The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Bhagavad Gita, the sublime Song of the Indians, is, as I mentioned yesterday, said by qualified persons to be the most important philosophic poem of humanity, and he who goes deeply into the sublime Gita will consider this expression fully justified. We shall take the opportunity given by these lectures to point out the high artistic merit of the Gita, but, above all, we must realise the importance of this poem by considering what underlies it, the mighty thoughts and wonderful knowledge of the world from which it grew, and for the glorification and spreading, of which it was created. This glance into the fundamental knowledge contained in the Gita is especially important, because it is certain that all the essentials of this poem, especially all relating to thought and knowledge are communicated to us from a pre-Buddhistic stage of knowledge, so that we may say: The spiritual horizon which surrounded the great Buddha, out of which he grew, is characterised in the contents of the Gita. When we allow these to influence us, we gaze into a spiritual condition of old Indian civilisation in the pre-Buddhist age. We have already emphasised that the thought contained in the Gita is a combined out-pouring of three spiritual streams, not only fused into one another, but moving and living within one another, so that they meet us in the Gita as one whole. What we there meet with as a united whole, as a spiritual out-pouring of primeval Indian thought and perception, is a grand and beautiful aspect of knowledge, an immeasurable sum of spiritual knowledge; an amount of spiritual knowledge so vast that the modern man who has not yet studied Spiritual Science cannot help feeling doubts as to such an amount of knowledge and depth of science, having no possible standard with which to compare it. The ordinary modern methods do not assist one to penetrate the depths of know ledge communicated therein; at the most, one can but look upon that here spoken of as a beautiful dream which mankind once dreamt. From a merely modern standpoint one may perhaps admire this dream, but would not acknowledge it as having any scientific value. But those who have already studied Spiritual Science will stand amazed at the depths of the Gita and must admit that in primeval ages the human mind penetrated into knowledge which we can only re-acquire gradually by means of the spiritual organs which we must develop in the course of time. Their admiration is aroused for the primeval insight that existed in those past ages. We can admire it because we ourselves are able to re-discover it in the universe and thereby confirm the truth of it. When we rediscover it and recognise its truth, we then confess how wonderful it really is that in those primeval ages men were able to raise themselves to such spiritual heights! We know, to be sure, that in those old days mankind was specially favoured, in that the remains of the old clairvoyance was still alive in human souls, and that not only through a spiritual meditation attained by using special exercises were men led into the spiritual worlds, but also that the science of those days could itself, in a certain sense, be penetrated by the knowledge and ideas which the remains of the old clairvoyance brought. We must confess that today we recognise, for quite other reasons, the correctness of what is there communicated to us, but we must understand that in those old times delicate distinctions as regards the being of man were arrived at by other means; ingenious conceptions were drawn from that which man was able to know: conceptions clearly outlined, which could be applied to the spiritual as also to external physical reality. So that in many respects, if we simply alter the expressions we use today to suit our different standpoint, we find it possible to understand the former standpoint also.

We have tried, in bringing forward our spiritual knowledge, to present things as they appear to the present day clairvoyant perception; so that our sort of Spiritual Science represents that which the spiritually-minded man can attain today with the means at his command. In the early days of the Theosophical Movement less was done by means of what was drawn straight from occult science than by such methods as were based on the designations and shadowy conceptions used in the East, especially those which, by means of old traditions, have been carried over from the Gita-time in the East into our present day. Hence the older form of theosophical development (to which we have now added our present method of occult investigation) worked more through the old traditionally-received conceptions—especially those of the Sankhya philosophy. But just as this Sankhya philosophy itself was gradually changed in the East, through the alteration in oriental thought, so, at the beginning of the Theosophical Movement the being of man and other secrets were spoken of and these things were specialty described by means of expressions used by Sankaracharya, the great reformer of the Vedantic and other Indian knowledge in the eighth century of the Christian reckoning. We need not devote much attention to the expressions used at the beginning of the Theosophical Movement, but in order to get to the foundations of the knowledge and wisdom of the Gita, we shall devote ourselves today to the old primeval Indian wisdom. What we meet with first, what, so to speak, is drawn from that old wisdom itself, is especially to be found in the Sankhya philosophy.

We shall best obtain an understanding of how Sankhya philosophy looked upon the being and nature of man if, in the first place, we keep clearly before us the fact that there is a spiritual germ in all humanity; we have, always expressed this fact by saying that in the human Soul there are slumbering forces which, in the course of human evolution, will emerge more and more. The highest to which we can at present aspire and to which the human soul can attain, will be what we call Spirit-Man. Even when man, as a being, has risen to the stage of Spirit-Man, he will still have to distinguish between the soul which dwells within him and that which is Spirit-Man itself; just as in everyday life today we have to distinguish between that which is our innermost soul and the sheaths which enclose it; the Astral Body, the Etheric or Life-Body, and the Physical Body. Just as we look upon these bodies as sheaths and distinguish them from the soul itself, which for the present cycle of humanity is divided into three parts: sentient soul, intellectual reasoning soul, and consciousness soul—just as we thus distinguish between the soul-nature and its system of sheaths—so in future stages we shall have to reckon with the actual soul, which will then have its threefold division fitted for those future stages and corresponding to our sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul, and the sheath-nature, which will then have reached that stage of man which, in our terminology, we call Spirit-Man. That, however, which will some day become the human sheath, and which will, so to say, enclose the spiritual soul-part of man, the Spirit-Man, will, to be sure, only be of significance to man in the future, but that to which a being will eventually evolve is always there, in the great universe. The substance of Spirit-Man in which we shall some day be ensheathed, has always been in the great universe and is there at the present time. We may say: Other beings have today already sheaths which will some day form our Spirit-Man; thus the substance of which the human Spirit-Man will some day consist exists in the universe. This, which our teaching allows us to state, was already known to the old Sankhya doctrine; and what thus existed in the universe, not yet individualised or differentiated, but flowing like spiritual water, undifferentiated, filling space and time, still exists, and will continue to exist, this, from which all other forms come forth, was known by the Sankhya philosophy as the highest form of substance; that form of substance which has been accepted by Sankhya philosophy as continuing from age to age. And as we speak about the beginning of the evolution of our earth (recollect the course of lectures I once gave in Munich on the foundation of the Story of Creation), as we speak of how at the beginning of our earth-evolution, all to which the earth has now evolved was present in spirit as substantial spiritual being; so did the Sankhya philosophy speak of original substance, of a primordial flood, from which all forms, both physical and super-physical, have developed. To the man of today this highest form has not come into consideration, but the day will come, as we have shown when it will have to be considered.

In the next form which will evolve out of this primeval flowing substance, we have to recognise that which, counting from above, we know as the second principle of man, which we call Life-Spirit: or, if we like to use an Eastern expression, we may call Budhi. Our teaching also tells us that man will only develop Budhi in normal life at a future stage; but as a super-human spiritual form-principle it has always existed among other entities, and, inasmuch as it always existed, it was the first form differentiated from the primeval flowing substance. According to the Sankhya philosophy the super-psychic existence of Budhi arose from the first form of substantial existence. Now if we consider the further evolution of the substantial principle, we meet as a third form that which the Sankhya philosophy calls Ahamkara. Whereas Budhi stands, so to speak, on the borders of the principle of differentiation and merely hints at a certain individualisation, the form of Ahamkara appears as completely differentiated already so that when we speak of Ahamkara we must imagine Budhi as organised into independent, real, substantial forms, which then exist in the world individually. If we want to obtain a picture of this evolution we must imagine an equally distributed mass of water as the substantial primeval principle; then imagine it welling up so that separate forms emerge, but not breaking away as fully formed drops, forms which rise like little mounts of water from the common substance and yet have their basis in the common primeval flow. We should then have Budhi; and inasmuch as these water-mounts detach themselves into drops, into independent globes, in these we have the form of Ahamkara. Through a certain thickening of this Ahamkara, of the already individualised form of each separate soul-form, there then arises what we describe as Manas.

Here we must admit that perhaps a little unevenness arises as regards our naming of things. In considering human evolution from the point of view of our teaching, we place (counting from above) Spirit-Self after Life-spirit or Budhi. This manner of designation is absolutely correct for the present cycle of humanity, and in the course of these lectures we shall see why. We do not insert Ahamkara between Budhi and Manas, but for the purpose of our concept we unite it with Manas and call both together Spirit-Self. In those old days it was quite justifiable to consider them as separate, for a reason which I shall only indicate today and later elaborate. It was justifiable because one could not then use that important characteristic that we must give if we are to make ourselves understood at the present day; the characteristic which comes on the one side from the influence of Lucifer, and on the other from that of Ahriman. This characteristic is absolutely lacking in the Sankhya philosophy, and for a construction that had no occasion to look towards these two principles because it could as yet find no trace of their force, it was quite justifiable to slip in this differentiated form between Budhi and Manas. When we therefore speak of Manas in the sense of the Sankhya philosophy, we are not speaking of quite the same thing as when we speak of it in the sense of Sankaracharya. In the latter we can perfectly identify Manas with Spirit-Self; but we cannot actually do so in the sense of Sankhya philosophy; though we can characterise quite fully what Manas is.

In this case we first start with man in the world of sense, living in the physical world. At first he lives his physical existence in such a way that he realises his surroundings by means of his senses; and through his organs of touch, by means of his hands and feet, by handling, walking, speaking, he reacts on the physical world around him. Man realises the surrounding world by means of his senses and he works upon it, in a physical sense, by means of his organs of touch. Sankhya philosophy is quite in accordance with this. But how does a man realise the surrounding world by means of his senses? Well, with our eyes we see the light and colour, light and dark, we see, too, the shapes of things; with our ears we perceive sounds; with our organ of smell we sense perfumes; with our organs of taste we receive taste-impressions. Each separate sense is a means of realising a particular part of the external world. The organs of sight perceive colours and light; those of hearing, sounds, and so on. We are, as it were, connected with the surrounding world through these doors of our being which we call senses; through them we open ourselves to the surrounding world; but through each separate sense we approach a particular province of that world. Now even our ordinary language shows us that within us we carry something like a principle which holds together these different provinces to which our senses incline. For instance, we talk of warm and cold colours, although we know that this is only a manner of speaking, and that in reality we realise cold and warmth through the organs of touch, and colours, light and darkness through the organs of sight. Thus we speak of warm and cold colours, that is to say, from a certain inner relationship which we feel, we apply what is perceived by the one sense to the others. We express ourselves thus, because in our inner being there is a certain intermingling between what we perceive through our sight and that which we realise as a sense of warmth—more delicately sensitive people, on hearing certain sounds can inwardly realise certain ideas of colour; they can speak of certain notes as representing red, and others blue. Within us, therefore, dwells something which holds the separate senses together, and makes out of the separate sense-fields something complete for the soul. If we are sensitive, we can go yet further. There are people, for instance, who feel, on entering one town, that it gives an impression of yellow another town gives an impression of red, another of white, another of blue. A great deal of that which impresses us inwardly is transformed into a perception of colour; we unite the separate sense-impressions inwardly into one collective sense which does not belong to the department of any one sense alone, but lives in our inner being and fills us with a sense of undividedness whenever we make use of any one sense-impression. We may call this the inner sense; and we may all the more call it so, inasmuch as all that we otherwise experience inwardly as sorrow and joy, emotions and affections, we unite again with that which this inner sense gives us. Certain emotions we may describe as dark and cold, others as warm and full of light. We can therefore say that our inner being reacts again upon what forms the inner sense. Therefore, as opposed to the several senses which we direct to the different provinces of the external world, we can speak of one which fills the soul; one, of which we know that it is not connected with any single sense-organ, but takes our whole being as its instrument. To describe this inner sense as Manas would be quite in harmony with Sankhya philosophy, for, according to this, that which forms this inner sense into substance develops, as a later production of form, out of Ahamkara. We may, therefore, say: First came the primeval flood, then Budhi, then Ahamkara, then Manas, which latter we find within us as our inner sense. If we wish to observe this inner sense, we can do so by taking the separate senses and observing how we can form a concept by the way in which the perceptions of the separate senses are united in the inner sense.

This is the way we take today, because our knowledge is pursuing an inverted path. If we look at the development of our knowledge, we must admit that it starts from the differentiation of the separate senses and then tries to climb up to the conjoint sense. Evolution goes the other way round. During the evolution of the world, Manas first evolved out of Ahamkara and then the primeval substances differentiated themselves, the forces which form the separate senses that we carry within us. (By which we do not mean those material sense-organs which belong to the physical body, but forces which underlie these as formative forces and which are quite super-sensible.) Therefore when we descend the stages of the ladder of the evolution of forms, we come down from Ahamkara to Manas, according to the Sankhya philosophy; then Manas differentiates into separate forms and yields those super-sensible forces which build up our separate senses. We have, therefore, the possibility-because when we consider the separate senses the soul takes a part in them—of bringing what we get out of Sankhya philosophy into line with that which our teaching contains. For Sankhya philosophy tells us the following: In that Manas has differentiated itself into the separate world-forces of the senses, the soul submerges itself—we know that the soul itself is distinct from these forms—the soul immerses itself into these different forms; but inasmuch as it does so, and also submerges itself into Manas, so it works through these sense-forces, is interwoven with and entwined in them. In so doing the soul reaches the point of placing itself as regards its spiritual soul-being in connection with an external world, in order to feel pleasure and sympathy therein. Out of Manas the force-substance has differentiated which constitutes the eye, for instance. At an earlier stage, when the physical body of man did not exist in its present form (thus Sankhya philosophy relates) the soul was immersed in the mere forces that Constitute the eye. We know that the human eye of today was laid down germinally in the old Saturn time, yet only after the withdrawal of the warmth organ, which at the present day is to be found in a stunted form in the pineal gland, did it, develop—that is to say, comparatively late. But the forces out of which it evolved were already there in super-sensible form, and the soul lived within them. Thus Sankhya philosophy relates as follows: in so far as the soul lives in this differentiation principle, it is attached to the existence of the external world and develops a thirst for this existence. Through the forces of the senses the soul is connected with the external world; hence the inclination towards existence, and the longing for it. The soul sends, in a way, feelers out through the sense-organs and through their forces attaches itself to the external world. This combination of forces, a real sum of forces, we unite in the astral body of man. The Sankhya philosopher speaks of the combined working of the separate sense-forces, at this stage differentiated from Manas. Again, out of these sense-forces arise the finer elements, of which we realise that the human etheric body is composed. This is a comparatively late production. We find this etheric body in man.

We must therefore picture to ourselves that, in the course of evolution the following have formed: Primeval Flood, Budhi, Ahamkara, Manas, the substances of the senses, and the finer elements. In the outer world, in the kingdom of nature, these fine elements are also to be found, for instance, in the plants, as etheric or life-body. We have then to imagine, according to Sankhya philosophy, that at the basis of this whole evolution there is to be found, in every plant a development starting from above and going downwards, which comes from the primeval flood. But in the case of the plant all takes place in the super-sensible, and only becomes real in the physical world when it densifies into the finer elements which live in the etheric or life-body of the plant; while with man it is the case that the higher forms and principles already reveal themselves as Manas in his present development; the separate organs of sense reveal themselves externally. In the plant there is only to be found that late production which arises when the sense substance densifies into finer elements, into the etheric elements; and from the further densifying of the etheric elements arise the coarser elements from which spring all the physical things we meet in the physical world. Therefore reckoning upwards we can, according to Sankhya philosophy, count the human principles, as coarse physical body, finer etheric body, astral body (this expression is not used in Sankhya philosophy. Instead of that the formative-force body that builds the senses is used) then Manas in an inner sense, then in Ahamkara the principle which underlies human individuality, which brings it about that man not only has an inner sense through which he can perceive the several regions of the senses, but also feels himself to be a separate being, an individuality. Ahamkara brings this about. Then come the higher principles which in man only exist germinally,—Budhi and that which the rest of Eastern philosophy is accustomed to call Atma, which is cosmically thought of by the Sankhya philosophy as the spiritual primeval flood which we have described. Thus in the Sankhya philosophy we have a complete presentation of the constitution of man, of how man, as soul, envelopes himself in the past, present and future, in the substantial external nature-principle, whereby not only the external visible is to be understood, but all stages of nature, up to the most invisible. Thus does the Sankhya philosophy divide the forms we have now mentioned. In the forms or in Prakriti, which includes all forms from the coarse physical body up to the primeval flood, dwells Purusha, the spirit-soul, which in single souls is represented as monadic; so the separate soul-monads should, so to say, be thought of as without beginning and without end, just as this material principle of Prakriti—which is not material in our materialistic sense—is also represented as being without beginning and without end. This philosophy thus presents a plurality of souls dipping down into the Prakriti principle and evolving from the highest undifferentiated form of the primeval flood in which they enclose themselves, down to the embodiment in a coarse physical body in order, then, to turn back and, after overcoming the physical body, to evolve upwards again; to return back again into the primeval flood, and to free themselves even from this, in order to be able as free souls to withdraw into pure Purusha.

If we allow this sort of knowledge to influence us, we see how, underlying it, so to speak, was that old wisdom which we now endeavour to re-acquire by the means which our soul-meditations can give us; and in accordance with the Sankhya philosophy we see that there is insight even into the manner in which each of these form principles may be united with the soul. The soul may, for instance, be so connected with Budhi that it realises its full independence, as it were, while within Budhi; so that not Budhi, but the soul-nature, makes itself felt in a predominating degree. The opposite may also be the case. The soul may enwrap its independence in a sort of sleep, envelop it in lassitude and idleness, so that the sheath-nature is most prominent. This may also be the case with the external physical nature consisting of coarse substance. Here we only need to observe human beings. There may be a man who preferably cultivates his soul and spirit, so that every movement, every gesture, every look which can be communicated by means of the coarse physical body, are of secondary importance compared to the fact that in him the spiritual and soul-nature are expressed. Before us stands a man—we see him certainly in the coarse, physical body that stands before us—but in his movements, gestures and looks there is something that makes us say: This man is wholly spiritual and psychic, he only uses the physical principle to give expression to this. The physical principle does not overpower him; on the contrary, he is everywhere the conqueror of the physical principle. This condition, in which the soul is master of the external sheath-principle, is the Sattva condition. This Sattva condition may exist in connection with the relation of the soul to Budhi and Manas as well as in that of the soul to the body which consists of fine and coarse elements. For if one says: The soul lives in Sattva, that means nothing but a certain relation of the soul to its envelope, of the spiritual principle of that soul to the nature-principle; the relation of the Purusha-principle to the Prakriti-principle. We may also see a man whose coarse physical body quite dominates him—we are not now speaking of moral characteristics, but of pure characteristics, such as are understood in Sankhya philosophy, and which do not, seen with spiritual eyes, bear any moral characteristic whatever. We may meet a man who, so to speak, walks about under the weight of his physical body, who puts on much flesh, whose whole appearance is influenced by the weight of his physical body, to whom it is difficult to express the soul in his external physical body. When we move the muscles of our face in harmony with the speaking of the soul, the Sattva principle is master; when quantities of fat imprint a special physiognomy to our faces, the soul-principle is then overpowered by the external sheath principle, and the soul bears the relation of Tamas to the nature principle. When there is a balance between these two states, when neither the soul has the mastery as in the Sattva state, nor the external sheath-nature as in the Tamas condition, when both are equally balanced, that may be called the Rajas condition. These are the three Gunas, which are quite specially important. We must, therefore, distinguish the characteristic of the separate forms of Prakriti. From the highest principle of the undifferentiated primeval substance down to the coarse physical body is the one characteristic, the characteristic of the mere sheath principle. From this we must distinguish what belongs to the Sankhya philosophy in order to characterise the relation of the soul nature to the sheaths, regardless of what the form of the sheath may be. This characteristic is given through the three states Sattva, Rajas, Tamas.

We will now bring before our minds the penetrating depths of such a knowledge and realise how deep an insight into the secrets of existence a science must have had, which was able to give such a comprehensive description of all living beings. Then that admiration fills our souls of which we spoke before, and we tell ourselves that it is one of the most wonderful things in the history of the development of man, that that which appears again today in Spiritual Science out of dark spiritual depths should have already existed in those ancient times, when it was obtained by different methods. All this knowledge once existed, my dear friends. We perceive it when we direct the spiritual gaze to certain primeval times. Then let us look at the succeeding ages. We gaze upon what is generally brought to our notice in the spiritual life of the different periods, in the old Greek age, in the age following that, the Roman age, and in the Christian Middle Ages. We turn our gaze from what the older cultures give down to modern times, till we come to the age when Spiritual Science once again brings us something which grew in the primeval knowledge of mankind. When we survey all this we may say: In our time we often lack even the smallest glimmering of that primeval knowledge. Ever more and more a mere knowledge of external material existence is taking the place of the knowledge of that grand sphere of existence and of the super-sensible, all-embracing old perception. It was indeed the purpose of evolution for three thousand years, that in the place of the old primeval perception the external knowledge of the material physical plane should arise. It is interesting to see how upon the material plane alone—I do not want to withhold this remark from you—there still remains, left behind, as it were, in the age of Greek philosophy, something like an echo of the old Sankhya knowledge. We can still find in Aristotle some echoes of real soul-nature; but these in all their perfect clarity can no longer be properly connected with the old Sankhya knowledge. We even find in Aristotle the distribution of the human being within the coarse physical body; he does not exactly mention this, but shapes a distribution in which he believes he gives the soul-part, whereas the Sankhya philosophy knows that this is only the sheaths; we find there the vegetative soul which, in the sense of the Sankhya philosophy would be attributed to the finer elemental body. Aristotle believes himself to be describing something pertaining to the soul; but he only describes connections between the soul and the body, the Gunas, and in what he describes he gives but the form of the sheaths. Then Aristotle ascribes to that which reaches out into the sphere of the senses, and which we call the astral body, something which he distinguishes as being a soul-principle. Thus he no longer clearly distinguishes the soul-part from the bodily, because, to him, the former has already been swamped by the bodily shape; he distinguishes the Asthetikon, and in the soul he further distinguishes the Orektikon, Kinetikon, and the Dianetikon. These, according to Aristotle, are grades of the soul, but we no longer find in him a clear discrimination between the soul-principle and its sheaths; he believes he is giving a classification of the soul, whereas the Sankhya philosophy grasps the soul in its own being as a monad and all the differentiations of the soul are, as it were, at once placed in the sheath-principle, in the Prakriti principle.

Therefore, even Aristotle himself in speaking of the soul part no longer speaks of that primeval knowledge which we discover in the Sankhya philosophy. But in one domain, the domain of the material, Aristotle still has something to relate which is like a surviving echo of the principle of the three conditions; that is, when he speaks of light and darkness in colours. He says: There are some colours which have more darkness in them and others which have more light, and there are colours between these. According to Aristotle, in the colours ranging between blue and violet the darkness predominates over light. Thus a colour is blue or violet because darkness predominates over light, and it is green or greenish-yellow when light and darkness counterbalance each other, while a colour is reddish or orange when the light-principle overrules the dark. In Sankhya philosophy we have this principle of the three conditions for the whole compass of the world-phenomena; there we have Sattva when the spiritual predominates over the natural. Aristotle still has this same characteristic, in speaking of colours. He does not use these words: but one may say: Red and reddish-yellow represent the Sattva condition of light. This manner of expression is no longer to be found in Aristotle, but the principle of the old Sankhya philosophy is still to be found in him; green represents the Rajas condition as regards light and darkness, and blue and violet, in which darkness predominates, represent the Tamas-condition of light and darkness. Even though Aristotle does not make use of these expressions, the train of thought can still be traced which arises from that spiritual grasp of the world conditions which we meet with in the Sankhya philosophy. In the colour teaching of Aristotle we have therefore an echo of the old Sankhya philosophy. But even this echo was lost, and we first experience a glimmering of these three conditions, Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, in the external domain of the world of colour, in the hard struggle carried on by Goethe. For after the old Aristotelian division of the colour-world into a Sattva, Rajas and Tamas condition, had been entirely buried, so to say, it then reappears in Goethe. At the present time it is still abused by modern physicists, but the colour-system of Goethe is produced from principles of spiritual wisdom. The physicist of today is right from his own standpoint when he does not agree with Goethe over this, but he only proves that in this respect physics has been abandoned by all the good Gods! That is the case with the physics of today, which is why it grumbles at Goethe's colour teaching.

If one wished today really to combine science with occult principles, one would, however, be obliged to support the colour theory of Goethe. For in that we find again, in the very centre of our scientific culture, the principle which once upon a time reigned as the spiritual principle of the Sankhya philosophy. You can understand, my dear friends, why many years ago I set myself the task of bringing Goethe's colour theory again into notice as a physical science, resting, however, upon occult principles; for one may quite relevantly say that Goethe so divides the colour phenomena that he represents them according to the three states of Sattva, Rajas, Tamas. So gradually, there emerges into the new spiritual history discovered by the modern methods, that which mankind attained to once upon a time by quite other means. The Sankhya philosophy is pre-Buddhistic, as the legend of Buddha brings very clearly before our eyes; for it relates, and rightly, the Indian doctrine that Kapila was the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. Buddha was born in the dwelling place of Kapila, in Kapila Vastu, whereby it is indicated that Buddha grew up under the Sankhya teaching. Even by his very birth he was placed where once worked the one who first gathered together this great Sankhya philosophy. We have to picture to ourselves this Sankhya doctrine in its relation to the other spiritual currents of which we have spoken, not as many Orientalists of the present day represent it, nor as does the Jesuit, Joseph Dahlmann; but that in different parts of ancient India there lived men who were differentiated, for at the time when these three spiritual currents were developing, the very first primeval state of human evolution was no longer there. For instance, in the North Eastern part of India human nature was such that it inclined to the conceptions given in the Sankhya philosophy; more towards the West, human nature was of that kind that it inclined to conceive of the world according to the Veda doctrine. The different spiritual “nuances” come, therefore, from, the differently gifted human nature in the different parts of India; and only because of the Vedantists later on having worked on further and made many things familiar, do we find in the Vedas at the present time much of Sankhya philosophy bound up with them. Yoga, the third spiritual current, arose as we have often pointed out, because the old clairvoyance had gradually diminished, and one had to seek new ways to the spiritual worlds. Yoga is distinguished from Sankhya in that the latter is a real science, a science of external forms, which really only grasps these forms and the different relations of the human soul to these forms. Yoga shows how souls can develop so as to reach the spiritual worlds.

And if we ask ourselves what an Indian soul was to do, who, at a comparatively later time wanted to develop, though not in a one-sided way, who did not wish to advance by the mere consideration of external form, but wanted to uplift the soul-nature itself, so as to evolve again that which was originally given as by a gracious illumination in the Vedas—to this we find the answer in what Krishna gave to his pupil Arjuna in the sublime Gita. Such a soul would have to go through a development which might be expressed in the following words: “Yes, it is true thou seest the world in its external forms, and if thou art permeated with the knowledge of Sankhya thou wilt see how these forms have developed out of the primeval flow: but thou canst also see how one form changes into another. Thy vision can follow the arising and the disappearing of forms, thine eyes see their birth and their death. But if thou considerest thoroughly how one form replaces another, how form after form arises and vanishes, thou art led to consider what is expressed in all these forms; a thorough inquiry will lead thee to the spiritual principle which expresses itself in all these forms; sometimes more according to the Sattva condition, at other times more after the forms of the other Gunas, but which again liberates itself from these forms. A thorough consideration such as this will direct thee to something permanent, which, as compared to form, is everlasting. The material principle is indeed also permanent, it remains; but the forms which thou seest, arise and fade away again, pass through birth and death; but the element of the soul and spirit nature remains. Direct thy glance to that! But in order that thou shouldst thyself experience this psychic-spiritual element within thee and around thee and feel it one with thyself, thou must develop the slumbering forces in thy soul, thou must yield thyself to Yoga, which begins with devotional looking upwards to the psychic-spiritual element of being, and which, by the use of certain exercises, leads to the development of these slumbering forces, so that the pupil rises from one stage to another by means of Yoga.” Devotional reverence for the psychic-spiritual is the other way which leads the soul itself forwards; it leads to that which lives as unity in the spiritual element behind the changing forms which the Veda once upon a time announced through grace and illumination, and which the soul will again find through Yoga as that which is to be looked for behind all the changing forms. “Therefore go thou,” thus might a great teacher have said to his pupil, “go thou through the knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy, of forms, of the Gunas, through the study of the Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, through the forms from the highest down to the coarsest substance, go through these, making use of thy reason, and admit that there must be something permanent, something that is uniting, and then wilt thou penetrate to the Eternal. Thou canst also start in thy soul through devotion; then thou wilt push on through Yoga from stage to stage, and wilt reach the spiritual which is at the base of all forms. Thou canst approach the spiritual from two different sides; by a thoughtful contemplation of the world, or by Yoga; both will lead thee to that which the great teacher of the Vedas describes as the Unitary Atma-Brahma, that lives as well in the outer world as in the inmost part of the soul, that which as Unity is the basis of the world. Thou wilt attain to that on the one hand by dwelling on the Sankhya philosophy, and on the other by going through Yoga in a devotional frame of mind.”

Thus we look back upon those old times, in which, so to speak, clairvoyant force was still united with human nature through the blood, as I have shown in my book, The Occult Significance of Blood. But mankind gradually advanced in its evolution, from that principle which was bound up in the blood to that which consisted of the psychic-spiritual. In order that the connection with the psychic-spiritual should not be lost, which was so easily attained in the old times of the blood-relationship of family stock and peoples, new methods had to be found, new ways of teaching, during the period of transition from blood-relationship to that period in which it no longer held sway. The sublime song of the Bhagavad Gita leads us to this time of transition. It relates how the descendants of the royal brothers of the lines of Kuru and Pandu fought together. On the one side we look up to a time which was already past when the story of the Gita begins, a time in which the Old-Indian perception still existed and men still went on living in accordance with that. We can perceive, so to say, the one line which arose out of the old times being carried over into the new, in the blind King Dritarashtra of the house of Kuru; and we see him in conversation with his chariot-driver. He stands by the fighters of one side; on the other side are those who are related to him by blood but who are fighting because they are in a state of transition from the old times to the new. These are the sons of Pandu; and the charioteer tells his King (who is characteristically described as blind, because it is not the spiritual that shall descend from this root but the physical), the charioteer relates to his blind King what is happening over there among the sons of Pandu, to whom is to pass all that is more of a psychic and spiritual nature for the generations yet to come. He relates how Arjuna, the representative of the fighters, is instructed by the great Krishna, the Teacher of mankind; he relates how Krishna taught his pupil, Arjuna, about all that of which we have just been speaking, of what man can attain if he uses Sankhya and Yoga, if he develops thinking and devotion in order to press on to that which the great teachers of mankind of former days have described in the Vedas. And we are told in glorious language, as philosophical as it is poetical, of the instructions given through Krishna, through the Great Teacher of the humanity of the new ages which have emerged from the blood-relationship. Thus we find something else shining from those old times across to our own. In that consideration which is the basis of the pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood, and many similar ones, I have indicated how the evolution of mankind after the time of blood-relationship took on other differentiations, and how the striving of the soul has thus become different too. In the sublime song of the Bhagavad Gita we are led directly to this transition; we are so led that we see by the instructions given to Arjuna by Krishna, how man, to whom no longer belongs the old clairvoyance dependent upon the blood-relationship, must press on to what is eternal. In this teaching we encounter that which we have often spoken of as an important transition in the evolution of mankind, and the Sublime Song becomes to us an illustration of that which we arrived at by a separate study of the subject.

What attracts us particularly to the Bhagavad Gita is the clear and emphatic way in which the path of man is spoken of, the path man has to tread from the temporary to the permanent. There at first Arjuna stands before us, full of trouble in his soul; we can hear that in the tale of the charioteer (for all that is related comes from the mouth of the charioteer of the blind King). Arjuna stands before us with his trouble-laden soul, he sees himself fighting against the Kurus, his blood-relations, and he says now to himself: “Must I then fight against those who are linked to me by blood, those who are the sons of my father's brothers? There are many heroes among us who must turn their weapons against their own relations, and on the opposite side there are just as honourable heroes, who must direct their weapons against us.” He was sore troubled in his soul “Can I win this battle? Ought I to win, ought one brother to raise his sword against another?” Then Krishna comes to him, the Great Teacher Krishna, and says: “First of all, give thoughtful consideration to human life and consider the case in which thou thyself now art. In the bodies of those against whom thou art to fight and who belong to the Kuru-line, that is to say, in temporal forms, there live soul-beings who are eternal, they only express themselves in these forms. In those who are thy fellow-combatants dwell eternal souls, who only express themselves through the forms of the external world. You will have to fight, for thus your laws ordain; it is ordained by the working laws of the external evolution of mankind. You will have to fight, thus it is ordained by the moment which indicates the passing from one period to another. But shouldst thou mourn on that account, because one form fights against another, One changing form struggles with another changing form? Whichsoever of these forms are to lead the others into death—what is death? and what is life? The changing of the forms is death, and it is life. The souls that are to be victorious are similar to those who are now about to go to their death. What is this victory, what is this death, compared to that to which a thoughtful consideration of Sankhya leads thee, compared to the eternal souls, opposing one another yet remaining themselves undisturbed by all battles?” In magnificent manner out of the situation itself, we are shown that Arjuna must not allow himself to be disturbed by soul-trouble in his innermost being, but must do his duty which now calls him to battle; he must look beyond the transitory which is entangled in the battle to the eternal which lives on, whether as conqueror or as conquered. And so in a unique way is the great note struck in the sublime song, in the Bhagavad Gita; the great note concerning an important event in the evolution of man kind, the note of the transitory and of the everlasting.

Not by abstract thought, but by allowing the perception of what is contained in this to influence us, shall we find ourselves upon the right path. For we are on the right path when we so look upon the instructions of Krishna as to see that he is trying to raise the soul of Arjuna from the stage at which it stands, in which it is entangled in the net of the transitory. Krishna tries to raise it to a higher stage, in which it will feel itself uplifted beyond all that is transitory, even when that comes directly to the soul in such distressing manner as in victory or defeat, as giving death or suffering it. We can truly see the proof of that which some one once said about this Eastern philosophy, as it presents itself to us in the sublime poem of the Bhagavad Gita: “This Eastern philosophy is so absolutely part of the religion of those old times that he who belonged to it, however great and wise he might be, was not without the deepest religious fervour, whilst the simplest man, who only lived the religion of feeling, was not without a certain amount of wisdom.” We feel this, when see we how the great teacher, Krishna, not only influences the ideas of his pupil, but works directly into his disposition, so that he appears to us as contemplating the transitory and the troubles belonging to the transitory; and in such a significant situation we see his soul rising to a height from which it soars far beyond all that is transitory, beyond all the troubles, pain and sorrows of the transitory.

The whole meaning of a philosophical poem such as the Bhagavad Gita can only be rightly understood by one to whom such things as are laid down therein, or in similar works of the world's literature, are not merely theories, but a destiny; for man's conceptions of the world may become destiny.

We have in the last few days made acquaintance with two different conceptions of world-philosophy (not to mention a third, the Vedantic) two different nuances of world-philosophy which, if we look at them in the right way, show us most strikingly how a world-philosophy may become a destiny for the human soul. With the concept of the Sankhya philosophy one may connect all that a man can attain to in knowledge, perception of ideas, survey of the world-phenomena; all in which the life of the soul expresses itself. If we describe that which at the present day still remains to the normal man of such knowledge, of a world-philosophy in which the concepts of the world can be expressed in a scientific form, if we describe that which stands at a lower level spiritually than Sankhya philosophy we may say that even in our own age, in so far as our destiny permits, we can still feel the effects of Sankhya philosophy. This will, however, only be felt by one who, as far as his destiny allows him, gives himself up to a one-sided study of such a branch of world-philosophy; a man of whom it might in a certain respect be said: He is a one-sided scientist, or a Sankhya philosopher. How does such a man stand as regards the world? What does he feel in his soul? Well, that is a question which can really only be answered by experience. One must know what takes place in a soul that thus devotes itself one-sidedly to a branch of world-philosophy, using all its forces to acquire a conception of the world in the sense just characterised. Such a soul might study all the variations of form of the world-phenomena, might have, so to say, the most complete understanding of all the forces that express themselves in the world in the changing forms. If a soul in one incarnation confines itself to finding opportunity through its capacities and its karma so to experience the world-phenomena that, whether illuminated by clairvoyance or not, it chiefly acquires the science of reason, such a tendency would in all circumstances lead to a certain coldness of the whole soul life. According to the temperament of that soul, we shall find that it took on more or less the character of ironical dissatisfaction concerning the world phenomena, or lack of interest and general dissatisfaction with the knowledge that strides on from one phenomenon to another. All that so many souls of our time feel when confronted with a science consisting merely of learning; the coldness and barrenness which then depresses them, all this we see when we investigate a soul-tendency such as is presented here. The soul would feel devastated, uncertain of itself. It might say: What should I have gained if I conquered the whole world, and knew nothing of my own soul, if I could feel nothing, perceive nothing, experience nothing; if all were emptiness within! To be crammed full of all the science in the world and yet to be empty within; that, my dear friends, would be a bitter fate. It would be like being lost among the world phenomena; it would be like losing everything of value to one's own inner being.

The condition just described we find in many people who come to us with some sort of learning or of abstract philosophy. We find it in those who, themselves unsatisfied and realising their emptiness, have lost interest in all their knowledge, and seem to be suffering; we also meet it when a man comes to us with an abstract philosophy, able to give information about the nature of the Godhead, cosmology and the human soul in abstract words, yet we can feel that it all comes from the head, that his heart has no part in it—his soul is empty. We feel chilled when we meet such a soul. Thus Sankhya philosophy may become a destiny, a destiny which brings it man near being lost to himself, a being possessing nothing of his own and from whose individuality the world can gain nothing.

