of the greatest theological thinkers. Vast volumes have been written on the subject. People thus misunderstand the meaning of those symbolic signs. Works like the Book of Revelation can only be understood by someone who is able to read the occult writing.

The prophetic significance of such signs and symbols may also make you realize that the spiritual science movement has an important mission. In choosing the seven seals from the Book of Revelation for the auditorium in Munich, we are also giving an outward indication of the direction we want to take. The spiritual principle is to come to face us again also in the outside world.

• 117. See Steiner R. Supersensible Knowledge (GA 55), lecture of 26 April 1907. Tr. R Stebbing. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1987.
• 118. Luke 16: 1-8.
• 119. Weinel H. Die Gleichnisse Jesu in Aus Natur und Geisteswelt. Sammlung wissenschaftich-gemeinverständlicher Darstellungen 46. Band, 2. Auflage Leipzig 1905, S. 130.
• 120. Ibid S. 23.
• 121. SGenesis 3: 14,Rev. 1: 8.
• 122. Matth. 5:17-18.
• 123. Zurich 1896; quoted by Weinel (see note 119).
• 124. Free rendering of story of Absalom according to 2 Samuel.
• 125. Matth. 25: 1-13.
• 126. Genesis 4: 1.
• 127. The sketches have not survived. See The Apocalypse of St John (Book of Revelation) (GA 104). Tr. rev. M. Cotterell. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1958; Occult Seals and Columns. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1924.
• 128. See also lecture given on 4 March 1907, in this volume.
• 129. Rev. 13: 18.
• 130. The Phoenician and later the Hebrew alphabet had a fixed sequence of letters, and this also made it possible to use the letters as numerals. This happens on several occasions in the Old Testament, in both the Hebrew and the Greek versions. The numerical value of letters is of considerable importance in occult writings.
• 131. The interpretation which Rudolf Steiner had shown to be wrong may still be found in reference works today, e.g. in Lexikon der Bibel, von Fritz Rienecker herausgegeben, 3. Auflage, Wuppertal 1961.

Dear attendees! When the Goetheanum in Dornach, before its actual completion, organized autumn courses on the various sciences and on various branches of human life last fall, the aim was not to focus exclusively on spiritual science as such in these courses, but to let the individual sciences express themselves in such a way that what they themselves could experience as a fertilization through spiritual science would have to come to light. For this reason, it was considered important that experts from the individual scientific fields were able to express themselves at this event, that they were heard, and that personalities from practical life, from commerce, industry and so on, were also heard, in other words, from thoroughly practical life. The idea was that those people who are either directly involved in science or those who have experienced the hardships and challenges of life and at the same time have truly penetrated into that which is to emerge as spiritual science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, should be able to discuss the experiences they have with the introduction of spiritual science into their particular field. But it has also been used to highlight what is supposed to be the actual origin of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represented by the Goetheanum. What is to be represented here is not something that even remotely has the intention, say, of founding some new religion. Nor is it about wanting to set up some kind of sectarian movement, but the starting point of spiritual science is taken entirely from the scientific life of modern times and especially of the present.

I would like to express myself through a comparison, as what is to be represented as Anthroposophy from Dornach is particularly related to the scientific life of modern times and the present. If I make such a comparison, it is only to explain something. Please do not think – I hardly need to mention this – that with this comparison, spiritual science itself is to be compared with the world-historical event that I am citing. That could be left to some cheap quip or the like. But I would like to point out to you – just to explain something – the views with which the discoverers of America set out, these discoverers of America who found the courage to sail across the ocean that had not yet been crossed. They believed they were arriving in India, reaching India from the other side, so to speak, hence the term West India and so on. So what did they predict? They predicted that by venturing out across the ocean, they would reach something familiar.

This is also how I would like to try to go further and further within modern science, as it has developed over the last three to four centuries. You are well aware that serious, conscientious researchers strive for this ever-advancing progress of science, and that extraordinarily conscientious researchers, it should be recognized, then speak of the fact that one must come to the insurmountable limits of human knowledge. But on the other hand, when one comes to these limits, all kinds of assumptions are made about the atomic and molecular world, and so on and so forth. One assumes, when working methodically in the laboratory, when doing research in the clinic, when trying to fathom the secrets of the world at the astronomical observatory, that somehow, through the sea of the scientific method, one must arrive at something that is either an insurmountable limit or something similar to what is already known. Just as Columbus more or less predicted that he would have to find something already known, so it is also assumed in science that one must find something already known. After all, molecules and atoms are nothing more than, I would say, penetrating into the smallest, into that which one also sees with ordinary eyes, making sense.

But this experience of the scientist seems perfectly understandable to someone who is immersed in scientific life, understandable because when you work further and further with modern methods, you don't actually arrive at a solution to important life and human riddles, as you might expect. If you believe that, you are indulging in an illusion. On the contrary, anyone who approaches science with an open mind, or rather, I should say, who conducts methodical research, especially if they not only pursue the natural sciences, but also want to transfer the scientific method to history, to the so-called humanities, will find that no solutions arise, but that the number of puzzles instead increases. You only really learn to recognize how mysterious the world around us is when you get to know it through the methods of modern science. But there is one thing we have to acknowledge when we reflect on ourselves in our research: What is it that we apply, regardless of whether we are conducting research in the laboratory or in the astronomical observatory or in the clinic? Well, my dear audience, however much some people, I would say through a radical materialism, may be mistaken about this, it is nevertheless not even a very high truth, but rather a trivial one, that if one wants to do scientific research, one must apply spirit, that in some way the spirit must be active in man.

And now it is a matter of combining these words, the spirit must be active in man when he researches externally, in the sensual-scientific, with these words, some real, scientific meaning. You cannot do this any differently than by researching what this spirit is. You cannot find it in the external world. You have to apply it to the knowledge of the external world, you have to get the spirit out of yourself. If we want to express ourselves at all about what science is, we speak of the spirit all the time. But we also have to be able to come to it through some particular way of knowing: What is this spirit actually? And by now trying to make the journey, I would like to say through the sea of modern science, one finally discovers that one does not arrive at something known, but that one arrives precisely at that which is previously in consciousness when one utters the word “spirit” or by saying, “The spirit searches,” one does not arrive at something known, but one arrives at that unknown and actually experiences something similar to what Columbus experienced when he discovered America between Europe and India.

On the journey to the world's mysteries, one actually experiences what the spirit is. Only, in a sense, science has lost it. And this is shown, I would say quite bitterly, in life that this science has lost it. This newer natural science recognizes the spirit only in thoughts, in ideas, in abstractions. And this view has been adopted by millions and millions of people, who call everything that arises through the spirit in life - morality, religion, science, law, and so on - an ideology, that is, something that would only arise as smoke from what is either sensual truth, or what some material production processes are, or the like. But this is what one discovers, not through any kind of belief, but through a real scientific observation within anthroposophical spiritual science, what the spirit is as a real being, what the spirit is as a living being, like what one observes through the outer senses in all its liveliness.

Now, my dear audience, to arrive at this view, one needs a certain starting point. And I would like to call this starting point: “intellectual modesty”. First of all, a moral quality is necessary, albeit an intimate moral quality, if one wants to find the right starting point for the spiritual science meant here.

To characterize this starting point in intellectual modesty, I would like to choose the following comparison. Imagine a five-year-old child is given a volume of Goethean poetry. What will he do with the volume of Goethean poetry? He would perhaps tear it up or play with it in some way, but in any case he would not do what the volume of Goethean poetry is actually there for, which one can do when one is in a different state than the one in which the child will be when he is ten or fifteen years older. He will do something different with the volume of Goethean poetry than he would at five years of age. What is the reason for this? The reason for this is none other than that the child's soul has developed in the meantime, developed from within. The child is now capable, because it has developed those qualities that it did not have at five years of age, of discovering something that was already there in the volume of poetry when the child was five years old. He was just the same externally in the eyes of the child as he might be when the child is twenty years old. But because something has taken place within the child, because something has been brought out of the child's inner being, purely because of this, the child treats everything it now does with the volume of Goethean lyric poetry quite differently.

Nowadays, especially in science, but also in life in general, we take the view that we develop those qualities in people that are, let us say, inherited, that can be acquired through ordinary education, and then we are usually ready for today's life and for scientific life. This is the point of departure, especially in scientific life. One regards oneself as more or less complete in a certain way, in terms of one's ordinary inherited qualities and one's education, and one looks at the world, so to speak, from this completed point of view. One combines what the mind and the senses provide and, without going deeper, one might say that one only considers what is missing in the area one wants to explore. One expands, one also expands by perhaps arming the eye with a telescope or microscope or [spectroscope] or X-ray machine. But in this way one attains nothing more than, I would like to say, even if indirectly, by means of the spectroscope or the X-ray apparatus or the telescope, one sees the same thing that one otherwise has before the senses and the other senses. But what one needs to have for spiritual science is intellectual modesty. That means that at some point in life one must simply say to oneself: Man can develop abilities from the age of five to the age of twenty. In a sense, he draws out of his inner being what is latent in him. And only because he has drawn something out of his inner being does the world now look different to him. If one merely describes the external senses: It is no longer there, but it is now more present for him because he has brought abilities and qualities out of the depths of his soul. So one says to oneself: There could be other abilities in this soul, abilities that do not come through the ordinary inherited qualities in their natural development and through ordinary education, but that perhaps only come through taking the soul life intimately inwardly — albeit with the appropriate modesty, because it is only a sensualization —, deeply inwardly, and that one brings it beyond the point of view that can otherwise be obtained in life and in ordinary science.

This is what must naturally take as its starting point the intellectual modesty just characterized, the view that there may still lie in the soul something as yet undeveloped, but which can still be developed. From this point of view, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? From this point of view, it really seeks to shape out of the soul that which is latent in the soul. The methods it uses for this cannot really be compared with any external measures. They are methods that are intimately applied to the inner life of the soul itself. But one should not think that what comes about through the development of intimate inner soul abilities is somehow easier than research in the laboratory or clinic or astronomical observatory. Rather, what I am now briefly indicating to you in principle requires years and years of inner, serious and dedicated soul work. This dedicated soul work is not appreciated by some people who know little about the subject. And so they believe that what is said in the field of spiritual science is something fantastic, plucked out of the blue. But that is not the case at all.

What I am now going to mention very briefly, you will find more fully described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Of course I cannot give all the details here, but I would like to suggest in principle that the matter at hand when researching the spiritual worlds, as meant in anthroposophy, is not at all something that has been miraculously brought forth or the like, but that it is only a continuation, a further development of the ordinary human soul abilities. Please excuse me, therefore, if I explain in a somewhat elementary way how one can move from the ordinary soul abilities to those through which, in science, one can look deeper into the reasons for existence than is the case with the ordinary external senses and with the combining mind.

You are all familiar with two human abilities. If I speak to you about a development in the first ability, perhaps not so many people will take offense at it, because they will at least admit that what comes about through such an ability can still be called science. But when I speak to you about the development of the second ability, then, of course, the objections will increase, which is quite understandable. The objections, ladies and gentlemen, are well known. Then, in particular, the scientific people will initially rebel against something like this, but only as long as the full transformation of the corresponding abilities is not envisaged.

The two abilities – there are, of course, many others, but these are the two main abilities that I want to characterize – these two abilities of the human soul, which, so to speak, have to be taken up at the point where they are in ordinary life and from there have to be further developed, just as the mental abilities of a five-year-old child have to be further developed. These two abilities are, on the one hand, the human ability to remember and, on the other hand, what we call love in our ordinary and social lives. The ability to remember and the ability to love – we apply them in science at least as aids. Memory and love play an enormous role in our ordinary and social lives. However, both abilities can be developed further than they are in the ordinary life of the human soul.

As you know, the ability to remember is what brings coherence into our lives. Initially, we have this ability to remember in such a way that we can conjure up an event that we may have experienced many years ago at a certain later point in our lives. At that time, we were fully immersed in this event with our whole being. At that time we touched, so to speak, that which was the cause of a certain experience in the external world. At that time our senses were exposed to this experience. In later periods of life, perhaps through an external cause, perhaps through an inner cause or something similar, we evoke in the soul itself in the form of an image that which was once an experience. And if we have healthy soul powers, we know quite precisely, simply inwardly through what is formed in the life contexts for our soul existence, whether we are imagining some kind of fantasy, whether we are merely thinking up something or whether what arises in our soul is only the image, so to speak, the imagination of what we have experienced in the outer sense world.

Those who have studied the significance of the ability to remember for the human soul in more depth know that our self is never truly healthy if something is wrong with this memory – going back to the point in time to which we can usually remember going back in the first years of life. If there is a period of life that cannot be reached in memory, where the thread of life is interrupted, something will show up that disturbs the self so much that the self, the center of the human soul, cannot feel healthy. And you also know how morbid conditions can intervene in the ego and how, through the rupture of memory, quite terrible mental illnesses can arise. There are people – you will have heard of them, my dear audience – who got on a train somewhere and rode it to some point. Then they got off. They only found their way again later. They have completely severed the thread of life. And afterwards? They cannot remember what they have been through. This thread of memory is what holds our ego together.

What is actually the basis for remembering any event? Yes, by going through the experiences, they are, so to speak, in front of us in the moment. We can relive what we experience in them inwardly over and over again. And what we have done over and over again can be inwardly revived in our soul as an image. I do not need to dwell today on what actually takes place in the human being's inner life; you can find that in my works on spiritual science literature. The fact of the matter is that we can bring forth images of experiences we have had, and that in this way the experience becomes a lasting one in our soul. You see, we have to hold on to this quality of permanence and, I would say, learn to experiment with it, just as one experiments with external things in a chemical laboratory. We must actually learn to think about these inner things in the same way that we have acquired skills in science, in modern science, whose merits should not be overshadowed by spiritual science. Just as we set out to do certain things in modern science, so we come to a different conclusion about what we can only observe in nature. Just as one goes from observing nature to conducting experiments and thereby arriving at certain things that could not be inferred from observation itself, but are only inferred from this artificially arranged observation of the experiment, so too can certain human soul abilities not be developed if one does not, so to speak, resort to inner work on the soul abilities themselves.

What is characteristic of memory images is duration, and that is what one absorbs. One forms easily comprehensible images, images that cannot be mixtures, that cannot emerge from some subconscious, that would be the complicated images. No, one forms easily comprehensible images, the individual components of which one can see quite well. You put them into your consciousness, just as you would otherwise put a memory into it. You now dwell on such images for a long time. But don't think that it is enough to do this twice. Such exercises must be continued for years, just as one must research serious science for years. Because one must gradually bring up the abilities that lie in the depths of the soul and can thus animate such ideas and sustain them in this way.

And in addition to this, a certain training must also be undertaken, I would like to say, of inner life experiences. Because, my dear attendees, you will have heard that there are all kinds of mystics and the like who are now also striving for inner vision. What is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science is by no means such nebulous mysticism. Quite the opposite! The one who works in this way on the inner life of his soul sets himself a very conscious ideal in this work. He also sets himself the ideal in this work that one can also acquire in a science, but only if one really devotes oneself to this science with full clarity and independence, with inner freedom.

This is the methodology that Goethe had in his research: although he was not actually a mathematician, he wanted to conduct research in the field of nature in such a way that he could give an account of his method to any strict mathematician. This is also how the humanities scholar does it. In mathematics, one works with transparent concepts. One does not describe the Pythagorean theorem in nebulous mysticism; one has everything one needs to see in order to arrive at this Pythagorean theorem. Those concepts that one constantly works with must be presented to the soul with such inner clarity and light. I call this resting on such ideas “meditation”, and I ask you not to imagine anything else by this meditation but firstly: this resting on easily comprehensible ideas that cannot have anything nebulous about them. They will have less nebulousness the more you acquire the ability, through a certain inner soul experience, to recognize such nebulousness and subconsciousness as soon as it arises.

Modern science has also dealt a great deal with this subconscious, which rises up from the depths of the soul and then lives in us. We do not really know its cause, but it belongs to the life of the soul. It is precisely about these things that anyone who wants to become a true spiritual scientist must first know.

Let me give you an example that you can also find in ordinary literature. A professor of zoology is walking down the street. He passes a bookstore, looks into the shop window and sees a book about lower animals. The title of the book is something about the lower animals. And you see, it happens to the good professor – just imagine: a professor of zoology! It happens to him, just by looking at this book title – it's a very serious book title about earthworms or something like that – that he has to start laughing. So, a professor of zoology who has to laugh at a perhaps very serious book title! He can't believe it himself. So he decides to tell himself: I'll maybe close my eyes to try to figure out why it has to happen to me that I laugh at this serious book title. He closes his eyes. And lo and behold, by not seeing, he hears better. And he hears a melody in the distance, played by a barrel organ grinder. And now he remembers: decades ago, he had danced his first dance to this same melody, which the barrel organ grinder is now playing. What he had experienced back then had not crossed his mind since, but had been lying dormant in his subconscious. But now, as he looks at a book title, he hears and does not hear – as if in an intermediate state between hearing and not hearing – and the melody brings it back to his memory. And he has to smile, as he laughed when he had his dancer in front of him and he danced his first dance to the same melody.

You see, by becoming acquainted with something like this — and there is an enormous amount of such things in human life —, one experiences how many so-called reminiscences can be found in the soul, and how easily illusions and fantasies can arise when one gives oneself over to some kind of imagination. That is why some mystics are like that. They believe that by constantly emphasizing, they look into the soul and find all kinds of things in it, which they then often characterize with lofty words that they think they find in the soul. But what one has once absorbed in this way in the soul does not always have to come up in the same way. It can also change. And when someone talks about all kinds of great opportunities and experiences that he claims to have had himself, it may just be the transformed tones of the melody of the barrel organ that he heard decades ago. Please excuse this comparison, but I hope I am being understood.

So what is actually present in the soul, what the possibilities of limitation are, must first be thoroughly and clearly understood by anyone who wants to be a spiritual researcher. He must have these experiences. Only then will he be able to feel correctly. I would now like to characterize it from my use of words, if these words are not misunderstood.

This inner experimentation, this resting on clear ideas, which cannot be reminiscences, of which one knows that only what is present in consciousness is effective, ultimately brings up certain powers from the depths of the soul, which develop through such practice in the same way as muscular strength develops when one works physically. The soul powers develop and one attains a faculty that goes far beyond mere remembering. Mere remembering brings experiences to mind in the form of images that we have gone through in this physical life. But what one now develops as a soul ability through a further development of the ability to remember, that teaches one so well that the human being, as he stands there in the world, is indeed born out of the whole of nature and the universe. It teaches us that everything that is spread out in the world and everything that has ever been spread out in this time, in this world that surrounds us and in which we ourselves are, that all this is in some developmental context with the human being.

It is certainly never my intention to resurrect any old ideas, but one can use expressions – even if one is easily misunderstood by those who want to misunderstand – but one can use old expressions to describe something that one has directly observed.

For example, it is an old idea that the human being is a small world, that is, a microcosm. This means that everything that exists in the world in some way is also present in the human being in its own way. It is interesting that the most recent researchers have repeatedly pointed out that when we look at our machines in terms of their principle, we are actually looking at nothing other than transformed human sensory organs or other human organs. You can prove in almost every machine how it is formed in principle, how something is in the human being. That which is observed externally can, when truly observed internally, come to full consciousness.

When this developed capacity for memory occurs, one brings forth, so to speak, something different from the human soul in terms of effects than one can bring forth from this soul through the ordinary capacity for memory, which conjures up images of what we have experienced before the soul. Through the faculty of memory of which I have just spoken, through the developed faculty of memory, what comes to the soul is in fact what is unknown to the soul itself, what precisely represents the connection of the human being with the whole environment, with the great world, with the macrocosm. And what also comes to the soul is what actually forms this physical body inwardly, because it is nothing other than the instrument of the soul. We need only look.

And when we have a sense of what is at work in the human being, I would say of inner plastic power, even after birth – one need only look with the necessary devotion and with the necessary seriousness and impartiality at the developing child, how it develops from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, how its movements become more and more articulated, how the marvelous happens, it is something marvelous for the one who looks at it impartially – that speech develops. When one sees an unknown person's work at first – but as if from a plastic-engraving principle – in the child at first, one continues to research. And that which works in man from within, which has already worked before he was born or conceived, which shapes his physical existence out of the spiritual world, that is what now shoots into our soul just as in later years a memory of experiences that we have gone through.

The spiritual researcher, ladies and gentlemen, cannot, like a spiritualist, present to your external sensory perception what he has researched. He can only hint at how, through the development of the soul from a point of intellectual modesty, through the ever-increasing unfolding of such powers as memory, one comes to see what initially passes through life as a great unknown.

One simply looks at things with this inner consciousness, with which one otherwise only looks into one's physical life through the ability to remember. Just as images of a mathematical nature arise before the soul, but these have no existence, so when the soul works from its inner being and does not work out something empty or fantastic, but something in which it recognizes reality when the image is there, and the soul works this out of itself and recognizes reality as in ordinary memory, where she also knows, you are not imagining anything, there is something in this image that is connected to reality – then you know that through this further developed ability to remember, you also have images in your soul that are connected to realities, that are built up in your soul in exactly the same way as the images, let's say, of geometry, but which, as I said, lack existence, while one now plunges into an inner, soul-like experience, which, however, through its own essence, indicates how it is connected with existence, and with spiritual existence, from which man is born just as he is born from physical existence, how it is connected with spiritual existence. It is truly not a fantasy, but rather, through the same efforts, whereby one gradually comes to understand the mathematical structures in their secret relationships, through efforts - but which go much further - to develop such inner abilities that, to a certain extent, give a world tableau, an internally constructed world tableau that provides world knowledge.

