The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As early as 1891 I drew attention¹ to the relation between Schiller's Aesthetic Letters² and Goethe's Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.³ I would like today to point to a certain connection between what I gave yesterday as the characteristic of the civilization of the Central-European countries in contrast to the Western and Eastern ones and what arises in quite a unique way in Goethe and Schiller. I characterized, on the one hand, the seizure of the human corporality by the spirits of the West and, on the other hand, the feeling of those spiritual beings who, as imaginations, as spirits of the East, work inspiringly into Eastern civilization. And one can notice both these aspects in the leading personalities of Goethe and Schiller. I will only point out in addition how in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters he seeks to characterize a human soul-constitution which shows a certain middle mood between one possibility in the human being—his being completely given over to instincts, to the sensible-physical—and the other possibility—that of being given over to the logical world of reason. Schiller holds that, in both cases, the human being cannot come to freedom. For if he has completely surrendered himself to the world of the senses, to the world of instincts, of desires, he is given over to his bodily-physical nature and is unfree. But he is also unfree when he surrenders himself completely to the necessity of reason, to logical necessity; for then he is coerced under the tyranny of the laws of logic. But Schiller wants to point to a middle state in which the human being has spiritualized his instincts to such a degree that he can give himself up to them without their dragging him down, without their enslaving him, and in which, on the other hand, logical necessity is taken up into sense perception (sinnliche Anschauen), taken up into personal desires (Triebe), so that these logical necessities do not also enslave the human being.

Schiller finds this middle state in the condition of aesthetic enjoyment and aesthetic creation, in which the human being can come to true freedom.

It is an extremely important fact that Schiller's whole treatise arose out of the same European mood as did the French Revolution. The same thing which, in the West, expressed itself tumultuously as a large political movement orientated towards external upheaval and change also moved Schiller—but moved him in such a way that he sought to answer the question: What must the human being do in himself in order to become a truly free being? In the West they asked: How must the external social conditions be changed so that the human being can become free? Schiller asked: What must the human being become in himself so that, in his constitution of soul, he can live in (darleben) freedom? And he sees that if human beings are educated to this middle mood they will also represent a social community governed by freedom. Schiller thus wishes to realize a social community in such a way that free conditions are created through [the inner nature of] human beings and not through outer measures.

Schiller came to this composition of his Aesthetic Letters through his schooling in Kantian philosophy. His was indeed a highly artistic nature, but in the 1780s and the beginning of the 1790s he was strongly influenced by Kant and tried to answer such questions for himself in a Kantian way (im Kantischen Sinne). Now the Aesthetic Letters were written just at the time when Goethe and Schiller were founding the magazine Die Horen (The Hours) and Schiller lays the Aesthetic Letters before Goethe.

Now we know that Goethe's soul-configuration was quite different from Schiller's. It was precisely because of the difference of their soul-constitutions that these two became so close. Each could give to the other just that which the other lacked. Goethe now received Schiller's Aesthetic Letters in which Schiller wished to answer the question: How can the human being come inwardly to a free inner constitution of soul and outwardly to free social conditions? Goethe could not make much of Schiller's philosophical treatise. This way of presenting concepts, of developing ideas, was not unfamiliar to him. Anyone who, like myself, has seen how Goethe's own copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is filled with underlinings and marginal comments knows how Goethe had really studied this work of Kant's which was abstract, but in a completely different sense. And just as he seems to have been able to take works such as these purely as study material, so, of course, he could also have taken Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. But this was not the point. For Goethe this whole construction of the human being—on the one hand logical necessity and on the other the senses with their sensual needs, as Schiller said, and the third, the middle condition—for Goethe this was all far too cut and dried, far too simplistic. He felt that one could not picture the human being so simply, or present human development so simply, and thus he wrote to Schiller that he did not want to treat the problem, this whole riddle, in such a philosophical, intellectual form, but more pictorially. Goethe then treated this same problem in picture form—as reply, as it were, to Schiller's Aesthetic Letters—in his Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily by presenting the two realms on this and on the far side of the river, in a pictorial, rich and concrete way; the same thing that Schiller presents as sense-life and the life of reason. And what Schiller characterizes abstractly as the middle condition, Goethe portrays in the building of the temple in which rule the King of Wisdom (the Golden King), the King of Semblance (the Silver King), the King of Power (the Copper King) and in which the Mixed King falls to pieces. Goethe wanted to deal with this in a pictorial way. And we have, in a certain sense, an indication—but in the Goethean way—of the fact that the outer structure of human society must not be monolithic but must be a threefoldness if the human being is to thrive in it. What in a later epoch had to emerge as the threefold social order is given here by Goethe still in the form of an image. Of course, the threefold social order does not yet exist but Goethe gives the form he would like to ascribe to it in these three kings; in the Golden, the Silver, and the Copper King. And what cannot hold together he gives in the Mixed King.

But it is no longer possible to give things in this way. I have shown this in my first Mystery Drama⁴ which, in essence, deals with the same theme but in the way required by the beginning of the twentieth century, whereas Goethe wrote his Fairy-tale at the end of the eighteenth century.

Now, however, it is already possible to indicate in a certain way—even though Goethe had not himself yet done so—how the Golden King would correspond to that aspect of the social organism which we call the spiritual aspect: how the King of Semblance, the Silver King, would correspond to the political State: how the King of Power, the Copper King, would correspond to the economic aspect, and how the Mixed King, who disintegrates, represents the 'Uniform State' which can have no permanence in itself.

This was how, in images, Goethe pointed to what would have to arise as the threefold social order. Goethe thus said, as it were, when he received Schiller's Aesthetic Letters: One cannot do it like this. You, dear friend, picture the human being far too simplistically. You picture three forces. This is not how it is with the human being. If one wishes to look at the richly differentiated inner nature of the human being, one finds about twenty forces—which Goethe then presents in his twenty archetypal fairy-tale figures—and one must then portray the interplay and interaction of these twenty forces in a much less abstract way.

Thus at the end of the eighteenth century we have two presentations of the same thing. One by Schiller, from the intellect as it were, though not in the usual way that people do things from the intellect, but such that the intellect is permeated here with feeling and soul, is permeated by the whole human being. Now there is a difference between some dry, average, professional philistine presenting something on the human being in psychological terms, where only the head thinks about the matter, and Schiller, out of an experience of the whole human being, forming for himself the ideal of a human constitution of soul and thereby only transforming into intellectual concepts what he actually feels.

It would be impossible to go further on the path taken by Schiller using logic or intellectual analysis without becoming philistine and abstract. In every line of these Aesthetic Letters there is still the full feeling and sensibility of Schiller. It is not the stiff Königsberg approach of Immanuel Kant with dry concepts; it is profundity in intellectual form transformed into ideas. But should one take it just one step further one would come into the intellectual mechanism that is realized in the usual science of today in which, basically, behind what is structured and developed intellectually, the human being has no more significance. It thus becomes a matter of no importance whether Professor A or D or X deals with the subject because what is presented does not arise from the whole human being. In Schiller everything still has a totally personal (urpersönlich) nature, even into the intellect. Schiller lives there in a phase—indeed, in an evolutionary point of the modern development of humanity which is of essential importance—because Schiller stops just short of something into which humanity later fell completely.

Let us show diagramatically what might be meant here. One could say: This is the general tendency of human evolution (arrow pointing upwards). Yet it cannot go [straight] like this—portrayed only schematically—but loops round into a lemniscate (blue). But it cannot go on like that—there must, if evolution takes this course, be continually new impulses Antriebe) which move the lemniscates up along the line.

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Schiller, having arrived at this point here (see diagram), would have gone into a dark blue, as it were, of mere abstraction, of intellectuality, had he proceeded further in objectifying what he felt inwardly. But he drew a halt and paused with his forms of reasoning just at that point at which the personality is not lost. Thus, this did not become blue but, on a higher level of the Personality—which I will colour with red (see diagram)—was turned into green.

Thus one can say: Schiller held back with his intellectuality just before that point at which intellectuality tries to emerge in its purity. Otherwise he would have fallen into the usual intellect of the nineteenth century. Goethe expressed the same thing in images, in wonderful images, in his Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. But he, too, stopped at the images. He could not bear these pictures to be in any way criticized because, for him, what he perceived and felt about the individual human element and the social life, did simply present itself in such pictures. But he was allowed to go no further than these images. For had he, from his standpoint, tried to go further he would have come into wild, fantastic daydreams. The subject would no longer have had definite contours; it would no longer have been applicable to real life but would have risen above and beyond it. It would have become rapturous fantasy. One could say that Goethe had to avoid the other chasm, in which he would have come completely into a fantastic red. Thus he adds that element which is non-personal—that which keeps the pictures in the realm of the imaginative—and thereby came also to the green.

Expressing it schematically, Schiller had, as it were, avoided the blue, the Ahrimanic-intellectuality; Goethe had avoided the red, excessive rapturousness, and kept to concrete imaginative pictures.

As a human being of Central Europe, Schiller had con-fronted the spirits of the West. They wanted to lead him astray into the solely intellectual. Kant had succumbed to this. I spoke about this recently⁵ and indicated how Kant had succumbed to the intellectuality of the West through David Hume. Schiller had managed to work himself clear of this even though he allowed himself to be taught by Kant. He stayed at the point that is not mere intellectuality.

Goethe had to do battle with the other spirits, with the spirits of the East, who pulled him towards imaginations. Because at that time spiritual science was not yet present on the earth he could not go further than to the web of imaginations in the Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. But even here he managed to remain within firm contours. He did not go off into wild fantasy or ecstasies. He gave himself a new and fruitful stimulus through his journey to the South where much of the legacy from the Orient was still preserved. He learnt how the spirits of the East still worked here as a late blossoming of oriental culture; in Greek art as he construed this for himself from Italian works of art. It can therefore be said that there was something quite unique in this bond of friendship between Schiller and Goethe. Schiller had to battle with the spirits of the West; he did not yield to them but held back and did not fall into mere intellectuality. Goethe had to battle with the spirits of the East; they tried to pull him into ecstatic reveries zum Schwärmerischen). He, too, held back; he kept to the images which he gives in his Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Goethe would have had either to succumb to rapturous daydreams (Schwärmerei) or to take up oriental revelation. Schiller would have had either to become completely intellectual or would have had to take seriously what he became—it is well known that he was made a 'French citizen' by the revolutionary government but that he did not take the matter very seriously.

We see here how, at an important point of European development, these two soul-constitutions, which I have characterized for you, stand side by side. They live anyway, so to speak, in every significant Central-European individuality but in Schiller and Goethe they stand in a certain way simultaneously side by side. Schiller and Goethe remained, as it were, at this point, for it just required the intercession of spiritual science to raise the curve of the lemniscate (see diagram) to a higher level.

And thus, in a strange way, in Schiller's three conditions—the condition of the necessity of reason, the condition of the necessity of instincts and that of the free aesthetic mood—and in Goethe's three kings—the Golden King, the Silver King, and the Copper King—we see a prefiguration of everything that we must find through spiritual science concerning the threefold nature of the human being as well as the threefold differentiation of the social community representing, as these do, the most immediate and essential aims and problems of the individual human being and of the way human beings live together.

These things direct us indeed to the fact that this threefolding of the social organism is not brought to the surface arbitrarily but that even the finest spirits of modern human evolution have already moved in this direction. But if there were only the ideas about the social questions such as those in Goethe's Fairy-tale and nothing more one would never come to an impetus for actual outer action. Goethe was at the point of overcoming mere revelations. In Rome he did not become a Catholic but raised himself up to his imaginations. But he stopped there, with just pictures. And Schiller did not become a revolutionary but a teacher of the inner human being. He stopped at the point where intellect is still suffused with the personality.

Thus, in a later phase of European culture, there was still something at work which can be perceived also in ancient times and most clearly, for modern people, in the culture of ancient Greece. Goethe also strove towards this Greek element. In Greece one can see how the social element is presented in myth—that is, also in picture form. But the Greek myth, basically, Is image in the same way that Goethe's Fairy-tale is image. It is not possible with these images to work into the social organism in a reforming way. One can only describe as an idealist, as it were, what ought to take shape. But the images are too frail a structure to enable one to act strongly and effectively in the shaping of the social organism. For this very reason the Greeks did not believe that their social questions were met by remaining in the images of the myths. And it is here, when one follows this line of investigation, that one comes to an important point in Greek development.

One could put it like this: for everyday life, where things go on in the usual way, the Greeks considered themselves dependant on their gods, on the spirits of their myths. When, however, it was a matter of deciding something of great importance, then the Greeks said: Here it is not those gods who work into imaginations and are the gods of the myths that can determine the matter; here something real must come to light. And so the Oracle arose. The gods were not pictured here merely imaginatively but were called upon (veranlasst) really to inspire people. And it was with the sayings of the Oracle that the Greeks concerned themselves when they wanted to receive social impulses. Here they ascended from imagination to inspiration, but an inspiration which they attained by means of outer nature. We modern human beings must certainly also endeavour to lift ourselves up to inspiration; an inspiration, however, that does not call upon outer nature in oracles but which rises to the spirit in order to be inspired in the sphere of the spirit. But just as the Greeks turned to reality in matters of the social sphere—just as they did not stop at imaginations but ascended to inspirations—so we, too, cannot stop at imaginations but must rise up to inspirations if we are to find anything for the well-being of human society in the modern age.

And we come here to another point which is important to look at. Why did Schiller and Goethe both stop at a certain point—the one on the path towards the intellectual (Verstandiges) and the other on the path to the imaginative? Neither of them had spiritual science; otherwise Schiller would have been able to advance to the point of permeating his concepts in a spiritual-scientific way and he would then have found: something much more real in his three soul-conditions than the three abstractions in his Aesthetic Letters. Goethe would have filled imagination with what speaks out in all reality from the spiritual world and would have been able to penetrate to the forms of the social life which wish to be put into effect from the spiritual world—to the spiritual element in the social organism, the Golden King; to the political element in the social organism, the Silver King; and to the economic element, the Bronze, the Copper, King.

The age in which Goethe and Schiller pressed forward to these insights—the one in the Aesthetic Letters and the other in the Fairy-tale—was not yet able to go any further. For, in order to penetrate further, there is something quite definite that must first be realized. People have to see what becomes of the world if one continues along Schiller's path up to the full elaboration (Ausgestaltung) of the impersonally intellectual. The nineteenth century developed it to being with in natural science and the second half of the nineteenth century already began to try to realize it in outer public affairs. There is a significant secret here. In the human organism what is ingested is also finally destroyed. We cannot simply go on eating but must also excrete; the substance we take in has to meet with destruction, has to be destroyed, and has then to leave the organism. And the intellectual is that which—and here comes a complication—as soon as it gets hold of the economic life in the uniform State, in the Mixed King, destroys that economic life.

But we are now living in the time in which the intellect must evolve. We could not come to the development of the consciousness-soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch without developing the intellect. And it is the Western peoples that have just this task of bringing the intellect into the economic life. What does this mean? We cannot order modern economic life imaginatively, in the way that Goethe did in his Fairy-tale, because we have to shape it through the intellect (verständig). Because in economics we cannot but help to go further along the path which Schiller took, though in his case he went only as far as the still-personal outbreathing of the intellect. We have to establish an economic life which, because it has to come from the intellect, of necessity works destructively in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In the present age there is no economic life that could be run imaginatively like that of the Orient or the economy of medieval Europe. Since the middle of the fifteenth century we have only had the possibility of an economic life which, whether existing alone or mixed with the other limbs of the social organism, works destructively. There is no other way. Let us therefore look on this economic life as the side of the scales that would sink far down and therefore has to work destructively. But there also has to be a balance. For this reason we must have an economic life that is one part of the social organism, and a spiritual life which holds the balance, which builds up again. If one clings today to the uniform State, the economic life will absorb this uniform State together with the spiritual life, and uniform States like these must of necessity lead to destruction. And when, like Lenin and Trotsky, one founds a State purely out of the intellect it must lead to destruction because the intellect is directed solely to the economic life.

This was felt by Schiller as he thought out his social conditions. Schiller felt: If I go further in the power of the intellect (verständesmassiges Können) I will come into the economic life and will have to apply the intellect to it. I will not then be portraying what grows and thrives but what lives in destruction. Schiller shrank back before the destruction. He stopped just at the point where destruction would break in. People of today invent all sorts of social economic systems but are not aware, because they lack the sensitivity of feeling for it, that every economic system like this that they think up leads to destruction; leads definitely to destruction if it is not constantly renewed by an independent, developing spiritual life which ever and ever again works as a constructive element in relation to the destruction, the excretion, of the economic life. The working together of the spiritual limb of the social organism with the economic element is described in this sense in my Towards Social Renewal (Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage).⁶

If, with the modern intellectuality of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, people were to hold on to capital even when they themselves could no longer manage it, the economic life itself would cause it to circulate. Destruction would inevitably have to come. This is where the spiritual life has to intervene; capital must be transferred via the spiritual life to those who are engaged in its administration. This is the inner meaning of the threefolding of the social organism; namely that, in a properly thought out threefold social organism, one should be under no illusion that the economic thinking of the present is a destructive element which must, therefore, be continually counterbalanced by the constructive element of the spiritual limb of the social organism.

In every generation, in the children whom we teach at school, something is given to us; something is sent down from the spiritual world. We take hold of this in education—this is something spiritual—and incorporate it into the economic life and thereby ward off its destruction. For the economic life, if it runs its own course, destroys itself. This is how we must look at things. Thus we must see how at the end of the eighteenth century there stood Goethe and Schiller. Schiller said to himself: I must pull back, I must not describe a social system which calls merely on the personal intellect. I must keep the intellect within the personality, otherwise I would describe economic destruction. And Goethe: I want sharply contoured images, not excessive vague ones. For if I were to go any further along that path I would come into a condition that is not on the earth, that does not take hold with any effect on life itself. I would leave the economic life below me like something lifeless and would found a spiritual life that is incapable of reaching into the immediate circumstances of life.

Thus we are living in true Goetheanism when we do not stop at Goethe but also share the development in which Goethe himself took part since 1832. I have indicated this fact—that the economic life today continually works towards its own destruction and that this destruction must be continually counterbalanced. I have indicated this in a particular place in my Towards Social Renewal. But people do not read things properly. They think that this book is written in the same way most books are written today—that one can just read it through. Every sentence in a book such as this, written out of practical insight, requires to be thoroughly thought through!

But if one takes these two things [Goethe's Fairy-tale and Schiller's Aesthetic Letters], Schiller's Aesthetic Letters were little understood in the time that followed them. I have often spoken about this. People gave them little attention. Otherwise the study of Schiller's Aesthetic Letters would have been a good way of coming into what you find in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—How is it Achieved? Schiller's Aesthetic Letters would be a good preparation for this. And likewise, Goethe's Fairy-tale could also be the preparation for acquiring that configuration of thinking (Geisteskonfiguration) which can arise not merely from the intellect but from still deeper forces, and which would be really able to understand something like Towards Social Renewal. For both Schiller and Goethe sensed something of the tragedy of Central European civilization—certainly not consciously, but they sensed it nevertheless. Both felt—and one can read this everywhere in Goethe's conversations with Eckermann, with Chancellor von Müller⁷ , and in numerous other comments by Goethe—that if something like a new impulse from the spirit did not arise, like a new comprehension of Christianity, then everything must go into decline. A great deal of the resignation which Goethe felt in his later years is based, without doubt, on this mood.

And those who, without spiritual science, have become Goetheanists feel how, in the very nature of German Central Europe, this singular working side by side of the spirits of the West and the spirits of the East is particularly evident. I said yesterday that in Central European civilization the balance sought by later Scholasticism between rational knowledge and revelation is attributable to the working of the spirits of the West and the spirits of the East. We have seen today how this shows itself in Goethe and Schiller. But, fundamentally, the whole of Central European civilization wavers in the whirlpool in which East and West swirl and interpenetrate one another. From the East the sphere of the Golden King; from the West the sphere of the Copper King. From the East, Wisdom; from the West, Power. And in the middle is what Goethe represented in the Silver King, in Semblance; that which imbues itself with reality only with great difficulty. It was this semblance-nature of Central European civilization which lay as the tragic mood at the bottom of Goethe's soul. And Herman Grimm, who also did not know spiritual science, gave in a beautiful way, out of his sensitive feeling for Goethe whom he studied, a fine characterization of Central-European civilization. He saw how it had the peculiarity of being drawn into the whirlpool of the spirits of the East and the spirits of the West. This was the effect of preventing the will from coming into its own and leads to the constantly vacillating mood of German history. Herman Grimm⁸ puts it beautifully when he says: 'To Treitschke German history is the incessant striving towards spiritual and political unity and, on the path towards this, the incessent interference by our own deepest inherent peculiarities.' This is what Herman Grimm says, experiencing himself as a German. And he describes this further as 'Always the same way in our nature to oppose where we should give way and to give way where resistance is called for. The remarkable forgetting of what has just past. Suddenly no longer wanting what, a moment ago, was vigorously striven for. A disdain for the present, but strong, indefinite hope. Added to this the tendency to give ourselves over to the foreigner and, no sooner having done so, then exercising an unconscious, determining (massgebende) influence on the foreigners to whom we had subjected ourselves.'

When, today, one has to do with Central European civilization and would like to arrive at something through it, one is everywhere met by the breath of this tragic element which is betrayed by the whole history of the German, the Central European element, between East and West. It is everywhere still so today that, with Herman Grimm, one can say: There is the urge to resist where one should give way and to give way where resistance is needed.

This is what arises from the vacillating human beings of the Centre; from what, between economics and the reconstructing spirit-life, stands in the middle as the rhythmical oscillating to and fro of the political. Because the civic-political element has celebrated its triumph in these central countries, it is here that a semblance lives which can easily become illusion. Schiller, in writing his Aesthetic Letters, did not want to abandon semblance. He knew that where one deals purely with the intellect, one comes into the destruction of the economic life. In the eighteenth century that part was destroyed which could be destroyed by the French Revolution; in the nineteenth century it would be much worse. Goethe knew that he must not go into wild fantasies but keep to true imagination. But in the vacillation between the two sides of this duality, which arises in the swirling, to and fro movement of the spirits of the West and of the East, there is easily generated an atmosphere of illusion. It does not matter whether this illusionary atmosphere emerges in religion, in politics or in militarism; in the end it is all the same whether the ecstatic enthusiast produces some sort of mysticism or enthuses in the way Ludendorff⁹ did without standing on the ground of reality. And, finally, one an also meet it in a pleasing way. For the same place in Herman Grimm which I just read out continues as follows: 'You can see it today: no one seemed to be so completely severed from their homeland as the Germans who became Americans, and yet American life, into which our emigrants dissolved, stands today under the influence of the German spirit.'

Thus writes the brilliant Herman Grimm in 1895 when it was only out of the worst illusion that one could believe that the Germans who went to America would give American life a German colouring. For already, long before this, there had been prepared what then emerged in the second decade of the twentieth century: that the American element completely submerged what little the Germans had been able to bring in.

And the illusionary nature of this remark by Herman Grimm becomes all the greater when one finally bears in mind the following. Herman Grimm makes this comment from a Goethean way of thinking (Gesinnung), for he had modelled himself fully on Goethe. But he had a certain other quality. Anyone who knows Herman Grimm more closely knows that in his style, in his whole way of expressing himself, in his way of thinking, he had absorbed a great deal of Goethe, but not Goethe's real and penetrating quality—for Grimm's descriptions are such that what he actually portrays are shadow pictures, not real human beings. But he has something else in him, not just Goethe. And what is it that Herman Grimm has in himself? Americanism! For what he had in his style, in his thought-forms, apart from Goethe he has from early readings of Emerson. Even his sentence structure, his train of thought, is copied from the American, Emerson.¹⁰

Thus, Herman Grimm is under this double illusion, in the realm of the Silver King of Semblance. At a time when all German influence has been expunged from America he fondly believes that America has been Germanized, when in fact he himself has quite a strong vein of Americanism in him.

Thus there is often expressed in a smaller, more intimate context what exists in a less refined form in external culture at large. A crude Darwinism, a crude economic thinking, has spread out there and would in the end, if the threefolding of the social organism fails to come, lead to ruin—for an economic life constructed purely intellectually must of necessity lead to ruin. And anyone who, like Oswald Spengler,¹¹ thinks in the terms of this economic life can prove scientifically that at the beginning of the third millenium the modern civilized world—which today is actually no longer so very civilized—will have had to sink into the most desolate barbarity. For Spengler knows nothing of what the world must receive as an impulse, as a spiritual impulse.

But the spiritual science and the spiritual-scientific culture which not only wishes to enter, but must enter, the world today still has an extremely difficult task getting through. And everywhere those who wish to prevent this spiritual science from arising assert themselves. And, basically, there are only a few energetic workers in the field of spiritual science whereas the Others, who lead into the works of destruction, are full of energy.

One only has to see how people of today are actually completely at a loss in the face of what comes up in the life of Present civilization. It is characteristic, for instance, how a newspaper of Eastern Switzerland carried articles on my lectures on The Boundaries of Natural Science during the course at the School of Spiritual Science. And now, in the town where the newspaper is published, Arthur Drews¹², the copy-cat of Eduard von Hartmann, holds lectures in which he has never done anything more than rehash Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious.¹³ In the case of Hartmann it is interesting. In the case of the rehasher it is, of course, highly superfluous. And this philosophical hollow-headedness working at Karlsruhe University is now busying itself with anthroposophically-orientated spiritual science.

And how does the modern human being—I would particularly like to emphasize this—confront these things? Well, we have listened to one person, we now go and listen to someone else. This means that, for the modern human being, it is all a matter of indifference, and this is a terrible thing. Whether the rehasher of Eduard von Hartmann, Arthur Drews, has something against Anthroposophy or not is not the important point—for what the man can have against Anthroposophy can be fully construed beforehand from his books, not a single sentence need be left out. The significant thing is that people's standpoint is that one hears something, makes a note of it, and then it is over and done with, finished! All that is needed to come to the right path is that people really go into the matter. But people today do not want to be taken up with having to go into something properly. This is the really terrible and awful thing; this is what has already pushed people so far that they are no longer able to distinguish between what is speaking of realities and what writes whole books, like those of Count Hermann Von Keyserling,¹⁴ in which there is not one single thought, just jumbled-together words. And when one longs for something to be taken up enthusiastically—which would, of itself, lead to this hollow word-skirmishing being distinguished from what is based on genuine spiritual research—one finds no one who rouses himself, makes a stout effort and is able to be taken hold of by that which has substance. This is what people have forgotten—and forgotten thoroughly—in this age in which truth is not decided according to truth itself, but in which the great lie walks among men so that in recent years individual nations have only found to be true what comes from them and have found what comes from other nations to be false. The disgusting way that people lie to each other has fundamentally become the stamp of the public spirit. Whenever something came from another nation it was deemed untrue. If it came from one's own nation it was true. This still echoes on today; it has already become a habit of thought. In contrast, a genuine, unprejudiced devotion to truth leads to spiritualization. But this is basically still a matter of indifference for modern human beings.

Until a sufficiently large number of people are willing to engage themselves absolutely whole-heartedly for spiritual science, nothing beneficial will come from the present chaos. People should not believe that one can somehow progress by galvanizing the old. This 'old' founds 'Schools of Wisdom' on purely hollow words. It has furnished university philosophy with the Arthur Drews's who, however, are actually represented everywhere, and yet humanity will not take a stand. Until it makes a stand in all three spheres of life—in the spiritual, the political and the economic spheres—no cure can come out of the present-day chaos. It must sink ever deeper!