Then again let us take the case of a soul seeking development in a one-sided way through Yoga, who is, so to say, lost to the world, disdaining to know anything about the external world. “What good is it to me,” says such a person, “to learn how the world came into existence? I want to find out everything in my own self; I will advance myself by developing my own powers.” Such a person may perhaps feel an inward glow, may often appear to us somewhat self-contained, and self-satisfied. That may be; but in the long run he will not always be thus, on the contrary, in time, such a soul will be liable to loneliness. When one having led a hermit's life while seeking the heights of soul-life goes forth into the world, coming everywhere in contact with the world-phenomena, he may perhaps say: “What do all these things matter to me?” and if then, because of his being unreceptive to all the beauty of the manifestations and not understanding them he feels lonely, the exclusiveness leads to a fateful destiny! How can we really get to know a human being who is using all his power towards the evolution of his own being and passes his fellowman by, cold and indifferent, as though he wished to have nothing in common with them? Such a soul may feel itself to be lost to the world; while to others it may appear egotistical to excess.

Only when we consider these life-connections do we realise how the laws of destiny work in the conceptions of the world. In the background of such great revelations, such great world-philosophies as the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we are confronted by the ruling of these laws of destiny. We might say: if we look behind the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we can see the direct ruling of destiny. How can we trace destiny in the Epistles?

We often find indicated in them that the real salvation of soul-development consists in the so-called “justification by faith” as compared to the worthlessness of external works; because of that which the soul may become when it makes the final connection with the Christ-Impulse, when it takes into itself the great force that flows from the proper understanding of the Resurrection of Christ. When we meet with this in the Epistles, we feel, on the other hand, that the human soul may, so to say, be thrown back upon itself, and thus be estranged from all external works and rely entirely on mercy and justification by faith. Then come the external works; they are there in the world; we do not do away with them because we turn from them; we join forces with them in the world. Again destiny rings out to us in all its gigantic greatness. Only when we look at things in this way do we see the might of such revelations to mankind.

Now these two revelations to humanity, the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, are outwardly very different from one another; and this external difference acts upon the soul in every part of these works. We not only admire the Bhagavad Gita for the reasons we have briefly given, but because it strikes us as something so poetically great and powerful; because from every verse it radiates forth to us the great nobility of the human soul; because in everything spoken from the mouths of Krishna and his pupil, Arjuna, we feel something which lifts us above everyday human experiences, above all passions, above everything emotional which may disturb the soul. We are transported into a sphere of soul-peace, of clearness, calm, dispassionateness, freedom from emotion, into an atmosphere of wisdom, if we allow even one part of the Gita to work upon us; and by reading the Gita we feel our whole humanity raised to a higher stage. We feel, all through, that we must first have freed ourselves from a good deal that is only too human if we wish to allow the sublime Gita to affect us in the right way. In the case of the Pauline Epistles, all this is different. The sublimity of the poetical language is lacking, even the dispassionateness is lacking. We take up these Epistles and allow them to influence us, and we feel over and over again how what is wafted towards us from the mouth of St. Paul comes from a being, passionately indignant at what has happened. Sometimes the tone is scolding, or—one might say—condemnatory; in the Pauline Epistles this or that is often cursed; there is scolding. The things that are stated as to the great concepts of Christianity, as to Grace, the Law, the difference between the law of Moses and Christianity, the Resurrection—all this is stated in a tone that is supposed to be philosophical, that is meant to be a philosophical definition but is not, because in every sentence one hears a Pauline note. We cannot in any single sentence forget that it is spoken by a man who is either excited or expressing righteous indignation against others who have done this or that; or who so speaks about the highest concepts of Christianity that we feel he is personally interested; he gives the impression that he is the propagandist of these ideas. . Where could we find in the Gita sentiments of a personal kind such as we find in the Epistles in which St. Paul writes to this or that community: “How have we ourselves fought for Christ Jesus! Remember that we have not become a burden to any, now that we laboured night and day that we might not be a burden to any.” How personal all this is! A breath of the personal runs through the Pauline Epistles. In the sublime Gita we find a wonderfully pure sphere-an etheric sphere-that borders on the superhuman and at times extends into it. Externally, therefore, there are powerful differences, and we may say that it would be blindest. prejudice not to admit that through the great Song that once was given to Hinduism, flows the union of mighty fateful world-philosophies, that through the Gita something of a noble purity, quite impersonal, calm and passionless, was given to the Hindus; while the original documents of Christianity—the Epistles of St. Paul—bear, as it were, an entirely personal, often a passionate character, utterly devoid of calm. One does not attain knowledge by turning away from the truth and by refusing to admit such things, but rather by understanding them in the right way. Let us, therefore, inscribe this antithesis on a tablet of bronze, as it were, during our subsequent considerations.

We have already pointed out in yesterday's lecture, that in the Gita we find the significant instruction of Arjuna by Krishna. Now who exactly is Krishna? This question must, above all, be of interest to us. One cannot understand who Krishna is if one does not make oneself acquainted with a point which I have already taken the opportunity of mentioning in various places; that is, that in earlier ages the whole system of giving names and descriptions was quite different from what it is now. As a matter of fact, it does not now in the least matter what a man is called. For we do not in reality know much about a man in our present time by learning that he bears this or that well-known name, that he is called Miller or Smith. We do not really, know much about a man—as everyone will admit—by hearing that he is a Privy Councillor, or anything else of the kind. We do not necessarily know much about people because we know to what social rank they belong. Neither do we know much of a man today because he has to be addressed as “your honour” or “your Excellency” or “my lord”; in short, all these titles do not signify much; and you may easily convince yourselves that other designations that we make use of today are not very important either. In bygone ages this was different. Whether we take the description of the Sankhya philosophy or our own, we can start from either and make the following reflections.

We have heard that, according to Sankhya philosophy, man consists of the. physical body, the finer elemental or etheric body, the body that contains the regular forces of the senses, the body which is called Manas, Ahamkara, and so on. We need not consider the other, higher principles, because they are not, as a rule, developed yet; but if we now consider human beings such as we see them in this or that incarnation, we may say: Men differ from each other, so that in one that which is expressed through the etheric body is strongly predominant, and in another that which is connected with the laws regulating the senses, in a third that which pertains to the inner senses, in a fourth Ahamkara. Or, in our own language, we may say that we find people in whom the forces of the sentient soul are particularly prominent; others in whom the forces of the intellectual or mind-soul are more particularly active; others in whom the forces of the consciousness soul predominate and others again in whom something inspired by Manas plays a part, and so on. These differences are to be seen in the whole manner of life which a man leads. They are indications of the real nature of the man himself. We cannot at the present time, for reasons which are easily understood, designate a man according to the nature which thus expresses itself; for if one were, for instance, to say at the present day, men's convictions being what they are, that the highest to which a man could attain in the present cycle of humanity was a trace of Ahamkara, each one would be convinced that he himself expressed Ahamkara more clearly in his own being than other people did, and it would be mortifying for him if he were told that this was not the case, that in him a lower principle still ruled. In olden times it was not thus. A man was then named according to what was most essential in him; especially when it was a question of putting him over others, perhaps by giving him the part of a leader, he would be designated by dwelling especially on the essential part of his being just described.

Let us suppose that in olden times there was a man who, in the truest sense of the words, had brought Manas to expression within him, who had certainly in himself experienced Ahamkara, but had allowed this as an individual element to retire more into the background and on account of his external activity had cultivated Manas; then according to the laws of the older, smaller, human cycles—and only quite exceptional men could have experienced this—such a man would have had to be a great law-giver, a leader of great masses of people. And one would not have been satisfied to designate him in the same way as other men, but would have called him after his prominent characteristic, a Manas-bearer; whereas another might only be called a senses-bearer. One would have said: That is a Manas-bearer, he is a Manu. When we come across designations pertaining to those olden times, we must take them as descriptive of the most prominent principle of a man's human organisation, that which most strongly expressed itself in him in that particular incarnation. Suppose that in a particular man what was most specially expressed was that he felt divine inspiration within him, that he had put aside all question of ruling his actions and studies by what the external world teaches through the senses and by what reason teaches through the brain, but listened instead in all things to the Divine Word which spoke to him, and made himself a messenger for the Divine Substance that spoke out of him! Such a man would have been called a Son of God. In the Gospel of St. John, such men were still called Sons of God, even at the very beginning of the first chapter.

The essential thing was that everything else was left out of consideration when this significant part was expressed. Everything else was unimportant. Suppose we were to meet two men; one of whom had been just an ordinary man, who allowed the world to act upon him through his senses and reflected upon it afterwards with the intellect attached to his brain; the other one into whom the word of divine wisdom had radiated. According to the old ideas we should have said: This first one is a man, he is born of a father and mother, was begotten according to the flesh. In the case of the other, who was a messenger of the Divine Substance, no consideration would be given to that which makes up an ordinary biography, as would be the case with the first who contemplated the world through his senses and by means of the reason belonging to his brain. To write such a biography of the second man would have been folly. For the fact of his bearing a fleshly body was only accidental, and not the essential thing; that was, so to speak, only the means through which he expressed himself to other men. Therefore we say: The Son of God is not born of flesh but of a Virgin, he is born straight from the Spirit; that is to say, what is essential in him, through which he is of value to humanity, descends from the Spirit, and in the olden times it was that alone which was honoured. In certain schools of initiation it would have been considered a great sin to write an ordinary biography, which only alluded to everyday occurrences, of a person of whom it had been recognised that he was remarkable because of the higher principles of his human nature. Anyone who has preserved even a little of the sentiments of those old times cannot but consider biographies such as those written of Goethe as in the highest degree absurd. Now let us remember that in those olden times mankind lived with ideas and feelings such as these, and then we can understand how this old humanity was permeated with the conviction that such a Manu, in whom Manas was the prevailing principle, appears but seldom, that he must wait long epochs before he can appear.

Now if you think of what may live in a man of our present cycle of humanity as the deepest part of his being, which every man can dimly sense as those secret forces within him which can raise him up to soul-heights; if we think of this, which in most men exists only in rudiment, becoming in a very rare case the essential principle of a human being-a being who only appears from time to time to become a leader of other men, who is higher than all the Manus, who dwells as an essence in every man, but who' as an actual external personality only appears once in a cosmic epoch; if we can form such a conception as this, we are getting nearer to the being of Krishna. He is man as a whole; he is—one might almost say—humanity as such, thought of as a single being. Yet he is no abstract being. When people today speak of mankind in general, they speak of it in the abstract, because they themselves are abstract thinkers. The abstract being is we ourselves today, ensnared as we are in the sense-world, and this has become our common destiny. When one speaks of mankind in general, one has only an indistinct perception and not a living idea of it. Those who speak of Krishna as of man in general, do not mean the abstract idea one has in one's mind today. “No,” they say, “true, this Being lives in germ in every man, but he only appears as an individual man, and speaks with the mouth of a man once in every cosmic age. “But with this Being it is not a question of the external fleshly body, or the more refined elemental body, or the forces of the sense-organs, or Ahamkara and Manas, but the chief thing is that which in Budhi and Manas is directly connected with the great universal cosmic substance, with the divine which lives and weaves through the world.

From time to time Beings appear for the guidance of mankind such as we look up to in Krishna, the Great Teacher of Arjuna. Krishna teaches the highest human wisdom, the highest humanity, and he teaches it as being his own nature, and also in such a way that it is related to every human being, for all that is contained in the words of Krishna is to be found in germ in every human soul. Thus when a man looks up to Krishna he is both looking up to his own highest self and also at another: who can appear before him as another man in whom he honours that which he himself has the predisposition to become, yet who is a separate being from himself and bears the same relationship to him as a God does to man. In this way must we think of the relationship of Krishna to his pupil Arjuna, and then we obtain the keynote of that which sounds forth to us out of the Gita; that keynote which sounds as though it belonged to every soul and can resound in every soul, which is wholly human, so intimately human that each soul feels it would be ashamed if it did not feel within it the longing to listen to the great teachings of Krishna. On the other hand, it all seems so calm, so passionless, so dispassionate, so sublime and wise, because the highest speaks; that which is the divine in every human nature and which yet once appears in the evolution of mankind, incorporated, as a divine human being. How sublime are these teachings! They are really so sublime that the Gita rightly bears the name of the “Sublime Song” or the “Bhagavad Gita.” Within it we find, above all, teachings of which we spoke in yesterday's lecture, sublime words arising from a sublime situation; the teaching that all that changes in the world, although it may change in such a way that arising and passing away, birth and death, victory or defeat, appear to be external events, in them all is expressed something, everlasting, eternal, permanently existent; so that he who wishes to contemplate the world properly must raise himself from the transitory to this permanence. We already met with this in Sankhya, in the reasoned reflections as to the permanent in everything transitory, of how both the conquered and the victorious soul are equal before God when the door of death closes behind them.

Then Krishna further tells his pupil, Arjuna, that the soul also may be led away from the contemplation of everyday things by another path, that is, through Yoga. If a soul is capable of devotion, that is the other side of its development. One side is that of passing from one phenomenon to another and always directing the ideas, whether illuminated by clairvoyance or not, to these phenomena. The other side is that in which a man turns his whole attention away from the outer world, shuts the door of the senses, shuts out all that reason and understanding have to say about the world, closes all the doors to what he can remember having experienced in his ordinary life, and enters into his innermost being. By means of suitable exercises he then draws up that which dwells in his own soul; he directs the soul to that which he can dimly sense as the highest, and by the strength of devotion tries to raise himself. Where this occurs he rises higher and higher by means of Yoga, finally reaching to the higher stages which can be attained by first making use of the bodily instruments; he reaches those higher stages in which we live when freed from all bodily instruments, when, so to say, we live outside the body, in the higher principles of the human Organisation. He thus raises himself into a completely different form of life. The phenomena of life and their activities become spiritual: he approaches ever nearer and nearer to his own divine existence, and enlarges his own being to cosmic being, enlarges the human being to God inasmuch as he loses the individual limitations of his own being and is merged in the ALL through Yoga.

The methods by which the pupil of the great Krishna may rise by one of these ways to the spiritual heights are then given. First of all, a distinction is made between what men have to do in the ordinary world. It is indeed a grand situation in which the Gita places this before us. Arjuna has to fight against his blood-relations. That is his external destiny, it is his own doing, his Karma, which comprises the deeds which he must first of all accomplish in this particular situation. In these deeds he lives at first as external man; but the great Krishna teaches him that a man only becomes wise, only unites himself with the Divine Eternal if he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary; yet the wise man must release himself from them. He performs the deeds; but in him there is something which at the same time is a looker-on at these deeds, which has no part in them, which says: I do this work, but I might just as well say: I let it happen. One becomes wise by looking on at what one does as though it were being done by another; and by not allowing oneself to be disturbed by the desire which causes the deed or by the sorrow it may produce. “It is all one,” says the great Krishna to his pupil Arjuna, “whether thou art in the ranks of the sons of Pandu, or over there among the sons of Kuru; what ever thou doest, thou must as a wise man make thyself free from Pandu-ism and Kuru-ism. If it does not affect thee whether thou art to act with the Pandus as though one of them, or to act with the Kurus as though thou were thyself a son of Kuru; if thou canst rise above all this and not be affected by thine own deeds, like a flame which burns quietly in a place protected from the wind, undisturbed by anything external: if thy soul, as little disturbed by its own deeds, lives quietly beside them, then does it become wise; then does it free itself from its deeds, and does not inquire what success attends them.” For the result of our deeds only concerns the narrow limitations of our soul; but if we perform them because humanity or the course of the world require them from us, then we perform these deeds regardless as to whether they lead to dreadful or to glorious results for ourselves. This lifting oneself above one's deeds, this standing upright no matter what our hands may carry out, even—speaking of the Gita situation—what our swords may carry out or what we may speak with our mouth; this standing upright of our inner self regardless of all that we speak with our mouth and do with our hands, this it is to which the great Krishna leads his pupil Arjuna. Thus the great Krishna directs his pupil Arjuna to a human ideal, which is so presented that a man says: “I perform my deeds, but it matters not whether they are performed by me or by another—I look on at them: that which happens by my hand or is spoken by my mouth, I can look on at as objectively as though I saw a rock being loosened and rolling down the mountain into the depths. Thus do I stand as regards my deeds; and although I may be in a position to know this or that, to form concepts of the world, I myself am quite distinct from these concepts, and I may say: In me there dwells something which is, it is true, united to me and which perceives, but I look on at what another is perceiving. Thus I myself am liberated from my perceptions. I can become free from my deeds, free from my knowledge and free from my perceptions. A high idea of human wisdom is thus placed before us! And finally, when it rises into the spiritual, whether I encounter demons or holy Spirits, I can look on at them externally. I myself stand there, free from everything that is going on even in the spiritual worlds around me. I look on, and go my own way, and take no part in that in which I take part, because I have become a looker-on. That is the teaching of Krishna.

Now having heard that the Krishna teaching is based upon the Sankhya philosophy, it will be quite clear to us that it must be so. In many places one can see it shining through the teaching of Krishna; as when the great Krishna says to his pupil: The soul that lives in thee is connected in several different ways; it is connected with the coarse physical body, it is connected with the senses, with Manas, Ahamkara, Budhi; but thou art distinct from them all. If thou regardest all these as external, as sheaths surrounding thee, if thou art conscious that as a soul-being thou art independent of them all, then hast thou understood something of what Krishna wishes to teach thee. If thou art aware that thy connections with the outer world, with the world in general, were given thee through the Gunas, through Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, then learn that in ordinary life man is connected with wisdom and virtue through Sattva, with the passions and affections, with the thirst for existence through Rajas; and that through Tamas he is connected with idleness, nonchalance and sleepiness. Why does a man in ordinary life feel enthusiasm for wisdom and virtue? Because he is related to the basic nature characterised by Sattva. Why does a man in ordinary life feel joy and longing for the external life, feel pleasure in the external phenomena of life? Because he has a relation to life indicated through Rajas. Why do people go through ordinary life sleepy, lazy and inactive? Why do they feel oppressed by their corporality? Why do they not find it possible continually to rouse themselves and conquer their bodily nature? Because they are connected with the world of external forms which in Sankhya philosophy is expressed through Tamas. But the soul of the wise man must become free from Tamas, must sever its connection with the external world expressed by sleepiness, laziness and inactivity. When these are expunged from the soul, then it is only connected with the external world through Rajas and Sattva. When a man has extinguished his passions and affections and the thirst for existence, retaining the enthusiasm for virtue, compassion and knowledge, his connection with the external world henceforth is what Sankhya philosophy calls Sattva. But when a man has also become liberated from that tendency to goodness and knowledge, when, although a kindly and wise man, he is independent of his outward expression even as regards kindness and knowledge; when kindness is a natural duty and wisdom as something poured out over him, then he has also severed his connection with Sattva. When, however, he has thus stripped off the three Gunas, then he has freed himself from all connection with every external form, then he triumphs in his soul and understands something of what the great Krishna wants to make of him.

What, then, does man grasp, when he thus strives to become what the great Krishna holds before him as the ideal-what does he then understand? Does he then more clearly understand the forms of the outer world? No, he had already understood these; but he has raised himself above them. Does he more clearly grasp the relation of the soul to those external forms? No, he had already grasped that, but he has raised himself above it. It is not that which he may meet with in the external world in the multitude of forms, or his connection with these forms, which he now understands when he strips off the three Gunas; for all that belongs to earlier stages. As long as one remains in Tamas, Rajas, or Sattva, one becomes connected with the natural rudiments of existence, adapts oneself to social relationships and to knowledge, and acquires the qualities of kindness and sympathy. But if one has risen above all that, one has stripped off all these connections at the preceding stages. What does one then perceive, what springs up before one's eyes? That which one perceives and which springs up before one is what these are not. What can that be which is distinct from everything one acquires along the path of the Gunas

This is none other than what one finally recognise as one's own being, for all else which may belong to the external world has been stripped away at the preceding stages. In the sense of the foregoing, what is this? It is Krishna himself; for he is himself the expression of what is highest in oneself. This means that when one has worked oneself up to the highest, one is face to face with Krishna, the pupil with his great Teacher, Arjuna with Krishna himself: who lives in all things that exist and who can truly say of himself: “I am not a solitary mountain, if I am among the mountains I am the largest of them all; if I appear upon the earth I am not a single man, but the greatest human manifestation, one that only appears once in a cosmic age as a leader of mankind, and so on; the unity in all forms, that am I, Krishna.”—Thus does the teacher himself appear to his pupil, present in his own Being. At the same time it is made clear in the Bhagavad Gita that this is something great and mighty, the highest to which a man can attain. To appear before Krishna, as did Arjuna, might come about through gradual stages of initiation; it would then take place in the depths of a Yoga schooling; but it may also be represented as flowing forth from the evolution of humanity itself, given to man by an act of grace, as it were, and thus it is represented in the Gita. Arjuna was uplifted suddenly at a bound, as it were, so that bodily he has Krishna before him; and the Gita leads up to a definite. point, the point at which Krishna stood before him. He does not now stand before him as a man of flesh and blood. A man who could be looked upon as other men would represent what is nonessential in Krishna. For that is essential which is in all men; but as the other kingdoms of the world represent, as it were, only scattered humanity, so all that is in the rest of the world is in Krishna. The rest of the world disappears and Krishna is there as ONE. As the macrocosm to the microcosm, as mankind, as a whole, compared to the small everyday man, so is Krishna to the individual man.

Human power of comprehension is not sufficient to grasp this if the consciousness of it should come to man by an act of grace, for Krishna, if one looks at the essential in him—which is only possible to the highest clairvoyant power—appears quite different from anything man is accustomed to see. As though the vision of man were uplifted above all else to perceive the vision of Krishna in his highest nature, we catch sight of him for one moment in the Gita, as the great Man, compared with whom everything else in the world must appear small; He it is before whom stands Arjuna. Then the power of comprehension forsakes Arjuna. He can only gaze and haltingly express what he beholds. That is to be understood: for by means of the methods he has used until now, he has not learned to look at such as this, or to describe it in words; and the descriptions that Arjuna gives at this moment when he stands before Krishna, must be thought of thus. For one of the greatest artistic and philosophical presentations ever given to humanity is the description of how Arjuna, with words which he speaks for the first time, which he is unaccustomed to speak, which he has never spoken before because he has never come within reach of them, expresses in words drawn from the deepest parts of his being what he feels on seeing the great Krishna: “All the Gods do I perceive in Thy, body, O God, so also the multitude of all beings. Brahma the Lord, on His Lotus-seat, all the Rishis and the Heavenly Serpent. With many arms, bodies, mouths and eyes, do I see Thee everywhere, in countless forms, neither end, middle nor beginning do I see in Thee, O Lord of everything! Thou appearest to me in all forms, Thou appearest to me with a diadem, a club, a sword, as a flaming mountain radiating out on all sides, thus do I see Thee. My vision is dazzled, as radiant fire by the brilliance of the sun, and immeasurably great. The Everlasting, the Highest that can be known, the Greatest Good; thus dost Thou appear to me in the wide universe. The Eternal Guardian of the Eternal Right art Thou. Thou standest before my soul as the Eternal Primeval Spirit. Thou showest me no beginning, no middle and no end. Thou art eternally everywhere, infinite in force, infinite in the distances of space. Thine eyes are, as big as the moon, yea, as big as the sun itself, and out of Thy mouth there radiates sacrificial fire. I contemplate Thee in Thy glow and I perceive how Thy glow warms the universe which I can dimly sense between the ground of the earth and the breadth of heaven, all this is filled with Thy power. I am alone there with Thee, and that world in Heaven wherein the three worlds dwell is also within Thee, when Thy wondrous, awful Figure displays Itself to my sight. I see whole multitudes of Gods coming to Thee, singing praises to Thee, and I stand there afraid, with folded hands. All the hosts of seers call Thee blessed, and so do the multitude of saints. They praise Thee in all their hymns of praise. The Adityas, Rudras, Vasus, Sadkyas, Visvas, Aswins, Maruts, Ushmapas, Ghandarvas, Yakshas, Siddhas, Asuras, and all the Saints praise Thee; they look up to Thee full of wonder: Such a gigantic form with so many mouths, arms, legs, feet; so many bodies, so many jaws filled with teeth; the whole world trembles before Thee and I too tremble. The Heaven-shattering, radiating, many-armed One, with a mouth working as though it were great flaming eyes, thus do I behold Thee. My soul quakes. I cannot find security or rest, O great Krishna, Who to me art Vishnu Himself. I gaze into Thy menacing innermost Being, I behold It like unto fire, I see how It works, how existence works, what is the end of all times. I gaze at Thee so, that I can know nothing of anything whatever. Oh! be Thou merciful unto me, Lord of Gods, Thou House in which worlds do dwell.” He turns towards the sons of the race of Kuru and points to them: “These sons of the Kuru all assembled here together, this multitude of kingly heroes, Bhishma and Drona, together with our own best fighters, they all lie praying before Thee, marvelling at Thy wondrous beauty. I am fain to know Thee, Thou Primal Beginning of existence. I cannot comprehend that which appears to me, which reveals itself to me.” Thus speaks Arjuna, when he is alone with Him Who is his own being, when this Being appears objectively to him. We are here confronted with a great cosmic mystery, mysterious not on account of its theoretical contents, but on account of the overpowering sensations which it should call up within us if we are able to grasp it aright. Mysterious it is, so mysterious that it must speak in a different way to every human perception from how anything in the world ever spoke before.

When Krishna Himself caused to sound into the ears of Arjuna that which He then spoke, it sounded thus: “I am Time, which destroys all worlds. I have appeared to carry men away, and even if thou shalt bring death to them in battle, yet all these warriors standing there in line would die even without thee. Rise up, therefore, fearlessly. Thou shalt acquire fame and conquer the foe, Exult over the coming victory and mastery. Thou wilt not have killed them when they fall dead in the battle; by Me they are all killed already, before thou canst bring death to them. Thou art only the instrument, thou fightest only with the hand The Dronas, the Jayadanas, the Bhishmas, the Karnas, and the other warrior heroes whom I have killed, who are already dead—now kill thou them, that my actions may appear externally when they fall dead in Maya; those whom I have already killed, kill thou them. That which I have done will appear to have been done by thee. Tremble not! Thou art not able to do anything which I have not done already. Fight! Those whom I have already killed will fall by thy sword.” We know that all there given in the way of instruction to the sons of Pandu by Krishna to Arjuna, is related as though told by the charioteer to Dritarashtra. The poet does not directly relate: “Thus spake Krishna to Arjuna ”; the poet tells us that Sandshaya, the charioteer of Dritarashtra, relates it to his blind hero, the king of the Kurus. After Sandshaya related all this he then spoke further: “And when Arjuna had received these words from Krishna, reverently with folded hands, tremblingly, stammering with fear and bowing deeply, he answered Krishna: “With right doth the world rejoice in Thy glory, and is filled with reverence before Thee. The Rajas” (these are spirits) “flee in all directions, furious. The holy Hosts all bow down before Thee. Wherefore should they not bow down before the First Creator, Who is even greater than Brahma? Truly we are confronting a great cosmic mystery; for what says Arjuna when he sees his own self before him in bodily form? He addresses this own Being of his as though it appeared to him higher than Brahma Himself. We are face to face with a mystery. For when a man thus addresses his own being, such words must be so understood that none of the feelings, none of the perceptions, none of the ideas, none of the thoughts used in ordinary life must be brought to bear upon the comprehension. Nothing could bring a man into greater danger than to bring feelings such as he may otherwise have in life to bear upon these words of Arjuna. If he were to bring any such feelings of everyday life to bear upon what he thus expresses, if this were not something quite unique, if he did not realise this as the greatest cosmic mystery, then would lunacy and madness be small things compared to the illness into which he would fall through bringing ordinary feelings to bear upon Krishna, that is to say, upon his own higher being. “Thou Lord of Gods, Thou art without end, Thou art the Everlasting, Thou art the Highest, Thou art both Existence and Non-existence, Thou art the greatest of the Gods, Thou art the oldest of the Gods, Thou art the greatest treasure of the whole universe, Thou art He Who knowest and Thou art the Highest Consciousness. Thou embracest the universe, within Thee are all the forms which can possibly exist, Thou art the Wind, Thou art the Fire, Thou art Death, Thou art the eternally moving Cosmic Sea, Thou art the Moon, Thou art the highest of the Gods, the Name Itself, Thou art the Ancestor of the highest of the Gods. Worship must be Thine, a thousand, thousand times over, and ever more than all this worship is due to Thee. Worship must come to Thee from all Thy sides, Thou art everything that a man can ever become. Thou art full of strength as the totality of all strength alone can be, Thou perfectest all things and Thou art at the same time Thyself everything. When I am impatient, and taking Thee to be my friend, I call Thee Krishna: call Thee Yiva, Friend; ignorant of Thy wonderful greatness, unthinking and confiding I so call Thee, and if in my weakness I do not reverence Thee aright, if I do not rightly reverence Thee in Thy wanderings or in Thy stillness, in the highest Divine or in everyday life, whether Thou art alone or united with other Beings, if in all this I do not reverence Thee aright, then do I implore pardon of Thy Immeasurableness. Thou Father of the world, Thou Who movest the world in which Thou movest, Thou Who art more than all the other teachers, to Whom none resembles, Who art above all, to Whom nothing in the three worlds can be compared; prostrating myself before Thee I seek Thy mercy, Thou Lord, Who revealest Thyself in all worlds. In Thee I gaze at That which never has been seen, I tremble before Thee in reverence. Show Thyself to me as Thou art, O God! Be merciful, Thou Lord of Gods, Thou Primal Source of all worlds!”

Truly we are confronted with a mystery when human being speaks thus to human being. And Krishna again speaks to his pupil: “I have revealed Myself to thee in mercy, My highest Being stands before thee, through My almighty power and as though by enchantment it is before thee, illuminating, immeasurable, without beginning. As thou now beholdest Me no other man has ever beheld Me. As thou beholdest Me now, through the forces which by my grace have been given to thee, have I never been revealed, even through what is written in the Vedas, thus have I never been reached by means of the sacrifices. No libation to the Gods, no study, no ceremonial whatsoever has ever attained unto Me, no terrible expiation can lead to beholding Me in My form as I now am, as thou now beholdest Me in human form, thou great hero. But fear must not come to thee, or confusion at the sight of My dreadful form. Free from fear, full of high thoughts thou shalt again behold Me, even as I am now known unto thee, in My present shape.” Then Sandshaya further relates to the blind Dritarashtra: When Krishna had thus spoken to Arjuna, the Immeasurable One—without beginning and without end, sublime beyond all strength—vanished, and Krishna showed Himself again in his human form as though he wished by his friendly form to reassure him who had been so terrified. And Arjuna said: “Now I see Thee once more before me in Thy human shape, now knowledge and consciousness return to me and I am again myself, such as I was.” And Krishna spoke: “The shape which was so difficult for thee to behold, in which thou hast just seen Me, that is the form for the sight of which even Gods have endlessly longed. The Vedas do not indicate My shape, it will neither be attained by 'repentance, nor by charity, neither by sacrifice, nor by any ritual whatsoever. By none of these can I be seen in the form in which thou hast just seen Me. Only one who knows how to go along the way in freedom, free from all the Vedas, free from all repentances, free from all charities and sacrifices, free from all ceremonials, keeping his eyes reverently fixed upon Me alone, only such an one can perceive Me in such a shape, he alone can recognise Me thus, and can also become entirely one with Me. Whosoever behaveth thus, as I put it into his mind to behave, whosoever loveth and honoureth Me, whosoever doth not care for the world and to whom all beings are worthy of love, he comes to Me, O thou, My son of the race of Pandu.”

We are confronted with a cosmic mystery of which the Gita tells us that it was given to mankind at a most significant cosmic hour, that significant cosmic hour when the old clairvoyance which is connected with the blood, ceases: and human souls must seek new paths to the everlasting, to the intransitory. Thus this mystery is brought to our notice so that we may at the same time realise by means of its presentation all that can become dangerous to man when he is able to see his own being brought to birth out of himself. If we grasp this deepest of human and cosmic mysteries—which tells of our own being through true self knowledge—then we have before us the greatest cosmic mystery in the world. But we may only put it before us if we are able to reverence it in all humility. No powers of comprehension will suffice, none will enable us to approach this cosmic mystery; for that the correct sentiment is necessary. No one should approach the cosmic mystery that speaks from out the Gita who cannot approach it reverentially. Only when we can feel thus about it do we completely grasp it. How, starting from this point of view one is able in the Gita to look at a certain stage of human evolution, and how, just by means of what is shown to us in the Gita, light can also be thrown upon what we meet with in a different way in the Epistles of St. Paul—that it is which, is to occupy us in the course of these lectures.

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain, for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning. Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna. All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant; were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully-developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom, a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom, might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully-developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison. It then also becomes clear that that which is some day to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles, had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the “ego” into the evolution of mankind. If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse—in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha—that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances. The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha, a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it. After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent

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Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse. Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state. What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one—whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides—is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness. It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line a-b as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilisation was then in the Sattva condition.

 7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D. A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B
 Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age. 

Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age, but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations we have the first age—which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition—occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age.' We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity—the Chaldean-Egyptian—and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking. If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Vedas—although that belongs to a still earlier age. Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body—which was woven of the etheric body alone—he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world. Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the earth. He felt his being growing into the earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old old age—the third—should so completely cease, and the new age—the fourth—should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described, would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the earth and the head was that which projected out of the earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, whilst outside the earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

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perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the earth through his legs and feet; besides which perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch, comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun; although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly-arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch, still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth. There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say—a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience. Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna-and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body—the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and amongst the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third Post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge, was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a world-wide historical Hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end—outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric, not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organisation of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired. Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world, which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realise much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see—one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man, it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it; the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, whilst he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilisation. That is the being of Krishna. What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavours to overcome that, which even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch, which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality; that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha. Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age—making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy—he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition—that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone, in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply-defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind, does so full of enthusiasm; in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualising of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga, as a side-issue. St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality. Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style, and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works, almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance-to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this. Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new—I would remind you of my little pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood—we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the Post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form: and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy, we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby, Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions. But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms; Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of—Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly I but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown; alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way if man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti—the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation, has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion, we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realise itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle, which, however, we only meet with in miniature, as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against Soul, the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognises this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance, but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition, they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit, at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation, it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle-the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer; then in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which, in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity and we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterised that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti, we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood, but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter, in Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty Poem—the Bhagavad Gita—that which was necessary for the old times-with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings. Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it, but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna—who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture—on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body, or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous; the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher—and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity, not merely against Tamas and Rajas, but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all. The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna, the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Visudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognise as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas, will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such, is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up. We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna. Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterised you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times, may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future-certainly more perfect, more all-embracing world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete. Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognise, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita, the very, very significant imperfections—they must not be disguised—but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.

During this course of lectures we have brought before our souls two remarkable documents of humanity, although necessarily described very briefly on account of the limited number of lectures; and we have seen what impulses had to flow into the evolution of mankind in order that these two significant documents, the sublime Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, might come into existence. What it is important for us to grasp is the essential difference between the whole spirit of the Gita and that of the Epistles of St. Paul. As we have already said:—in the Gita we have the teachings that Krishna was able to give to his pupil Arjuna. Such teachings can only be given and should only be given to one person individually, for they are in reality exactly what they appear in the Gita; teachings of an intimate nature. On the other hand, it may be said that they are now within the reach of anyone, because they appear in the Gita. This naturally was not the case at the time the Gita was composed. They did not then reach all ears; they were then only communicated by word of mouth. In those old days teachers were careful to ascertain the maturity of the pupil to whom they were about to communicate such teachings; they always made sure of his being ready for them. In our time this is no longer possible as regards all the teachings and instructions which have in some way come openly to light. We are living in an age in which the spiritual life is in a certain sense public. Not that there is no longer any occult science in our day, but it cannot be considered occult simply because it is not printed or spread abroad. There is plenty of occult science even in our day. The scientific teaching of Fichte, for instance, although everyone can procure it in printed form, is really a secret teaching; and finally Hegel's philosophy is also a secret doctrine, for it is very little known and has indeed many reasons in it for remaining a secret teaching; and this is the case with many things in our day. The scientific teaching of Fichte and the philosophy of Hegel have a very simple method of remaining secret doctrine, in that they are written in such a way that most people do not understand them, and fall asleep if they read the first pages. In that way the subject itself remains a secret doctrine, and this is the case in our own age with a great deal which many people think they know. They do not know it; thus these things remain secret doctrine; and, in reality, such things as are to be found in the Gita also remain secret doctrine, although they may be made known in the widest circles by means of printing. For while one person who takes up the Gita today sees in it great and mighty revelations about the evolution of man's own inner being, another will only see in it an interesting poem; to him all the perceptions and feelings expressed in the Gita are mere trivialities. For let no one think that he has really made what is in the Gita his own, although he may be able to express in the words of the Gita itself what is contained in it, but which may itself be far removed from his comprehension. Thus the greatness of the subject itself is in many respects a protection against its becoming common. What is certain is that the teachings which are poetically worked out in the Gita are such that each one must follow, must experience them for himself, if, through them, he wishes to rise in his soul, and finally to experience the meeting with the Lord of Yoga, with Krishna. It is therefore an individual matter; something which the great Teacher addresses to one individual alone. It is a different thing when we consider the contents of the Epistles of St. Paul from this point of view. There we see that all is for the community, all is matter appealing to the many. For if we fix our attention upon, the innermost core of the essence of the Krishna-teaching we must say: What one experiences through this teaching, one experiences for oneself alone, in the strictest seclusion of one's own soul, and one can only have the meeting with Krishna as a lonely soul-wanderer, after one has found the way back to the original revelations and experiences of mankind. That which Krishna can give must be given to each individual.