This is simply a fact that one arrives at by starting from intellectual modesty. And one must simply deny the human being the ability to develop if one does not want to admit at first that something like this is possible. The rest then depends only on whether one really tries. Everyone is free to try things out. Others prove that they are leading people to the microscope, and it is said that this is not based on blind faith, because everyone can see for themselves.

It is no different with spiritual science; it just has to demand different things. Everyone can see for themselves what spiritual science claims. But just as one must really look into the microscope in physical science, so in spiritual science one must actually go through that which the spiritual researcher shows must be developed if one wants to look into the spiritual worlds. Then one does not merely acquire a belief from the spiritual worlds, but one actually acquires real knowledge, an insight into the spiritual worlds. Then one beholds that which one can call the eternal aspect of human nature, for one does not just see that which is produced in life, which stands before our sensory eyes as a human body, but one sees the producing spiritual-soul aspect, that which forms this human body, but also that which, at the same time, takes care of the breakdown of this physical aspect in the moment when the physical is formed. Because, however, my dear audience, one also sees that! From such starting points, one actually penetrates certain secrets of our brain structure quite differently than with external anatomy or physiology.

Above all, through inner observation, one gets to know how thinking, how imagining, is connected with the structure of our brain, with our nervous system. Materialists believe that the ordinary growth process that otherwise builds our body also continues in the brain, and that such an organic process of building, which, for example, underlies our growth or our nutrition, also underlies our brain when we think. This can only be believed as long as one fantasizes about these things. This can no longer be the case when one looks at these things inwardly. Then you know that the brain must be well nourished. But why? Because it is constantly destroying itself. And it is this process of destruction, not the process of building, that is connected to what we call thinking and imagining. We could not think if the brain were constantly growing, constantly feeding and building.

What the building process is – you can observe it when you observe twilight or sleep states, where the growth processes become too strong. That which is growth, that which is building processes, leads to unconsciousness, not to conscious ideas. Conscious imagining occurs precisely in the breakdown of the brain, in the breakdown of the nerves. And that which is the building of the nerves is precisely the retroactive process. This in turn forms the nerves, it forms them out of the organic process. But if thought is to take place, if something of the soul is to develop in a person, then the brain must degrade. In a sense, the brain must first make room for the soul to unfold. If one understands this process, then one can never arrive at the view that the brain thinks. The brain only thinks to the extent that it destroys itself as a brain.

The brain thinks just as little as one can say – let me express myself with a comparison: someone walks along a muddy road, or a car drives along a muddy road, and the footsteps or wheel tracks that one steps or drives into the ground become visible. Now someone comes along and says: There are all kinds of shapes in the ground, so I have to assume that below the ground there are forces at work that shape forms, footsteps. Anyone looking for these forces in the ground will, of course, search in vain. They must assume that something completely different is involved, something that has nothing to do with the ground, except that the ground must be there, because otherwise one would sink into the abyss. The ground must be there, but it is only the foundation. However, what causes the forms in the ground is something that has nothing to do with the ground. In the same way, thinking and imagining have nothing to do with the brain other than the brain provides the physical substrate on which the soul-spiritual develops, making its impressions. No wonder when the physiologist or anatomist comes and says: Yes, everything that takes place in the soul can also be seen in the brain. You see it, but the soul is what does it in the first place, the soul is expressed there. And it needs the brain for nothing other than to provide a kind of resistance, just as I need the ground when I cross the street. This is expressed by a comparison.

But what can really be seen through spiritual science, as one sees, I would like to say the emergence of man out of the spirit through the developed ability to remember, I cannot go into it further now, as I said the methods are described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” — one comes to say to oneself: Basically, one begins to die by being born, because this process of degradation is constantly there. And what happens at death is nothing more than that the body, which can no longer be created, is torn away from the spiritual soul. This spiritual-mental now seeks out other worlds. One learns to recognize the passing through of the spiritual-mental, of the eternal in human nature, through the fragile body, by watching the process of dying itself in thinking, I would say from hour to hour, by constantly dying in the small things, I would say, when we think. So everything that one finds in life appears in such a way that one sees it in its true form through spiritual science.

I must first describe [this] to you – my dear audience – in very elementary terms, because this is the only way we can communicate. In every science, one must start from the first principles. I would just like to mention in parenthesis that I have said that what is developed memory is a tableau, comparable to the mathematical tableau, that it calls up before our soul, but that this tableau introduces us to the [spiritual-soul life] from which we are formed.

The names are not important – my dear attendees – what you can perceive there must also have a name. In my books, I have called this the “Akasha Chronicle” because it actually has something to do with chronicling. Just as memory itself has something to do with chronicling, so that which leads us out of it has, like memory, only into ordinary life, into the life of the world. Therefore, I would say, if we simply call the spiritual 'ether' or 'akasha', we can speak of an 'ether chronicle' or an 'akasha chronicle'. These words do not have any kind of mystical meaning. Nor is there any kind of mystical meaning to these words, any more than there is any mystical meaning to the whole of geometry. It can certainly be compared to the totality of geometry, which, however, does not apply to time but to space. Therefore, geometry cannot be called a chronicle. But this can certainly be understood that way. The things meant here must not be taken out of context, but only considered in context. If you look at them in this way, you will find that they actually mean something quite different from what may appear to you if you tear them out of context. Nowhere is it a matter of nebulous mysticism, but everywhere of emerging from the sources of the soul's existence, which can be followed piece by piece, and in such a way that the individual pieces stand before the soul with mathematical clarity.

The second faculty of the soul – honored attendees – that needs to be cultivated so that one does not merely have images, because all that I have described to you so far are basically only images. One knows, as with memory images, that they are about life, but one does not have life. You know full well that you do not live in a fantastic world. You have imaginations, imaginations of reality, but you do not stand in this reality. In order to live in this reality, in order to have this direct experience of the spiritual-real, it is necessary to experience the power that is otherwise only bound to our human organization, which, by confronting us in life, always equips us with a good deal of egoism, so that we develop this ability further and further, so that we can indeed gradually come to look at things in such a way that we can completely forget ourselves, can completely immerse ourselves in each individual thing, and in each individual being. It is necessary to develop this ability more and more.

This training is based on a very simple thing: human attention, in that I take an interest and turn my attention to some thing or process. I can pay attention to what I am actually doing inwardly by turning my attention away from other things and turning it to a new being. I have to become aware of how this attention works. And by training this ability, which in turn takes years of training, I grasp inwardly, as it were, the capacity of attention. I transform it into the power to devote myself to a thing, to become completely absorbed in a thing or process. In short, what one otherwise experiences only as an abstract ability to pay attention can be increased to become devoted love.

By developing this love more and more, one comes close to what I described in my “Philosophy of Freedom” as early as 1893, showing that only the person who truly has this love can be free, whereby he also does not carry out his actions out of his capacity for desire, but out of loving immersion in the things of the world. He finds that something has to happen. He is completely indifferent to what his desire is. From objectivity, he realizes that something has to happen. This development of the ability to see that something has to happen leads, on the one hand, to real human freedom and, on the other hand, to the power of love.

And then, when you have developed this ability, my dear audience, you can not only receive such images that arise within and depict a reality, but you can also remove these images from your consciousness at will. Just as in physical matters one must have the ability to look at a thing and then look away, otherwise one would not have a healthy soul life, so one must develop the ability, when one has inner vision, to have the images and then not to have them. One must become completely inwardly master of having these images. And by being able to alternate between the things that live in the soul and the completely empty state of the soul, by learning this alternation in the soul, one also learns to have an image and then to let the image disappear in the soul. Then one lives on. The image is gone, but one has the experience of the inner reality of things. One experiences the spiritual. You experience it through the power you have acquired, through the development of love. Just as you learn the spiritual anew through the development of your ability to love, so you learn to experience the spiritual through the increase, through the ever-increasing increase of the power of love.

I know how much is opposed to the scientist when he is to regard the ability to love itself as a power of knowledge. The scientist demands that what is to apply objectively in the scientific should only be attainable to the exclusion of love. But in doing so, he reaches the limits of knowledge. These limits of knowledge arise from the fact that one does not enter into the inner workings of things with one's soul, but stops and fantasizes all kinds of things, all kinds of molecules and atoms. If you experience through the increased power of love what comes to you from the surface of things, and then you experience what you can have in images through the increased ability to remember, then you know where images come from in the [increased] depths of existence. For one can compare what one sees in the picture with that into which one then submerges with the experience. And one practices, so to speak, if I want to use these expressions so simply, being constantly in being, as one otherwise inhales and exhales. That is what really leads one into the spiritual world, what allows one to get to know what actually underlies the human being.

Now, my dear attendees, what develops in this way in man as certain abilities to look into the spiritual world can now be applied in every single science. It is not at all that what happens in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on, or in the clinic, is despised. But now one learns to look at it in such a way that one can observe every detail at the same time as that which reveals itself as spiritual. And one does not fantasize, as the German natural philosophers did, for example, but one researches just as objectively as one searches with one's eyes objectively, as one combines with the outer mind objectively — although one can certainly err. But in the inner vision, those things simply come before the soul's eye that otherwise cannot appear at all, just as little as what is in Goethe's book of poetry can appear before the soul of a five-year-old child. And so, in all the individual sciences, one arrives precisely at that which these individual sciences are currently lacking. This is not just something that can be spoken about only in abstract generalities. In this way, light can be brought into the science that is closest to human life, into medical science, for example. And we are now in the process of setting up such institutions in individual places, which deal with the science of therapy in a spiritual scientific sense. It is primarily a matter of deepening scientific life. That is what it is about in Dornach, not to meddle with the sphere of any religion, not to engage in anything sectarian, but to engage in serious science, as this science allows itself to be engaged with by deepened powers of cognition, which are just as deepened as I have stated.

I myself experienced that epoch, esteemed attendees, that epoch of science, in a formerly most important medical faculty, where the capacities were just piling up – Oppolzer, [Rokitansky] and so on. I myself experienced how that remarkable therapeutic direction emerged, which was then called medical nihilism. This medical nihilism no longer prevails to the same extent as it did when I was young – a long time ago – but what emerged back then as medical nihilism denied medicine at the time the ability to move from the pathological examination of the clinical picture to the healing process, to therapy. They did not want to find a bridge between pathology and real therapy. And this cannot be found if one proceeds with mere external natural science. One can explain this in a very popular way, why it cannot be found.

Is this not the case, the healthy human organism undergoes certain processes that we call natural processes. And we can say: Let us look at the healthy person in terms of his physical nature. We perceive natural processes. But is the sick person, what takes place in the illness, not just as much a natural process? Do we not have a natural process in the healthy and in the sick person? Do we have two natures? How does one natural process relate to the other? If we speak of causality in the one natural process, we must also speak of causality in the other.

Spiritual science shows us that whatever enters the world spiritually always gives rise to the opposite natural process. The natural process of human growth is initially a constructive one. The process that must occur for the spiritual to simply intervene is a destructive one. We do indeed get to know processes from different directions when we immerse ourselves in spiritual science. We learn to look inside this remarkable structure that is the human organism and we get to know that there are indeed two opposing processes. And we then learn to recognize the human being in his connection with the rest of nature, learn to recognize how the rest of nature works on the human being. And from all this, the spiritual view of the world then arises that there is a connection between certain healing processes or substances and what happens in the human being, who is connected to the whole world. One can say: one can indeed come to a real healing art through spiritual science. I am giving this as an example, I could just as easily have mentioned another science. That is what matters.

You learn to recognize, especially when you are immersed in this modern scientific life – and truly experienced, level-headed scientists already admit this today – that science today does not offer solutions to riddles, but on the contrary, piles up riddles more and more. The further you research with the microscope, you research all the more riddles in the small, but you research just as few real riddles with the telescope. These riddles can, however, be solved to a certain extent by calculation.

But it is necessary not to assume that we will find something known, but to be open to finding that unknown, as America was between Europe and India at that time, that unknown that the mind finds as its own essence when it reflects on itself. We apply the mind in the individual sciences. Even a materialist must do this. The spiritual researcher is only trying to understand himself. He applies the spirit, seeks to discover what this spirit is, and actually comes to realize that this spirit is not connected with the anabolic processes – with which it would have to be connected if the materialistic view were correct – but that the spirit is connected with the catabolic processes, that the spirit presents precisely that as fact, which directly runs counter to the material process, breaks it down, undermines it. These are the significant experiences that are made in spiritual science, for example.

This is how it is with spiritual science. The other science basically works on the human mind, only in such a way that the human being can develop what intelligence is. Now, many people are already saying, especially in the field of contemporary education, that what has emerged from more recent scientific life as school education actually trains the intellect too much and not the mind. It does not want to take hold of the will, not the whole person. But to ensure that this is the case, one does not just have to declaim that it should be so, that the mind should be formed again. Rather, just as the more recent period has ultimately formed the outer science, one also needs a spiritual science that does not just speak to the intellect, but that could take hold of the whole person.

This can also be seen from the fact that we have recently been able to introduce this spiritual science into existence as an element in individual areas. One of these attempts is our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt, initially for the children of his factory. But since then it has already doubled in size! Pupils have flocked to this school from all walks of life and from all sides. This school is not a school of world view; it is only a slander when it is said that it is. It is not about grafting anthroposophical world view or some new religion into children. When this school was founded, I myself agreed to run the school. It was established from the very beginning that the religious education to be given to the children – to Catholic children by the Catholic priest and to Protestant children by the Protestant pastor – should be given by the children's respective religious teachers. We completely refrain from any kind of world view in this school. Only those children whose parents belong to no confession or the like, who therefore do not want to send their children to any religious education, should be free to attend religious education that we can provide ourselves. Otherwise, these children would have no religious education at all if it were not given to them. But those who want a particular religious education, based on the life they have grown up in, will receive such instruction from their religious teacher.

This should prove to you that we, while not standing on anthroposophical ground, do not want to found a new religion or somehow graft a world view onto people. Rather, what should guide us, for example, is this: Anyone who has a science like anthroposophical spiritual science has something that seizes the whole person, that makes him skillful, that above all makes his soul skillful, that makes him a judge of character, also a judge of children, a judge of the developing human being, the child. [And that is why we have brought it about in the Waldorf school that we only work through the method, through the didactics, through the art of education, which can be developed out of anthroposophy, in the way we teach, and that is what matters, not the inculcation of some religious creed that is somehow supposed to be new compared to the others. We take great care to ensure that the child is treated in the way that is appropriate to him or her, which is only possible if we really take into account the totality of the soul and spirit, and I would say every year, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, in its particular abilities.

Now, my dear attendees, in this school, precisely because the teachers are imbued with spiritual science and bring this atmosphere into the classroom, there is, I might say, an atmosphere of love. Of course, people may not take it particularly deeply when I say something like that. But every time I come to Stuttgart to audit this school, I ask the children in each class and in the assembly hall: Dear children, do you also love your teachers? You can tell by the way the children behave and the way their eyes light up whether they really mean it or not. And that is something that always gives one great joy, that something has happened after all, that such a didactics has been formed out of anthroposophy: when the children respond with their whole being, with a “yes” that comes from the whole soul, that has not been rehearsed.

Dear attendees! When we handed out the school reports after the first school year, there was nothing in them of the usual. Otherwise, they say: “satisfactory”, ‘almost satisfactory’, ‘less than satisfactory’, ‘almost satisfactory’ and so on. Rather, for each child, despite the fact that some classes are quite large, there was something in it that was or is entirely appropriate to the child's individuality, so that the children repeatedly pick up these reports and, I would like to say, repeatedly see themselves reflected in them. Again and again they read what the teacher gives them as a force of life, so a single saying or the like, not something out of a scheme that tends to be, I would say, “less satisfactory” and the like. It is, of course, a bit radically expressed, but it can be done if you enter the class with some knowledge of children, even in large classes, so that the individuality of the child comes into its own.

This is an example of how anthroposophy can become an integral part of life, that is, it can be applied in human life. And after all, schooling and teaching are a very important part of human life. [But now, this is only one part, the part that has been brought to us by the more intellectual education of recent times.

Let us look – esteemed attendees – at what has become great. Certainly, anyone who wants to deepen science into a spiritual science will not underestimate the great triumphs and the importance of modern science – on the contrary! In speaking to you here, I fully recognize the importance of modern science for our external lives. But on the other hand, they only educate the head, they only educate that which arises from the head in social life. And so, in modern times, we have developed what we know as the great, significant technology that surrounds us everywhere out of this scientific approach. But in this modern age, in which technology has developed to such an extent that it has become an external-mechanical technology in the entire world economy, in all world traffic, at the same time it has grown into all of modern life, what we call the social question.

It must be said that modern science has indeed come to terms with the external mechanism, with that which can be composed of external natural forces, that which can serve human life. But we see this in the chaos that has emerged to the present day, and which has led to millions of people being shot dead and beaten to cripples in recent years. We see that modern science, as soon as it wants to be active in social life in any way, fails. It can't help. It goes as far as the machine, as far as the mechanism, it can go that far with what it borrows from nature. But just as the machine has been introduced between the account book in the office and the cash book and what is produced in production, and an intimate connection has been formed, no such intimate connection has been formed in recent times between those who were leading personalities in the course of the last [decades] and those who are in the outer work. Man has found his way to the machine, but he has not found his way to the human being.

We will only find our way to the human being through a humanly deepened science that grasps the human being as deeply as the spiritual science meant here, because that will also be a life-oriented science for social life. [That which is based on it — as a conception, as a theoretical view —, only destroys the human organism, the transfer to the outer world, it becomes destruction.] Today you only need to see how people are creating something so devastating in Eastern Europe today, that it would almost have to lead to the downfall of civilization, if it lasts as it is in Russia. How these people, who are doing this, are acting in good faith and believe that in Marxism and the like they are only extending modern science to social life. But it becomes the death of social life. It must be a different science, a science that does not arise from the human mind alone, but from the human being as a whole. It is a science that does not arise merely from a contemplation of the physical world and from there forms its methods, but that is drawn from the human-spiritual being itself, as spiritual science is. If one studies this spiritual science, if one attempts to build up, as I have attempted — however contestable it may be in detail — in these two books, 'The Core Points of the Social Question' or 'In Implementation of the Threefold Social Organism', if one attempts to arrive at a social view from this spiritual science, then it is a thoroughly constructive one. This then proves itself in social thinking, which can truly lead the human being to the human being, as a life-giving treasure.

And so I could cite many examples to you — such as this in general, as well as the school system in particular — where this spiritual science proves to be a vital asset. It is absolutely necessary that, in order to cope in social life, we first and foremost deepen our understanding of the human being, help him to see the spiritual and soul life within him.

If we begin by characterizing spiritual science in these elementary terms, we have the goal towards which it strives. We can only assess its details if we enter into its interrelationships. I could go on talking for hours, but I just want to say one more thing today in conclusion. Just as it was thought centuries ago that Copernicanism, by coming into the world, would endanger religion, would endanger Christianity, so it is also believed today that spiritual science, as it is seeking to enter the world today through the Goetheanum in a more intensive way, would endanger religion, would endanger Christianity.

Dear attendees! When I am confronted with something like this, I always remember what a friend of mine did many years ago. I was very close friends with Professor Müllner, who at the time was a professor of Christian philosophy at the Vienna Faculty of Theology. When he took up his year as rector, he spoke about Galileo in his inaugural speech as rector of the university. And this Professor Müllner – he died a long time ago – spoke in such a way that his last spoken word was that he died as a loyal son of his church. And yet, what did he say when he gave his rectorate speech about Galileo? He said: Today, within Christianity, when we look at the things of this world with a truly open mind, we view Galileo's ideas differently than the Church did during Galileo's lifetime.

The Church today must realize that no new scientific discovery can in any way detract from the deep human forces of Christianity. On the contrary, the Church today must look at these things in such a way that it says to itself: Through every new scientific discovery, the glories of divine spiritual life become visible and evident to humanity only to a higher degree. This is what Professor Müllner said at the time – I cannot quote it to you in full today – this professor of Christian theology, the Catholic Christian at the Vienna Catholic Theological Faculty, who before his death spoke the word that he wanted to die as a loyal son of his church. It was still the pontificate of Leo XIII. Today, we look down on the grave of Galileo differently than his contemporaries in Rome at the time looked up at Galileo.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when Professor Laurenz Müllner spoke in this way, he knew that he was using these words not to endanger Christianity, which he himself represented, but to create an even firmer foundation for Christianity from a scientific point of view. This is how a Christian priest spoke. I often have to remind myself of that. I also had many private conversations with him and with other theologians who were frequent visitors to his house.