• 1 . See Rudolf Steiner's own review (GA 51) of his lecture to the Vienna Goethe Association (Wiener Goetheverein) on 27 November 1891 entitled Über das Geheimnis in Goethes Rätselmarchen in den 'Unterhaltu deutscher Ausgewanderter' (On the Secret in Goethe's Enigmatic Fairy Tale in 'Conversations of German Emigrants) in Literarisches Frühhwerk, Vol III, Book IV, Dornach, 1942. See also Goethe's Standard of the Soul (Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch seine 'Faust' und durch sein 'Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der Lilie') (GA 22).
• 2 . See On the Aesthetic Education of Man published in 1795 in the Die Horen. This work arose from letters sent by Schiller to the Duke of Augustenburg between 1793 and 1795.
• 3 . Published in the Die Horen in 1795 as the close to the short story Conversations of German Emigrants.
• 4 . See The Portal of Initiation—A Rosicrucian Mystery, 1910, in Four Mystery Dramas, (GA 14).
• 5 . See Lecture One of this volume.
• 6 . See Towards Social Renewal, 1919, (GA 23). For what follows on here, see Chapter Two.
• 7 . See, for example, the conversation with Chancellor von Müller on 8 June 1830 and that with Eckermann on 11 March 1832.
• 8 . Herman Grimm (1828–1902). The quotations are from his essay Heinrich von Treitschke's German History (Heinrich von Treitschhes Deutsche Geschichte) in Contributions to German Cultural History, (Beitrage zur Deutschen Kultur-geschichte) Berlin, 1897, page. 5
• 9 . Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937), German general.
• 10. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American writer and philosopher.
• 11. Reference is made here to Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) and his work Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline and Fall of the Occident), the first part of which was published in 1918.
• 12. Arthur Drews (1865–1935), Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University at Karlsruhe, spoke on 10 October 1920 in lectures organized by the free religious congregation at Konstanz on 'Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy'. He repeated this lecture on 19 November in Mainz. His articles opposing Anthroposophy were published as a collection under the title Metaphysik and Anthropasophie in ihrer Stellung zur Erkenrunis des Obersinnlichen (Metaphysics and Anthropasophy in their Position Regarding Knowledge of the Supersensible), Berlin, 1922.
• 13. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), Philosophie des Unbewucsten: Versuch einer Weltanschauung (Philosophy of the Unconscious: An Attempt at a World-View), Berlin, 1869.
• 14. Count Hermann Keyserling (1880–1946). Compare, for example, the chapter 'Für and wider die Theosophie' ('For and Against Theosophy') in Philosophic als Kunst (Philosophy as an Art), Darmstadt, 1920.

The subject about which I shall have to speak today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and which was already referred to some time ago,¹ is the special way in which, in the first half of the twentieth century, a kind of renewed manifestation of the Christ-Event is to take place. This will need a certain amount of preparation, and today, to begin with, I shall try to characterize again from a certain point of view the spiritual complexion of the civilized world and, from this point of view, draw attention to the challenges that are placed before us with regard to the evolution of humanity—the education of humanity as a whole in the near future-by the facts of this human evolution itself.

We know that a new age in the development of civilized humanity began around the beginning of the fifteenth century. People today no longer form an exact idea of what the constitution of soul was like in the people who lived before this great turning-point of modern history. People do not consider this. But one could easily imagine how different the soul-constitution in Europe must have been which, over large areas, inclined people to undertake the Crusades to Asia, to the Orient; especially when one bears in mind how impossible an event like this, resting as it did on an idealistic spiritual background, has become since the beginning of the fifteenth century. People do not consider the completely different nature of humanity's interests before this historical turning-point, nor the interests which, since that time, have become particularly important. But if, from the many characteristics which can be attributed to this more recent time, one wishes to single out the most significant one, then this must be the increasing ascendancy, the increasing intensity of the human power of intellect.

But in the depths of the human soul there is always another force, whether as a sense of longing or as a more or less clear facet of consciousness. It is the longing for knowledge. Now, when one looks back into former times, even into the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of European development, it is possible to speak of a definite longing for knowledge in as much as the human being at that time had faculties in his soul which enabled him to achieve a relationship to nature—a relationship to what was revealed in nature as spirit—and thereby also to achieve a relationship to the spirit world itself. Certainly, longing for knowledge has been spoken about a good deal since then; but it is impossible, when one looks completely without prejudice at the development of humanity, to compare the longing for knowledge which holds sway today with the intensity of the longing for knowledge that held sway before the middle of the fifteenth century. Striving for knowledge was an intense affair of the human soul; for knowledge that had an inner glow, an inner warmth, for the human being, and which was also significant for the human being when it came to what moved him to perform his work in the world, and so on. Everything that lived there as a longing for knowledge has become less and less comparable with what has been emerging since the middle of the fifteenth century. And even when we consider the great philosophers of the first half of the nineteenth century, we are presented with ingenious elaborations of the human system of ideas; but only, if I can put it so, artistic elaborations of it. In neither Fichte, nor Schelling, nor Hegel—particularly not in Hegel—do we find a proper idea of what had previously existed as a longing for knowledge.

Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the striving for knowledge, even though pursued in isolation as was still the custom, enters more and more into the service of outer life. It enters into the service of technological science and thus also takes on the configuration of this technology. What then is the cause of this? It comes from the fact that it is just in this time that we find the particular development and elaboration of the intellect. This, of course, did not happen all at once. The intellect was gradually prepared for. The last traces of the old clairvoyance had long since become extremely dim. But one can nevertheless say that, to a certain degree, the last effects of the old clairvoyance—though not the old clairvoyance itself—were still present even in the fifteenth century. All human beings, or at least those who strove for knowledge, had some idea of the faculties rising up out of the human soul that are higher than the faculties concerned with daily life. Although in olden times these faculties arose from the soul in a dreamlike way, they were nevertheless faculties different from those of everyday life and it was by means of these other [higher] faculties that people tried to probe to the depths of the world-being—and did, in fact, penetrate to its spirituality. Thus was knowledge attained. People experienced it as knowing when, from the phenomena of nature, from the being of nature, they sensed, they perceived, how spiritual elemental beings worked in the individual phenomena of nature; how the divine spiritual being as a whole worked through the totality of nature. People felt themselves to be in the realm of knowledge when gods spoke through the phenomena of nature; when gods spoke through the appearance and movements of the stars. This is what people understood as knowledge.

The moment humanity renounced perception of the spiritual in the manifestations of nature, the concept of knowledge itself also fell more or less into a deterioration. And it is this decline of real intensity in the pursuit of knowledge that marks the latest period of human evolution.

What then is needed here? It is that which exists at present only in the small circle of anthroposophically-striving human beings but which must become more and more general. Nature's manifestations spoke to ancient human beings in such a way that they revealed the spirit to them. The spiritual spoke out of every spring, every cloud, every plant. In the way people came to know the manifestations and beings of nature they also came to know the spiritual. This is no longer the case. But the condition of intellectualism is only a transitional condition. For what is the deepest characteristic of this intellect? It is that it is impossible to grasp and know anything at all with the pure intellect. The intellect is not just there for knowing. This is the greatest error to which the human being can give himself: the belief that the intellect is there for gaining knowledge. People will attain to true knowledge again only when they concern themselves with what lies at the basis of spiritual-scientific research; which, at the least, can be given by Imagination. People will only know truly again when they say: In ancient times divine-spiritual beings spoke from the manifestations of nature. For the intellect they are silent. For higher, super-sensible knowledge it will not be the phenomena of nature that will speak directly—for nature, as such, works silently. But beings will speak to the human being—beings who will appeal, to him in Imaginations, will inspire him, with whom he will become united intuitively and whom he will then be able to relate again to the phenomena of nature. Thus one can say: In ancient times the spiritual appeared to the human being through nature. In our transitional condition we have the intellect. Nature remains spiritless. The human being will lift himself up to a condition where he can again truly know; where, indeed, nature will no longer speak to him of divine-spiritual beings but where he will o take hold of the divine-spiritual in supersensible knowledge and will, in turn, be able to relate this to nature.

It was a particular characteristic of oriental spiritual life, of oriental knowledge—which, as we know, lived on as a heritage in occidental civilization—that the orientals, at the time of the blossoming of the knowledge of their culture, perceived a spiritual element in all the manifestations of nature; that the divine-spiritual spoke through nature, whether through the lower elemental beings in individual things and phenomena or in the whole of nature, as the all-encompassing divine-spiritual. Later on there developed in the central regions of the earth that which came under the dialectical-legal spirit. It is out of this that intellectuality was born. Spiritual culture was retained as a heritage from the ancient Orient. And when people still had this last longing to experience something from the Orient—people did experience something of this in the Crusades and brought it back to Europe—and after they had stilled this longing through the Crusades, the Orient became effectively closed off. On the one hand, by what was established by Peter the Great who destroyed the remains of the oriental constitution of soul on the European side and, on the other hand, by the blockade set up by the Turks who, just at the beginning of this age which we call the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, established their rule in Europe. European thought and culture was, as it were, closed off from access to the Orient. But it had to develop further and could only do so under the influence of the dialectical-legal life, under the influence of the economic life arising from the West, and in the decadent continuation of the spiritual life which had been received from the Orient, to which the doors were now closed as I described. The condition was thereby prepared in which we are now living, where it is up to us, out of ourselves, to open the doors again to the spiritual world; to come to a perception of it through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.

This is all connected with the fact that, in those ancient times in which the oriental rose to the attainment of wisdom, what was of particular importance were the abilities, the forces, brought by the human being into physical existence through birth. In the time of oriental wisdom, everything—despite the civilization which took its course there and was shone through with wisdom—everything, fundamentally, depended on the blood. But, at the same time, what was in the blood was also spiritually recognized. It was determined by the Mysteries as to who, through his line of blood, was called by destiny to the leadership of the people. There could be no questioning this: whoever was called to the leadership of the people by the Mysteries was brought to this position because his bloodline, his descent, was. the outer sign that this was how it should be. There could be no question of any kind of legal proof as to whether anyone was rightly in this position or not because, against the verdict of the gods, according to which people were allotted their place, there could be no contradiction. Jurisprudence was unknown in the mission here in the world of the senses was given by Orient. One knew theocracy, the 'rule of cosmic order', One's mission here in the world of the senses was given by the spiritual world above. The feeling that said that someone was in the in the right place because the gods had directed his bloodline in such a way that he could be brought to this place was replaced with another in a dialectical-legal dress, on the basis of which one that he could dispute on legal grounds whether someone was entitled to his position, or to do this or that, and so on.

The nature of the soul-constitution, prepared already in Greece but then particularly also in Rome, by which Central Europeans were beginning to use concepts, dialectics, to decide what justice was, was quite unknown and alien to the Orient. I have described this from different aspects. In the Orient it was a matter of fathoming the will of the gods. And there were no dialectics for deciding what the gods willed.

But we are again at a turning-point. It is becoming necessary now for humanity to also take a closer look at this dialectical-legal element. For the economic element, which from the West has conquered the world with the aid of technology, is already completely entangled in the state of affairs that has arisen through the dialectical-legal aspect. The economy was a minor element in the ancient theocratic cultures which were permeated by the divine-spiritual. People did there in the economic life what arose as a matter of course according to the place and rank into which the gods had placed them through the proclamations of the Mysteries. And then the economic life, which began again only primitively, became caught up, as it were, in the threads of the dialectical-legal life. For, at the beginning of the so-called Middle Ages, the Romans above all had no money. Economics based on money was gradually lost and the dialectical-legal culture spread in Europe as a kind of economy based on nature-produce. The early part of the Middle Ages was, basically, short of money; and this brought about all those forms of military service which were necessary because there was no money to pay the troops. The Romans paid their troops with money. In the Middle Ages feudalism developed, and with it a particular type of professional soldiery. All this came about because, tied to the soil under the influence of an economy based on the exchange of nature-produce, a man could no longer take part himself in distant campaigns of war. Thus this dialectical-legal element grew up in a kind of agricultural economy based on barter, and it was only when technology from the West permeated this economic life that the new age arose. The life of this new civilization, which has become so fragile, has arisen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch entirely as a result of technology. I have already described this in different ways. I have described how, according to the official census, world population at the end of the nineteenth century was 1,400 million but that as much work was being accomplished as though there were 2,000 million. This is because such a phenomenally large amount of work is done by machines. The machine technology with its stupendous transformation of the economic life and the social life has arrived.

What has not yet arrived—because everything is still engulfed in the intellectual life—is precisely what must now carry this machine-technological economy into modern civilization. One experiences the strangest things today with regard to the prospects facing humanity. There are already many people today, particularly among those who pride themselves on being practical, who, for example, go into governmental positions with their practical experience where it then usually evaporates. The little practical experience people have usually evaporates as soon as they take it into a government department. Such `governing practicians', such 'practical men in government'—one has to put it in inverted commas—get the strangest ideas these days. Someone said to me recently: 'yes, the new age has brought us machines, and with them urban life; we must take life back to the land.' As though one could just remove the machine-age from the world! The machine would simply follow us into the country, I said to him. Everything, I said, could be forgotten; spiritual culture could be forgotten, but machines would remain. They would simply be taken out to the land. What has arisen in the cities will transplant itself into the country.

In fact, people become reactionaries in a grand style—when they no longer feel inclined—and this is the characteristic of people generally today: that they have no will—to form ideas concerning true progress. They would prefer to bring back the old conditions of the countryside. They imagine that this can be done. They believe that one can shut out what the centuries have brought. That is nonsense! But people today love this nonsense so tremendously because they are too complacent to grasp the new and prefer to get along with the old. The machine age has arrived. Machines themselves show how much human labour they save. It is simply that 500 million people would have to do the work machines do if their work on the earth were to be done by people.

And all this work by machines began, primarily, in Western civilization. It arose in the West and spread to the Orient very late where it did not establish itself at all in the same way as it did in occidental civilization. But that is a time of transition. And now try and grasp a thought which, however strange it may seem to you, must be taken seriously.

Let us suppose the human being in ancient times had before him a cloud, or perhaps a river, or all kinds of vegetation and so on. He did not see in these the dead nature seen by the human being of today—he saw spiritual elemental beings, up to the divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. He saw all this, as it were, through nature. But nature no longer speaks of these divine-spiritual beings. We have to grasp them as spiritual reality beyond nature and then relate them again back to nature. The period of transition came. Man created machines as an addition to nature. These he regards for the time being quite abstractly. He works with them in an entirely abstract way. He has his mathematics, geometry, mechanics. With these he constructs his machines and regards them altogether in the abstract. But he will very soon make a certain discovery. Strange though it may still seem to the human being of the present that such a discovery will be made, people will nevertheless discover that (in this mechanistic element which they have incorporated into the economic life) those spirits are again working which in earlier times were perceived by the human being in nature. In his technical machines of the economic sphere the human being will perceive that, although he constructed and made them, they nevertheless gradually take on a life of their own—a life certainly which he can still deny because they manifest themselves to begin with only in the economic sphere. But he will notice more and more in what he himself creates that it gains a life of its own and that, despite the fact that he brought it forth from the intellect, the intellect itself can no longer comprehend it. Perhaps people today can barely form a clear idea of this, but it will be so nevertheless. People will discover, in fact, how the objects of their industry (Wirtschaft) become the bearers of demons.

Let us look at it from another side. Out of the naked intellect, out of the most desolate intellect, there has arisen the Lenin-Trotsky system that is trying to build an economic life in Russia. Despite Lunacharsky,² these people are not interested in the spiritual life. For them the spiritual life must be an ideology arising from the economic life. It can hardly be said that there is a very strong dialectical-legal element in the Trotsky-Leninist system—everything is to be geared towards the economic. The desire is, in a certain sense, to embody the intellect in the economic life. If one could do this for a time—this initial experiment will not work, but let us suppose that it were possible—the economic life would grow over peoples' heads. It would bring forth everywhere destructive, demonic forces out of itself. It would not work because the intellect would not be able to cope with all the economic demands that would surge up! Just as the human being in ancient times beheld nature and the manifestations of nature and saw in them demonic beings; so, too, must the human being of present times learn to see demonic beings in what he himself produces in the economic life. For the time being these demons, which human beings have not diverted into machines, are still in human beings themselves and manifest as the destructive beings (die zerstarenden) in social revolutions. These destructive social revolutions are nothing other than the result of not recognizing the demonic element in our economic life. Elemental spirits (elementarische Geistigkeit) must be looked for in the economic life just as in ancient times elemental beings (elementarische Geistigkeit) were sought in nature. And the purely intellectual life is only an intermediary stage which has no significance at all for nature or for what man produces, but only for human beings themselves.

Human beings have developed the intellect so that they can become free. They have to develop a faculty that has absolutely nothing to do with nature or with machines but only with the human being himself. When the human being develops faculties that stand in a relationship to nature, he is not free. If he tries to flee into the economic life he is also not free because the machines only overwhelm him. But when he develops faculties that have nothing to do with either knowledge or practical life, like pure intelligence, he can appropriate freedom to himself in the course of cultural development. It is precisely through a faculty like the intellect, which does not stand in a relationship to the world, that freedom can arise. But in order that the human being does not tear away from nature, in order that he can again work into nature, Imagination must be added to this intellect; everything must be added to it which supersensible research is seeking to find.

There is something else involved here. I related how, for the ancient oriental, the relationships of the blood line were of very particular importance, for the wise men of the Mysteries were guided by these as though by signs from the gods when they placed the human being into his appropriate [social] position. And all these things reach over then like after-effects, like ghosts, into later times. Then came the dialectical-legal element. The official stamp became the most important thing. The diploma, examination results or, rather, what was on the piece of paper that was the examination certificate—this became the important thing. Whereas in ancient theocratic times blood was the decisive factor, it was now the piece of paper. Those times drew near for which many things are characteristic. A lawyer once said to me during a discussion I had with him: The fact that you were born, that you exist, is not what matters!' This did not interest him. It was the birth certificate or the christening certificate that had to exist; that was the important thing. The paper substitute! So the dialectical-legal arose. This, at the same time, is also the expression for the unreal (das Scheinhafte) in relation to the world, for the unreal element of the intellect. But precisely in the human being himself there could develop, as the counterpart of this maya element (Scheinhafte) in the world, what gave the human being freedom.

But now there develops, out of what is signified in paper—which in earlier times was signified in the blood—out of what is signified in the letter-patent of nobility or similar documents, something that is already showing itself today and which will—continue if things go on as now. And they will continue! Descent by blood will no longer be of importance. The letter-patent of nobility and similar papers will have no more importance. At most, only what a man manages to salvage of what he possesses from the past will count. To ask 'why' was not possible when the gods still determined an individual's place in the world. In the dialectical-legal age it was possible to dispute this 'why'. Now all discussion ceases, for only the factual is left, the actuality of what an individual has salvaged. The moment people lose faith in the paper-regime there will be no more discussions. The things an individual has saved for himself will simply be taken away. There is no other way to bring humanity forward, now that nature no longer reveals the spiritual, than to turn to the spiritual itself and, on the other hand, to find in the economic element what people in earlier times found in nature.

This, however, can only be found through association. What a human being alone can no longer find can be found by an association which will again develop a kind of group-soul, taking in hand what the individual at present cannot decide alone. In the Middle Ages, in the age of the intellect, it was the individual that ruled in economics. In the future it will be the association. And people must stand together in an association. And then, when it is recognized that a spiritual element has to be kept in check in the economic life, something will be able to arise which can replace the blood-line and the patent. For, the economic life would grow above the human being's head if he did not show himself equal to it, if he did not bring a spiritual insight with him to guide it. No one would associate with someone who did not bring qualities that made him effective in the economic life and which qualified him really to control the spirits which assert themselves in the economic life. An entirely new spirit will arise. And why will this be so?

In the ancient times, in which people judged according to the blood, what had taken place before birth or before conception was of importance for human beings, for this is what they brought into the physical world through the blood. And when existence before birth had been forgotten a recognition of the life before birth still lived on in the recognition of the blood-line. And then came the dialectical-legal element. The human being was only recognized in relation to what he was as a physical being. Now the other element comes in—an economic life that is growing demonic. And the human being must also now be recognized again in his inmost soul-and-spirit being. And just as one will see the demonic element in economic life, so one will also have to begin to see that which the human being bears through repeated lives on earth. One will have to be aware of what a human being brings when he enters this life. This will have to be taken care of in the spiritual limb of the social organism.

When one judges according to the blood, one really does not need a pedagogy; one only needs a knowledge of the symbols through which the gods express where it is a human being is to be placed. As long as one judges in a purely dialectical-legal way one only needs an abstract pedagogy which speaks of the human child in a generalized way. But when a human being is to be placed in an associative life in such a way that he is fit and capable one has to take account of the following. One must realize that the first seven years in which the human being develops the physical body, are not significant for what he will be able to do later in the social life -—he must only be made fit and capable in a general way valid for all human beings. In the years between seven and fourteen, in which the etheric body is developed, the human being must first of all be recognized. What has to be recognized is what then emerges as the astral body at the age of fourteen or fifteen and which comes into consideration when the real soul-and-spiritual core of the human being is to bring him to the place he is meant to be. Here the educational factor becomes a specifically social one. It is a matter here of gaining a true understanding of the child one is educating so that one can see that a certain quality in the child is good for this, and another quality is good for that. But this does not show itself clearly until after the child leaves primary school and it will belong to an artistic pedagogy and didactics to be able to discern that one child is suited for this and another is suited for that. It is according to this that those decisions will be made that are the challenge in Towards Social Renewal for the circulation of capital; that is to say the means of production. A completely new spiritual concept must arise which, on the one hand, is capable of perceiving the economic life in its inner spiritual vitality and, on the other, can perceive what role must be played by cultural life; how cultural life must give economic life its configuration. This can only happen if the cultural life is independent, when nothing is forced upon it by the economic life. It is when one inwardly grasps the whole course of humanity's evolution that one recognizes how this evolution requires the threefolding of the social organism.

Thus, because we have been closed off from the Orient in more recent times by the Petrinism of Peter the Great on the one hand and Turkey on the other, we therefore need an independent spiritual life; a spiritual life that really recognizes the spiritual world in a new form and not in the way in which, in ancient times, nature spoke to man. One will then be able to relate this spiritual life back to nature. But once one has found it, one will also be able to develop this spiritual life in such a way in the human being that it becomes the content of his skills; that he will be able through this spiritual life to satisfy, in associative cooperation, an economic life that becomes more and more dynamic. Such thoughts as these really must exist in an anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science. For this reason such a spiritual science can only be born from a knowledge of the course of human evolution.

The first thing is to steer towards a real knowledge of the spirit. Talk of the spirit in general terms—in empty, abstract words in the way that is accepted practice today among official philosophers and in other circles and which has become generally popular—is of no use for the future. The spiritual world is not the same as the physical world. Thus it is not possible to gain a perception of the spiritual world by abstracting from the physical but only by direct spiritual investigation. These perceptions naturally then appear as something completely different from what the human being can know when he knows only the physical world. People who, out of complacency, wish only to know of the physical world call it fantastic to talk about Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. They find that, when one speaks about these former embodiments of the earth, it strikes no chord in them. Things are described there of which they do not have the foggiest notion. The fact is of course that they have no notion of them because they do not want to know about the spiritual world. Things are related to them about the spiritual world and they say: But it doesn't concur with anything we already know. But that is the whole point: worlds are found that do not concur with what one knows already. This is the way, is it not, that, for example, Arthur Drews, the philosophy professor, judges spiritual science. It does not concur with what he has already imagined. Indeed, when the railway from Berlin to Potsdam was to be built, the post master of Berlin³ said: And now I'm supposed to send trains to Potsdam! I already send four post coaches a week and no one travels in them. If people really want to throw their money out of the window why don't they do it directly! Of course, the railways looked different from the post-coaches of the 1830s of the honest post-master of Berlin. But, of course, the descriptions of the spiritual world also look different from what nests in heads like Arthur Drews'. He, however, is only characteristic of many others. He is even one of the better ones, strange as it may seem. Not because he is good, but because the others are worse.

It was first of all necessary to show how, on a strict scientific basis, one can truly penetrate into the spiritual worlds. This is what, in the first place, our lecture course this autumn has been striving towards. And even if this is only at its beginnings, it has at least been shown how, in certain areas of the sciences, knowledge can be raised to a knowledge of the spiritual as such and how this spiritual element can in turn permeate what is gained by sense-knowledge.

But what can thus be gained in the field of knowledge and what will be achieved in contrast to the accepted knowledge in the schools—for it is in this area that fine beginnings are apparent—would remain incomplete. One could in fact already show how psychology, and, indeed, even mathematics, point towards spiritual realms. But it would only be something incomplete and therefore unable to aid our declining civilization if a truly elemental and intensive will does not arise from the area of practical economic life. It is necessary that old usages, old habits, be truly dropped and that everyday life be permeated with spirituality. It must come about as a flower of the Anthroposophical Movement that, with the help of the mood of soul that can arise out of spiritual science, a perceptive understanding of practical life is brought to bear—especially of the practical economic life—and that it may be shown how the downfall can be averted if a consciousness of creating something alive is carried into this economic life.

Every day one should keep an ever-watchful eye on the so blatantly visible signs of our declining economic life. This old economic life cannot be galvanized. For just as today no one should be proud of what he gains from ordinary science—for that would definitely lead humanity into the future prophesied by Oswald Spengler—so, too, no one should be proud of what he can gain from the old economic life by way of abilities that correspond to this old form. Today no one can be proud of being a physicist, a mathematician, a biologist in the usual sense. But also no one can be proud of being a merchant, an industrialist in the old sense. But this 'old sense' is the only thing we have today. Nowhere today do we see anything arising like a true association. What is really needed, as a kind of second event of this Goetheanum, is to have something on the lines of this lecture-course, which could provide something tangible out of the realm of practical life itself, and which could stand side by side with the sciences. We will not get any further with what is contained in just one stream but only when this other side of human striving also has its place.

This today is still the characteristic feature of our present human evolution: on the one side the traditional bearers of the old spiritual life who calumniate and slander one when, working out of the modern scientific approach, one tries to achieve a spiritualization. They already do this today quite consciously because they have no interest in the progress of human development and because, for the time being, they only think to hold back this evolution of humanity. Sometimes they do so in a truly grotesque manner, like that strange academic⁴ who recently spoke in Zurich about Anthroposophy and went to such extremes that even his colleagues were shocked; so that, as it seems, this attack against Anthroposophy has actually acted as mild propaganda for it. These representatives of a redundant spiritual life persist, however, and will do so far more, for they will dose ranks with formidable slanders. Here one sees what one is up against, arising in the form of slanders and so on, in regard to untruth.

On the other side one can notice another strong resistance; which, however, occurs in the unconscious. And this is a painful experience. In this area one can definitely speak of an inner opposition, sometimes quite unintentional, against what must lie in the direction of spiritual-scientific endeavour. It will be a matter of having to learn, particularly in this area, to identify with the aims that spiritual science can set here. For to judge, in the subjective way that has been usual up to now, what must be willed from spiritual science, would be to do the same as the priests and others in other areas do when they declare spiritual science a heresy. This is what makes difficulties for our Anthroposophical Movement—the fact that precisely in this area a kind of inner opposition is clearly noticeable. One can say that it is particularly in this area that what sheds light in such a strange way on certain accusations which come from many sides, shows itself most clearly. They say: 'In this Anthroposophical Society everyone only repeats what one man has said. But in reality they do not repeat at all; everyone just says what he thinks so that the one man can approve it.' We have experienced this many times, have we not? A person talks frequently about what he may want, saying that I said so, even though from me he actually heard the exact opposite. Now this is the real rule of blind faith in authority. A strange faith in authority! This has been evident in many cases. But it would be particularly damaging if this strange kind of opposition—there has actually always been more opposition than faith in authority and, therefore, an indictment of faith in authority is really unjust—it would be far more fatal if what I refer to here as inner opposition were, particularly in the sphere of practical life, to take on wider dimensions. For then the opponents of anthroposophical striving would, as long as they could, of course say: `Aha, a sectarian, fantastic movement which cannot be practical.' Of course it cannot be practical if people do not engage themselves in it; just as, after all, no matter how good one is at sewing, one cannot sew without a needle.

With this I only wished to draw attention to something that needs watching. It is by no means intended as a criticism or as a reference to the past but is something necessary for the future. Nevertheless, I would of course not have referred to it if I did not see all sorts of smoke-clouds rising. But I am really only pointing out what has, as it were, to be a challenge to really cooperate on all sides and not to shelter behind reactionary practices and, behind the bulwark of these reactionary practices, destroy Anthroposophy even though one is perhaps trying to help it. So I am not referring to something that has already happened but to something that is necessary for the future. It is necessary to think about these things.

With these comments I shall have to let it rest for today. Tomorrow and the following day we shall have to link up this prelude which, as you will see, is in fact an introduction to a study of the Christ-experience in the twentieth century.

• 1 . See Das Ereignis der Christus-Erscheinung in der atherischen Welt (The Event of the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric World), sixteen lectures given in different cities in 1910, (GA 118).
• 2 . Anatol Vasilevich Lunacharsky (1875–1933), Russian writer and politician. From 1917 he was the Commisar for the education of the masses.
• 3 . Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von Nagler (1770–1846).
• 4 . It has not been possible to establish who this was.

If an understanding for what one can call the reappearance of Christ is to find its place in the soul in the right way it is necessary to create a preparatory understanding for the course that the Christ-idea, the image people have had of the Christ, has taken in the course of human development. We remember that human development has proceeded from a constitution of soul which we have often called a kind of instinctive perception; a clairvoyance which was dim and dreamlike. And we have, on repeated occasions, characterized the different epochs of human development in such a way that we have placed the corresponding form of this constitution of soul into different times.