This is not the ease with the revelation given to the world through the Christ-Impulse. From the beginning the Christ-Impulse was intended for all humanity, and the Mystery of Golgotha was not consummated as an act for the individual soul alone; but we must think of the whole of mankind from the very beginning to the very end of the earth's evolution, and realise that what happened at Golgotha was for all men. It is to the greatest possible extent a matter for the community in general. Therefore the style of the Epistles of St. Paul, apart from all that has already been characterised, must be quite different from the style of the sublime Gita. Let us once more picture clearly the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna. He gives his pupil unequivocal directions as Lord of Yoga as to how he can rise in his soul in order to attain the vision of Krishna. Let us compare with this a specially pregnant passage in the Pauline Epistles, in which a community turn to St. Paul and ask him whether this or that was true, whether this could be considered as giving the right views about what he had taught. In the instructions which St. Paul gives, we find a passage which may certainly be compared in greatness, even in artistic style with what we find in the sublime Gita; but at the same time we find quite a different tone, we find everything spoken from quite a different soul-feeling; It is where St. Paul writes to the Corinthians of how the different human gifts to be found in a group of people must work in cooperation. To Arjuna, Krishna says “Thou must be so and so, thou must do this or that, then wilt thou rise stage by stage in thy soul-life.” To his Corinthians St. Paul says: “One of you has this gift, another that, a third another; and if these work harmoniously together, as do the members of the human body, the result is spiritually a whole which can spiritually be permeated with the Christ.” Thus through the subject itself St. Paul addresses himself to men who work together, that is to say, to a multitude; and he uses an important opportunity to do this-namely, when the gift of the so-called speaking with tongues comes under consideration.

What is this speaking with tongues that we find spoken of in St. Paul's Epistles? It is neither more nor less than a survival of old spiritual gifts, which, in a renewed way, but with full human consciousness, confront-us again at the present time. For when, among our initiation-methods, we speak of Inspiration, it is understood that a man who attains to inspiration in our age does so with a clear consciousness; just as he brings a clear consciousness to bear upon his powers of understanding and his sense-realisations. But in olden times this was different, then such a man spoke as an instrument of high spiritual beings who made use of his organs to express higher things through his speech. He might sometimes say things which he himself could not understand at all. Thus revelations from the spiritual worlds were given, which were not necessarily understood by him who was used as an instrument, and just that was the case in Corinth. The situation had there arisen of a number of persons having this gift of tongues. They were then able to make this or that prediction from the spiritual worlds. Now when a man possesses such gifts everything he is able to reveal by their means is under all circumstances a revelation from the spiritual world, yet it may, nevertheless, be the case that one man may say this and another that, for spiritual sources are manifold, One may be inspired from one source and another from another, and thus it may happen that the revelations do not correspond. Complete harmony can only be found when these worlds are entered in full consciousness. Therefore St. Paul gives the following admonition: “Some there are who can speak with tongues, others who can interpret the words spoken. They should work together as do the right and left hands, and we should not only listen to those who speak with tongues, but also to those who have not that gift, but who can expound and understand what someone is able to bring down from the spiritual sphere.” Here again St. Paul was urging the question of a community which might be founded through the united working of men. In connection with this very speaking with tongues St. Paul gave that address which, as I have said, is in certain respects so wonderful that in its might it may well compare, though in a different way-with the revelations of the Gita. He says (1 Cor. xii. verses 3-31): “As regards the spiritually gifted brethren, I will not leave you without instructions. You know that in the time of your heathendom, it was to dumb idols that you were blindly led by desire. Wherefore I make clear to you: that just as little as one speaking in the Spirit of God says: Accursed be Jesus; so little can a man call Him Lord but through the Holy Spirit. Now there are diversities of gracious gifts, but there is one Spirit. There are diversities in the guidance of mankind, but there is one Lord. There are differences in the force which individual men possess; but there is one God Who works in all these forces. But to every man is given the manifestation of the Spirit, as much as he can profit by it. So to one is given the word of prophecy, to another the word of knowledge; others are spirits who live in faith; again others have the gift of healing, others the gift of prophecy, others have the gift of seeing into men's characters, others that of speaking different tongues, and to others again is given the interpretation of tongues; but in all these worketh one and the same Spirit, apportioning to each one what is due to him. For as the body is one and hath many members, yet all the members together form one body, so also is it with Christ. For through the Spirit we are all baptised into one body, whether Jew or Greek, bond or free, and have all been imbued with one spirit; so also the body is not made of one but of many members. If the foot were to say: Because I am not the hand therefore I do not belong to the body, it would none the less belong to it. And if the ear were to say: Because I am not the eye I do not belong to the body, none the less does it belong to the body. If the whole body were only an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were a sense of hearing, where would be the power of smell? But now hath God set each one of the members in the body where it seemed good to Him. If there were only one member, where would the body be? But now there are truly many members, but there is only one body. The eye may not say to the hand: I do not require thee! nor the head to the feet—I have no need of you; rather those which appear to be the feeble members of the body are necessary, and those which we consider mean prove themselves to be specially important. God has put the body together and has recognised the importance of the unimportant members that there should be no division in the body, but that all the members should work harmoniously together and should care for one another. And if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and it one member prosper, all the members rejoice with it. “But ye,” said St. Paul to his Corinthians, “are the Body of Christ, and are severally the members thereof. And some God hath set in the community as apostles, others as prophets, a third part as teachers, a fourth as miraculous healers, a fifth for other activities in helping, a sixth for the administration of the community, and a seventh He set aside to speak with tongues. Shall all men be prophets, shall all men be apostles, shall all be teachers, all healers, shall all speak with tongues, or shall all interpret? Therefore it is right for all the gifts to work together, but the more numerous they are the better.”

Then Paul speaks of the force that can prevail in the individual but also in the community, and that holds all the separate members together as the strength of the body holds the separate members of the body together. Krishna says nothing more beautiful to one man than St. Paul spoke to humanity in its different members. Then he speaks of the Christ-Power, which holds the different members together just as the body holds its different members together; and the force that can live in one individual as the life-force in every one of his limbs, and yet lives also in a whole community; that is described by St. Paul in powerful words: “Nevertheless I will show you,” says he, “the way that is higher than all else. If I could speak with tongues of men or of angels and have not love, my speech is but as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, and if I could prophesy and reveal all secrets and communicate all the knowledge in the world, and if I had all the faith that could remove mountains themselves and had not love, it would all be nothing. And if I distributed every spiritual gift, yea, if I gave my body itself to be burnt, but were lacking in love, it would all be in vain. Love endureth ever. Love is kind. Love knoweth not envy. Love knoweth not boasting, knoweth not pride. Love injureth not what is decorous, seeketh not her own advantage, doth not let herself be provoked, beareth no one any malice, doth not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth only in truth. Love envelopeth all, streameth through all beliefs, hopeth all things, practiseth toleration everywhere. Love, if it existeth, can never be lost. Prophesies vanish when they are fulfilled, what is spoken with tongues ceases when it can no longer speak to human hearts; what is known ceases when the subject of knowledge is exhausted, for we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child; when I became, a man the world of childhood was past. Now we only see dark outlines in a mirror, but then we shall see the spirit face to face; now is my knowledge in part, but then I shall know completely, even as I myself am known. Now abideth Faith, the certainty of Hope, and Love; but Love is the greatest of these, hence Love is above all. For if you could have all spiritual gifts, whoever himself understands prophecy must also strive after love; for whoever speaks with tongues speaks not among men, he speaks among Gods. No one understands him, because in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” We see how St. Paul understands the nature of speaking with tongues. His meaning is: The speaker with tongues is transported into the spiritual worlds; he speaks among Gods. Whoever prophesies speaks to men to build up, to warn, to comfort; he who speaks with tongues, to a certain extent satisfies himself; he who prophesies builds up the community. If you all attain to speaking with tongues, it is yet more important that you should prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, for he who speaks with tongues must first understand his own speaking, in order that the community should do so. Supposing that I came to' you as a speaker with tongues, of what use should I be to you if I did not tell you what my speaking signifies as prophecy, teaching and revelation! My speaking would be like a flute or a zither, of which one could not clearly distinguish the sounds. How could one distinguish the playing of either the zither or of the flute if they did not give forth distinct sounds? And if the trumpet gave forth an indistinct sound, who would arm himself to battle? So it is with you; if you cannot connect a distinct language with the tongue-speaking, it is all merely spoken into the air.

All this shows us that the different spiritual gifts must be divided amongst the community, and that the members as individuals, must work together. With this we come to the point at which the revelation of Paul, through the moment in human evolution in which it appears, must differ absolutely from that of Krishna. The Krishna-revelation is directed to one individual, but in reality applies to every man if he is ripe to tread the upward path prescribed to him by the Lord of Yoga; we are more and more reminded of the primeval ages of mankind, to which we always, according to Krishna-teaching, return in spirit. At that time men were less individualised, one could assume that for each man the same teaching and directions would be suitable. St. Paul confronted mankind when individuals were becoming differentiated, when they really had to become differentiated, each one with his special capacity, his own special gift. One could then no longer reckon on being able to pour the same thing into each different soul; one had then to point to that which is invisible and rules over all. This, which lives in no man as a separate individual, although it may be within each one, is the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse, again, is something like a new group-soul of humanity, but one that must be consciously sought for by men. To make this clearer, let us picture to ourselves how, for instance, a number of Krishna students are to be distinguished in the spiritual worlds, from a number of those who have been moved in the deepest part of their being by the Christ-Impulse. The Krishna pupils have every one of them been stirred by one and the same impulse, which has been given them by the Lord of Yoga. In spiritual life each one of these is like the other. The same instructions have been given to them all. But those who have been moved by the Christ-Impulse, are each, when disembodied and in the spiritual world, possessed of their own particular individuality, their own distinct spiritual forces. Therefore even in the spiritual world, one man may go in one direction and one in another; and the Leader of both, the One Who pours Himself into the soul of each one, no matter how individualised he may be, is the Christ, Who is in the soul of each one and at the same time soars above them all. So we still have a differentiated community even when the souls are discarnate, while the souls of the Krishna pupils, when they have received instructions from the Lord of Yoga, are as one unit. The object of human evolution, however, is that souls should become more and more differentiated.

Therefore it was necessary that Krishna should speak in a different way. He really speaks to his pupils just as he does in the Gita. But St. Paul must speak differently. He really speaks to each individual, and it is a question of individual development whether, according to the degree of his maturity, a man remains at a certain stage of his incarnation at a standstill in exoteric life, or whether he is able to enter the esoteric life and raise himself into esoteric Christianity. We can go further and further in the Christian life and attain the utmost esoteric heights; but we must start from something different from what we start from in the Krishna-teaching. In the Krishna-teaching you start from the point you have reached as man, and raise the soul individually, as a separate being; in Christianity, before you attempt to go further along the path you must have gained a connection with the Christ-Impulse-feeling in the first place that this transcends all else. The spiritual path to Krishna can only be trodden by one who receives instructions from Krishna; the spiritual path to Christ can be trodden by anyone, for Christ brought the mystery for all men who feel drawn towards it. That, however, is something external, accomplished on the physical plane; the first step is, therefore taken on the physical plane. That is the essential thing. Truly one need not, if one looks into the world-historical importance of the Christ-Impulse, begin by belonging to this or that Christian denomination; on the contrary one can, just in our time, even start from an anti-Christian standpoint, or from one of indifference towards Christ. Yet if one goes deeply into the spiritual life of our own age, examining the contradictions and follies of materialism, perhaps one may genuinely be led to Christ, even though to begin with one may not have belonged to any particular creed. Therefore when it is said outside our circle that we are starting from a peculiar Christian denomination, this must be regarded as a special calumny; for it is not a matter of starting from any denomination, but that in response to the demands of the spiritual life itself, everyone, be he Mahommedan or Buddhist, Jew or Hindu, or Christian, shall be able to understand the Christ-Impulse in its whole significance for the evolution of mankind. This desire we can see deeply penetrating the whole view and presentation of St. Paul, and in this respect he is absolutely the one who sets the tone for the first proclamation of the Christ-Impulse to the world.

As we have described how Sankhya philosophy concerns itself with the changing forms, with that which appertains to Prakriti, we may also say that St. Paul, in all that underlies his profound Epistles, deals with Purusha, that which pertains to the soul. What the soul is to become, the destiny of the soul, how throughout the whole evolution of mankind it evolves in manifold ways, concerning all this St. Paul gives us quite definite and profound conclusions. There is a fundamental difference between what Eastern thought was still able to give us, and what we find at once with such wonderful clearness in St. Paul. We pointed out yesterday that, according to Krishna, everything depended on man's finding his way out of the changing forms. But Prakriti remains outside, as something foreign to the soul. All the striving in this Eastern method of development and even in the Eastern initiation, tends to free one from material existence' from that which is spread outside in nature; for that, according to the Veda-philosophy, is merely maya. Everything external is maya, and to be free from maya is Yoga. We have pointed out how in the Gita it is expected of man that he shall become free from all he does and accomplishes, from what he wills and thinks, from what he likes and enjoys, and in his soul shall triumph over everything external. The work that man accomplishes should equally fall away from him, and thus resting within himself, he shall find satisfaction. Thus, he who wishes to develop according to the Krishna teaching, aspires to become something like a Paramahamsa, that is to say, a high Initiate who leaves all material existence, behind him, who triumphs over all he has himself accomplished by his actions in this world of sense; and lives a purely spiritual existence, having so overcome what belongs to the senses that he no longer thirsts for reincarnation, that he has nothing more to do with what filled his life and at which he worked in this sense-world. Thus it is the issuing forth from this maya, the triumphing over it which meets us everywhere in the Gita, With St. Paul it is not so.

If he had met with these Eastern teachings, something in the depth of his soul would have caused the following words to come forth: “Yes, thou wishest to rise above all that surrounds thee outside, from that also which thou formerly accomplished there! Dost thou wish to leave all that behind thee? Is not then all that the work of God, is not everything above which thou wishest to lift thyself created by the Divine Spirit? In despising that, art thou not despising the work of God? Does not the revelation of God's Spirit dwell everywhere within it? Didst thou not at first seek to represent God in thine own work, in love and faith and devotion, and now desirest thou to triumph over what is the work of God?”

It would be well, my dear friends, if we were to inscribe these words of St. Paul-which though unspoken were felt in the depths of his soul-deeply into our own souls; for they express an important part of what we know as Western revelation. In the Pauline sense, we too speak of the maya which surrounds us. We certainly say: We are surrounded by maya: but we also say: Is there not spiritual revelation in this maya, is it not all divine spiritual work? Is it not blasphemy to fail to understand that there is divine spiritual work in all things? Now arises the other question: Why is that maya there -? Why do we see maya around us? The West does not stop at the question as to whether all is maya: it inquires as to the wherefore of maya. Then follows an answer that leads us into the centre of the soul—into Purusha: Because the soul once came under the power of Lucifer it sees everything through the veil of maya and spreads the veil of maya over everything. Is it the fault of objectivity that we see maya? No. To us as souls objectivity would appear in all its truth, if we had not come under the power of Lucifer. It only appears to us as maya because we are not capable of seeing down into the foundations of what is spread out there. That comes from the soul's having come under the power of Lucifer; it is not the fault of the Gods, it is the fault of our own soul. Thou, O soul, hast made the world a maya to thyself, because thou hast fallen into the power of Lucifer. From the highest spiritual grasp of this formula, down to the words of Goethe: “The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives,” is one straight line. The Philistines and zealots may fight against Goethe and his Christianity as much as they like; he might nevertheless say that he is one of the most Christian of men, for in the depths of his being he thought as a Christian, even in that very formula: “The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives.” It is the soul's own fault that what it sees appears as maya and not as truth. So that which in Orientalism appears simply as an act of Gods themselves, is diverted into the depths of the human soul, where the great struggle with Lucifer takes place.

Thus Orientalism, if we consider it aright, is in a certain sense materialism, in that it does not recognise the spirituality of maya, and wishes to rise above matter. That which pulses through the Epistles of St. Paul is a doctrine of the soul, although only existing in germ and therefore capable of being so mistaken and misunderstood as in our Tamas-time, but it will in the future be visibly spread out over the whole earth. This, concerning the peculiar nature of maya, will have to be understood; for only then can one understand the full depth of that which is the object of the progress of human evolution. Then only does one understand what St. Paul means when he speaks of the first Adam, who succumbed to Lucifer in his soul, and who was therefore more and more entangled in matter-which means nothing else than this: ensnared in a false experiencing of matter. As God's creation external matter is good: what takes place there is good. But what the soul experiences in the course of human evolution became more and more evil, because in the beginning the soul fell into the power of Lucifer. Therefore St. Paul called Christ the Second Adam, for He came into the world untempted by Lucifer, and therefore He can be a guide and friend to men's souls, who can lead them away from Lucifer, that is, into the right relationship to Him. St. Paul could not tell mankind at that time all that he as an Initiate knew; but if we allow his Epistles to work on us we shall see that there is more in their depths than they express externally. That is because St. Paul spoke to a community, and had to reckon with the understanding of that community. That is why in certain of his Epistles there seem to be absolute contradictions. But one who can plunge down into the depths, finds everywhere the impulse of the Christ-Being. Let us here remember, my dear friends, how we ourselves have represented the coming into existence of the Mystery of Golgotha. As time went on we recognised that there were two different stories of the youth, of Christ Jesus, in the Gospel of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke, because in reality there are two Jesus-boys in question. We have seen that externally—after the flesh, according to St. Paul, which means through physical descent—both Jesus-boys descended from the stock of David; that one came from the line of Nathan and the other from that of Solomon; that thus there were two Jesus-boys born at about the same time. In the one Jesus-child, that of St. Matthew's Gospel, we find Zarathustra reincarnated: and we have emphatically stated that in the other Jesus-child, the one described by St. Luke, there was no such human ego as is usually to be found, and certainly not as the one existing in the other Jesus-child, in whom lived such a highly evolved ego as that of Zarathustra. In the Luke-Jesus there actually lives that part of man that has not entered into human evolution on the earth. *[See also The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, the Gospel of St. Luke, the Gospel of St. Matthew.]

It is rather difficult to form a right conception of this but we must just try to think how, so to speak, the soul that was incarnated in Adam, he who may be described as Adam in the sense of my Occult Science succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, symbolically described in the Bible as the Fall of Man in Paradise. We must picture this. Then we must picture further, that side by side with that human soul-nature which incarnated in Adam's body, there was a human part, a human being, that remained behind and did not then incarnate, that did not enter a physical body, but remained “pure soul.” You need only now picture how, before a physical man arose in the evolution of humanity, there was one soul, which then divided itself into two parts. The one part, the one descendant of the common soul, incarnated in Adam and thus entered into the line of incarnations, succumbed to Lucifer, and so on. As to the other soul, the sister-soul, as it were, the wise rulers of the world saw beforehand that it would not be good that this too should be embodied; it was kept back in the soul world; it did not therefore take part in the incarnations of humanity, but was kept back. With this soul none but the Initiates of the Mysteries had intercourse. During the evolution preceding the Mystery of Golgotha this soul did not, therefore, take into itself the experience of an ego, for this can only be obtained by incarnating in a human body. None the less, it had all the Wisdom that could have been attained through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, it possessed all the love of which a human soul is capable. This soul remained blameless, as it were, of all the guilt that a man can acquire in the course of his incarnations in human evolution. It could not be met with as a human being externally; but it could be perceived by the old clairvoyants, and was recognised by them: they encountered it, so to say, in the mysteries. Thus, here we have a soul, one might say, that was within, but yet above, the evolution of mankind, that could at first only be perceived in the spirit; a pre-man, a true super-man.

It was this soul which, instead of an ego, was incarnated in the Jesus-child of St. Luke's Gospel. You will remember the lectures at Bale; this fact was already given out there. We have therefore to do with a soul that is only ego-like, one that naturally acts as an ego when it permeates the body of Jesus: but which in all it displays is yet quite different from an ordinary ego. I have already mentioned the fact that the boy of St. Luke's Gospel spoke a language understood by his mother as soon as he came into the world, and other facts of similar nature were to he observed in him. Then we know that the Matthew-Jesus, in whom lived the Zarathustra ego, grew up until his twelfth year, and the Luke-child also grew up, possessing no particular human knowledge or science, but bearing the divine wisdom and the divine power of sacrifice within him. Thus the Luke-Jesus grew up not being particularly gifted for what can be learnt externally. We know further that the body of the Matthew-Jesus was forsaken by the Zarathustra ego, and that in the twelfth year of the Luke-Jesus his body was taken possession of by that same Zarathustra-ego. That is the moment referred to when it is related of the twelve-year-old Jesus of Luke's Gospel, that when his parents lost him he stood teaching before the wise men of the Temple. We know further that this Luke-Jesus bore the Zarathustra ego within him up to his thirtieth year; that the Zarathustra ego then left the body of the Luke-Jesus, and all its sheaths were taken possession of by Christ, a superhuman Being of the higher Hierarchies, Who only could live in a human body at all inasmuch as a body was offered Him which had first been permeated up to its twelfth year with the pre-human Wisdom-forces, and the pre-human divine Love-forces, and was then permeated through and through by all that the Zarathustra ego had acquired through many incarnations by means of initiation. In no other way, perhaps, could one so well obtain the right respect, the right reverence, in short, the right feeling altogether for the Christ-Being, as by trying to understand what sort of a body was needed for this Christ-Ego to be able to enter humanity at all. Many people consider that in this presentation, given out of the holy mysteries of the newer age about the Christ-Being, He is thus made to appear less intimate and human than the Christ-Jesus so many have honoured in the way in which He is generally represented-familiar, near to man, incarnate in an ordinary human body in which nothing like a Zarathustra ego lived. It is brought as a reproach against our teaching that Christ-Jesus is here represented as composed of forces drawn from all regions of the cosmos. Such reproaches proceed only from the indolence of human perception and human feeling which is unwilling to raise itself to the true heights of perception and feeling. The greatest of all must be so grasped by us that our souls have to make the supremest possible efforts to attain the inner intensity of perception and feeling necessary to bring the Greatest, the Highest, at all near to our soul. Our first feelings will thus be raised higher still, if we do but consider them in this light. We know one other thing besides. We know how we have to understand the words of the Gospel: “Divine forces are being revealed in the Heights, and peace will spread among men of goodwill.” We know that this message of peace and love resounded when the Luke-Jesus appeared, because Buddha intermingled with the astral body of the Luke-Jesus; Buddha, who had already lived in a being who went through his last incarnation as Gautama Buddha and had risen to complete spirituality. So that in the astral body of the Luke-Jesus, Buddha revealed himself, as he had progressed up to the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha on earth.

Thus we have the Being of Christ Jesus presented before us in a way only now possible to mankind from the basis of occult science. St. Paul, although an Initiate, was compelled to speak in concepts more easily understood at that time; he could not then have assumed a humanity able to understand such concepts as we have brought before your hearts today. His inspiration, however, was derived from his initiation, which came about as an act of grace. Because he did not attain this through regular schooling in the old mysteries, but by grace on the road to Damascus when the risen Christ appeared to him, therefore I call this initiation one brought about by grace. But he experienced this Damascus Vision in such a way that by means of it he knew that He Who arose in the Mystery of Golgotha lives in the sphere of this earth and has been attached to it since that Event. He recognised the risen Christ. From that time on he proclaimed Him. Why was he able to see Him in the particular way he did? At this point we must enter somewhat into the nature of such a vision, such a manifestation as that of Damascus: for it was a vision, a manifestation of a quite peculiar kind. Only those people who never wish to learn anything of occult facts consider all visions as being of one kind. They will not distinguish such an occurrence as the vision of St. Paul from many other visions such as appeared to the saints later. What really was the reason that St. Paul could recognise Christ as he did when He appeared to him on the way to Damascus? Why did the certain conviction come to him that this was the risen Christ? This question leads us back to another one: What was necessary in order that the whole Christ-Being should be able completely to enter into Jesus of Nazareth, at the baptism by John in the Jordan? Now, we have just said what was necessary to prepare the body into which the Christ-Being could descend. But what was necessary in order that the Arisen One could appear in such a densified soul-form as he appeared in to St. Paul? What, then, so to speak, was that halo of light in which Christ appeared to St. Paul before Damascus? What was it? Whence was it taken?

If we wish to answer these questions, my dear friends, we must add a few finishing touches to what I have already said. I have told you that there was, as it were, a sister-soul to the Adam-soul, to that soul which entered into the sequence of human generations. This sister-soul remained in the soul world. It was this sister-soul that was incarnated in the Luke-Jesus. But it was not then incarnated for the first time in a human body in the strictest sense of the words, it had already been once incarnated prophetically. This soul had already been made use of formerly as a messenger of the holy mysteries; it was, so to say, cherished and cultivated in the mysteries, and was sent whenever anything specially important to man was taking place; but it could only appear as a vision in the etheric body, and could only be perceived, strictly speaking, as long as the old clairvoyance remained. In earlier ages that still existed. Therefore this old sister-soul of Adam had no need at that time to descend as far as the physical body in order to be seen. So it actually appeared on earth repeatedly in human evolution: sent forth by the impulses of the mysteries, at all times when important things were to take place in the evolution of the earth; but it did not require to incarnate, in ancient times, because clairvoyance was there. The first time it needed to incarnate was when the old clairvoyance was to be overcome through the transition of human evolution from the third to the fourth Post-Atlantean age, of which we spoke yesterday. Then, by way of compensation, it took on an incarnation, in order to be able to express itself at the time when clairvoyance no longer existed. The only time this sister-soul of Adam was compelled to appear and to become physically visible, it was incorporated, so to speak, in Krishna; and then it was incorporated again in the Luke-Jesus. So now we can understand how it was that Krishna spoke in such a superhuman manner, why he is the best teacher for the human ego, why he represents, so to speak, a victory over the ego, why he appears so psychically sublime. It is because he appears as human being at that sublime moment which we brought before our souls in the lecture before last, as Man not yet descended into human incarnations. He then appears again to be embodied in the Luke-Jesus. Hence that perfection that came about when the most significant world-conceptions of Asia, the ego of Zarathustra and the spirit of Krishna, were united in the twelve-year-old Jesus described by St. Luke. He who spoke to the learned men in the Temple was therefore not only Zarathustra speaking as an ego, but one who spoke from those sources from which Krishna at one time drew Yoga; he spoke of Yoga raised a stage higher; he united himself with the Krishna force, with Krishna himself, in order to continue to grow until his thirtieth year. Then only have we that complete, perfected body which could be taken possession of by the Christ. Thus do the spiritual currents of humanity flow together. So that in what happened at the Mystery of Golgotha, we really have a co-operation of the most important leaders of mankind, a synthesis of spirit-life. When St. Paul had his vision before Damascus, He Who appeared to him then was the Christ. The halo of light in which Christ was enveloped was Krishna. And because Christ has taken Krishna for His own soul-covering through which He then works on further, therefore in the light which shone there, in Christ Himself, there is all that was once upon a time contained in the sublime Gita. We find much of that old Krishna-teaching, although scattered about, in the New Testament revelations. This old Krishna-teaching has on that account become a personal matter to the whole of mankind, because Christ is not as such a human ego belonging to mankind, but to the Higher Hierarchies. Thus Christ belongs also to those times when man was not yet separated from that which now surrounds him as material existence, and which is veiled to him in maya through his own Luciferic temptation. If we glance back over the whole of evolution, we shall find that in those olden times there was not yet that strict division between the spiritual and the material; material was then still spiritual, and the spiritual—if we may say so—still manifested itself externally. Thus because, in the Christ-Impulse, something entered into mankind which completely prevented such a strict separation as we find in Sankhya philosophy between Purusha and Prakriti, Christ becomes the Leader of men out of themselves and towards the divine creation. Must we then say that we must unconditionally give up maya now that we recognise that it seems to be given us through our own fault? No, for that would be blaspheming the spirit in the world; that would be assigning to matter properties which we ourselves have imposed upon it with the veil of maya. Let us rather hope that when we have overcome in ourselves that which caused matter to become maya, we may again be reconciled with the world.

For do we not hear resounding out of the world around us that it is a creation of the Elohim, and that on the last day of creation they considered: and behold, all was very good? That would be the karma to be fulfilled if there were nothing but Krishna-teaching (for there is nothing in the world that does not fulfil its karma). If in all eternity there had been only the teaching of Krishna, then the material existence which surrounds us, the manifestation of God of which the Elohim at the starting-point of evolution said: “Behold all was very good,” would encounter the judgment of men: “It is not good, I must abandon it!” The judgment of man would be placed above the judgment of God. We must learn to understand the words which stand as a mystery at the outset of evolution; we must not set the judgment of man above the judgment of God. If all and everything that could cling to us in the way of guilt were to fall away from us, and yet that one fault remained, that we slandered the work of the Elohim; the earth-Karma would have to be fulfilled; in the future everything would have to fall upon us and karma would have to fulfil itself thus. In order that this should not happen, Christ appeared in the world, so to reconcile us with the world that we may learn to overcome Lucifer's tempting forces, and learn to penetrate the veil; that—we may see the divine revelation in its true form; that we may find the Christ as the Reconciler, Who will lead us to the true form of the divine revelation, so that through Him we may learn to understand the primeval words: “And behold, it is very good.” In order that we may learn to ascribe to ourselves that which we may never again dare to ascribe to the world, we need Christ; for if all our other sins could be taken away from us: yet this sin could only be removed by Him. This, transformed into a moral feeling, is a newer side of the Christ-Impulse. It shows us at the same time why the necessity arose for the Christ-Impulse as the higher soul to envelope itself in the Krishna-Impulse.

An exposition such as I have given you in this course, my dear friends, should not be taken as mere theory, merely as a number of thoughts and ideas to be absorbed; it should be taken as a sort of New Year's gift, a gift which should influence our New Year, and from now on it should work as that which we can perceive through the understanding of the Christ-Impulse, in so far as this helps us to understand the words of the Elohim, which resound down to us from the starting point, from the very primeval beginning of the creation of our earth. And look upon the intention of the course at the same time as the starting point of our Anthroposophical spiritual stream. This must be Anthroposophical because by means of it will be more and more recognised how man can in himself attain to self-knowledge—. He cannot yet attain to complete self-knowledge, not yet can Anthropos attain to knowledge of Anthropos, man to the knowledge of man, so long as this man can consider what he has to carry out in his own soul as an affair to be played out between him and external nature. That the world should appear to us to be immersed in matter is a thing the Gods have prepared for us, it is an affair of our own souls, a question of higher self-knowledge; it is something that man must himself recognise in his own manhood, it is a question of Anthroposophy, by means of which we can come to the perception of what theosophy may become to mankind. It should be a feeling of the greatest modesty which impels a man to belong to the Anthroposophical movement; a modesty which says: If I want to spring over that which is an affair of the human soul and to take at once the highest step into the divine, humility may very easily vanish from me, and pride step in, in its place; vanity may easily install itself May the Anthroposophical Society also be a starting point in this higher moral sphere; above all, may it avoid all that has so easily crept into the theosophical movement, in the way of pride, vanity, ambition, and want of earnestness in receiving that which is the highest Wisdom. May the Anthroposophical Society avoid all this because from its very starting point, it has already considered that the settlement with maya is an affair for the human soul itself.

One should feel that the Anthroposophical Society ought to be the result of the profoundest human modesty. For out of this modesty should well up deep earnestness as regards the sacred truths into which it will penetrate if we betake ourselves into this sphere of the super-sensible, of the spiritual. Let us therefore understand the adoption of the name “Anthroposophical Society” in true modesty, in true humility, saying to ourselves Let all that remains of that pride and lack of modesty, vanity, ambition and untruthfulness, that played a part under the name of Theosophy, be eradicated, if now, under the sign and device of modesty, we begin humbly to look up to the, Gods and divine wisdom, and on the other hand dutifully to study man and human wisdom, if we reverently approach Spiritual Science, and dutifully devote ourselves to Anthroposophy. This Anthroposophy will lead to the divine and to the Gods. If by its help we learn in the highest sense to look humbly and truthfully into our own selves and see how we must struggle against all maya and error through self-training and the severest self-discipline, then, as written on a bronze tablet may there stand above us the word: Anthroposophy! Let that be an exhortation to us, that above all we should seek through it to acquire self-knowledge, modesty, and in this way endeavour to erect a building founded upon truth, for truth can only blossom if self-knowledge lays hold of the human soul in deep earnestness. What is the origin of all vanity, of all untruth? The want of self-knowledge. From what alone can truth spring, from what can true reverence for divine worlds and divine wisdom alone come? From true self-knowledge, self-training, self-discipline. Therefore may that which shall stream and pulsate through the Anthroposophical movement serve that purpose. For these reasons this particular course of lectures has been given at the starting point of the Anthroposophical movement, and it should prove that there is no question of narrowness, but that precisely through our movement we can extend our horizon over those distances which comprise Eastern thought also. But let us take this humbly in self-educative anthroposophical fashion, by creating the will within us to discipline and train ourselves. If Anthroposophy, my dear friends, be taken up among you in this way, it will then lead to a beneficial end and will attain a goal that can extend to each individual and every human society for their welfare. So let these words be spoken which shall be the last of this course of lectures, but something of which perhaps many in the coming days will take away with them in their souls, so that it may bear fruit within our Anthroposophical movement, within which you, my dear friends, have, so to speak, met together for the first time. May we ever so meet together in the sign of Anthroposophy, that we have the right to call upon words with which we shall now conclude, words of humility and of self-knowledge, which we should now at this moment place as an ideal before our souls.

I thank you from my heart for the kind words of the General Secretary of the Swedish section, Colonel Kinell, and in reply I wish to say that it is deeply satisfying, on my journey from Helsingfors, to be able for a few days to discuss again with you in Stockholm those things and truths which touch us all so closely. I offer you a hearty greeting, as warmly felt as the kind words of the General Secretary.

On these two more intimate evenings we shall have to speak of a question, an affair of mankind, which in a double connection penetrates extraordinarily deeply into our souls. First, because the Christ question is such that, for two thousand years now, not only has it occupied countless souls on earth, but from it have flowed for countless earth-souls spiritual life-blood, strength of soul, consolation and hope in suffering, strength and sureness in action. And not only that, but when we consider all that surrounds us as external exoteric culture, created through many centuries, then through deeper knowledge we see that all this would have been impossible had not the Christ impulse taken hold of a large part of humanity. This is one consideration which shows us what strong interest the Christ question must offer if we approach it with anthroposophical knowledge. This is only one side of the interest which we bring to this problem; the other side of our interest comes out of the particular soul and spiritual conditions of our present time, our epoch. We need only look about us in the world and try to understand the yearnings, the seeking of the human soul, and we shall be able to say to ourselves: “Ever more do human souls seek after something which, through the centuries, has been connected in men's souls with the name of Christ, and ever more do they come to the conviction that a renewing of the ways, a renewing of interest, a deepening of knowledge, is necessary if the needs of human souls (which will steadily increase with regard to Christ) are to be satisfied.” If we find on the one side a thirsting for enlightenment about Christ, we find on the other side, among numerous souls of the present day, doubt and insecurity as to the means used up to this time. And therefore, because of the yearning for an answer and because of the doubt that the truth can be learned, this is one of the most burning questions of the present time.

It is thus obvious that a spiritual movement which penetrates more deeply into spiritual foundations has the task of throwing light on this question. Things are like this today, my dear friends, but in a relatively short time, truly in a very short time, they will be entirely different. If we somewhat unegotistically examine what, in relation to Christ, will be needed by those men who follow after our time, then we must say to ourselves that, although many men of the present can satisfy themselves with what there is, souls will feel themselves increasingly unsure and will thirst increasingly for enlightenment. Thus in speaking of Christ today we speak of something which we foresee as necessary for the human beings of a very near future. Anthroposophy would not fulfil its task if it did not put itself in a position to create clarity on these points by means of its knowledge, as far as this is possible today.

As my point of departure I shall indicate the three paths along which the soul, in accordance with human evolution, can attain to Christ. If we mention three paths we must briefly describe the first path, which today is no longer a path, though it once was; which today need not be an esoteric path, as just in our time the anthroposophic path is, but which was a path for millions of souls through the centuries. This is the path through the so-called Christian documents, through the Gospels. For millions and millions of people this path was, and for many it still is, the only possible one. The second path along which the human soul may seek the Christ is that which can be called the path through inner experience, which especially in the present and in the near future numerous souls, out of their particular constitution and qualities, must pursue. The third path is that which, through the anthroposophical movement, one can at least begin to understand in our time, the path through initiation. Thus there are three paths to Christ: First, the path through the Gospels; second, the path through inner experience; and third, the path through initiation.

The first path, the path through the Gospels, need be only briefly characterized here. We all know that, in the course of the centuries, the Gospels became nourishment for the hearts and souls of innumerable people. We know also that the most enlightened, the most critical natures (and these are not the irreligious), begin to have no further relation to this Christ, because it is maintained today that external knowledge cannot know what historical facts really stand behind that which the Gospels relate. Had the Gospels been read by men of past centuries as today they are read by a scholar, by a man who has gone through the current scientific education, they would never have been able to exercise the powerful influence, the life-influence, which has flowed out of them. Now, if the Gospels were not read in past centuries as the educated man of today reads them, how were they read?