Dear attendees! I will not talk about the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity today, but I would like to say just one thing in conclusion: that one can follow the development of Christianity through philology, one can follow the development of Christianity through history. One can also follow the development of Christianity through anthroposophical spiritual science, and one comes thereby to certain truths about Christianity, which one can find only through this spiritual science. But the truths about Christianity that one comes across in this way are truly not suitable to endanger Christianity in any way. And anyone who believes that Christianity as such could be endangered by any new cognitive truths, whether in the physical or spiritual realm, I would like to believe that he does not have a high enough opinion of Christianity. The one who has a high opinion of Christianity and the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha, when he recognizes what Christianity is in the spiritual-scientific sense, says to himself: Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha have given the development of the earth its true meaning.

I have often said that it is only a comparison, and that nothing is to be said about the inhabitants of any other worlds. If any inhabitant of Mars were to descend, he would see much of our world – it is my innermost conviction, which I have acquired precisely through spiritual science – much that would be incomprehensible to him. But if he were to see what has come down to us as Leonardo's painting 'The Last Supper' – Christ among his apostles – if he were to see only that which is there (he needs nothing more than this painting), then he would say to himself: 'I have come upon a strange plan. What is depicted by this image points to those deeds within earthly life that are not mere earthly facts, but are a fact of the whole world, and without which all life on earth would have no meaning; the meaning of the earth lies in this fact. This is something one learns to recognize more and more, precisely by immersing oneself spiritually in Christianity and in the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Truly, one must have too low an opinion of Christianity to believe that it could be endangered in any way by a new discovery. Truly – even if it is not written in the Bible – just as Christianity was not endangered by the discovery of America, so too neither can any physical or spiritual truth, be it the Galilean truth or the repeated lives on earth, which I have not spoken about today but But you can follow from the literature as being in the straight line starting from what I have spoken today, just as little can one endanger Christianity in any way if Christianity remains in its inner truth, and may millions and millions of physical or spiritual insights still go through the world. On the contrary, through all these realizations, the Christian truth is deepened and more accurately recognized, and more thoroughly introduced to the human souls, when these truths are really taken out of the Spirit of Truth itself.

But, my dear audience, the different times need such views on all the things of the world, arising out of their spiritual needs, as they arise out of the age. Therefore, I may tell it again and again: I once spoke on the subject of “Bible and Wisdom” in a southern German city that is no longer in southern Germany today. There were also two Catholic theologians at this lecture. It was precisely in this lecture not just something that they could somehow dispute. They came to me and said: “Well, what you said - we could indeed subscribe to it, but the way you say it, we cannot admit it. Because it is not for all people, it is for some prepared people. But we speak for all people.” At the time, I could only say: Reverend, it goes without saying that you think you speak for all people. That corresponds to the natural feeling that we must have as human beings. But through that which is spiritual science, one gradually works one's way through to a different point of view. One comes away from oneself. You no longer believe that you can shape things the way you want to shape them within your environment. You learn to look at what time demands, what objective facts demand. And now I ask you what the objective facts demand, how you treat it. It remains the case that you believe you speak for all people, but that does not decide anything. The only thing that matters is whether all people still go to your sermons. And you see, you cannot answer “yes” there. Among those who do not go to church, there are also those who seek the path elsewhere. I am not speaking to those who go to church with you, but to those who also want to find the path to Christianity and who do not go to you. This is clear from the facts. But the fact that we have religious education in the Waldorf School given to the children by the respective pastors under the given circumstances, and that we have set up religious education only for those who would otherwise have no religious education, proves that this is not something that detracts from religion. So we are not harming anyone [by doing what is desired under the circumstances, but on the contrary, we are imparting something to the 'dissident children' that can lead them to a genuine religious experience] while they would otherwise hear nothing of a religious nature in the best years of their development.

All this might lead one to point out that this Goetheanum and this spiritual science is not just some fantastic product of human willfulness, but something that as a scientific grasp of the spiritual in an age that would otherwise remain unbelieving, at least where science would have to remain at the mere external grasp of things, while people want to develop further. Because if the present chaos wants to bring civilization more and more into decadence, then out of the circumstances of the time itself that great teaching will come, which basically wants to be followed by this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And the truth will prevail, no matter how many obstacles are put in its way. In the short term, the aims of spiritual science can be suppressed, perhaps even destroyed for a time, but the truth has paths that can be found through everything. And that these paths can be followed if the methods by which the spirit is seen are honestly and sincerely sought, one can decide for one's conviction in a certain way.

For anyone who really gets involved, not just with their heads but with all their senses, and who engages with everything human, with the individual human being, with the individual life, will always come to the point where they have to say to themselves: science must not just remain on the surface, it must also progress as science, as knowledge, to the spirit. Because

For an upward development, people need what is being sought there – they need the spirit! And without the spirit, humanity will not progress. Spiritual science does not pursue an abstract spirit with ideas and fantasies, but the living spirit, which is to enter into the souls in a living way. And let it be said once again: humanity, if it wants to progress, needs the spirit. Therefore, we must ask for the spirit.

Discussion and Closing Words

Ulrich [Dikenmann]: Dear speaker, dear attendees! Dr. Steiner has made an effort this evening to make anthroposophy more accessible to us and to inspire confidence in us. And we are very grateful for the additions that have been presented to us this evening compared to the lecture that would have been given eight days ago. I would now like to ask a question about what Dr. Steiner has presented and which perhaps can be touched on a little more from his side.

Dr. Steiner spoke of two different ways of attaining higher knowledge, of spiritual experiences, which perhaps many of us are only superficially familiar with. He spoke of a deepened ability to remember that yields results for spiritual science, and he spoke of love. I now see a gap in that there is something about these two methods that we should still be enlightened about before we can have deeper trust in the matter. As far as I remember from his books, it can be read there that before the goal in these spiritual results, light phenomena appear before the eye of those who deal with anthroposophical science – it could also have been color phenomena, I do not remember exactly – at a certain level of spiritual science. I would now be grateful if Dr. Steiner would tell us a little more about this.

Because, you see, dear attendees, when we or our younger friends turn to anthroposophy, we may have to allow ourselves to be guided by empirical, in-depth psychology. What else is the nature of spiritual science if someone, after a long period of self-reflection, begins to experience such light phenomena? Is this what he is experiencing, ecstasy, or is it something like a spiritual presentiment, which still lies in the realm in which we can examine scientifically, in which logic and understanding and reason are applied?

Secondly, we have learned from Dr. Steiner's remarks that those who aspire to the highest levels must surrender themselves to a spiritual leader to a great extent, that they cannot draw entirely from themselves. From my point of view as a Protestant theologian, this seems to me to be a somewhat serious matter. For, as is well known, there are always two dangers associated with excessive devotion to a personality. Either the person who surrenders too much to his leader becomes spiritually dependent and lethargic, and he is no longer sure what his own conviction is or what has been placed more in his soul, placed in his soul by suggestive means. And on the other hand, the person who enjoys the extensive trust of a second person is subject to a powerful temptation that only highly developed, highly spiritual personalities can resist: namely, the temptation to be pleased with the power he has gained over the other person, and then easily exert too much influence over him in all things. This is not meant to imply that I have any mistrust of the lecturer, who has spoken so excellently to us, in this regard. But it has been proven throughout world history, even if one only surveys it in a certain way, as I survey it, that there is a certain danger here, which we must be careful of and to which we must be attentive when we want to encourage one or the other of our acquaintances to take an interest in spiritual science. Incidentally, I am pleased to note that what Dr. Steiner said this evening about his religious views has been very beneficial for me personally.

Roman Boos: Dr. Steiner has the final word, if there are no further questions?

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees! Of course, I would have been very happy to take any questions. I am particularly pleased about the two questions that have been put to me today, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to address them to you this evening.

It is necessary that what lives in the soul when one has progressed to what I have characterized today as seeing, that if one wants to express it, it must be named in some way, and that one has very different words, a certain terminology. If you follow my writings, some of which have already appeared in very large print runs, you will see, if you follow the individual print runs, how I have endeavored from print run to print run – or at least always over several print runs – to formulate the sentences sentences in such a way that what needs to be said about such a subject, which, after all, is not easy to put into words, is said with a certain clarity and distinctness.

We must not forget that our language, especially as it has developed among civilized peoples today, is to a large extent already something extraordinarily conventional and that, above all, it has incorporated the meaning that has entered the world view through the materialism of the last few centuries. Therefore, today, when using words, it is extremely difficult to strip these words of their materialistic meaning and to give something that is meant spiritually the appropriate meaning. Nevertheless, I have tried again and again, and especially in the fundamental books you will find a struggle for expression. By this I do not mean to say that in the last editions this struggle has everywhere led to an ideal — of course not! But now, the special characteristic that I have given of what one sees, by using [to characterize the color perceptions] – isn't it true that I am saying that one is dealing with imaginations; these imaginations are completely different from what one can have in the sensory world. Now I would like to choose the following approach so that we can understand each other.

If you study Goethe's Theory of Colors – perhaps some of you, esteemed attendees, know that for forty years I have been endeavoring to present the significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors in relation to today's physics. Well, in Goethe's Theory of Colors you will find an extraordinarily significant chapter at the end about the sensual-moral effect of colors. This chapter will perhaps meet with the least opposition from physicists and, when read, it is an extraordinarily stimulating read. What is written here can also be found elsewhere; but so wonderfully beautifully compiled, it can actually only be found in Goethe.

What do we find there, in the characterization of external colors? We also find the emotional experience of color mentioned. We find the experience that one has, for example, with yellow, this peculiar aggressiveness of yellow, the excitement of yellow, similar to red. We then find the balancing of green, the devotion of violet. We have these soul experiences when we let the sensual colors affect us. If you ever visit Dornach, you will see that an attempt has been made there in the Goetheanum to paint entirely from color, to create the picture from the color. In particular, you will find this in the small dome, for example, where an attempt has been made to shape what then leads to the transformation of the picture entirely from the color experience.

Now, on the one hand we have the sensory experience of color, and on the other hand we have the inward spiritual experience, which, however, quite clearly belongs to the experience of color. If we are fully human, we cannot have the sensory experience of color without having the corresponding spiritual experience. This is what Goethe described in his theory of colors.

When one enters the spiritual world, one has experiences that are truly not ecstatic — just as little as the life in geometric representations is an ecstasy. If one were not fully aware that one is in one's psychological state exactly as one is when mathematically imagining, then one would not be on the right path. So, one experiences something that is completely in line with the pattern of mathematical experience in the soul, but one experiences a real spiritual world. And by experiencing this real spiritual world, one does not initially experience colors, but rather those experiences that we inwardly experience in the sensual colors. Of course, one must now have developed to the point where one pays attention to these experiences.

You see, a certain presence of mind is required for spiritual experience. So, one must have this inner experience, which is otherwise experienced with color. The best way to characterize this experience is to remember the color, to really have the color in front of you. Just as one has, let us say, the triangular experience by drawing the triangle inwardly, so one has that which one experiences inwardly best when it is before one, not by drawing a geometric figure, but by painting a colored picture. This colored image is then as adequate to the spiritual experience as, let us say, drawing a triangle with its 180° and angles is identical to the triangular experience, while you have to know that it is a kind of sensualization, then, if you express it in Goethean terms, it is also a supersensory-sensory representation of what is actually experienced.

This, of course, points to subtle experiences, so that one should not draw them out roughly, but one should really go into them. But then one will find that a real thing has indeed appeared by describing it in colors. I have tried to develop this very precisely in the last editions of my basic books. You can't help but describe what you experience in just such a way; otherwise you would become even more materialistic if you described it, and would describe it too symbolically.

But in this way, one describes by actually covering that which is an inner experience through the experience of color. One is always aware of this – that one proceeds in a certain way, as in the presentation of the mathematical – and there is nothing of ecstasy in any way.

I am extremely grateful to the previous speaker for touching on this question. Because I have had to experience it, that I have been told from many sides: what is experienced in the imaginations is repressed ideas, repressed nervous forces, which then come up and represent something fantastic, unhealthy. You see, if someone wanted to maintain such an assertion, at most the proof would have to be provided that the person who speaks of such things cannot, just as the other person who accuses him of such things, speak in a strictly scientific sense. If one has not lost one's scientific sense on the one hand, but is firmly grounded in the scientific sense, and then consistently goes out to something else, then such an accusation cannot be made.

Nor can the objection be raised that it is merely a matter of suggestion. I have already indicated today how it essentially belongs to the schooling of the spirit that one can, I might say, enter into all the special processes of the subconscious life of the soul, so that one can compensate for and exclude every source of error that presents itself. You will see, when you read my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds', how I have tried to describe all the precautionary measures that need to be taken into account.

Now, I have often been asked: How can one easily distinguish suggestions from non-suggestions, from the truth? For example, it can happen in life that someone only has to think of lemonade and they taste lemonade in their mouth. I readily admit this, since these things are well known. But—and this is addressed to those of you who are present—anyone who is an epistemologist knows that a real experience can only be determined through life. Only through life and the context of life can we determine whether anything we imagine corresponds to reality — but it is only from the context of life that we can be certain [of it]. It is the same in relation to the higher worlds; there too, we can only determine it from the context of the whole. If one wants to go from the suggestion of the taste of lemonade to the totality of the experience, then the comparison no longer applies. One must now say: It is nice to have the taste of lemonade in one's mouth through suggestion, but the question arises as to whether anyone has quenched their thirst with such an image of lemonade. You cannot claim that. There you have the transition to the totality of phenomena. And that is what must always be borne in mind: reality cannot be decided by remaining with the partial phenomenon, but the phenomena of life always have something that signifies their transition to totality.

I would like to draw attention to something that may seem rather remote, but which can be very usefully applied to the sensitization of the matter. You see, if you have a salt crystal, a salt cube, it is in a sense a closed reality. It can exist for a certain period of time, a very, very long time on earth, as a salt cube in front of you. Take a rosebud. A rosebud is not really a reality as we see it, because it can only be conceived as a reality in connection with the totality of the rose bush, the roots and so on. Realities have very different degrees, different meanings. If we do not go into this, we will not arrive at clear, luminous concepts.

And so it is also necessary, in the face of such descriptions as those given by the esteemed gentleman who spoke before me, to bear in mind that the totality of the experience is taken as a basis. Then one will already notice how such color appearances are meant. One does not lose the connection with ordinary consciousness at all, does not go over into foolishness, but the opposite is the case for the paths that are chosen to get into anthroposophy. This lies precisely on the opposite path to the pathological; they lead precisely away from the pathological, they make the human being inwardly consolidated. Therefore, they can not only make drawings, especially in mathematical forms, but also see certain drawings in colors, that is, have a supersensible experience. I don't know if that satisfies you.

Regarding the second question, I would like to say: You are absolutely right in both directions, but I must emphasize that wherever I have the opportunity to talk about these things, you will find that I myself have pointed out that these two dangers can indeed arise, but that they must also be recognized and avoided in genuine spiritual research. If you do not avoid them, you cannot achieve what spiritual research is supposed to achieve. They are avoided precisely when you are aware of them, when you know that such dangers can be present. And if you also have a sense of responsibility, you will certainly try to avoid them.

Regarding the so-called student, I have to say that in spiritual research, what can be described as the relationship between the student and the teacher is basically nothing more than the transfer, only to a different area, of the same relationship that also exists when someone learns something from someone else. It is true that the guidance for spiritual training reaches somewhat more intimately into human life, but, you see, there is a corrective, I would say. It is actually not at all correct that there are no dangers for the student in the outer life in current science.

Just think about how little students are actually immune from blind faith in authority, and especially from that which is initially there as a constraint but which, over the years, becomes something that is very strongly inculcated – [the compulsion to say what is] and so on. There are also dangers for the independent development of the student or listener, which can be described in the same way as those that are present in those who want to advance in spiritual science.

But in addition, there is a corrective, especially when one strikes more intimate chords of the human soul with spiritual science, I would like to say, by wanting to learn something. In this way, an extraordinary sensitivity for independence also develops, especially when one awakens the soul's abilities. And experience shows that such a sense of authority, as it sometimes exists in external science – such swearing by the words of the master, such going away with the notebook and swearing by what one has written in the notebook after hearing it – does not take place in a truly responsible handling of the method of spiritual training.

A sensitivity given by experience shows one – especially when one has to deal with something that deeply intervenes in the soul life of the human being – that the urge for freedom is thereby definitely increased. And in any case, in my experience, those who come into consideration as serious spiritual students soon even move on to accepting something not in good faith, but only after sometimes very extensive examination; so that one can say that it is precisely the sense of freedom that awakens to a particular degree.

Now, of course, there is the other side, where I absolutely have to agree with the esteemed previous speaker that there is a very real danger for the person who is to take on such a role – let us just say that they have to advise someone based on their own experience, because it is almost impossible to do otherwise – and say: you will be able to develop your memory or your love through this or that. Then a temptation can approach the teacher – we know that this temptation can approach. And if I may tell you my own conviction in this regard – my dear audience: when you are in the middle of what spiritual research is about, there is actually nothing more repugnant than what could somehow be called personal adoration or the like. Even though the people who want to slander you keep pointing to such stuff. That is not at all what it is really like; it is actually something that you fundamentally find very repulsive. If you are even a little advanced on the path – which spiritual science indicates – then the truth cannot escape you. The truth cannot escape one that to the same extent as one exercises an unauthorized power, one loses the ability to recognize. That is just the way it is, that is an objective fact, and one recognizes it when one walks the path in spiritual science, through direct experiential knowledge.

Isn't it true that the path to spiritual science is a subtle one, one that must be kept alive through constant inner experience of the soul? To the same extent that one now practices things that correspond to the capacity for desire, that correspond to vanity or the sense of power, to that same extent one obscures precisely those forces that want to spread. Just think, it takes an enormous amount of work to develop what I have called the ability to love. It is the greatest unkindness that one can fall into when one develops feelings of power. I don't know if I am being given a context from your side in this way, but it is true that the feeling of power actually obscures the real feeling of love.

And so there are opportunities everywhere to see clearly how to reject such temptations. And yet, although it is absolutely right that this temptation can approach me, I would say, countless times, the one who has some kind of guidance to give also knows that succumbing to it – this temptation – is what can bring him down the most. For it can only be explained by vanity, by a hunger for power. But these are things that lead away from the paths one must follow if one really wants to achieve something.

I do believe that the distinguished gentleman who spoke before me was also referring to these things in his remarks, based on his own profound experience. Such things have occurred, of course, and will continue to occur, naturally. But there is no reason for this – my dear attendees – to refrain from the path of development just because there are dangers lurking somewhere; rather, if there are dangers lurking somewhere, this can be a reason to avoid the dangers if one recognizes the necessity of the matter in a healthy way. Is that perhaps a sufficient answer to the question that has been asked? If it is not, then I would be happy to elaborate further.

Now, esteemed attendees, since no other questions have been asked, I have nothing special to add on this matter. I would just like to point out very briefly that the spiritual science as it is meant here does not want to be a religion.

The question has been raised: It may explain the position of anthroposophy in relation to denominations if you tell us what you teach children of non-denominational parents in religious education.

You see, my dear audience, my opinion is this – but in the sense that I have gained it entirely from spiritual science – that something as intimate as religious education can only be taught within the framework of that which fills one's soul completely. This refers to religious education for children of non-denominational parents or those who are expected to be regarded as non-denominational at school. In this intimate area, therefore, only that which one carries in one's soul, that one is completely filled with, can come into question. And that is what is taught. And what it is about is that the anthroposophical direction that I follow is, in the first place, actually a method, a path, a living life. And that is why it can have an effect on all the individual sciences, and why it can also have an effect on the art of education, and indeed on art itself, as the artistic conception of the Dornach building shows. But ultimately, what is being researched is the living spirit, and that can only lead to a deepening of religious life.

Now, we are of course dependent on imponderables to a great extent, and I prefer to make things clear by means of concrete details rather than speaking in abstract generalities. You see, we try to show the children the way to the Christ in such a way that this way leads out of the rest of human life. However much it is claimed by some denominational sides – or rather by representatives of certain sides – it is not true that anthroposophy wants anything other than to show the way to the Christ in this religious field in its own way, to those who need to find him in this way.

You can certainly be a follower of anthroposophy and want nothing more than a deepening of the sciences, biology, psychology and so on. You don't need to establish any kind of relationship between anthroposophy and religion. But there are a great many people here today who, on the basis of anthroposophy, of spiritual science, are seeking a religious deepening in the same way that people, on the basis of materialism, have sought a religious deepening, albeit perhaps an older religion, as, for example, David Friedrich Strauß, the author of 'Der alte und der neue Glaube' and the like. Not true, as at that time a number of such people tried and sought a kind of materialistic religion, so one finds a truly spiritual religion and also the way to Christ - among many others - on the way to spiritual science. In addition to medicine, psychology, philosophy, biology and so on, which one can deepen, one also acquires, I might say, a certain knowledge of those peculiar paths that must be followed.

Let us assume that we first need to teach children the concept of the immortality of the soul. We try to do this – as I said, I am talking about an example, it could easily be explained differently – but let us assume that we try to teach the child through an image. We point to the butterfly pupa. The butterfly emerges. We then try to show how the soul of a human being also leaves the body at death and enters a [different] world, albeit now in the invisible, and so on. You can think up something like that. But if you just make it up, you will notice – you need pedagogical experience to do so, but if you have it, you will notice: if you have just thought up this point of view – I am so clever and the child is so stupid, I have to bring it to the child, then in reality you are not teaching it to the child. You teach it to the brain, to word recognition, but not to the heart. You only teach the heart what you can believe in yourself; then you teach it, I might say with joy, if there really is something real in it, if you can say to yourself, 'Yes, I have a correspondence there; I believe in it.' That is precisely what is formed in our spiritual science, but not in a nebulous, hazy way. For that is something that is rejected by spiritual science, as it is meant here.