Today we will remind ourselves that there were still strong remnants of this old clairvoyant condition of humanity existing at the time of the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood in the first place as a fact, but as a fact which, in its inner essence, can never be grasped by the intellect which since the middle of the fifteenth century has constituted the soul-life of modern civilization but which was already prepared for in Greek and Roman times. Thus one can say: During the course of Greek and Roman history, when the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on the earth, there were still strong remnants of the ancient clairvoyance existing in many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance—were already definitely in the beginnings of an intellectual development. This was particularly so in the Romans. And one can therefore say that, in its reality, in its essence, the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped at first only by those who still had a remnant of the old clairvoyance. It could be described—the symbolism too could be indicated—by those who had these remnants. This instinctive clairvoyance was a particular characteristic of the ancient oriental peoples and existed essentially in its last remnants above all in these peoples. And Christ Jesus, too, did, after all, walk on the earth among oriental people.

Thus the Mystery of Golgotha was understood first of all through the remnants of ancient oriental wisdom. And when this Mystery of Golgotha moved towards the West—to the Greeks and the Romans—one could receive what was related by those people who, out of the remains of the old clairvoyance, had understood what had really come to pass on the earth. And in order that there could be a perception through an 'eyewitness' of the soul there arose in St Paul, through a particular enlightenment which came to him at a late period of his life, a clairvoyant state through which he could convince himself of the truth, of the genuine nature, of the Mystery of Golgotha. What St Paul was able to relate out of his conviction—what those who had preserved the remains of an old clairvoyance could bring forward concerning the Mystery of Golgotha out of an ancient oriental wisdom, could be received by people as news—could be clothed in the form of the germinating intellect. Intellect itself, however, was not able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha.

The way in which those who still had remains of the old clairvoyance spoke about the Mystery of Golgotha is called Gnosis. And, if I can put it so, the form of speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha in the way that was possible with these remnants of old clairvoyance—this was Christian Gnosis. And the presentation of the Mystery of Golgotha then reached posterity in the way I have described in my book Christianity as mystical Fact. Thus the first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was attained through these remains of the old clairvoyance; through the ancient, instinctive oriental perception. One could say that this ancient oriental perception was preserved up to the Mystery of Golgotha to such a degree that a truly human grasp of this Mystery could find a place before the intellect broke in and understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be found. Had the Mystery of Golgotha come during the full flowering of the intellect it would, of course, have made no impression on humanity at all.

Thus the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha lived in the accounts of the old clairvoyants and, basically, as you know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Gospels are nothing other than accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha gained through clairvoyance. But then there spread out over humanity's development the wave which had already taken root in Greece, as I have described to you, which had its source particularly in Rome and which can be seen as the wave that prepared the later intellectuality but in which this intellectuality already lived. Dialectical-legal thinking spread out and, in turn, led to civic-political thinking. This spread from the South into those northern regions where, as I related yesterday, there was still a nature-based economy. Central European civilization, nourished at first by Rome, took shape primarily in the sign of the intellectual, the dialectical-legal, development of the human soul. In the midst of everything that occurred here people could no longer themselves behold the Mystery in the sense of the old spirituality, but received the accounts, the traditions, and clothed these in the forms of their own soul-constitution. People clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Rome the Mystery of Golgotha became clothed in dialectics. Out of what was Christian Gnosis, which still relied on vision, there took shape the pure dialectical theology which went hand in hand with the establishing of the European Empire that later became [nation] States. But the first great Empire was actually the secularized ecclesiastical 'Empire of the Church', permeated by Roman judicial forms. Many external facts show how this dialectical-legal, political thinking, in which the old oriental direct perception clothed itself, spread out over Europe.

Charlemagne, for example, was a vassal of the Pope who had bestowed on him his title of Emperor. And when one studies the whole extent of the rulership of Charlemagne, one finds among the forces through which his rulership spread an ecclesiastical-theological influence. It was a kind of theocratic empire that spread there but it was everywhere permeated by dialectical-legal forms. The clergy were the bureaucracy. They held the offices of the State and united in their person the political and ecclesiastical elements. The old spiritual life based on spiritual vision—which, as you know, had abolished the spirit in 869—this old spiritual life moves over entirely into a political Church-Empire which extends over the greater part of Europe.

You know from history and from what I have related here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this continuous cross-flow of the Roman ecclesiastical element, and that which tried more or less to free itself from it, produced conflicts, and how these conflicts really form a great part of medieval history. But one must look at the immense difference that exists between the whole social structure of the Middle Ages, which then dissolved into the modern states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient which was entirely permeated by the spirit, by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and all that this brought with it.

From what source did this ancient oriental vision receive its content? It was—one cannot put it differently—'inborn' (Angeborensein); for the sages of the Mysteries sought as their pupils those who had inborn faculties of such a nature that they were able to come to this instinctive perception. Out of the great mass of people those were chosen in whose blood it lay to have such vision. Thus one simply knew that in the human beings that were sent as children from the spiritual worlds into this physical world came remnants of the experiences in those spiritual worlds. (I am still speaking of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha approached or was already accomplished.) In one individual these came less; in another, more. With the blood, so to say, echoes from the experiences in the spiritual worlds came in. Those who had the largest number of instinctive memories of experiences before birth or conception were the suitable pupils for the Mysteries. They were able to comprehend and see, or, rather, were able through comprehending vision to recognize the intentions of the gods regarding human beings, for they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this life on earth. And they were sought out by the wise men of the Mysteries, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as individuals who could bear witness to the will of the spiritual world with regard to the physical world. It was human beings such as these who were the first ones able to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha. One can certainly say that this was a very different way of placing a human being in the social order. He was placed in this social order by the gods themselves through the recognizing of this fact by the Mysteries.

The inborn faculties based on the action of the blood then gave way to the medieval wave. Human beings then had nothing, or they had less and less, of what is brought into the physical world at birth from the spiritual worlds. Certainly the people who counted had nothing of this. Nothing but an instinctive memory remained. So upon what basis could a social structure be founded? What could this be founded on in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be founded on authority—the authority claimed above all by the Popes of Rome. It was this authority that took the place of that which the priests of the ancient Mysteries had beheld and recognized as being sent from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times decisions were made as to what should happen in the social life according to what was brought from the spiritual worlds. This could now only be decided in that certain people—that is the Roman Popes and, by extension, the individual vassal princes of the Popes, the kings and other princes—were ascribed with a certain authority on earth, and ascribed through legal justification, by formal, legal right. Men must now command, since the gods no longer commanded. And who was to command had now to be established through external law.

Thus arose the medieval principle of authority and one can say that into this principle was also incorporated the whole perception of the Mystery of Golgotha which one only received as an account. At most one could clothe it in symbols, in which, however, one only had images. A symbol of this kind is the mass with the sacred Last Supper and all that the Christian could experience in the Church. In the Last Supper he had directly present, according to his comprehension, the entry of the Christ-force into the world. The fact that this Christ-force was able to stream into the physical world for the believers was subject to the authority which in turn proceeded from the ordinations of the Roman Church.

But what was developing here as the dialectical-legal Roman element also bore in its bosom, as it were, its other side. It bore the continuous protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then there also already comes to expression in the human being that which is to come in the future: inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through the most diverse historical phenomena, through such people as Wyclif,¹ Hus² and so on, who set themselves against the bare principle of authority, who wished to comprehend Christ out of their inner being—for which, however, the time had not yet come. In fact, one could only give onself up to the illusion that one grasped Christ out of one's own inner being.

Those men who still made their appearance as mystics in the Middle Ages also spoke of the Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ-experience. But they did have the old accounts concerning the Christ. And this rebellion against authority became stronger and stronger and because of this the urge to fortify this authority also naturally became stronger and stronger. And the strongest exercise of power to fortify this authority—to put, in a sense, everything that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha only on a basis of authority and permanently so—came from Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing more of the Christ. Jesuitism already contains in itself a complete rebellion against the original understanding of Christ. The first understanding occurred in Gnosis with the remains of the oriental clairvoyance. Jesuitism took up only the intellectual-dialectic element and rejected the Christ-principle. It did not develop a Christology but a fighting doctrine for Jesus: a Jesuology. Even though Jesus was seen as one reaching beyond all human beings, that which led to the Mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was nevertheless to be something founded purely on authority.

Thus was prepared the situation which then came about, with its culmination in the nineteenth century, in which the Christ-impulse as something spiritual was completely lost—in which theology, in wishing to be a modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. But as this whole development took its course it gave rise to many difficult conditions. Take the fact that the existing accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha were taken up by the Roman principle into a purely juristic dialectics; that they were taken up through external symbolism which could be explained. It was then impossible to let these accounts, as they existed, come into the hands of the faithful. Thus the strict forbiddance for those of the Roman faith to read the Bible.

This was the most important fact right into the later Middle Ages; that the faithful were forbidden to read the Bible. It was considered by the priesthood and the leading Catholic circles that it would be the most frightful thing if the Gospels were to become known among the broad mass of the faithful. For the Gospels originate out of a completely different constitution of soul. The Gospels can only be understood through a spiritual constitution of soul. A dialectical soul-constitution can make nothing of them. It was therefore impossible for those times, in which the intellect and dialectics were prepared, to allow the masses access to the Gospels. The Church fought furiously against the Gospels becoming known and regarded those who went against the prohibition of reading them as the most flagrant heretics; like, for example, the Waldenses and Albigenses. These claimed the right to teach themselves about the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. The Church opposed this because it knew full well that the way the Church itself presented the Mystery of Golgotha was irreconcilable with a common knowledge of the Gospels. For the Gospel in its true form actually consists of four Gospels which contradict one another. They knew that if they gave out the Gospels to the great mass of the faithful, the faithful would straightaway be confronted with contradictory accounts which, with the dawning intellectuality, they could only grasp as something to be understood as one understands things of the physical plane. After all, with an event on the physical plane one cannot understand why it ought to be described in four different ways. For an event that has to be understood by higher forces one is concerned with how it looks from this or that view, since it must always be seen from different sides. I have often said that this holds true even for dreams. People can dream the same thing; that is to say the same thing can take place within them but the pictures that are formed can differ in the most manifold ways. Thus for someone who stands in a spiritual relation to the Mystery of Golgotha the contradictions are of no significance.

But the people at the dawn of the Middle Ages did not stand in a spiritual relation; they stood in the sign of dialectics right into the lowest classes of the people. And for dialectics one could not simply give out a fourfold mutually contradictory account of the Mystery of Golgotha. And when Protestantism emerged and the Church could no longer maintain the prohibition of the Bible, there arose that discrepancy in European life which then led to the modern theology of the nineteenth century which finally erased from the Gospels everything that was contradictory. And what the Gospels have now become is, in the end, really just a well-picked carcass. The most meagre that has appeared, the most plucked, are the things which the famous Schmiedel has discovered. He considers the only genuine places in the Gospels are those where someone is not praised, where something disapproving is said, and dismisses everything else. And thus there arose the descriptions of Jesus of the theologians of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, who only wanted to describe Jesus the man and believed that with that they could still remain within Christianity. An intellectual-dialectical age could only remain within Christianity by prohibiting the Gospels. With the Gospels a dialectical-legal age could only have the effect of gradually eliminating the figure of Christ completely.

Modern humanity has actually developed under this untruth. This humanity has absolutely no inkling that, fundamentally, it lives under the principle of authority but continually denies that this is so. There is hardly a stronger stamp of the belief in authority than exists among those who accept modern official science as the standard for the world. Just look how easily people are satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been 'scientifically proven'. They know nothing more about this proof than that it has been stated by someone who has been to grammar school and university, has become a lecturer or professor and has therefore been appointed again by authority. This is how this is promulgated. And then what gets out among people in this way is supposed to be true science. Just try sometime to hold in mind for yourself everything that people accept nowadays as being true, proven science. In the last analysis it rests upon nothing other than a pure principle of authority, on absolute faith in authority—it is only that people delude themselves about this. This is the belief in authority that has replaced the other way of ordering the social structure which was derived from the Orient.

And one must grasp what hatred developed within those circles who had no understanding at all for the Mystery of Golgotha, who had only tradition continued through authority, and were terrified of the Gospels becoming generally known among the masses. One must grasp the hatred that became ever stronger and stronger and especially in Jesuitism was developed into a complete system—a hatred for Gnosis. And even today we still see how theologians get hot under the collar whenever there is any talk of Gnosis! We have to understand this on the basis of the development of European humanity. One must, for example, understand the development of the universities. How have the universities developed? One should look at history from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. They developed out of the Church. The monastery schools have become universities. Everything that was taught had to have the stamp of approval from Rome and only what had received this stamp was to be believed. The thought that it had to be approved by Rome was gradually lost but the thought that it had to be approved by something remained. And thus there remained the principle of authority even in those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And this continuation of the Roman authority-principle, but without a belief in Rome itself, is the mentality of our universities today. It is also the mentality in Protestant countries. The Catholic Church only fights on for its authority, with the exclusion of everything spiritual; it calumniates everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal mode of thinking, calumniates everything which resists being fitted into the social authority principle. One must only understand how deeply this has penetrated into the soul-constitution of those human beings living at the dawn of our modern civilization. In this way the majority lost the power to face the truth for themselves and in the last resort this has produced the great confusion; the frightful chaos in which we are now living.

But at the same time we are now living,in an age in which a faculty of vision, of supersensible perception, is again being prepared. It is the wish of spiritual science to prepare for this faculty which humanity must take hold of again. Not the old instinctive vision, but a supersensible perception founded on full consciousness. Theology professors and others fight against this perception; they confuse it with the old Gnostic visionary gift and say all sorts of things they do not understand themselves against this modern faculty. But this new vision is rising up as a necessity which must take hold of humanity. And it is into this faculty of vision that a true comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha can shine again.

Thus, the course of man's image of Christ is as follows. The Mystery of Golgotha takes place at a time in which remnants of the old clairvoyance still exist. Human beings can still just about understand it. They set down this understanding in the Gospels. Christianity moves westwards and it taken up by Rome in the dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People talk in words about the Mystery of Golgotha; in words that are merely words so that the faithful are also quite content when they are in church and the priest speaks words in a language they do not understand. For it is not a matter for them of understanding but a matter, at most, of living in the general atmosphere which is directed to the Mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection of human beings with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain point in the Middle Ages people begin to debate the significance of the symbol in which the continuous communication of the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself. People begin to debate, for example, the significance of the Last Supper. But as soon as people begin to debate something it means they no longer understand it. What lives in the evolution of humanity lives as experience; as long as people have the experience they do not dispute it. When the conflict over the nature of the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages the very last traces of understanding for the Last Supper were gone—the play of dialectics had already taken possession of it. And so the modern life of humanity unfolded until the prohibition of the Bible could no longer hold. In theory, all Catholics are still forbidden to read it. Theoretically they are allowed to read only that extract that is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity. Even today it is strictly forbidden for Catholics to occupy themselves with the four Gospels because, of course, the moment one goes into the four gospels with the modern spirit, where they are read in the same way one reads an account of the physical plane, they fragment into shreds. It is irresponsible when people who are fully aware of this and who have also experienced how in the course of the nineteenth century, under the philologizing of theology, the Gospels have been destroyed—when these people have the cheek, it cannot be called anything else, to say that Anthroposophy explains the Gospels in an arbitrary way, that it reads all sorts of things into them. These people know that the connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences people getting up onto the platform and again and again gabbling from a Catholic or Protestant point of view about how Anthroposophy puts things into the Gospels although they know perfectly well that if no spiritual comprehension is given to the Gospels they must radically destroy the Christian constitution of soul. If people would only pay more attention to how the majority of those who utter such nonsense about Anthroposophy are really only concerned with keeping their office in the most comfortable way, in the way they learnt in their youth—if people knew that in these theologians there is living not the slightest feeling for truth but only fear of losing their comfortable way of comprehending things—then we would get much further in rejecting the sort of Frolinmeyers and similar people who no longer possess the slightest spark of any sense of truth.

What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. And preparation must be made so that this Mystery of Golgotha may shine forth again to human imagination. For it cannot shine forth to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can either only wipe it from the world with its art of philology or preserve it by a tyrannical authority in the Jesuitical sense which does not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those, however, who strive for truth the path today leads towards Imagination; that is to conscious perception of the spiritual world. And the important thing is that, from the vantage point of this conscious perception of the spiritual world, One should be in the position to comprehend once again the whole being of humanity. Above all, it is essential that all human education and instruction be given from this point of view.

We know that until the age of seven, until the change of teeth, the child lives in imitation. Imitation is, in fact, nothing less than a continuation of what, in a completely different form, was present in the spirit world before birth or conception. There, in the spiritual world, one being merges into another and this is then expressed in the child's imitation of the people around it, as an echo of its spiritual experiences. Then, from the seventh Year, from the change of teeth up to puberty, comes the child's need for authority. What still lives in childish imitation lived in a certain way in the whole human nature during the ancient oriental culture. Those who worked out of the Mysteries worked with such a powerful force that other human beings followed them, as the child follows the grown-ups in its environment. Then came the principle of authority. And now the human being is growing out of this principle and is growing into that principle which begins to show itself after puberty—although of course in a personal, individual way, different from the way it is in the development of humanity as a whole. Today the human being is approaching the time when it will be necessary to develop in himself something which cannot be developed of itself. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In the ancient oriental social life it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in the child as the principle of imitation remained active even into the time of authority: the time of discerning judgements, remained active with regard to social affairs and everything that was encompassed as the religious life. The authority-principle in the ancient Orient applied only to the immediate environment. The greater affairs of life remained in the form of child-like experience.

These larger affairs of life then came into the times of the Middle Ages. The authority-principle prevailed and now, for the first time, a withdrawl from the authority-principle asserted itself—the principle of individual judgement arose. All that was developed for the affairs of the religious life, the artistic life -for human life in general that goes over and beyond the immediate elementary affairs of nature—could be found in the child, who brought it with him into the physical world from the spiritual worlds through the blood. When the authority principle still held sway, one only needed to build upon something which, with a certain necessity, developed out of the still quite unconscious etheric body. Today, when the principle of independent judgment is appearing, there arises an enormous new responsibility for pedagogy and didactics. There arises the fact that one must look in the growing child towards what will emerge. When a child reaches the age of fifteen the astral body is born in him. There is born in him that which carries into the world—now not unconsciously but in a more and more conscious way- the experiences of the spiritual world.

The time is approaching when in all our education and training we must look to what emerges from the child when he is in the fourteenth, fifteenth years of life. This was not of such great importance in all earlier times for it is connected with what lives independently in the human being which he does not bring with him through birth and which he cannot receive through authority but must really draw out of himself. And in order that he may draw it out of himself rightly we must take care that the child has the right upbringing and education up to the fourteenth, fifteenth years so that in those years he can then develop the astral body in the right way. Education and training take on a completely new significance in our modern time and, in fact, there should be no more teaching without insight into the relation of the human being to the spiritual world. That is the battle that is arising.

The sense of 'I' which pressed to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe asserted itself, as it were, out of still instinctive depths. In Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, however, this sense of 'I' dealt only with what man experiences between birth and death and had nothing to do with what is the super-physical human being. I said yesterday that the Mid-European was cut off by Turkey and by the influence of Peter the Great from anything oriental. But what continued to hover before the Mid-European as a revelation still lived on as an inheritance. This was really only understood out of the clairvoyance of the ancient Orient but still had its echoes in Asiatic Russia, the Russia not yet Europeanized.

Revelation is still alive today in Asia although in a completely decadent form. A sense for revelation is there still. The intellectual, the purely dialectical element, belongs to the West and is only developed today for the economic life. The Mid-European element was always hemmed in between these two—the Western intellectualism, still entirely restricted to the earthly economic, human reason that wishes to occupy itself only with external experience, and the oriental revelation. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly since only a kind of rhythmic balance existed between revelation and reason. What the great Scholastics of the Middle Ages had sought to hold apart—a rational grasp of the outer sense-world and supersensible revelation—collided increasingly into one another as the modern age arose. And we see this mutual interlocking particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century when the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe was born. We see then how the Western element expands in the second half of the nineteenth century; how, to a certain degree, the whole of Europe, even up to Russia, is Anglicized, and how the crushed condition, the devastated state, of Central Europe is an external sign of a deep inner process which humanity today is unwilling to grasp. Everything that is hemmed in between West and East is razed to the ground, is dashed to pieces, and does not know what to do. It lives in upheavals; talks of all sorts of things by which, somehow or other, progress can be made—but talks, however, nothing but nullities. This is expressed right into small details. There is an utter inability to cope with economics under the old conditions. What do people do? They either squeeze out of the old what is still left by a dreadful tightening of taxation or they fill what is lacking by printing worthless notes; millions of bank-notes a week. And though it is perhaps only a symbol, there nevertheless stands before the soul of individual people the following: a decadent clinging to revelation in the East, the nullity of the Centre and the rationality of the West, still bogged down in economics. And yet they talk as if of a future perspective—as though the Centre were simply not there—of the great conflict that lies ahead between Japan and America.

People, of course, picture this purely physically. This also signifies something of immense profundity. And when the decadent element existing in the East and that which is as yet unborn in the West clash together through ignoring the Centre—then the sense of 'I' which came to expression in the Centre is submerged in that chaos that arises through the crushing from East to West. Contemplation of the 'I' vanished with the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe. It has ceased to exist since the middle of the nineteenth century. And what people tried to create as political structure out of the upheavals—that, too, lies on the ground today. Impossible political structures spring up like that of Czechoslovakia which, quite certainly, in the long run cannot live and cannot die. These impossible structures can only spring up through the fact that peace is made by the people of the West who have no idea what the conditions for life are in the Centre. In Zurich people listen to someone or other who comes from Paris and holds forth to them brilliantly, as one says, on the unity of the Slovak and the Czech elements. The listeners are astounded at what such a professor makes known about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because they have no idea of the conditions for life in the East and because they do not know that what is brought into being there is only the squeezing element, the crushing together of East and West. People still cover their eyes so as not to see what the external symptoms are saying. You won't believe how, even here in Central Europe, scenes take place—though at the present time still very much towards the East—where remnants of the troops who carried the war on their shoulders appear here and there. They are now officers although there is no justification for this under present conditions. They make innocent women dance naked before them and then thrust bayonets into their bellies. Such scenes actually take place at the command of people who, incidentally, fought bravely in the war.

Before all these things the deluded men of the West, who conclude a peace of which they understand nothing, cover up their eyes. They do not see how, in what is actually going on, significant things proclaim themselves. And, for the most part, people go on with life as though nothing were happening in the world at all. And thus, one could say, things are driven into the very narrowest corner of the consciousness. That which once brought forth such idealistic heights—such ideas as one finds in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—in reality no longer exists in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered. Trumped-up slanderous stuff crops up everywhere; people cite it as something which they pretend to understand and must pass judgment on. Something is developing into nullity which a century ago was still radiant spirit-life. And above this the clouds are rolling together from the East and the West.

And what is the meaning of this that must come to expression In the most frightful way in coming decades? What is its Meaning? On the one hand it is the challenge to stand firm on the ground that would give birth to the new life of the spirit. On the other hand it is the sign in the heavens of that which has been spoken about among us for some time: the approach of the Christ in the form in which He must be seen from the twentieth century onwards. For, before the middle of this century has passed, the Christ must be seen. But before that, all that remains of the old must be driven into nullity, the clouds must gather. The human being must find his full freedom out of nullity and the new perception must be born out of this nullity. The human being must find his whole strength out of the nothingness. It is but the desire of spiritual science to prepare him for it. This is something of which one may not say that it desires to, but that it must desire to!

• 1 . John Wyclif (c. 1324–84).
• 2 . John Huss (1369–1415).

I tried yesterday to describe to you something of how European conditions are bound to develop in the near future, and we saw that the course of European development, of modern civilisation generally, will inevitably be bound up with the disappearance of what, in many areas of our modern times, is still considered by people to be the easiest way and of value. From the way in which I had to speak yesterday it will be clear to you that, for many who would rather go through the coming times in a comfortable sleep, with a sleeping soul, there is a very disagreeable awakening in store. I do not say—I mentioned this yesterday already—that the prophecies of those who see the most central matter of the near future as lying in such external things as the differences between Japan and America must be absolutely correct. But what must be regarded as imminent is what I characterized for you in a few brush-strokes as the great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks, will be wedged.

Strange as this may sound it is out of the modern world-conception, based on science, that the most intense need will have to arise for what I have called the Christ-experience soon to come.

We learnt yesterday how little experience of the Christ there really is at the present time. The course of human evolution has brought it about that ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, and particularly in recent centuries, all that can properly be called experience of the Christ has fallen into complete decadence. We saw, too, that because of the impossibility of adhering to the old prohibition against reading the Gospels—which, in theory, is indeed still maintained by the Catholic Church against humanity's demand to be able to receive and read the Gospels—an experience of Christ has not been able to develop. And we have already pointed out how the particular constitution of soul that is becoming prevalent in modern civilization will again lead to experience of the Christ, just as remnants of the old instinctive clairvoyance could lead to it at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But one has to be clear that just as other crucial, incisive events in human evolution came about in ways other than is expected among philistine circles; so, too, what one must call the Christ-experience of the first half of the twentieth century will come in an unexpected way. And this experience will have a clearly definable connection with the modern outlook on life based on science.

Consider the following. Since the middle of the fifteenth century the constitution of people's souls has become quite different from what it was before that time. History does not take this into account because external history ever and again remains at the surface of things. But especially during the period between the middle of the nineteenth century and our own time, the soul-constitution of humanity as a whole has undergone a fundamental change. This also has been taken into account far too little because people habitually stick to what was once instilled into them. At most, one can notice a breaking out from this clinging by force of habit to what has been inculcated when one observes with a wakeful soul the outlook on life of today's younger generation, and compares this with the outlook of their eiders when they were in their youth. The difference between older people and the youth of today has been depicted again and again, particularly by poets; and if people did not encapsulate themselves in their habitual ideas so that nothing can penetrate which conflicts with their usual habits of thought they would soon see what an immense gulf there really is between those who are old today and those who are young.

On the other hand there is a terribly reactionary, conservative element in human evolution today. It is the belief in the authority of popular science. And this is connected with the fact that popular science has totally captivated the general consciousness. People underestimate this today. Just think how rapidly, especially in the last decades, ideas which have become familiar through nineteenth-century scientific development have taken universal hold, right down to the least educated classes. Certainly there are many who still cling to a certain piety, a piety that wants to know nothing of what is laying hold of humanity through modern scientific thought. But for the most part there is a terrible dishonesty rooted in this piety; a refusal to face what is spreading here and which one can only define as the materialism of modern humanity evoked by natural science.

The spread of this materialism will not be checked in the near future as some deluded scientists seem to think. On the contrary, it will increase with furious speed and we shall see how, out of the chaos of modern civilization, this materialistic mood will become stronger and stronger. And if sufficient preparation has been made, if the aims of spiritual science are fulfilled—so that children at school are given a stimulus for the right kind of development—then out of this materialistic mood, out of this chaos, individual souls can emerge who will have a very strong sense of something which I should now like to describe, although I have done so in different ways and at different times before.

When someone acquainted with the modern scientific outlook on the world, observes it with awakened eyes of the soul, he cannot fail to realize that one of its most distinguishing features is that it is incapable of comprehending the human being. The human being, as such, is actually entirely excluded from the conception of the world based on modern science. We had occasion here recently to consider the scope of the various branches of scientific learning when we held our course for scientists and we saw that none of these has anything to say about the real nature of man.

We need only give one characteristic example: take the usual theory of evolution expounded under the influence of Darwin or Weismann¹ or others. It demonstrates the evolution of the living creature from the simplest to the most perfect and lays down the view that man also derives his origin from this line of evolution. But actually it takes into consideration only that element of man that is animal. It considers man only so far as to be able to say that any organ, any structure in man, derives from the corresponding organ or structure in the animal line. Science ignores the extent to which the animal-element in man appears in a modified form, the extent to which the animal-nature in man differs from that of the animal world. The ability to keep man himself in view has been completely lost by science; man is left out.