To ponder a priori on what may have taken place in Palestine at the beginning of our era, this would never have occurred to the Gospel-readers of earlier centuries, and still does not occur to many Gospel-readers of today. Those who begin to test, in the Gospels, what may have taken place before the eyes of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of our era lose confidence in the historical character of the events of Palestine. The men of earlier times did not read in this way. They read in such a way that they allowed a picture to work on their souls; for instance, the picture of the Samaritan woman at the well, or of Christ imparting the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples. The question of external physical reality never occurred to them. How their hearts warmed, how their feelings swelled in the presence of these great and powerful pictures—this was to them the main thing. What formed itself in their hearts, what force, what life-meaning they gained through these pictures—this was the main thing. They felt that spiritual lifeblood and strength flowed to them from these pictures. When they let these pictures work on their souls, they felt strong; they felt that, without these pictures, they would be weak. And then they felt living, personal connections with what is recounted in the Gospels, and the question of historical reality occurred to them no further. The Gospels were themselves reality, they were present as force, and one did not need to ask whence they came; one knew that men had written them not with earthly means, but with impulses from the spiritual worlds. I do not assert that one must feel in this way today (what one must do depends on the development of mankind), but I assert that men felt in this way through centuries.

How could it be so? On this point spiritual science is now first able to instruct us. When we begin to understand the Gospels in the light of spiritual science, and try to penetrate into what flows down from spiritual worlds and is contained in the Gospels, then we stand before the Gospels in such a way that we say: “We know from spiritual science, quite apart from the Gospels, all that has taken place in human evolution in connection with the Christ-impulse, and then we find what is contained in the Gospels, quite independently of them.”

How, then, do we conceive the Gospels from the spiritual-scientific point of view? If I may use a simple comparison, let us assume that a man has attained enlightenment on some subject. With this enlightenment, he meets a second man and begins to talk with him. At first he will not suppose that the other knows anything of the subject which is so clear to him, but from the conversation he perceives that the other knows it quite as well as he. What must reasonably be assumed? The reasonable thing to assume is that the other has enlightened himself through the same or similar sources. So is it also with the Gospels. We can do this, no matter from what standpoint we approach the Gospels. A society could be formed of people who read the Gospels in the above described way; then there could also be people in this society who were determined opponents of the Gospels, and who would say that, when the Gospels were tested by the methods of science, it would be found that they were written much later than the events in Palestine could have occurred, and that their accounts contradict each other—in short, that these Gospels cannot be regarded as historical documents. Such people might be in such a society, and one could say: “Well, let us at first leave the Gospels in peace, but let us do some research in the spiritual worlds.”

Then, if we did some genuine spiritual research, if we gained genuine super-sensible knowledge, we would find that in the course of human evolution there had once entered a strong impulse, which broke into human evolution as an impulse from the spiritual worlds, from which mighty things have proceeded for humanity; and we would see that at the beginning of our era, this impulse had taken hold of a man who was especially suited thereto. All this, and many other facts which fit into this knowledge and which can be won only through super-sensible research, all this we would have; and those who wished to know nothing of the Gospels would have this as well as others. Then one could approach the Gospels and say: “Well now, at first we did not trouble ourselves at all about these Gospels; yet it is remarkable that, when we read them carefully, we see that they contain what we found in spiritual fields independently of them. Now we recognize their value from an entirely different side.”

Then we are clear that it could not be otherwise, that those who wrote the Gospels must have received their knowledge from the same source which is now opening itself to humanity through the spiritual movement. This is just what now confronts us, what will come more and more, what will make a valid basis for the valuation of the Gospel documents. If this is so, we must say that men will be able to find along other ways what can be known through these documents. And so this knowledge begins to be more and more sacred to us through the spiritual cognition of the present day. It already worked through the force of the Gospels. Because the Gospels are suffused with the holiest knowledge, with the spiritual impulses of humanity, they had an influence even where they were taken in naively. Spiritual knowledge works not only abstractly, not only in theory, but works as a life-force, as life-blood of the soul. And ever more and more will men recognize how consolation and strength flow from this knowledge.

But when we speak of the inner way to Christ, we encounter more and more things which can be understood and felt at the present time only when approached with the right spiritual-scientific understanding. We shall try to speak of the inner Christ-experience in such a way that it may be seen how, independently of all tradition, this may appear in every man. To this end we must, of course, regard the human being with the knowledge which we have found through spiritual science. If we steep ourselves in spiritual science, then we find even the most elementary knowledge becoming fruitful when we apply it to life. We find that we get away from the abstract charts of the seven members of man when we contemplate the growing and becoming of man. The physical body has its especial development in the first seven years of life. We perceive further that in the second seven years of life, from the change of teeth until sexual maturity, the forces of the etheric body play in man. Then the forces of the astral body begin to play, and only later, about the 20th or 21st year, (depending on his whole organization and on the nature of the forces in him) begins what appears in man as the Ego, as the bearer of the Ego, with that force which it really has because of its organization for the whole life of man as the bearer of the Ego.

That the bearer of the Ego first becomes really capable of living in the 20th or 21st year is not often observed in our present time, because we are not yet inclined to pay attention to these things. What does it mean that the bearer of the Ego first becomes really active in the 20th or 21st year of life? Here we must observe, by occult means, the growing man and view the deeper forces of his organization. These forces continually change: from birth until the seventh year, from the seventh year until sexual maturity, from sexual maturity until the unfolding of the Ego. But they change in such a way that they cannot be tested by the methods of ordinary anatomy or physiology. By occult means, one can say that only around the 20th year does man develop his forces in such a way that a self-sufficing Ego-bearer now exists. Earlier this Ego-bearer is not yet formed; earlier the human corporeality, even the super-sensible, is not yet a proper Ego-bearer. So if we consider the members of man in the light of the great world-principle, we must say that, through the peculiarities of his organization, man is really ripe to develop an Ego out of himself only in his 20th or 21st year, not earlier.

With this fact another may be contrasted, namely that in the first years of life, in normal consciousness, we really dream ourselves, sleep ourselves into life, and that only after a certain point of time does life take such a course that our own memory begins. Of what happened before this time we may be told by our parents or elder brothers; after this point the man says “I am who I am.” From the time when he says “I have done this; I have thought that,” the man dates his own Ego; what came before that loses itself in the twilight of the soul. Our memory reaches only to the point of time so described.

What do we have when we put these two facts together; that the real bearer of the human Ego is born in the 20th or 21st year, and that in our souls we describe ourselves as an Ego from the third or fourth year on? This means that in the present cycle of man's development he has an opinion, a feeling, about himself which does not correspond to his inner organization, as this has developed; for the consciousness of the Ego appears in the third or fourth year, but the organization for the Ego first appears in the 20th or 21st year. This fact is of fundamental importance for the understanding of man. When this fact is stated abstractly as an item of spiritual-scientific knowledge, no one gets particularly excited about it; but, because this fact is true, there are numerous experiences available which we all know well, but which we do not observe in the light of this fact. All that man can experience of cleavage between external organization and inner experience, of sorrow and pain in life because (by reason of his organization) certain things are impossible for him, of disharmony between what he wishes and what he can perform; the fact that he may have ideals which lead far beyond his organization: all this leads back to the fact that the consciousness of our Ego goes an entirely different way from that followed by the bearer of our Ego. In this respect we are two men; An external man who is organized to develop his egohood in the 20th or 21st year, and an inner soul-man who already in his fourth or fifth year, as to his soul-life, emancipates himself from his outer organization. Emancipation of the Ego-consciousness from the outer organization takes place in childhood. We go through something in our soul which proceeds independently of our outer organization and which can even come into sharp contradiction with our outer organization. We are inclined, in regard to the inner consciousness of the Ego, to pay no attention to our organization, to what is below in our bodies. In our souls we develop in an entirely different way from that in which our bodies develop.

Thus the course of inner development of mankind is twofold. The development of our organization goes from the first to the seventh year, then from the seventh to the fourteenth, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, in the above described way; but our inner development is such that we are entirely independent of the above, such that the consciousness of our Ego emancipates itself in tenderest childhood and makes its own way through life. But what is the consequence of this curious fact of human development? Only the occultist can tell us this.

If we survey all that the occultist can teach, we come to a curious fact. We come to see that sickness, frailty of the human organization, all that makes possible illness, age, and death, comes from our being really a duality. We die because we are organized in a certain way and in our organization pay no attention to our Ego-development. That with our Ego we go an independent path, not troubling ourselves about our organization, this is brought home to us when this organization, in sickness and death, places a hindrance before our Ego-development; we are reminded that our Ego-development proceeds quite separately from our organization. Whence comes really this curious fact of duality in human nature?

When we examine man in connection with reality, we see that, if at a certain time in the Earth evolution, namely in the Lemurian time, only progressive forces had intervened in human development, the youthful development of man would today proceed quite otherwise—namely so that it would keep even step with the Ego-development. At all times the soul-development would coincide exactly with the body-development. It would have been impossible for man to develop himself otherwise than in the way now set up as an ideal, for example, in my pamphlet The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. (Anthroposophic Press, New York City) Had only progressive forces been active at that time, the singular result would have been that, in the first twenty years of life, man would have been much less self-reliant than he is now. This lack of self-reliance is not meant in a bad sense, but in such a way that each of you would approve of it completely. For example, human nature in the first seven years of life is completely disposed to imitation. Since grown people, if only progressive forces had been active in the Lemurian time, would do nothing shameful, children between one and seven would be able to imitate nothing bad. In the second seven years of life the principle of authority would reign, whereas now it has come to be a curse of the land, a curse of the world, that persons between seven and fourteen want to be independent and are even educated to form independent opinions. The grown persons would have been the natural authorities for the children. From fourteen to twenty-one, man would have looked much less into himself, upon his own self; he would have turned more toward the outside. The force of ideals, the power of living himself into his life-dreams would have become immensely significant for him. Life-dreams would have sprung from his heart, and then full Ego-consciousness would have appeared in his 20th and 21st years.

Thus there would be in the first seven years a period of imitation, then in the second seven years a looking up to authority, then in the third seven years a springing forth of ideals, which would bring man to his full Ego-consciousness. The sum of those forces also working in evolution which are called the Luciferic forces have brought about a deviation from this path of development in the course of human evolution. Since the Lemurian time they have torn the Ego-consciousness away from the foundation of the organization. The fact that we already have the Ego-consciousness in tenderest childhood is to be traced to the Luciferic forces.

How did the Luciferic forces intervene? The Luciferic powers are beings who remained behind on the Moon, and who therefore have no understanding of the mission of the Earth, for that which should develop for the first time on the Earth for the Ego after the 21st year. They took man as he was on coming over from the Moon, and laid in him the germ of self-reliant soul-development. So that in the hastening of Ego-consciousness, in this peculiar cleavage in human nature, lie the Luciferic forces. Knowledge of such a fact is given for the first time by anthroposophy. It can be sensed by every man of sound feeling, for every man can sense that there is something in him which separates him from his full humanity. All that we call unjustified egoism in our nature, all withdrawing from the activities of men, all this stems from the Ego's not going along on the right path of the organization. Thus do we see man before us, if he can feel. If he says to himself: “I could be other than I am; I have something in me which is not in harmony with myself”—then he feels the strife within him of the progressive powers with the Luciferic powers. This fact had to occur in the course of human evolution; it was necessary because man would never have become really free without the Luciferic beings; he would have been always bound to his organization. What on the one hand brings man into conflict with his organization, gives him on the other hand the first possibility of being free. One thing, however, remains out of this duality of the organization for the ordinary human life; this shows itself in our feeling that the Ego has become incapable, out of its own powers, of transforming the organization.

When we survey the broad circumference of what has constituted and created man, we find the two forces described above; there are the organic forces of our human nature, which are intended to develop in seven-year periods, and there are the Luciferic forces. If there were nothing else in nature or in the spiritual life in the course of human development, it would follow that man could never, through his emancipated Ego, come into full harmony with his nature. Were there nothing else in the field of earth-existence, man could only become ever more estranged from his organization; his organization would become ever more infirm, more dried up; the cleavage would necessarily become always greater. If man only once reaches the point of intensely feeling this as spiritual-scientific knowledge, then he comes to a great moment in his life, when he can say: “Here I stand with my human organization which is given me by the progressive forces that work from seven years to seven years (he need not express this in precise words, he need only feel it dimly). But, because this organization has an opposing force, which develops itself independently, it becomes sick and infirm and finally dies.” In the depths of his soul man feels this. Without knowing anything of anthroposophy, he need only have this feeling of a discrepancy between the inner Ego and the outer organization, and, if he steeps himself in this feeling, then—he knows not whence—there comes into his soul something of which he feels: “I myself, with the Ego which I can trace back, can do nothing against my organization, for which I am no match. But there comes something which I can take into my Ego as force, which I can take into my consciousness as conviction; directly from spiritual worlds comes something which does not reside in me, but which permeates my soul. From unknown worlds something can flow into my soul; if I take it up in my heart, if I suffuse my Ego with it, then it helps me directly from spiritual worlds.”—This which comes from spiritual worlds may be called whatever we like; that is not important; only the feeling is important.

Let us assume that a man is today at odds with life and says to himself: “I must seek through the whole world to see if somewhere a force will spring up which will give me something through which I can come out of the conflict, something which will help me out.”—In the nature of things this man could never find his way with the means of the old religious confessions; in the ancient ecclesiastical ideas he could never find anything which would give him this force that he seeks. But, in order to have a concrete example, let us assume that such a man went to one of the ancient holy religions, that he went, for example, to Buddhism and steeped himself in the extraordinary teachings of Buddhism. If the man felt, however, naturally and in its full strength the cleavage described above, he would feel—I do not say this would come out of a theory, but out of a dim feeling—he would feel that in the personality, in the individuality of Gautama Buddha, something had lived which could appear in the world only on the basis of a long development. This individuality went through many incarnations, achieved higher and higher grades of evolution, and finally came so far that in the 29th year of his life as Gautama Buddha, he was able to rise from Bodhisatva to Buddha, was able to rise in such a way that he need never more return to a physical body. How did that which flows out from this individuality come into being? Every unprejudiced mind can feel what speaks out of the Buddha, can feel all that first came about and developed through the Bodhisatva in earth evolution after developing through many incarnations. In the most beautiful and comprehensive sense all this contains the forces which are found in the periphery of the earth, in the interplay of the forces of the organization and the Luciferic forces. Therefore, because it has gone from incarnation to incarnation, because it stems from the same forces from which the human forces stem, therefore that which flows from the Bodhisatva to the Buddha has such an effect that the unprejudiced mind does not feel anything that can call forth a full harmony between the Ego of man and his organization. The soul feels that there must be something which does not go from incarnation to incarnation, but which can stream into every human soul directly from the spiritual worlds.—When the soul feels that it must have a relation to what streams down from the heavens, then it is beginning to have an inner experience of the Christ. Then the soul can understand that in Christ Jesus something had to appear which was different from everything previously existing. This is the radical, fundamental difference, the difference in principle between the life of the Christ and that of the Buddha.

Buddha rose from a Bodhisatva to a Buddha with the forces which cause man to mount from incarnation to incarnation, as is the case with other great founders of religions. Into the life of Jesus of Nazareth something entered, something worked into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth, over a period of three years, which streamed down directly out of the spiritual worlds, which had nothing to do with human evolution, which previously was not connected with a human life. We must keep this difference clearly in mind if we wish to understand why, in what the fourth post-Atlantean epoch called the Christ, there was something which was different from all other religious impulses, and why the other religions have always pointed mankind toward this Christ.

If we, in the post-Atlantean time, look back into the ancient sacred Indian culture, we see the seven holy Rishis, in whose souls there lived something of an immediate perception of the spiritual worlds. Had one of the seven holy Rishis been asked about the fundamental mood of his soul, he would have said: “We look up to the spiritual powers from whom all human development has proceeded. This reveals itself to us in seven rays, but above this is something else, something which lies above our sphere.” Vishvakarman, this was the name later given to what the seven holy Rishis thus felt. The seven holy Rishis spoke of a power which had not developed with the earth.

Then came the Zarathustra culture. Zarathustra spoke, when he directed his gaze to the spirits of the sun, of something which should flow into human evolution directly through a streaming out of the spiritual worlds. “What we can give to men,” so spake Zarathustra, “is not that which will one day, from the sun-distances, stream directly out of the spiritual worlds into mankind.” What is spiritual in the sun, this is what the later Persian culture called Ahura-Mazdao.

In the Egyptian mysteries the Christ question was felt with a particularly tragic force. It was felt in the deepest way, if by deep we mean a form of human feeling in which there was an especially strong consciousness that humanity stems from what is spiritual. The Egyptian initiate said to himself: “Wherever we turn our gaze, we feel in what surrounds us the decline from the original spiritual. Nowhere in the outer world is the spiritual to be found in its immediacy and purity. Only when man steps through the gate of death does he descry that from which he springs. Man must first die (in relation to inner experience, not in relation to initiation); then he becomes united with the Osiris-principle (so did the ancient Egyptian name the Christ principle); in life this cannot be done, that is the discrepancy. All that is in the periphery of the earth, this does not lead to Osiris; the soul must first have passed the portal of death to be united with Osiris. Then, in death, the soul becomes a piece of Osiris, it becomes itself a sort of Osiris. The world outside has become such that it dismembers Osiris through his enemy; that is, through all that belongs to the external world.”

And the initiate of the Egyptian mysteries said: “Mankind, as it now is in our culture, is a sort of reminiscence of the old Moon-time. As the culture of the seven holy Rishis is a sort of reminiscence of the old Saturn-time, as the Zarathustra culture is a reminiscence of the old Sun-time, so is the Osiris-culture a reminiscence of the old Moon-time when the Moon and its beings first separated from the sun, on which, however, remained the beings from whom man took his origin. At that time there took place the separation of man from the good forces of his organization, from the source of his life-forces. But, through the yearning and privation for the spiritual which will endure, the time will come for men when Osiris will descend and show himself as something which must come as a new impetus which was not before on earth, because already in the old Moon-time it had separated itself from the earth.”

All that to which the seven holy Rishis and Zarathustra pointed, and of which the Egyptians said that in their time men could not attain it during life, this was the force, the impulse, which for three years revealed itself in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. All great religions spoke of it; it revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all religions pointed. Thus not only Christians have spoken of Christ, but also the members of all ancient religions. Thus something entered into the course of human development which man needs and which is accessible to inner experience.

Let us assume that a man grows up on a lonely island. Those who have charge of his education tell him nothing of that happens in the world in regard to the name of Christ and to the Gospels; they give him only such culture as does not make use of the Gospels or the name of Christ, culture which may have come to birth under the influence of Christ, but divested of the name of Christ. What would happen in this case? In such a man the following mood would be bound to appear. He would say to himself one day: “Something lives in me which is in accord with my universal human organization; this I cannot at once grasp. For that in which my Ego-consciousness lives presents itself to me in such a way that I need something which cannot come to me through human culture, I need an impulse from the spiritual worlds, in order to make the Ego stronger again in its organization, from which it has emancipated itself.” If such a person can only feel strongly what man needs, then something can come over him from which he will recognize that, directly from spiritual worlds, something must stream out which penetrates directly into his Ego. He does not know that this is called Christ; but he does know that in his consciousness he can suffuse himself with it, that in his Ego he can foster this which comes to him from the spiritual worlds. Then something will come to him of which he may say: “Granted, I can be ill, I can be weak, I can die; but from my own Ego I can make myself stronger, I can send into my organization something which gives me strength and force directly out of the spiritual worlds.” It is indifferent what he calls this; if the man comes to this feeling, he is gripped by the Christ-impulse. That man is not gripped by the Christ-impulse who says he can have something from a teacher who has passed from incarnation to incarnation, but he who feels that directly from the spiritual world there can come impulses of force, of strength. Men can have this inner experience; without it men cannot live, without it men will not be able to live in the future. They can have this experience, because once, for three years, there lived objectively in Jesus of Nazareth this impulse which came directly out of the spiritual worlds. As it is true that a man can lay a seed in the earth, and that many other seeds can come from this one, so it is true that the Christ-impulse was once implanted into humanity, and that since that time there is something in humanity which was not there earlier.

This is why the Egyptian life was so tragic. Men felt that in their lives they could not come to Osiris; that they must first pass through the gate of death, to be united with him in inner experience. Of initiation we have still to speak. But since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that is possible which earlier was not possible: that of his own motion, out of his single incarnation, man seeks his connection with the spiritual world. And this is because the impulse which was given through the Mystery of Golgotha can flash up in every soul, and can enter, since that time, into every man through inner experience. Not the Christ Who was on earth—the soul does not trouble itself about Him—but the Christ Who is attainable through inner experience. Since the Mystery of Golgotha it is possible, in the single incarnations, to win a connection with the spiritual. And because this is so, there happened in the one fact of Golgotha something which can shine out into humanity, which is not given through the achievements of the successive incarnations. Therefore it is impossible that Christ should show himself in a way which is a consequence of many incarnations, as happened to Buddha from his incarnations as Bodhisatva.

Tomorrow we shall see how the path to the Christ in human evolution can be found for the future.

If I may indicate in a few words the point at which yesterday's considerations culminated, I would like to say that out of them the possibility should come to light for every man, through a deepening of his being, through a trust in the spiritual worlds, of causing to rise within him a soul-mood, a soul-disposition, which will say to him: “Into man flow not only the things which are in the periphery of the earth, not only those things which stem from the evolution of the earth itself, but it is possible for man to tune his soul in such a way that he receives out of the spiritual worlds helping forces which flow into him, which produce an equilibrium between the single egoistic I and the totality of his organization—if that possibility offers itself which has flowed into the earth-mission.” Whoever can attain this trust in this inflow from the spiritual worlds, no matter what he calls this inner event, this inner experience, has lived through the personal Christ-experience inwardly. The remainder of this matter will reveal itself to us if today we start by considering the third path to Christ, the path of initiation.

With the path through the Gospels, and the path through inner experience, we have the two paths to Christ which are accessible to every man: I say expressly—to every man. But to the path of initiation there belongs a certain preparation, as should be understandable to everyone. In our time this requires us to go deeply, in a real and not merely theoretical way, into the true, genuine spiritual science which, at least in our present time, must always be the point of departure, if we wish to understand what the way of initiation is. Regarding the essence of initiation it would be well to give a few introductory remarks in a certain direction. You see, initiation is the highest which man can achieve in the course of the Earth-evolution, for it leads man to a certain understanding, to a real insight into the secrets of the spiritual world. What occurs in the spiritual worlds is really the content, the object, of initiation, and a real knowledge, an immediate perception, of events in the spiritual worlds is attained on the path of initiation. When initiation is characterized in this way, something very special must strike everyone who lets this characterization work on his soul. This is really to say, fundamentally, that initiation is—allow me the expression—a super-religious way. The religions which in the course of human epochs have spread over the surface of the earth, and which still prevail among men, all of these, in so far as they are great religions, and in so far as we study them at their points of origin, were originally founded upon initiation, by initiates. They have flowed out of what great initiates have been able to give to men. But the religions were given in such a form that, in their contents, men received what was suitable to the time in which they lived, to the race to which they belonged, even to the region of the earth in which they lived.

Now today we live in a very special epoch of human evolution, and it is just the task of spiritual science to understand that we live in a special time. The way in which among our contemporaries spiritual science can be brought forth and spread, this was nowhere possible in past times. Anthroposophy as such could not be publicly taught. Only in our time do we begin to teach anthroposophy. The religions were once the channels through which the secrets of initiation were to be allowed to flow into mankind; to be allowed to flow in a manner suitable at a given time to a given group of men. But today we are in a position to give through anthroposophy something which is not adapted to a single race, to a single region, to a single group of men, but which can bring to every man, no matter where he finds himself on earth, something of those secrets of existence, for knowledge of which souls are yearning and which souls must have if hearts are to be strong for work on earth. But this already shows that through anthroposophy something is to be given which takes a standpoint higher than the religious standpoints were, or still are where these religious standpoints continue to be accepted. In a certain way anthroposophy is that which must propagate the secrets of initiation in a universal human way, whereas in the various ancient religious systems of the earth the secrets of initiation were always announced in a special manner, in a different way, adapted to the particular human group.

What follows from this? It follows that we find the most varied religions spread out over the earth, all of which point back to this or that founder. We find first the Krishna religion, leading back to Krishna; second, the Buddha religion, leading back to Buddha; third, the ancient Hebrew religion, leading back to Moses; and we find Christianity, leading back to Jesus of Nazareth. The religions having all flowed out of initiation, we must be quite clear that we cannot today take the position taken by the philosophers of religion who consider themselves “enlightened.” The philosophers of comparative religion have a secret outlook on religions; they regard them all either as false or as childish stages of human development. But we, as anthroposophists, since we learn to know that the religions are only different formulations of the truths of initiation, are in a position to grasp the true and not the false in the various religious systems. We do justice to all the religious systems in comparison with one another. We regard them as equally justified revelations of the great truths of initiation.

And from this follows something terribly important for practical feeling and practical activity. What is this important thing? That out of the anthroposophical mood will proceed complete understanding, hearty respect, and full recognition of the core of truth in all religions; and that those who, out of an anthroposophical attitude, reflect on the world and its course of development, will respect the truths of the various religious systems. There will be the highest esteem and respect. Yes, my dear friends, from the anthroposophical spiritual stream will result the following for the various religious confessions on earth: A man will go to the adherents of any religious system, and he will not think himself able to graft on to them, or inoculate them with, other confessions. Much rather will we go to them and, out of our own religious faith, discern what there is of truth in their faith. And a man who is born in a region where a particular religion holds sway will not, on account of this religion, intolerantly reject all other religions, but he will be able to approach them on the basis of what, as truth, is contained in the different religions. Let us take an example. Such an example can be grasped only by those who, in the depths of their soul, take seriously the anthroposophical attitude and all that must follow from a knowledge of the fundamental conditions of initiation. Let us assume that an Occidental has grown up within Christianity. He will perhaps have learned to know Christianity through having taken into himself the great truths of the Gospels. Perhaps he has already attained also to what is called the path to Christ Jesus through inner experience; perhaps in his inner experience he has already experienced the Christ. Let us assume that he now becomes acquainted with another religion, Buddhism for example. From those who stand within the sacred truths and knowledge of Buddhism, he learns to know something which is an annoyance to the materialistic Occidental but which we anthroposophists can understand: He learns to know that the founder of this religion, after having lived through many incarnations on earth as a Bodhisatva, was reborn as the son of King Sudhodana; he learns to know that in the twenty-ninth year of his life as Bodhisatva he rose to Buddha, and that with this rising to Buddha there is given in this religion—since it stems from initiation—the one great truth which is valid not only for Buddhism but for all men, and which is acknowledged by every initiate and by all men who understand Buddhism; he learns to know that the adherent of Buddhism says justly: “When the Bodhisatva becomes Buddha in a human incarnation, then this incarnation which the Buddha has to go through on earth is the last. Then he does not come back again in a human body.”

To one who stands within Buddhism it would be acutely painful, if it were asserted that the Buddha would return again in a fleshly body. Such an adherent of the Buddha would be deeply distressed, if anyone were to dispute this truth, saying that the Bodhisatva who became a Buddha could again at some time appear upon the earth in a physical body. But we anthroposophists recognize the truth in the religions; we take the position of seeking the truth of the various religions and not their error. So we go to those who understand Buddhism and we learn to know—or learn out of initiation to know—that it is true that that individuality who lived as Bodhisatva on earth and became a Buddha has since that time reached spiritual heights from which he need not again descend to this physical globe. From that moment on, if we stand on the ground of the doctrine of reincarnation, we shall no longer thrust upon the Buddhist the assertion that the Buddha could reappear in a physical body. Genuine knowledge will create an understanding for every form of religion proceeding out of initiation. We respect the religious forms which have been developed on earth, in that we recognize the truth which they have to give. Yes, my dear friends, I acknowledge as frankly and honestly as the strictest Buddhist this truth, that the Bodhisatva who was on earth and rose to Buddha reached therewith a height of human development which made it possible for him no longer to descend to earth. This is what we call having an understanding for the various forms of religion on the earth.

Let us take the opposite case: That an adherent of Buddhism should make his way to anthroposophical knowledge. Either out of a real knowledge of Christianity or out of the principle of initiation, he would allow it to become clear to him that in another region of the earth there is another form of religion, and that those who understand this religion are quite clear about the following: That there once lived a personality who really belonged to no nation, least of all to the Occident, and that from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year there lived in this personality that impulse, that force of the spiritual life, to which we pointed yesterday; to which, in their Vishvakarman, the seven holy Rishis also pointed; to which, in his Ahura-Mazdao, Zarathustra also pointed; to which, as their Osiris, the Egyptians also pointed; and which the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period named Christ. But that is not the point: The point is to recognize in Christ that which lived as an impulse for three years in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which was not previously present on earth, that which descended from spiritual heights into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which in this personality went through the Mystery of Golgotha, and that which as such a Christ-impulse is a once-appearing impulse for the earth and is not connected with any ordinary incarnation of mankind; that which was thus once present as Christ and can never return in any man, but will come, as the Bible says, in the clouds of heaven—meaning that as a spiritual revelation it will show itself to men. This is a Christian avowal.

Now, one who stands within Buddhism, imbued with theosophical earnestness and theosophical dignity, will have to recognize that he must pay attention to and respect this Christian avowal just as the Christian must respect his. The Buddhist who has risen to theosophy and takes it seriously will say: “Just as you as a Christian approach with trust the teaching that the Bodhisatva who became a Buddha will no more return to the earth, just as it seems to me fitting that you know that the Buddha cannot return, so I as a Buddhist acknowledge that what you call Christ cannot return in a physical incarnation, but as a once-appearing impulse lived only for three years in a physical human body.”—If in anthroposophy we find the reciprocal understanding of the religions in such a way that the initiation-principle can penetrate into man's heart in such a way that one man shall not impose an alien opinion on others, then we produce an understanding which unites men over the whole earth, we establish peace between the single religions on earth.

In Christianity the founder of the religion is Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian initiation-principle is concerned with the religion's founder, Jesus of Nazareth, only as with a fact, as with a fact which can be examined by occultists as a fact. With the same love, with the same care, as are used in examining the life of Buddha or of another founder of a religion, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is examined by those who are acquainted with the principle of religion. How this life of Jesus of Nazareth appears from the standpoint of pure occultism you will find described in my pamphlet: The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind. But the true Christian initiation-principle concerns itself with recognizing Christ, with the way to Christ. And this Christian religious principle was preparing for many years what was just now described as a principle of peace for the whole earth, in that it clearly does not proceed from the founder of a religion as such, but from a fact which occurred once in the world.

That is the basic difference between Christianity and the other religions. What the initiation-principle which leads to Christ has as a task in the world is different from the cultures which have proceeded from the other religious principles. What the Christian initiation-principle has as a task within the world-mission proceeded from a fact, from an event, not from a personality. This will be understandable if we mention first some preliminary conditions. We can put forward a single sentence, a single statement, and we have then characterized, although externally, the starting point of esoteric Christianity, of Christian initiation: It is the death which was experienced in the uniting of Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The fact of this death, which we call the Mystery of Golgotha, is what should be understood through the principle of Christian initiation. Now, a true understanding of this death can be won only if we make quite clear to ourselves the mission of death within our earth-evolution. Yesterday we pointed out that frailty, infirmity, illness, and death are connected with the lack of harmony between our Ego, permeated by the Luciferic principle, and our organization. Death, after all, is connected with the Luciferic principle, and that in a very special way. It would be an entirely false idea if we were to assume that Lucifer brought death. Lucifer did not bring death, he brought what we can call the possibility of error (also of moral error), the differentiation of men into races, and the possibility of freedom. Lucifer brought these things. If only what Lucifer brought had been efficacious in mankind, if nothing had been opposed to him, then this Luciferic principle would have led to the point where mankind would have fallen out, would have broken out, of the progressive divine evolution. Man would indeed have spiritualized himself, but in an entirely different direction from that to which the progressive divine evolution led. To retain mankind within this divine evolution, to prevent mankind's being lost for the divine evolution, a particular arrangement had to be set up: Man had to be continually reminded of what the consequences are if he misuses the possibility of error and of freedom. All illness, frailty, infirmity, and death are reminders that man would have to estrange himself from the progressive divine evolution if, in addition to having the Luciferic freedom, he were healthy and full of energy. Thus illness, infirmity, and death are not gifts of Lucifer, but gifts of the good, wisdom-filled divine powers, who have therewith set up a dike against the influences of Lucifer.

Thus we must say that all that confronts us in the world as continuous human tribulation coming from outside, as illness and death, is there in order that we men may remain fettered to earth-existence until we have an opportunity to make amends; in order that we may have an education which will adapt us to our organization. We suffer in order that out of our suffering we may gain experience and find an equilibrium between our Lucifer-permeated Ego and our divinely-permeated organization. Our organization falls away from us repeatedly, until we have completely imbued ourselves, in our Ego, with the laws of the evolution which is progressive in a divine sense. Every death is therefore a point of departure for something else. Man cannot die without taking with him that which gives him the possibility of sometime overcoming death in his successive incarnations. All our pains are there in order that out of suffering we may gain the experience of how we must adapt ourselves to our progressing divine organization. This question, however, cannot be discussed apart from its connection with all of evolution.

We can study such a thing especially well if we examine occultly the connections between man and the next lower kingdom, the animal kingdom. We know that in the course of evolution man has always inflicted pain on the animals, that he has killed the animals. One who learns to know the Karma of human life often finds it highly unjust that the animal, which does not reincarnate, should suffer, should bear pain, and even, in the case of the higher animals, should go through death with a certain consciousness. Should no Karmic compensation take place here? Naturally, the human being has to make a Karmic compensation in Kamaloka for the pain which he inflicts on animals, but I am not speaking of this now; I am speaking of the compensation for the animals. Let us make one thought clear: If we consider human evolution, we see how much pain man has strewn over the animal kingdom and how many animals he has killed. What do these pains and these deaths mean in the course of evolution?

Occult study shows us that every pain which is inflicted on a pain-feeling being other than man, every death, is a seed for the future. Animals, as they are willed by the progressive divine evolution, are not destined to have incarnations like man. But, if a change comes into this wisdom-filled world-plan, if man intervenes and does not leave the evolution of the animals to be as it would have been without man, what happens then? Now, you see, occult research teaches us that every pain, every death, inflicted by man on the animals, will return and arise again, not through reincarnation, but because pain and death have been inflicted on the animals. This pain and suffering call up animality again. These animals on which pain has been inflicted will arise again, though not in the same form; but that which feels pain in them, that comes again. It comes again in such a way that the sufferings of the animals are compensated, so that to every pain its complementary feeling is added. These pains, these sufferings, this death, these are the seed which man has sown; they return in such a way that to every pain its contrary feeling is added in the future. To use a concrete example: When Earth is replaced by Jupiter, the animals will not appear in their present form, but their pains and sufferings will awaken the forces for the feeling of pain. They will live in men, and will embody themselves as parasitic animals in men. Out of the sensations and feelings of these men, out of their pains, the compensation will be created. This is the occult truth, which can be stated objectively and unadorned even if it is not pleasant to the man of today. Man will one day suffer this, and the animals will have, in a certain well-being, in a pleasant feeling, the compensation for their pains. This already happens slowly and gradually in the course of present-day earth-life, no matter how strange this seems. Why are men plagued by beings which are really neither animals nor plants, but stand between the two, by bacilli and similar creatures, which feel a well-being when man suffers? They have brought this upon themselves in earlier incarnations through inflicting pain and death on animals. For the being, though not appearing in the same form, feels this across time and feels the compensation for its pains in the suffering which man must undergo. Thus all the pain and suffering in the world are positively not without consequences. It is a seed from which proceeds what is caused by pain, suffering, and death. There can be no suffering, no pain, no death, without causing something which springs up later on.

Let us consider in this light the death on Golgotha, which followed from the uniting of Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The first thing which becomes clear to anyone who goes through the requisite initiation is that this death on Golgotha was no ordinary death on earth, no ordinary human or other death. Persons who do not yet believe in the super-sensible can form no conception of this death on Golgotha. For even externally this Mystery of Golgotha has something very strange, something from which man has much to learn. This is that no historical writings tell of the Mystery of Golgotha, and the critics of the Gospels assert that the Gospels are in no way authoritative as historical documents. Principles of initiation are applied to that which was not written out of historical observation. What happened on Golgotha can still be perceived today by initiates, can still be seen today in the Akashic Record by people who undergo initiation. The writers of the Gospels also wrote only out of the Akashic Record; an event is described for which the original writers of the Gospels never thought of calling in the aid of perceptions on the physical plane. So strong was then the consciousness that one had to do here with something which stood in relation to the super-sensible worlds, and that the most important thing was to gain a relation to the super-sensible worlds. Out of the sense-world no right relation to these events can be won. What happened becomes clear through initiation. One could say that at the beginning of our era there lived a man, Jesus of Nazareth; that in the 30th year of his life he experienced a certain change through the reception of the Christ, and that after three years he was crucified. This would signify an event for the progressive history of mankind. If this were said, it would be the opposite of what the initiate learns to know; it would be an affair of men on earth, no matter how spiritualized it might become. With the initiation-principle, this is not the point.

Fundamentally, it might be said—but you must not misunderstand me—radically, it might be said that, at first glance, what happened on Golgotha was not an event which concerned men in so far as they are on the physical plane. At first glance! Not in the way in which it is related: A man once lived, Jesus of Nazareth, at the beginning of our era, who in the 30th year of his life experienced a certain change through the reception of the Christ, and was then crucified in his 33rd year—not so is the initiation-truth of Christianity told. It must be stated entirely differently.

It must be stated approximately thus: One who is to be initiated into the Christian principle learns the following: Before this Earth there was a Moon-condition. During this Moon-condition the Luciferic beings remained behind. These Luciferic beings developed further, alongside the progressive divine spiritual beings. In the Lemurian time Lucifer drew near to men, injected himself into the human earth-evolution, and brought about what was characterized yesterday. Thus Lucifer was inside the whole human development. Had human evolution continued in this way with Lucifer, it would gradually have happened that the mission of the Earth would not have reached its goal; man would have dried up, the human Ego would have separated from, would have broken out of, the divine spiritual evolution. On the old Moon a series, so to speak, of beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds learned that Lucifer had become rebellious, that he had taken up a position hostile to them. Thus the gods were compelled to see that Lucifer had become the adversary of the progressive divine development.—One can at first completely ignore all that concerns man in this. Let us consider all this as the affair of the gods and of their adversaries, the Luciferic beings, and let us consider mankind as a creation of the gods. This was the situation.