It is again a slander when we are accused of phantasms. What we seek is not an abstract spiritual reality, but a concrete spirituality is contained in the details. And so, for those who recognize the spirit in nature, this process of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis is the same at a lower level as what is death with the immortal soul of man at a higher level, a reality. It is not I who makes the picture, but the phenomena of the world themselves make the picture. And when I stand in them and judge the phenomena of the world in such a way that nature becomes, as it were, for me the living vision of what I can bring forth from the whole world as the understanding of the divine essence, then I am also able to teach it to the child. For then not only, I might say, the ordinary relations to the child are formed. There are imponderables, forces that work from person to person. And it is these imponderable forces that lie within, that make it possible to teach another person only that in which one can believe with all one's strength. And the basic truths that present themselves to us, the awareness of religious truths on the path that can be taken through spiritual science, that is what makes religious education possible, where it is necessary to give to the child.

We have put a great deal of effort into finding a method for teaching religion. And I have to say that it is actually something that works very well. And I have been able to emphasize again and again at the various school celebrations what seems to me to be a truth now, that in our Waldorf School the Christian spirit is not only present in the religion lessons, but it is there when you enter the school or leave class. It is present in everything, without one always saying “Lord, Lord” or constantly pointing to that which somehow is religiosity with words. That which is the religious spirit is something quite different, when the rest flows into objectivity.

That is what underlies it. And when I say that our paths lead to Christ, then perhaps despite all the hostility that comes from various sides, I may also recall a Bible verse that is truly important to me not only because it has been handed down, but because it is daily proving to be true and has certainly become a valuable Bible verse. This is the one that is put into the Savior's mouth:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Thus He is not only present during the time of His life on earth, but He is always present. And if one is willing, one can always experience what the living Christ wants among people. This living understanding of Christ is especially important – this ever-present Christ – which, of course, does not exclude the Mystery of Golgotha as an historical event from us. And in order to avoid misunderstandings, I emphasize that it is understood as a supersensible event and that it has even been possible to lead Protestant clergymen, who were dissatisfied with the existing presentation, which has become quite rationalistic – the journal literature already shows this today – back to a real, supersensible understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, precisely through anthroposophy.

All this shows you that our religious education is looking for a method that brings it into connection with all other aspects of the world, with all other human activity and with human life in general, and on the other hand, that the matter does not lead away from Christianity.

And you see, dear ladies and gentlemen, we do not force anyone from any religious community or any other community, but we have nevertheless managed to have Jewish children sitting in our Waldorf School who listen to the knowledge of Christianity with complete inner soul and with truly religious fervor, without this being anything extraordinary.

Education can be such that, for example, the following occurred with us at the Waldorf School, but it was not a merit of the Waldorf School, the boy had already done that before he came to the Waldorf School. A Jewish boy who was later sent to the Waldorf School received Jewish religious education before the school was established. When he came to our school and heard what goes on here, he compared it with the way religion is approached in his parents' home. And he simply ran away, just walked out the door and went into the other class where free Christian religious education was being taught, and stayed inside. So if the claim is that Christianity is not being cultivated, that is not true. Although we have to say: we are not a sect, we do not compete with any religious community; our sources lie first and foremost in science, as I have explained today. So it would be a completely unjustified accusation to claim that Christianity is not being cultivated.

And if you look at real life, you will see how far we have already been able to go in the most diverse fields using the anthroposophical method of understanding the world. It will become clear to you how unfounded what is already being said against anthroposophy in a somewhat indefinable way from some quarters is. But that is not what is worthy of discussion in the first place. Rather, it is important to know that this spiritual science does not want to remain in the sphere of mere theoretical development, in the sphere of mere theoretical knowledge, because that is ultimately something that alienates people from the world and keeps them far removed from it. Rather, it seeks to penetrate the sphere of the will, into all of human life, and is therefore far removed from any nebulous mysticism, any mysticism that seeks to withdraw from life.

There are, of course, people who, in complete good faith, believe that this world is too bad after all, that one must withdraw into another, mystical world. I have met many such people; they were quite good people, but they were not the kind of people that today's difficult times need. Today's world needs people who not only believe in the spirit in knowledge and abstract theories, but today's difficult times need people who absorb this spirit in such a way that they can carry it into matter and into life themselves.

Dear attendees! We have experienced it – and the deeper connections show it to a deeper understanding – these things have led us into disaster. We have experienced it that people were religious on the one hand according to their own view, and then they had nothing from religion in their external actions during the whole week, except that in the bookkeeping in the ledger it still says on the first page: “With God”. I don't know if that is true or not. But in any case, something has occurred that I would call a kind of double way of life: on the one hand, one can be a follower of any confession, and on the other hand, nothing can be brought into one's life from that confession. Likewise, there are already a great many scientists today who pursue their science in such a way that they handle it on the one hand, and then they grasp life quite differently on the other. They make two things out of these things that should actually be one. But we must come to a unified life, not just a conception of life, but a way of life.

That is what is striven for through anthroposophical spiritual science: not just to recognize the spirit in abstract, mystical contemplation and immersion, and believe that one has the spirit when one withdraws from the external life but to absorb the spirit into the soul in such a way that one can then carry it into matter, into external matter, and thus deepen the external life. The human being must not only work as a knower of the spiritual order of the world, but as a realizer of the spiritual order of the world. And that is the basis of the impulse of spiritual science:

is based: not just to recognize the spirit in abstract ideas and to be able to speak of it, but to take this spirit so fully within oneself that one is able not only to carry it in concepts, but to carry it in one's mind and will, so that one oneself belongs to those powers in the world that actualize the spirit, that one can become a servant for the realization of the spirit in the world order.

Emil Bock: To show what is desired, it is perhaps better if the questions received in writing are asked personally.

Rudolf Steiner: There remains the question from yesterday about women. Perhaps I will first speak a little about this question, which was asked yesterday in relation to the participation of women in the movement we are dealing with here.

Now, I believe that the time has indeed come when women should participate in all branches of public life on an equal footing. So there should be no doubt that the entry of women into this movement is justified and that women should be treated the same as men. I would just like to say that it would be necessary to make this clear. That has been the great disappointment so far, that the entry of women into the movements in which they have succeeded in entering has not actually been noticed, at most it has been noticed in relation to some externalities, to subordinate things, but not actually in relation to the cultural nuances. You will all have experienced the deep disappointment when a woman even entered the German Reichstag and absolutely no kind of change resulted from a woman's participation.

I already pointed out yesterday that years ago I said to a woman's rights activist, Gabriele Reuter, who was moderate in one sense but very active in another direction, that women must bring their own character into the movements and not find their way into what is already given by the culture of the past, which is above all a male culture. As you know, Bebel once explained that there is a reason why women do not actually intervene in such a way that their intervention is noticed as a shade [in cultural life], which is justified in theory within Darwinism, but is strange in view of reality. He said that it is self-evident that every being, when it enters the world, must first adapt to the circumstances, and since women have not had the opportunity to adapt to the circumstances so far, one must first wait until a certain time has passed. If women then had the opportunity to discard their old inherited traits, then the adaptation would have been better executed. At present, women are still too much influenced by their inherited traits. Well, my dear friends, in the future, inheritance in women will not be any different than it is today, namely that they also descend from a father and a mother, just like their brothers, so that in this respect, there is obviously no inheritance through generations and no [necessary] adaptation. That is self-evident. So in the main it is just a matter of mere words.

On the other hand, it is of course very important to consider that precisely for such an area as religious life, an extraordinary enrichment can occur if women bring their particular nature to it. Although women have not [so far] thrown their share into the movements they have joined, this nature has nevertheless been noticed within the modern emancipation efforts of women. The point is that women have a different way of thinking. It is therefore entirely possible for women to achieve a certain more congenial understanding of things that cannot be expressed in sharply defined concepts because then they would not correspond to reality. So women's ability to grasp things is readily given. It is extremely difficult for a man to grasp things without sharply contoured concepts; this makes it difficult for him to find his way into such areas where female concepts are needed. So it is that women will have to play a major role in the spiritualization of our culture. She will only have to try to assert sharply that which is her own, with less sharply defined concepts, and not simply imitate the conceptual contours of men, for example in their studies. We would have gained something if, for example, in medicine or in other branches, in philology and so on, where women have begun to work, we could have seen that women, with their greater mobility, with their greater adaptability, would really have made a difference. As a rule, female physicians are such that in their thoughts they are really a copy of what they have learned, even more so than men. So it is necessary that these qualities [of women] be brought into the field sharply, but on the other hand, precisely because of these qualities, women need an extraordinary self-criticism. Women are more subjective or at least more inclined to subjectivity than men. A man, for example, has more sense of the fact that one must be convinced of the truth of a matter that one asserts. It will be much easier for a woman to judge according to subjective feeling. This will be important here because a woman, when she participates in this movement, will probably be able to discern the emotional coloring of what is to be given with extraordinary subtlety. But she will have difficulties when it comes to really asserting a will rooted in the objective, and it is precisely this will factor that comes into play strongly. In the case of man, the fact is that he can generally be characterized in such a way that the greater part of his intellect is used to enter into the organism in an organizing way; hence, I might say, he retains for his psychic life an intellect that is indeed sharp but not mobile. His will enters less into his organism, hence he has a strong will. In women, it is the case that the will enters into the organism more, and the intellect less. The female body is less intellectual, less constructed with the intellect in mind than the male body; therefore, in general, despite the greater mobility of the intellect, or perhaps because of it, women are endowed with a greater measure of concepts, with broader concepts, and even with a greater number of concepts than men. It will be found that within this movement woman will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of the spiritual, and that man, in this movement, will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of firmness; but when the two really work together, then something extraordinarily harmonious can come out, especially in community life.

Of course, when discussing such things, one speaks in generalities. There is no other way to do it, because the things one discusses must be more directive than something that is already based on observation. On the whole, however, it can be said that it is possible for a woman to develop a strong sense of responsibility through a strong self-education when she enters this movement, because the lack of a sense of responsibility is something that could certainly be observed where women have entered more spiritual movements in recent times. It is, for example, the case that a man is much more likely to be persuaded to keep something secret than a woman, who, if she has a female friend, is extremely quick to consider that friend as being completely trustworthy and then to divulge the matter to just one person, even though there are also numerous old women among men. This is simply a phenomenon that one has to experience and which carries a great, great deal of weight. So the sense of responsibility is something that will have to be particularly developed. It could be observed, for example, in medicine, how particularly the finer operations, eye operations and the like, can be performed much more precisely, better and more skillfully by women than by men. This will also be the case in the spiritual realm, and it will become apparent in the cult that women will truly be able to carry out the cult in a very special way, that they will also be able to empathize much more easily when performing the cult. On the other hand, something else has become apparent. I need only remind you that at the head of the Theosophical Society there stood for many years a woman, Annie Besant, who has a very skilled hand for many things, especially in the treatment of external matters, but who, on the other hand, is inclined to a very particular vanity. This is something that must then be developed: a keen sense of self-discipline to overcome vanity and ambition. In all this, women are much more easily tempted, both externally and internally, than men.

All these things ultimately lead to the fact that woman is in a certain way less constant, that she very easily swings between these two you have seen, Ahriman on the one hand, Lucifer on the other. Man naturally swings in rhythm from one to the other, but woman swings with extraordinary agility and very frequently in such a way that the equilibrium becomes very unstable. This must be taken into account, and I could go on in this matter, but it is not really necessary. The question must practically be answered in such a way that today there can be no doubt that women must be able to participate in such movements, but that they must practice the necessary self-education for such movements. It must be said that women must participate out of the general course of human development. You see, until the 15th century, the development of man was such that he had then reached the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. In relation to the intellectual or emotional soul, man and woman are very different. Therefore, it could not be otherwise than that within this period of time, woman was excluded from certain things, and where these old customs have been retained, for example in Freemasonry, women are still excluded today. This is based on traditions, and this can be seen in the cult of Freemasonry itself. That women as such have absolutely equal rights is not recognized by legitimate Freemasonry. It is the case that the cult of Freemasonry is such that it could not be practised in common [with women].

But since the middle of the 15th century, we have been developing more and more towards the unfolding of the consciousness soul, and in relation to the consciousness soul, such a differentiation no longer exists; the qualities of both sides [of man and woman] flow entirely into a unified configuration. It is, of course, not correct when, within certain movements that also take the position of reincarnation, one repeatedly finds that women – with rare exceptions – when they list their past incarnations – which of course is mostly fantasy – then list only women, while men list only men. These are, of course, things that are based on fantasy. It is of course the case that the successive earthly lives are experienced in different genders.

So that is what I have to say first about such a matter, which is always problematic and must always be unsatisfactory, with regard to the position of women. Do you (to Gertrud Spörri) have anything else in particular in this direction that you would like to discuss?

Gertrud Spörri: I would like to ask whether a woman today has the opportunity to found independent communities herself.

Rudolf Steiner: Whether a woman today has the opportunity to establish independent communities? Yes, you know, I believe that women will not only have the opportunity to found independent communities, but that it will sometimes even be relatively easy for women to found independent communities. They just have to be sustainable, that is, women will have to prove themselves. She will be able to found communities relatively easily, but she will have to reflect on what is a little sensational, a little novel, and so on. But we must not exclude these latter things just because we are afraid of them; we must rise above them. I am rather afraid that at first it could go for the world as it has gone for the anthroposophical movement, where, in newspaper reports, when there is an anthroposophical lecture somewhere, it is usually calculated that there are so many women in it and only very few men. In general, this has also been the case in reality, in that women are much more easily able to found groups, circles and so on. So that does make itself felt. I have always said that when it was emphasized that there were often more women than men, it was not the women's fault. They were quite right to do so, but if the men find it necessary to play cards and therefore stay away, then it is the men's fault. It does not testify to a strongly developed spirit in men, but to a backwardness in men. You have to be clear about that. Now, this sometimes occurs in an extremely disturbing way in the anthroposophical movement, in that women quickly find their way into it, but sometimes the depth of their finding their way in is lacking because the active, the will element, is missing. Therefore, when forming a community, a wise self-education of this element of knowledge and, in the beginning, a certain reserved element will be called for, I think. Perhaps it will be a matter of tact and then has to develop in cooperation with the central leadership, so that in the beginning women do not found ninety percent of the communities and only ten percent the men. Yes, you could experience that under certain circumstances, and it would not be wise if it happened that way. But that we have to fear that women will be less successful than men in founding communities is not something I think will happen. It will certainly not be the case that the women's churches would be attended only by women, that is, more than is now the case with the men's churches, because some churches are indeed attended by a majority of women; so nothing special needs to change there. We must be quite aware that in Central Europe, where it is a matter of attributing to women alone the ability to bring a certain kind of divine revelation from the supersensible world into the sensory world, only a light veil lies over the old conditions with regard to the things at issue here. The WALA principle is something that is absolutely true here and that, when it is resurrected in a dignified way, is not something that needs to be looked at with a jaundiced eye.

But there are a whole bunch of questions here.

Gernot Weißhardt: How can the priest achieve a life together with the dead?

Hubert Sondermann: I would like to ask about meditation or intercession for the benefit of the deceased.

Rudolf Steiner: In what way would you like to know about this question?

Hubert Sondermann: How this intercession can be justified and how it can be practiced. Then about the funeral ritual...

Rudolf Steiner: We will discuss the funeral ritual tomorrow.

Well, for spiritual scientific-anthroposophical research, it turns out that the human being is still connected to the physical-earthly conditions after death and that one can imagine this connection in a very specific way because one can observe it. However, it must be clear that life here on earth in relation to life after death is often something like a cause in relation to an effect. Let us assume that a family man has died, he was a materialist, but he led a life otherwise that he, for example, was very much absorbed in his love for his children. In the beginning there is a certain difficulty for those who are left behind to approach the soul of the dead person with prayers or meditations, because the dead person initially only perceives what he experienced up to his death, so that he perceives, let's say, his wife and children insofar as their life developed up to the moment he died. A wall opens up to the present experiences, to the present being of the bereaved, so that it is extremely difficult for the deceased to experience the connection with his relatives in the immediate present. It seems as if he can only get to this particular point in time, and then it stops; it is like a memory that has been torn away. But this shows, of course, that it has a meaning how the soul's attitude towards the spiritual world [in life] has been. You cannot be materialistic or spiritual without consequences for life after death. In people who are spiritually minded, it is immediately apparent [after death] that they can have an immediate connection with those who have remained behind. Now today, the human being's ability to experience anything supernatural is extremely coarse. People can hardly develop any kind of feeling for the numerous influences from the spiritual world, so that the real connection with the dead, which many seek and which is quite possible – not in the sense of an ordinary trivial interpretation, of course – is made more difficult. One can help oneself to strengthen and increase the sensitivity for these things through meditation, for example in the following direction: Imagine that you have decided to go out on a certain day, let's say at 11 o'clock; now someone comes and delays you by half an hour. Afterwards you discover that if you had left half an hour earlier, you would have found a ride, for example, and then you hear that everyone was killed in the accident – so you would have been killed too. I believe it is absolutely certain that a great many people did not die in the Paris disaster these days because they were prevented from doing so. Don't you read the newspapers? A large number of people have been killed in the Paris subway. When you think about such things, you will see how extraordinarily little man, in judging his life, takes into account the things from which he is protected. We live for the moment and only pay attention to what happens to us. We never perceive what we are protected from. Of course, it is difficult to prove something positively when you live in the spiritual world. I have already pointed out the following: Suppose I advise someone who is ill – let's say he is 40 years old – not to drink wine and not to eat meat. He dies at 48; now people say: He died young, even though he didn't eat meat or drink wine for the last eight years. But who can say whether he wouldn't have died at 44 if he had eaten meat and drunk wine? What people so carelessly call 'proving' is extraordinarily difficult when it comes to things in the supersensible world, but precisely reflecting on such things increases our sensitivity to the intrusion of the supersensible world into the sensual world. I only mention this because there can still be very little understanding of this relationship with the dead today, especially in the West. Of course, this does not prevent us from cultivating this relationship with the dead in such a way, and it is particularly effective if we cultivate this relationship with the dead in such a way that we try to live in such thoughts in which the dead can also easily live, and these are never abstract thoughts. The more abstract a thought is, the less the dead person can have such a thought in common with us.

These things are all very difficult to express when I am trying to make myself understood. For example, there are no nouns for the dead; the dead do not know non-nouns, which are the most abstract words. They still know verbs, but mainly those that are spoken from the heart. That is tangible for them. Then he can experience what is specifically vivid. So if you immerse yourself in something that you experienced with the dead person in all concreteness here on earth, let's say you remember that you were on a walk with him, he picked up an ear of corn, he spoke something —, and you remember it down to the smallest nuance, then the dead person can have the thought [with you]. All these are preparations for developing a relationship with the dead. We can then also read out loud to the dead person everything that relates to the spiritual world, as I always call it. If we simply imagine in a concrete way that the dead person is present and we read something, but as I said, it must relate to the spiritual world, then he can develop a connection with us. I would feel untrue if I did not first communicate these things, which are concrete observations of spiritual science, to you, because then you will know that the assertions of spiritual science with regard to the dead refer to concrete things. One also has the possibility of bringing about the turning to the dead especially by supporting what the dead person takes with him in a spiritual relationship.

I can tell you that it is extremely important to relate to the dead person in the following way: Immediately after death, right away, the person experiences a streaming memory of their life here, which does not proceed like an ordinary memory because, as I said, it is much more fluid, but it contains everything specific in this memory picture. If we then inwardly say something to the dead person that is in this memory picture, then that is an element, a force, which can now also contribute to his particular well-being, which will particularly satisfy him. All this shows you that we as people on earth can do something to come into a special relationship with the dead. From this you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science must definitely speak of the fact that everything we feel inwardly for the dead is something real. A funeral ritual, for example, is something absolutely real. In a similar way to how we initiate something for life here between birth and death through a baptismal ritual. We give something to the dead when we direct our thoughts to them, thoughts that are multiplied a hundredfold in the community, not just added up, but multiplied many times over. What is directed to the dead in this way is something that falls into the dead person's field of vision and enriches the dead inwardly. Just don't say that we are interfering with their karma. If you gave someone 500 marks – I don't know how much that is worth today – so that he could make an Italian journey and visit the art galleries in Italy, that was not at all an unlawful interference with his karma; it was something perfectly permissible, although it has something to do with his karma. And so it is also not an unlawful interference with karma when we do something for the dead. It is indeed an embellishment, an elevation, an enrichment for the life of the 'dead, when thoughts or actions or the like, clothed in ritual, flow from us to the dead, but it must remain the intercourse with the dead in the inner life of the soul.