Science has developed scrupulous methods. It has established a certain discipline that is necessary if one means to enter into discussions on world-views. But this science has not been capable of raising man's power of understanding to the point where man himself becomes comprehensible. There is no place for the human being in the scientific thought of today and thus he presents an ever-greater riddle to himself. Only a very few people are aware of this today and these few can certainly be clear about it theoretically. But there is, as yet, no unified feeling for it. Such a feeling will arise with vigour from properly conducted elementary education. The children will come out of properly conducted elementary school in such a way that they will already have the feeling: 'We have a science which is born out of modern intellectuality, but the further we enter into this science, the more we learn of nature, the less we understand of ourselves, the less we understand of the human being.'

This intellect, which was the principal soul-force developing in recent centuries—and is so still today—this intellect creates a complete void in man, so to speak, as regards his perception of self. And yet, on the other hand, we hear the demand that man should stand solely on the basis of his own being. This comes forward as, I should say, a fundamental social demand. Side by side with the inability of the science of recent times to account for the human being, we have, on the other side, claims of all kinds coming not from any scientific impulse but from the depths of human instinct—demands that man be able to raise himself to an existence worthy of the human being: that he should be able to feel what his real nature is. While on the one hand we have more and more demands of a practical kind, on the other we have the increasing inability of science to say anything about the human being's own nature. Such a discrepancy in human experience would have been quite impossible in earlier times of human world-view development.

If we turn once more to the ancient oriental outlook we must Say, from what we have been able to indicate of this, that the human being knew then that he descended from spiritual heights; that he lived, before he entered into physical existence through conception and birth, in a spiritual world. He knew that he brought with him from the spiritual world something that was still in him, something that came out in childhood as disposition, as aspiration, and remained with him through the whole of his life on earth. In ancient times every oriental knew that what worked its way out of his soul during childhood, in youth, was a dowry from the spiritual worlds which he had experienced before entering into physical existence. To be aware theoretically that one has passed through a spiritual life of this kind before one's life on earth has no very great value, but a lively feeling for it is worth a great deal; it is something of the greatest value to feel that what has been growing and developing in one's soul since childhood comes from the spiritual world.

Today, however, this feeling has given way to another. It has given way, both in the individual and more especially in the social life, to another feeling entirely. And there is something important here which must be looked at. More and more there weighs down upon the human being, half unconsciously, the feeling of his inherited characteristics. Anyone who is able to view this impartially sees how the human being-today actually feels that he is what he is through his parents, his grandparents and so on. Unlike the human being in ancient times he no longer feels that what flames up in him from childhood onwards, comes from those depths in which is rooted that which he received from his spiritual experiences before. his life on earth. On the contrary he feels in himself the characteristics inherited from parents, grandparents and so on. The first thing people ask about a child nowadays is from whom it has got this or that characteristic. And the reply, however, is seldom that the child has it as a result of this or that particular experience in the spiritual world. People look instead to see whether it comes from the grandmother or grandfather, and soon.

The more this emerges in individual people—not merely as a theory but as a feeling, a feeling of dependence on purely earthly inherited characteristics—the more oppressive and dreadful will it gradually become. And this feeling will increase in strength very rapidly. In the decades ahead it will intensify to the Point of becoming unbearable, for it is connected with another feeling, a certain feeling of the worthlessness of human existence. This will arise more and more: that the human being will feel his existence to be worthless if he cannot feel it to be anything other than the sum total of what has been implanted in his blood and in his other organs by physically-inherited characteristics. Today what is emerging here is still, to a certain extent, mere theory, although there are poets who have already expressed it as experience. But it will emerge as a feeling, as a sense, and it will then become an oppressive characteristic in the feeling-life of civilized humanity. This experiencing of oneself in the purely inherited characteristics will lie like a weight on the soul. It is here that the inability of natural science to give man an understanding of himself shows itself in all its poverty; the human being no longer feels himself to be a child of the spiritual world but merely a child of characteristics inherited in the course of earthly physical existence.

All this is very forcibly manifest in social life. You have only to think of the demands that have arisen as the outcome of a gigantic piece of political stupidity which has spread through the world in recent years! This folly slowly gathered strength during recent centuries and then came to a climax in our own day. The great crisis of the second decade of the twentieth century was ushered in when those who were supposed to be leading the several nations—who at any rate held positions which imply leadership and yet understood nothing of the situation mankind is in - when these people began talking about organizing mankind according to the will of its individual nations. It was indeed in our recent times that national chauvinism was aroused in its very worst sense. And it is national chauvinism that is ringing through the whole civilized world today.

This is merely the social counterpart of the utterly rsactionary world-view that tries to trace everything back to inherited characteristics. When one no longer strives to fathom one's nature as a human being and to fashion the social structure in such a way that this human nature can be at home in it; and when one strives, instead, to bring it about that the social structure corresponds only with what men are as Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Poles and so on, then one forgets all spirituality. Then all spirituality is excluded and people try to order the world solely in accordance with characteristics inherited through the blood because they have come more and more to the point of having no content at all in their concepts. This had to happen because this twentieth century had to give us a taste of the fact that there can be a man, marvelled at by vast numbers as a world-leader, even though there are no concepts in his words whatsoever—that there can be a man like Woodrow Wilson² who utters words which no longer contain any concepts.

It is for this reason that people have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit—on blood relationship, on the blood-related characteristics of the nations. All that has resulted from this is that peace treaties have been made in which people who know absolutely nothing about the conditions of life in the modern civilized world have determined the shape of the maps of the countries of that world. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times, its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the principle of nationalism.

This, of course, is a truth which for many people today is highly unpleasant. And this is why so many lies have to be harboured in the deeper regions of the soul. For if one does not face honestly the fact that by establishing an order of the world based only on blood-relationship one is denying the spirit, then one is lying. And one is also lying when in such circumstances one then claims to be inclined towards some kind of spiritual conception of the world.

And now let us look at the way the evolution of the world is going today. Everything that is welling up out of the chaotic instincts of humanity denies the spirit utterly. I put you through a trial yesterday. In order to spare your delicate nerves, which I noticed yesterday to some extent, I will not add any more trials, although they could easily be added. Thus we see on all sides how man has lost insight into the true nature of his being. And let us now consider from a spiritual-scientific standpoint the counter-image of what I had to describe as a feeling that is surging up.

You know that spiritual science shows how our earth-planet, upon which the human being has to experience his present destiny, is the re-embodiment of three preceding conditions and how we have to look forward to three subsequent embodiments so that our earth, schematically, is in a midway state.

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Now we know from what is described in my Occult Science³ that what the human being bears today as his physical body is essentially an inheritance from the first, second, third and fourth conditions. What he bears as his etheric body is a result of the second, third and fourth conditions. What we call his astral body is the result of the third and fourth conditions. And now, in our present earth-evolution, the 'I' is appearing. And there will appear in the future, when the earth enters its next stages, what today is indicated in the human being only in germ—spirit-self, life-spirit and actual spirit-man. These will have to be elaborated in the human being, just as physical body, etheric body and astral body have been elaborated, and just as the 'I' is being worked on at the present time.

But you will know, if you reflect on how much of this cosmic-earthly evolution can be brought to you, that during earth-evolution only the germs of spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man will be able to evolve; for we shall have to wait for the transformation of the earth into its three following conditions for them to appear fully. And from the descriptions I have given in my Occult Science you will see that, essentially, spirit-self is the transformation of the astral body into a higher stage, that life-spirit is the transformation of the etheric body to a higher stage and spirit-man is the transformation of the physical body to a higher stage. This transformation of the physical body, however, will not take place until the seventh condition—nor, correspondingly, the transformation of the other members.

Today, however, the human being can already understand that this has to happen. He can already embrace the thought that it must happen. Indeed, the human being can grasp still more today if, without prejudice, he gets beyond the limitations of natural science and directs his soul's gaze upon its own nature. He will have to say to himself: 'It is true that, during earth-existence, I cannot attain spirit-self in my astral body, nor life-spirit in my etheric body nor spirit-man in my physical body, but what I have to do is to prepare, to prefigure, them in my soul. And by developing the consciousness-soul now I am preparing myself to take spirit-self into it in the next, the sixth, culture-epoch. I know that I cannot yet bring spirit-self into my entire astral body, but I have to bring it into my consciousness-soul. As a human being, I must learn to live inwardly in the way that I shall one day live when the earth has passed over, through a certain cosmic development, into its next stage of evolution. And I must prepare for these future conditions, at least inwardly, while still in earthly existence. I must prepare myself, in germ, inwardly so that in the future I shall be able to shape my outer form in the way which it is my task, even now, to understand.'

Now try and sense clearly what is really involved here. The human being is already growing into spirit-self, as I have often explained. The human being is growing into states of consciousness of which he must say that they are really of such a nature that, during the period of earth-existence, they cannot emerge fully. These states of consciousness try to transform him even as regards his external sheaths—his astral body, etheric body and physical body—but, as earthly man, he cannot achieve this. He has to say to himself: 'I must pass through the rest of earth-evolution continually feeling that I am preparing myself inwardly for conditions of being I cannot yet develop'. In future it will have to be the normal thing for a human being to say: 'I see the being of man as something which, in its inner nature, grows beyond what I can be as earthly man. As earthly man I am forced, in a sense, to feel myself as a dwarf compared with what the human being really is.' And out of this dissatisfaction, which properly educated children will begin to have in the very near future, this feeling will arise: The children will feel that, despite all our intellectual culture, people are still not able to solve the riddle of man. Man is missing from what can be known intellectually; he has no place in the social structure.

Everything that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian formulas, and out of any other form of chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be quite unworkable. Through all such things modern civilization is heading towards impossible situations. However many more national states you set up you will provide only so many more seeds of destruction; and it is just out of everything that is loaded onto human souls as a result of modern civilization that the feeling I have just described from another point of view will proceed. The human being will say to himself: The being of man that lights up inwardly for me is something much higher than anything I can realize externally. I must bring something quite different to the world. I must bring something quite different into the social structure, something that is recognized as coming from spiritual heights. I cannot entrust myself to the social science derived from natural science.'

But the human being must sense the inner schism between his dwarf-like existence on earth and the experience that lights up within him of himself as a cosmic being. Out of all that modern culture—this much-praised, idolized culture of today—can give the human being, a twofold feeling will develop. On the one hand he will feel himself as belonging to the earth; on the other he will say: 'But the human being is more than an earthly being. The earth cannot fulfill the human being at all; if it a to fulfill him it will have first to transform itself into other conditions.'

In reality the human being is not an earth-being. In reality the human being is a cosmic being, a being belonging to the whole universe. On the one side the human being will feel himself bound to the earth; on the other he will feel himself to be a cosmic being. This feeling will weigh down on him. And when this is no longer mere theory but is experienced by individual human beings whose karma enables them to grow beyond the trivial feelings of today - when humanity comes to feel disgust at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this—only then will a kind of reverse begin. The human being will feel himself to be a cosmic being. As though with outstretched arms he will ask for the solution to the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come in the next decades: as though with outstretched arms—I mean this, of course, symbolically—the human being will ask: 'Who can decipher for me my nature as a cosmic being? Everything that I can establish on earth, all that the earth can give me, all that I can get from the natural science that is so highly valued today, accounts for me only as an earth-being and leaves the true being of man as an unsolved riddle. I know that I am a cosmic, a super-earthly being. Who can unravel for me the riddle of this super-earthly being?'

This will live in the human soul as a question rising up from a fundamental experience. In the decades to come, even before we reach the middle of this century, this question will be more important than anything else or any other feelings people may have. And the expectation, the longing, that there has to be a solution to this human riddle—the riddle that the human beings are, after all, cosmic beings. This feeling towards the cosmos -that one day it must reveal what cannot come from the earth—all this will create a mood to which the cosmos responds. Just as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha so the spiritual Christ will appear to humanity. He alone can give the answer because He is not in some indefinite place but must be recognized as a Being from beyond the earth who has united Himself with earthly humanity. People will have to understand that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He who unites Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid. This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has ever arisen in earth-existence; the disharmony between the human being's feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing (Drang) will prepare man to recognize how, out of grey spiritual depths, the Christ-Being will reveal Himself to him and will speak to him spiritually, just as, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He spoke to him physically.

The Christ will not come in the spirit if human beings are not prepared for Him. But they can be prepared only in the way I have just characterized, by sensing the discrepancy I described, by the schism weighing terribly heavily upon them from which they feel: 'I must regard myself as an earth-being. The intellectual development of recent centuries has created the conditions which make me appear as an earth-being. Yet I am no earth-being. I cannot but feel myself united with a being who is not of this earth; a being who, not with theological mendacity but in very truth can say: "My kingdom is not of this world".'⁴ For man will have to say to himself: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' And this is why he will have to be united with a being who is not of this world.

It is directly out of the sciences which, as I have said, will take possession of the popular consciousness with tremendous speed that something must be developed which will direct mankind towards the new manifestation of the Christ in the first half of the twentieth century.

This, of course, could not have happened in the constitution of soul in which the civilized world was before 1914 when all talk of ideals, all talk of spirituality, was fundamentally a lie. Deep need will have to make human beings' search for spirituality a true one. And the Christ will appear only to those who renounce everything that spreads falsehood over earthly life. And no social question will be solved that is not thought out in connection with this spiritual-scientific endeavour that enables the human being to appear in truth once again as a super-earthly being. The solutions to our social problems will be found to the degree in which human beings are able to feel the Christ-impulse in their souls. All other solutions will lead only to destruction, to chaos. For all other solutions are based on the conception of man as an earthly being. But precisely in our own day the human being is outgrowing the constitution of soul which permits him to think of himself as a purely earthly, physical being. The new experience of the Christ will arise out of the attunement (Gestimmtheit) of human souls and out of their need.

But awareness must all the more be directed towards everything that hinders the approach of this new Christ-experience.

We had to refer directly to attacks on our own affairs and have seen that here also people take up an attitude towards the emerging spiritual science such that they fight against it out of an inner untruthfulness.

One experiences something in this area today which must be kept in view completely impartially. Almost every day at the moment spiritual science is, as it were, killed off at least once. The most recent of these death-blows was the one dealt by a theology professor, Karl Goetz, in agreement with another Doctor of Divinity, a certain Heinzelmann.⁵ I will disregard the fact that this Doctor of Divinity, Karl Goetz, has made an attack on spiritual science, or 'so-called spiritual science' as he terms it, for example in his newspaper article—we are having to get used to these things more and more here in Dornach. But one can also look from another point of view at everything that has been perpetrated by this Doctor of Divinity, Goetz. One can look at it from the point of view of how lacking in knowledge is this official 'erudition which has the education of contemporary youth in its care. One can deduce from this that there is an attack here on spiritual science. But one can look at the following, and I will highlight a few characteristic points—although only from the newspaper article—which, according to this attack, are supposed to occur. The methods of knowledge in spiritual science are referred to here by a man whose profession it is to speak about Christology, who gains his daily bread by educating youth in Christology. This man says, about the methods used to gain knowledge in anthroposophical science, that the Imaginations sought are the result of when the mental activity of forming ideas is artificially inhibited and suppressed. He says that the nervous energy saved in this way is then used to produce the mental images which anthroposophists call Imagination and Intuition.

So, just take a look at what this man says: Artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity and, in the process, saved neural energy! One can disregard the fact that this man can of course only speak of saved neural energy as a vague hypothesis—for no one in science today can picture anything under the term of 'saved neural energy'. But he nevertheless talks of artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity. Has this man in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—I choose the words carefully in this case and thus say in inverted commas, in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—ever really occupied himself with what, for example, is applied here as the methods of knowledge for coming to Imagination? Is it possible to speak here about constrained or repressed mental-picturing activity? Now, if he decided to look at some anthroposophical literature this man would be able to answer this. Those mental pictures which he considers to be his normal ones are indeed not repressed. Had he only tried a little to find out whether distorted mental pictures ruled the day while our School of Spiritual Science course was being held he would not speak about mental-picturing activity being suppressed here. There is still plenty of unsuppressed mental-picturing life here which, at least with regard to many a specialized science, is well able to understand what this man can understand. One simply cannot speak about suppressed mental-picturing activity [in this connection]. And if he had ever acquainted himself in his 'scientific conscientiousness' with what is described as the path into the spiritual worlds, he would have seen that nothing is artificially suppressed here but that things are freed. The case here is that this man has not understood a single word of what is contained in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—How is it Achieved?. And he knows nothing of the methods of spiritual science other than what, in accordance with his constitution of soul, he can gather from the meditation successes of a bunch of old cronies. This is what is working under the name of 'scientific conscientiousness' in official science.

He goes on to say that through holding back these constrained mental pictures—people are supposed to imagine something here like mental pictures being dammed up like water—that, through this holding back, Imaginations come to life and appear like perceptions of the senses. Well, I would like to count up the pages where, again and again in my books, I have said that Imaginations have no similarity with pictures from the senses, with sense-perceptions. This is dealt with quite extensively. So what is ruling in this 'scientific conscientiousness'? The lie—which, albeit may arise from impotency, from inability. But this lie is spreading with tremendous speed in theology, philosophy, history, jurisprudence and similar branches of teaching. Modern humanity should take note of this fact. For it is in this fact—not in speeches that Woodrow-Wilsonism fabricates out of words empty of content—that the causes lie for steering us into chaos.

Then comes another good bit—as I said, I can only discuss this from the newspaper article. It says then that because these Imaginations, which have come to life through suppressing the mental-picturing element, arise involuntarily they are therefore described as being experiences free of the body. Again, in his 'scientific conscientiousness', he has never directed his mind to the fact that, as has been shown, nothing arises involuntarily but that in the spiritual-scientific act of knowing the voluntary mental picture is enhanced. Perhaps this man has got his information from a spiritistic or mediumistic nursery. If so, he should stay with his spiritism and mediums and keep away from things he does not understand and does not wish to understand.

And he says further that what personifies Imagination is that which is evoked through the split in consciousness. This is a lack of conscience and a twisting of everything that is portrayed in my books as the methods of knowledge of spiritual science! This man thereby prepares the ground in order to say, in his own way, that spiritual science may not be hostile towards Christianity, but is culturally valueless. And then comes the really good bit: spiritual science, he says, is culturally valueless for telepathy will never replace the telegraph, thought-reading will never replace the telephone nor magnetic healing-power replace medicine!

Thus, although during our course here at the—Goetheanum we spoke about medicine and truly excluded all dilletantism about magnetic healing-powers, and although in truth we referred to medicine very seriously, a doctor of theology nevertheless gives a talk in our immediate neighbourhood after the course has ended about how the whole endeavour of spiritual science consists in trying to substitute medicine with magnetic healing-forces. And with this sort of talk a present-day doctor of theology enjoys success with the present-day public! And he enjoys success when a Heinzelmann-hobgoblin^T1 then jumps to his aid—a modern hobgoblin—and adds that one cannot find Christ through spiritual science but only through the Gospels. Now someone should just ask this hobgoblin: Which Gospel? One should ask him: What have you done to the Gospels with your theology? You have brought it about that the whole of Christology has vanished from modern development. And now that this mess has been created, we hear people from that corner saying: For Christianity we don't need what comes from spiritual science, we only need the simplicity of the Gospels. Is this not a most fundamental falsehood? It is a lie, knowing what modern criticism of the Gospels has come up with, to stand there and say: Our salvation for eternity must come from the Gospels without a science of the spirit.

What is it then that is coming from this corner? It is a denial of the Christ. And the most vigorous deniers of Christ today are the theologians. Those who want to prevent a true concept of the Christ from arising today are the theologians! And as long as it is not realized that this new experience of the Christ in the twentieth century will have to arise in such a way that the theology of all denominations denies him, the Christ will not come. He will appear again to human beings when those who are counted as his followers—the modern Scribes and Pharisees—have denied him completely.

It is not easy to see through these things with full strength, for one always also sees then how little the people of today are inclined to reckon with insights of this kind. The opponents are ready at their posts. They are developing all the intensity of battle. Our battle—what we are capable of—is weak, very weak and our comprehension of Anthroposophy is in many respects very sleepy. This is the great pain which weighs down these days upon someone who sees through things. One feels it so often when one says something in answer to the problems of our times—something for a social healing of our times—and people receive it as though it were barely anything other than a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. One would like to call upon people to awaken, to carry what can come from spiritual science into the way they shape all aspects of life. But, instead, one sees how people just let life run its course; how they look at those who direct life out of falsehood, and listen, greedy for entertainment, to what they receive from spiritual science as though it were nothing but a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. What must still arise is this: a deep, holy seriousness in receiving spiritual science and the disaccustoming of oneself from what induces people to receive spiritual science like any other literary product, albeit one in which one can amuse oneself all the better because it is a guarantee for one's longing for life after death. There is today a terrible gap between what is necessary in receiving spiritual science and what is actually there. You see, one can disregard an attack on Anthroposophy like that of Goetz or Heinzelmann. One has only to look at their abilities to ask: How was it that the pick of humanity was such that it brought these people to positions of this kind? Until one puts this question most intensely to oneself, until one is prepared to look where things are lacking, we will not make progress. All declaiming about social ideals or the like is useless if one is not prepared to look at this element that is living as a fundamental principle in our present time. For the damage of our time has its source in our perverted spiritual life which has gradually gone very deep into untruth but is completely unaware of how deeply in untruth it lives. How great is the contrast between what is necessary and the way in which what is spoken here is taken up! It is not intended to be a magazine article; it is meant as a force for life and people will have gradually to accustom themselves to understanding it as such.

This is what, in both a positive and negative sense, I wanted to say to you today concerning—to use a trivial word—the spirit of the age. This spirit of our age should be a spirit of expectation; the spirit which, out of expectation, develops an understanding for the great experience of the twentieth century that is born of deep need. But without also looking, in truth, at everything that is blocking this experience, people will not be able to meet it. If people today want, out of complacency, out of inner pleasure-seeking, to bow down to tradition—and if people do not want to be aware that, bowing down like this, they burden the day with a deep untruth—then people will not make themselves mature and ready for the Christ-event of the twentieth century. But everything depends on this maturity. Everything depends on our overcoming theological talk about Christ so that, in all reality, we can move forward to an understanding of Him.

• 1 . August Weismann (1834–1914), German zoologist.
• 2 . Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), President of the United States 1913–1921.
• 3 . Occult Science, (GA 13), published by Rudolf Steiner Press.
• 4 . 'My kingdom is not of this world' John: 18,36.
• 5 . Karl Goetz and Gerhard Heinzelmann &mdsh; both theology professors at that time in Basel. Translator's note: In German 'Heinzebnannchen'
• T1. means goblin, brownie or imp. Steiner plays on this here in connection with the name of Professor Heinzelmann.

Yestrday I tried to describe to you something of how European conditions are bound to develop in the near future, and we saw that the general course of modern civilisation will inevitably involve the disappearance of much that is still greatly to men's taste and considered by them to be of value. From the way in which I had to speak yesterday it will be clear to you that a very disagreeable awakening is in store for many who would have preferred to sleep comfortably through the coming times. I do not say that the prophecies of those who see the writing on the wall only in such external things as the differences between Japan and America must be fulfilled to the letter. But what must be regarded as imminent is a great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks, will be crushed.

Strange as this may sound, it is the modern world-conception, based on natural science, that will arouse the deepest need for what I have called the Christ-Experience yet to come. We learnt yesterday how little experience of the Christ there really is at the present time. The course of human evolution has brought it about that ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, and particularly in recent centuries, all that can properly be called experience of the Christ has fallen into complete decadence. We saw, too, that the impossibility of withstanding men's demand for the Gospels, their desire to be able to read the Gospels—although the ancient veto is still maintained in theory by the Catholic Church—has been a hindrance to the development of a Christ-Experience. And we have already pointed out how the peculiar frame of mind which is becoming prevalent in modern civilisation will again lead to experience of the Christ, just as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha remnants of the old instinctive clairvoyance could lead to it. But one has to be clear that just as other incisive events in human evolution come about otherwise than is expected among the philistines, so the Christ-Experience of the first half of the twentieth century will come in an unexpected way. And it will have a clearly definable connection with the modern outlook on life, based on natural science.

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, the disposition of men's souls has become quite different from what it was before that time. History does not take this into account, because external history always keeps to the surface of things. But, especially during the period between the middle of the nineteenth century and our own day, mankind in general has undergone a fundamental change in its frame of mind. That also has been too little noticed, because people usually stick to the ideas that have once been instilled into them. But there has been a marked departure from this clinging by force of habit to what has been inculcated, and this comes out very clearly if one observes closely the outlook on life of the younger generation and compares it with the outlook which their elders had in their own youth. The poets, especially, furnish us with repeated illustrations of this difference. And if men did not box themselves up within their habitual ideas, so that nothing is able to penetrate their minds which conflicts with their habitual thinking, they would soon see what an immense gulf really exists between those who are old today and those who are young.

On the other hand there is today a terrible reactionary, conservative element in human evolution. It is the belief in the authority of popular science. And this comes about because popular science has invaded the general consciousness with giant strides. Just think how rapidly, especially in the last decades, ideas which have become familiar through nineteenth-century scientific development have taken universal hold, right down to the least educated classes. It is true that there are many who still cling to a certain piety, a piety which prefers to remain in ignorance of what is penetrating mankind through modern scientific thought. But for the most part a terrible dishonesty lurks in this piety, a reluctance to face what it is that is spreading, a reluctance to acknowledge the materialism of the modern man evoked by natural science.

The spread of this materialism will not be checked in the near future, as some misguided scientists seem to think. On the contrary, it will increase with furious speed, and in the chaos of modern civilisation we shall see this materialistic mood becoming stronger and stronger. And if sufficient preparation has been made, if the aims of spiritual science are fulfilled—so that children are given a stimulus for the right kind of development—then out of this mood, out of this chaos, individual souls will emerge who will have a very strong sense of something which I should now like to describe.

When someone acquainted with the modern scientific outlook on the world pursues it with an open mind, he cannot fail to realise that one of its distinguishing features is that it is not in a position to understand man. Actually man, as such, is entirely excluded from the conception of the world based on modern natural science. We had occasion here recently to consider the scope of the various branches of scientific learning when we held our course for scientists, and we saw that none of these has anything to say about the real nature of man.

We need only give one characteristic example take the usual theory of evolution expounded under the influence of Darwin or Weismann or others. It demonstrates the evolution of the living creature from the simplest to the most perfect, and lays down the view that man also derives his origin from this line of evolution. But actually it takes into consideration only so much of man as is animal. It considers man only so far as to be able to say that any organ, any structure in man, derives from the corresponding organ or structure in the animal line. Science ignores how far the form in which the animal appears in man is modified; the extent to which the animal nature of man differs from that of the animal world. The ability to keep man himself in view has been completely lost by science; man is left out.

Science has developed certain methods. It has established a certain discipline, a discipline which is necessary if one is to enter into discussions of world-conceptions. But this science has not been able to raise man's power of understanding to the point where man himself becomes comprehensible. There is no place for man in the scientific thought of today, so that he presents an ever greater riddle to himself. Only a very few people are aware of this, and these few are probably clear about it theoretically, but as yet there is no general feeling for it. Properly conducted elementary education will bring such a feeling to life. If education up to the age of fourteen is what it should be, children on leaving school will already have the feeling: “We have a science which is born out of modern intellectuality, but the further we enter into this science, the more we learn of nature, the less we understand of ourselves, the less we understand of man.”

This intellect, the development of which has been and still is of course the dominant impulse of recent centuries, completely hollows man out, so to speak, as regards his perception of self. And yet we hear the demand that man should take his place in the world solely on the basis of what he is in himself. This stands out clearly as a fundamental social demand. Side by side with the impotence of science to account for the human being, we have claims of all kinds coming not from any scientific impulse but from the depths of human instinct—demands that man should be able to raise himself to an existence worthy of a human being, that he should be able to feel what his real nature is. While on the one hand we have more and more claims of a practical kind, on the other we have the increasing inability of science to give man any light upon his own nature. Such a lack of harmony in human experience would have been quite impossible in earlier times.

If we turn once more to the old oriental outlook, we find that man knew then that he descended from spiritual heights, that before he entered into physical existence through conception and birth he lived in a spiritual world; he knew that he brought with him from the spiritual world something that came out in childhood as disposition, as aspiration, and remained with him throughout his life on earth. To be aware theoretically that one has passed through such a spiritual life before one's life on earth has no very great value, but a lively feeling for it is worth a great deal; it is something of the greatest value to feel that what is in one as an adult has been developing in one's soul since childhood, and comes from the spiritual world.