Now, there is a certain peculiarity in the spiritual, in the super-sensible, worlds. One thing is not present there which is present on the earth; death, in all its forms, is not found there. In the super-sensible worlds one transforms oneself, but one does not die. Metamorphoses, not birth and death, are present there. For example, the group-souls which are in the super-sensible worlds do not die; they transform, metamorphose themselves. Birth and death do not exist there, where the effects of the physical world have never reached. Only where the traits of the physical world have already been transmitted to a certain extent to the beings of the spiritual world, there is something which may be regarded as analogous to death, as with the spirits of nature; but we cannot go into this today. In the real super-sensible world there is no birth or death, only transformation, metamorphosis.

For the divine spiritual beings who may be designated the creators of men, birth and death do not come into consideration. Lucifer also does not incarnate himself as a human being in the physical world. He works in man through man; uses men as his vehicle, as it were. Thus we have to do with the gods and with the Luciferic beings, who look down, so to speak, upon their creations. Had evolution continued in this way, had nothing happened in the world of the gods, then the intention of the gods for men would never have been fulfilled; Lucifer would have thwarted the plan of the gods. The gods had to make a sacrifice—that was their concern—they had to experience something which was related to their sphere in such a way that it really could not be experienced by gods if they remained in their own sphere: They had to send from their own ranks down to the physical plane a being who experienced something which otherwise gods in the spiritual worlds cannot experience. The gods had to send the Christ down to earth to do battle with the Luciferic principle. In the course of time, when the time was fulfilled, the gods, whom we group together under the name of the divine Father-world, sent down the Christ in order that he should learn to know the unending pains of men, which mean something entirely different for a god from what they mean for a man. Therewith the gods entered the earth-sphere to do battle with the Luciferic spirits. A god had to suffer death on the cross, the most disgraceful human death, as Paul especially emphasizes.

We were allowed, once in the Earth's development, to be witnesses—because we looked as through a window into the spiritual worlds—of an affair of the gods.

Previously—so says the initiation-principle—man was compelled under all circumstances to rise into the divine-spiritual worlds in order to take part in the initiation-principle. The initiation-principle stands before the whole of mankind in the Mystery of Golgotha, an event which is at the same time sensible on the physical plane (if men would only see it) and super-sensible, a true affair of the gods. This is the essential thing, that a god once went through death, as a counterpoise to Lucifer, and that men were allowed to look on. This is what the initiation-principle gives as Christian wisdom, and this is the real origin of the faith that to men, as men, something can flow as a force which can take them beyond the earth-sphere and beyond death; because once the gods settled their affair on earth and allowed men to look on. Therefore that which streams out from the Mystery of Golgotha is something universally human. And if every pain, every suffering, every death has its effect (even those inflicted by men on animals) so does this death also have its effect. This death was a seed sown by the gods; it was something which remained bound up with the earth, and has remained bound up with it ever since, remained bound up with it in such a way that every man, through trust, through love for the spiritual worlds, will find it. He does find it!

The initiate knows that this is so; the believing-trusting man feels that from the spiritual worlds help can come to him for his striving, if he can only develop enough belief and trust. This will develop itself in a very definite way.

There were those who were contemporaries of the Egyptian initiates. Through initiation these initiates had made quite clear to their pupils the whole tragedy of the conflict of the gods with Lucifer, by setting before men symbolically in their mysteries the Osiris-Set myth. Just yesterday we considered what feelings the Osiris-Set myth called forth in the Egyptians. There lived the divine-spiritual to which men wished to attain; this was called Osiris. But on earth the human being cannot unite himself with Osiris; he must first go through the gate of death. On earth Osiris could not live; he was immediately dismembered; this was not the place for what was incarnated in Osiris. The last culture epoch before the Graeco-Latin looked up to Christ, to the Osiris-principle, as to a Beyond. Then came the Greek time, which was so deeply imbued with the feeling that it was better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades. In the time in which this was still felt in Greece, in the time of the old heroes, men felt the whole discrepancy between the Ego, permeated by the Luciferic principle, and the progressive human organization. Men felt then that the fourth post-Atlantean culture period ran its course in such a way that they had to crowd in a great deal of what man can experience just here on earth. Thence the abnormal, the singular, in this period. In no other time do so many remarkable series of incarnations occur as in this fourth period. Men had to do a great deal here on earth, because they now looked more on this world than on the worlds beyond, as the third culture epoch had still done. The Greeks did not prize this incorporation into Osiris; they were more occupied with cramming as much as possible into the human incarnations, they wanted to get as much as possible out of the incarnation. Thence the remarkable fact that Pythagoras, the great initiator of a certain line of Greek culture, in an earlier incarnation had fought as a Trojan hero on the side of the Trojans. He himself says that he was a Trojan hero, mentioned in Homer, and that he recognized himself as an enemy of the Greeks because he recognized his shield. When Pythagoras says that he had been Euphorbos, anthroposophy teaches a full understanding of this assertion. The Greeks, even the greatest among them, laid especial value on what the single physical incarnations meant for them.

But the fourth post-Atlantean period had also to lead men to feel the spiritual worlds in their full significance, for in that time fell the Mystery of Golgotha. At the time when men in Greece were prizing the outer world most, there occurred in an unknown corner of the world the Mystery of Golgotha; on the earthly stage, where otherwise men carry out their human affairs, the gods carried out their own affairs.

Just as the Egyptian learned to look up to death when he thought of his Osiris, so man learned to know, in the fourth post-Atlantean period, how a contemporary religious form was present, in which lived the impulse which could bring to men the feeling that in this physical world something takes place which is really an affair of the gods; that there takes place the living refutation of that which the Greeks had until then believed—“Better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shades.” For now the Greeks learned to know him who, as a king, had descended from the realm of the gods, and, as a beggar, had lived out his destiny on earth among men. That was the answer to the feeling of the fourth past-Atlantean period. But this is also that complex of feelings from which the rays for the future earth-development can proceed. The Egyptian had looked up to Osiris, who for him was the Christ, in order to unite himself with him after death; in the fourth post-Atlantean period man looked upon the Mystery of Golgotha as the contemporary act which taught men that in the physical world an event had taken place which was an affair of the gods.

We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In our fifth post-Atlantean period men will add the great teachings of Karma to the other teaching, they will learn to understand their karma. In our fifth post-Atlantean period, human beings are experiencing the third act which follows consistently after the Osiris act and the act of the Mystery of Golgotha. They will learn to grasp the idea: “I am placed on earth through birth; my destiny is on earth; I experience joy and sorrow; I must understand that what I experience as joy and sorrow does not approach me in vain, that it is my Karma, and that it comes to me because it is my Karma, my great educator. I look upon that which was before my birth, which placed me in this incarnation, because this, my destiny, is necessary for my further development. Who sent me hither? Who will continue to place me on this earth, into my destiny, until I have discharged my Karma? I shall owe this to the Christ that men can ever more be called to suffer their destinies, until they have discharged their Karma on earth.” Therefore Jesus of Nazareth, out of whom Christ spoke, could not say to men; “Try to escape as fast as possible out of the physical body”...but he had to say to men: “I will place you into your destinies on this earth so long as you have not discharged your Karma. You must discharge your Karma.” Men will learn as we approach the future that they were united with Christ before birth, that they have received from him the grace of discharging their old Karma in the incarnations.

Thus did the men of the fourth post-Atlantean period look up to Jesus of Nazareth as the bearer of the Christ. Thus will the men of our time learn that the Christ will reveal himself ever more supersensibly, and will govern more and more the threads of Karma in the affairs of the earth. They will learn to know that spiritual power as that destiny which the Greeks could not yet recognize, which will bring men to the point of discharging their Karma in the most fitting way in the successive incarnations. As to a judge, as to a lord of Karma, men will look up to the Christ in the succession of incarnations, when they experience their destiny. Thus men will stand in such a relation to their destiny that they will be stimulated increasingly to deepen their souls, until they can say to themselves: “This destiny is not allotted to me through an impersonal power, this destiny is allotted to me through that with which I feel myself related in my inmost being. In Karma itself I perceive what is related to my being. My Karma is dear to me because it makes me better and better.” Thus one learns to love Karma, and then this is the impulse to know the Christ. Men first learned to love their Karma through the Mystery of Golgotha. And this will continue further and further, and men will learn more and more that under Lucifer's influence alone the earth would never have been able to reach its goal, that the evolution of mankind would have had to become more and more corrupt without the Christ.

But Christianity does not look upon the Christ as a personality, as the founder of an abstract religious system. In our present time the founder of a religion, in accordance with the demands of our time, only brings about discords. Not from a personality does the Christian initiation proceed, but from a fact, from an impersonal act of the gods which took place before the eyes of men. That is why this secret of Golgotha, this event which took place at the beginning of our era and from which went forth the seed of this unique death, the seed from which now grows man's love for his destiny, for his Karma, has been transmitted to mankind in a special way.

We have seen that the death which man inflicts on animals has a certain consequence. The death on Golgotha works as a seed in the human soul which feels its relation to the Christ. So was it with the Mystery of Golgotha: The One died, and just as a single seed is laid in the earth, in order that it die and spring up in the field, and that there be an increase of that which proceeded from the one seed, so the death of a god was realized on the cross. The seed was strewn on Golgotha, the soil was the human soul; what springs up are the relations of man to the super-sensible Christ, who will never more disappear from the evolution of the earth, who will always appear to men in the most varied ways. As men were able to see him physically in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so will they be able to raise themselves to see in the near future an etheric Christ-image; they will see the Christ as Paul saw him.

That which is contained in the Christian initiation was preserved in the symbol of the Holy Grail; it was brought into that community which imparts the Christian initiation. For those who receive the Christian initiation what is said here is not an abstract theory, not an hypothesis, but a fact of the super-sensible worlds. The cultivation of the Christian initiation was entrusted to those who were the guardians of the Holy Grail, and later to the fosterers of the community of the Rose Cross. What proceeds from the Christian initiation should, according to its whole nature, work impersonally. Everything personal should be excluded therefrom; for the personal has brought only quarrels and strife into humanity, and will do this increasingly in the future. Therefore it is a strict rule for those who, symbolically speaking, serve the Holy Grail or, speaking literally, serve the cultivation of the Christian initiation, that none of those who have a leading part of the first order to play within the brotherhood of the Holy Grail or the community of the Rose Cross—neither they nor those who live in their surroundings—may speak of the secrets which they know and which work in them, before the passage of one hundred years after their deaths. There is no possibility of learning the complete truth about a leading personality of the first order until one hundred years have passed after his death.

This has been a strict law within the Rosicrucian community since its foundation. Exoterically, no one knows who is a leader in the Rosicrucian community until one hundred years have passed after his death. Then what he has given has already passed over into humanity, has become the objective property of mankind. Thus everything personal is excluded. Never will it be possible to point to a personality in an earthly body as a carrier of the Christian mystery. Only a hundred years after the death of such a personality would this be possible. This is a law which all the brothers of the Rose-Cross well observe. Never will a Rosicrucian brother point to a living personality as a leader of the first order in relation to that which, as Christian initiation, should flow into humanity. In ancient times one could point prophetically to those who would come: The prophets were preceded by their forerunners, their prophets, and these prophets pointed to the founders of religions who should come later; in the time of Jesus of Nazareth the contemporaries, for example the Baptist, pointed to him who was their contemporary; but the spiritual organization of mankind, after the Mystery of Golgotha, of necessity became altered in such wise that it can no longer be the prophet's way to point to a personality who will come or who is already present. On the contrary, a person who was a bearer of the Christian mystery, of that spiritual fact which is tested by the hearts of men, will first be pointed out a hundred years after he has passed from the physical plane through the gates of death.

All these things do not happen out of human caprice, but because they must happen. They must happen because humanity now stands before a time when love, peace, and understanding must spread in the process of the development of mankind. But they will spread only if we learn to take impersonally what is present, if we learn to champion the truth-containing element which has been given to mankind in the course of human evolution. Never more shall we, if as Occidentals we meet a Buddhist, seek to make him a Christian through persuasion or compulsion; for we believe that what has been given to him, and is the deepest thing in his religion, will surely lead him to the Christ. We believe above all things in his own truth; we will not injure the feelings of the Buddhist by saying it is not true that the founder of his religion, after he had lived among men as a Bodhisattva, has as a Buddha no expectation of further physical incarnations. Thereby we establish peace between the religious confessions. In this way, in the future the Christian will understand the Buddhist, and the Buddhist will understand the Christian. The Buddhist who will understand Christianity will say: “I understand that the Christian makes his religious principle something impersonal, an impersonal fact, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha, an affair of the gods which man may watch and through which he may receive what can connect him with the divine.” No reasonable Buddhist will come to the Christian and say that the Christ can be incarnated in a physical body. On the contrary he would see in this a transgression of the true religious principle. And so no new discord-producing confession with a religious leader of a personal sort will be brought into the world, but the initiation principle itself with its peace, its harmony, its way of producing understanding, will meet all religions with vivifying understanding, and will not wish to force the truth of one religion upon another. As the Oriental Buddhist would answer to the Occidental who said to him that the Buddha could appear in a fleshly body: “Then you do not understand the matter, you do not know what a Buddha is” so would the Buddhist who had grasped the true heart of Christianity, and who stood for spiritual knowledge in earnestness and dignity, reply to one who should speak to him of a Christ incarnated in the flesh: “You do not understand Christianity if you believe that the Christ comes again in a physical body; you understand Christianity just as little as one understands Buddhism who believes that the Buddha would appear in a fleshly body.” What the Christian, if he is an anthroposophist, will always grant to the Buddhist; this will the Buddhist, if he is an anthroposophist, always grant also to the Christian. And so with every adherent of every religious confession of the earth. Thus will anthroposophy bring the great and understanding union, the synthesis of the religious confessions on the earth.

In speaking to-day as one must, if one speaks from the way of thinking that underlay, and underlies, the impulse towards the threefold social order, one cannot fail with one's whole soul to have been following the events of the times; and so one well knows, that one is talking into a storm. And although many people still remain unaware of the storm, yet the storm nevertheless is raging. So that one may well be filled with a kind of amazement, when, answering back, from a blank unconsciousness of this storm, one hears the reply,—which we have heard in these days,—“All ideology! a mere Utopia!”

It is from the actual events of the times that we shall seek to-night to refute the notion, that the impulse towards the threefold social order can be treated as a piece of unpractical idealism, a ‘Utopia,’ or that it has in it anything whatever ‘ideologic.’

Since the present Appeal [Aufruf an das deutsche Volk und die Kulturwelt (“Appeal to the German People and the Civilised World”), issued early in 1919.], as need hardly be said, goes out in the first place from the experience of a particular person, you will find it excusable, if a very natural astonishment at this reproach of ‘utopianism’ and ‘ideology’ leads me to begin with just a few introductory remarks which might perhaps he thought personal. But it is only too true in these days, that everything personal—which is not deliberately shut up in its own walls, hut can live with the life of mankind—may, through the grave events of the times, be something also which is very commonly human, and therefore perhaps a very good example of what is commonly human in these present anxious days,—with the undoubted prospect of a still more anxious future.

First came this Appeal to the German People and the Civilised World, where the Threefold Order of the Body Social was first set forth in the form now being propagated by the League for the Threefold Order. And this then was followed up by my book on the Roots of the Social Question, or the Life-needs of To-day and Tomorrow [Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft. Published in England under the title “The Threefold Commonwealth.”].

Such things as these are not put forward without reason by a man who had no wish to do so, and no power to do so, until close upon his sixtieth year of life. In no way whatever do they originate in any sort of theoretic reasonings or ingenious propositions; they originate in the fullness of life and of the observation of life. And probably they would even to-day not have become public, if the person who made them public had not been led by the actual events of the times to the conviction, that in these critical times so much is being done which is not practical, and so much finds its way into men's heads which is Utopian and ideologic, that, if anyone has something to put in place of all this, which ij3 practical, it is nothing less than his bounden duty to speak out, and make this life-practicality known.—And yet, Echo answers: Utopia! Ideology! Impracticable idealism!

You will therefore pardon me, if I make a few remarks of a personal kind, by way of introduction.—It was not from any feeling of personal attraction that I was induced to come forward with this thing, after having spent long years in one of the three fields in question, doing as much as in me lay to put this particular field onto its legs again,—it having been, in my opinion, stood upon its head by our modern form of culture. After having been busily engaged for some twenty or thirty years past in working at what I call Spiritual Science, it was really not any personal attraction that led me to extend into the other two fields of life as well, but simply the urgent necessity imposed upon a man by the present times.

What stood so menacingly before my eyes, long years ago, as the terrible problem of our civilisation, was this: that our modern spiritual life, through the peculiar character which leads to its most triumphant successes on the one side,—namely in the field of natural science,—is on the other disqualified from laying hold upon actual human life,—the life, that is, which goes beyond such things as proceed solely from the natural world; that this same spiritual life could therefore ... and this was what stood as the terrible menace of civilisation before my mind's eye ... that this spiritual life could never therefore prove qualified to grasp those great social problems which mankind is urgently called upon to solve at this present day. For the social problem is, ultimately, a spiritual one. Nobody is in a position to grasp it in its truth, who cannot grasp it from its spiritual aspect. Here, in the grasping of spiritual things, I felt myself more peculiarly at home; and this too I more peculiarly felt to be the home where I did not find the kind of hearing that I should have liked to find, so that what was only words might have passed over into acts, into a reformation of that spiritual life which was no longer capable of actually entering into human life and permeating it. Still, I would gladly have kept within this special field, if it had not been for all the things that arose out of the events of these last few years,—things, that so very plainly showed the way men go hunting after Utopias and ideologies, and never manage to grasp the really practical thing at their door, except from the aspect of some “grey theory” or some party dogma.

In the midst of the war-troubles, when I thought the time had come, when one might expect mankind to be beginning to see that any further prolongation of these war-troubles would inevitably lead to the ruin of Central and Eastern Europe, I then for the first time drafted the outlines of the scheme which has now come out, for the threefold social order. For I could see coming up, as the war went on, a terrible Utopia; a Utopia,—but one which unfortunately, from the peculiar circumstances of the times, exerted a very real influence. Its real influence was due to two properties which it possessed: In itself, in its substance, it was an unmixed Utopia. And again, in what went along with it, it was something which had been launched into the world by the interests of actual groups of human beings, and was peculiarly fitted to delude all such people as think themselves practical whilst running after every sort of utopia, and to conceal from these people the fact, that this Utopia had its origin simply in human and, in this case, purely economic interests. One could see it; one could see this Utopia, coming up on the mental horizon of the day. One could see how, in the western world, this Utopia acted upon people in such a way as not only to create certain tones of mind; but also—because it was a Utopia that coincided with very practical interests (though these interests didn't come to expression in what it said)—that this Utopia had the power to set armies marching, and to propel ships across the seas. And greater and ever greater grew the following of this Utopia in the countries of the West. And finally this Utopia assumed the shape of the so-called Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson.

In Germany, there would have been, at that time, no sense in doing so: in Switzerland, (where it was necessary to speak out the truth in this direction during the war), I repeatedly pointed out the Utopian character, on the one hand, of this Wilson-Programme, and, on the other, its economic character, that had its source solely in the economic conditions of the West.

So strong was the influence of this Utopia, that in the autumn of 1918 it not only found general adherence on the side of the Entente; but that in Germany, in addition to the military capitulation there came the capitulation of the spirit,—the capitulation to Wilson's Utopia,—and through the very man to whom the German People in their day of destiny looked as to their last hope.—Before it had yet taken shape in the Fourteen Points, at a time when this World Utopia was still only on the horizon, I tried to set on paper what ought to be put forward in opposition to this World Utopia as a Central European Reality. In not one quarter, where the matter should have obtained a hearing, was it possible to find any understanding for the thing which, from its inherent practicality, was fitted to be matched against a World-Utopia. At that time, they thought it very practical to trumpet into the world phrases about: ‘the rule amongst men of Might and Right.’ Those were the statesmen, who could get as far as threadbare definitions of Might and Right, but couldn't get as far as anything concrete, as really laying hold of something that was real. Never shall we get clear of confusion and chaos, until we grow able to lay practical hold on what is really practical!

As I told you, I neither wished, nor in a way was I able, to bring this thing to public notice until close upon my sixtieth year of life. For the thing goes back in retrospect to what I myself had experienced in my own life as a working-class child amongst the working classes,—where I learnt the note that rose up from the working classes of to-day, (that is, of those days,) and from the din of economic life with its toils and its troubles, in the 'sixties and 'seventies of the nineteenth century. I made acquaintance with what today is termed ‘class-struggles,’ through the ample opportunities my destiny gave me of becoming acquainted with the classes. I learnt to know the working class as myself a member of the working class. Later on, I learnt to know the middle-class with all its habits and ways: its short-sightedness for the real practical requirements of the times, its absorption in the interests of the one particular class, its indifference to everything that lies outside these particular class-Interests. And I learnt to know that class of people too from direct intercourse in life, who deal in the ‘big politics’ of the day. And in this way I acquired a direct picture of what is actually living in the age: of the struggle between the different classes of mankind. Believe me, I have been brought into near touch with the needs, the toils and troubles, the various destinies, of all those classes, of which to-day we are obliged to speak, because the great audit of accounts is beginning with regard to class-differences.

There was one thing only to which circumstances kept me a stranger; and to this I remained a very thorough stranger. I have always been kept aloof by circumstances from any sort of association with one or other party. In all my life I have never be* longed to any party whatever. I have had to do with any number of party-men, I have become acquainted with any number of party-programmes and party-opinions; but I never belonged to any party. In Austria, where my youth was spent, I could neither elect nor be elected, for the simple reason that, in those days, nobody might elect or be elected, who did not possess a yearly income amounting to a considerable figure. Afterwards, I never was in any place where I had a chance of giving my vote, for the simple reason, that my temporary residence in two other countries never gave me citizen's rights in either country. No circumstances of party, no schemes of party, have any share in what comes before the world today as the Impulse for the Threefold Social Order. Nothing has any share in this impulse, save what can be acquired in the course of a life spent in learning to know the needs, the demands, the conditions and circumstances of all the many human beings living side by side in the various classes. And when a practical way of life is then sketched out to-day on premises such as these, then one is told that this practical way of life is a ‘Utopia,’ an ‘ideology!’

For me the whole thing is a symptom: it is a symptom of the mentality of the age, that the very thing today which is out against all utopianisms, should itself be taken for a Utopia by all those utopian-minded people who fill the ranks of parties—or other posts in human society. I venture to say that, from the needs of the costermonger and the day-labourer, up to the needs of the big capitalists or of the people—for there is that sort too!—who, as diplomatists, have been concerned in the world's destinies during these last twenty or thirty years, that all this has come together in the thing, which of course in this first Appeal had to be compressed into a few short sentences. And there has gone into it too, whatever the experience of an elementary school teacher, up to that of a member of the upper universities, can contribute towards the practice of real life to-day. This seems, and seemed, to me the only possible way of acquiring the ground from which one can attempt to approach the great social problem of our times.

The social problem of our times: in what does it find its expression?—It finds expression in everything, from what the costermonger enters with a stumpy pencil in his pocket-book as his takings and outlay, up to all those creations of the mind that go out into the world as spiritual impulses to give mankind a direction and an aim. All these things to-day involve vast, wide-reaching problems, which we require to consider, before we can enter upon anything, big or little, that concerns the social question and the tasks it lays upon us.

I spoke just now of, call it a revolution, or call it a reform, in the character of our spiritual life, and said, that I looked upon this as the province where I was peculiarly at home. And I said, that the great anxiety, the great problem of civilisation which faced me here, was, that this spiritual life, in the reactionary and conservative form in which it has lingered down into our days, is suited to lay the basis for a great science of the natural world, but is bound to remain sterile and unproductive, when it comes to really grasping the will-forces at work in social life. This is a fact, one might say, which to-day is palpable. Let us just look at what the results have been of this incapacity to extend the powers of the mind over the field of social will.—During the last three or four centuries, when mankind began to emerge from the earlier, instinctive patriarchal conditions and to think over its economic system, there arose for the first time all sorts of views as to the form this economic system ought to take,—views with which I needn't trouble you to-day, and which have been superseded. They merged however finally, on the one side, into the principles of national economy evolved by the spirit and in the style of university learning,—which is nothing however but the imposition of middle-class views upon national economy. And on the other side they crystallised out into what has found its clearest, its most forcible, its most comprehensive expression in Marxianism, in the social views of Carl Marx,—which are nothing however but a reflexion of those impulses by which the working-classes are determined to see national economy propelled.

What are the characteristic features of these two tendencies?—In pointing them out, we shall at the same time be pointing out just those things in the present day which are not practical, but the reverse of all that is practical, which are ‘ideology.’

University learning: what has it finally come to? except to regarding anything like social will and purpose on a large scale as an impossibility, and taking petty tinkerings for great measures of social reform. This university-made economics moreover has declared its incompetence to do anything whatever in national economy beyond registering what actually takes place, or—expressed in this learned language itself—making a historical and statistical analysis of it. This historical and statistical analysis has resulted in nothing hut a complete paralysis of all social will and purpose. They examined the existing social tendencies historically: that is, they recorded what occurred. They examined them statistically: that is, they tabulated figures of all that went on, and thereby killed every sort of impulse towards any social will and purpose whatever. So that in practice all social will and purpose exhausted itself in petty details; whilst the things, which life actually brought with it were devoid of all real will-force, at a time when the problems of the day had long been clamouring for active consideration. And these things which actual life brought with it, being left to run their course thought-less and will-less, rushed headlong at last into the World-Catastrophe, which is the great r e d u c t i o - a d - a b s u r d u m of this Social Will-lessness.

And, on the other side, yoked to the factory, yoked to the technical processes, to the soul-blighting capitalist system, were the working classes, who turned with all their spiritual fervour to the doctrine of Marx; for they saw in this Marxian doctrine the most brilliant, the most grandiose criticism, which they themselves felt in their own hearts towards the social order: a social order; on which they could only wage war, because it was one that allowed them no share in its material and spiritual possessions.

And this Marxian doctrine, so powerful, so grandiose in its criticism of Society,—what is the nerve of it? The nerve of it is this:—‘Evolution goes forward of itself. Little by little, in modern times, the economic system has evolved forms, in which the means of production have gradually passed over into the hands of Trusts, or similar Combines. This is the way in which the working-class have become expropriated; but it is also the way which will inevitably lead, quite of itself, to the expropriation of the expropriators. Whatever men may do to assist the process, this evolution will go forward of itself.’—This, let me say, is the most unpractical confession of faith that ever was uttered: the confession, that evolution must go forward of itself; that Man is tied and bound to the wheel of history; and that he is bound to wait until the historic, economic forces in their un-human objectivity of themselves evolve what then is to be the salvation of the great masses of the working class!

Then came the World-Catastrophe. And what did it show? It showed, that all talk of automatic evolution had its origin simply in the paralysis of the human will. The will of the working-classes, yoked to the factory, yoked to the soul-blighting capitalist system, was paralysed by this yoke. They had no faith in their own power to shape a new world-order. They made it their confession of faith: ‘For us too salvation will come in due course: we cannot bring it about of ourselves.’ And they comforted themselves with this,—with this confession of faith: ‘Our salvation will come to us from without, in the course of automatic evolution.’ Such is the great creed, and such the mis-practice of life amongst the large masses of the working-class.

And now came the World-Catastrophe and suddenly demonstrated that what they put their faith in, the accumulation of the means of production, didn¹t lead to what was expected of it in the course of evolution, but planted the working-man down himself on his two feet, as a human being, and demanded of him: ‘Now then! Act!’ And this ‘Now then, act! act like a man, out of your own social will and purpose!’ is like a sign hung up in very luminous letters before the eyes of the working-classes to-day.

If one was not going through life asleep; and if one was not a theorist, simply saying yes or no to propositions propounded in some theory of life; but if one was a person who regards what men say and what men think as the outcome of something much deeper-seated,—as symptoms of what is going on deep down, inside the external affair,—then one said to oneself: Men are rapidly drifting into a total disregard of real practice, into a paralysis of all practical will. Such was the disposition of men's minds, whilst those great questions were gathering, which to-day can only find their answer, when people see fit to introduce genuine practice into life's mis-practice.

Jumbled together in all the relations of our life to-day, there is an unnatural conglomeration of Rights, of Labour and of that, which must really lie below the cry for social reconstruction in its true form. In the things about which people are fighting today, there is a great deal more underneath, than enters the minds of those who are fighting. In truth: one may say that at every point in all that is done in these critical times, one may see this unpracticality coming into it. The cry for socialisation runs through all the ranks of the working classes; it finds expression in quite definite impulses; it finds its immediate expression in the demand of the day for Works' Councils.

If the Works' Councils are to play that part in the age of socialisation, which in reality they are called upon to play, and which is demanded by the consciousness of the age (though often may be unconsciously) throughout the wide ranks of the working-classes, then these Works' Councils must grow up on the independent soil of an economic life, which in its internal organisation is completely detached from everything else in the form either of political or of spiritual life.

In saying that the corporate body of Works' Councils must grow out of a free selection of such persons as are actually engaged in economic life, so that it may make its own forms of constitution for the coming economic life of the future,—this, and what this means,—the whole nature of what is now rising up from the subconscious depths of men's souls and seeking expression in acts,—all this is something so foreign to those who today call themselves practical people, that they have now in project a Works' Councils Law, which in every one of its items is a flat contradiction of all that Works' Councils are intended to be:—a law which in every one of its items proceeds from the idea, not of moving on towards a new future, but of somehow preserving forms that inwardly are dead and done with. There can be no plainer symptom of the impracticality and utopianism of this age than the life-remote phaenomenon presented by this Works' Councils Bill.—Is it not time, that even people who had till now made their spiritual home elsewhere, should feel it their personal duty to speak out, when they see how this age is saturated with Utopianism,—how infinitely far this age—so rich in life's routine, is removed from anything like life's genuine practice! -

In this present age we have—all jumbled together—impulses still dating from the earliest times; times, when wave after wave of migrant peoples broke in and built up territorial lordships, conquered the soil, and on the strength of conquest of the soil established rights over the soil, out of which has grown in due course the whole code of legal rights. In our notions of right and justice, in our impulses of right and justice, we still have the old conceptions, principles, laws, attached to the conquest of the soil. “Of the rights you brought with you at birth” of these alas! there is still in many respects “no question.” That age has left much behind with us to-day; it has left us everything in our national economy which has to do with the soil.—Then followed the age of industrialism, which has led to the thing against which people are struggling so fiercely today in many quarters; namely, to Capitalism.

What do we mean by Capitalism? By Capitalism we simply mean, in other words, the private ownership of the means of production. And so we have, matched one against the other, (as becomes plain directly one tries to form a comprehensive view of the whole economy of the civilised globe) ... we find, matched one against the other, on one side those conditions that arise from the use of the soil for the purposes of human economy, and those again that arise from ownership of the means of production, and the use of these for the same economic purposes.

This is something which very few people see: that down to the smallest thing, down to the halfpenny that I take out of my purse to buy some trifle that I need, there is this economic struggle going on between the conditions arising from the soil, and the conditions arising from the means of production. Our whole process of national economy is one constant endeavour to effect a balance between these two sets of conditions: arising from the soil, and from the means of production. And into this whole process we ourselves are forced with all our life's fate in every field, as men of modern times. And what came about when the old aristocratic forms of society passed over into its middle-class forms, can be best described by saying, that these middle-class forms of society have given rise to the modern market, governed anarchically by Supply and Demand. In the market today, we find capital transferred from hand to hand, from company to company. And subject to this principle of Supply and Demand, we find human labour-power, working under a system of wage-relations, and commodities circulating, the services performed by human hands.

Three separate things have been flung into the market by the middle-class order of society: Capital, Wages, and Services [Leistung: i.e. that which is performed by labour, whether the manufacture of an article, a personal service rendered, or a literary or artistic production.]; and under this middle-class order of society Capital has been made the substitute for something that in earlier days, under the old aristocratic world-order, wore a very different aspect. Under the old aristocratic world-order, based upon conquest of the soil, everything in the nature of services exchanged between men was relegated to the sphere of Rights. Part of all that was produced must be paid as dues to the landlord; and so-and-so-much one might keep back as labourer. All this was relegated to the sphere of Rights. One had a right to consume so and so much oneself; and one had a duty, because the other man had a right to consume so and so much of what one produced in his service. Rights were the rule under the old aristocratic order; that is to say, rights of privilege, class-rights, ruled everything to do with human requirements. Much of all this echoes on into our own times,—vibrates on even into the penny I take out of my purse to buy something. And through this under-note comes the sound of the other thing: of what has taken the place of this old Order of Rights; the sound of all which has turned capital, human-labour and human services into commodities, ruled by Supply and Demand, regulating themselves, that is, according to profit, according to the most sordid competition, the blindest human egoism, which leads every man to try and earn as much as ever he can squeeze out of the social system. And so, in the place of the old Rights, there came something that was a play of forces between economic power and economic coercion. In place of the privileged with preferential rights, and the others with deferential rights, under the old patriarchal relations of master and servant, there came the economic relations of the middle-class regime, based upon the war of competition, upon profit, upon economic coercion in the tug of war between capital and wages. And into this again is coerced the exchange of commodities, is coerced the adjustment of prices, which is dependent on the egoist war between capital and wages.—And to-day, ... to-day what is trying to grow up ... for this is the really practical thing, to see what is growing up, and how, more or less unconsciously—though consciously too in many quarters to-day!—a new order of society is trying to take shape; one that shall no longer be based upon relations of coercion, of economic coercion, but based upon reciprocal services, justly exchanged;—based, that is, in this respect upon a really unegoistic and social way of thinking amongst the human community. And the only practical person to-day, the only person, who is not working in opposition to what nevertheless must come, is one who hears the cry that goes up from the whole depths of the human soul: ‘The old privileged rights, the old system of capital and wages, must give place to the system of mutual services!’ How many people are there to-day, do you think, who understand it as yet in all its consequences, this great, new, up-welling life-impulse, springing from human evolution itself,—not conjured up by the arbitrary wishes of individuals,—this life-impulse, which has had such a bloody prelude in the terrible World-War? One may still hear people, even those who think socialistically, who with every fibre of their will are bent on combating capitalism,—one may still hear them talk—and it's a plain symptom of the times!—of the worker receiving the just wages of his labour, and that this is the way to combat capitalism!

Anyone who looks deeper into the conditions, knows,-that Capital will exist, so long as Wages exist. For, as you know, in the real world we always find two opposites going together: a north pole, and a south pole; north-pole magnetism, and south-pole magnetism: each positive has its negative; Capital brings Wages in its train; and one only needs to look into the whole business of national economy at the present day, to know the answer to the question: What are wages paid out of?—Wages are paid out of Capital! And there will inevitably be Capital, so long as Wages have to be paid out of Capital. Anti-capitalism has no sense, unless at the same time one is clear, that along with capital the wage-system itself must go; and that there must come a free communal association of the manual worker and the spiritual worker in the non-capitalist order of economy. A free communal association, which makes the manual worker the free partner of the spiritual worker, who is no longer a capitalist, will do away with the wage-principle, with the wage-relation; and, with the wage relation, will do away with the capital-relation. And therefore the only possible way to talk of capitalism, is to talk of it from the standpoint of the social requirements of the day,—as you find them discussed in my book The Threefold Commonwealth or The Life-needs of To-day and To-morrow. We must start from this important truth: that we are situated in the midst of this struggle between the two opposing sets of Rights: the Rights arising from the soil, and the Rights arising from the means of production; and we must show, that the soil, in our future economic order, will be a means of production, and nothing more; and that a means of production can only accumulate labour-value until it is ready-finished; that, from that moment on, it is nobody's property; that, from that moment on, nobody has strictly speaking any rights of heritage over it; that, from that moment on, it goes back into circulation in the community, as I have described in my book* And then, then we come also and very straight to the discovery, that this was the position held by the soil from the very first; that all mortgaging of the soil is a thing against nature; that land and ready-finished means of production are in no way commodities, but must pass from man to man by some other means than by exchanging them for commodities. This is something one may learn at the present day from the actual practice of life.

That this is something which may be learnt from the actual practice of life to-day, will be plain from the following considerations. Nobody can look into life with a practical eye to-day, who approaches this life with a mind hill of stereotyped theories, party definitions or merely abstract ideas. We have moved on today into an age, when man has awoken to the consciousness of himself, in quite a different way from ever before. Only their disinclination to the objective study of souls can make men today blind to the fact, that since the middle of the fifteenth century we have entered upon a totally new epoch as regards the evolution of the human soul,—an epoch, in which the soul of man is becoming ever more and more conscient. And there is one class of mankind from whose unexhausted brains the cry goes forth: ‘Let me come to myself as a human soul, in full consciousness of my manhood!’—That, ladies and gentlemen, however unpleasing the symptoms which may often accompany it,—that is the soul of the Working-Classes! And the first words in this appeal for a self-conscient life under human conditions are as follows: ‘No longer shall Capital coerce me by unjust economic power through the means of Wages!’ Wages, for the modern working man, represent what he has to fight against, if he would rise to that full human consciousness which is absolutely demanded by the age upon which we are now entering. And it is the task of this age, upon which we are entering, to give Services their right place as such in the economic process.

Services can only find their right place In the economic process, when every measure has been taken on the other hand to separate out from this process again all that has become involved with it through the old aristocratic and the old middle-class regimes;—when we have separated out from the economic circuit the system of state-rights: the political relations;—when we have separated out the spiritual life (which truly has been long enough in bondage!), and released it from the state on the one side, and from the economic process on the other. And therefore every endeavour after a social order in which services shall ensure just reciprocal services, in which men shall work for men, not merely every man for himself, is inseparably involved with the division of the body social into those three organic systems, which have been fused together and confounded by what had quite other interests than interests of common humanity,—by what had, and could have, only interests of caste, interests of class.