A great deal of nonsense has been done with spiritualism, also in other respects. In recent times, in particular, communication with the dead through spiritualism has been brought into a terrible situation. You know that spiritist séances are mainly used to communicate with the dead. Now, of course, most of what comes to light in spiritist séances is false, but despite all the falsity, there remains a certain residue that should not be cultivated, because it is something that always brings a person down, not up. If a person does not develop in a higher world, but allows the ordinary world to enter deeper into himself, a kind of pathological relationship with the spiritual world can arise. This is, as a rule, also the case with mediums, who very often succeed in approaching the dead through suggestion. You will understand that all kinds of illusions must arise. It is, of course, absolute nonsense to believe that the dead are able to use speech and writing in the way that is manifested in spoken or even written communications. That is, of course, complete nonsense. What comes to light is only transformed by the medium. Imagine that we were all sitting here together in peace, when the floor opened up and a menagerie of lions came up into this room. Imagine that vividly! Just as it would look here if a menagerie of lions came up through a floor opening, so it is for the dead when we enter their realm in a spiritualistic way with all that we are as human beings here. It is an entirely accurate image. The dead suffer as a result if the contact is real. It is irresponsible what can be achieved through spiritualism.

Communication with the dead must remain entirely within the soul realm. In this context, it is only ever appropriate to address prayers to the dead when there is a tendency to find a bridge to the dead, and that meditation, ritual acts and so on are also directed towards the dead, so that one can relate to the dead on a spiritual level. In this way, both the world in which the dead find themselves and the world in which the living find themselves are served; that is, those who are living on earth; for much of what people, without having a real idea of its origin, summarize in the word “genius” is in reality an inspiration from the dead, who find their way into the thoughts of men. So what we develop in relation to the dead in cult, in prayer, in meditation, these are absolutely justified things.

A participant: This raises the question of whether the grave is a particularly favorable place to get in touch with the dead. Or is it not the case that shortly after the dead person is buried, there is no longer a special place here to get in touch with the dead person?

Rudolf Steiner: In general, I can say that when thinking of the dead, when praying for the dead, the place plays an extraordinarily small role. It can indeed happen that the dead person has a strong longing for earthly life, then he would develop a certain longing for the place and also have a point of reference for being met there, if I may say so, where he was last thought of in community. It could be that way roundabout, but apart from that, one cannot say that the place, or even the place where someone is buried, has a great influence on what we can do for the dead. It is indeed the case, is it not, that in the festivals of the dead, especially in the All Souls' festivals, in a certain way the dead are almost brought to their graves, but that is actually something more for the living than for the dead. Here I must again take up the thought I expressed earlier. The dead man does indeed reach out to the living in his effectiveness, and we can certainly say: the dead man takes part in the world, as we take part in the most eminent sense in the spiritual world, and it can have a certain significance for the living when they develop their memories and their thoughts at the grave, in connection with the grave. This was naturally the case with the martyrs, the so-called saints. In the early centuries of Christianity, worship was performed at the graves primarily not for the sake of the dead, but for the sake of those who had been left behind. The altar still has the form of a grave, and this is a relic of the time when the service of the supersensible was already a kind of cult of the ancestors; and this is how it must be judged in the early times of Christianity. It is more for the living than for the dead.

A participant: Does time play a role here? And what about the requiem?

Rudolf Steiner: The funeral service is essentially one of the things that can be done ritually for the dead. Now it is the case that the funeral service should of course be read soon after the “death, and that is also good because the etheric body and the astral body still interact then. The etheric body is discarded very soon after death, so that the requiem, if it falls into the time when the person still has his etheric body or at least has not discarded it for long, still has a very strong subjective meaning for him.

Regarding the other question, I would like to ask you to take into consideration that a person, on the one hand, has to consider the objective facts and, on the other hand, his or her ability to perceive. Certainly, if someone died thirty years ago, he or she is no longer as intimately connected to the earth as if he or she died three days ago, that is certain. But there is a connection, and it is only a question of the fact that after thirty years it is difficult for a person here to establish the connection. I cannot find that it does not coincide a little with earthly development, because I have met a great many people in whom the first intense pain, which may have been stormy in expression, after they lost someone, was very subdued after thirty years, but I have never met anyone in whom the pain would have increased. Circumstances arise in the lives of those who have been left behind that are quite contrary to the fact that in later years the connecting bridge can still be as lively as in previous years. But if someone asks me whether the dead person comes out of the earthly sphere completely after thirty years or after an even longer time, then I must always say no; there can be no question of that. The world is such that everything is together in it; it is quite the case that we could just as easily perform rituals or ceremonies for the dead after thirty or fifty years as we could earlier. This is to be firmly held.

A participant: In this context, I would like to ask for an explanation of the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 29.

Rudolf Steiner: “What do those who are baptized for the dead do? If the dead do not rise, why are they baptized for the dead?” — What kind of question is that?

A participant: Whether baptism is thought to influence the state of the dead.

Rudolf Steiner: What kind of influence do you mean?

A participant: Whether there is any influence at all and if so, what kind. This passage is completely unclear to me.

Rudolf Steiner: What do those who get baptized for the dead do if the dead do not rise at all? – Is it not the question of resurrection for you? Well, it is not, because here it is a matter of the idea of resurrection being the underlying assumption, and then of our taking it very seriously that the dead person has a relationship with the living, with those living here on earth. If the dead person has an ongoing life, then this life is modified in the most diverse ways, and if his life was such in Christ, then the connection that remains with the dead person is indeed a strengthening element for us. We can therefore say the following: Let us assume that we have known someone who was particularly significant in some way. I do not want to talk about spiritual or psychological qualities, but only about a significant person who has died and with whom we ourselves have a living connection in the way we can, emotionally, in thought.

I will start from something else first. You will gain extraordinary strength if you develop a living pedagogy, namely strength that can be used to make children receptive to certain admonitions when you educate, as it were, in the name of a dead person. If you just have the strength to do that, for example, to walk around the classroom and bring this connection with the dead person to life within you, it will give you the strength to make the children receptive to admonitions. In this way, you will also gain a special strength for the rite for that which is to be attained through baptism – baptism is emphasized here because it aims to lead the person into the Christian community – if you gain strength through the dead. It is natural that this is cited by the founder of Christianity, for the reason that all of Christianity, including dead Christianity, should work in the continuation of Christianity, so that all those who have gone out of the world through death should be co-helpers in properly guiding those who are born into the Christian community. That is what I would like to summarize.

A participant: [On what do the relations between the living and the dead depend?]

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, according to the experiences one can have, it is the case that the most real relationships emerge when they are built on real relationships in life before death. In general, if I may express it this way, dying is as follows: when the individual dies, he steps out of his physical shell, and what he has experienced in the physical shell is often the cause of what he then experiences [as an effect after death]. That is just the way it is: after death, he is dependent on what he has experienced in the physical shell. What he can experience through the physical shell falls away, he acquires other perceptual abilities, but he slips out of the shell, so to speak. It is the same with the relationships that a person has entered into with other people in life; these relationships have developed, they are mediated through our physical existence here, but when we slip out of the shell, the relationships continue. If one can have experiences in this area, one really has to say: the more concrete the relationships were in life, the more concrete the relationships are with the dead person.

But there is something else to consider. Above all, it must be considered that relationships are formed between the dead person and a new birth itself. So the person then develops new perceptions, but he forms emotional relationships, so that when the person comes down from the pre-existent life with human relationships – and in fact our real human relationships are much greater than we actually believe – one cannot say that the general relationship that is developed through such things as you have in mind would be completely fruitless. It is true that, for example, the members of a church community also establish relationships for their afterlife, but the other things are by no means fruitless, that much can be said. Such things can really only be determined from experience, but the concrete aspect plays a much greater role.

Johannes Perthel: Can we expect in the present or in the immediate future that a religious movement, including ritual, as mentioned, is possible in the proletariat?

A participant: What about the difference between city and country?

Rudolf Steiner: In this respect, we have indeed had a certain experience. Was it not necessary for me to follow a call to Stuttgart in April 1919 and to advocate there in Germany for the threefold social order movement, just as the view of the threefold structure of the social organism arose for me from the foundations of experience to be cultivated through spiritual science? I had to regard it absolutely as something that was a task for precisely this point in time. Before I left Switzerland, a man came to me who wanted to sign the appeal I had written and said that I must tell him more than was in the appeal. The Kernpunkte had not yet appeared at that time. He thought that something must arise that could be counted on, something like the second German revolution. I asked him: Do you therefore count on the second German revolution? — He counted the one of November 1918 as the first. And just as one revolution followed another in Russia, so he counted on a second revolution and thought that I held the view that threefolding should fall into it. I told him at the time: Yes, a large number of people believe that threefolding will indeed have a rapid effect after all the events of the times. It simply has to be tried. Because if I were to say that it cannot have a rapid effect, it would not be done, and then it will not be possible to prove to anyone that if it had been done, it would have had a very good effect for the benefit of all humanity. I told him: Just as one can overlook something in an ordinary context, so can some things also escape one in a spiritual field. There may be factors that make a second German revolution promising, but I do not believe at all in an acute second revolution, but in a continuity that would make it impossible to count on a second revolution as a serious factor. I do not believe that there is any real basis for such things.

Well, the development of the years has also proved this view right, and the result was that, at first, the threefold order progressed relatively quickly. Then it faltered, and obstacles arose from various sides, which I do not want to discuss with you now. On the other hand, a certain connection with the proletariat has been created precisely through the threefolding movement, and this connection has brought anthroposophy into the proletariat in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. I would like to say that anthroposophy has remained, and that threefolding has passed by the proletariat. It has been shown that there is a very strong interest among the urban proletariat in getting to know these things.

I have already mentioned another thing to you. If we had not been able to give anthroposophical religious education in the Waldorf school, always in harmony with the parents' views, never against them, the vast majority [of children] would have been left without religious education. With anthroposophical religious education, it is the case that the teachers say: We can't keep up, we are not able to have a sufficient number of teachers [for religious education]. It might even look a bit malicious if I were to say that the other RE teachers sometimes express their displeasure: Yes, if they keep it up like this, all the children will run away from us. But we can't help it, the blame must lie with someone, I won't say who, but I think it lies with someone else. So you see again that there is actually a strong pull in the direction that can come into the world through anthroposophy.

So I am not at all worried about the urban population. I believe that the communities you will be able to found will indeed attract a large influx of people from the proletariat in particular. Experience shows this quite clearly, and the whole constitution of the proletarian soul today shows it, as one has experienced in the last time. It is really the case that the proletariat today is something different than it was in 1914. If you grasp it in the right way, it is very accessible to a religious deepening, it is really longing for it.

The situation is more difficult, however, with the rural population, but with the rural population it is more difficult in all areas. The rural population is very stubborn, very conservative and will in fact hardly be won over to a reasonable further development in any other way than by the fact that those who are their leaders gradually become reasonable, which of course causes terrible difficulties with certain sides. Today, one must actually say that it would be relatively easy to make progress with the led — I mean, as a general phenomenon — if only the leaders would bite, but they are so terribly comfortable. With regard to the rural population, the leaders would just have to bite, we would have to overcome the leaders' complacency. Then the question of the rural population would also be solved, because it will quickly be solved if the question is resolved there as a pastor. In the cities, pastors will be forced to be progressive because the churches will gradually remain empty. In the countryside, it is a matter of winning over the leaders.

Now, my dear friends, I cannot interfere in this matter given our situation here, because it is a question of how quickly it will be possible for those who are actually, I do not want to say for a hasty, but for an energetic approach, in the real sense, that is, future pastors, to be able to shape the leadership in their own way. That is what one has to say about it. Is your question going in a different direction?

A participant: I would like to ask whether it is to be expected that these new cult forms will find immediate appeal among the proletariat?

Rudolf Steiner: That is quite certain. It is only important to know how to treat the proletariat. Of course — as can also be seen from the first chapter of my 'Key Points' — the qualities that have developed in the souls of the proletariat today are essentially the heirlooms of bourgeois qualities from the last centuries. The proletarian today shows no other characteristics than those he has inherited from the bourgeois. If the bourgeois has become pedantic, the proletarian has become even more pedantic; if the bourgeois has become philistine, the proletarian has become even more philistine; if the bourgeois has become materialistic, the proletarian has become even more materialistic, and so on. The dislike of ritual and ceremony that you find among the proletariat today is nothing more than the continuation of that dislike that has gradually developed in the bourgeoisie. It is also a matter of our really being able to appeal from the external to the internal, and here it must be said: anyone who looks a little deeper into the course of human development knows that, as the social question stands today, it cannot be overcome by anything other than a serious religious renewal, and that can only be found through the ceremonial. You do not even get around to developing what you need to get into the proletarian soul without the ceremonial. But the ceremonial must be honest. Here imponderables play a great role. If the ceremonial is not honest, it is impossible to bring it to bear. If it is honest, it takes the lead. I would like to say that it is not necessary to be blunt, but the ceremonial must be honest.

You see, in this respect one must say: the ceremonial acts have gradually become so externalized that of course the proletarian today has only a smile for everything ceremonial. But let something come along that is honest, that is what it should be, then you will get through to people, even to the proletarian soul, perhaps even to this first of all.

Hubert Sondermann: May I ask from which side we could approach the soul of the countryman with what we want and where, so to speak, the key can be found, where we can unlock it.

Rudolf Steiner: This cannot be done theoretically, but must be taken as I have said it. We must be clear about the fact that the countryman, the farmer, is conservative, and that what is rigid in him is extremely difficult to get out of him, and this is much more common today than it used to be. I think that can be seen in a relatively short time. In the 1980s, it was still relatively easy to bring people over from the Roman Catholic Church to the Old Catholic Church. Today, it is almost unthinkable.

Constantin Neuhaus: The good elements no longer come at all.

Rudolf Steiner: The general effect is that receptivity has actually been lost in a relatively short time, especially in the countryside to an eminent degree. In the countryside, things can only improve if we work indirectly through the priesthood. If we are able to found a community in the countryside, even if it is still small, and if this community is there and the priest really works in a priestly way, then he can gradually have this community, but of course he must be prepared for the fact that the real issue is to overcome the leaders. Of course, they cannot do anything with the people of Arlesheim as long as Pastor Kully is there. It is clear that we are talking here about the leaders. The path that can be taken at all will be to first found communities in larger towns and then to simply try to have a convincing effect on people, so that a kind of further development takes place through the pastor himself. The moment you succeed in conquering any district as a leader, it will happen. You always have to see that it does not depend on individual souls, especially not in the compact rural communities. But attempts must be made everywhere, and it will be a matter of overcoming the leaders there.

A participant: I think we will have difficulties because in the countryside religious life is lived much less consciously. I don't think that many people in the countryside are really searching, but religiosity is more traditional, it is a movement that happens by itself. We can expect much more of a person who is searching hard than of people who are only in the religious life because of tradition. Is there any hope of success here, of raising religious life in the countryside out of the sphere of tradition and into the sphere of consciousness, or is that expecting too much?

Rudolf Steiner: Please bear in mind that what you describe is only a contemporary phenomenon. Just think of the time of the peasant revolts, which were entirely religious in character. The phenomenon you describe is actually much more connected with other things in the present than merely with religious things. If you want to present anthroposophy in Regensburg and there are farmers in the audience, they will naturally come and stamp on the ground: You have nothing to say to us here, our pastor has to say that to us, and you have to shut up! —- But this is connected with the fact that today, as a result of liberalism, of man's development towards freedom, there is an enormous belief in authority, not only in the religious field, but everywhere. We have acquired this belief in authority particularly by becoming more and more liberal people. It is because liberalism has spread that we have forfeited our freedom. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is already proving true in the most diverse areas. This has much more to do with the things that are otherwise present in life than with religious matters. Just try to imagine what would happen if a truly free spiritual life were to take hold. A free spiritual life, where, for example, the school is completely autonomous and self-sufficient, where what is done in the school is, I might say, direct revelation from the spirit, then, of course, you come to the point where, through the free spiritual life, you overcome the leading personalities with their authorities. This is something that comes to the fore most strongly in things that develop in other areas than in the religious sphere, especially in the countryside, because in the countryside the principle of authority cannot be overcome as easily in all areas as it can in cities. But I do not wish to say that religious life is unconscious in the countryside for that very reason. It is simply that everything is more rigid and submerged in what the modern age has brought forth.

A participant: [Isn't the rural population particularly receptive to cults?]

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, certainly for the introduction of cults. The moment you appear with the cult, you will win the heart of the countryman much more easily than with a teaching; that is quite certain. The Catholic Church spread Christianity initially not so much through teaching as through cult, even if the teaching has flowed into external forms.

A participant: Wherever the remains of cults still exist, the position of the priest is different – a position of authority – and this makes it easier for the priest to gain access to the lives of the rural population. My only fear is whether the priest has the necessary expert knowledge to intervene and take the lead in all these areas.

Rudolf Steiner: Which priest?

A participant: The pastor in the countryside. If all the threads come together there, can he really do it?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, why do you think it can't be done?

A participant: Because we have become too unworldly as a result of our education.

Rudolf Steiner: This is indeed essentially overcome by a free spiritual life, as I think it is in the sense of the threefold social organism - that is, in the educational sphere according to the model of the Waldorf School through education in the free spiritual life. Don't we see the worst consequences actually coming from the lack of freedom in the spiritual life, that is, I mean now from the lack of social freedom. Just think, it was not so very long ago that there was a real and serious debate about whether or not to tolerate the Jesuits in the German Reich. Now, it is outrageous to even discuss the spiritual life from a political point of view. You will not expect me to have even a single hair left to praise the Jesuits, of course, but politically speaking, no kind of spiritual movement should be oppressed in any way if we want to advance in the general spiritual life. What have they achieved by politically fighting Jesuitism in Germany? To the same extent that they fought Jesuitism politically, to that same extent did its capacities increase from another side. Jesuitism is very astute; it has extraordinarily significant people working within it. If you want to fight it, you also have to develop sharp mental abilities. I must say that any kind of oppression of the free intellectual life leads to an oppression of the intellectual life in general. We should never think of using political measures to bind or restrict our opponents in the field of intellectual life, or anything of the sort; only in this way is it possible to really move forward. I think that when intellectual life sheds all the dark sides that still remain, for example specialization – which can be completely shed in anthroposophical education – then the pastor will actually be able to be the leader that he must be. There is simply no other way in the rural communities out there. There is no other possibility for the pastor than to really be involved in all matters concerning the community – I also want to talk about community building – he simply must be. One cannot say “he will be”, but one can say: he must be. We must say with Fichte: Man kann, was er soll, and when he says: ich kann nicht, so will er nicht. That should be our motto.

Christian Geyer: I would like to make a small suggestion. Unfortunately, some of us have to leave. It was originally planned that the course would last until tomorrow, and some will not be able to attend the continuation. I don't know if it is immodest of me to ask if you could at least give a rough outline of how the creed will be formulated.

Rudolf Steiner: Tomorrow. It is no longer possible for us to continue. Tomorrow, yes.

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul¹ is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls² I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,³ a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Galatians 2:20
• 2. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121
• 3. the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)

[ 1 ] The author would like to sketch several pictures—nothing other than that—and not about the spiritual thought-life of Austria but only from this life. No kind of completeness will be striven for, not even with respect to what the author himself has to say. Many other things might be much more important than what is to be brought here. But this time only a little bit will be indicated from the spiritual life of Austria that is more or less, directly or indirectly, connected in some way with spiritual streams in which the author himself has stood during his youth. Spiritual streams like those meant here can indeed also be characterized, not by presenting mental pictures one has formed of them, but by speaking of personalities, their way of thinking and inclinations of feeling, in whom one believes these streams to express themselves, as though symptomatically. I would like to depict what Austria reveals about itself through several such personalities. If I use the word “I” in several places, please consider that to be based on my point of view at that time.

[ 2 ] I would like first of all to speak about a personality in whom I believe in myself able to see the manifestation in a very noble sense of spiritual Austrianness in the second half of the nineteenth century: Karl Julius Schröer. When I entered the Vienna College of Technology in 1879, he was professor of German literary history there. He first became my teacher and then an older friend. For many years now he has not been among the living.

In the first lecture of his that I heard, he spoke about Goethe's Götz van Berlichingen. The whole age out of which this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became alive in Schröer's words. A man was speaking who let flow into every one of his judgments what, out of the world view of German idealism, he had incorporated into all the feeling and willing of his entire spiritualized personality, His following lectures built up a living picture of German poetry since Goethe's appearance on the scene, They did so in such a way that through his depiction of poets and poems one always felt the living weaving of views, within the essential being of the German people, struggling to come into reality. Enthusiasm for the ideals of mankind carried Schröer's judgments along, and this enthusiasm implanted a living sense of self into the view of life that took its start in Goethe's age. A spirit spoke out of this man that wanted to communicate only what had become the deepest experience of his own soul during his observations of man's spiritual life.

[ 3 ] Many of the people who got to know this personality did not know him. When I was already living in Germany, I was once at a dinner party, a well-known literary historian was sitting beside me. He spoke of a German duchess, whom he praised highly, except that—according to him—she could sometimes err in her otherwise healthy judgment as, for example, when she “considered Schröer to be a significant person.” I can understand that many a person does not find in Schröer's books what many of his students found through the living influence of his personality; but I am convinced that one could also sense much of this in Schröer's writings if one were able to receive an impression not merely by so-called “rigorous methods” or even by such a method in the style of one or another school of literature, but rather by originality in judging, by the revelations of a view one has experienced oneself. Seen this way, a personality grown mature in the idealism of German world views does in fact speak forth from the much maligned book of Schröer, History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century and from others of his works. A certain manner of presentation, in his Faust commentaries, for example, could repel many a supposed free thinker. For there does work into Schröer's presentation something that a certain age believed to be inseparable from the character of what is scientific. Even strong-minded thinkers fell under the yoke of this belief; and one must seek these thinkers themselves in their true nature by penetrating through this husk of their creations that was forced upon them by this yoke.