To-day, both in the individual and more especially in social life, this feeling has actually given way to another. More and more man is weighed down, half unconsciously, by the feeling of his inherited characteristics. To a dispassionate view this is quite clear; men feel that they are what they are through their parents, their grandparents and so on. Unlike men of old, they no longer feel that the spark which kindles in them from childhood onwards comes from those depths in which are anchored spiritual experiences brought from their life before birth, On the contrary, they feel in themselves characteristics inherited from parents and grandparents. The first thing anyone asks about a child to-day is from whom he has got this or that characteristic. And the reply seldom is that the child has it as a result of experiences in the spiritual world; inquiries are conducted as to whether it comes from the grandmother or grandfather, and so on.

The more this emerges, not merely as a theory but as a feeling, a feeling of dependence on purely earthly inherited characteristics, the more oppressive and dreadful will it gradually become. And the strength of this feeling will increase very fast. In the decades ahead, it will become unbearable, for it is associated with another feeling, a certain feeling of the worthlessness of human existence. We shall see more and more that if man is unable to feel his existence as anything beyond the comprehensive expression of what has been implanted in his blood and in his other organs by his physically inherited characteristics, he will feel his existence to be worthless. To-day that is to a certain extent mere theory, although there are poets already who have expressed it as experience. But it will emerge as something directly felt, and then it will become an oppressive quality in the life of civilised humanity. This experiencing of oneself in the purely inherited characteristics will lie like a weight on the soul. It is here that the inability of natural science to give man an understanding of himself shows itself in all its poverty man no longer feels himself to be a child of the spiritual world, but merely a child of characteristics inherited in the course of earthly physical existence.

All this is very forcibly manifest in social life. You have only to think of the claims that have arisen as the outcome of a gigantic piece of political stupidity which has spread through the world in recent years! This folly has been slowly gathering strength during recent centuries; it has come to a climax in our own day. Those who are supposed to lead the several nations, those who at any rate hold positions which imply leadership, and yet understand nothing of the situation mankind is in, have brought about the great crisis of the second decade of the twentieth century by talking about the membering of mankind according to the will of its individual nations. National chauvinism in its worst sense has been aroused. And to-day national chauvinism rings through the whole civilised world.

This is merely the social counterpart of the utterly reactionary outlook on the world which would trace everything back to inherited characteristics. When we no longer strive to fathom man's nature as man, and to fashion the social structure in such a way that this human nature will thrive in it, and when, instead we try to bring it about that the social structure corresponds only with what men are as Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Poles and so on, then we are forgetting all spirituality, we are excluding all spirituality. This is because we are trying to order the world solely in accordance with characteristics inherited through the blood; because we have got to the pitch of having no content at all in our ideas; because this twentieth century has had to give us an example of a man, hailed by vast numbers as a world-leader whose utterances have absolutely no meaning—Woodrow Wilson, who only utters phrases which have completely lost their content.

We have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit, on blood relationship; consequently all that has happened is the making of peace treaties in which people who know absolutely nothing about the conditions of life in the civilised world of to-day have taken decisions as to the shape of the maps of the countries in that world. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times, its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the principle of nationalism.

I need scarcely say that to many men to-day this truth is unacceptable. And that is why so many lies have to find a camping-ground in the depths of the soul. For if one does not face honestly the fact that by establishing an order of the world based only on blood-relationship one is denying the spirit, then one is lying. To say in such circumstances that one is inclined towards any kind of spiritual conception of the world is to lie.

And now let us look at the way the evolution of the world is going to-day. All this that wells up out of the chaotic instincts of mankind belies the spirit utterly. ... We see on all sides that the conception of the human being has become lost to man. Let us now consider the spiritual-scientific counterpart of what I have so far described simply as a feeling that is surging up.

You know that spiritual science shows how our earth-planet, upon which man has to experience his present destiny, is the re-embodiment of three preceding conditions, and how we have to look forward to three subsequent embodiments, so that our earth is in a midway state. Now we know from the descriptions in my Outline of Occult Science. that what man has to-day as his physical body is in essentials an inheritance from the first, second, third and fourth conditions what he has as his ether body is a result of the second, third and fourth conditions; what we call his astral body is the result of the third and fourth conditions; and now in Our present earth-evolution comes his ego. When the earth enters into its future states there will appear spirit-self, life-spirit and the true spirit-man; today these are indicated in man only in germ. They will have to be worked out just as physical body, ether body and astral body have been elaborated, and as the ego is being fashioned at the present time.

If you reflect on it, you will know how much of this cosmic-earthly evolution can come about in you: during earth-evolution only the germs of spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man can unfold. We shall have to wait for the transformation of the earth into its three following conditions for them to appear fully. And from the descriptions I gave in the Outline of Occult Science. you will see that spirit-self is the transmutation of the astral body to a higher stage, that life-spirit is the transmutation of the ether body to a higher stage, and spirit-man the transmutation of the physical body to a higher stage. But this transmutation of the physical body will not take place until the seventh condition, and correspondingly in the case of the other members.

Today, however, man can already understand that this has to happen; he can embrace the thought that it will happen. Indeed, he can grasp still more, if without prejudice he gets beyond the limitations of natural science and directs his soul's gaze upon his own nature. He will have to say to himself: “It is true that I cannot during earth-existence attain spirit-self in my astral body, nor can I attain life-spirit in my ether body or spirit-man in my physical body, but what I have to do is to prefigure them in my soul. And by developing the consciousness-soul now, I am preparing myself to take spirit-self into it in the next, the sixth, culture-epoch. I know that I cannot yet bring spirit-self into my entire astral body, but I have to bring it into my consciousness-soul. As man, I must learn so to live inwardly as I shall one day live actually, when the earth has passed over, through a certain cosmic development, into its next condition. I must prepare myself in germ inwardly, so that in the future I shall be able to shape my outer form in the way which it is my task, even now, to understand.”

Now I want you to be quite clear as to what is involved. Man is already growing into spirit-self, as I have often explained he is growing into states of consciousness which are really of such a nature that during the period of earth-existence they cannot fully emerge. These states of consciousness tend to transform him even as regards his external sheaths, his astral body, ether body and physical body; but, as earthly man, he cannot achieve this. He has to say to himself that he must pass through the rest of earth evolution in such a way as always to be aware that he is preparing himself inwardly for conditions of being that he cannot yet develop. In future it will have to be the normal thing for a man to say: “I see the human being growing in his inner nature beyond what he can be as earthly man. As earthly man I cannot but feel myself a dwarf, compared with what man really is.” And this feeling will be the outcome of the sense of dissatisfaction that properly educated children will now very soon have. The children will feel that no amount of intellectual culture enables them to solve the riddle of man. Man is missing from what can be acquired intellectually; man is missing from the social structure.

All that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian prescription, and out of any other form of Chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be quite unworkable. All such things bring modern civilisation up against a dead-end. However many more national states are set up, they will provide only so many more seeds of destruction, and it is just out of what matures in human souls as a result of modern civilisation that the feeling I have just described from another point of view will proceed. Man will say to himself: “The being of man that lights up in me inwardly is far higher than anything I can realise externally under these conditions. I must introduce into the social structure something quite different, something of which the spiritual heights can take cognizance. I cannot entrust myself to the social science derived from natural science.”

The essential thing is for man to sense the inner discord between his dwarf-like existence on earth and the experience of himself as a cosmic being that can light up within him. Out of all that men can absorb from modern culture—that culture which today is lauded to the skies—a twofold feeling will develop. On the one hand man will be aware of himself as belonging to the earth; on the other he will say, “But man is more than an earthly being.” For the earth can by no means satisfy man; it will have to be transformed into other conditions before it can do that.

These feelings will ripen, and when they are no longer mere theory, but are experienced by those whose karma enables them to grow beyond the trivial feelings of today—when humanity comes to feel disgust at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this—only then will a reaction set in. Man will feel himself to be a cosmic being. With outstretched arms he will implore the solution of the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come about in the next decades eagerly man will ask, “Who will decipher for me my nature as a cosmic being? All that I can establish on earth, all that the earth can give me, all that I can get from natural science, accounts for me only as an earth-being and leaves my real being an unsolved riddle. I know that I am a cosmic, super-earthly being. Who will disentangle this super-earthly being for me?”

The experiencing of this question will be the dominant note in men's souls. In the next decades, even before we reach the middle of the century, this question will be more important than anything else which may happen or any other feelings men may have. And from the expectation, the feeling that there must be some solution to this riddle, that man is despite all a cosmic being; from this conviction that one day the cosmos will unveil something that cannot come from the earth, the mood will arise to which the cosmos makes reply: “Just as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so the spiritual Christ will appear to mankind. He alone can give the answer, for He is not in some indefinite place; He must be recognised as a Being from beyond the earth Who has united Himself with earthly humanity.” People will have to understand that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He Who unites Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid. This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has ever arisen in earth existence, the disharmony between man's feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing will prepare man to recognise how the Christ-Being will reveal Himself out of remote spiritual depths; He will speak to men spiritually, as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha He spoke to them in the physical body.

The Christ will not come in the spiritual sense if men are not prepared for Him. But a man can be prepared only in the way I have just stated, by sensing the incongruity I have described, by feeling the discordance weigh heavily upon him: “Of course I must regard myself as an earth-being. It is the intellectual development of recent centuries that has created the conditions which make me appear an earth being. Yet I am no earth-being. I cannot but feel myself united with a Being Who is not of this earth; a Being Who, not untruthfully as the theologians do, but verily in truth can say:—‘My kingdom is not of this world.’” For man will have to say to himself:—“My Kingdom is not of this world.” And to do it he will have to be united with a Being Who is not of this world.

It is directly out of the sciences which, as I have said, will take possession of the popular consciousness with devastating speed that something must be developed which will direct mankind towards the new manifestation of the Christ in the first half of the twentieth century.

Naturally this could not happen in the state of mind in which the civilised world was before 1914, when all talk of ideals, all talk of spirituality, was grounded in falsehood. Men will have to be driven by necessity to make their search for spirituality a true one. And the Christ will appear only to those who renounce all that spreads falsehood over earthly life. And no social question will be solved unless it is thought out in conjunction with this spiritual-scientific endeavour that enables man once again to appear in truth as a super-earthly being. The solution to our social problems will be found to the degree in which men are able to feel the Christ-Impulse in their souls. All other solutions will lead only to destruction, to chaos. For all other solutions are based on the conception of man as an earthly being. But in our own day man is outgrowing the state of mind which permits him to think of himself as a purely earthly, physical being. The new experience of the Christ will arise out of the harmony of men's souls, and out of their need.

Today I shall try to give a wider view of a subject already often touched upon. I have frequently pointed out how, for modern man, moral and intellectual conceptions diverge. On the one hand we are brought, through intellectual thinking, to recognition of the stern Necessity of Nature. In accordance with this necessity we see everything in Nature under the law of Cause and Effect. And we ask also, when man performs an action: what has caused it, what is the inner or outer cause? This recognition of the necessity for all events has in modern times acquired a more scientific character. In earlier times it had a more theological character, and has so still for many people. It takes on a scientific character when we hold the opinion that what we do is dependent on our bodily constitution and on the influences that work upon it. There are still many people who think that man acts just as inevitably as a stone falls to the ground. There you have the natural scientific colouring of the Necessity concept. The view of those more inclined to Theology might be described as follows. Everything is fore-ordained by some kind of Divine Power or Providence and man must carry out what is predestined by that Divine Power. Thus we have in the one case the Necessity of natural science, and in the other case unconditioned Divine Prescience. One cannot in either case speak of human Freedom at all.

Over against this stands the whole Moral world. Man feels of this world that he cannot so much as speak of it without postulating the freedom of the decisions of his will; for if he has no possibility of free voluntary decision, he cannot speak of a morality of human action. He does however feel responsibility, he feels moral impulses; he must therefore recognise a moral world. I have mentioned before how the impossibility of building a bridge between the two, between the world of Necessity and the world of Morals, led Kant to write two critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason in which he applies himself to investigating the nature of simple Necessity, and the Critique of Applied Reason in which he inquires into what belongs to Moral Cosmogony. Then he felt compelled to write also a Critique of Judgement which was intended as an intermediary between the two, but which ended in being no more than a compromise, and approached reality only when it turned to the world of beauty, the world of artistic creation. This goes to show how man has on the one side the world of Necessity and on the other the world of Free Moral Action, but cannot find anything to unite the two except the world of Artistic Semblance, where—let us say, in sculpture or in painting—we appear to be picturing what comes from Natural Necessity, but impart to it something which is free from Necessity, giving it thus the appearance of being free in Necessity.

The truth is, man is not able to build a bridge between the world of Necessity and the world of Freedom unless he finds the way through Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science, however, requires for its development a fulfilment of the aphorism which won respect centuries ago, the saying of the Greek Apollo: “Know thyself!” Now this admonition, by which is not intended a burrowing into one's own subjectivity but a knowledge of the whole being of man and the position he occupies in the Universe—this is a search that must find a place in our whole spiritual life.

From this point of view we may really say that the course taken by the development of the spiritual Movement directed to Anthroposophy has in the last few days taken a step forward; it has begun to show clearly to the spiritual life of humanity, how we must seek to illuminate modern methods of thought with a knowledge of Man; for it is a fact that the knowledge of Man has to a very great extent been lost in modern times. This was our aim in the course of lectures that has just been held for doctors, where an initial attempt was made to throw light in a positive way upon matters with which medical science has to concern itself. [*Published by Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, 1961, (third edition) with the title: Geisteswissenschaft und Medizin. English translation (now out of print) entitled: Spiritual Science and Medicine, can be borrowed from the Library, Rudolf Steiner House, London, N.W.I] In the series of lectures given by our friends and myself, we tried to show how a connection must be made between the individual sciences and what these can receive from Spiritual Science. It is very desirable that within our Movement there should be a strong consciousness of the need for such attempts; for if we are to succeed it is absolutely necessary to make clear to the outer world—in a sense, to compel it to understand—that here no kind of superficiality prevails in any domain, but rather an earnest striving for real knowledge. This is often hindered by the way in which things reach the public from our own circles, so that it is supposed, or may easily be maliciously pretended, that all kinds of sectarianism and dilettantism are allowed here. It is for us to convince the outer world more and more how earnest is the striving underlying all that this Movement represents. Such attempts must be carried further afield, and they must be carried further by the forces of the whole Anthroposophical Movement; for we have now made a beginning with a true knowledge of Man which must form the foundation of all true spiritual culture. It is true to say that from the middle of the fifteenth century, man's earlier concrete relation to the world has been growing more and more abstract. In olden times, through atavistic clairvoyance man knew much more of himself than he does today, for since the middle of the century intellectualism has spread over the whole of the so-called civilised world. Intellectualism is based upon a very small part in the being of Man, a very small part; and it produces accordingly no more than an abstract network of knowledge of the world.

What has knowledge of the world become in the course of the last centuries? In its relation to the Universe, it has become a mere mathematical-mechanical calculation, to which in recent times have been added the results of spectra analysis; these again are purely physical, and even in the physical domain, mechanical-mathematical. Astronomy observes the courses of the stars and calculates; but it notices only those forces which show the Universe, in so far as the Earth is enclosed in it, as a great machine, a great mechanism. It is true to say that this mechanical-mathematical method of observation has come to be regarded simply and solely as the only one that can actually lead to knowledge.

Now with what does the mentality which finds expression in this mathematical-mechanical construction of the Universe reckon? It reckons with something that is founded to some extent in the nature of Man, but only in a very small part of him. It reckons first with the abstract three dimensions of space. Astronomy reckons with the abstract three dimensions of space; it distinguishes one dimension, a second (drawing on blackboard) and a third, at right angles. It fixes attention on a star in movement, or on the position of a star, by looking at these three dimensions of space. Now man would be unable to speak of three dimensional space if he had not experienced it in his own being. Man experiences three-dimensional space. In the course of his life he experiences first the vertical dimension. As a child he crawls, and then he raises himself upright and experiences thereby the vertical dimension. It would not be possible for man to speak of the vertical dimension if he did not experience it. To think that he could find anything in the Universe other than he finds in himself would be an illusion. Man finds this vertical dimension only by experiencing it himself. By stretching out our hands and arms at right angles to the vertical we obtain the second dimension. In what we experience when breathing or speaking, in the inhaling and exhaling of the air, or in what we experience when we eat, when the food in the body moves from front to back, we experience the third dimension. Only because man experiences these three dimensions within him does he project them into external space. Man can find absolutely nothing in the Universe unless he finds it first in himself. The strange thing is that in this age of abstractions which began in the middle of the fifteenth century, Man has made these three dimensions homogeneous. That is, he has simply left out of his thought the concrete distinction between them. He has left out what makes the three dimensions different to him. If he were to give his real human experience, he would say: My perpendicular line, my operative line, my extensive or extending line. He would have to assume a difference in quality between the three spatial dimensions. Were he to do this, he would no longer be able to conceive of an astronomical cosmogony in the present abstract way. He would obtain a less purely intellectual cosmic picture. For this however he would have to experience in a more concrete way his own relationship to the three dimensions. Today he has no such experience. He does not experience for instance the assuming of the upright position, the being in the vertical; and so he is not aware that he is in a vertical position for the simple reason that he moves together with the Earth in a certain direction which adheres to the vertical. Neither does he know that he makes his breathing movements, his digestive and eating movements as well as other movements, in a direction through which the Earth also moves in a certain line. All this adherence to certain directions of movement implies an adaptation, a fitting into, the movements of the Universe. Today man takes no account whatever of this concrete understanding of the dimensions; hence he cannot define his position in the great cosmic process. He does not know how he stands in it, nor that he is as it were a part and member of it. Steps will have now to be taken whereby man can obtain a knowledge of Man, a self-knowledge, and so a knowledge of how he is placed in the Universe.

The three dimensions have really become so abstract for man that he would find it extremely difficult to train himself to feel that by living in them he is taking part in certain movements of the Earth and the planetary system. A spiritual-scientific method of thought however can be applied to our knowledge of Man. Let us therefore begin by seeking for a right understanding of the three dimensions. It is difficult to attain; but we shall more easily raise ourselves to this spatial knowledge of Man if we consider, not the three lines of space standing at right angles, but three level planes. Consider for a moment the following. We shall readily perceive that our symmetry has something to do with our thinking. If we observe, we shall discover an elementary natural gesture that we make if we wish to express decisive thinking in dumb show. When we place the finger on the nose and move through this plane here (a drawing is made), we are moving through the vertical symmetry plane which divides us into a left and a right Man. This plane passing through the nose and through the whole body, is the plane of symmetry, and is that of which one can become conscious as having to do with all the discriminating that goes on within us, all the thinking and judging that discriminates and divides. Starting from this elementary gesture, it is actually possible to become aware of how in all one's functions as Man one has to do with this plane.

Consider the function of seeing. We see with two eyes, in such a way that the lines of vision intersect. We see a point with two eyes; but we see it as one point because the lines of sight cross each other, they cut as shown in the drawing. Our human activity is from many aspects so regulated that we can only understand its regulation by reference to this plane.

We can then turn to another plane which would pass through the heart and divide man back from front. In front, man is physiognomically organised, behind he is an expression of his organic being. This physiognomical-psychic structure is divided off by a plane which stands at right angles to the first. As our right and left man are divided by a plane, so too are our front and back man. We need only stretch out our arms, our hands, directing the physiognomical part of the hand (in contrast to the merely organic part) forwards and the organic part of the hands backwards, and then imagine a plane through the principal lines which thus arise, and we obtain the plane I mean.

In like manner we can place a third plane which would mark off all that is contained in head and countenance from what is organised below into body and limbs. Thus we should obtain a third plane which again is at right angles to the other two.

One can acquire a feeling for these three planes. How the feeling for the first is obtained has already been shown; it is to be felt as the plane of discriminative Thinking. The second plane, which divides man into front and back (anterior and posterior) would be precisely that whereby man is shown to be Man, for this plane cannot be delineated in the same way in the animal. The symmetry plane can be drawn in the animal but not the vertical plane. This second (vertical) plane would be connected with everything pertaining to human Will. The third, the horizontal, would be connected with everything pertaining to human Feeling. Let us try once more to get an elementary idea of these things and we shall see that we can arrive at something by this line of thought.

Everything wherein man brings his feeling to expression, whether it be a feeling of greeting or one of thankfulness or any other form of sympathetic feeling, is in a way connected with the horizontal plane. So too we can see that in a sense the will must be brought into connection with the vertical plane mentioned. It is possible to acquire a feeling for these three planes. If a man has done this, he will be obliged to form his conception of the Universe in the sense of these three planes—just as he would, if he only regarded the three dimensions of space in an abstract way, be obliged to calculate in the mechanical-mathematical way in which Galileo or Copernicus calculated the movements and regulations in the Universe. Concrete relations will now appear to him in this Universe. He will no longer merely calculate according to the three dimensions of space; but when he has learnt to feel these three planes, he will notice that there is a difference between right and left, over and under, back and front. In mathematics it is a matter of indifference whether some object is a little further right or left, or before or behind. If we simply measure, we measure below or above, we measure right or left or we measure forward or backward. In whatever position three metres is set, it remains three metres. At most we distinguish, in order to pass from position to movement, the dimensions at right angles to one another. This we do, however, only because we cannot remain at simple measurement, for then our world would shrink to no more than a straight line. If however, we learn to describe Thinking, Feeling and Willing concretely in these three planes, and to place ourselves thus in space as psychic-spiritual beings, with our Thinking, Feeling and Willing—then just as we learn to apply to Astronomy the three dimensions of space as found in man, so do we learn to apply to Astronomy the threefold division of man as a being of soul and spirit. And it becomes possible if we have here (drawing) Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and lastly Earth, then it becomes possible, if we look at the Sun, to observe it in its outer manifestation as something separating, as a dividing element. We must think of a plane passing through the Sun, and we shall no longer regard what is above the plane and what is below as merely dimensional, but must regard the plane as a dividing plane and distinguish the planets as being above or below. Thus we shall no longer say: Mars is so many miles distant from the Sun, Venus so many miles; but we shall learn to apply the knowledge of Man to the knowledge of the Universe, and say: It is no mere question of dimensions when I say that the human head in respect of the nose is at such and such a distance from the horizontal plane which I have called the plane of Feeling, and the heart at such and such a distance; but I shall bring their position and distance above and below into connection with their formation and structure. So too I shall no longer say of Mars and Mercury that the one is at such a distance and the other at such another distance from the Sun, but I shall know that if I regard the Sun as a dividing partition, Mars being above must be of one nature and Mercury being below of another.

I shall now be able to place a similar plane perpendicularly through the Sun. Thus the movements of Jupiter, let us say, or of Mars, will be such that at one time it will stand on the right of this plane and then go across it and stand on the left. If I simply proceed abstractly, according to dimensions, I shall find it is sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left, and such and such a number of miles. But if I study cosmic space concretely, as I must [study] my own being as man, it is not a matter of indifference whether a planet is at one time on the left and at another time on the right, but I say there is the same kind of difference whether it is on the right or left as there is between a left and right organ. It is not sufficient to say that the liver is so many centimetres to the right of the symmetrical axis, the stomach so many centimetres to the left, for the two are dissimilar in formation because the one is a right organ and the other a left. Here it is so, that Jupiter, according as he is on the right or the left, to the eye appears different.

In the same way I might make a third plane, and must again form a judgement in accordance with that. And if I extend my knowledge of Man to the Universe, I shall be obliged, as I connected the one plane with human Thinking, and the second plane with human Feeling, to consider the third plane as connected with human Will.

By all this I wanted only to show how modern cosmogony has no more than a last remnant of external abstraction when it speaks of the three planes perpendicular to one another, to which the positions and movements of the stars are quite indifferently related, and then according to these positions the whole Universe calculated out as a machine. In the astronomical conception of Galileo, only this one thing is taken into consideration for the Universe—abstract space, with its point relationships. This knowledge can however be enlarged to become an active and powerful knowledge of Man. One can say: Man is a thinking, feeling and willing being. As an external being, he is connected by Thinking with one plane, with another at right angles to it by Willing, and with a third at right angles to both by Feeling. This must apply also in the external world. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, man has really known no more than that he extends in three directions; all else is just material collected for observation. A true knowledge of Man must be regained, and indirectly a knowledge of the Cosmos by the same method. Then man will understand how Necessity and Free Will are related, and how both can apply to Man, since he is born from the Cosmos. Naturally if one only takes this last remnant of the human being—the three dimensions at right angles to one another—if that is all one wants to imagine, then the Universe appears terribly poor. Poor, infinitely poor is our present astronomical view of the Universe; and it will not become richer until we press forward to a real knowledge of Man, until we really learn to look into Man.

The anthroposophical conception of the universe leads directly into a real spiritual knowledge of the matter. Do not such things as Thinking, Feeling and Willing appear to human knowledge as terribly bare abstractions? Man does not investigate himself thoroughly enough. He does not ask himself what these things are for him to which he applies the words. So much has become mere phrase. One should really ask oneself conscientiously, when using the word Thinking, whether it presents any clear idea—not to speak of Feeling and Willing. But our speech becomes clear and plain, directly we pass from the mere making of phrases, the using of lofty words, and go back to pictures; even when we take just that one picture for Thinking—putting the finger to the side of the nose! We do not need to do it always, but we know that this gesture is often naturally made when we have to think hard, just as we point the finger to the chin when we want to indicate we are paying attention! We enter this plane precisely because we wish to judge there concerning something to which we are related. We bisect our organism as it were into right and left; for we really act quite differently with our right and left sense-organs. This we can appreciate if we observe that with the left sense-organ we undertake as it were, the handling of outer objects; and in our thinking too, there is a sort of handling or feeling of external objects. With the right sense-organ we as it were ‘feel our feeling’ of them. It is then that they first become our own. We could never have attained to the ego-concept if we were not able to perceive, together with what we experience on the right, also that which we experience on the left. By simply laying the hands one over the other we have a picture of the ego-concept. It is indeed true that by beginning to use clear images instead of living merely in phraseology, man will become inwardly richer and will gain the faculty of visualising the Universe in greater detail.

Having entered on this path, we shall find that the Universe comes to life again for us, and that we ourselves as human beings share in its life. Then we shall learn again how to build a bridge between Universe and Man. When this is done man will be able to perceive whether there is in the Universe an impulse of Natural Necessity for all that is in Man, or whether the Universe in some measure leaves us free; whether it wholly determines us, or leaves us in a certain sense free. As long as we live in abstractions, we cannot build a bridge between Moral and Natural Law. We must be able to ask ourselves how far Natural Law extends in the Universe, and where something enters in which we cannot include under the aspect of Natural Law. Then we arrive at a relation which has its significance for Man too, a relation between what comes under Natural Law and what is Free and Moral. In this way we learn to connect a meaning with the statement: “Mars is a planet far from the Sun, Venus a planet nearer the Sun.” By simply stating their distances in abstract numbers we have said nothing or at least very little, for to define in this way according to the methods of modern Astronomy, is equivalent to saying: I look at the line which passes through man's two arms and hands, and I speak of an organ that is 2.5 decimetres from this line.—Now this organ may be so and so far under the line, and another organ so and so far above it; it is not, however, the distance that makes the difference, but the fact that one organ is above and the other below. Were there no difference between above and below, there would be no difference between the nose or eyes and the stomach! The eyes are only eyes because they are above, and the stomach is only a stomach because it is below, this line. The inner nature of the organ is conditioned by the position.

Similarly the inner nature of Mars is qualified by its position outside the Sun's orbit, and that of Venus by its position within the Sun's orbit. If one does not understand the essential difference between an organ in the human head and an organ in the human trunk—the one lying over and the other under this line—then one cannot know that Mars and. Venus, or Mars and Mercury are essentially different. The ability to think of the Universe as an organism depends on our learning to understand the hieroglyph of the organism we have before us. We must learn to perceive Man as a hieroglyph of the Universe, for he gives us the opportunity of seeing near at hand how different are above and below, left and right, before and behind. We must learn this first in Man, and we shall then find it in the Universe.

Because the modern view of the Universe held by Natural Science really gives a cosmogony omitting Man—recognising him only as the highest of the animals, that is to say an abstraction—because Man is not in it at all, therefore to this conception the Universe appears as a mathematical picture only, in which the universal origin of Freedom and Morality can never be recognised. It is, however, of the utmost importance that we should learn to perceive scientifically the connection between Moral Law and Natural Necessity. Today I have endeavoured to show you, in perhaps rather subtle concepts, how a knowledge of the Universe is to be gained from a Knowledge of Man.

To the doctors I was able to show in a strictly scientific way how this path has to be sought in Medicine, Physiology and Biology. In these lectures it will be our task to perceive how it must be sought if we are to form aright our general understanding of the world; and the social life in which we find ourselves in these times has great need of such understanding.