All these single, separate interests, then, mount up to what we find as the collective totality of interests when we come to the big world-affairs. As I mentioned to-day in my opening remarks, which had a somewhat personal tinge,—a person who has spent his life in learning to know the life-needs of all kinds and conditions of men, has his eyes a little sharpened for those international conditions too, which have come about through the amalgamation of economic life, political or rights life, and spiritual life. Believe me, if one has not been asleep through all that has happened, one finds so much in these happenings which is symptomatic and very plainly shows the impossibility, in international life also, of this amalgamation of the three fields of life!

Let me remind you of one thing only: At the time when the German Empire was founded from reasons of the political life, how often did Bismarck lay it down as a maxim that, ‘This Empire is politically saturated; this Empire needs no extension.’ This was in the first place a political line of thought, proceeding from the political impulses which led to the founding of the Empire. And then, whilst the remains, the remnants, of this political way of thought lingered on amongst the people in power, economic conditions began to come to the front, amalgamating ever more and more with these political conditions; and, finally, the economic conditions gained so completely the upper hand, that if one asked any of the leading people (and I often made the experiment during the war): What are they aiming at on political considerations in Germany? one got no answer to one's question. But answers came, and very early in the day, from certain economic interests: which is to say, that economic interests wanted to have the decision in a political matter.—One has only to observe things of this kind with an eye to the really practical understanding of life!

For years, the whole tangle of national, that is to say spiritual and cultural relations, of economic relations, and of political-international relations of rights were all knotted up together in the fatal part played by the so-called Baghdad Railway Question. It was one of the causes that contributed to set the world on fire. For years past, any real practitioner of life, any real observer of life, could see how,—like a knot that is continually being ravelled and unravelled,—economic, political, •;cultural relations were for ever, now blending, now undoing one another in this question of the Baghdad Railway. One could see the thing coming up over the horizon: how It began politically with the Young Turk Party establishing itself in Constantinople and setting up Liberalism as a political system, in place of the old Turkish conservative system. There one had, to begin with, political considerations. And then these became mixed up with purely economic concerns, in the question of the Sanjak Railway and the question of the Dardanelles. And to this there then came in addition the cultural problem of the Slavonic question, involving spiritual relations of a national and cultural character. No steps had been taken to forestall this confusion of provinces in the international life too of modern times, and to bring the three into same form of international structure in which they might work, not to mutual disturbance, but so as to correct and balance one another.

Anyone, who looked from the real experience of life in one nationality to the field of international affairs, might see the terrible T w i l i g h t o f t h e N a t i o n s coming up in Europe from this amalgamation of the three provinces of life in all the great questions of world-politics in modern times. And for him it lay like a nightmare on his soul: ‘When at last will they see, that the sources of all really social thinking in every people must lead to a separation of those three social systems, whose entanglement is bringing mankind into crises and disaster!’

Our diplomacy was a mis-practice, a Utopia, an ideology! No wonder then, that from this quarter the very thing to be set against it is regarded as a Utopia, as an ideology, as a mere piece of idealism I These things have finally brought about the conditions, of which at the present day one can only say to oneself again and again: When will people wake up to the seriousness of the times? When at last will they see, that the worst of all Utopias at the present day is the Utopia that cannot see that it is a question to-day of big accounts, not little ones, and that one is sinning against the spirit of the age when one labels a thing from some hole and corner of one's own, as being the kind of thing that happens to fall within the particular limits of one's own understanding,—when one looks out at life from some point of view like this at something which obviously demands experience of life, demands the good will to learn from actual life,—and then calls this thing unpractical, a piece of idealism!—When will people at last wake up, and recognise this ‘piece of idealism’ to be the genuine practice of life?—When will they be willing to see, that the important thing is not to say, ‘I don't understand that,’ but to feel from the underlying instincts of life, whether a person is talking, not from some shadowy theory but from the faithful observation of life itself!—Or else,—to the great misfortune of the age!—we shall always be meeting in the social field with a repetition of something which is a typical picture of bourgeois philistrosity:—At the time when the plans were being made for the construction of the first German railway, they consulted a college of physicians—practical people therefore, a select committee!—as to whether it were advisable to build a railway. And these practical people replied: That it would be better to build no railway; for that if they did, it would be injurious to the health of any persons who might eventually travel on it. But that if, however, there were persons already who were determined to travel on It, then at any rate they should put up a high wooden fence to right and left along the line, so that, when the train rushed by, people mightn't get brain-shock from the rapidity of the motion.—Well, to-day too, people are afraid of the on-rush of the social movement. They would like to put up high fences, for fear of getting brain-shock. Woe to the weaklings, who want to put up such fences, for fear the reality might unhinge their brains!

And so every actual observation of our times is a constant reminder to speak in such a way, that one knows that in speaking one is talking into the storm. Though many people may still be unaware of the storm, yet the storm is raging. May as many people as possible grow aware of the storm,—may a large enough number of people grow aware of it,—before it is too late!

* *

(a discussion followed; after which
Steiner replied in conclusion:)

After all that has been said by the other speakers in the course of the discussion, there remains very little for me to say to-night in addition. I should only like to point out,—not by way of correction, but simply to prevent any misunderstanding,—that by ‘capitulation to the Wilson-Utopia’ I simply meant what the previous speaker, Mr. X..., himself said. X merely wanted to point out the significant fact about it, which in my opinion is, that in this Western Utopia we have before us, what in its substance as I said is a Utopia. Its Utopian character has by now, I think, been plainly enough demonstrated. A Utopia is something which utters very fine words and words which are meant to be very ideal, but which lack all basis for realisation. And in this sense everything that came to light in these Fourteen Points—insofar as they proposed to bring about ideal conditions—was Utopian. I am quite of opinion with the gentleman who spoke, that, with all this, there was something very different behind; as I expressed it myself in my lecture, there were extremely real western interests behind. And so we have to do with a Utopia, which very cleverly conceals behind it something which is Not-a-Utopia, namely very real interests. And in saying that in Germany in October 1918 they succumbed also to this Utopia, I meant to say that in those days people believed ... well, in certain circles at any rate they believed ... that these Fourteen Points didn't represent a Utopia, but something that was to be taken as Not-a-Utopia. I should like to know otherwise, why they surrendered—so to speak—to this Utopia! At any rate, they didn't say: We appeal to the very real selfish interests which lie behind the Fourteen Points, and to these we surrender. But they said: We surrender to the Fourteen Points, and appeal to the realisation of them. And therefore I think, in the light of what has actually come to pass, that one may certainly see all the signs of a real capitulation to a real Utopia.

If I may say a few words upon the question that was raised about the Works' Councils; I should like to refer to the brief remark already made in my lecture: that the whole corporation of Works' Councils must go out solely from the economic body itself; and in this way; namely that in the different businesses, from the different persons actually engaged in manual and spiritual work, and simply and solely on the grounds of a confidence founded in this joint associative work,—that first of all these Works' Councils should be set upon their legs. Then we have the Works' Councils there, possessing the confidence of their fellow-workers in the different businesses. One can't socialise in the individual businesses. This is just what is so unpractical in the proposed Works' Councils Bill, which is in all truth wide enough of anything like real socialisation. The really practical thing will be, that all the inter-arrangements between the different businesses should come from the Works' Councils of these businesses themselves; and they will have to come about in this way; that the councils elected from the separate business-works come together and form a Corporation of Works' Councils covering a definite self-contained system of economy, and begin first by giving themselves a constitution at a sort of preliminary Founders' Meeting. And they will also go on to mark out the lines of direction along which the individual councils are then to work in their own businesses, under the joint social management of the whole Corporation of Works' Councils. It must come out of the forces of the economic life itself, of an independent economic life, resting upon its own grounds, if the thing which proceeds to-day from the real, social foundations of human nature,—not from any red-tape government theory,—is to what is officially termed ‘march;’—though indeed this official ‘marching’ is very unlike the old military forward march, and looks much more like a skipping-about,—or ‘running to cover,’ let us say!—

And now, after the many points that have been touched on by the different gentlemen who spoke in the course of the discussion, it only requires that I should add one thing to what I have said already; which is: That the age, which we have now entered upon in the course of historic evolution, is one which sets a great task before us; the task of combining together men who render spiritual, and men who render manual services, and of enabling them to turn their services to full value, so that they may find their rightful place socially in the whole social community of which they form part. But this means, that we must give our minds in deepest earnest to this demand of the times, so that really we may succeed at last in arousing men to a mutual understanding and agreement between man and man in the field of Economics, of Rights, of the Spirit.

That these three departments of life work best in actual practice when they are divided, is something very plain to be seen in a quarter, where people are obliged to-day to let them work together from separate and very different sources: namely in the life of the individual family. Just think what would become of the individual family of these days, if Rights life, spiritual life and economic life were all jumbled up together in it chaotically! What is needed for the times to come, as well as for the present time, is that we should find means to apply to our social conditions today, what goes on of itself as a matter of course in the family. But here our eyes grow confused; and we can't see the wood because of the trees; and then, if we talk of separating the three systems of the body social, we are accused of wanting to split the body social into three parts, whereas of course anything can only live as a unity. But just in order to keep this unity properly alive, the body social must be placed on its three proper footings! It's not I that am so unpractical as to want to chop the horse into three pieces; all I want is, that those people should come to their senses who maintain that the only one and undivided horse is the horse with one leg, not with four. This seems to me much the same as those people who declare that one wants to out up the body social into three parts, because one wants to separate its three limbs. No! what I want, is to establish the unity of the body social, so that this body social may stand soundly upon its three legs of Rights, of Economics, of Spiritual life. But to-day one is shouted down as a Utopianist, directly one talks of a horse standing on its four legs; and those are taken for the really practical people to-day, who maintain, that the only proper horse, the only one-and-undivided horse, is the horse that stands only on one leg.—There are many things to-day, which are only standing upon one leg, and which we need to put upon their sound number of legs; indeed one might say that very much has been stood on its head by Utopian dreamers, which we need to set up on its proper legs.

“I believe the thoughts, which I am expressing, to be not the private thoughts of a single individual, but to voice the unconscious actual will of European mankind.”

“Here is no claim for a plan that ought to be realised; here is simply a statement of what is trying to realise itself, and will succeed in doing so, the moment it is allowed free passage.”

The practical problems, presented by the social life of our day, cannot fail to be misinterpreted by anyone who approaches them with the idea of any sort of Utopia. One's particular views and sentiments may lead one to believe, that some special form of institution, as planned in one's own brain, is bound to make men happy; this belief may assume the force of overwhelming conviction; one may try to promulgate this belief;—and yet all one says may be completely wide of the mark as regards the social question at the present time, and its real significance.

One may push this assertion even to the following, seemingly absurd extreme, and yet strike the truth to-day. For suppose someone to possess a quite perfect theoretical “solution” of the social question, his ideas might nevertheless be wholly impractical if he thought of tendering this brain-devised scheme as a “solution” to mankind. For we are no longer living in an age when one should think it possible to influence public life to any purpose in this manner. With the present constitution of men's souls, it is not to be expected that they should say in respect to public life: “Here is somebody who understands social institutions and what is necessary; what he thinks to be the right thing, we will do!”

This is not at all the way in which people are willing to welcome any ideas about social life. The following book,—which has already received a fairly wide circulation—reckons with this fact. The intentions with which it was written have been totally misunderstood by those people who attributed to it anything of a Utopian character. The people to do so more especially, were such as themselves persist in thinking in Utopias; what they see in the other person is the characteristic feature of their own habit of mind.

For the practical thinker, it is to-day one of the accepted experiences of public life, that, with any idea of a Utopian kind—be it never so demonstrably convincing—there is absolutely nothing to be done. And yet many people still have a notion, that they are called on to lay some idea of this kind,—in the economic field, for instance,—before their fellow-men. They will have to convince themselves that they are talking in vain; their fellow-men can find no use for their proposals.

This should be taken practically as a piece of experience. For it points to a fact of great importance in modern public life:—the fact namely of the life-remoteness of what is thought, in comparison to the actual demands, for instance, of economic realities. But how can one hope to master the tangle of public life at the present day if one approaches its intricate conditions with a thinking that is life-remote?

Such a question cannot be exactly popular; for it involves the admission that one's way of thought is remote from life. And yet, without this admission there can be no approaching the social question either. For the question is one that affects the whole civilisation of the day, and that must be treated seriously, before it can be possible to arrive at any clear view of what is needed in our social life.

It is the whole form of the spiritual life of our day which is thereby called in question. Mankind in modern times has developed a kind of spiritual life which is dependent to a very large degree upon state institutions and economic forces. The human being, whilst still a child, is brought under the education and teaching of the State. He can be educated only in the way permitted by the economic conditions of the environment out of which he proceeds.

Now it might easily be thought, that in this way a person cannot fail to be well fitted to the conditions of life at the present day, since the State thus has the means of giving such forms to the whole system of education and teaching, (and thereby to the principal part of public spiritual life) as shall prove of best service to the human community. It might easily be thought too, that a person is likely to be the best possible member of the human community, when he Is educated in accordance with the economic possibilities from which he proceeds, and placed by his education at the post to which these economic possibilities appoint him.

This book has to undertake the unpopular task at the present time of showing, that the complications in our public life arise from the dependence of the spiritual life upon the State and upon the economic system; and it has to show, that one part of the very burning social question is the emancipation of the spiritual life from this dependence.

In doing so, the book sets itself in opposition to errors that are widely spread. The taking-over of the educational system by the State has for a long time past been generally regarded as something very good, and favourable to human progress. And persons of a socialist turn of mind can hardly conceive of anything else, than that the Community should educate the individual to its own service after its own standards.

People, in this matter, are very unwilling to come to a recognition which is absolutely necessary to-day: the recognition, namely, that, in the course of history, a thing may come at a later age to be mistaken, which, at an earlier stage of evolution, is right. In order for the new conditions to grow up amongst mankind in modern times, it was necessary that the educational system—and therewith public spiritual life—should be taken away from those in whom it was vested during the Middle Ages, and should be made over to the State.—But to continue to maintain this state of things is a very serious social mistake.

This is what the book has to show in the first part of it. Spiritual life has grown up to freedom within the framework of the State. It cannot flourish in this freedom as it should, unless it be given full self-administration. The whole character which our spiritual life has assumed, requires that it should form a completely self-dependent branch of the body social. The educational and teaching system,—which after all form the ground from which all spiritual life grows,—must be placed under the administration of those who do the educating and teaching. In this administration nothing must interfere, whether by voice or authority, which plays any part in the State or in economic affairs. Every teacher must spend so much time only on the actual teaching, as will allow of his also being an administrator in his own province. This means, that he will carry on the administration in the same way as he carries on his educating and teaching. Nobody will proscribe instructions, who is not himself at the same time livingly engaged in the actual work of educating and teaching. No parliament, and no individual,—who once taught perhaps, himself, but does so no longer,—will have any voice in the matter. What is learnt in the direct experience of teaching,—this will pass over into the work of administration too. And under such an arrangement it will be natural for competence and practical sense to find their fullest possible scope.

It may of course be objected, that even under this self-administration of the spiritual life everything will not be perfect. But perfection is, after all, not to be looked for in real life. All that can be aimed at, is the realisation of the best-that-is-possible. The faculties, ripening in the growing child, will really be passed on into the human community, when the care of developing them is left solely to a person who, judging upon spiritual grounds, can form a competent decision. How far a particular child ought to be brought on in the one or the other direction,—this is a matter only to be judged of in a free spiritual community; and only a community of this kind can determine, what should be done to give such judgment due effect. From a free spiritual community of this kind, both the State-life and the life of Economics will receive those forces which they are not able to give themselves, when they shape the spiritual life from their own aspects.

It lies along the lines sketched out in the book, that, as regards their arrangements and subject-matter, all educational institutes for the service of the State or the Economic System will also be under the charge of the Free Spiritual Life and its administrators. Schools of law, trade-schools, training-institutes for agriculture and industry, will all take the form which the free spiritual life gives to them. The book will inevitably awake the hostility of many prejudices, if these, quite correct, consequences be drawn from what is said there. But what is the source of these prejudices?—The antisocial spirit of them becomes plain enough, directly one perceives that at bottom, unconsciously, they proceed from the conviction that teachers are of course unpractical people, out of touch with life,—people who, if left to themselves, could not possibly be expected to make the sort of institutions that would suitably supply the practical departments of life,—that these institutions must be shaped by those actually engaged in practical affairs, and that the teachers must work along the lines directed for them.

Those who think so, do not see, that teachers who are unable to direct their own lines, from the smallest matter to the highest, are thereby made unpractical and out of touch with life. And then, the principles given them may be laid down by the most practical persons—to all appearance,—and yet the teachers will educate no practicians for actual life.

Our anti-social conditions are brought about by the fact, that people come into social life without a social sense acquired from their education. People with a social sense can only proceed from a form of education that is guided and directed by persons who themselves have a social sense. The social question will never be touched, unless the education question, and the whole question of spiritual life, be treated as one of its essential factors. Anti-social conditions are not created simply by economic institutions, but by the fact, that the human beings in these institutions behave anti-socially. And it is anti-social to have the young taught and educated by people, whom one cuts off from actual life by proscribing to them from outside what they are to do and what lines they are to follow.

The State appoints schools for the study of law, and requires that what is taught in these law-schools should be that code of jurisprudence which the State itself has laid down from its own standpoints, in accordance with its own constitutions and rules. Law-schools, that originate solely in a free spiritual life, will draw their teachings of law and equity from the sources of the spiritual life itself. The State will have to wait for what this free spiritual life shall encharge on it, and will receive new seeds of life from those living ideas which can proceed only from a spiritual life that is free.

But within the spiritual life itself, there will be those people who go out into life from their own points of view, and spread into all the branches of life's practice. Life's actual practice can never be anything that grows out of educational institutions devised by the mere practicians, and where the teaching is done by people estranged from life; it can only grow out of a teaching where the teachers understand life and its practice from their own points of view.—The administration of the spiritual life in detail, and the form it will take, is described, or at least indicated, in the book.

People of a Utopian turn of mind will raise any number of questions in argument. Artists and spiritual workers of all professions will anxiously enquire, whether artistic talent is likely to flourish better under a free spiritual life, than under the one at present provided by the State and the powers of the economic world?—Those who put such questions should reflect, that this book is in no respect designed as a Utopia. Nowhere is there laid down in it any sort of theory: Things should be thus or thus; but practical suggestions are made for human communities, which, living and working together, shall be able to bring about desirable social conditions. Any person who judges life, not according to theoretic preconceptions but actual experience, will say to himself, that every worker, producing freely out of Ms own creative talents, will have a prospect of his work being duly appreciated, when there is a free spiritual community, able to intervene in life's affairs from its own point of view.

The “social question” is not something that has come up in human life in these days, and that can now be solved by a couple of individuals or by parliaments, and will then be solved. The “social question” is bound up with the whole of modern civilised life, and will remain so, once having arisen. At every moment in the evolution of human history it will have to be solved anew. For human life in these latter times has entered upon a phase where all social institutions continually give rise to what is anti-social. And this anti-social element has constantly to be overcome afresh. Just as any living body, after repletion, enters again after awhile upon a phase of hunger, so too the body social, after its organic conditions have once been ordered, comes again into disorder. There is no more a panacea for the ordering of social conditions, than there is a food that stills hunger for all time. Men, however, may enter into such forms of community, that, through their joint living co-operation, external life is constantly redressed and turned into the social direction. And one such community is the self-administering, spiritual branch of the body social.

Just as, for the spiritual life, free self-administration is a social necessity, called for by the practical experiences of the modern age,—so, for the economic life, is associative work.—The economic process, in modern human life, consists in the production of commodities, the circulation of commodities, and the consumption of commodities. By means of this process human needs are satisfied; and in this process are involved the human beings with their activities. Each person has his own part-interests in the process, and each must himself take part in it with the peculiar activity of which he is capable. What each person actually requires, he alone can know and feel; what he ought to perform, he desires to decide from his own insight into the life-conditions of the whole body. This was not so at all times, and is not so to-day over all the earth; it is so in the main, amongst the civilised part of the earth's population at the present day.

The economic life has drawn ever wider circles in the course of mankind's evolution. The self-contained system of household-economy grew into town-economy and this again into state-economy. To-day we are confronted with world-economy.—It is true, that in each new system a considerable part still lives on of the old; and in each old system a good deal of the new was already present in anticipation. But the divers lots and lives of mankind are involved with the fact, that this series of evolutionary phases have exerted in turn a predominant influence in certain relations of life.

It is a senseless idea to want to organise the forces of economic life into an abstract all-world community. The individual economic organisms have to a large extent merged, in the course of evolution, into the economic organisms of the various states. But the state-communities arose out of other forces than purely economic ones; and it was the endeavour to convert these state-communities into economic communities, which has resulted in the social chaos of these latter times. Economic life is struggling to assume shapes given to it by its own proper forces, independent of State-institutions, and independent too of State ways of thinking. It can only do so, when associations come together, composed purely from economic points of view, and drawn conjointly from circles of consumers, traders, and producers. The size of such associations will be regulated of itself by the circumstances of actual life:—over-small associations would prove too costly in the working, over-large ones too complicated, economically, for provision and control. The actual requirements of life will lead the different associations to find the best ways of regulating intercourse one with another. There is no need to fear, if a person's life has to be spent in constant change of place, that he will find himself restricted by associations of this kind. Transition from one to the other will be easy, when the interests of trade and industry effect the transit, and not state-organisations. One can conceive arrangements between such an organic system of associations, which would work with all the ease of a money-currency.

Within any particular association, a very general harmony of interests can be made possible by practical sense and a thorough understanding of the departments of business. Instead of laws regulating the production of the commodities, their circulation and their consumption, the people themselves will regulate them through their own direct insight and immediate interest in the matter. Standing themselves in the midst of this associative life, the people are able to possess the requisite insight; and the fact, that the various interests must find their level by means of contract, will lead the commodities to circulate at proportionate prices. Such joint association according to economic points of view is something quite different from what exists, for instance, in the modern trades' unions. The trades' unions exert their action in economic life; but they do not come together according to economic points of view. They are constructed after the principles which in modern times have grown out of habitual dealing with political, or State, points of view. They are parliaments, in which the people debate; not where they meet to settle together, according to economic points of view, what service one should render the other. In the associations, there will not be sitting ‘wage-labourers’ exerting their power to extract as high a rate of wages as possible from the employer of labour; but the manual workers will be collaborating with the spiritual directors of production and with those whose interests lie in the consumption of what they produce, jointly endeavouring so to adjust prices, that one service may find a suitable reciprocation in the other. This cannot be done by debating in parliamentary assemblies; people will be very chary of such things; for, who would ever be working, if any number of people had to spend their time negotiating about the work! It all goes on in agreements between man and man, between association and association,—along with the work.

What is sketched here, is no plan for a Utopia. It does not say in the least, that anything ought to be arranged in this way or in that. It simply points out how the people themselves will arrange things, when they want to work effectively in communities that accord with their own insight and interests.

That people will actually join together in communities of this kind, is a matter which human nature takes care of on the one hand,—when it is not hindered by state-Interference,—since nature creates the wants. And on the other hand, the free spiritual life will take care of it; for a free spiritual life develops the kinds of insight that are needed for action in the community. Anyone, whose thinking rests on experience, must admit, that associative communities of this kind could be formed at any time, and that there is nothing utopian involved in them. Nothing whatever prevents their existing, except the fact, that the modern man is so bent upon “organising” economic life from outside, that the idea of “organisation” might be said to have become a sort of psychic suggestion with him. In direct contrast to this “organising,” which tries to join men together from outside in the work of production, is this other picture, of the living economic organisation which rests on free associative union. In the course of joint association, one man forms links with the other, and the general system of the whole body grows out of the intelligence of its individual members.

One may say of course, ‘What is the use of the Have-Nots associating together with the Haves!’ One may perhaps think it better that all production and consumption should be regulated “justly” from outside. But this sort of “organising” regulation hampers the free creative energies of the individual, and deprives economic life from receiving what such creative energies alone can produce. Only let the experiment for once be made, in spite of all existing prejudices; let an association be formed even between the Have-Nots of to-day and the Haves; and if no forces intervene save economic ones, he-who-has will of necessity be obliged to balance services with him-who-has-not, reciprocal service for service.

In discussing these things to-day, people talk, not from the life-instincts which arise out of experience, but from those moods of mind which have grown up out of class-interests and interests of all kinds, other than economic,—and which have been able to grow up, for the reason, that in this modern age, when the economic life especially has become ever more and more complicated, people have been unable to keep pace with it with purely economic ideas. What prevented them, has been the unfree spiritual life. The people engaged in economic life are caught up in its routine. The forces in action, that shape the economic processes, are not fully clear to them; they work without any insight into the totality of human life. In the associations, each will learn from the others what it is absolutely necessary that he should know. There will come to be a collective economic experience as to what is possible; because the people, of whom each has insight and experience in his special department, will put their judgments together.

Just as, in the free spiritual life, the only forces at work are those which reside in the spiritual life itself, so too, in the associative system of economy, the only economic values will be those which result from the associations. In the economic life, what any particular person has to do in it, is the outcome of his life in conjunction with those with whom he is economically associated. This means, that he Will have exactly so much influence upon the general economic process as corresponds to the service he renders.—The case of those who are unfit for service, and the place they occupy in the body social, will be found discussed in the book. To shelter the weak from the strong: this can be done by an economic life that is shaped solely by its own, economic forces.

The body social will fall then into two self-dependent parts, which are able mutually to support one another for the very reason, that each has its own peculiar administration, proceeding from its own special forces. But between the two, there must be a third form of life at work. This is the ‘State’ branch, strictly speaking, of the body social. What here finds scope, are all those things which are, and must be, dependent on the judgment and sentiments of every grown-up human being. In the free spiritual life, each person busies himself according to his own special faculties. In the economic life, each person occupies his particular place in the way that results from the associative connection in which he stands. In the political, or State life of Rights, he comes to his account purely as a man,—insofar as this is independent of the faculties he may be able to exert in the free spiritual life, and independent too of whatever value the associative economic life may give to the commodities that he produces,

Labour is shown in this book, as regards hours and manner of work, to be a concern of the political, or State Rights life. In this system of the body social, every man meets his fellow man on equal ground; because, here, the only affairs transacted, or administered, lie in provinces where every man alike is equally competent to judge. Men's rights and men's duties find their regulation here.

The organic unity of the whole body social will grow out of the independent development of these, its three systems. The book will show, what form the action of movable capital,—the means of production,—may assume under the joint working of the three systems, as well as the use of land and soil.

Anybody, who wants to ‘solve’ the social question by means of some economic device hatched out in the brain, will think the book not practical. But if anybody, starting from life's actual experience, wants to promote those forms of association, amongst human beings, in which they may learn to understand and to apply themselves to the social problems—then he may be not quite unwilling to allow the author's attempt towards a genuine practice of life.

The book was first published in 1919. To what was verbally delivered at the time, I added a series of supplementary articles, which appeared in the paper, ‘Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus,’ and have now come out in book-form under the title “In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” [obtainable in English through the anthroposophical book-shops under the title, “Studies in the Threefold Commonwealth.”].

It will be found, that in both books there is comparatively little said about the “aims” of the social movement, and much more about the paths that must be trodden in social life. Anyone, who thinks along the lines of practical life, knows, that a particular aim may present itself under a variety of shapes. Only those people who live in abstractions, see everything mapped-out in single contours. Such people often find fault with what is really practicable, as being not ‘clear’ enough, ‘too vague in its outlines.’ Many, who fancy themselves ‘practical people,’ are often just these very abstractionists. They do not reflect, that life may assume all manner of shapes. It is an element of flux; and whoever would go along with it, must adapt himself in his own thoughts and sentiments to this trait of constant fluctuation. Social problems are only to be grasped by this kind of thinking.

The ideas in this book have been wrung from observation of life; it is from the observation of life that they ask to be understood.

In accordance with the program of today's meeting, my task this evening will be to say a few words about the appeal “An das deutsche Volk und an die Kulturwelt” (To the German People and to the Civilized World), which is in your hands. You will allow me to speak more aphoristically today, when I am addressing an assembly that is essentially familiar with the content of the appeal. I will speak about the social views that underlie the appeal and my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days, next Monday. What can lead a person with a compassionate impulse for humanity to make such an appeal, as has been presented to you today, is truly not some programmatic idea that one tends towards out of this or that interest. No, it is the facts that speak loudly and clearly, which have emerged from the terrible world catastrophe that we have been through in recent years. If we look at these facts with a watchful soul, we will come to a very definite conclusion above all. I would characterize this impression in the following way.

We have heard it said many times: During the terrible years that we have gone through in this world catastrophe that befell humanity, something happened that is unparalleled in the historical course of human development, which one usually surveys as such. There was a widespread feeling that something like this had never been seen in the whole of the great span of time that we call history. Should not the other thing also be evoked, which, it seems to me, has not yet been fully evoked, the feeling that now, for a reorganization of world conditions, things are also necessary that are, so to speak, brought forth from impulses of humanity that are radically new, that radically break, not only with old institutions, but that, above all, break with old habits of thought? Do we not have to say to ourselves, looking at the facts that speak loudly, that shadows are spreading over large parts of the civilized world, shadows that were actually left behind by pre-humanity in a chaotic manner for present-day humanity? In the face of this, can we say that out of the confusion, out of the chaos, such ideas, such thoughts, have already emerged that are equal to these facts? When we look at these facts soberly, do we not feel that we have to say: old party opinions are there, old social views are there, certain ideas of how it should be among people are there, but none of this is enough to somehow lead to a reorganization of what has been left behind from the most immediate past into our present.

This presents us with major, comprehensive tasks for the present. Perhaps we will best meet them if we ask ourselves openly and honestly – because openness and honesty will be the only things that can carry us into the future – if we ask ourselves openly and honestly: how did we actually end up in these circumstances? If I am to describe the most significant phenomenon of the present and want to ask: what has actually led to the present conditions, I cannot point out that they have arisen merely from the aberrations of one class or another of humanity. I would like to say: what is actually happening today is surging up as if from an abyss. What kind of abyss is that? It is an abyss that has opened up in the course of the last three to four centuries between the classes that have led humanity up to now and those who are emerging from being led and are now making their demands. It is not from one side or the other that the turmoil comes, but from what lies in between. This is not a pedantic remark, but something on which I believe a profound basis can be established and which at the same time throws light on what actually has to happen. On the one hand, we have the leading circles of humanity, who, basically, let's just admit it openly and honestly, have developed over the last few centuries and especially the last few years in such a way that they have shown little inclination to somehow look into the future, to have any idea of what may actually lie in the bosom of the social order within which they live.

When one looks at what has become of the influence of the thoughts, feelings, willpower and actions of these previously leading circles of humanity, then one recalls the degree of insight, the degree of power of thought, that was there, well, let us say, in the spring of 1914. It is necessary to point out such things today. In the spring of 1914, we could hear that at a meeting that was supposed to be enlightened at least with regard to political matters, at a meeting of those men to whom the leadership of the people was entrusted at that time, the then Foreign Minister said that he could inform the gentlemen of the German Reichstag that the general relaxation of Europe was making great progress. The relations between the German Reich and Russia are as satisfactory as can be imagined, because the government in St. Petersburg is not inclined to listen to the machinations of the press; the friendly neighborly relations between the German Reich and Russia promise the very best. Furthermore, he said that negotiations had been initiated with England, which had not yet been concluded, but which promised that the best relationship with England would ensue.

Yes, especially if one wants to openly and honestly consider what the intellectual power of the leading circles and those selected from these leading circles was in that decisive time, then one must point out such things. What has been hinted at could have been said in the weeks immediately preceding that terrible time, in which, within Europe, a mere ten to twelve million people were killed and three times as many were maimed! These things must be looked at, because today it is important to finally break away from what in recent times has usually been called the practice of life and to gain confidence in what real insight into the facts can achieve. If we do not decide to look courageously and without pretence at what, let us admit, we have been led to by our thoughtlessness regarding what the present is bearing for the future, we cannot move forward. That is what must be faced today. I really don't want to talk to you about anything personal this evening, but perhaps I may point out one thing by way of introduction.

At the same time that leading people were talking about “general relaxation” and the like, as I have just mentioned, I had to summarize in a small gathering in Vienna what I had formed over decades as a vision of the future possibilities of European, modern, civilized life in general. At that time I had to say it in front of a small group – a larger one would probably have laughed at me, because all those who held the leadership of humanity at that time were only inclined to regard such things as fantasies. I put what I had to say at the time into the following words, only repeating what I had already said in one form or another over the past decades:

The prevailing trends in today's world will become ever stronger until they ultimately destroy themselves. Those who have a spiritual understanding of social life see how terrible tendencies are sprouting everywhere, leading to the formation of social ulcers. This is the great cultural concern that arises for those who see through existence. This is the terrible thing that has such a depressing effect and that, even if one could suppress all enthusiasm for recognizing the processes of life through the means of a science that recognizes the spirit, would lead one to speak of the remedy, to cry out to the world for the remedy, so to speak, for what is already so strongly on the rise and will become ever stronger and stronger. What must be the case in a field, in a sphere, as nature creates through abundance in free competition - in the spreading of spiritual truths - that becomes a cancerous formation when it enters social culture in the way described.

It seems to me that these arguments more accurately describe what followed the spring of 1914, when these words were spoken, than all the words spoken by those who at the time considered themselves practitioners of life, who believed that they drew from reality, while they only drew from their political and other life illusions.

If I am to give a brief description of what has led to such things, well, it is precisely the lack of any foresight, the lack of a will to foresee what lies in the bosom of the present as the seeds of the future. Not to be accused – merely characterized!

If we survey the developments that have gradually emerged in the last few centuries in those leading classes that have ultimately entered the so-called bourgeois class of society, we must say that there have been many extraordinarily praiseworthy endeavors. There is no other way to describe them than to say that tremendous progress has been made in general human culture up to the present day. But what has this progress necessitated? It has necessitated that one has become entangled in a terrible contradiction of life. With the emergence of modern technology, with its necessary accessory of modern capitalism, on the one hand, and the modern world view, which goes hand in hand with capitalist and technical development, on the other, there was a need for a certain broadening of education. I will have to say something very paradoxical, but the truths that are necessary for us today may still sound somewhat paradoxical to the habits of thought of the time. Among those who have spoken out in an outstanding way, I actually know of only one man who has said in the right way how the world should actually be treated if things are to continue as they have been done in these leading, guiding circles for centuries; I know of one man who has said what, if they were consistent, these guiding, leading circles should actually do. And this man, and herein lies the paradox, is the head of the Holy Synod, as it is called in Russia; he is the Chief Procurator Pobjedonoszew. There is a writing of this man, which in an extraordinarily forceful and spirited way radically condemns all parliamentarism of recent times, radically condemns democracy, but above all the press of the Western world. Pobjedonoszew was far-sighted enough to know that either these things must be done away with, parliamentarism, the press, democracy, or that one would come to the destruction of that which the leading, guiding circles believe to be the right thing for modern times. Of course, only such a chairman of the Holy Synod had the courage to speak in such a radical way. There was an inner contradiction in the souls of the most progressive thinkers in the leading circles. It was fundamentally a contradiction even to the invention of the printing press. It was impossible, through all the newer institutions, to call upon the wider circles to make their own judgments and to think for themselves, and at the same time to continue to manage things in the same way as they had been managed. This was bound to lead to the result it has produced, namely, the self-destruction of this culture. That is one side of the matter. If the conclusion of the Senior Procurator Pobjedonoszew had been drawn in the widest circles, then people would have said, long since said: something else, something radically different is needed from what we have allowed to develop in the last few centuries. That is one side of the matter. I say this without accusation, just for the sake of characterization. From the statements of the Senior Procurator, one could see that a radical change was necessary, even if it was nonsense in more recent times. For actually one could only have held one's own if one had thought like him. That is the paradox that can be said on one side. That stands on one side of the abyss. Then comes the abyss, and on the other side stand the proletarians who have come of age, those who have been called from other walks of life over the past few centuries to the machine, to the factories; they have been called in such a way that their lives have been placed in modern capitalism, which is desolate for them. From their soul arose those demands that today are truly not just questions of bread; they are that too – but the important thing today is not the question of bread, because basically in Central Europe it is justified for all people – but, as we shall see in a moment, it is a comprehensive economic, legal and intellectual question. But let us now look at the other side of the abyss from the point of view that I want to take here, with regard to the characteristics of this side. Let us look at what is emerging in the proletarian world. It was truly something significant to witness what developed there. While on the one hand the bourgeois circles formed the upper class and developed a certain culture, which could only develop on the substructure of the proletariat, while the upper class of the bourgeoisie developed its own culture, one could see how, for decades, the little time that the proletarian had left over and above his work was filled with the striving for a social world and life view. This arose from completely different foundations than bourgeois culture. What this means is only known to those who have learned to think not only about the proletariat, but with the proletariat, through the vicissitudes of life. This is what is needed today to assess this side. And what do we see on this side? Well, there are already areas of the previously civilized world today where the proletariat is called upon to create order out of chaos. We have seen it develop, truly through all the ingenuity that corresponds to the fresh intellect of the proletariat, in which I believe – we have seen it, the idea, the idea of the social world outlook of the proletariat, endowed with tremendous momentum. We have seen it develop until the outbreak of the world catastrophe. We know how comprehensive views have arisen within the proletariat about what is to happen. Now, many of those who have formed these ideas in their own way, who believe that they have struggled to a proletarian world view, now stand in a position where they could carry out this world view, now they have inherited certain institutions over large parts of Europe. Do we see that they can do it? We see that from this side, too, the thoughts are much too short for these facts.