[ 4 ] Karl Julius Schröer lived his boyhood and youth in the light of a man who, like himself, had his roots in spiritual German Austrianness, and who was one of its blossoms: his father, Tobias Gottfried Schröer.

It was not so long ago that in the widest circles certain books were known to which many people certainly owed the awakening of a feeling, supported by a view of life in accordance with the spirit, for history, poetry, and art. These books are Letters on Aesthetics' Chief Objects of Study, by Chr. Oeser, The Little Greeks, by Chr. Oeser, World History for Girls' Schools, and other works by the same author. Covering the most manifold areas of human spiritual life from the point of view of a writer for young people, a personality is speaking in these writings who grew up in the way of picturing things of the Goethean age of German spiritual development, and who sees the world with the eye of the soul educated in this way. The author of these books is Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who published them under the name Chr. Oeser. Now, nineteen years after the death of this man, in 1869, the German Schiller Foundation presented his widow with an honorary gift accompanied by a letter in which was stated: “The undersigned Board has heard with deepest regret that the wife of one of the most worthy German writers, of a man who always stood up for the national spirit with talent and with heart, is not living in circumstances appropriate to her status nor to the service tendered by her husband; and so this Board is only fulfilling the duty required of it by the spirit of its statutes when it makes every possible effort to mitigate somewhat the adversity of a hard destiny.” Moved by this decision of the Schiller Foundation, Karl Julius Schröer then wrote an article about his father in the Vienna New Free Press that made public what until then had been known only to a very small circle: that Tobias Gottfried Schröer was not only the author of the books of Chr. Oeser, but also a significant poet and writer of works that were true ornaments of Austrian spiritual life, and that he had remained unknown only because he could not use his own name due to the situation there regarding censorship. His comedy The Bear, for example, appeared in 1830. Karl von Holtei, the significant Silesian poet and actor speaks of it in a letter to the author right after its appearance: “As regards your comedy The Bear: it delighted me. If the conception, the disposition of characters, is entirely yours, then I wish you good luck with all my heart, for you will still write more beautiful plays.” The playwright took all his material from the life of Ivan (the Fourth) Wasiliewitsch and all the characters except Ivan himself are freely created. A later drama, The Life and Deeds of Emerick Tököly and his Comrades in Arms, received warm acclaim, without anyone knowing who the author was. One could read of it in “Magazine for Literary Conversation” (October 25, 1839): “An historical picture of remarkable freshness ... Works offering such a breath of fresh air and with such decisive characters are true rarities in our day ... Each grouping is full of great charm because it is full of great truth; ...The author's Tököly is a Hungarian Götz von Berlichingen and only with it can this drama be compared... From a spirit like this author we can expect anything, even the greatest.” This review is by W. v. Ludemann, who has written a History of Architecture, a History of Painting, Walks in Rome, stories and novellas, works that express sensitivity and great understanding for art.

[ 5 ] Through his father's spiritual approach the sun of idealism in German world views had already shone beforehand upon Karl Julius Schröer as he entered the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin at the end of the 1840s and there could still experience, through much that worked upon him, this idealism's way of picturing things. When he returned to his homeland in 1846, he became director of the Seminar for German Literary History and Language in the Pressburg secondary school for girls that his father had founded in this city. In this position he unfolded an activity that essentially took this form: Through his striving Schröer sought to solve the problem of how to work best in the spiritual life of Austria if one finds the direction of one's strivings already marked out by having received the motive forces of one's own soul from German culture. In a Text and Reading Book (that appeared in 1853 and presents a “History of German Literature”), he spoke of this striving: “Seniors, law students, students of theology ... came together there (in the secondary school) ... I made every effort to present to a circle of listeners like this, in large perspectives, the glory of the German people in its evolution, to stimulate respect for German art and science, and where possible to bring my listeners closer to the standpoint of modern science.” And Schröer describes how he understands his own Germanness like this: “From this standpoint there naturally disappeared from view the one-sided factional passions: one will listen to a Protestant or a Catholic, to a conservative or a subversive enthusiast, or to a zealot of German nationalism only insofar as through them humanity gains and the human race is elevated.” And I want to repeat these words, written almost seventy years ago, not in order to express what was right for a German in Austria at that time, nor even now. I only want to show the nature of one man in whom the German—Austrian spirit expressed itself in a particular way. To what extent this spirit endows the Austrian with the right kind of striving: on this question the adherents of the different parties and nations in Austria will also decide very differently. And in all this one must also remember that Schöer expressed himself in this as a young man still who had just returned from German universities. But the fact is significant that in the soul of this young man—and not for political purposes, but out of purely spiritual thoughts about how to view the world—a German Austrian consciousness formed for itself an ideal for the mission of Austria that Schröer expressed in these words: “If we pursue the comparison of Germany with ancient Greece, and of the Germanic with the Greek tribes, we find a great similarity between Austria and Macedonia. We see the beautiful task of Austria exemplified there: to cast the seeds of Western culture out over the East.”

[ 6 ] Schröer later became professor in the University of Budapest and then school director in Vienna; finally, he worked for many years as a professor of German literary history in the Vienna College of Technology. These positions were for him only an outer covering, so to speak, for his significant activity within Austrian spiritual life. This activity begins with an investigation into the soul and linguistic expressions of the German-Austrian folk life. He wants to know what is working and living in the people, not as a dry, prosaic researcher but rather as someone who wants to discover the riddle of the folk soul in order to see what forces of mankind are struggling to come into existence in these souls. Near the Pressburg region, among the farmers, there were living at that time some old Christmas plays. They are performed every year around Christmas time. In handwritten form they are passed down from generation to generation. They show how in the people the birth of Christ, and what is connected with it, lives dramatically in pictures with depth of heart. Schröer collects such plays in a little volume and writes an introduction to them in which he depicts this revelation of the folk soul with most loving devotion, such that his presentation allows the reader to immerse himself in the way the people feel and view things. Out of the same spirit he then undertakes to present the German dialects of the Hungarian mountain regions, of the West-Hungarian Germans, and of the Gottscheer area in Krain. His purpose there is always to solve the riddle of the organism of a people; his findings really give a picture of the life at work in the evolution of language and of the folk soul. And basically the thought is always hovering before him in all these endeavors of learning to know, from the motive forces of its peoples, what determines the life of Austria. A great deal, a very great deal, of the answer to the question, What weaves in the soul of Austria?, is to be found in Schröer's research into dialects.

But this spiritual work had yet another effect upon Schröer himself. It provided him with the basis for deep insights into the essential being of the human soul itself. These insights bore fruit when, as director of several schools, he could test how views about education and teaching take form in a thinker who has looked so deeply into the being of the heart of the people as he had through his research. And so he was able to publish a small work, Questions about Teaching, which in my view should be reckoned among the pearls of pedagogical literature. This little book deals brilliantly with the goals, methods, and nature of teaching. I believe that this little volume, completely unknown today, should be read by everyone who has anything to do with teaching within the German cultural realm. Although this book was written entirely for the situation in Austria. the indications there can apply to the whole German-speaking world. What one today might call outmoded about this book, published in 1876, is inconsiderable when compared with the way of picturing things that is alive in it. A way of picturing things like this, attained on the basis of a rich experience of life, remains ever fruitful even though someone living later must apply it to new conditions. In the last decades of his life Schröer's spiritual work was turned almost entirely to immersing itself in Goethe's life's work and way of picturing things. In the introduction to his book German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, he stated: “We in Austria want to go hand in hand with the spiritual life of the German empire.” He regarded the world view of German idealism as the root of this spiritual life. And he expressed his adherence to this world view in the words: “The world-rejuvenating appearance of idealism in Germany, in an age of frivolity a hundred years ago, is the greatest phenomenon of modern history. Our intellect (Verstand)—focused only upon what is finite, not penetrating into the depths of essential being—and along with it the egoism focused upon satisfying sensual needs, suddenly retreated before the appearance of a spirit that rose above everything common.” (See the introduction to Schröer's edition of Faust). Schröer saw in Goethe's Faust “the hero of unconquerable idealism. He is the ideal hero of the age in which the play arose. His contest with Mephistopheles expresses the struggle of the new spirit as the innermost being of the age; and that is why this play is so great: it lifts us onto a higher level.”

[ 7 ] Schröer declares his unreserved allegiance to German idealism as a world view. In his History of German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century there stand the words with which he wants to characterize the thoughts in which the spirit of the German people expresses itself when it does this in the sense of its own primal being: “Within what is perceived experientially, determining factors are everywhere recognizable that are hidden behind what is finite, behind what can be known by experience. These factors must be called the ‘undetermined’ and must be felt everywhere to be what is constant in change, an eternal lawfulness, and as something infinite. The perceived infinite within the finite appears as idea; the ability to perceive the infinite appears as reason (Vernunft), in contrast to intellect, which remains stuck at what is surveyably finite and can perceive nothing beyond it.” At the same time, in the way Schröer declares his allegiance to this idealism, everything is also at work that is vibrating in his soul, which senses in its own being the Austrian spiritual stream. And this gives his world-view-idealism its particular coloring. When a thought is expressed, there is given it a certain coloring that does not allow it to enter right away the realm described by Hegel as the realm of philosophical knowledge when he said, “The task of philosophy is to grasp what is; for, what is reasonable is real, and what is real is reasonable. When philosophy paints its gray on gray then a form of life has become old; the owl of Minerva begins to fly only when dusk is descending.” (See my book Riddles of Philosophy, vol. I.) No, the Austrian, Schröer, does not want to see the world of thoughts gray on gray; ideas should shine in a color that ever refreshes and rejuvenates our deeper heart. And what would have mattered much more to Schröer in this connection than thinking about the bird of evening was to think about the deeper human heart struggling for light, seeking in the world of ideas the sun of that realm in which our intellect, focused upon the finite and upon the sense world, should be feeling the extinguishing of its light.

[ 8 ] Herman Grimm, the gifted art historian, had nothing but good to say about the Austrian culptor Heinrich Natter. In his essay on Natter, published in his Fragments (1900), one can also read what Grimm thought about Natter's relation to Austria. “When I meet Austrians, I am struck by their deep-rooted love for the soil of their particular fatherland and by their impulse to maintain spiritual community with all Germans. Let us think now of one such person, Ignaz Zingerles. Natter's statue of Walter von der Vogelweide owes its existence to the unceasing quiet work of Zingerles. He resembled the men of our earlier centuries through the fact that he was hardly conceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland. He was a figure with simple outlines, fashioned out of faithfulness and honesty as though out of blocks of stone. He was a Tyrolean, as though his mountains were the navel of the earth, an Austrian through and through, and at the same time one of the best and noblest Germans. And Natter was also all these: a good German, Austrian, and Tyrolean.” And about the monument to Walter von der Vogelweide in Bozen Herman Grimm says: “In Natter, inwardness of German feeling was united with formative imagination, His Walter von der Vogelweide stands in Bozen as a triumphant picture of German art, towering up in the crest of the Tyrolean mountains at the border country of the fatherland, A manly solid figure.”

I often had to think of these words of Hennan Grimm when the memory came alive in me of the splendid figure of the Austrian poet Fercher von Steinwand, who died in 1902. He was “all these: a good German, Austrian, and Carinthian,” although one could hardly say of him that he was “inconceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland.” I learned to know him at the end of the 1880's in Vienna and for a short time associated with him personally. He was sixty years old at the time: a true figure of light, even externally; an engaging warmth shone from his noble features, eloquent eyes, and expressive gestures; through tranquil clarity and self-possession, this soul of an older man still gave the effect of youthful freshness. And when one came to know this soul better, its particular nature and creations, one could see how a feeling life instilled by the Carinthian mountains united in this soul with a contemplative life in the power of the idealism in German world views. This contemplation (Sinnen) was already entirely native to his soul as a poetic world of pictures; this contemplation pointed with this world of pictures into the depths of existence; it confronted world riddles artistically, without the originality of artistic creation paling thereby into thought-poetry; one can observe this kind of contemplation in the following lines from Fercher von Steinwand's Chorus of Primal Dreams:

Out of all regions
Ever ascended,
Wanders an ether in far-radiant arches;
Travel the billows to
Depths ever silent.

There with our all-seeing
Will as their cargo,
Wending their way through the fog go our ferries;
Sail between wonderful
Banks new arising.

There before all-warming
Eyes of soft mildness
Winding and turning we fashion our patterns
Out all around dreaming
Regions of star-fields.

There to misfortune we
N'er are indebted,
There we constructed our fortresses hovering, And tribulations we
Joyfully shattered.

He who would paint you with
Most holy features,
Highest abode of our contemplative urgings:
Wait for the swiftest
Servants of love!

[ 9 ] The following verses seek to portray how the soul, in thinking-waking daydreams, lives in far-away starry worlds and in immediate reality; then the poet continues:

No matter what careful
Powers accomplish,
Only on dreaming's own wide-spreading pinions
Can what is mighty be
Gained now forever.

Every o'erpowering greatness of action,
All of the angels who guard what was planted
Are given counsel by
Dreams that inspire them.

[ 10 ] Fercher von Steinwand then sings further about the penetrating of thinking, spiritualized to the point of dreaming, into the depths of the world, and about the penetrating of that kind of dreaming which is an awakening out of our ordinary waking state into those depths where the life of what is spiritual in the world can make itself tangible to the soul:

Life that our pulsating
Hearts have perceived,
Life that our struggling hearts have ascended
To all the welcoming
Cries of the spirits:

[ 11 ] And then Fercher von Steinwand lets sound forth to the human spirit what the beings of the spirit realm speak to the soul that opens itself to them in inner contemplation:

Healed ones, now be here by
Loving encircled!
What you were seeking in uplifting hours,
Here, you selected ones,
Is it disclosed;
Here in the grandeur of
Halls of the Godhead,
Where to the heart other hearts are so pleasing,
Where buried voices are
Sounding forth newly

Where now the care-worn are
Royally striving,
Radiant souls now in smiles are all wreathed,
Round all the wrecks of the
Wheels of the ages—

Only the blinded ones,
Earth-bound and foolish,
Were for the gulf of destruction begotten,
Lost to the worlds of
Spirit perfection!
Weal to the sens'tive one
Round whom we hover,
Whom we enliven to bloss'ming existence,
All without weaving in
Fugitive shadows!

[ 12 ] In the literary works of Fercher von Steinwand there then follows upon this Chorus of Primal Dreams his Chorus of Primal Impulses:

In the distances unbounded
Of our ancient mother Night.
Hark—to be in inward conflict
Seems the deep mysterious might!
Do we hear present'ment striding?
Is our longing wide awake?
Was a spirit-lightning lit?
Are our dreams through spaces gliding?

How now are powers by powers enraptured,
Blessed exchanges!
Now sudden hastenings.
Then quiet lingerings,
Reveling listenings
Change into beckonings
Marveling fearings!
Charm of desiring
Mounts, and sinks down,
Sinks into hatred.
Faced with the pallid
Picture of embracing
Cannot clasp hatred.
Ramifications dim,
Inclinings burgeoning,
Send forth their tendrils.
Ponderous inklings
Dawn and go faltering
O'er the wide spaces,
Seem to give counsel
Or to give guidance.
What they're preparing
Is it the sowing
Of immense actions,
Of radiant ages?
Who felt the furrows
To be creative!
Who wandered through them
Blissfully savoring,
Or disentangling,
Grandeurs discovering!
Yonder the stir is like spirits embracing
We are enwarmed
And are receiving,
Seeking, and thinking,
See ourselves lifted,
Woven in joy with
Highest beginnings.
You wafting ‘round us,
In us arising:
“You are ideas!—”

[ 13 ] Reflecting in this way, the poet's soul enters into an experience of how the ideas of the world-spirit announce the secrets of existence to the spirit of man's soul and of how the spirit of man's soul beholds the shapers of sense-perceptible shapes.—After presenting the observations of the soul within the chorus of primal world impulses in brilliant, ringing pictures, the poet concludes:

May duration grow accustomed
To what urge has conjured up;
May adorning and appeasement
In creation's stream prevail.
Sweetest light! in noble ringing
Mounts my heart aloft to you:
Linger at your western gate;
Help to crown the deed of love!
Risen from all earthly bonds is our impulse Soul—resurrected!
But what is ripened
Ruling, and valid
Proves to be spirit!
All that is circling,
All earth foundations,
All heavenly kindlings are
Self-made in spirit,
Came forth from spirit,
Work through the spirit
–
Powerful freedom from chaos did fashion
Space for good fortune!
Cloaked, with the dew of its deep-breathing mildness, Forest and field!
Cared that the dew and the light be companions,
Forming the hem of deep transfiguration—
Cared that each droplet should float at the threshold
of Spiritual radiance!

In Fercher von Steinwand's Complete Works (published by Theodor Daberkow in Vienna), there are also several indications about his life given by the poet himself when pressed by friends on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, He wrote, “I began life on March 22, 1828 upon the heights of the Steinwand above the banks of the Möll in Carinthia (Kärten); that means, in the midst of a defiant congregation of mountains with their heads held high, beneath whose domineering grandeur burdened human beings seem continuously to grow poorer,”

Since, in his Chorus of Primal Impulses, we find the world view of German idealism cast in the form of a poetic creation, it is interesting to see how the poet, on his paths through Austrian spiritual life, receives impulses from this world view already in his youth. He describes how he enters the university in Graz: “With my credentials—which of course consisted only of my report cards—held tight against my chest, I presented myself to the dean. That was Professor Edlauer, a criminologist of high repute. He hoped to see me (he said) industriously present in his lecture course on natural law. Behind the curtain of this innocent title he presented us for the whole semester, in rousing lectures, with those German philosophers who, under the fatherly care of our well-meaning spiritual guardians were banned and kept from us: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and so on—heroes, therefore; that means men who founded and fructified all areas of pure thinking, who gave the language and created the concepts for all the other sciences, and who, consequently, are illustrious names shining from our street comers today and seeming almost strange there in their particular diamond clarity. This semester was my vita nuova!”

[ 16 ] Whoever learns to know Fercher von Steinwand's tragedy Dankmar, his Countess Seelenbrand, his German Tones from Austria, and other works of his will be able through this to feel many of the forces that were working in the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century. And everything about Fercher von Steinwand testifies to the fact that one receives out of his soul a picture from this spiritual life in clarity, truth, and genuineness. The amiable Austrian poet in dialect Leopold Hormann felt rightly when he wrote the words:

Far from all baseness
All avarice and meanness;
Foe of publicity,
That loathesome false lady;
German in soul,
Strong yet with kindness
Great in his thinking,
No faltering and wavering,
Proof against all objections:—
Fercher von Steinwand!

[ 17 ] Out of the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century, a thinker arose who brought to expression deeply significant characteristics of the content of modern world views: the moral philosopher of Darwinism, Bartholomaeus von Carneri. He was a thinker who experienced the public life of Austria as his own happiness or suffering; for many years, as a representative in the federal council, he took an active interest in this life with all the power of his spirit. Carneri could only appear at first to be an opponent of a world view in accordance with the spirit. For, all his efforts go to shaping a world picture from only those mental pictures which occur in the train of thought stimulated by Darwinism. But if one reads Carneri with a sense not only for the content of his views but also for what lay beneath the surface of his truth-seeking soul, one will discover a remarkable fact. An almost entirely materialistic world picture takes shape in this thinker, but with a clarity of thought that stems from the deep-lying, idealistic basic impulse of his being. For him as for many of his contemporaries the mental pictures growing from a world view rooted entirely in the soil of Darwinism burst into his thought-life with such overpowering force that he could do no other than incorporate all his consideration of man's spiritual life into this world view. To want to approach the spirit cognitively on any path other than those taken by Darwin seemed to him to rend the unified being that must extend out over all human striving in knowledge. In his view Darwinism had shown how a unified, lawful interrelationship of causes and effects encompasses the development of all the beings of nature up to man. Whoever understands the sense of this interrelationship must also see how the same lawfulness enhances and refines the natural forces and drives in man in such a way that they grow upward to the heights of moral ideals and views. Carneri believes that only man's blind arrogance and misled overestimation of himself can entice his striving for knowledge into wanting to approach the spiritual world by different cognitive means than in approaching nature.

Every page of Carneri's writings on the moral being of man, however, shows that he would have shaped his view of life in Hegel's way if, at a particular point of development in his life, Darwinism had not struck like lightning, with irresistible suggestive force, into his thought-world; this occurred in such a way that with great effort he silenced his predisposition toward an idealistically developed world view. As his writings also attest, this world view would definitely not have arisen through the pure thinking at work in Hegel, but rather through a thinking that resounded with a hearty, contemplative quality; but his thinking would have gone in Hegel's direction.