The quest for an experience of the Christ Forces lives in countless human souls today. Christianity can speak to every human heart and to every level of understanding from childlike devotion to loftiest regions of philosophical life. It was so in history and is still true today.

In hundreds of lectures Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) has spoken from ever new aspects of this central theme of human life and evolution. The eight lectures published here in a new translation (the last two for the first time) were given during the Christmas season 1918/19 to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. Some of the illustrative material was drawn from events of that time at the close of World War I.

As always, Rudolf Steiner spoke freely without using notes. Most of his audience had studied—or were at least familiar with—his written works and the published lecture cycles on the Gospels and related themes. A similar background will be needed for reading How Can Mankind Find the Christ Again? Such a background will prepare the reader for challenges and vistas not encountered elsewhere. Steiner's message of the new Christ Light midst the shadow existence of our age speaks to the modern soul in search of a cognitive reach.

Readers who have wrestled with Christ themes on that level and are willing to study this text, consciously kept difficult and low-key, will find here themes spanning the past, present and future of mankind. No other thinker of any age has opened up for modern man such a wealth and depth of insight. As a herald of the new Christ revelation, Rudolf Steiner is practically unknown; so pervasive are the shadows of our age. They obscure even the light of recognition.

For students of Rudolf Steiner's work it should be noted that the last lecture in this series, published here in English for the first time, is unique and frequently noted. Livingness in thinking rather than an amassing and combining of information—this actual shaping of thoughts in an organic way (Ideegestaltung)—has been an ever present challenge. This livingness with its formative character is a manifestation of forces newly available to human beings. It has been evident in all of Rudolf Steiner's contributions: in his architectural and sculptural forms and in his unique style of developing thoughts in speaking and writing.

Our activity of thinking, that least observed element of the human soul, today perpetuates habits of past periods in history. Our heritage from Greek, Hebrew, and Roman cultures and the analytic rationalism of Arabism and the Enlightenment—for all their wonder and intellectual achievement—has led to a worldwide cultural impasse. Without a radical change, a transformation in the very way people form their thoughts, without a permeation by that new life embodied in the Christ-Idea—all hope for a renewal of human civilization ends. For readers endowed with a feeling for reality, the urgency of Rudolf Steiner's message will ring true.

George O'Neil
Spring Valley, N.Y., 1984

Privately printed for the members of the College of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum. No one is considered competent to pass judgment upon these writings who has not acquired the prerequisite knowledge demanded by this school, either through the school itself or in a manner approved by it. Opinions expressed by other persons will be disregarded; the authors of the writings in question will engage in no discussion regarding them.

This lecture was given at Basel in December of 1918, and is included in Volume 187 of the Bibliographic Survey, 1961. It is lecture 1 of 8 from the lecture series: How Can Humanity Find the Christ Again? It was published in German as, Wie Kann die Menschheit den Christus Wiederfinden? Das Dreifache Schnattendasein Unserer Zeit und das Neue Christus-licht. It has been translated from notes unrevised by the lecturer, by Olin D. Wannamaker.

Like two mighty pillars of the spirit have the two annual festivals, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, been set by the Christian cosmic feeling within the course of the year, which should be a symbol of the course of man's life. We may say that in the conception of Christmas and the conception of Easter there stand before the human soul those two spiritual pillars upon which are inscribed the two great mysteries of man's physical existence which he must look upon very differently from the way in which he views other events in the course of his physical life. It is true that a super-sensible element is projected into this physical life—through sense observation, through intellectual judgments, through the content of feeling and will. But this super-sensible element is in other cases clearly manifest as such—for instance, when the Christian cosmic feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of Pentecost. In the Christmas conception, however, and that of Easter, attention is drawn to those two events occurring within the course of the physical life which are in their external appearance purely physical but which—in contrast with all other physical events—do not immediately manifest themselves as physical events. We can look upon the physical life of man as we look upon nature; we can thus look upon the external side of the physical life, the external manifestation of the spiritual. But we can never view with our physical vision the two boundary experiences of the course of human life—not even the external aspect, the external manifestation—without being brought face to face, even through our physical vision, with the tremendous riddle, the element of mystery, in these two events. They are the events of birth and death. And in the life of Christ Jesus stand these two events of man's physical life—and likewise in the Christmas and Easter conceptions, reminding us of them—confronting the responsive Christian heart.

In the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter, the soul of man wills to look upon the two great mysteries. And, as it thus looks, it finds in this contemplation strength filled with light for man's thought, content filled with power for the will, an upright lift of the whole man, from whatever situation he needs this upright lift. As they thus confront us, these two pillars of the spirit—the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter—they possess an eternal worth.

But, in the course of man's evolution, his capacities of conception have approached in manifold ways the great Christmas thought and the great Easter thought. During the earliest times of the evolution of Christianity, when the Event of Golgotha had penetrated with shattering effect into human emotions, men gradually found their way to the view of the Redeemer dying on Golgotha, as they came during the earliest Christian centuries to feel in the Crucified One hanging on the cross the thought of Redemption, and gradually formed for themselves the great and powerful imagination of the Christ dying on the cross. But in the later times, especially since the modern age began, Christian feeling—adapting itself to the materialism rising in human evolution—has turned to the picture of the childlike element entering the world in the newborn Jesus.

We can certainly say that a sensitive feeling will find in the way in which the Christian sentiment of Europe has turned during recent centuries to the Christmas manger something of a materialistic Christianity. The craving—this is not said in a bad sense—to caress the infant Jesus has become trivial in the course of the centuries. And many a song about the infant Jesus felt in our day to be beautiful—or charming, as many express it—will not seem to us to possess a deep enough seriousness in the presence of these more serious times.

But the Easter thought and the Christmas thought, my dear friends, are two eternal pillars, eternal memorial pillars, of the human heart. And we can truly say that our age of new spiritual revelations will cast a new light upon the Christmas thought; that the Christmas thought will gradually come to be felt in a new form and in a glorious way. It will be our task to hear in the present world events the call to a renovation of many an old conception, a call to a new revelation of the spirit. It will be our task to understand how a new conception of Christmas, for the strengthening and uplifting of the human soul, is working its way up through the present course of world events.

The birth and death of the human being, no matter how we may analyze them, how intensely we may look at them, manifest themselves as events which play their role directly upon the physical plane, and in which the spiritual is so dominant that no one who earnestly reflects upon things could deny that these two events, these earthly events of human life, give evidence as they work upon the human being that man is the citizen of a spiritual world. No vision of the natural world can ever succeed—in the midst of what can be perceived by the senses, understood by the intellect—in finding in birth and death anything other than events in which the intervention of the spirit is manifested directly in the physical. Only these two events manifest themselves thus to the human heart.

As to the Christmas event also, the event of birth, the human and Christian heart must have an ever deepening sense of mystery. We can say that men have seldom risen to the level whence they could, in the true sense, direct their look to the mysterious nature of birth. Very seldom, indeed, but then in concepts that speak to the utmost depths of the human heart.

So it is, my dear friends, in the conception associated with the spiritual life of Switzerland of the fifteenth century, with Nicholas von der Flue. It is related of him—and he himself related this—that, before his birth, before he could breathe the outer air, he had beheld his own human form, that which he would wear after his birth should have occurred and his life should have begun its course. And he had beheld before his birth the ceremony of his own christening, the persons who were present at the christening and who shared in his earliest experiences. With the exception of one elderly person who was then present and whom he did not know, he recognized the others because he had already seen them before he beheld the light of the world.

However we may view this narration, we shall not be able to escape the impression that it points in a way to the mystery of human birth, which confronts world history so magnificently symbolized in the Christmas conception. In the story of Nicholas von der Flue we shall find the suggestion that there is connected with our entrance into the physical life something which is concealed from the every-day view of humanity only by a very thin partition wall; by a wall which can be broken through when such a karmic situation exists as was present in the case of Nicholas von der Flue. Such a startling allusion to the mystery of birth and of Christmas still meets us here and there; but we must say that humanity has as yet become very little aware of the fact that birth and death, the two boundary pillars of human life facing us in the midst of the physical world, reveal themselves even in their physical manifestation as spiritual events, such as could never occur within the mere course of nature; as events in which, on the contrary, spiritual divine Powers intervene, as is evident in the very fact that both these boundary experiences of the course of human life must still remain mysteries, even in their physical manifestation.

The new revelation of the Christ now leads us to contemplate the course of man's life—so we may safely say—as Christ wills that we should contemplate it in the twentieth century. Let us recall today, as we desire to enter deeply into the thought of Christmas, a saying reported to have been uttered by Christ Jesus which can rightly lead us to the Christmas conception. The saying runs thus: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little children”—this is truly not an exhortation to strip away all the mystery character of the Christmas conception, and to drag it down to the triviality of “dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and artistic songs have done—but the folk songs less than the artistic—in the course of the materialistic evolution of Christianity. This very saying—“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven”—impels us to look upward to mighty impulses surging through the stream of human evolution. And in our own present time, when all that is taking place in the world surely does not give occasion for lapsing into trivial conceptions of Christmas, when the human heart is filled with so much that is painful, when this human heart must reflect upon so many millions of human beings who have met their death in the last few years, must reflect upon countless multitudes who hunger for food,—in this time surely nothing is fitting for us save to behold the mighty thoughts within world history which impel humanity in its onward course, thoughts to which we can be guided by the saying, “Except ye shall become as little children,” which we can supplement by this other saying: “Unless you live your life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

My dear friends, the very moment when the human being enters into the world as a child he withdraws from the world of spirit. For what occurs in the physical world, the procreation and growth of his physical body, is only the ensheathing of that event which cannot be described otherwise than by saying that man in his deepest being withdraws from the spiritual world. Man is born out of the spirit into a body. When the Rosicrucian said: “Ex deo nascimur,” he meant the human being to the extent that he enters the physical world. For that which constitutes the sheaths around the human being, which renders him a physical totality here on the earthly globe, is what is indicated by the saying: Ex deo nascimur. If we look at the centre of the human being, at the inner midmost entity, we must say that man journeys out of the spirit into the physical world. Through that which occurs in the physical world, that upon which he has looked down from the land of the spirit before his conception or his birth, he is enveloped in his physical body, in order that he may experience in his physical body things which cannot be experienced except in such a body. But, in his centre-most being, man comes out of the spiritual world. And he is of such a nature that in his earliest years—to the eyes of those who will to see things as they are in the world, who are not blinded by the illusion of materialism—he is of such a nature, this human being, that he reveals even in his earliest years how he has come out of the spirit. What we experience in connection with the child is of such a character, for those who possess insight, as to reveal to one's feeling the after effects of experiences in the spiritual world.

It is to this mystery that such narrations as that associated with the name of Nicholas von der Flue are intended to allude. A trivial view, strongly influenced by a materialistic mode of thinking, declares in its simplicity that the human being gradually develops his ego in the course of his life from birth to death; that this ego becomes more and more powerful and mighty, more and more distinctly manifest. This is a naive way of thinking, my dear friends. For, if we look upon the true ego of man, upon that which comes into a physical sheathing at the birth of the human being out of the spiritual world, we then express ourselves very differently about man's whole physical evolution. That is, we then know that, as the human being progressively develops in the physical body, the true ego actually vanishes out of the physical form, that it becomes less and less manifest; and that what develops here in the physical world between birth and death is only a mirrored reflection of spiritual occurrences, a dead reflection of a higher life. The right form of expression would be to declare that the entire fullness of the being of man gradually disappears into the body, becoming continually less and less manifest. As the human being lives his physical life here upon the earth, he gradually loses himself in his body, to find himself again in the spirit after death. So does one who knows the facts express himself. But one who is ignorant of the facts declares that the child is incomplete, and that the ego little by little develops to an ever greater perfection, growing out of the undefined subconscious levels of man's existence. He who knows what is beheld by the spiritual seeker must express himself in just this realm otherwise than is done by the sense-consciousness of our age, enmeshed in external illusions, still always materialistic in the trend of its sentiments.

Thus man enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily nature, while he is a child, is still undefined; it has as yet laid small claim to the spiritual nature, which enters the physical existence as if there falling asleep—but appearing to us so little filled with content only because we can perceive this spiritual being, in ordinary physical life, just as little as we can perceive the sleeping ego and astral body when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to acquire by means of his physical body—that he entombs himself more and more in the physical body for the purpose of achieving by means of this burial in the body capacities which can be acquired only in this way, only through the fact that the spirit and soul being for a time loses itself in the physical existence. In order that we may always remember our spiritual origin, that we may grow strong in the thought that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical world—it is for this reason that the Christmas conception stands there like a mighty pillar of light amid the Christian cosmic feeling. This thought, as a Christmas thought, must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of humanity. Then will the Christmas conception become powerful again for humanity; then will mankind once more approach the Christmas festival in such a way as to draw forces for the physical life out of the Christmas conception, which can remind us in the right way of our spiritual origin. Seldom can this Christmas thought be so powerful at the present time as it will then be in human hearts. For it is a strange fact, but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what comes to light in the world—bearing mankind forward, helpful to mankind—does not at once appear in its ultimate form: that it first appears, as it were, tumultuously, as if prematurely brought forth by unlawful spirits in world evolution. We understand the historic evolution of humanity in its true meaning only when we know that truths are not to be understood only as they first appear oftentimes in world history, but that we must consider in relation to truths the right moment for their entrance into human evolution in their true light.

Among many kinds of thoughts which have entered into the evolution of modern humanity—certainly inspired by the Christ impulse, but at first in a premature form—is the conception of the equality of mankind before God and the world, the equality of all men, a thought profoundly Christian but capable of an ever increasing profundity. But we should not place this thought before men's hearts in such a generalization as that given to it by the French Revolution, when it first appeared tumultuously in human evolution. We must be aware of the fact that this life of man from birth to death is involved in a process of evolution, and that the primary impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Let us reflect about the human being as he enters into the sensible existence: he enters life filled with the impulse of the equality of the human nature in all men. We sense the child nature with the greatest intensity when we see a child permeated through his whole being by the conception of the equality of all men. Nothing which creates inequality among men, nothing that so organizes men that they feel themselves different from other men—nothing of all this enters at first into the child's nature. All this is imparted to the human being in the course of the physical life. Inequality is created by the physical existence; out of the spirit human beings come forth equal before the world and God and before other human beings. Thus does the mystery of the child declare.

And to this mystery of the child the Christmas conception is united, which is to find its deeper meaning in the new Christian revelation. For this new Christian revelation will take into account the new Trinity: the human being, as he directly represents humanity; the Ahrimanic; and the Luciferic. And, as it comes to be known how the human being is placed in the world in a relationship of balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, it will be understood also what this human being really is in the external physical existence.

Most of all must understanding come about, Christian understanding, in reference to a certain aspect of human life. Clearly will Christian thought proclaim in future what has already been affirmed by certain spirits since the middle of the nineteenth century, though in stammering accents and never quite distinctly. When we grasp the fact that the thought of equality enters the world in the child, but that forces of inequality later develop in man, as if from the fact of his having been born, forces that do not seem to belong to this earth, then just in regard to the conception of equality another profound mystery faces us. To see into this mystery, and through seeing into it to gain a true conception of man, will belong from the present time onward among the weighty and essential needs in the future evolution of the life of the soul. This is the depressing problem that faces man: Truly, human beings grow to be unlike, even though they are not so in childhood, by reason of something that is born within them, that is in the blood: their varied gifts and capacities.

The question of gifts and capacities, which cause so many inequalities among men, faces us in connection with the thought of Christmas. And the Christmas festival of the future will always admonish men most earnestly, reminding them of the origin of that which differentiates them so widely over the earth, the origin of their gifts, capacities, talents, even the gift of genius. They will have to inquire about the origin of these. And a true balance within the physical existence will be attained only when the human being can point rightly to the origin of the capacities which differentiate him from other men. The light of Christmas, or the Christmas candles, must give to evolving humanity an explanation of these capacities; it must answer the profound question: Do individual human beings suffer injustice between birth and death under the ordering of the universe? What is the truth about faculties and gifts?

Now, my dear friends, many things will be seen in a different light when humanity shall have been permeated by the new Christian feeling. Most particularly will it be understood why the Old Testament occult conception possessed a special insight into the nature of the prophetic gift. What were the prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were personalities who had been sanctified by Jahve; they were those personalities who were permitted to employ in the right way special spiritual gifts reaching far above those of ordinary man. Jahve had first to sanctify their capacities, which are born in men as if by reason of their blood. And we know that Jahve works on human beings between their falling asleep and awakening We know that Jahve does not work within the conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said within his heart: That which differentiates men as regards their capacities and gifts, which rises to the level of genius in the nature of the prophet, is born, indeed, with the person, but it is not used by him for a good purpose unless he can sink down in sleep into that realm in which Jahve guides his soul impulses, and transforms from the spiritual world gifts which are otherwise only physical, inherent in the body.

We point here to a profound mystery of the Old Testament conception. The Old Testament view, including that in regard to the nature of the prophet, must disappear. New conceptions must, for the redemption of humanity, enter into the cosmic historic evolution. That which the ancient Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve in the unconscious state of sleep the human being must become capable of sanctifying in the modern age while he is awake, in a state of clear consciousness. But he can do this only if he knows, on the one hand, that all natural gifts, capacities, talents, even genius, are Luciferic endowments, and work in the world Luciferically. unless they are sanctified and permeated by all that can enter into the world as the impulse of the Christ. We touch upon a tremendously important mystery of the evolution of modern humanity when we grasp the central kernel of the Christmas conception, and call attention to the fact that the Christ must be so understood and so felt by men in their hearts that they stand as New Testament human beings before the Christ and say: “In addition to the inclination of the child, his aspiration, toward equality, I have been endowed with various capacities and talents. But they can lead permanently to good results, to the welfare of humanity, only provided these gifts, these talents, are dedicated to the service of Christ Jesus; only if the human being strives to permeate his whole nature with the Christ, in order that human gifts, talents, genius may be freed from the grasp of Lucifer.”

The heart permeated by the Christ takes away from Lucifer what works otherwise Luciferically in man's physical existence. This thought must powerfully influence the future evolution of the human soul. This is the New Christmas thought, the new annunciation of the influence of the Christ in our souls, bringing about the transformation of the Luciferic—which does not enter into us because we journey out of the spirit, but is to be found in us because we are clothed in a blood-permeated physical body which bestows upon us capacities derived from the line of heredity. Within the Luciferic stream, within that which works in the stream of heredity, do these characteristics appear, but they are to be conquered and mastered during the physical life by that which the human being can feel in connection with the Christ impulse, not through Jahve inspiration in sleep, but through the fruition of man's experiences in full consciousness.

“Direct yourself, O Christian, to the Christmas thought”—thus does the new Christianity speak—“and lay there upon the altar set up for Christmas every differentiation you have received as a human being from your blood, and sanctify your capacities, sanctify your gifts, sanctify even your genius as you behold it illuminated by the light which comes from the Christmas tree.”

The new annunciation of the spirit must speak a new language, and we must not be dumb and unheeding toward the new revelation of the spirit which speaks to us in this deeply serious age in which we live. When we are sensitive to such thoughts, we are living with the power with which man ought to live in this time in order to discharge the great duties which are to be assigned to humanity in this very age. The full gravity of the Christmas thought must be experienced: that in our day there must enter into the waking consciousness of humanity what the Christ willed to say to men when he uttered the words: “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” The thought of equality which the child manifests, if we look upon him in the right way, is not convicted of falsehood by reason of these words, for that Child whose birth we commemorate on Christmas eve, proclaims to human beings in the course of their evolution through the history of the world—revealing ever new thoughts—clearly and distinctly, that the differentiating gifts we possess must be placed within the light of the Christ who ensouled this Child; that all which these differentiating gifts bring about within us human beings must be placed upon the altar of this Child.

You may now ask under the inspiration of the Christmas thought: “How may I experience the Christ impulse within my own soul?” Alas, this thought is often a heavy burden in men's hearts.

Now, my dear friends, that which we may call the Christ impulse does not become rooted in our souls in a moment, forthwith and tempestuously. And in different ages it takes root differently in man. In our day man must take into himself in full clear waking consciousness such cosmic thoughts as have been stammeringly imparted by spiritual knowledge as guided by Anthroposophy, to which we belong. As these thoughts are proclaimed to him—provided he truly understands them—they can awaken within him the assurance that the new revelation, the new Christ impulse of our age, truly enters into him on the wings of these thoughts. And such a person will sense the new impulse if only he pays heed to it.

Make the endeavour, in the sense we intend, in living reality as is appropriate to our age, to take into yourselves the spiritual thoughts of the guidance of the world; seek to take them into yourselves, not as mere teaching, not merely as theory—-seek so to imbibe them that they will move your souls to their very depths, warming, illuminating, permeating them—that you shall bear them livingly within you. Seek to feel these thoughts so intensely that they shall become to you something which seems to pass through your body into your soul and to change your very body. Seek to strip away from these thoughts all abstractions, anything theoretical. Endeavour to discover for yourself that these thoughts are such as constitute a true nourishment of the soul. Seek to discover for yourself that, with these thoughts, not merely thoughts alone enter your souls, but spiritual life coming from the spiritual world.

Enter into the most intimate inner union with these thoughts, and you will observe three things. You will observe that these thoughts gradually eliminate something from within you, which appears so clearly in human hearts in our age of the consciousness soul: that these thoughts, however they may be expressed, eliminate self-seeking from the human soul. When you begin to notice that these thoughts kill egoism, destroy the force of self-seeking, you have then, my dear friends, sensed the Christ-permeated character of spiritual thought guided by Anthroposophy.

In the second place, when you observe that, in the moment when untruthfulness approaches you anywhere in the world, no matter whether you yourself are tempted to be too careless about truth or whether untruthfulness approaches you from another direction—if you observe that in the moment when untruthfulness enters the sphere of your life, an impulse makes itself felt by you, warning you, pointing to the truth, an impulse which will not permit untruth to enter your life, always admonishing you and impelling you to hold fast to truth, then do you sense, in contrast with the life of the present day, so strongly inclined toward mere appearance, the living impulse of the Christ. No one will find it easy to lie in the presence of spiritual thoughts guided by Anthroposophy, or to lack all feeling for mere appearance and untruth. A sign pointing your way to the sense of truth—apart from all other knowledge—you will feel in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ. When, my dear friends, you shall have reached the point where you do not strive for a mere theoretical understanding of spiritual science, as this is sought in relation to any other science, but when you have reached the stage where the thoughts so penetrate you that you say to yourself: “When these thoughts become intimately united with my soul, it is as if a Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, pointing me toward truth,”—then will you have found the Christ impulse in the second form.

In the third place, when you feel that something streams from these thoughts which works even into your body, but especially into the soul, overcoming sickness, making the human being well and vital, when you sense the rejuvenating, refreshing power of these thoughts, the adversary of illness, then will you have sensed the third part of the Christ impulse in these thoughts. For this is the goal toward which humanity strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit—to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome self-seeking: to overcome self-seeking through love, the mere appearance of life through truth, the force of illness through health-giving thoughts which bring us into immediate unison with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow from the harmonies of the universe.

Not all that has been indicated can at present be attained, for man bears within him an ancient heritage. It is a mere lack of understanding when such a back-stairs politician as Christian Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing power of the spirit. Yet, even though our ancient heritage renders it impossible for thought to become sufficiently potent at present to achieve what the human being craves thus to achieve—perhaps, from a self-seeking motive—nevertheless thought possesses healing power. In such things human thinking is always perverted. Some one who understands these things may say to you that certain thoughts give health, and the person who hears this may at a certain time be affected by this or that illness. Indeed, my dear friends, the fact that we cannot at present be relieved of all illnesses by the mere power of thought is due to an ancient heritage. But are you able to say what illnesses would have overtaken you if you had not possessed the thoughts? Could you say that your life would have been passed in its present degree of health if you had not possessed these thoughts? In the case of a person who has applied himself to spiritual science guided by Anthroposophy and who dies at the age of 45 years, can you prove that, without these thoughts, he would not have died at 42 or 40 years of age? Human beings tend always to think from the wrong direction when they deal with these thoughts. They direct their attention to what cannot be bestowed upon them, by reason of their karma, but do not pay attention to what is bestowed upon them by reason of their karma. But if, in spite of everything contradictory in the external physical world, you direct your look with the power of inner confidence which you have gained through intimate familiarity with the thoughts of spiritual science, you then come to feel the healing power, a healing power which penetrates even into the physical body, refreshing, rejuvenating—the third element, which the Christ as the Healer brings with his never ceasing revelations into the human soul.

We have desired to enter more deeply, my dear friends, into the thought of Christmas, which is so closely bound up with the mystery of human birth. What is revealed to us today out of the spirit as the continuing extension of the Christmas thought we desired to bring in brief outline before our minds. We can feel that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel that it places us amid the impulses of cosmic evolution, no matter what may befall, so that we can feel ourselves in unison with these divine impulses in the evolution of the world; that we can understand them, and can draw power for our will from this understanding, and light for our life of thought. Man is evolving; it would be wrong to deny this evolution. The only right course is to go forward with this evolution.

Moreover, Christ has declared: “I am with you always even to the end of the world.” This is not a phrase; it is truth. Christ has revealed Himself not only in the Gospels; Christ is with us; Christ reveals Himself continually. We must have ears to harken to what He is ever newly revealing in the modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in these new revelations; but strength shall be ours if we have such faith.

Strength will come to us if we have faith in the new revelations, even should they speak to us from life's seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. With our own souls we pass through repeated earth lives during which our destiny comes to fulfilment. Even this thought, which empowers us to sense the spiritual behind the external physical life, we can realize only when we take into ourselves in the truly Christian sense the revelations following one upon another. The Christian—the true Christian—when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should begin to work with the strengthening thoughts which can come to him today from the new cosmic revelation, to give power to his will, illumination to his life of thought. And his feeling should be such that the power and the light of this thought may enable him in the course of the Christian year to draw close to that other thought which admonishes of the mystery of death—the Easter thought, which brings the final experience of the earthly life of man before our souls as a spiritual experience. For we shall sense the Christ more and more if we are able to place our own existence in the right relation with His existence. The medieval Rosicrucian, uniting his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex deo nascimur; in Christo morimur; per spiritum sanctum reviviscinius. Out of the Divine have we been born as we contemplate ourselves as human beings here on the earthly globe. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be again awakened. This actually pertains to our life, our human life. If we turn our look away from our life to the life of Christ, then what is represented in our life is a mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine are we born; in Christ we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall again be awakened. This saying, which is true of our first-born Brother, the Christ living in our midst, we can so affirm that we shall feel it to be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and mirrored in our human nature: Out of the Spirit was He begotten—as this is represented in the Gospel of Luke in the symbol of the descending dove—out of the Spirit was He begotten; in the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.

Truths which are eternal we can take into ourselves in the right way only when we see them in their contemporary reflection—not made into something absolute, made abstract in a single form. And if we feel ourselves as human beings, not only in an abstract sense but human beings existing actually at a certain time when it is our duty to act and to think in harmony with this time, then shall we seek to understand the Christ, who is with us always even to the end of the world, in His contemporary language as He teaches us and gives us light regarding the Christmas thought, filling us with the power of the Christmas thought. We shall desire to take this Christ into ourselves in His new language. For the Christ must become intimately related to us. Then shall we be enabled to fulfil in ourselves the true mission of Christ on the earthly globe and beyond death. The human being in each epoch must take the Christ into himself in his own way. This has been the feeling of human beings when they have looked in the right way at the two great pillars of the spirit: at the Christmas thought and the Easter thought. Thus did the profound German mystic, the Silesian, Angelus Silesius, contemplating the Christmas thought, declare:

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

And, contemplating the Easter thought, he said:

The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.

Truly the Christ must live within us, since we are not human beings in an absolute sense, but human beings of a definite epoch. The Christ must be born within us according to the sound of His words in our epoch. We must seek to bring the Christ to birth within us, for our strengthening, for our illumination, as He has remained with us until now, as He will remain with mankind throughout all ages even to the end of earthly time, as He wills now to be born in our souls. That is, if we seek to experience the birth of Christ within us in our epoch, as this event becomes a light and a power in our souls—the eternal power and eternal life entering into time—we then behold in the true way the historic birth of Christ in Bethlehem and its counterpart in our own souls.

Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.

As He creates the impulse in our hearts today to look upon His birth—His birth in human events, His birth in our own souls—so do we deepen the Christmas thought within us. And then we look away to that night of consecration which we ought to feel coming to pass within us for the strengthening and illumination of human beings for the endurance of many evils and sorrows which they have had to live through and will yet have to live through.