We see how on the one hand a worldview is alive that is driving the world into decline, and on the other hand a certain world-humanity current has not been able to find the social impulses at the decisive moment that can lead to a new form of organization. Between the two lies the abyss, and from this abyss surges that which already confronts us today and which will truly confront humanity, both bourgeois and proletarian, ever more strongly if this humanity does not find the inclination to grasp what the present and the near future demand out of the necessities of human development. These necessities of life can be seen by observing the proletarian movement as it is emerging, by seeing how it has gradually formed.

It can be said that what lives in the proletarian soul develops in three areas of life, but also develops what asserts itself as an inevitably satisfying demand of the present and the near future. In three areas of life. Those who have become somewhat familiar with the proletarian world view and outlook on life in recent decades, which has been summarized time and again by the insightful people of this movement in the words: It cannot go on as it has become, found above all how deeply the proletarian minds of recent times by an idea that emanated from the proletarian leader whose name has been alive in the European and American proletariat for seventy years, and who, despite all his successors, has not yet been surpassed, that emanated from Karl Marx. One has only to realize how, in the minds of modern workers, exhausted by toil, who in their evening meetings wanted to educate themselves about what should happen, everything that is connected with the word 'surplus value' has struck a chord. This touched the deepest feelings of the proletariat. But it not only touched the deepest feelings of the proletariat, no, it touched at the same time the most intense demands of the modern development of humanity. Only if you really want to understand such things, you have to look deeper than just into what people say with their minds, with their head consciousness. In the depths of the human soul often rests something quite, quite different from what people consciously realize. Endless meaning was stirred up in the proletarian soul when surplus value was mentioned. Infinitely much was stirred up by what the proletarian has no clear conscious ideas about, but what lives in him and what now erupts with elemental force and must be understood if one wants to find any way out of the confusion. Whether the doctrine of “surplus value” can stand up to the judgment of economic science in the sense of Karl Marx is not important for what is meant. Even if this idea was based on error, its social, its social-agitational effect in the working class as a historical phenomenon would have to be considered.

What was it that lived in the deepest depths of the proletarian soul when the subject of surplus value was raised? Well, the leading, managerial circles spoke of the evolution of humanity; they felt themselves in this evolution of humanity. Yes, when they wanted to express what actually underlies this evolution of humanity, then they said, depending on their need, divine world government, moral world order, historical ideas or the like. The proletarian, who, with the dawn of the new era, had inherited this bourgeois world view as a legacy, was offered certain concepts that had developed over time. But when he looked at the leading circles, he could see nothing of the revelation of what these leading circles spoke of as divine world guidance, moral world order and historical ideas. Why could he see nothing? Well, he was harnessed – that is only in recent times and truly has not improved much through the merits of the leading circles – he was harnessed not to a moral world order or divine world order, but to the yoke of the newer economic order. And he looked at what developed as spiritual life among the leading classes. What did he feel there? He sensed the only relationship he truly had – for he could not have the other – to this cultural view, to this cultural heritage of the leading, guiding circles. What was his relationship to it? He produced what this cultural heritage cost; he produced surplus value for others, that alone he understood.

And what they wanted to give him of this cultural heritage, in the form of all kinds of popular entertainment, popular theater performances, in popular courses, in artistic popular performances of other kinds, was something to which he could not develop an inner relationship. For one can only gain an inner relationship to it if one is socially and vitally immersed in the corresponding intellectual life. But the abyss between the two classes had opened up, and basically it was an untruth when the proletarian felt something in what had been thrown at him as a piece of cultural property. And so it came about — I will only briefly describe it today, on Monday I will say a little more about it — that something came about that cut deeply into the hearts of those who understood culture when, like the one who is allowed to speak before you today, they took part in proletarian life and proletarian striving. It came up that within the proletariat the soul-destroying view took hold that all intellectual life, art, religion, customs, law, all science are basically nothing but the reflection of economic life. Among the insightful proletarians, one could repeatedly hear a word used to describe all intellectual life: the word 'ideology'. What the proletarian felt when he looked at art, at science of modern times, at religion, customs and law, was for him nothing more than something that rises like a smoke from the only real thing, the material economic life - ideology. And the view arose, that view which cut deep into the heart, that view which understood all spiritual life, the entire content of the human spirit as ideology. One can, and the modern proletarians did so, especially their leaders, have this view: All spiritual life is basically only the product of unreal human thoughts that arise from the conditions of economic life. Oh, there is so much that can be proved in a strictly scientific way! We have learned a lot about it in recent times. Of course, this view can be scientifically proven as rigorously as possible, but one thing cannot be done with this view: it cannot be lived with. And that is the great tragic fate of the modern age, that the proletariat has placed one last great trust in the bourgeois class by taking over what has become of intellectual life within the bourgeois social order in modern times. What has become of it has been taken over by the proletariat and perceived as an empty fabric of thoughts, like smoke, one might say, rising from the economic conditions. But one can only live with the spiritual life if one experiences it in such a way that one is strongly supported by it in one's deepest soul. Otherwise the soul becomes desolate, otherwise the soul becomes empty.

And no one understands the terrible damage of modern culture who cannot point to this subconscious, who does not have insight into this subconscious, who does not know that precisely under this seemingly so easily provable view of life, the soul must become desolate and that this therefore led to despair in something other than at most an improvement in external material conditions. , and that this soul, emerging from this desolation, came to despair of everything in life except, at most, an improvement in material circumstances. This is the basis of what must be described as the real spiritual demands of the modern proletariat. This cannot be characterized in any other way than to say that the bourgeois social order of modern times has handed down to the proletariat a soul content, a spiritual content, that cannot ennoble the soul and spirit of man, and now this bourgeois social order is being hit back by what has become of the desolate souls, of the abandoned souls. These souls had to be summoned to participate in education through the necessarily widespread democracy. They could not and should not be excluded, nor did anyone want to do so. But they were summoned by a sense of modern intellectual life, the consequences of which were not drawn by those in power, because they did not need to be drawn. If you were a member of the bourgeois class, you still lived in the impulses that came from old religious ideas, from old moral or aesthetic views from ancient times. The proletarian was put at the machine, was crammed into the factory, into capitalism. Nothing arose from this that could answer the big question for him: What am I actually worth as a human being in the world? He could only turn to what was the scientific orientation in modern times. Intellectual life became an ideology for him, something soul-destroying. From this arose his demands, which are still vague today. Only an understanding of this fact can lead to a salutary path into the future. Things are much more serious and in a completely different area than is usually believed today.

The proletarian, for his part, has now gradually seen how, in more recent times, intellectual life arose from the economic order of the bourgeois circles – today there would not be enough time to fully develop the thought. The way people were placed, their existence and economic circumstances, so was their spiritual life. I may, when I tell these things, perhaps refer to a personal experience, because I consider this personal experience to be extremely characteristic. For many years I taught a wide range of human knowledge at the Workers' Education School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht. I was also a teacher of speech exercises. In my dealings with students who are now active in party life and play a role here and there, I have been able to see much of what emerged at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. I endeavored to make clear to my students, who also understood, what the intellectual life has made into an ideology, and that is precisely the economic life of the last four centuries. And by limiting himself essentially to the observations of life in the last four centuries, the proletarian and the proletarian theorist come to regard the whole of intellectual life as ideology. But it has only become so in the last four centuries. The proletarian world view is based on this error, in that it takes a fact of the last four centuries for a fact of the whole development of humanity. I have said it again and again: for the last four centuries this is correct, but we are now faced with the challenge of having to replace ideology with real spiritual life that carries the human soul. The healing aspect lies not in the statement that spiritual life is ideology, but in the will to create a spiritual life that is not ideology. For this ideology is the heritage of the bourgeois social order. At that time I was pushed out of the school by the party leaders, although the students themselves were in favour of me and had also understood me. It was not so easy to gain acceptance for those ideas which, after all, must above all be the fundamental ideas for a social reorganization if one first regards the social question as a spiritual question.

The second area of life that we see as having developed into what has come to light in the proletarian demands is the field of law, the field that, as the proclamation states, is supposed to be the actual territory of the state. What then is right? Yes, I have truly tried for decades to understand the different views that people have about the concept of right. I must admit that if one approaches the concept of right in a way that is true to life and reality, and not theoretically, then one says to oneself in the end: right is something that arises as something original, as something elementary, from every healthy human breast. Just as the ability to see blue or red as a color comes from a healthy eye, and just as one can never teach someone who has a diseased or blind eye the concept of the color blue or red, one can never teach anyone teach anyone what is right in any specific area, unless the sense of right and wrong, which is something elementary and original, lives in him, just as seeing colors or hearing sounds is something elementary. This sense of right and wrong arises, I might say, from a quite different corner of the soul's life than anything else that is created in the development of the human spirit. What is otherwise created in the life of the mind is all based on talent. The sense of right and wrong has basically nothing to do with talent. It is something that develops out of human nature in an elementary way, but only in dealing with people, just as one can only learn language by dealing with people. This sense of right and wrong, whether it speaks loudly and clearly, whether it springs darkly from the human soul, is something that the human soul wants to develop within itself. When the proletarian, through modern educational conditions and through democracy, began to participate in the general intellectual and legal life, in the life of the constitutional state, the question of rights arose for him as well. But when he asked about rights, what did he find? Look into his soul and you will find the answer to this question. He found that when he judged the point of law from his point of view, he did not find rights, but privileges, conditioned by the differences between the classes of humanity. He found that what had become established as positive rights had actually only emerged from the privileges of the favored class, as a disadvantage of the right among the classes without property. He found the class struggle on the legal ground instead of the realization of the right. This realization filled him with the conviction that he could advance only if he was a class-conscious proletarian, if he sought his rights from within this class. This led him to the second link in his world view: to overcome class differences so that the structure of the life of the constitutional state could arise on the soil on which these class differences had arisen in the course of historical development.

The third area from which the demands that are proletarian demands and at the same time necessary demands of the present arise is the economic area. This economic area, as it has so clearly emerged through the capitalist world order and through modern technology, how did it affect the proletarian? How did this economic order, this economic cycle affect the proletarian? Well, it affected him in such a way that he saw himself completely enmeshed in this economic cycle. The others had the intellectual life, which he, however, saw as an ideology, and for him to participate in it was actually a lie because he did not stand in the social context from which it had arisen. The bourgeois circles had their special privileges and cultural assets, and they had an economic life that ran alongside. For them, life was divided into three, even if they combined it in the unified state. But he, the proletarian, felt that his whole personality was harnessed to this economic life. How so? You can see why by looking at the feelings – if you want to understand these things, you have to look at real life – that have developed more and more violently in the modern proletarian soul over the last six to seven decades. Just as it became clear to the proletarian that he derived no benefit from intellectual life, that his only connection to it was his role in producing surplus value, so it became self-evident to him that the new economic life contained something that should not be there if he, as a proletarian, was to receive a humane answer to the question: What is human life worth in the context of the world?

In essence, the only things that move in the economic cycle are those that can be labeled as goods or human services. Production of goods, circulation of goods, consumption of goods, that is basically economic life. For the leading and guiding circles it was also so, but for the proletarian it was different. His labor power was woven into this economic cycle. Just as one bought goods on the goods market, so one bought the human labor power from the proletarian. Just as the commodity had its price, so human labor had its price in the form of wages on the labor market. This, again, was something that touched the unconscious feelings of the proletarian soul, something that did not necessarily have to come to full conscious clarity, but which was expressed in an elementary way in the great, significant, loud facts of the present. It was therefore to the depths of the proletarian soul that Karl Marx's words about “labor as a commodity” spoke. Basically, the proletarian stood in retrospect in the historical development of mankind by understanding these words in the sense of labor as a commodity. In ancient times, economic culture needed slaves. The whole person was sold like a commodity or like an animal. Later, in a different economic order, serfdom came. Less of the human being was sold, but still a great deal. Now the more recent period came along, which, in order to develop in a capitalist way, had to summon the broad masses of the proletariat to a certain education, which had to cultivate democracy in a certain way. And it was not understood in time to see what was germinating in the present for the future. It was not observed in time, as it is necessary, to tear the buying and selling of human labor out of the economic cycle. The modern proletarian felt that he was a continuation of ancient slavery, that he had to sell his labor power on the labor market according to supply and demand, just as one buys and sells merchandise. Thus he felt as if he were wrapped up in the economic process, not standing outside it, as the other classes of the population do. He felt as if he were completely immersed in it. Because if you have to sell your labor, you sell the whole person, because you have to go to the place where you sell your labor as a whole person. The time had come when it should have been realized that human labor had to be integrated into the social organism so that it was not a commodity, where the old wage relationship could no longer exist. This was overlooked. That is the tragedy of the bourgeois view of life: that the right moment has been missed everywhere, that what was necessary in the course of modern capitalist and democratic development has been missed. This is what, in the end, not from below, from the proletariat, but from a lack of understanding of the times, from the bosom of the bourgeoisie, has brought about the current chaos. “My guilt, my great guilt,” the leading circles should say to themselves all too often, then out of this realization would flow the clear feeling of what actually has to happen. This characterizes what has led to the present situation, that which is now bursting out of the abyss as a threefold demand, as a spiritual demand, a legal demand, an economic demand. And we must no longer build on the fallacy that all salvation can come from the economic order. For that is precisely the evil, the harmful thing, that the modern proletarian has been enslaved completely in the economic order. He must be freed from the economic order!

I have only been able to sketch out the historical development of these ideas. Anyone who has followed these events as they have unfolded in modern times with an insightful eye, anyone who has the good will and the inner sincerity and honesty to look beyond all economic, historical and other judgments of the present the reality, will come, through observation of the conditions of the last three to four decades, to recognize the necessity of this threefold order, of which the call speaks.

The proletarian has only seen that intellectual life is dependent on economic life. From this he formed the idea that all intellectual life must be dependent on economic life. He could not overlook the fact that intellectual life has condemned itself to be an appendage of economic life due to its inner weakness, due to the fact that it no longer had the impact of the old worldviews. Thus it came to its view of ideology. The proletarian had paid less attention to something else, which, however, for the same reason as the intellectual life has also become dependent on the life of the state, has remained unseen on the part of the middle-class. I even want to see the historical justification of this dependency in modern times as something necessary. But it is also necessary to take into account the right time at which this intellectual life must be emancipated, not only from economic life but also from state life. Over the last four centuries, the intellectual life of the civilized world has become increasingly dependent on state life. This has been seen as a sign of progress in modern times. Of course, this was necessary to free intellectual life from the shackles of the church; but now it is no longer necessary. It was considered progress to place intellectual life entirely under the wing of state life. How could anyone scoff at the Middle Ages, which we truly do not want to see again, how could anyone scoff at the fact that in those days philosophy, that is to say, for the Middle Ages, science in general, carried the train of theology. Well, at least it has come to pass that modern science does not everywhere carry the train of theology. But science has come to something else, intellectual life has come to this: to the dependence of this intellectual life on the needs of state life, which has been gradually established – this has been shown in particular by the world war catastrophe – entirely according to the needs of modern economic life, which were not generally human needs. The catastrophe of war has made us in Germany very aware of this in individual phenomena, I would say symptomatic. Of course, I could multiply the symptoms a hundredfold, even a thousandfold, but you will understand me when I point to what emerged from a certain scholarship precisely during the war, which, after all, brought everything to an extreme. But the matter has always been there. A very important natural scientist of the recent past, for whom, as a natural scientist, I naturally have the utmost respect, spoke a word that is particularly indicative of the dependence of science on the modern state. He spoke the word as Secretary General of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, calling this Academy of Sciences “The Scientific Guard Troop of the Hohenzollerns”. Well, you don't have to go that far everywhere. In relation to mathematics and chemistry, the corresponding fact is very much hidden, but even there it is present. But go up to those areas that touch on a great vital question of world view, to the field of history, and in modern times, intellectual life has truly become nothing more than the scientific protection force for the modern state. But intellectual life cannot be cultivated in its inner essence by legislating on freedom of teaching, on free science and free teaching. Laws have no influence at all on intellectual life, because intellectual life is based on elementary human talents. And anyone who is familiar with the official intellectual life of modern times knows, even if it sounds paradoxical – I do not even like to say it, because I had to struggle with a certain reluctance to come to this conclusion – that this modern official intellectual life has gradually developed a certain hatred for the talents and a certain preference for the production of the average in human nature. But all intellectual life must be based on the original human talents.

Anyone who looks into the connection between human and individual talents and the social order of human society knows that spiritual life can only prove itself in reality when it is compelled to prove this reality from its own essence prove this reality, when it is left to its own devices from the lowest school up to the universities, from what is today perceived as an appendage of the state to the free artistic expression and so on. Social democracy has so far only found the opportunity, based on feelings that may be wrong, which is not to be assessed here, to demand that religion must be a private matter. In a similar way, all intellectual life must become a private matter in relation to the state and economic order if it is to continue to prove its own reality. This reality can only be proven if this intellectual life is left to its own devices. Furthermore, if it is left to its own devices, this intellectual life will no longer engage in the nonsense it has been engaging in, for example, by interfering in the legal order of the state. One will have to recognize the enormity of the fact that a party like the Center, based purely on spiritual foundations – one may think of it as one pleases in terms of content – has wormed its way into a state parliament, such as the German Reichstag, where only human rights and the like were to be formulated. The moment such a party enters into the life of the state, this life is inevitably tarnished from one side, from the spiritual side. For only that can flourish in the life of the state in which all people are equal, just as they are equal to a certain degree in language. In the life of the state, only that which is not based on special human talent can flourish, but what is determined from person to person on the basis of the original sense of right and wrong. From an understanding of intellectual life as well as from an understanding of the conditions that have arisen in modern times from the intermingling of intellectual life with the state, the demand arises to completely separate intellectual life as a separate organization and to stand on its own. There is no need to fear, as the Socialists do, that the unity of the school system, which they advocate, might be endangered by the fact that the lowest school is placed on the independent basis of spiritual life, in an independent spiritual administration. The conditions of social life in the future will be such that special schools for different classes and groups will not be able to develop. Especially if the lowest teacher is not a civil servant, but only dependent on a spiritual administration, then nothing else can arise from this but the unified school. For how did the classes come about? Precisely because spiritual life was combined with state life.

On the other hand, economic life must be detached from state life. By raising such a demand, one is only too deeply involved in practical life. For basically one can say that economic life, in developing in modern times, has something so arbitrarily compelling that it has gone beyond outdated state and other ideas. Today, people still do not have a clear idea of this, because they do not look at what the necessary demands of modern times are. Let me give you a concrete example, an example that could be multiplied a hundredfold, and that shows how economic life has emancipated itself from the other areas, from intellectual and legal life, in modern human development. I would like to point out the necessary extraction of raw iron at the beginning of the 1860s. In 1840, the German iron industry needed about 799,000 tons of raw iron, which was mined by just over 20,000 workers. In the relatively short period up to the end of the 1880s, the German iron industry required 4,500,000 tons of pig iron, compared to the previous 799,000 tons. These 4,500,000 tons of pig iron were mined by roughly – there is only a slight difference – the same number of 20,000 workers. What does this mean? It means that regardless of everything that has happened in the development of humanity, regardless of what has taken place in the development of humanity, at the end of the 1880s, with 20,000 people, purely through technical improvements, through technical developments, about five times more iron was produced than in the 1860s. That is to say, that which belongs to the technical-economic sphere has become independent, has been set apart from the rest of human development. But people have not paid attention to this, they have not even seen it - and this example could be multiplied a hundredfold - how economic life has emancipated itself. What people did in the economic sphere was not followed by progress in the economic sphere through technology. One should not ignore the opinion expressed here. This opinion is that technology has advanced, but that there was no corresponding idea to accompany technical progress with appropriate social progress. Those who are able to observe facts know that this modern economic life has emancipated itself, and that when this emancipation is demanded from state life, all that is demanded is that people should admit it and make such arrangements as they have developed by themselves. Thus the necessity of the emancipation of economic life follows from many examples, which are not thought up by me or others, but which live in the facts themselves. It is what the facts demand. But what will be the consequence?

Well, a basic requirement, a fundamental requirement of modern life can only be met by separating economic life from state life. Contrary to the thinking of many a socialist thinker of recent times, development must proceed in this direction. While many socialist thinkers think that economic life must develop as in a large cooperative, that it must also include intellectual and state life, economic life must be separated and only run in the cycle of goods production, goods circulation, and goods consumption. But that is the only thing that can lead to a satisfaction of the necessary demands of life in the present.

You see, economic life borders on natural conditions on the one hand. We can only master natural conditions to a certain extent. Whether an area is fertile, whether the soil contains raw materials for industry, whether there are fertile or infertile years, these are natural conditions; they underlie economic life. This builds itself as on a base from one side on it. In the future, it must build itself on something else, which cannot be regulated by economic life any more than the natural forces in the soil. You cannot make decrees about the forces of nature. On the other hand, economic life must be adjacent to the legal life of the state. Just as economic life borders on natural conditions on the one hand, so it must border on the legal life of the state on the other. This also includes ownership, employment relationships and labor law. Today, the situation is such that, despite the employment contract, the worker is still harnessed into the cycle of economic life with his labor. This labor must be released from the cycle of economic life, despite the fears of Walther Rathenau. And it must be released in such a way that the measure, time and nature of labor are regulated on the legal basis of the state, which is completely independent of economic life, from purely democratic legal relationships. The worker will then, before he enters economic life, have himself co-determined the measure, time and nature of his labor from the democratic state order. How this measure, this nature, this character of the labor force is determined will underlie economic life, just as natural conditions underlie it. Nothing in economic life will be able to extend the basic character of that life to human labor. The basic character of economic life is to produce goods in order to consume goods. That is the only healthy thing about economic life. And it is the very nature of economic life that everything drawn into its cycle must be consumed to the last bit. When human labor is drawn into the economic process, it is consumed. Human labor, however, must not be consumed to its very last ounce, and must not, therefore, be treated as a mere commodity. It must be determined on the basis of the legal life of the State, which is independent of economic life, just as the foundations of economic life are laid in the soil by the forces of nature, which are independent of economic circulation. Before the worker begins to work, the nature, extent and duration of his labor are determined in the realm of the legal life.

I know all the objections that can be made against what has been said. One thing in particular can be objected to. As a necessary consequence of this view, it will be said that what is called national prosperity comes to depend on what labor law is. Yes, that will happen, but it will be a healthy dependence. It will be a kind of dependence that does not ask for production and production and more production, but asks: How can the person who has to intervene in the economic process maintain his physical and mental health despite the economic process? How can he be assured of rest from work, in addition to the consumption of his labor power, so that he can participate in the general spiritual life, which must become a general human spiritual life, not a class spiritual life? For this he needs rest from work. And only when social consciousness arises to such an extent that the rest from work also satisfies the purely human needs of the proletariat, when it is recognized that this rest from work is just as much a part of work, of social life, as is the labor force, only then will we emerge from the turmoil and chaos of the present. It is necessary that those for whom the above is biting into an apple, do it. Otherwise they will realize in a very different way what the modern demands mean, which do not arise from human souls alone or from human minds, but from the historical development of humanity itself. If this demand regarding labor law is met, then the formation of prices will depend in a healthy way on labor law and not the other way around, as it still is today despite some labor protection legislation. Wages, that is, the price of human labor, will depend on the other conditions of the economic cycle. Man will become the determining factor for what can be there in economic life. However, just as with nature, which can only be approached to a limited extent through technical devices, one will have to be reasonable in determining labor law and ownership in a certain direction. But on the whole, economic life must be aligned between the legal life and natural conditions. This economic life itself must be built on purely economic forces, on associations that will partly be formed from the professional guilds, but mainly from the harmony of consumption and production.

Today, due to a lack of time, I cannot go into the causes of the great economic crises, especially not into how they ultimately led to the great catastrophe, the Baghdad Railway and the like. But it is necessary to consider – and it can be shown in concrete terms – how these things must actually be thought.

You see, a healthy economic life can only result when the relations of consumption are regarded as the decisive factor, not the relations of production. Now, perhaps I may mention something that was once attempted, which failed only because, within the whole old economic order, such an isolated attempt is bound to fail. It can only succeed if the economic system is radically emancipated from all other aspects of life. In a society that most of you do not love very much because it has been much maligned, we tried, before the catastrophe of war befell us, to accomplish some of the things that must become the economic system of the future, developed, of course, to an immeasurable extent, in a small area, in the area of bread production. We were a society, we could provide consumers with bread. The consumers were there first, and the aim was to produce according to the needs of consumption. For various reasons, the project failed, especially during the war catastrophe, when such things were not possible. But take another example, which may seem strange to you because, compared to the “idealism” of today, it unjustifiably combines intellectual life with economic life for many people — after all, the idealists of materialism are strange people. In the same society, which, as I said, many of you will not love, I have always tried to put the economic element of intellectual production on a healthy footing. Just think about the unhealthy economic basis on which much of today's intellectual production stands. In this respect, it is truly exemplary of what should not prevail in the broadest areas of our economic life. So-and-so – well, who is not a writer today? – writes a book or books. Such a book is printed in a thousand copies. Nowadays, there are truly quite a lot of books that are printed in such numbers, but of which only about fifty are sold, the rest are destroyed. What actually happens when 950 books are destroyed? So many typesetters and so many bookbinders have worked unproductively, work has been done for which there was no need at all. This happens in the intellectual realm in relation to economic life, in relation to material things. I believed that the healthy thing was this: that, of course, needs must first be created. And within this society, which, rightly or wrongly, many of you do not love, the necessity has arisen to establish a bookshop of this kind, where a book is only published when it is certain that there will be takers for it, where only as many copies are produced as needed, so that human labor of typesetters and bookbinders is not wasted, but rather that what is created is adapted to human needs, which one may find wrong for my sake. And that is what has to happen: production must be adapted to needs. But this can only happen if economic life is built on the basis of associations in the way described.

Since the eighteenth century, the modern social life has been imbued with the threefold motto: liberty, equality, fraternity. Whoever hears these three words resounding in the human heart knows that great things have been said with them. But there have been clever people in the course of the nineteenth century who have proved that these three human impulses contradict each other. They really do contradict each other. Three dear human mottos contradict each other. Why? Because they arose at a time when, as far as these mottos are concerned, people felt true human impulses, but were still hypnotized by the unitary state. It was not yet possible to see that the salvation of the future can only lie in the threefold division into a spiritual organism, an economic organism and a state organism. And so people believed that they could realize freedom, equality and brotherhood in a unitary state. They contradict each other. Structure the healthy social organism into its three natural parts, and you have the solution for what the human soul has been brooding on for more than a century: freedom is the basic impulse of spiritual life, where the freedom of individual human abilities must be built upon. Equality is the basic impulse of state and legal life, where everything must arise from the consciousness of the equality of human rights. Brotherhood is what must prevail on a large scale in the economic sphere of life; this brotherhood will develop out of the associations. These three words suddenly take on a meaning, an unsuspected meaning, if one discards the prejudice of the unitary state and embraces the conviction of the necessity of the threefold social order.

I can only hint at all these things, and I can understand if many people still say today: these things seem incomprehensible to me. I have repeatedly tried to seek the reason for this lack of understanding in the call. And many were among those who said that they found it incomprehensible, for example, I cannot quite understand how they can justify what they have understood when they have been ordered to understand it in the last four and a half years. There are many things that people have understood that I truly have not understood. But with this call, something penetrates to the human soul that is to be understood from its freest, innermost resolution. To do so, however, requires the inner strength of the soul. But this inner strength of the soul will be needed if we want to emerge from the chaos and turmoil of this time. The appeal was first made in the midst of the terrible situation in which we found ourselves, because it was originally intended – now we have entered a different phase – as the basis for a foreign policy of which I could assume that with a certain revival of the ideas of this appeal, despite the fact that they only appear to be domestic political ideas, it would have been possible for them to have resounded in the thunder of the guns in the last few years. Then something would have emerged from Central Europe that could have been believed to have resounded out into the world in such a way that it would have been on a par with Woodrow Wilson's so-called Fourteen Points. These fourteen points, which are truly conceived in a quite different interest from the Central European, should have been opposed by the Central European interest. Then there would have been a possibility of speaking of understanding, whereas all the other talk of understanding was hollow. That is what was first attempted there, where it might have had an effect. But it was preaching to deaf ears. Those people who still had influence at that time, those who were the successors of those who had spoken of the “progress of general relaxation” before murdering ten to twelve million people, were told: You have the choice of either accepting reason now or expecting something disastrous. What I said in 1917 at a decisive moment in this appeal, is not the invention of one man, but the result of devoted observation of the developmental necessities of Central and Eastern Europe. You have the choice of either presenting to humanity what reason wants to be realized first, so that this humanity of Central Europe may have a goal again and be able to speak of it like the people of the West, or you will face the most terrible cataclysms and revolutions. In those days people listened to such things, and they were understood. But the will was lacking, or rather, there was no bridge between the intellectual understanding and the development of the will. Today, the facts speak loudly of the fact that these bridges from understanding to will must be found. That is what this call to humanity is meant to say. This call is to be understood out of free inner resolve. It is to be understood out of the will to think.

What I can contribute to this through the book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future”, which will be published in the next few days, I will do so. But humanity will have to admit that completely new habits of thought are necessary for the new building, that something is necessary that has not been thought of in such a way on the left or on the right. One should not take things lightly. Humanity will have to make an effort to do so. It is making an effort to do so, forced by external circumstances to recognize that the time is past when people were led to believe that they can only be happy, contented and socially viable if throne and altar are in order. From the east of Europe today, a different song is heard: “throne and altar” are to be replaced by “office and factory”. In the womb of that which arises in the office and factory lies something very similar to that which arose under the influence of throne and altar. Only if we are willing to look neither to the left nor to the right, but only at the great historical necessities of development, will we find the way that leads us to what we need, namely, to nothing other than humanity, neither to throne and altar nor to office and factory, but to the liberated human being. For by dividing the social organism into three parts, you allow people to participate in all three parts. They are part of economic life, they are part of the democratic state, they are part of spiritual life or have a certain relationship to it. They will not be fragmented, but will be the connecting link between the three areas. It is not a matter of reinstating the old class distinctions, but precisely of overcoming the old class distinctions, so that the free human being can live fully by organizing the external life of the human being in a healthy way within the social organism itself. That is what the future is about. We can only free the human being, we can only place him in a position where he can stand on his own, if we place him in the world in such a way that he stands in all three areas without his humanity being fragmented.

Of course, it is still quite difficult to understand these things under certain circumstances. Recently I gave a lecture on these matters in a town in Switzerland. A speaker stood up who said that he did not really understand the threefold social order, because justice would then only develop on the basis of the state; it must also permeate intellectual and economic life. I replied with a comparison to make the matter clear. I said: Let us assume that a rural family community consists of a man, a woman, children, maids and farmhands, and three cows. The whole family needs milk to live, but it is not necessary for the whole family to produce milk. If the three cows produce milk, the whole family will have milk. Justice will then prevail in all three areas of the social organism when justice is produced on the soil of the emancipated state. It is a matter of returning from clever thoughts and ideas to simple thoughts and ideas about reality. I am convinced that this call is not understood because people do not take it simply enough. Those who take him simply will see how he and his ideas express the longing that we gradually emerge from the turmoil of the present, from the chaos of the present, from the trials of the present, to a life in which, precisely through the threefold social order, the uniformly healthy human being, the human being who is healthy in soul, body and spirit, can develop.

Closing words after the discussion

Someone asks Dr. Steiner where, in our German life at the moment, in the form in which the present government exists, the best opportunity presents itself to translate the ideas expressed into reality. Is there any hope that more can be expected for the thoughts expressed here tonight, or that more can be expected for the development of these thoughts, if the present socialist majority government remains in power?

Dr. Steiner: Those who try to penetrate more deeply into what this appeal actually means will, I believe, not find it difficult to see the direction in which the significant, weighty questions of the esteemed previous speaker are posed. I would like to say a few words about the historical phenomenon touched on by the esteemed previous speaker. You see, I only did it in two places in my lecture, but I believe that today's public life must have thrown its mirror images into personal experience in a certain way for anyone who really tries to penetrate it, dares to have a say in it, and has the confidence to dare to do so. I only mentioned two personal experiences, but perhaps I may say, in response to this question: I myself actually came from a working-class background, and I still remember as a child looking out the window when the first Austrian Social Democrats walked by in their large democratic hats on their way to the first Austrian assembly in the neighboring free forest. Most of them were miners. From that time on, I was able to experience everything that happened within the socialist movement, in the way I have characterized it in the lecture and as it happens when one is determined by fate, not just to think about the proletariat but with the proletariat, while still maintaining a free view of life and all its individual aspects. Perhaps I bore witness to this in 1892, when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” which truly advocated the structure of human social life that I now see as necessary for the development of human talent. Well, you see, in the 1880s, you could take part in many discussions and the like within the social movement, in which the socialist ideas that were emerging were reflected. I would like to say that a certain basic tone was present in all of this.

Of course, it would be going too far to talk about it, because the history of modern socialism is a very long one; it would be going too far if I wanted to be more detailed about this chapter, so what I say will already be subject to the fate that one must, to a certain extent, characterize superficially. In all that was truly alive in the proletarian-socialist worldview, there was something that I would like to call social criticism. It was something that could point out the entire process of modern life over the last four hundred years with tremendous acuity, with the acuity of human self-awareness. One experienced the social impossibilities of the present. But even when one spoke about these things in small circles, the most knowledgeable, the most active—I cite as examples the recently deceased Viktor Adler and E. Pernerstorfer —, the most knowledgeable stopped the discussion at a certain moment, when ideas were to be developed about what should happen, when the inner consistency that was pointed out, the inner consistency of the modern economic order, led to its dissolution, which was called “the expropriation of the expropriators”. What should happen then? If one considered the nullity of what was given at the time as an answer to this question, what should happen then, one could indeed have a certain cultural concern, because one could already see into a future at that time, which is now actually here. Into that future in which those who thought as people thought at that time are called upon to create positively. Those who have now emerged from these views, which caused such cultural concern – you really didn't need to be a fanatical bourgeois to experience this cultural concern in discussions with Social Democrats; it could arise from honest human thought and will – the descendants of these people are the present-day majority Socialists, and the cultural concern is now faced with facts. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, all the people who spoke in this way said: “Let us only get to the helm, then the rest will follow.” If one could not believe that “the rest would follow,” one nevertheless more or less became a prophet of what one is confronted with today: the helplessness of the successors of these people in the face of the facts. In those days, one was considered a fanatic if one pointed out what has happened today.

I truly admire Karl Marx for his keen insight, for his comprehensive historical perspective, for his superb, all-encompassing sense of the proletarian impulses of modern times, for his powerful critical insight into the self-destructive process of modern capitalism, and for his many ingenious qualities. But anyone who knows him also knows that Karl Marx was basically a great social critic who always fell short when it came to pointing out what should actually be done. This is the source of what we see today as the inability to achieve positive progress. Today we see not only the consequences of the facts, but also the consequences of opinions. You see, when I recently gave a lecture in Basel, to a different audience than the one I mentioned earlier, one of the speakers said that, above all, it was necessary for salvation if Lenin were to become world ruler. The other social issues are national. Internationally, Lenin must become world ruler. Well, in the face of such a remark, I had to allow myself to say the following: however we understand the concept of socialization, more or less, one out of insight, the other out of preference or under the compulsion of the facts, let us be a little consistent in these matters as well. If one wants to socialize, then I believe that the first thing to socialize is the relations of domination. Those who demand a world ruler may socialize in some areas, but they certainly do not socialize in the area of power relations. The socialization of power is what is really a basic demand in the first place. So, you see, today you can be radical and fundamentally conservative, even terribly reactionary. Those who have emerged through what I have characterized are often like that.

Today, one has to think in paradoxical terms in many things, because what is true contradicts the habits of thought so much that people today prefer to present contradictions rather than simple truths. But we also need consistency of opinion. Let us consider the opinion of a thinker who is so consistent – whether one likes him or not – as Lenin is. He is consistent, even with regard to a certain action. If you look at his views, you have to say that, in his opinion, he is more firmly established than any other, especially more firmly established than the majority socialists, in what Marxism is. And in one of his books, which is very interesting, he makes a highly interesting remark precisely from the point of view of Marxism. It is all the more interesting, at least formally, because it is not made by someone who writes about socialist parties within his own four walls, or by someone who may be a minister or otherwise in public office, but by an almighty man. He discusses those tenets of Marxism which point out how the old bourgeois state must pass into the proletarian state, but how this proletarian state has only the single task of gradually killing itself. Thus the establishment of a state that makes laws that ultimately kill it. In this state there will be a social order in which all people are equal not only in terms of the law, but also in terms of economic and intellectual conditions. Oh, the intellectual workers will not have a penny more than the physical workers. But at the same time, Lenin is absolutely convinced that this is only a transition. Because, and this he also deduces from Marxism, after the proletarian state has been killed, so all that it is striving for today will have perished, then the other will come, the actual great ideal, which will be realized in that there will be a social order in which everyone will have, not the same as the other, but where everyone will have according to his talents and his needs. But – now consider this big but – but, says Lenin, this state of affairs cannot be achieved with the present people; a new breed of people must first come. You see, in a sense that is also correct thinking, only in a peculiar way correct thinking. On the one hand you have the negative, and on the other the negative, which has led to the present-day consequence of facts, where people are faced with tasks that they cannot overcome from old theories, from old dogmas. They have the consequence of opinion. Something is to be done, but for people who are not yet there.

Now, dear attendees, in the face of all this, our appeal is for people who are here. And it is precisely this that distinguishes our appeal from everything else: it is radically different from basically everything else that is emerging in this field. What else is emerging? Programs! Well, programs are as cheap as blackberries today. It is very easy to found a society, a party, and make a program. But that is not the point. This call is not based on theory or dogma, but on reality, on practical experience. It is therefore not directed at programs, but at people.