As though from hidden depths of Carneri's soul, Hegel's way of picturing things often arises in Carneri's writings, cautioning him as it were. On page 79 of his Fundamentals of Ethics one reads: “With Hegel ... a dialectical movement took the place of the law of causality: a gigantic thought, which, like the Titans all, could not escape the fate of arrogance. His monism wanted to storm Olympus but sank back down to earth; it remained a beacon for all future thought, however, illuminating the path and also the abyss.” On page 154 of the same book, Carneri speaks of the nature of the Greek way and says of it: “In this respect We do not remember the mythical heroic age, nor yet the times of Homer. ... We take ourselves back to the highlight of ages that Hegel depicted so aptly as the youthful age of mankind.” On page 189 Carneri characterizes the attempts that have been made to fathom the laws of thinking, and observes: “The most magnificent example of this kind is Hegel's attempt to let thoughts unfold, so to speak, without being determined by the thinker. The fact that he went too far in this does not prevent an unprejudiced person from acknowledging this attempt (to see one single law as underlying all physical and spiritual evolution) to be the most splendid one on the whole history of philosophy. The services he rendered to the development of German thinking are imperishable, and many an enthusiastic student who later became an embittered opponent of his has unintentionally raised a lasting monument to him in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel.” On page 421 one reads: “Hegel has told us, in an unsurpassable manner, how far one can go in philosophizing” with mere, so-called, healthy common sense.

Now one could assert that Carneri too has “raised a lasting monument to Hegel in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel,” even though he applied this way of expression to a world picture with which Hegel would certainly not have been in agreement. But Darwinism worked upon Carneri with such suggestive power that he included Hegel, along with Spinoza and Kant, among those thinkers of whom he said: “They would have acknowledged the sincerity of his (Carneri's) striving, which would never have dared to look beyond them if Darwin had not rent the curtain that hung like night over the whole creation as long as the theory of purpose remained irrefutable. We have this consciousness, but also the conviction that these men would have left many things unsaid or would have said them differently if it had been granted them to live in our age of liberated natural science...”

[ 18 ] Carneri has developed a variety of materialism in which mental sharpness often degenerates into naiveté, and insights about “liberated natural science” often degenerate into blindness toward the impossibility of one's own concepts. “We grasp substance as matter insofar as phenomena—resulting from the divisibility and movement of substance—work corporeally, i.e., as mass, upon our senses. If the divisions or differentiations go so far that the phenomena resulting from them are no longer sense-perceptible but are now only perceptible to thinking, then the effect of substance is a spiritual one” (Carneri's Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). That is as if someone were to explain reading by saying: As long as a person has not learned to read, he cannot say what stands upon the written page of a book. For, only the shapes of the letters reveal themselves to his gaze. As long as he can view only these letter shapes, into which the words are divisible, his observation of the letters cannot lead to reading. Only when he manages also to perceive the letter shapes in a yet more divided or differentiated form will the sense of these letters work upon his soul.

Of course, an unshakable believer in materialism would find an objection like this absurd. But the difficulty of putting materialism in the right light lies precisely in this necessity of expressing such simple thoughts in order to do so. One must express thoughts that one can scarcely believe the adherents of materialism do not form for themselves. And so the biased charge can easily be leveled against someone trying to clarify materialism that he is using meaningless phraseology to counter a view that rests upon the empirical knowledge of modern science and upon its rigorous principles.¹ Nevertheless, the great power of materialism to convince its adherents arises only through the fact that they are unable to feel the weight of the simple arguments that destroy their view. Like so many others, they are convinced not by the light of logical reasons which they have examined, but by the force of habitual thoughts which they have not examined, which, in fact, they feel no immediate need to examine at all. But Carneri does differ from the materialists who scarcely have any inkling of this need, through the fact that his idealism continuously brings this need to his consciousness; he must therefore silence this need, often by quite artificial means. He has scarcely finished professing that the spiritual is an effect of finely split-up substance when he adds: “This conception of the spirit will be unsatisfying to many people who make other claims about the spirit; still, in the further course of our investigations, the value of our view will prove to be significant and entirely able to show the materialism which wants to grasp the phenomena of the spirit corporeally that it cannot go beyond certain bounds” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). Yes, Carneri has a real aversion to being counted among the materialists; he defends himself against this with statements like the following: “Rigid materialism is just as one-sided as the old metaphysics: the former arrives at no meaning for its configurations; the latter arrives at no configurations for its meaning; with materialism there is a corpse; with metaphysics there is a ghost; and what they are both struggling for in vain is the creative heat of sentient life” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 68).

But Carneri does feel, in fact, how justified one is in calling him a materialist; for, no one with healthy senses, after all, even if he is an adherent of materialism, will declare that a moral ideal can be “grasped corporeally,” to use Carneri's expression. He will say only that a moral ideal manifests in connection with what is material through a material process. And that is also what Carneri states in his above assertion about the divisibility of substance. Out of this feeling he then says (in his book Sensation and Consciousness): “One will reproach us with materialism insofar as we deny all spirit and grant existence only to matter. But this reproach is no longer valid the moment one takes one's start from this ideal nature of one's picture of the world, for which matter itself is nothing but a concept a thinking person has.” But now take hold of your head and feel whether it is still all there after participating in this kind of a conceptual dance! Substance becomes matter when it is so coarsely split up that it works only “upon the senses as mass”; it becomes spirit when it is split up so finely that it is then “perceptible only to thinking.” And matter, i.e., coarsely split up substance, is after all only “a concept a thinking person has.” When split up coarsely, therefore, substance achieves nothing more than playing the—to a materialist!—dubious role of a human concept; but split up more finely, substance becomes spirit. But then the bare human concept would have to split up even finer. Now such a world view would make that hero, who pulled himself out of the water by his own hair, into the perfect model for reality.

One can understand why another Austrian thinker, F. von Feldegg (in the November 1894 edition of “German Words”), would reply to Carneri with these words: “The moment one takes one's start from the ideal nature of one's picture of the world! What an arbitrary supposition, in all the forced wrong-headedness of that thought! Does it indeed depend so entirely on our pleasure whether we take our start from the ideal nature of our picture of the world or, for example, from its opposite—from the reality of our picture of the world in fact? And matter, for this ideal nature, is supposed to be altogether nothing except a concept a thinking person has? This is actually the most absolute idealism—like that of a Hegel, for example—which is meant to render assistance here against the reproach of materialism; but it won't do to turn to someone in the moment of need whom one has persistently denied until then. And how is Carneri to reconcile this idealistic belief with everything else in his book? In fact, there is only one explanation for this state of affairs and that is: Even Carneri is afraid of, yet covets, the transcendental. But that is a half-measure which exacts a heavy toll. Carneri's ‘Monistic Misgivings’ fall in this way into two heterogeneous parts, into a crudely materialistic part and into a hiddenly idealistic part. In the one part, the author's head is correct in the end, because he is undeniably sunk over his head in materialism; but in the other part, the author's deeper heart (Gemüt) resists the clumsy demands of rationalism's modes and conceits; it resists them with all the power of that metaphysical magic from which, even in our crudely sense-bound age, nobler natures are not able to escape entirely.”

[ 18 ] And yet, in spite of all this, Carneri is a significant personality of whom one can say (as I indicated in my book Riddles of Philosophy: “This Austrian thinker sought, out of Darwinism, to open wide vistas in viewing the world and in shaping life. Eleven years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, Carneri came out with his book Morality and Darwinism, in which, in a most comprehensive manner, he turned this new world of ideas into the foundation of an ethical world view. After that he worked ceaselessly to elaborate a Darwinistic ethics. Carneri seeks to find elements in our picture of nature through which the self-conscious ‘I’ can fit into this picture. He wants to think this picture of nature so broadly and largely that it can also comprise the human soul.”

By their very character, Carneri's writings seem to me in fact everywhere to challenge us to root everything out of their content that their author had forced himself into by surrendering to the yoke of the materialistic world view; his writings challenge us to look only at that which—like an elemental inspiration of his deeper heart—appears in them as a revelation of a large-scale human being. Just read, from this point of view, what he thinks the task to be for an education toward true humanness: “It is the task of education ... to develop the human being in such a way that he must do the good, that human dignity not suffer from this, but that the harmonious development of a being who by his very nature is happy to do what is noble and great is an ethical phenomenon more beautiful than anything we could imagine. ... The accomplishment of this magnificent task is possible through man's striving for bliss, into which his drive for self-preservation purifies itself as soon as his intelligence develops fully. Thinking is based on sensation and is only the other side of feeling; which is why all thinking that does not attain maturity through the warmth of feeling—and also all feeling that does not illuminate itself with the light of thinking—is one-sided. It is the task of education, through the harmonious development of thinking and feeling, to purify man's striving for bliss in such a way that the ‘I’ will see in the ‘you’ its natural extension and in the ‘we’ its necessary consummation, and egoism will recognize altruism as its higher truth. ... Only from the standpoint of our drive to attain bliss is it comprehensible that a person would give his life for a loved one or to a noble end: he sees precisely in this his higher happiness. In seeking his true happiness, man attains morality, But he must be educated toward this, educated in such a way that he can absolutely do no other. In the blissful feeling of the nobility of his deed he finds his most beautiful recompense and demands nothing more.” (See Carneri's introduction to his book Modern Man.) One can see: Carneri considers our striving for bliss, as he sees it, to be a power of nature lying within true human nature; he considers it to be a power that, under the right conditions, must unfold, the way a seed must unfold when it has the appropriate conditions. In the same way that a magnet, through its own particular being, has the power to attract, so the animal has the drive of self-preservation and man the drive to attain bliss. One does not need to graft anything onto man's being in order to lead them to morality; one needs only to develop rightly their drive to attain bliss; then, through this drive, they will unfold themselves to true morality. Carneri observes in detail the various manifestations of human soul life: how sensation stimulates or dulls this life; how emotions and passions work: and how in all this the drive to attain bliss unfolds. He presupposes this drive in all these soul manifestations as their actual basic power. And through the fact that he endows this concept of bliss with a broad meaning, all the sours wishing, wanting, and doing falls—for him, in any case—into the realm of this concept. How a person is depends upon which picture of his own happiness is hovering before him: One person sees his happiness in satisfying his lower drives; another person sees it in deeds of devoted love and self-denial. If it were said of someone that he was not striving for happiness, that he was only selflessly doing his duty, Carneri would object: This is precisely what gives him the feeling of happiness—to chase after happiness but not consciously. But in broadening the concept of bliss in this way, Carneri reveals the absolutely idealistic basic tenor of his world view. For if happiness is something quite different for different people, then morality cannot lie in the striving for happiness; the fact is, rather, that man feels his ability to be moral as something that makes him happy. Through this, human striving is not brought down out of the realm of moral ideals into the mere craving for happiness; rather, one recognizes that it lies in the essential being of man to see his happiness in the achieving of his ideals. “We are convinced,” says Carneri, “that ethics has to make do with the argument that the path of man is the path to bliss, and that man, in traveling the path to bliss, matures into a moral being.” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 423)

Whoever believes now that through such views Carneri wants to make ethics Darwinistic is allowing himself to be misled by the way this thinker expresses himself. He is compelled to express himself like this by the overwhelming power of the predominant natural-scientific way of picturing things in his age. The truth is: Carneri does not want to make ethics Darwinistic; he wants to make Darwinism ethical. He wants to show that one need only know man in his true being—like the natural scientist seeks to know a being in nature—in order to find him to be not a nature being but rather a spirit being. Carneri's significance consists in the fact that he wants to let Darwinism flow into a world view in accordance with the spirit. And through this he is one of the significant spirits of the second half of the nineteenth century. One does not understand the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of this age if one thinks like those people who want to let all striving for knowledge merge into natural science, if one thinks like those who toward the end of the nineteenth century called themselves adherents of materialism, or even if one thinks like those today who actually are not less materialistic but who assure us ever and again that materialism has “long ago been overcome” by science. Today, many people say they are not materialists only because they lack the ability to understand that they are in fact materialists. One can flatly state that nowadays many people stop worrying about their materialism by pretending to themselves that in their view it is no longer necessary to call themselves materialists. One must nevertheless label them so. One has not yet overcome materialism by rejecting the view of a series of thinkers from the second half of the nineteenth century who held all spiritual experiences to, be the mere working of substance; one overcomes it only by allowing oneself to think about the spiritual in a way that accords with the spirit, just as one thinks about nature in a way that accords with nature. What is meant by this is already clear from the preceding arguments of this book, but will become particularly apparent in the final considerations conceived of as “new perspectives” in our last chapter,

But one will also not do justice to the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of our age if one sets up a world view against natural science, and only rejects the “raw” mental pictures of “materialism,” Since the achievement of the natural-scientific insights of the nineteenth century, any world view that is in accordance with the spirit and that wishes to be in harmony with its age must take up these insights as part of its thought-world. And Carneri grasped this powerfully and expressed it urgently in his writings. Carneri, who was only taking his first steps on the path of a genuine understanding of modern natural scientific mental pictures, could not yet fully see that such an understanding does not lead to a consolidating of materialism but rather to its true overcoming, Therefore he believed—to refer once more to the words of Brentano (see page 45 of this book)—that no success can be expected from modern science in “gaining certainty about the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” But whoever goes deeply enough into Carneri's thoughts, not only to grasp their content but also to observe the path of knowledge on which this thinker could take only the first steps, will find that through him, in another direction, something similar has occurred for the elaboration of the world view of German idealism as occurred through Troxler, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, and others going in the direction characterized in this book. These spirits sought, with the powers of Hegelian thinking, to penetrate not merely into spirit that has become sense-perceptible but also into that realm of spirit which does not reveal itself in the sense world. Carneri strives, with a view of life in accordance with the spirit, to devote himself to the natural-scientific way of picturing things. The further pursuit of the path sensed by these thinkers can show that the cognitive powers to which they turned will not destroy the “hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” but rather will give these hopes a sound basis in knowledge. On the one hand, F.v. Feldegg, whom we have already mentioned (“German Words,” November 1894), is certainly justified when he says—in connection with the conflict in which Carneri was placed toward idealism and materialism:—“But the time is no longer far off in which this conflict will be settled, not merely as one might suppose within the single individual, but within our whole cultural consciousness. But Carneri's ‘Misgivings’ are perhaps an isolated forerunner of completely different and more powerful ‘Misgivings,’ which then, raging toward us like a storm, will sweep away everything about our ‘scientific’ creed that has not yet fallen prey to self-disintegration,” On the other hand, one can recognize that Carneri, by the work he did on Darwinism for ethics, became at the same time one of the first to overcome the Darwinian way of thinking.

[ 19 ] Carneri was a personality whose thinking about the questions of existence gave all his activity and work in life their particular stamp. He was not one of those who become “philosophers” by allowing the healthy roots of life reality to dry up within them. Rather, he was one of those who proved that a realistic study of life can create practical people better than that attitude which keeps itself fearfully, and yet comfortably, at a distance from all ideas and which obstinately harps on the theme that the “true” conduct of life must not be spoiled by any dreaming in concepts. Carneri was an Austrian representative in the Styrian provincial diet from 1861 on, and in the federal council from 1870 to 1891. Even now, I often have to think back on the heart-lifting impression he made on me when, from the gallery of the Viennese federal council, as a young man of twenty-five just beginning life, I heard Carneri speak. A man stood down there who had taken up deeply into his thoughts the determining factors of Austrian life and the situation arising from the evolution of Austrian culture and from the life forces of its peoples; this was a man who spoke what he had to express from that high vantage point upon which his world view had placed him. And in all this there was never a pale thought. always tones of heart's warmth, always ideas that were strong with reality, not the words of a merely thinking head; rather, the revelations of a whole man who felt Austria pulsing in his own soul and who had clarified this feeling through the idea: “Mankind will deserve its name wholly, and wholly travel the path of morality only when it knows no other battle than work. no other shield than right, no other weapon than intelligence, no other banner than civilization.” (Carneri, Morality and Darwinism, p. 508)

[ 20 ] I have tried to show how a thoughtful idealism constitutes the roots, solidly planted in reality, of Carneri's soul life; but also how—overwhelmed by the materialistic view of the time—this idealism goes its way accompanied by a thinking whose contradictions are indeed sensed but not fully resolved. I believe that this, in the form in which it manifests in Carneri, is based on a particular characteristic that the folk spirit (Volkstum) in Austria can easily impress upon the soul, a characteristic, it seems to me, that can be understood only with difficulty outside of Austria, even by Germans. One can experience it, perhaps, only if one has oneself grown up in the Austrian folk spirit (Volksart). This characteristic has been determined by the evolution of Austrian life during the last centuries. Through education there, one is brought into !:I. different relationship to the manifestations of the immediate folk spirit than in German areas outside Austria. In Austria, what one takes up through one's schooling bears traits that are not so directly a transformation of what one experiences from the folk spirit as is the case with the Germans in Germany. Even when Fichte unfolds his thoughts to their fullest extent, there lives something in them recognizable as a direct continuation of the folk element working in his Central German fatherland, in the house of Christian Fichte, the farmer and weaver. In Austria, what one develops in oneself through education and self-education often bears fewer of such directly indigenous characteristics. The indigenous element lives more indirectly, yet often no less powerfully thereby. One bears conflicting feelings in one's soul; this conflict, in its unconscious working, gives life there its particularly Austrian coloring.

As an example of an Austrian with this soul characteristic, let us look at Mission, one of the most significant Austrian poets in dialect.

[ 21 ] To be sure, poetry in dialect has also arisen in other Germans out of subterranean depths of the soul similar to those of Mission. But what is characteristic of him is that he became a poet in dialect through the above-mentioned trait existing in the soul life of many Austrians. Joseph Mission was born in 1803, in Mühlbach, in the Lower Austrian district, below Mannhardtsberg; he completed school in Krems and entered the Order of Pious Schools. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Horn, Krems, and Vienna. In 1850 there appeared a pearl of Austrian poetry in dialect written by him: “Ignaz, a Lower Austrian Farmer Boy, Goes Abroad.” It was published in an uncompleted form. The provost Karl Landsteiner, in a beautiful little book, later wrote about Mission and reprinted the uncompleted poem.)

Karl Julius Schröer said of it (1875), and quite aptly, in I my opinion: “As small as the poem is and as solitary as it has remained through the fact that Mission published nothing further, it nevertheless deserves special attention. It is of the first order among Austria's poems in dialect. The epic peacefulness that permeates the whole, and the masterful depiction in the details that enthralls us constantly, I astonishing and refreshing us through its truth—these are qualities in Mission that no one else has equaled.” The setting out on his travels of a Lower Austrian farmer boy is what Mission portrays. A direct, truth-sustained revelation of the Lower Austrian folk spirit (Volkstum) lives in this poem. Mission lived in the world of thoughts he had attained through his education and self-education. This life represented the one side of his soul. This was not a direct continuation of the life rooted in his Lower Austrianness. But precisely because of this and as though unconnected to this more personal side of his soul experiences, there arose in his heart (Gemüt) the truest picture of his folk spirit, as though from subterranean depths of the soul, and placed itself there I as the other side of his inner experience. The magic of the direct folk spirit quality of Mission's poem is an effect of the “two souls within his breast.” I will now quote a part of this poem here and then reproduce the Lower Austrian dialect in High German prose as truly and modestly as possible. (In this reproduction, my intentions are only that the sense of the poem emerge fully in a feeling way. If, in such a translation, one simply replaces the word in dialect with the corresponding word in High German, the matter becomes basically falsified. For, the word in dialect often corresponds to a completely different nuance of feeling than the corresponding word in High German.)

Lehr vo main Vodern auf d'Roas

Naaz, iazn loos, töös, wos a ta so, töös sockt ta tai Voda.
God, what's so good! and try tai luck ö da Waiden.
Muis a da sogn töös, wo a da so, töös los der aa gsackt sai.
I and tai Muida are old and tahoam, know as ee, looks nothing out.
What you look and work and plod and do not care
Do it for the children, what don't you do, don't leave the place!
I'm just a pressed person and a black woman,
Graif an s'am aa, ma fint töös pai ortlinga rechtschoffan Kinern,
Gladly under Orm, on taas mer d'Ergiibnus laichter daschwingan.
If you don't have any luck, you won't live all your life.
Just stay in the same place, in the middle of the golden mass, don't get bored.
Your luck is round as a ball, balls so lightly toni as touaha.
But if something happens and misfortune befalls you, don't let it go.
Don't let anything happen to you, don't let it happen to me, don't let it happen to you.
Klock's unsan Heagoot, pitt'en, iih so ders, er mochts wida pessa!
Mocka'r and hocka'r and pfnotten and trenzen with the kimt nix außa.
Head hanging, just as if amt' Heana had eaten her protest:
You don't like it bad, you don't like it bad, you don't like it bad! Look at your soul, what you have, think about the future!
If you give something, don't talk about it, take it and so for it: good luck!
Look Naaz, mirk ta dos fai: what little politeness iis no longer gstroft!
Get ti nea ritterla, Fremd zügelt t'Leud, ist a Sprichwoat, a Worwoat.
Let's go, don't wash your hands, don't get any more clay. Go on, don't open your eyes, you won't be lucky in Trambuich.
Go two weeks and tar oani is naich, so gee du en olden.
If you go to a place that is also often the case, you are a big one -
Look at tain Gsund, ta Gsund iis pai olIn no allwail tos Pessa.
So what do you have in the world if you are not healthy? - - - - -
Come back and you'll find our old friends in the parlor,
We often go to places where you and your friends are happy to meet us,
Finding our guittäter and our vastoabani friendschoft! Olli, sö kenan uns glai - und töös, Naaz, töös is dos Schöner!"