“My Kingdom,” said Christ, “is not of this world.” It is a saying which challenges us, if we look upon His birth in the right way, to find within ourselves the path to the Kingdom where He abides to give us strength, where He abides to give us light amid our darkness and helplessness through the impulses coming from the world of which He himself spoke, of which His appearance on Christmas will always be a manifestation. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” But He has brought that Kingdom into this world, so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and hope out of this Kingdom in all the circumstances of life, if we only will come to Him, taking His words to heart—such words as these:

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

During these lectures I have often seized the occasion to point out to you that particularly in connection with the most important problems of life, modern men may learn something from the trenchant, penetrating, almost flood-like events of the present time, though this learning from events is a method practised by few people to-day. As a rule, they think that they can learn something from the events if they simply pass judgment on them, and then these judgments are locked upon as experiences. This can be very satisfactory for some people, but it does not suffice, indeed it is quite unsuited, for what we so sorely need at present, and that is an understanding of social life. The essential thing in such matters is to learn from the events themselves; we must allow the events themselves to develop our judgment, instead of pronouncing judgment over the events. Many explanations which I have given you can show you the true methods of spiritual science; and how spiritual science applies these methods to external physical events—for instance, to the events in social life. Here I think that particularly a significant event of modern times connected with social life may teach us something. I have already drawn attention to it, but let me open to-day's lecture by developing thoughts relating to it.

Were we to discuss the social question with a member of the working class now constituting the majority of the population which counts most in the concerns of modern life, and which has, on the other hand, obtained the inner impulse for its views chiefly through Marxism—were we to speak with him on the social question, we would always find that in regard to social work and social thinking he would not attribute much importance to so-called good will, or to ethical principles. Again and again, you would come across the following attitude: Suppose you were to tell him that according to your views the foundation for a solution of the social problem lies therein that all the people who have certain leading positions, particularly those who belong to the class of the so-called employers, should begin to develop a feeling of social responsibility and feel that it is absolutely necessary to create for everyone an existence in keeping with human dignity.

To a man of the working class you speak, for instance, of raising the moral level of the middle classes. When you voice this view to the working man, he will at first smile, and then he will tell you that it is very naive of you to believe that the social question can now be solved through feeling, or an activity engendered through feeling. A member of the greater mass of the working population will tell you: Everything that flows out of the feeling of the leading class of employers does not count at all. This class of employers may think what it likes in regard to ethical or moral feelings… but since the world is now divided into employers and employees, the employers must necessarily be the exploiters. A working man does not even listen to proposals that the feeling of social responsibility should be raised, for he argues: This is quite useless, for everything depends upon the following: The working class must become conscious of the prevailing conditions, so that the working class itself may bring about a change in the social conditions, a change which ends, or at least alleviates the general misery. The essential point is not that of increasing the sense of moral responsibility, but that the oppressed, miserable working class should bring about, in the present struggle, a new non-capitalistic economic order, a change in the prevailing conditions, a new economic order.

This means, in other words, that no trust should be put in the power of thought; we should not believe that a right comprehension, a right understanding of life can bring about a change in social conditions. One might well imagine the following taking place in one of the many “Councils” which are now being formed in central European countries. A comic paper recently published the picture of a man with a long body and with tiny little legs, stating that he was the only man in Germany who did not “govern”, for everybody else already belonged to some “Council”; but the man with the short legs had always remained behind, so that he was the only one in Germany ,who did not belong to a council and who did not govern! People felt that there was a great deal of truth in this picture. If we were to speak at one of these councils of what must now be considered as right, through an insight into the development of humanity and the needs of humanity, the listeners who belonged to the working classes would answer: “What are you talking about ? You belong to the middle class! Because you are a member of this middle class, your thoughts are a priori influenced by the modern economic order. If social conditions are to be improved, it is far better to incapacitate you in one way or the other, so that you have nothing more to say in the matter; this is better than listening to any proposals you can make for a useful development of social conditions!

Things have already gone too far. Because of this, it is necessary to see things clearly. Of course, the majority of people does not wish to see things clearly to-day; least of all those who come together in councils, for they do not in any way desire to judge things clearly.

Every proletarian, every member of the great mass of the working population, should be taught to see the following, and he will do so, if we approach him at the right moment (this is the essential point!): As a proletarian, he denies the possibility of any social improvement in human development through the means of thought. We may ask him how he arrived at the view that an improvement of social life can only be brought about only through A change in the conditions of social life. There is only one answer to this question; which the facts themselves reveal. You see, the whole tremendous impetus of the modern proletarian movement in social life is based upon the idea of Karl Marx and his followers, and it is a very vigorous idea, to be sure. The idea that thought is worthless is a marxistic theory. Consequently this idea has produced the present socialistic way of feeling. But this socialistic feeling, which refuses to have anything to do with the impulse of thought, is nevertheless: based upon the impulse of thought.

In a lecture which I once delivered to proletarians I explained: Those who investigate world-history and the true forces which are active in the development of humanity, will find that with only one exception, a truly scientific impulse has never become a world-historical impulse. Investigate things everywhere and try to discover the real impulses, and you find that these impulses were never of a scientific kind; with one exception, the renewal of the proletarian movement through Marxism. Lassalle felt this truth, when he delivered his great incisive speech on science and the working class. For the only political, social movement having a scientific foundation, is the modern working class movement. It is encumbered with all the errors and the hopelessness of modern science, just because it sprang out of modern science. But it proceeds entirely from thought.

Imagine this colossal contradiction which has found its place in modern life! During the past sixty or seventy years, the idea that thought is worthless has exercised the greatest influence of all: The course of development during the past sixty or seventy years shows this. It is a significant lesson, because it shows that the influence of thought is something quite different from the content of thought. An idea, the idea of Karl Marx, exercised a particularly strong influence. But if we examine this idea in regard to its content, we find that the content as such is quite unimportant; of importance are only the economic conditions. If we have the capacity to immerse ourselves in this contradiction, in this living contradiction of thought, we find something tremendous in it: If we can penetrate into this contradiction, we discover in it a truth of tremendous import for an understanding of the present time.

What must now be grasped at all costs is the fact that the content of theories, the content of programmes„ is really of no importance whatever, for the influence of thought is based upon something quite different: Upon the relationship of the corresponding thought to the state of mind of those who absorb this idea, etc. You see, if Karl Marx had not voiced his idea from 1848 onwards up to the seventies; had he not given expression to the ideas contained in the Communist Manifesto and developed in his system of political economy and in his great work Capital, just at that time, had he spoken of these things in 1800, or in 1796, his ideas would have exercised no influence whatever, nobody would have shown any interest in them.

Here you,have a key for a most important fact. Imagine that Karl Marx's works had appeared, for instance, fifty years sooner—they would have been waste paper! But from 1848 onwards, when general conditions of the proletarians had reached a definite stage, his works did not become waste paper, but an international impulse, and now they continue to live in Russian Bolshevism and in the whole central European chaos, which has already begun and which will increase more and more, they continue to live in the chaos which will spread over the whole world.

With this I wish to draw your attention to the fact that far more essential than the content of a truth is the circumstance whether it is uttered fifty years sooner or later. The content of an idea is only significant for a definite time and it is no mere fad on my part when I say, for instance, in regard to Anthroposophical spiritual science, now is the time to speak of it, now it must enter the hearts of men, for now is the right moment in which human beings should absorb it. But something else should be borne in mind: Marxism was kindled of its own accord; but spiritual science is something which must be taken up by people in freedom.

If we bear in mind that human understanding is really something which is subject to evolution, it will be easier to understand many things which are,we can really say, not only possible, but also necessary to understand, and which people really do not wish to understand. In a certain connection, we discover tremendous things if we encounter the thoughts which now exist in the so-called spiritual life, which is, however, no real spiritual life! Those who can understand such things, will come across plenty of evidence.

We may open, for instance, a certain number of a periodical published here in Switzerland, in which the, author, who frequently writes for this paper, discusses a topical problem. In the article in question he speaks of what he understands by “the people”. He speaks of various personalities and of their responsibility or guilt in regard to the outbreak of war; he discusses the fact—and in many ways he is right—that certain leading men of central Europe must be blamed for it. (I have often explained that here it is not possible to speak of guilt) Then he finds it necessary to explain what he really means by—“the people”. This is how he defines “the people”; They constitute nine tenths of civilised countries, such as Germany? Austria, England, France, etc. and he says that the people are the sum total of the uncultured unfree persons, who are in the widest sense dependent on leaders, and who therefore need leadership.

Consequently we may say that this writer defines “the people” as being the uncultured, unfree, dependent persons, who, in the widest sense, need a leader. But if we were to examine conscientiously the majority of those who belong to the middle classes, or even to the higher classes, they would also answer more or less the same, if they were asked for their opinion as to the meaning of the expression “the people”: The uncultured, unfree, dependent mass, needing guidance, and constituting nine tenths of the whole of humanity.

If we now take the opposite view, we would have to say that only one tenth of humanity is cultured, free and independent, and that it doe's not require a leader! Those who think that they can express an opinion as to the true significance of “the people”, generally think that they belong to this one tenth.

In the face of such a view, which is preeminently important for the development of a social judgment, it is above all necessary to face the question, as to whether it is justified, in the widest sense of the word, to accept the idea that nine tenths of the population consist of uncultured, unfree, dependent men who need a leader! This is the question which each one of us must face, if we wish to form an independent social judgment. Of course, if views are to be exchanged on such questions, it is necessary to build up that intensity of thinking which spiritual science can offer. F For everything else which intensifies thought to-day, does not suffice; this can be seen in the thoughtlessness which now rules the masses.

There is a saying which I have come across again and again during the last months—I do not know if one can call it a coincidence, for in reality no such thing exists. I have found this saying quoted by one or other, whenever social conditions were discussed in public. It is the following: The stupidest calves choose their own butchers. People find it natural to quote this saying and everyone finds an obvious meaning in it. I do not find any meaning whatever in it, for I think that not the stupidest, but the cleverest calves would choose their own butcher, for in that case they would choose one who would kill them as, painlessly as possible, whereas those who do not choose their butcher would fare worst of all. The very opposite is true: Only the cleverest calves choose their own butcher.

Important judgments which require changing, are accepted just as thoughtlessly as this saying. Or when a human being surveys life, he would gladly forego the activity of thought, he has no wish to apply power of thought!

What we need to-day is a keener thought-activity, so that we may reach concepts which correspond to reality. An “advanced” modern thinker—“advanced”, in the meaning of modern academic wisdom, modern illumined thought, modern democratic consciousness may find the idea tempting that nine tenths of the whole of humanity constitute the uncultured, unfree dependent people who need a leader. Nevertheless this idea is quite worthless for the following reason:—

Let us proceed from a historical fact which can teach us a great deal in this connection. Christianity arose, as you know, in an unknown province of the Roman Empire, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Within the Roman Empire of that time, which had already absorbed the Greek civilisation, there lived a population which really possessed a wisdom of deep significance. The Church had to make a tremendous effort in order to eliminate every trace of the ancient Gnosis. (I have already spoken of this) Gnostic wisdom existed at that time. A highest wisdom existed in those days. When Christianity first arose this highest wisdom existed within the Roman Empire. This can in no way be denied. Yet it was impossible for this highest wisdom to absorb the historically powerful impulse of Christianity. The strong impulse of Christianity (I have spoken of this recently) was absorbed by the barbarians of the North, who did not possess the wisdom of the southern populations. When the barbarians of the North encountered the strong wave of Christianity, then Christianity began to exercise the influence which it had to unfold for the remainder of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and for the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. New conditions have only arisen at the present time.

We should bear in mind the fact that the strongest impulse in history could not be absorbed by the most highly developed and abstract spirituality of a certain epoch; this impulse could instead be absorbed by men who were apparently retarded in their development and whose being was connected with the more instinctive part of human nature.

The view which has just been mentioned in regard to nine tenths of humanity, constituting the uncultured, unfree mass in need of guidance, is not worth much more than the fact that as far as spirituality is concerned, these nine tenths of humanity differ from the people who believe to be the leaders. For these so-called leading men have a degenerated intellect, a degenerated understanding. The nine tenths of humanity constituting the so-called uncultured, dependent people in need of guidance, still possess, as it were, a latent kind of intelligence, which is far more able to absorb the strong historical impulse which must now be received. This impulse is far more powerful than the one to be found among the so-called “intelligentsia”, among the people with a decadent intelligence. What now separates the bearer of spiritual impulses from the masses which are able to receive these impulses, are not the masses themselves, not the souls of these great masses of humanity, but the leaders, the men who have the guidance. These leading men, even the leaders of socialistic proletarians, are completely permeated with the decadent intellect of the “bourgeoisie”.

What is needed above everything else is a clear admission of the fact that the true impulses of spiritual development are accessible to the so-called uncultured, unfree, dependent people in need of guidance; these impulses can reach them, if we gain an insight into the characteristic form of intelligence of these people, and of the way in which it works.

No class of humanity has ever been so fantastic as the bourgeoisie which mocks at fantasy. Practical life to-day is truly fantastic! The practical things in life are “practical” only because they have been given the legal possibility to assert themselves, to enforce themselves, whereas people who do not have the chance to push themselves forward, cannot assert themselves, no matter how skilful and practical they may be.

To-day we should really learn to feel that in the great masses which are not led, but misled by their leaders, there is something which asserts itself as a remnant from that time which is designated—but erroneously—as the migration of the people. At that time, certain barbarian tribes came to the fore, as it were, and they absorbed the very impulses which the more highly developed nations were no longer able to receive.

During the present time we also have a migration of people; this migration, which is forcing its way to the surface, does not start from any definite place, but it comes from the whole sub-stratum, the proletarian sub-stratum of humanity. This is the essential point.

It is necessary to, face this migration of people, to meet it. Let us take the following hypothesis. Suppose that everything which is described in history books as the migration of people had really taken place—all these migrations of the Goths, the Huns, and later on, of the Mongolians, the migrations of the Vandals, the Suevi, etc. Imagine that these tribes had not encountered the stream of Christianity, when they migrated from the East to the South-West. Imagine that this stream of Christianity had not come; think what a difference this would have made in the world! The whole subsequent epoch can only be thought of, if we bear in mind the fact that these barbarian tribes came over from the East to the South West, and that they encountered the stream of Christianity.

Today the proletarian element rises out of the depths. And this proletarian element must be met with a spiritual element which comes from above! You might say that a Spiritual-scientific influence should be exercised upon social conditions, upon the conception of the world. Those who do not wish to believe that a new spiritual revelation comes towards this migration of people, which now follows a vertical, and not a horizontal direction, those who remain by the old spiritual revelation suited to the horizontal direction, in short, those who prefer to remain by the Roman way of propagating Christianity and do not wish to become acquainted with the new revelation of Christ Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, those people lose a great deal; they lose as much as might have been lost in the Middle Ages if the barbarian stream, which rolled from the East to the South West had not encountered the spreading current of Christianity.

Also at that time, the cultured men of Greece and of Rome stood between the current of Christianity and the barbarian stream.

To-day all the people who cling to old ideas, under the guidance of the so-called intelligentsia, particularly under the guidance of modern science, which has proved so unfruitful in the social field, to-day all these people stand between,the spiritual stream which should flow down to the proletarian stream and this current which flows upwards.

In such matters, we should chiefly strive to become unprejudiced in regard to ideas enabling us to develop a social judgment. But if we do not understand the social organism, we cannot develop a social judgment.

Do you know what results when a modern professor of national economy, who is a guide to others, or when a real political leader speaks of social or of economic questions, etc.—do you know what results in such cases in regard to the social organism?—The social homunculus! This is a fact which we should really try to grasp; we must bear in mind that all those who wish to understand the social organism, without grasping the truth of the threefold structure, give rise, within the social organism; to the homunculus, to nothing but the homunculus! Goethe also believed that the ordinary understanding, based upon the senses and the intellect, could not reach the “homo”, but only the “homunculus”!

You see, in regard to the social organism, the great majority of men is to-day absolutely unable to think; the leading motifs for real thought are lacking.

I have already explained to you that in the social sphere people set out from the strange and grotesque idea that a single state or national territory is a complete organism. Indeed, they even aim at setting up national organisms, complete in themselves! But this is nonsense! I have already told you that if anything on earth which is connected with social life is to be compared with an organism, then it is only possible to look upon the whole earth as an organism; and a single state, or national territory, can only be a part of this organism of the earth. If we wish to apply this idea of an organism, it can only be applied to a complete whole.

Those who wish to establish political economy upon the foundation of one single nation, resemble someone who seeks to establish the anatomy of the whole human being by studying only the hand, or a leg, or the stomach. This should be borne in mind, for it is far more important than people generally believe.

The threefold structure which I have explained to you, does not give any abstract resume and none of the recapitulations to which people are accustomed to—day, but it places itself livingly within the economic structure, within the social structure.

Those who only study the anatomy of the stomach, cannot understand the anatomy of the head or of the throat. But those who study the anatomy of the whole human being, are also able to form a right idea of the stomach, of the head, or of the throat.

Those who know the inner life—conditions of the social organism (and this knowledge can only proceed from the above-mentioned threefold structure) are indeed able to identify themselves with the real conditions, and they are able to have an insight into them, whether they have to judge the social conditions in Russia, England, Germany, or in any other country.

To-day we come across the strange and distressing circumstance that people speak of the different nations as if they were separate countries, and they believe that social reforms, etc. can be brought about in single, separate regions. This constitutes one of the fundamental errors of our time and it may lead to the greatest mischief in practical life.

It can only cause harm to believe that it is possible to do something within a certain limited territory, without taking into consideration that from a social standpoint the earth is an organism which is complete in itself, ever since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is absolutely necessary to reckon with reality, otherwise we cannot progress in any way.

You will see from this that the essential thing is to acquire an unprejudiced attitude, for such an unprejudiced attitude alone enables us to develop judgments out of the things themselves. For we can only judge things rightly, if we have no prejudices.

When social conditions are discussed in the way in which we discuss them here; you will hear over and over again that it is hardly conceivable not to separate economic values from human labour. That this is possible, can't be grasped least of all by the learned political economists of to-day.

If these men were willing to learn something from history, they would say to themselves: Plato and Aristotle were as yet unable to think that slaves are not connected with economic values. Plato and Aristotle still considered the existence of a fairly large slave population as an economic necessity. But to-day no sensible person looks upon the existence of a slave population as an economic necessity, in the meaning of ancient Greece and Rome. Yet people still consider that human labour should be a merchandise, that it should be treated as goods.

You see, when we strive after the gradual realisation of the above-mentioned threefold structure (it can only be realised little by little; we do not aim at sudden reforms or revolutions, but merely indicate a new direction; single measures in keeping with this new direction can be introduced, indeed, everything which calls for reform to-day can be in all details in such a way as to follow these guiding lines, this new direction; this can be done if one does not stupidly adhere to programmes, but to real life and if one moves, in the direction of real facts. This is the essential point)—we divide into three the parts which have merged together during the last phase of human development, thus producing a diseased social organism—indeed, the last catastrophe (the first world war) has clearly revealed this diseased condition. A sound course of development, in keeping with reality, can be reached if we strive to separate into three parts that which has melted together into a whole.

This will lead of its own accord to the separation of human labour from economic values. Even as the slave has ceased to be merchandise, so human labour will cease to be merchandise. But this will not be brought about by laws forbidding that “human labour should be merchandise”, but by keeping asunder the spiritual; the economic and the state concerns. This alone will separate goods representing an economic value, or merchandise as such, from that which has now become crystallised within the merchandise, the human labour employed in it.

In this connection it is really terrible to come across the mistaken and confused thoughts of people who have something to say, or wish to have a say, in the reorganisation, in the necessary reorganisation of social conditions. Let me give you an example:

You have the great mass of the so-called Marxists; these men have a clear idea of the fact that human labour is stored in goods which we purchase, in any merchandise which we purchase; human labour has produced this merchandise. In paying for the goods, I must also pay for the human labour contained in it. This is of course the case under modern conditions, but it is essential to separate human labour from the true goods, to separate it not only in thoughts, but in the real process. But this entails that we should really develop clear thoughts in regard to these matters.

Now it is easy to argue that manufactured goods do not contain human labour as an economic value. A non-Marxist, for instance, would say: It is not right to state that in political economy human labour and manufactured goods have been fused. Non-Marxists, who consider things from another angle, say that in the capitalistic economic structure manufactured goods exist in order to save labour. In fact, there are some goods with a certain purchasing power, which can save labour. Let us suppose, for instance, that you are a painter and that you have painted a picture which is worth £500.00 and that under present conditions you can actually sell this picture for £500.00. This sum enables you to employ so and so many people to work for you. Because you possess an object of value in this picture, you can make so and so many people work for you. Suppose that you do not sell the picture, and that you would have to do the work which others would have done for you, if you had sold your picture for £500! In that case, you would hare to make your own shoes, your own clothes, and even weave the material for your clothes, etc. But first of all, you would have to get the raw material ,for your work, and so forth, for the economic process is an extremely complicated one.

Nevertheless, some economists think that it is not at all a question of labour being stored in goods, but a question of being able to save labour through goods which can be sold. According to these economists, the economic value of a merchandise is therefore based upon the fact of how much labour can be saved through it, and not upon the quantity of labour which was needed to produce it.

We therefore have two sides to-day; one declares that the economic value consists in the amount of labour which has been put into the goods. Take the case of the picture; there, the work put into it can really not be compared with the work which has been saved through the fact that the picture was sold in accordance with the value which it possesses in the economic structure, in the circulation of goods. Under given circumstances, a gifted painter may produce a picture ready for sale in about a month's time—is it not so? His “labour” is, in that case, what he “crystallizes” into the picture in one month's time. This is, however, far less important than the work which he thus saves for himself. He becomes a capitalist through the fact that he saves labour; a capitalistic economic structure arises through the very fact that he can now employ so and so many people to work for him, by saving work through the sale of his picture.

Here you have two opposed definitions. One definition is that the economic value of a merchandise or of goods consists in the labour employed for the production of these goods. The other definition is that the economic value of goods consists in the labour saved through having these goods. These two definitions are diametrically opposed; they are opposed in regard to their real significance. For it would be an entirely different matter if the goods were really valued according to the labour employed for their production, or according to the labour saved through having them.

But in the process of economic circulation goods are valued neither in the one nor in the other way. Let me elaborate my example: Bear in mind the following: Suppose that the picture of which I have spoken, valued at £500 in accordance with prevailing ideas, still hangs in the painter's studio. He sells it, and it now hangs in the drawing room of Herr Mendelssohn, who is not a painter. There it hangs, and only a few people see it. Now, if you wish to define the economic value of the picture, you will say that it consists in the amount of labour, employed to paint it. Yet this definition does not hold good, either in regard to the painter—let us say, Lenbach—or in regard to the buyer, Herr Mendelssohn. As far as they are concerned, the economic value of the picture is not based upon this fact. For Lenbach, or any other modern painter, the immediate value of the picture of course consists in the work which he saves through it; yet this is not true, as far as Herr Mendelssohn is concerned, for he does not save any work through it. The definition of labour saved may therefore be applied, from an economic aspect, to the painter who has produced the picture; you may apply this definition to him, if you think in a one-sided manner. But from the aspect of the person who buys the picture and hangs it up in his drawing room, the above definition no longer holds good; the political-economic definition of the picture's value cannot be applied, if we bear in mind real facts.

You see, what is so important to bear in mind is the fact that to-day people are so easily inclined to define things; when they think to have discovered something in the existing conditions, they immediately look out for a definition. Under such circumstances it is not at surprising that one side should have one view and one side another. It is natural that someone who draws the economic definition of a picture from Lenbach's studio, has quite a different opinion from someone who draws the economic definition of the picture from the drawing room of Herr Mendelssohn. This of course gives rise to disputes.

This is the character of every dispute which now exists in social spheres; differences arise because people do not go back to the original impulses. This calls for sense of reality, which can only be acquired through a spiritual-scientific training.

To-day you may come across hundreds of definitions in the political-economic sphere, but they will only make your heart ache, because they are so very unreal. These definitions fall far short of the reality, though it is possible to “prove” them over and over again, for they always fit into a certain sphere. If you only consider the aspect of the spiritual worker, you may say that the economic value of something consists in the amount of labour saved. But if you only bear in mind the aspect of the proletarian workman, you may say that the economic value of something consists in the labour employed for its production.

I have now given you another example from the field of political economy? In this field, we have—in regard to the theory of money—the so-called nominalists and the metallists. On the subject of money, they have the most terrible disputes, for the latter look upon money as goods, and attribute to it the value which it has as gold or silver; the former only consider money as a symbol for an existing value. The nominalists, on the one hand, and the metallists, on the other, wage a war to the knife on this subject of money; they try to define it and they quarrel over it.

But these people have no idea whatever of reality. As far as money is concerned, nominalism is right at a time when the production of goods is very weak; nominalism is justified when there is a crisis. But metellism is right, when there is superfluity. From the aspect of reality, both are right—at one time this, and at the other time that direction. You see, if we take ideas in the one-sided manner in which people generally take them, we can never apply them to a totality in a healthy way. When we regard a totality, a whole, it is essential to collect all the facts; we should not apply one-sided definitions, and we should develop a feeling which shows us where we can take hold of the facts, throwing light upon reality.

Now the following question might be raised: Where does the economic value arise? It does not arise where human labour accumulates, or becomes crystallised in the goods; it does not arise where labour can be saved through goods; the economic value does not arise in any of these fields. The economic value is a condition of tension.

If here, at this point, you have an electric conductor (a drawing is made), discharging electricity, and if the electric current is intercepted here at this point, we have a tension between the two, between the discharging apparatus and the apparatus which collects the discharge. There is no discharge if the tension is too weak, for a discharge can only take place if the tension is strong enough.

Similarly, the economic value must be sought within a kind of tension, and we can describe this economic value by saying: On the one hand, we have the goods, the wares; then we must consider their different qualities and also the place where they can be consumed. We therefore have, on the one hand, the goods. On the other hand, we have the human requirements, and this is the same as the artificial or natural interest which people have in the goods. We have therefore, on the other hand, the goods in a certain place at a certain time. This tension, and nothing else, gives rise to the true economic value.

The true economic value does not contain the idea of human labour. Within the social organism, labour should be associated with the circulation of goods in quite a different way. The peculiar tension, which resembles the tension existing between an electric accumulator and an electric receiver, is that which produces the true economic value. This tension arises through the existence of definitely qualified goods at a definite place and time and the demand for these goods. This alone determines the real economic value.

Lenbach's efforts in producing a picture within a certain time, through his gift as a painter, and the labour which he could save for himself, through this picture as an object of value, can only determine the picture's value as Lenbach's private property. This applies to every other kind of labour in regard to goods. All this does not determine the economic value.

The economic value at any given moment is determined, on the one hand, by the demand, or the requirement, and on the other hand, by the definite, qualified goods which exist at a given time. This constitutes the true economic value of a merchandise, and this value can always be applied.

But this leads us away from the mere political-economic organism, and leads us instead into the social three partition. For, on the one hand, we have the goods, the wares, leading us into the economic sphere, which can, however, never come into being through the mere circulation of goods, but which depends upon the soil and ground, upon other foundations of Nature This foundation of Nature must exist. It cannot be saddled on to the state. It must exist, on the one side.

On the other side, we have the demand, the requirement. This leads us into the spiritual sphere; it leads us into the spiritual world of man, for consider how different are the demands of uncivilised barbarians and of civilised men!

Here we have two entirely different elements which penetrate into the political-economic life. The essential point which must be borne in mind, the chief thing which we must consider, is that there are other elements which penetrate into the political-economic life.

The social organism thus resembles the human organism which consists, on the one hand, of the chest and of the head into the head penetrates the spiritual world. On the other hand, it consists of that part of the body which takes in nourishment, and the physical world penetrates into this part. But also the social organism is threefold, for on the one hand, we find that it is influenced by all that which gives rise to demands, to requirements, which must never be produced by the economic process itself; and on the other hand, it is influenced by that which Nature produces. This leads us to a threefold structure, for in the middle lies that which unites these two spheres.

In order to perceive the immense fruitfulness, the social fruitfulness of the above thought, it suffices to consider the following fact:—According to the explanations given above, an isolated process, an economic process, should never give rise to demands, but demands should instead come from outside, through some other cultural process, through an ethical process, or something similar.