It has been said time and again that if a person is placed alone on an island from birth, he never learns to speak, he only learns to speak in the company of people. Thus, social impulses can only develop in the context of living together with other people. They develop in the individual in a very particular way. Here is some proof of this. Among the Bolsheviks today, you know Lenin, Troitsky, and so on. I will mention another Bolshevik whom you may not have considered, and whom you will be very surprised to hear me call a Bolshevik. This Bolshevik is Johann Gottlieb Fichte! No one can have more respect for Johann Gottlieb Fichte than I do, but read his “Closed Trade State,” read the social order he designs in it. Truly, it is being realized in Russia. What is actually at its basis? Fichte was a great philosopher, one might say, a great thinker. All the spiritual paths he has trodden can rightly be trodden by anyone who brings to development what is latent in the human soul, what flows out of human talent. But more recent times have placed the individual at the very pinnacle of the personality. On the one hand, we have to develop this personality today, but just as language does not come from the individual human being when he develops alone, so a social order does not come from the individual. Social ideas, social impulses, social institutions can only develop in the society itself. Therefore, one should not set up social programs, but merely find out: How must people be organized socially, how must they live together so that they find the right social impulses in this living together? That is what is sought in this call. That is the important thing: how people must be structured in the social organism so that they can find the social impulses in the context that then arises from the right structure. This call does not believe in the idea, so common among social thinkers, that one is wiser than all other people. The author of this appeal does not imagine this; but he does believe that with this appeal he has been led to a burning point of reality. To the people to whom I have often spoken in smaller groups, I have repeatedly said: I could imagine that, based on the appeal, no stone remains upon another, that everything will be different than initially conceived, but that is not the point. What matters is to grasp reality as it is meant here, then people who grasp reality in this way will discover something that will also be in accordance with reality. What matters to me is not a program, not details, but that people work together in such a way that the social impulses are found through the collaboration. That is what must underlie realistic thinking today: to bring people into the right relationship. If a person wants to spin out of himself, as Lenin, as Trotsky, as Fichte did, some kind of socialist program, then nothing will come of it, because the socialist will can only develop in the social context.

Therefore, one has to seek out the right structure, the right design of the healthy social organism. What lives today as socialist theory reminds one of the old superstition that Goethe dealt with in “Faust”, how in the Middle Ages people wanted to compose certain substances of the world out of pure intellectual ideas in order to create a homunculus. Today, one looks back on this as a medieval superstition, and rightly so. But in the evolution of humanity it seems to be the case that superstition flees from one area into another. We no longer seek homunculi in the retort, but we do try to assemble an ideal picture of the social order out of all kinds of mental ingredients. That is social homunculi making, social alchemy. The world suffers today from this superstition. This superstition must disappear. It must become clear that reality must be grasped, that it must be pointed out how people must stand in the social organism. That is why I said: ultimately, it does not matter to me what the names of those who will participate in the new construction are here or there. It does not matter which former classes and social circles will be the ones to participate in this new construction. It does not matter whether they call what is necessary one thing or another, whether it is a dictatorship of individuals in the transition period or whether it is already widespread democracy. All these are ultimately secondary questions. What matters is that the right thing is thought, the right thing is felt, the right thing is wanted. I must again emphasize that, however beautiful our thoughts about social institutions may be, we must devote ourselves to the reconstruction of social institutions wherever we can. But anyone who believes he has a deeper insight into the situation must also assume that the following will be revealed to him from these conditions.

If you continue to make good institutions today, but leave people's habits of thought as they are, then in ten years you will have achieved nothing with these institutions. Today we need not just a change of institutions. As paradoxical as it sounds, what we need today are different minds on our shoulders! Minds in which new ideas are present! Because the old ideas have brought us into chaos. This must be understood. Therefore, today it is a matter of spreading enlightenment about the living conditions of a healthy social organism in the broadest circles. It is important today to start with a free intellectual life, to start expanding the opportunities everywhere to bring people to an understanding of the healthy conditions of the social organism. Above all, we need people who do not practice social alchemy or social homunculism, but people who create from social reality. Therefore, I do not believe that another revolution, and yet another, will follow the past revolution without a thorough re-education with regard to the ideas that a revolution brings something beneficial. Only when it becomes an ideal to engage in the healthy organization of intellectual life, the dissemination of healthy ideas, the arousal of healthy feelings, then there will be people — no matter how they assert themselves, be it in the soviet government or in something else — who will be able to bring about the recovery of the social organism. I consider that the most important thing. The most important thing is the revolutionizing of the human world of thought, feeling and will. Only on this basis can the result be achieved that the previous speaker longs for. I do not believe that salvation can come from anything else without these foundations. Because I take the matter so seriously, I have devoted myself to the area that was expressed in the appeal. Only when more and more people can be found who have the honest will and courage to radically understand and then implement this threefold order — it can be implemented from every point in practical life today —, when enough people with new thoughts replace people with old, unfruitful thoughts, then in some way that which must happen for the good of people and for their liberation will happen.

A communist speaker doubts that socialization in the form of the lecture can be carried out with today's people.

Dr. Steiner: Basically there is not much to be said in connection with what the previous speaker said, because he spoke out in favour of threefolding and is really suffering from a certain pessimism, namely the pessimism that people today are immature for this threefold social order and must first go through a communism in the sense of Lenin and Trotsky. It has been said as if these had been discussed here in a way that they did not come into their own. I only said, “think about it as you will,” that is the only thing I said about the content. I only characterized the form. It seems to me that the honorable gentleman who spoke before me does not actually believe that humanity could really be brought spiritually to put other heads on its shoulders. Well, you see, we have all experienced that five months ago people still wanted the world war and so on. But, dear attendees, I believe that there is one tremendous teacher of all that can be said today by people, and that is the world of facts itself. That is the terrible world catastrophe itself. I do not believe, however, that since the world catastrophe entered a new phase, there has been enough time for all people to learn anew. But for very specific reasons, I cannot join the previous speaker in his pessimism, in the form in which he has it. Not for the following reasons, in particular. You see, if it were simply the case that there was no other way to achieve threefolding than through the detour of communism – believe me, I am not suffering from any kind of pettiness or faint-heartedness about what is necessary – then one could also agree with that. If it were only possible to achieve the threefold social order through communism, as the previous speaker suggested, then I would immediately think that this is the way to go. But I have not said this without careful consideration, but rather based on decades of life experience: from the throne and altar on the one hand, to the office and factory on the other. You see, I am perhaps two and a half times older than the previous speaker. Now, even at this age, I just want to touch on this with a few words, one certainly has the opinion that a great deal of what needs to be done can only be done by young people. I have the opinion that you can stand at the end of the sixth decade of life and have a soul that is just as young as the previous speaker. That may be selfish. But I have given a great deal of thought to what I said about throne and altar on the one hand, and office and factory on the other.

You see, the situation is simply this: when you create any kind of social structure, you are not creating something eternal for all time or even for a long time, but something that is developing and growing. And for those who have gained the necessary life experience, the situation is such that they know full well that when a child is growing, they will take on a different form when they are adults. So, if you look at the living conditions of the social organism, you also have a definite idea of how it will develop and grow. On the one hand, I see something that has grown old, emerging from older communities: the private-sector administration of more recent times, the capitalism of today with its terrible harmfulness. We have experienced this as decomposition under the throne and altar. Now we are starting again with communism, only in a slightly different form – not under the motto 'throne and altar', but under the motto 'office and factory'.

All right, let us start again. After some time, we will not be at the threefold social order, but at another form, at a terribly bureaucratized form under the motto “office and factory”, under what is being prepared today in communism. There will not be what the propertyless experience today through the propertied. There will be, whether you believe it or not, a hunt for positions in order to achieve through the hunt for certain positions what is hunted today through capitalist profit. Instead of the harm of today, there will be a tremendous amount of spying and informing. Those who, on the basis of superficial thoughts, want to restore a bygone social order today so that they can start again and then believe that by starting over with what has already been tried and tested to the point of decrepitude, we can arrive at different conditions, are not considering all of this. Of course, in view of what we have experienced, how so many people have believed in what they were told, while they only barely approached something like the call, one can become pessimistic. I fully understand pessimism as a sign of the times. And in a certain respect, after months of talking about these things, I have also felt something that seems like a tragedy of the times: that it is so difficult to engage in discussion with bourgeois personalities. I regard that as a very significant phenomenon. It is something that very, very much encourages pessimism. You experience many things. For example, recently in a southern city, I experienced that in a newspaper review of a private page it was said, well, he made quite good comments in the first part of his lecture on intellectual life, but one would have wished that a speaker would have appeared who would have considered private-sector capitalism as his business and would have defended it, because it could be defended. It is sad that not a single such speaker appeared. It makes you want to believe that the capitalist order has reached its end. — A tangle of contradictions. First, you have to admit that the private-capitalist administration, the private-capitalist economic order, must be defended, so it must represent something durable after all. But the second thing is that the writer himself doubts it because no speaker could be found to defend it. The third thing is, if the sender was there himself, why didn't he actually speak himself?

It is as if people were extinguishing themselves and thereby proving how far they have descended into nothingness. I can understand all that, but still, for those who do not think pessimistically, there is only one thing to do: we must find as many people as possible who understand this threefold social order, then we can actually realize it in a very short time. Nowhere have I said that it cannot be realized for another ten years. No, this threefold social order can be realized today from every point of view. And that is why it is important to get it into people's heads, which is why we all want to take it seriously enough and work for it. But if you want to work for the good of humanity, you don't have to be pessimistic, you have to believe in your work. You have to have the courage to really think about being able to realize what you think is right. I consider it a form of self-destruction when someone says: I have ideas that can be realized, but I don't believe in them. I don't consider this question to be a question of reality, but only: What are we doing to ensure that a realistic idea can be realized as quickly as possible? Let us not think about what minds are like today, but about what they must become.

Let us take courage, and we will not have to wait for a new breed of human beings; we will find people who, although they have been depressed by the violence of recent years, will find a way to carry the new heads on their shoulders that is different from what some people think. So let us not be pessimistic, but let us work and see if our ideas will take hold or if we have cause for pessimism. If there were such a cause, then I do believe that the ten years of transition would not lead to threefolding but to something else. We have ruined much and would ruin much more, and before ten years have passed, we would reach the point where we would no longer be able to ruin anything because everything has been ruined. Therefore, it is better to work than to fall into discouragement.

A lecture for the employees of Waldorf-Astoria.

We are living in a highly significant time, which is already being announced by loud speaking facts over a large part of Europe, by facts that will become more and more widespread, and in this significant time it is necessary, especially in these circles, to think seriously, very seriously, about the tasks that one can have as a human being, as a working human being; about the rights that one must have; about what life should give in general. To think seriously and, above all, to think in a very specific way about this, it will be necessary to say a few introductory words.

You see, most of you will have formed views over the years about what needs to be done to solve the so-called social question, the social movement. Some of what has been formed as such a view will also have to be reconsidered within the working class. Now that we are facing completely different issues than perhaps quite recently, we will have to think differently in the very near future and already today. How one must endeavor to think is precisely what we want to talk about today. But first we must agree that today, above all, it is important that we have trust in each other and that we can really achieve something through that trust. This trust could be present less and less in the time that has now passed and which, however many impossibilities it contained, showed that it led to that terrible catastrophe, through which, in Europe, counting few, ten to twelve million people were killed and three times as many were crippled. This was the final consequence of the socially perverse ideas and desires of the classes that had previously led humanity. Today, the entirely justified demands of the times come from a completely different class of humanity: the proletariat. But this also means that the proletariat is faced with completely different tasks today than it was just a short time ago.

I will say only one thing to point out these tasks, that even leading Social Democrats said shortly before the October catastrophe, the November catastrophe occurred in Germany: Yes, when this war is over, the German government will have to take a completely different position towards the proletariat than it has taken before. It will have to take the proletariat into account in all acts of government, in all legislation. It will no longer be able to treat the proletariat as it has treated it in the past. - You see, that was said by leading Social Democrats relatively recently. But what does that mean? It means that these leading Social Democrats, shortly before the November Revolution, still expected that after the war the old German government would be on top. Now we are faced with the fact that, as elsewhere in Europe, in Central Europe, these governments have been swept away. This automatically negates the possibility that they can take social demands into account. Today, one must speak about these things quite differently, purely on the basis of the facts, than even insightful, well-reflecting Social Democrats have spoken about them recently. For today the proletarian himself is faced with the necessity of creating something sensible out of the chaos and confusion of the present. Therefore, today it is necessary to look at something quite different than one looked at a short time ago.

You see, when someone spoke recently, as I am doing now before you, people paid attention to what they said in terms of content. They checked whether the things that were said were in line with old social ideas or the ideals of the proletariat, and they rejected the person in question if he did not say exactly the same thing, or at least the main points in many respects. Today things have to be different, otherwise we will not get out, but deeper and deeper into chaos and confusion. Today, I would say, we must apply something completely different to awaken mutual trust. We must carefully examine intentions, we must examine whether what is said is based on honest and sincere intentions. Today, in fact, everyone must be able to have their say who, regardless of how they envision what has to happen, honestly and sincerely means well with the demands of the proletarian world. How we satisfy these demands is only the second question today. The first question is that anyone who wants to talk about reorganization or reconstruction today must be sincere about the demands of the world proletariat; they must be sincere in the sense that they are convinced that the demands as such, that the proletarian wants, are justified. For only when these demands are recognized as justified can there be any basis for discussion, and then one can talk about how these demands can be fulfilled and satisfied.

Now you see, in some respects you will indeed find that the call, which has also become known to you, differs from older socialist demands. Nevertheless, I believe that if people are made aware of what this call and the book 'The Crux of the Social Question', which is to be published in the next few days, are striving for, then what the newer proletarian movement has actually wanted for more than half a century will be achieved in a more intense and correct way. The desire was, to a certain extent, a demand of the times itself. It could not go on as the leading classes had arranged it. But from the criticism of the behavior of the leading classes, ideas must emerge today about how to do it – what actually needs to be done. Now, basically, the proletariat itself has done the best preparatory work for such a shaping as this call demands. Therefore, I believe that if some misunderstandings are removed, the proletariat in particular will develop the most meaningful understanding of this call, which is honest about the conditions of humanity today.

Those of us who, like me, have not thought about the proletariat but always with the proletariat, have experienced how the proletariat has been completely drawn into the cycle of economic life by the conditions of modern times. It is no wonder that today the proletariat, in contrast to those who have reaped the fruits of this economic process in the so-called “higher culture,” calls out to these leading classes: We want to create a completely new social order out of the economic process. The leading classes have, for centuries, and particularly in the nineteenth century, harnessed the worker to economic life, have kept him so busy in economic life, have taken up so much of his time with economic life that the worker could basically see nothing but this economic life. He saw how his entire working capacity was absorbed by this economic life, how he created surplus values by the absorption of his working capacity, through which the so-called “higher class” satisfied its so-called “higher culture”. He saw that he lived badly from the economy – the others lived well – and in the end he said to himself: Well, everything is economic life, so an order must come out of it that somehow brings salvation for the future. Of course, this view had to emerge. But the point is not that we judge the social order from what we have just grown into, but that we ask ourselves: What is necessary for the social organism to become properly viable? And you see, the task that was set first was to think about this viable social organism, which makes it possible for every human being to answer the question: What am I actually as a human being? was the task that had to be accomplished before the call to humanity was issued during this difficult time of trial for humanity, a call that arose from life experiences that are almost as old as the newer social movement. It did not arise out of some fleeting thought, as many of the thoughts do that now also design some social programs, but it arose out of the experience of the social movement for as long as I was able to experience it, for example. There one could see that one of the main reasons why we are still so far behind in solving the most urgent social questions today is that the leading classes have not been able to come up with something from their own thoughts that could get the social organism back on its feet in a healthy way. Of course, this cannot be found in any bourgeois thought, but only if one thinks neither bourgeois nor proletarian, but only human.

You may ask, dear attendees, why do those who represent this appeal not join a socialist party? I would like to answer with a very simple reference: you can be sure that the person who first drafted this appeal has never belonged to a bourgeois party and has never belonged to a bourgeois association, because today all party programs have to be redesigned. This appeal begins with a discussion of intellectual life. For this intellectual life, a complete reorganization is required, even a radical reorganization. I do not believe that anyone today can make a sound and original judgment about the reorganization unless he has been obliged to conduct intellectual life in the way that it must be conducted in the future simply to be healthy for decades. Of course, when one speaks of such things, one must speak somewhat radically and many may then say: the things are not meant so badly. — I myself have never lived in any dependence on the state or other corporations for the pursuit of an intellectual life. All my life I have tried to cultivate intellectual life on its own merits. This is precisely what the appeal as something universally human is intended to achieve. For anyone who has had to cultivate intellectual life in this way, who has never wanted to be dependent in his intellectual pursuits on any state or on anything else in the civil institutions that have passed away, experiences many things precisely with regard to intellectual life that help him to understand proletarian life in the present day. We know how difficult it was to break free from the fetters of intellectual life, which have brought so much harm – more than you yourselves with your socialist views can believe – especially in terms of spreading need and misery for the physical and mental life of the proletariat.

For in the material realm, in the external economic realm, people today fall into two classes: the class of the bourgeois, which has merged with the nobility, and the class of the proletarians. Today, the proletarian, because he has become class-conscious, knows what he has to demand. He is a proletarian. He did not have a choice. He was thrown into the proletariat by the economic process. Under the old economic and state order, the intellectual worker did not even have the choice of either becoming an intellectual entrepreneur or a proletarian. You could hardly become a proletarian if you did not make your peace with the ruling powers. In the spiritual field, one could only struggle through the difficulties that arose in the old order, or, if one made peace with the powers, if one worked together, as the proletarian must work in the material field, then one did not become a proletarian in the spiritual field, but a coolie. Either one had to take upon oneself everything that pulled one out of the old order as a spiritual worker, or one had to become a Kuli if one was worse off than the proletarian when one entered into what the social structure had developed in the old order. Because that is the case – I do not want to make any personal remarks, but to remain on factual ground – because the intellectual coolie has become so much the henchman of the economic and state powers, we have come from one side into such misery. The worker cannot, of his own accord, see this with such strength, because he has been drawn into the purely economic order since the advent of modern technology and soul-destroying capitalism. Those who have not been harnessed in this way, but in a spiritual way, know that what must happen for the good of human development is the emancipation of spiritual life. They know that it is impossible for those who have to cultivate the abilities, the talents of humanity, that which the human being brings with him into the world through his birth, to continue to be the servants of what has developed in modern times as a state or economic order. To liberate the spiritual life, that is the first task.

This liberation of intellectual life is still opposed by many prejudices, even on the part of the proletariat. The fact is that this intellectual life has emerged in modern times at the same time as the development of modern technology, with the development of soul-destroying capitalism. A newer intellectual life has also emerged, but one that is only a class intellectual life. In this respect, it was and is still very difficult to be understood. I would like to give you an example. Twenty years ago, in a lecture to the Berlin working class in the Berlin Trade Union House, I made the following assertion, which for me is an insight: Not only what else exists in the world is a result of the capitalist economic system, but above all, our scientific endeavor is a result of the capitalist economic system. At the time, most leading proletarians did not believe me either. They said: Science is something that is established by itself. What is scientifically established is just established; it does not matter whether it is proletarian or bourgeois thought. These were fallacies that haunted people's minds, regardless of whether they were proletarian or bourgeois; for the bourgeois world view was adopted by the proletariat. And today we are faced with the necessity not of continuing to cultivate this knowledge adopted from the bourgeoisie, but of deciding on a free knowledge that can only develop if prejudices are overcome.

For example, one might say: We have now happily come to the decision to strive for a unified school system; but if intellectual life is to be freed and children are to be led to school not by state compulsion but by each person's free will to send their children to the school of their choice, then the higher-standing people will found their own schools again. The old class school system will reappear. This objection was still justified in the old order, but in a very short time it will no longer be justified. The old classes will no longer exist. And what is demanded in this appeal for intellectual life, the emancipation of intellectual life from the lowest school up to the university, is not demanded as an individual institution, but in connection with a complete reorganization, which should make it possible that by the time a person grows out of school, something other than the unified school will exist. The objections that are made against these things are only conservative prejudices. We must learn to see that intellectual life must be emancipated, that it must be left to its own devices, so that it is no longer a servant of the state and economic order, but a servant of what general human consciousness can produce in intellectual life; so that intellectual life is not there for one class, but for all people equally.

Dear attendees, you have been working in the factory since morning, as far as your work goes. You go out of the factory and at most pass the educational institutions that are set up for certain people. In these educational institutions, those who were previously the ruling class, who led the government and so on, are being manufactured. I ask you: hand on heart, do you have any idea what is going on in there? Do you know what goes on in there? No, you don't know! This is a vivid illustration of the class divide. There is an abyss. What is sought in the appeal is that everything that is done on intellectual ground concerns everyone, and that the intellectual worker is responsible to all of humanity. You cannot achieve this if you do not liberate the intellectual life and make it stand on its own. That is why Karl Marx's words about surplus value have struck such a chord in the minds of the proletarians. The proletarians did not know this in their heads, but in their hearts they felt it to be true, and today these heartfelt demands are expressed in world-historical demands.

Why have these demands had such an impact? Why? Why is Walther Rathenau already worried about surplus value? The reason is that, so far, the worker knows nothing about surplus value except that it exists. It is used within circles that are strictly closed off from the others. Does the worker of today know that he is working for things that simply need not be in the world, that are fruitless labor, brought forth because bourgeois life has brought countless luxuries in the intellectual sphere as well? Most people today, out of thoughtlessness, do not yet understand how to get a correct idea of the relationship between the economic value of labor and intellectual life, which must surely be the guiding light for humanity. I will give you an example that may seem a little strange to you. Imagine a student who is about to graduate from university. You know, he is given an assignment to write a doctoral thesis on the parenthesis in Homer. That is, there are no parentheses in Homer, but he is supposed to invent one. He needs a year and a half for this. Then he does an excellent job on the parenthesis in Homer, according to the demands of today's education and science. But now we ask about the economic context of this doctoral thesis. This doctoral thesis, when it is finished and printed, will be placed in a library. Another doctoral thesis; no one looks at it, sometimes not even the writer himself. But from a practical point of view, the young student must eat, must clothe himself, must have money. But to have money today means to have the work of so and so many people. The proletarian must work for this doctoral thesis. He does work for something in which he is not allowed to participate. A grotesque, comical example of countless things, it cannot only be multiplied by a hundred, it can be multiplied by a thousand. So the first question to ask is: what do those who are supposed to lead us spiritually look like? They come from the educational institutions in which we ourselves are not allowed to participate. This will be different when the spiritual life is emancipated, when those who cultivate the spiritual no longer have the support of an economic corporation or a capitalist order, not the support of the state, but when they must know every day that what they achieve has value for people because people have confidence in it. Spiritual life must be based on the trust between humanity and spiritual leaders. No one can reply: Today, people are not always recognized when they are talented; there are unrecognized talents, even unrecognized geniuses. How will it be in the future when recognition must be based on trust? — for what a person occupies himself with privately is his own business; we are talking about how spiritual life is integrated into the social organism. It must integrate itself in the way I have described. It must integrate itself freely. Only by the fact that spiritual life has gradually been driven into dependence on state and economic life in the last few centuries has it become what it is. Only through this has it been possible that those people who spoke as I mentioned yesterday, those people to whom the leadership of men was entrusted, should have grown out of this spiritual life.

Let us take a look at the people who were at the helm at the outbreak of the world war. The Foreign Minister said to the enlightened gentlemen of the German Reichstag, who should understand something of the world situation: The general political relaxation has recently made gratifying progress. We have the best relationship with Russia; the St. Petersburg cabinet does not listen to the press pack. Our friendly relations with Russia are on the right track. Promising negotiations have been initiated with England, which will probably be concluded in the near future in favor of world peace, as the two governments are in a position that will allow relations to become ever closer and more intimate.

Well, so spoken in May 1914! Intellectual life, which has been led in this way for the past few centuries, had to lead to this level of maturity and insight into the circumstances. There are excellent scientists, because they are well drilled scientifically. But the point is that through intellectual training, heart and mind are also awakened to life; that one learns to recognize life, that one does not say in May “world peace is secured” and then in August allow the event of what killed ten to twelve million people and maimed three times as many. This must come about in spiritual education, and it can only come about when spiritual life is free and people not only become knowledgeable and can give definitions about all sorts of things, but when they become intelligent. When they become intelligent, then, precisely out of this free spiritual life, they will become those who can help in the management of businesses and in the management of the national economy. Then the worker who is under such a leadership will no longer say, “I must fight this leader,” but, “It is good that we have this leader; he has something on his mind, and my work will bear the best fruit.” If there is a stupid leader, I will have to work long hours; if there is a clever leader, the working hours can be shortened without making economic prosperity impossible. What matters is not that we work short hours, but that when we work short hours, we do not have nothing when it comes to expensive food and expensive housing. We must start from the whole, to arrive at a new structure, not from individual points. That is why I emphasize so strongly that, above all, intervention must be made in the spiritual life, that it must be placed on a healthy independent basis.

Now, people have been asking for so long what the state should do. Yes, you see, over the last three to four centuries, this state has become a kind of god for the ruling, leading classes – and many others have said so. When you hear what has been said about the state, especially during this terrible war, you are reminded of the conversation that Faust has with the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. Faust says of God: “The All-embracing, the All-sustaining, does he not embrace and sustain you, me, himself?” Yes, many an entrepreneur today or recently could have taught his employee about the state in such a way that he could have said: Does he not sustain me, you, himself? — He would then have added: but especially me!

Yes, you see, that is what we have to learn with regard to this, I would say, deification of the state. For the bourgeois population, for the most part, this deification has very quickly evaporated under the pressure of the facts. And when the state is no longer the great protector of enterprises, then enthusiasm for the state will no longer exist in this circle. But it must also become clear to the proletarian that the state must not be treated as a god. Of course, one does not speak of it as a “god”, but one thinks very highly of it. The old framework of the state is used to guide economic life. But it is healthy not to transfer economic life to the state, but only to transfer political life, the pure legal life, to the state. There it is on its own ground. There it exists by right. But economic life must be placed on its own foundation, for it must be administered in a quite different way from the legal life of the state. We can only arrive at a healthy basis for the social organism if we undertake the threefold division. On the one hand, spiritual life, which must itself procure its right, which has no right to exist if everyone who achieves something spiritual does not have to prove it before humanity every day. In the middle, the life of the state, which must be democratic, as democratic as possible. Nothing but what concerns all people equally may be decided there. What presents every human being before every human being as equal must be addressed there. Therefore, the state must be separated. How are we to negotiate whether one person is better at this or that than another? This must be separated from the state.

In the state, the only thing that can be discussed is what all people are equal in. What are all people equal in? Today, just two examples: one for property, the other for labor. Let us start with labor. Karl Marx's words about “labor as a commodity” have had a profound impact on the minds of proletarians. Why? Because the proletarian, even if he could not define it exactly in his head, still felt what was meant by it. What was meant was: your labor power is a commodity. Just as goods are sold according to supply and demand on the market, so you are bought on the labor market and given as much for your labor as the economic situation demands. Recently, people have begun to believe that insurance can improve all sorts of things. But that was truly not brought about by bourgeois circles. They had lived in terrible thoughtlessness, especially in more recent times. Well, to be fair, they did achieve one thing: statistics. Such an enquiry, such a census was carried out by the English government in the 1840s, at the dawn of the social movement. What did this census reveal? First of all, it mainly relates to English mines. It was found that children as young as nine, 11, 13 years old, boys and girls, were working down there in the mines. It was found that these children had never seen sunlight except on Sundays because their working hours were so long that they were led down the shafts before sunrise and did not return until after sunset. Furthermore, it was found that half-naked, often pregnant women worked together with naked men down there in the mines. But up above, in the well-heated rooms, people talked about charity, brotherhood and how people want to love one another. You see, that was included in the statistics back then, but it certainly did not become a lesson. It did not lead to reflection. The individual need not be accused, but what the bourgeois class has actually done, if one can say so, is to fail to intervene in the right way at the right moment!

The proletarian mind has conceived the idea: In ancient times there were slaves, and people sold each other whole. They became the property of their owners, like a cow in its possession. Later came serfdom. Then people sold a little less, but still enough, of themselves. In more recent times, people sell their labor. But if the worker has to sell his labor, he must go with his labor to the place where he sells it. He must go to the factory. So he sells himself there with his labor. He cannot send his labor to the factory. There is not much substance behind the labor contract. Salvation can only be expected when the control over the labor force is completely removed from the economic sphere, when the decision on the extent, on the whole way in which work should actually be done, is made by the state on a democratic basis. Before the worker even enters the factory or the workshop, a decision about his work has already been made on a democratic basis by the state, with his vote. What is achieved by this? You see, economic life is, on the one hand, dependent on the forces of nature. We can only control these to a certain degree. They intervene in human affairs. For example, the amount of wheat that thrives in any given country and the amount of raw materials that lie under the earth are given from the outset, and one must adapt to them. You cannot say that you have to have the prices of one or the other if that would contradict the quantity of raw materials. That is one limit. Another limit must be the use of human labor. Just as the forces of nature lie beneath the soil for the grain and man has no control over this in economic life, so labor must be supplied to economic life from outside. If it is supplied from within, wages will always depend on the economic situation. Only when it is determined outside of economic life, quite independently, on a purely democratic, state basis, what kind of work it is and how long the work may last, then the worker goes to work with his labor law. Then the labor law becomes a natural force. Then the economic is sandwiched between nature and the constitutional state. Then the worker no longer finds in the state what he has found in the last three to four centuries. He no longer finds class struggle, class privilege, but human rights. Only by isolating the state as a special social entity from the other two areas can we achieve beneficial social progress, can we achieve a form of salvation that can be found for all people on earth. We must get away from this prejudice that the state should be regulated by economic life and not economic life by the state, which is independent of it. Otherwise, we will always think wrongly into the future.

The same applies to property law as to labor law. You see, ultimately the foundations of all present-day property can be traced back to old conquests, to old military enterprises; but that has changed. In terms of political economy, the concept of ownership makes no sense at all. It is a pure illusion. It only exists to appease certain bourgeois minds. In terms of political economy, what does the concept of ownership mean? It means only one right, namely, the right of disposal over property, land, and the means of production. The right of disposal must be placed in the competence of the state, just as must the right of labor. You can only do this if you remove all economic and intellectual powers from the state. You can only do this if you run economic life, on the one hand, and intellectual life, on the other, completely independently, leaving only democracy to the state.

It will be difficult at first to grasp these ideas, but I am convinced that the proletarian will feel how these ideas contain the future. Within economic life, nothing may move as a commodity. Today, property also moves in it, that is, actually, rights. Nowadays, you can simply buy rights. With the right to work, you also have the right to dispose of the person. By owning the means of production, the land, you buy the right to dispose of it. You buy rights. Rights must no longer be bought in the future; they must be administered by the state, which has nothing to do with buying and selling, so that every person participates equally in the administration. Nothing other than what can be represented in the production, circulation, and consumption of commodities will circulate in the cycle of economic life. This always goes through consumption, and therefore the whole economic system in the future must be built on an associative basis, built on coalitions that arise from professional groups, but mainly from the emergence of the necessary consumer needs. Today, it is precisely because we start from the production of wealth that we are led to constant crises, caused by the social misery of the masses. If we start from consumption, then economic life is placed on a healthy foundation. Yesterday I gave an example of how, even if it is still inadequate, one can attempt to proceed in such a way in spiritual production that one does not count on unfruitful labor. I would like to tell you about that now. You see, our society is perhaps still an abomination for many. But in the field of spiritual production, this society has made an attempt at something that must extend to all other branches. About twenty years ago, I began writing books. But I did not approach it like many of my contemporaries. You know, many books are written, few are read. How could anyone have time to read everything that is written today? But this is economic nonsense, especially in this field. Imagine a book is written – that is the case in thousands upon thousands of cases. The writer of the book must eat. So and so many typesetters must set the type. The paper must be manufactured, so and so many binders must bind the book. Then the book is published in, let us say, a thousand copies. Perhaps fifty copies will be sold, the other nine hundred and fifty copies have to be thrown away. What actually happened here? We must always look at the reality. So many people who had to work by hand worked for nothing for the person who wrote the book. You see, much of today's misery is based on unproductive, useless work that is thrown to the wind. So what did we do in our society? We can't do anything with the usual book trade, which is completely within today's economic order. So we founded a bookshop ourselves. But a book was never printed before there were so many people that all the copies could be sold, that is, before the needs were there. Of course, this can only be achieved through work. People had to be made aware – but not, of course, by a sign like “Maggi's Good Soup Cubes”, for example. Advertising can be used to make people aware that the goods are available. But it must start from needs, from consumption. However, that can only happen if consumer cooperatives are established, if the cooperative system is essentially placed on an economic footing. It is not necessary to put this on political ground if you have democracy. Today, however, the proletarian does not see it, he does not yet have a good overview of it. And since I want to speak honestly, I may well touch on the last question to show how the proletarian experiences it in his own destiny, what terrible things are produced by the fusion of economic life with state life. What do countless proletarians consider to be the only salvation in economic difficulties, since the state still does not stand on truly healthy ground, that of democracy, which is independent of the needs of economic life? One can say, for example, that there must be labor rest so that the proletariat can participate in the generally free spiritual life of humanity. The state must stand in the middle between economic life and intellectual life; it must be placed on its own democratic ground. Today, things have become intertwined through bourgeois interests of the last centuries and very strongly intertwined within the first two decades of the 20th century. What do numerous proletarians often have as their ultimate goal - we see it today, where the facts speak so loudly - what do they have when they fight for justified demands? I need only utter one word to touch on something that many proletarians think about, but at the same time on something they cannot yet feel properly about today because they do not see the full economic consequences – I need only utter the word “strike”. I know, esteemed attendees, that if the proletarian were given the opportunity to help himself without striking, he would reject any strike. At least I cannot imagine any sensible proletarian who would want a strike for the sake of a strike. Why are they often so inclined to strike today? Because our economic life is intertwined with state life. A strike is a purely economic matter and only has an economic effect. But often a state effect, a political effect, is also to be achieved. This can only be the case in an unhealthy social organism in which the separation between state and economic life has not yet occurred. Anyone who looks into economic life knows that it can only be healthy if production is never interrupted. With every strike, you stop production. Those who believe they have to strike are acting out of necessity, which has arisen from the intermingling of state and economic life. It is a great misfortune that we are forced to destroy life today by this unfortunate amalgamation of what should be three separate spheres. There is no other way to definitively avoid strikes in the right way than to place state democracy on its own ground and make it impossible to fight for rights on economic ground. If they realized that, I know people would say: Well, if people finally come to their senses, if they would only tell us what they are going to do to fulfill the social demands, then we wouldn't strike, because we also know that not everything can be achieved overnight; we want to wait, but we want guarantees. During the war, in order to escape from the terrible misery, I spoke to many so-called “authorities” about the appeal and submitted it to them. The most important leading personalities have long since received the appeal. I said to them: What is set out here did not come from human minds by chance. I am no smarter than others, but I have observed life and that has shown me that in the next twenty years all work must be used to realize this tripartite division, not as a program - as a human demand. You have the choice either to accept reason now and to counterpose this as a Central European program to Wilson's fourteen points – if we don't help ourselves, Wilson can't help us either – or to put forward a call for international politics and say what should happen when peace comes; you have the choice either to accept reason or you face revolutions and catastrophes. The people did not accept reason. Has the latter been fulfilled or not? That is what we must ask today. That is what fills one with such concern today: that basically the old thoughtlessness is still present today, that it is not replaced by fruitful, realistic, practical ideas. Threefolding is a true way of life. That is why I am convinced that it will come about – and we will experience it – if only there is some possibility that the proletariat will realize that it can be enforced that we will advance socially in this way. Then the unproductive social aspirations will cease. People will work rationally, out of a proletarian mentality, rationally, after others have not worked rationally. That is what matters. I could have kept quiet, avoided talking about the strike, but I wanted to show you that I express everything I am convinced of at all times. That is what perhaps gives me the right to make the claim and to say: perhaps accept some of what I have said as if it were contrary to your views; but do not doubt the honest endeavor to achieve what the proletariat really wants and must achieve.

For more than a century, the motto of humanity has been: liberty, equality, fraternity. In the 19th century, many clever people wrote about how contradictory these three words are. They were right. Why? Because these words were still formulated under the hypnosis of the unitary state. Only when these three words, these three impulses, are set up in such a way that freedom belongs to the spiritual life, equality to the democratic state, and fraternity to the association of economic life, do they acquire their real meaning. What was still misunderstood at the end of the 18th century as the threefold social order must still be fulfilled in the 20th century. We want to achieve true equality, fraternity and freedom, but first we must recognize the necessity of dividing the social organism into its three parts. For if one realizes how necessary it is and if one has hope that understanding of this threefold nature must be awakened within the proletariat, then one may also express one's faith, may say: I believe that a healthy, good, future-oriented idea is the one that, more or less unconsciously, lies at the heart of the newer proletarian movement. The modern proletarian has become class-conscious. Behind this hides the consciousness of humanity, the consciousness that human dignity must be achieved. Through life itself, the proletarian wants to be able to answer the question in a dignified way: What am I as a human being? Do I, as a human being, have a dignified place in human society? He must achieve a social order that allows him to answer this question with “yes”. Then today's demands will have been met by a healthy social organism. In this way the working class will have achieved what it set out to achieve: the liberation of the proletariat from physical and mental hardship. But it will also have achieved the liberation of all humanity, that is, the liberation of everything in man that is worthy of being truly liberated.