Advice from my Father for my Travels
(Translation of Rudolf Steiner's High German prose version.)

Ignaz, now listen well to what I say to you; I am your father.
In God's name, since it must be so that you are to seek your fortune in the wide world,
Therefore I must tell you this; and what I tell you take well to heart.
I and your mother are old and have stayed at home; you know that nothing comes from that.
One slaves away, takes pains, works hard, and weakens oneself in the care of work
One does this out of love for one's children; what would one not do just so they will not fall into bad ways.
If later one becomes weak and sick, and hard times come,
Even they spring upon us lovingly if, when they come, proper honest children
Are standing by to help, so that one can more easily do what the state and life demands.
If good fortune should find you, don't live like a cavalier.
Stay as you were, in the golden mean of the middle road; do not budge from the right path of life.
Good fortune is round like a ball; it rolls just as easily away from as toward us.
If some effort does not succeed, or if a misfortune befalls you, do not speak of it to people.
Remain calm; let nothing show; do not be faint-hearted;
Pour out your troubles to God alone; beg him; I tell you, He makes everything better again!
To act troubled, to withdraw, to pull a sour face, to be whiny: nothing is achieved by that.
To let your head hang as though the chickens had eaten your bread away from you:
That improves nothing bad, let alone making the good even better!
Guard the possessions you take with you; take a little care for the future.
If someone gives you something, just receive it, without affectation, and say: “God bless you!”
Listen, Ignaz, and remember this well: no one has ever been punished for being polite!
Don't act stubborn; new places make a person modest; this is a saying and a true word.
Don't be led astray into gambling; don't let the dance floor mean too much to you.
Don't let anyone read your future in the cards; and do not seek your destiny in the book of dreams.
If two paths lie before you and one of them is new, then you take the old one.
If one is crooked, which is often the case, then you take the straight one.
Protect your health; health is the best of all possessions.
Admit it to me, after all: What does one really possess in the world if one lacks health?
- - - - -
If you ever come back home and no longer find us old folk in this little room,
Then we are there where your grandfather and your grandmother await us with joy,
Where our benefactors and our dead relatives will find us!
They will all recognize us at once—and this, Ignaz, is something very—beautiful.

[ 22 ] In 1879 Karl Julius Schröer writes the following about this Austrian from whose educated soul there arose so magnificently the life of the peasants and also, as the above section of his poem shows so well, the native philosophy of the peasants: “His talent found no encouragement. Although he wrote much more than the above work, he burned his entire literary output ... and now lives as librarian for the Piaristic faculty of St. Thekla of the Fields in Vienna, isolated from all social intercourse, as he puts it, ‘without joy or sorrow.’” As in the case of Joseph Mission one must seek many personalities of Austrian spiritual life living in obscurity.

Mission cannot come into consideration as a thinker among the personalities portrayed in this book. Nevertheless, to picture his soul life gives one an understanding for the particular coloration of the ideas of Austrian thinkers. The thoughts of Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, and Planck shape themselves plastically out of each other like parts of a thought-organism. One thought grows forth from the other.

And in the physiognomy of this whole thought-organism one recognizes characteristics of a certain people. In the case of Austrian thinkers one thought stands more beside the other; and each one grows on its own—not so much out of the other—but out of a common soul ground. Therefore the total configuration does not bear the direct characteristics of the people; but, on the other hand, these characteristics are poured out over each individual thought like a kind of basic mood. This basic mood is held back by these thinkers within their heart (Gemüt) in the way natural to them; it sounds forth but faintly. It manifests in a personality like Mission as homesickness for what is elemental in his people. In Schröer, Fercher von Steinwand, Cameri, and even in Hamerling, this basic mood works along everywhere in the fundamental tone of their striving. Through this, their thinking takes on a contemplative character.

[ 23 ] In Robert Hamerling one of the greatest poets of modern times has arisen from the lower Austrian district. At the same time he is one of the bearers of the idealism in German world views. In this book I do not intend to speak about the nature and significance of Hamerling's literary works. I wish only to indicate something of the position he took within the evolution of world views in modern times. He did in fact give expression in the form of thoughts to his world view in his work The Atomism of Will. (The Styrlan poet and folk author Adolf Harpf published this book in 1891, after Hamerling's death.) The book bears the subtitle “Contribution to a Critique of Modern Knowledge.”

[ 24 ] Hamerling knew that many who called themselves philosophers would receive his “contribution” with—perhaps tolerant—bewonderment. Many might think: What could this idealistically inclined poet undertake to accomplish in a field that demands the strictly scientific approach? And the presentations in his book did not convince those who asked this; for their judgment of him was only a wave rising from the depths of their souls where (in an unconscious or subconscious way) this judgment issued from habits of thought. Such people can be very clever; scientifically they can be very important: and yet the struggles of a truly poetic nature are not comprehensible to them. Within the soul of such a poetic nature there live all the conflicts from which the riddles of the world present themselves to human beings. A truly poetic nature, therefore, has inner experience of these world riddles. When such a nature expresses itself poetically, there holds sway in the foundations of his soul the questioning world order that,without transforming itself in his consciousness into thoughts, manifests itself in elemental artistic creation. To be sure, no inkling of the real being of such true poetic natures is present even in those poets who recoil from a world view as from a fire that might singe their “life-filled originality.” A true poet might never shape thoughts in his consciousness for what actually lives powerfully in the roots of his soul life in the way of unconscious world thoughts: nevertheless, he stands with his inner experience in those depths of reality of which a person has no inkling if, in his comfortable wisdom, he regards as mere dreams the place where sense-perceptible reality is granted its existence from out of the spirit. If now, for once, a truly poetic nature like Robert Hamerling, without dulling his creative poetic power, is able to lift into his consciousness, as a thought-world, what often has remained unconscious in other poets, then, with respect to such a phenomenon, one can also hold the view that, through this, special light is shed from spiritual depths upon the riddles of the world. In the foreword of his Atomism of Will, Hamerling himself tells how he arrived at his thought-world. “I did not suddenly throw myself upon philosophy at some point out of a whim, for example, or because I wanted to by my hand at something different. Moved by the natural and inescapable urge that drives us, after all, to search out the truth and solve the riddles of existence, I have occupied myself since earliest youth with the great questions about human cognition. I have never been able to regard philosophy as a special department of science that one can study or not study—like statistics or forestry—but always as the investigation into what is most immediate important, and interesting to every person. ... For my own part, I could by no means keep myself from following the most primal, natural, and universal of all spiritual drives and from forming a judgment over the course of the years about the fundamental questions of existence and life.”

One of the people who valued Hamerling's thought-world highly was Vincenz Knauer, the learned and sensitive Benedictine priest living in Vienna. As guest lecturer at the university in Vienna, he held lectures in which he wanted to show how Hamerling stood in that evolutionary stream of world views that began with Thales in Greece and that manifested in the Austrian poet and thinker in its most significant form for the end of the nineteenth century. To be sure, Vincenz Knauer belonged to those researchers to whom narrow-heartedness is foreign. As a young philosopher he wrote a book on the moral philosophy in Shakespeare's works. (Knauer's lectures in Vienna were published under the title The Main Problems of Philosophy from Thales to Hamerling.)

[ 25 ] The basic idealistic mood underlying Hamerling's view of reality also lives in his literary work. The figures in his epic and dramatic creations are not a copy of what spirit-shy observation sees in outer life; they show everywhere how the human soul receives direction and impulses from a spiritual world. Adherents of spirit-shy observation are critical of such creations. They call them bloodless mental products lacking the juice of real life. They are often to be heard belaboring the catch phrase: The characters of this poet are not like the people who walk around in the world; they are schemata, born of abstractions. If the “men of reality” who speak like this could only have an inkling, in fact, how much they themselves are walking abstractions and their belief the abstraction of an abstraction! If they only knew how soulless their blood-filled characters are to someone having a sense not just for pulsing blood but also for the way soul pulses in the blood. From this kind of “reality standpoints” one has said that Hamerling's dramatic work Danton and Robespierre has enriched the shadow folk of bygone revolutionary heros with a number of new schemata.

[ 26 ] Hamerling defended himself against such criticisms in his “Epilogue to the Critics” which he appended to the later editions of his Ahasver in Rome. In this epilogue he writes: “... People say that Ahasver in Rome is an ‘allegorical’ work—a word that immediately makes many people break out in goose-bumps.—The poem is allegorical, to be sure, insofar as a mythical figure is woven in whose right to existence is always based only upon the fact that it represents something. For, every myth is an idea brought into picture form by the imagination of the people. But, people will say, Nero is also supposed to ‘represent’ something—the ‘lust for life’! All right, he does represent the lust for life; but no differently than Moliere's Miser represents miserliness and Shakespeare's Romeo love. There are, to be sure, poetic figures that are nothing more at all than allegorical schemata and consist only of their inner abstract significance—comparable to Heine's sick, skinny Kanonikus who finally was composed of nothing but ‘spirit and bandages.’ But, for a poetic figure filled with real life, its inherent significance is not some vampire that sucks out its blood. Does anything actually exist that ‘signifies’ nothing? I would like to know, after all, how a beggar would manage not to signify poverty and a Croesus wealth. ... I believe therefore that Nero, who is thirsting for life, sacrifices Just as little of his reality by ‘signifying’ lust for life when placed next to Ahasver, who is longing for death, as a rich merchant sacrifices of his blooming stoutness by happening to stand beside a beggar and necessarily making visible, in an allegorical group, the contrast between poverty and wealth,” This is how a poet, ensouled by an idealistic world view, repulses the attacks of those who shudder if they catch a scent anywhere of an idea rooted in true reality, in spiritual reality.

[ 27 ] When one begins a reading of Hamerling's Atomism of Will, one can at first have the definite feeling that he let himself be convinced by Kantianism that a knowledge of true reality, of the “thing-in-itself,” was impossible. Still, in the further course of the presentations in his book, one sees that what happened for Hamerling with Kantianism was like Carneri with Darwinism. He let himself be overcome by the suggestive power of certain Kantian thoughts; but then the view wins out in him that man—even though he cannot push through to true reality by looking outward with his senses—does nevertheless encounter true reality when he delves down through the surface of soul experience into the foundations of the soul.

[ 28 ] Hamerling begins in an entirely Kantian way; “Certain stimuli produce odors in our sense of smell. The rose, therefore, has no fragrance if no one smells it.—Certain oscillations of the air produce sound in our ear. Sound, therefore, does not exist without an ear. A rifle shot, therefore, would not ring out if no one heard it. ... Whoever holds onto this will understand what a naive mistake it is to believe that, besides the perception (Anschauung) or mental picture we call ‘horse,’ there exists yet another horse—and in fact only then the actual real one—of which our perception ‘horse’ is only a copy. Outside of myself there is—let me state this again—only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” These thoughts work with such suggestive power that Hamerling can add to them the words: “If that is not obvious to you, dear reader, and if your understanding shies away from this fact like a skittish horse, then read no further; leave this and every other book on philosophical matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact without bias and to retain it in thought.” I would like to respond to Hamerling: “May there in fact be many people whose intellect does indeed shy away from the opening words of his book like a skittish horse but who also possess enough strength of ideas to value rightly the deeply penetrating later chapters; and I am happy that Hamerling did after all write these later chapters even though his intellect did not shy away from the assertion: There in me is the mental picture ‘horse’; but outside there does not exist any actual real horse but only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” For here again one has to do with an assertion—like that made by Carneri with respect to matter, substance, and spirit—that gains overwhelming power over a person because he just does not see at all the impossible thoughts into which he has spun himself. The whole train of Hamerling's thoughts is worth no more than this: Certain effects emanating from me onto the surface of a coated pane of glass produce my image in the mirror. Nothing occurs through the effects emanating from me if no mirror is there. Outside the mirror there is only the sum total of those determining factors which bring it about that in the mirror an image is produced that I refer to with my name.

In imagination I can hear all the declamations against a philosophical dilettantism—carried to the point of frivolity that would dare to dispose of the serious scientific thoughts of philosophers with this kind of a childish objection. I know, in fact, what all has been brought forward by philosophers since Kant in the way of such thoughts. When one speaks as I have just done, one is not understood by the chorus that propounds these thoughts. One must turn to unprejudiced reason, which understands that the way one conducts one's thinking is the same in each case: whether, when confronted by the mental picture of the horse in my soul, I decree the outer horse to be nonexistent, or, when confronted by the image in the mirror, I doubt my existence. One does not even need to enter into certain, supposedly epistemological refutations of this comparison. For, what would be presented there—as the entirely different relationship, after all, of the “mental picture to what is mentally pictured” than of the mirror image to what is mirroring itself—already stands there for certain epistemologists as established with absolute certainty; for other readers, however, the corresponding refutation of these thoughts could in fact be only a web of unfruitful abstractions.

Out of his healthy idealism, Hamerling feels that an idea, in order to be justified within a world view, must not only be correct but also in accordance with reality. (Here I must express myself in those thoughts which I introduced in the presentation on Karl Christian Planck in this book.). If Hamerling had been less suggestively influenced by the way of thinking described above, he would have noticed that there is nothing in accordance with reality in such thoughts as those which he feels to be necessary in spite of the fact that “one’s intellect shys away from them like a skittish horse.” Such thoughts arise in the human soul when the soul has been made ill by a mind for abstractions estranged from reality and gives itself over to a continuous spinning out of thoughts that are indeed logically coherent but in which no spiritual reality holds sway in a living way. It is precisely his healthy idealism, however, that guides Hamerling in the further thoughts of his Atomism of Will out of the web of thoughts he presented in the opening chapters. This becomes particularly clear where he speaks of the human “I” in connection with the life of the soul. Look at the way Hamerling relates to Descartes' “I think, therefore I am.” Fichte's way of picturing things (of which we have spoken in our considerations of Fichte in this book) works along like a softly sounding, consonant, basic tone in the beautiful words on page 223 of the first volume of The Atomism of Will: “In spite of all the conceptual hairsplitting that carps at it, Descartes' Cogito ergo sum remains the igniting flash of lightning for all modern speculation. But, strictly speaking, this ‘I think, therefore I am’ is not made certain through the fact that I think, but rather through the fact that I say that I think. My conclusion would have the same certainty even if I changed the premise into its reverse and said ‘I do not think, therefore I am.’ In order to be able to say this, I must exist.” In discussing Fichte's world view, we have said in this book that the statement “I think, therefore I am” cannot maintain itself in the face of man's sleeping state. One must grasp the certainty of the “I” in such a way that this certainty cannot appear to be exhausted in the inner perception “I think.” Hamerling feels this; therefore he says that “I do not think, therefore I am” is also valid. He says this because he feels: Within the human “I” something is experienced that does not receive the certainty of its existence from thinking, but on the contrary gives to thinking its certainty. Thinking is unfolded by the true “I” in certain states; the experiencing of the “I,” however, is of such a kind that through this experience the soul can feel itself immersed into a spiritual reality in which it knows its existence to be anchored even during other states than those for which Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” applies. But all this is based on the fact that Hamerling knows: When the “I” thinks, life-will is living in its thinking. Thinking is by no means mere thinking; it is willed thinking. As a thought, “I think” is a mere fantasy that is never and nowhere present. It is always the case that only the “I think, willing” is present. Whoever believes in the fantasy of “I think” can isolate himself thereby from the whole spiritual world; and then become either an adherent of materialism or a doubter in the reality of the outer world. He becomes a materialist if he lets himself be snared by the thought—fully justified within its own limits—that for the thinking Descartes had in mind the instruments of the nerves are necessary. He becomes a doubter in the reality of the outer world if he becomes entangled in the thought—again justified within certain limits—that all thinking about things is in fact experienced within the soul and that with his thinking, therefore, he can in fact never arrive at an outer world existing in and of itself, even if such an outer world existed. To be sure, whoever sees the will in all thinking can, if he inclines to abstraction, now isolate the will conceptually from thinking and speak in Schopenhauer's style of a will that supposedly holds sway in all world existence and that drives thinking like whitecaps to the surface of life's phenomena. But someone who sees that only the “I think, willing” has reality would no more picture will and thinking as separated in the human soul than he would picture a man's head and body as separated if he wished his thought to portray something real. But such a person also knows that, with his experience of a thinking that is carried by will and experienced, he goes outside the boundaries of his soul and enters into the experience of a world process (Weltgeschehen) that is also pulsing through his soul. And Hamerling is headed in the direction of just such a world view, in the direction of a world view whose adherent knows that with a real thought he has within himself an experience of world-will, not merely an experience of his own “I.” Hamerling is striving toward a world view that does not go astray into the chaos of a mysticism of will, but on the contrary wishes to experience the world-will within the clarity of ideas.

With this perspective of the world-will beheld through ideas, Hamerling knows that he now stands in the native soil of the idealism of German world views. His thoughts prove even to himself to have their roots in the German folk spirit (Volkstum) that in Jakob Böhme already was struggling for knowledge in an elemental way. On page 259f. of Hamerling's Atomism of Will one reads: “To make will the highest philosophical principle is what one seems to have overlooked until now—an eminently German thought, a core thought of the German spirit. From the German Naturphilosophen of the Middle Ages up to the classical thinkers of the age of German speculation, and even up to Schopenhauer and Hartmann, this thought runs through the philosophy of the German people, emerging sometimes more, sometimes less, often only at one moment, as it were, then disappearing again into the seething masses of our thinkers' ideas. And so it was also the philosophus teutonicus who was in truth the most German and the most profound of all modern philosophers, and who was the first, in his deeply thoughtful, original, and pictorial language, to grasp the will expressly as the absolute, as the unity. ...” And now, in order to point to yet another German thinker in this direction, Hamerling quotes Jacobi, Goethe's contemporary: “Experience and history teach us that man's action depends far less upon his thinking than his thinking depends upon his action, that his concepts direct themselves according to his actions and only copy them, as it were; that the path of knowledge, therefore, is a mysterious path, not a syllogistic one, nor a mechanical one.”

Because Hamerling, out of the prevailing tone of his soul, has a feeling for the fact that the accordance of an idea with reality must be added to its merely logical correctness, he also cannot regard those pessimistic philosophers' views of life as valid which wish to determine—by an abstract conceptual weighing—whether pleasure or pain predominates in life and therefore whether life must be regarded as a good or an evil. No, reflection become theory does not decide this; this is decided in much deeper foundations of life, in depths that have to judge this human reflection, but do not allow themselves to be judged by this reflection. Hamerling says about this: “The main thing is not whether people are correct in wanting to live, with very few exceptions, at any price, no matter whether things are going well or badly for them. The main thing is that they want it and this can by no means be denied. And yet the doctrinaire pessimists do not reckon with this decisive fact. Intellectually and in learned discussions, they always only weigh against each other the pleasure and pain life brings in particular situations; but since pleasure and pain belong to feeling, it is feeling and not intellect that ultimately and decisively draws up the balance between pleasure and pain. And, with respect to all mankind—indeed one can say with respect to everything living—the balance falls on the side of the pleasure of existence. That everything living wants to live, under any circumstances and at any price, this is the great fact; and in the face of this fact all doctrinaire talk is powerless:” In the same way as the thinkers from Fichte to Planck described in this book, Hamerling seeks the path into spiritual reality, except that his striving is to do justice to the natural-scientific picture of the world to a greater degree than Schelling or Hegel, for example, were able to do. Atomism of Will nowhere offends against the scientific picture of the world. But this book is everywhere permeated with the insight that this picture of the world represents only a part of reality. This book is based upon an acknowledgement of the thought that a person is submitting to belief in an unreal world if he refuses to take up the forces of a spiritual world into his thought-world. (I use the word “unreal” here in the sense employed in our discussion of Planck.)

[ 29 ] Hamerling's satiric poem “Homunculus” speaks forcibly for the high degree to which his thinking was in accordance with reality. In this work, with great poetic force, he depicts a man who himself becomes soulless because soul and spirit do not speak to his knowledge. What would become of people who really stemmed from a world order such as the natural-scientific way of picturing things sets up as creed when it rejects a world view in accordance with the spirit? What would a man be if the unreality of this way of picturing things were real? In somewhat this way one could formulate the question that finds its artistic answer in “Homunculus.” Homunculism would have to take possession of a mankind that believed only in a world fashioned according to mechanistic natural laws. One can also see in Hamerling how a person striving toward existence's ideas has a healthier sense for practical life than a person who, fearful of the spirit, shies away from the world of ideas and feels himself thereby to be a true “man of reality.” Hamerling's “Homunculus” could help those regain their health who, precisely in the present day, are allowing themselves to be led astray by the opinion that natural science is the only science of what is real. Such people, in their fear of the spirit, say that the idealism of our classical period—which, in their opinion, has been overcome today—brought knowing man (homo sapiens) too much into the foreground. “True science” must recognize that attention should be paid above all to economic man (homo oeconomus) within the world order and in human arrangements. For such people “true science” means solely the science stemming from the natural-scientific way of picturing things. Homunculism arises out of opinions like this. The proponents of these opinions have no inkling of how they are hurrying toward homunculism. With the prophetic eye of the knower, Hamerling has delineated this homunculism. Those who fear that a rightful estimation of homo sapiens in Hamerling's sense might lead to an overestimation of the literary approach will also be able to see from “Homunculus” that this does not occur.

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