During unsound times, demands arise through purely economic processes, and people who cannot think soundly rejoice over this. During the time which led to our present social catastrophe, during the time in which the social cancerous growth, the present social cancer, gradually began to develop, people tried in every way to produce demands for goods through processes which did not come from the social structure itself, but which entered it from outside, which came from some other cultural task of humanity, from social processes which were called into being artificially. You could, for instance, read over and over again the following advertisement: “Cook good soups with Maggi!”—Well, the demand for “Maggi” would certainly not have arisen, had it not been advertised!

Advertising has come out of the purely economic sphere. It does not give rise to real demands. To produce demands in such a way as to arouse an artificial interest in certain goods, is unsound and a source of illness to the social organism. It is just the same as if a physician were to induce a boy to learn more diligently by giving him a stimulating powder, so that his stomach makes him more diligent, instead of his being stimulated to study by moral forces.

This social bungling, these social tricks, which arise by saddling everything on to a so-called “monon”, on to a social homunculus, have led to the catastrophes of the present time. For the social organism itself, should never produce, on the one hand, demands, and on the other goods. The goods must be supplied to the social organism by the foundation of Nature. And the course of human development itself, must supply to the social organism the demands for goods.

A social problem should never become, for instance, a problem of population, for this would imply a misunderstanding of the connections which exist between the human being and political economy. This would mean that in our time we do not know the difference between a pig and a human being, as I explained to you yesterday, at the end of my lecture, and it would lead to our making a social problem out of the problem of population.

Political-economic reasons should never determine whether an increase in the population is desirable, or whether it is to kept upon a certain level; other reasons, of an ethical, spiritual kind, should be called in for this. When considering such a problem, we should particularly bear in mind that if a considerable increase in population is obtained through artificial means, we force the souls who would only have incarnated after four or five centuries, to come down prematurely, and consequently, in a deteriorated condition. Under certain conditions, an increase in the population implies a coercion for souls who are thus forced to incarnate in a physical body under unfavourable conditions. This would give rise to moral corruption.

The problem of increase, stability, or decrease in the population, should never be a political-economic problem, but a moral-ethical one in short, a problem connected with a spiritual conception of the world with a spiritual conception of life.

All these things can only follow a sound course of development if they are grasped in a spiritual-scientific manner. You will therefore recognise the necessity of giving a spiritual-scientific foundation to all the thoughts which are connected with social problems. If you really wish to study the horrible things which are now said and written in connection with the social problem you would see that the unfruitfulness contained in all these calls for the application of that sharp, clear way of thinking which these questions entail.

Even as the blind follower's of Plato and of Aristotle had to come to the point of saying: “Man, as a slave, cannot be considered as goods”, so the followers of modern humanity must learn to say: “In no case can human labour be considered as goods”, for other impulses, not the value of products, should induce men to serve and to work for their fellows.

The economic value of goods produced by labour should never be fixed in accordance with the labour accumulated within the goods, nor by the labour saved through the goods, but only in accordance with the justified tension which exists between the goods and human demands. Neither the labour accumulated in the goods, nor the labour saved through them, constitutes the decisive factor, for our labour does not place us within an economic process, we do not work in order to save labour, but we produce goods in order that there may be a certain tension between the goods produced and the corresponding demand .

The corresponding demand may determine that goods which entailed a great amount of work must, under certain conditions, be sold cheaply—and, within a sound economic process, the demand may determine that a product involving little work obtains a higher price. Consequently the work involved can never be the decisive factor.

This is evident from the explanations given above. Those who have an insight into such things, consequently recognise the radical necessity of not seeking the impulses which give rise to human labour in the economic value of goods, but on quite a different direction, which is determined by the above-mentioned state of tension.

Only those who have an insight into such things can arrive at a decision in connection with the two important social problems which face us at the present time: compulsory labour, which is the aim of the Bolshevists, and the right to work, or any other name which we may give to it. Those who do not penetrate to the depths indicated to-day, will always talk in a confused way, no matter whether they speak officially, of compulsory labour, or the right to work, or whether they simply follow certain aims. Only those who penetrate to the depths of reality have a right to speak of such questions. Indeed, it is a serious matter to-day to acquire the right to have a say in such things.

In my next lecture I shall continue to speak on this subject.

We can really say that at the present time a deep tragedy lies over humanity. Many of the lectures which I have recently delivered to you, will have shown you this, for they dealt, to a great extent, with the development of the social problem, of the social riddle of our time. Particularly in regard to this social riddle we may say that a certain deep tragedy now lies over humanity. For we can see that the social problem, which many people—particularly the so-called intellectuals—consider more or less as a theoretical question, is now taking on a truly significant and a very practical form, throughout vast territories of the civilised world.

The tragic aspect of this matter is that wherever the social problem now rises to the surface in practical life, we find that men of every profession and of every social class, are very badly prepared to face the social situation of the present. People of every standing, who are now confronting this situation, which does not only oblige them, as in the past, to speak about the social problem, but also to form a judgment concerning this or that question connected with the social development, (it is easy to see that this is entailed by the conditions of the present do not find any starting point which might enable them to form a judgment. They do not find the possibility to develop the right way of thinking which might enable them to form the judgments which the present time so urgently requires. Do we not see that the leading men of the bourgeoisie adopt for daily use—and even for the weekly and yearly use of their thinking!—certain forms of thought coming (though this is not always clearly evident) from the modern natural-scientific way of thinking. People who think at all to-day, think in natural-scientific terms, even though they do not have any ideas concerning natural-scientific subjects; they think in the way in which it is right to think in natural science; they think in the direction developed through modern natural science.

But this kind of thinking does not make us progress one stop in social matters! As a rule, people do not want to admit this. They prefer to ascribe, the present chaos to all kinds of different causes. They are not yet willing to face the fact that they should really admit to themselves: We are confronting a social chaos, as far as the great majority of the civilised world is concerned; we must learn to judge things, yet through our present habit of thinking we cannot obtain any essential fact enabling us to form true judgments.

If we really wish to bear in mind the whole weighty tragedy of the above-mentioned fact, we must consider the following: The events which are now rising to the surface have slowly prepared themselves ever since the 16th and 17th century; since that time, the leaders of humanity have not really done anything to develop true judgments in regard to that which is really needed. The economic orders which existed up to the 16th and 17th century have been dispersed; now they exist no longer. We might say that up to the middle of the 19th century, they were replaced by a kind of economic chaos, or rather, an economic anarchy. Ever since the middle of the 19th century, humanity has been striving to form social corporations able to break the existing economic anarchy. But it strove after this with insufficient means.

Let us now consider this situation; lot us observe it at least more closely.

If we look back to the time which preceded the 17th and 17th century, we find that people were then gathered together into more or less stable associations, in accordance with their profession or trade. To-day we do not know much about the inner structure of these associations, but they were organised and structured in such a way as to offer a certain satisfaction to the people of that time. In these professional associations, which existed in the form of corporations, guilds, etc., the individual human beings were able to take a full human interest in the organisation of their particular sphere of work. One might say, that every man had a full share in the interests of his corporation; all his own aspirations were connected with it. If he was an apprentice and belonged to such a corporation, he could hope to become a journeyman and finally a master. He could cherish the hope of climbing up the social ladder. Under certain conditions, these organisations were more or less useful in the development of humanity.

Then the new age dawned. Through our spiritual-scientific studies, the true inner character of this modern age is known to us. In a conscious way, man seeks to place himself at the very summit of his own personality. He seeks to unfold the consciousness-soul. This is the inner impulse of the forces which are now struggling to come to the fore and which are now developing, though various conditions mask this. The old organisations, which had arisen from entirely different aspirations, were no longer suited for the development of the personal, individual element, after which humanity was now striving. We therefore see that from the 16th and 17th century onward, a certain individualism begins to develop also in the sphere of economic life and that the old associations, the old communities, are demolished.

During the time of transition, we discern certain transitional phenomena in this process of demolishment: during the 16th and 17th century, we discern a transitional form of development which we might call a monopolisation of various branches of production. Particularly under the influence of the economic individualism, we can discern the development of a kind of anti-monopoly movement, and this really lasts until the middle of the 19th century. Then it passes over to the modern capitalistic production.

In a certain way modern production reckons with individualism. The old communities were dispersed, and the economic initiative was now taken over by individual human beings, by the capitalists. They became the contractors and employers, and from their daring and initiative it depended whether the economic life prospered or not.

By the side of this, we have the development of modern technical life, which entirely transformed the whole economic life. It was this transformation which really gave rise to the modern proletarian class. As a result, we have on the one hand the development of capitalism, and on the other hand the development of the proletariat. Through a hand to mouth existence, and finally through the lack of interest and understanding on the part of the leaders of economic life, a complete misunderstanding arose between the leading capitalists and their followers, and the working proletarian population.

You see, the great majority of men who are now bungling with the social problem in this or in that way, really overlook the great differences which now exist throughout the world in regard to the social life of humanity. We should bear in mind that in recent times, the western states and North America have completely turned towards a direction which might be called a bourgeois democracy.

This bourgeois democracy reckons with certain ideals of liberty and of equality, and applies those ideals to economic life. But to a certain extent, this bourgeois democracy has remained behind, for it applies the principles, or rather the programmes of the bourgeoisie, in the form in which they arose before the time of modern engineering. In the western countries we therefore see the development of this bourgeois democracy, and we see it calling into existence its own corporations and a certain social structure; yet it gradually becomes permeated by an element which results from the modern engineering age, it becomes permeated by the proletarian element. These western countries, however, do not reckon seriously with the proletarian population.

In Central Europe, the development of the modern age has shown the trend of things in a fearfully clear way. What has been the fundamental character of the central European states? Their essential character consisted in a state-structure based upon very old, traditional forms. In Central Europe, and even in Russia the ideas which influenced the mentality which was connected with the state, had been handed down from very ancient times. These ideas had been preserved—no matter whether they were monarchical or non-monarchical, for this is not so important—but they had been preserved in such a way that the old corporations developed into the so-called modern states. These modern states of central Europe, stretching as far as Russia, are in reality remnants of medieval thoughts and feelings. Their structure is in keeping with medieval elements. But life does not adapt itself to obsolete ideas. In the countries where such obsolete structures arose, something else appeared as well, out of a necessity which was far stronger than that which had been transplanted from the Middle Ages: the economic structure, the economic body arose. And this economic body has laws of own, it demands its own laws.

The thoroughly pathological process now arose that modern economic life and its requirements turned to the old government structures; people thought that economic life could be permeated with these old state-structures. Economic life, which was, or rather is, a completely new element, was to be incorporated with the body of the state, although this had grown out of entirely different conditions.

Than came the modern catastrophe, the terrible catastrophe of the past years. This catastrophe clearly showed (what I am telling you now, helps us to understand its course) that it is impossible to unite modern economic life with an obsolete state structure, with the ideas connected with such a state. That this catastrophe has become a crisis during the last months, is evident through the fact that the central European structures have been swept away. They do not exist any more, and also the economic body has disappeared. Any man of insight can perceive that in the future course of events it would be impossible to couple together the new economic demands with the old state corporations, because these old corporations were swept away, instead of becoming modernised in accordance with the requirements of modern life.

Here, we face a very strange outlook. This movement which must spread over the whole of humanity, has, for the time being, been arrested in the western countries. But it can only be arrested so long as the old bourgeois-democratic impulses, which do not take into account modern economic life, are still strong enough to suppress the proletarian life. But when this proletarian life can no longer be suppressed in the western countries, the short-sighted people there, will realise that they have been gambling with life! Yet they do not wish to listen to this, before it is too late!

In the central European and in the eastern countries of Europe the spark has already fallen into the powder barrel. It is an anachronism to speak—out of pure laziness—of ideas which no longer exist, of concepts which have disappeared completely. Yet in certain circles, people still speak of Russia, of Germany, and even of Austria which has ceased to exist externally, they still speak of these countries, and do not realise that they should turn instead to new ideas. Some people still talk in this way, whereas in these countries it is clearly evident that impulses which have been handed down from the past must be abandoned. Even in thought, they should be given up. People, however, find it difficult to understand that they should not merely judge the things that lie under their very nose, for those judgments will never be conclusive; they should learn instead to develop now thoughts, new ideas. Yet modern people find it so difficult to understand this!

This unwillingness on the part of modern men to understand how necessary it is to-day to acquire new ideas, new concepts, is chiefly based upon the fact that these modern men have a firm belief in the ideas which have been developed during the past centuries, they are firmly convinced of a manner of thinking which is wonderfully suited to natural-scientific spheres of work, but which is absolutely unsuited to social problems, it cannot be applied to the solution of social problems! Yet people do not want to grasp this. They are not willing to see that they have developed a definite kind of thinking, and that the life which has now come to the fore in the external world calls for a kind of thinking which entirely differs from the existing kind. Yet people find it so difficult to understand this, although the facts themselves speak a tremendously clear language.

Let me indicate one fact, which is eminently instructive, if we consider it in the right way. Men who took a more unprejudiced interest in modern life, experienced, one might say, a kind of theoretical surprise in the early nineties of the past century, when the German social democrats, who were the most advanced people in this direction, passed over from their old ideal to that of the so-called “Erfurt Programme” (elaborated in the early nineties at Erfurt, during the Congress of the Social Democratic Party). The old ideal, if I may use this expression for certain propagandistic aims, still contained an unscientific way of thinking, it contained thoughts which had nothing to do with natural science. But the Erfurt Programme led the modern proletarian movement into a superstitious attitude in regard to natural-scientific thought. From that time onwards, the proletarians endeavour to master the whole social question by applying to it scientifically trained thoughts.

We might say: Before the elaboration of the Erfurt Programme, the social-democratic ideals of the proletariat converged in two points, two ideals. These two points were in the first place, the suppression of the system of paid labour, and in the second place: the elimination of every social and political inequality.

These two points were still based upon a far more universal way of thinking; which proceeded from judgments which were based more upon instinct and feeling. During the last centuries, these judgments rose up into human consciousness, and people began to look upon the human being as the centre of every social endeavor. Paid work, the system of paid labour, was to be suppressed. That is to say, man should be given the possibility to lead an existence in keeping with human dignity (this was a rather muddled idea, but we can develop it clearly with the aid of spiritual science), human labour was no longer to be placed on an equal footing with objects sold as goods, it was no longer to be treated as merchandise. The system of paid labour was to be suppressed and replaced by something which would no longer compel the human being to sell his personal labour. This concept still took into account something universally human. And it was the same with the idea of suppressing social and political inequality.

With the so-called Erfurt Programme, this thought which lay at the foundation of the socialistic ideal of earlier times was given up at the beginning of the nineties of the 19th century. Two other points were now taken as real goals, as aims. These two points were: In the first place, the transformation of capitalistic private property into collective property, that is to say, the collective control of the means of production. Machines, landed property, etc. were to pass over from private proprietorship into collective proprietorship. This was the first point. The second point was the transformation of the production of goods into socialistic production, controlled through and for the communistic body.

These two items on the programme are altogether adapted in their manner of thinking to the purely natural-scientific thoughts of modern times. In this programme it is no longer a question of man acquiring or conquering something; it is no longer a question of suppressing the system of paid labour; it is no longer a question of eliminating social and political inequalities, but it is a question of something which completely eliminates the human being as such, of a process which ignores the human being, a process which takes its course under the influence of cause and effect, in the same way in which processes of Nature take their course under the influence of cause and effect. It is simply a question of transforming the private property of means of production into a collective property, and what the human being experiences through this transformation is quite an indifferent matter. And the economic order is no longer to be a production of goods, but a socialistic production; the community itself is to produce, and the goods produced are to exist for the collective community. Goods produced by private individual initiative, and brought on to the market in order to be purchased by others, is a process which differs from the socialistic production of goods. The socialistic production applies, as it were, the principle of individual production, where the producer himself consumes the goods which he produces, to the whole community. The production of goods reckons with individual human beings. One individual produces something, brings it on to the market, and another individual takes it away from the market by purchasing it. But the socialistic production returns to the primitive form of production, where every human being produces the goods which he consumes (at least people imagine that this was once the case!); now this is to be done by the whole community. The market ceases to exist, for the community produces the goods which it consumes. The goods produced are no longer merchandise, but they are distributed among those who belong to the community. Those who produce the goods are also the consumers.

In this case, purely natural-scientific concepts are applied to the social organism. You see, modern men do not like to bear in mind differences such as these in the socialistic programme before the Erfurt Congress and after the Erfurt Congress, they do not like to bear in mind such differences, because to-day people do not like to think, in spite of the fact that they are so proud of their thinking.

Now we must consider another misery. We can study it particularly well if we consider one of the classical writers, who have dealt with the social problem, when this problem was still: a more theoretical question—for instance a writer such us Karl Kautsky.

In one of his books, Kautsky tries to prove that the capitalistic economic order should be transformed into a socialistic order, and he says that in this transition the production of goods must cease. It must be replaced by self-consumption, so that the consumer is at the same time the producer, that is to say, a community is producer. At the same time, he advances the problem: What people are to form this community? And he replies: This can only be the modern state, the government. That is to say, he gives an answer which he should not have given. He did not realise, and people of his type do not even realise this to-day, that the state, which they call a modern state, is in no way a modern structure. The states of central and of eastern Europe which were swept away, were not modern structures, for they existed upon the foundation of old traditions, and not upon those contained in modern economic life; it was therefore impossible to establish a connection between modern economic life and these obsolete state-structures, as people of Kautsky's type imagined.

These states were therefore swept away, and what has remained of them is something spectral and ghostly, which continues to haunt the minds of men; this too will be swept away… nothing will remain except problems in every sphere of practical life,—only problems will remain.

A completely new way of thinking will be needed in order to reply to these questions, which are not theoretical questions, but facts. This new way of thinking exists, as I have explained to you in our lectures, in our spiritual-scientific conception. This new way of thinking consists in the realisation of the fact that it is necessary to study the fundamental laws of a human organisation in the same way in which spiritual science studies the fundamental laws of the individual human organisation.

When we study the fundamental laws of the individual human organism, we come to the threefold structure of the nerves and senses: the rhythmic system and the metabolic system. And we can only understand the human being within the course of time if we understand the interplay of these three systems in the human organism.

In the sphere of external life, this corresponds to the understanding of the three members of the social organism. The social organism must be subdivided into a spiritual system, an economic system, and a juridical system, which should however exclude jurisprudence as such, which should only contain the external juridical system, the political juridical system.

Even as modern natural science does not wish to kn0w anything concerning the threefold structure of man and treats alike everything which exists in the human being, so modern social thinkers do not wish to know anything concerning the body's threefold structure. Just because they do not wish to know anything concerning the threefold structure of the social body, they are so helpless and perplexed, and they will continue to be without advice, so long as they refuse to know what must really be done in the face of the great practical requirements of daily life. A regeneration of thinking is needed. It is necessary to perceive that modern natural-scientific concepts, which are very useful in certain fields, cannot bring us forward one step, in the sphere of social life.

We my thus observe some very strange phenomena. Indeed, it is not astounding that people begin to think in a more or less social way, and before the fearful catastrophe of recent years broke out, which partly revealed the original aspect of the social enigma, it was not surprising that certain people began to think in a social way. Particularly if we study the thoughts and conceptions of some of the leading teachers of national economy, we can perceive how helpless they really are in the face of the phenomena which now present themselves.

As an example, let me read you a definition which Jaffe, a national economist of some repute in certain circles, gave for the ideal condition of a social organism. In thoughts which entirely come from ideas developed in this field by modern humanity, Jaffe describes what he thinks he ought to describe and then he recapitulates and gives an idea of the social condition which would correspond to modern requirements and to the requirements of the modern industrial development, as well as to other forms of development. Consider this definition, which is, I might say, exceedingly clear and does not constitute one of the insignificant products of modern national economic thinking. Let me read to you quite slowly what Jaffe indicates as the ideal future condition of the social organism. It is that condition of the economic order in which all parts of the nation grow together into an organic whole, and in which every part has its assigned place. Each part belongs to the whole as a serving member of the community, which in the end serves each single part. This condition not only guarantees outwardly an existence which is in keeping with human dignity, but it also ennobles man's work and confers dignity: upon it, because it does not pursue individual aims, but is service on behalf of the general welfare.

I believe that a great number of people who think altogether in accordance with modern habits of thought, will find that this is an extremely clever definition and quite to the point. They will even say that it contains everything that can be desired. Within an ideal economic order, every individual human should have his assigned place, the place which suits him and where he can fulfil his tasks. His work should not only guarantee him an existence in keeping with human dignity but through the fact that he places' it at the service of the community, the community: should to at his service. Such a definition impresses many people, who believe that they can think soundly; it will give them the impression:“My God, how clever I am, for at last I have discovered how matters really stand!

Poverty comes from pauvreté—this too is a definition, and Jaffe's definition does not differ much from it! For it can be applied to the present social organisation, at least to the one which existed before the war, and also to the conditions which existed in various countries, for example, in Germany, during the war. Yet we can say at the same time that this definition does note apply to any State, Such a definition is the very pattern of abstraction.

We therefore find to-day that people think out many systems, yet the definitions which they advance do not in any way approach reality,

Take, for instance, Jaffe's definition. He describes an ideal economic condition of the future. This is an economic organisation in which every member of the nation forms part of an organic whole. In reality, this occurs whenever a state arises,even in the worst kind of state. In spite of everything, all parts of the nation have somehow grown together into an organic whole; they form an organic whole in spite of everything. But when a man has leprosy, every part of his body is leprous, and all these leprous parts form an organic whole. Consequently, the same definition may be applied both to a sound and to a diseased body.

Nobody notices this, so long as the definition remains mere theory. But when a situation such as the present one arises, that is to say, when the disease has broken out and a healing treatment becomes necessary, then the concepts which people generally have, prove absolutely useless.

Jaffe continues: “Where everyone has his assigned place, as a serving member of the community”. Well, this is really the case in Germany, for example… With the exception of a few men who do not wish to have anything to do with the state, the great majority of people are serving members within a whole. At least, they give their votes. “Serving member of a community which finally serves each one”: This, too, is correct, for it can be applied even to the worst form of government. “It does not only guarantee him outwardly his existence” there may be some meaning in this, but it is a phrase, an empty appendage, for it is simply one of the usual phrases. In the words, “which ennobles his work and confers dignity upon it”, it is essential to bear in mind what is meant by “ennobling” and “dignity”… “Because it does not pursue individual aims, but is service on behalf of the general welfare”—this can be applied even to the worst state!

You see, therefore, that a smart definition advanced by an economist of repute is not much better than the definition, poverty comes from pauvreté! The great majority of men now suffers under such abstract unrealities. For people hardly have an idea of the reality which lives and weaves behind the phenomena. Think how far they are from considering and applying a truth such as that of the threefold structure, which we have advanced as something fundamental and essential! People still believe that
they can discover a formula, let us say for the “socialisation” of life, for this has become a catchword.

Though the comparison may be somewhat lame, this is not much better than the discovery of a science through which one can digest! In real life, the human organism must digest. In order to do this, it must have a threefold structure, and it can maintain its life-functions through a right cooperation of the three members. If we give a threefold structure to a community, it will not be necessary to discover formulae for the socialisation of life, for this will take place of its own accord.

Think how immensely complicated are the processes which take place within the human organism! Imagine how difficult it would be to think out all that occurs within you during the two hours after your lunch! You have eaten your lunch and you digest the food, but this is a tremendously complicated process, which consists of innumerable details. Imagine that your digestion were to depend on the fact that you have to think it out—in that case you would not be able to live one single day!

Committees assemble at this or at that place and they discuss ways and means of socialising life. Yet the public life of humanity is through and through g complicated process; and its details can be grasped just as little as, for instance, the details of the digestive process, or the thinking process, or the breathing process. But the right thing will take place, if we allow the impulses of a threefold structure to work together!

Take the following example: To-day it is hardly possible to read the books of socialistic or social writers, without wondering at their surprising store of knowledge. Socialistic writers, even more than those of the middle classes, have collected a mass of statistical and historical material, reaching as far as the present time, in order to find out what course of development would be needed at present. The course of human development is to teach them, let us say, how to socialise life.

Yet a strange thing arises within this process which takes place in the human community. These writers grasp a phenomenon by one of its ends, but immediately it slips away from them at the other end! If they begin to socialise life in the way which they consider best, by taking hold of things at one end, everything slip away again at the other end.

An example can illustrate this: Let us, consider the following fact: In 1910, an American factory of rails produced in two and a half days as many rails as one week's output of ten years previously. That is to say, this factory put on the market in two and a half days the number of rails which they produced in 1900 in one week. In spite of this, the workmen worked for a whole week.

In order to obtain a conception of the relationship existing between employer and workmen, we must say: The workmen who continue to work for the whole week after the year 1900, really produce in that time the double amount of work. Of course, each workman produces the double amount of work for the market, and many conditions show him this. This increased labour on the part of the workman is naturally expressed in the proletarian problem. The workman is of course fully aware of the fact that the employer earns twice as much, and factors arise which induce him to demand twice as much pay from the employer. If we now theorize and say, it is not necessary to pay the workman twice as much, but he ought. to receive so and so much more, we only take hold of things by one end. But at the other end, they slip away, for the rail of course become so and so much cheaper. The cheaper price of the rails then reflects itself in other phenomena of social life, and corrects the proletarian problem which arises, on the one hand. We can really say that conditions are so complicated within the social organism, that if any question is tackled from one aspect, other aspects immediately arise which paralyze the solution which we advance.

Let us now take another example:—Take the national economy of Germany. I have already explained to you in past lectures that engines, mechanical labour, relieve humanity, as it were, from human labour. Particularly in the economic life of Germany, which has developed enormously, we can say that in the last decades engines—apart from locomotives—have done the work of 70 to 80 millions of men, which is more than the population of Germany. Only a part of Germany's population consists of workmen; consequently, in the years before the war, and through the new economic order, a workman in Germany did the work of four of five men together, he worked four or five times as much as a workman before the introduction of mechanical labour.

Think what a change this meant to life in general! But the phenomena which thus arise, appear at so many different points in life, that a socialisation carried put from any one standpoint, would bring about the worst possible results from other standpoints.

Social life is just as complicated as the life of an organic being. It is not our task to discover formulae for that which should take place, but we should instead give the social organism a structure which enables it to work spontaneously, so that it orders its processes, in the same way in which the human organisms brings in order its functions. This is the only point which should be borne in mind.

You therefore see that matters should be grasped from quite a different standpoint; we should namely bear in mind that it is necessary to penetrate into the real being and essence of the social organism. This is far more important than any discussion connected with the building up of a community.

For the countries of central and eastern Europe, it will be an excellent school to realise very soon that it is no longer possible to talk in the usual way of the socialization of the means of production. People still talk of these things in accordance with old habits of thought, and they forget that the States no longer exist, that they have disappeared, and must be replaced by something quite new. These people will elect, to begin with, statesmen whose heads are still filled with obsolete concepts, and these statesmen will do things in accordance with these old ideas. The result, however, will not be real and living; it will resemble a human being just as little as the Homunculus in Wagner's test-tube. In the end, they will realise that it is impossible for them to continue along the old paths. Practical life itself will convince them that the confused ideas which arose during the past decades cannot possibly cope with the practical situation which must be faced in the present time.

This will draw your attention to the fact that it is necessary above all to investigate real life, so that reality, real life lead us to the question: What shape can the demands of social life take on at the present time?

There is one thing which I have emphasized again and again: Let the proletarians say whatever they like… As a rule, it is quite indifferent what people say to-day, for they only voice that which exists in their upper consciousness, whereas that which they really need, the essential thing which they require, lives in their sub-consciousness.

We hardly ever learn to know people through what they say. We gain a far better knowledge of their true being, by considering that which confusedly comes out of their sub•;consciousness. The way in which they talk, tells us far more than the actual content of their words, far more than what they say. For the content of their words is generally handed down from a moribund or already lifeless epoch. The new element is something which is rooted in man's sub-psychical regions.

We find that the proletarian population propagates everywhere categorical ideas. These are mere words learnt by rote through Marxism, or derived from some other source. The true impulse (and how many impulses there are!) is that human labour should not be allowed to be considered as a merchandise.

If we were to ask a modern proletarian, what he is really striving for, he would reply: I want State-controlled means of production, I want socialisation, etc., etc. But he would speak the truth, if he would stress the following point, among the many which we learn to know in their true aspect: “What I really want, is that my labour should no longer be treated as a merchandise, but as something quite different.”

Modern thought is therefore a compound off' the very oldest elements And of something which the human souls contain in their sub-conscious depths, as the newest, most modern requirement. But the human beings are not conscious of this demands arise which have lost every meaning for a great number of educated people, old forms of community life are to take the place of private employers.

In the case of States which have ceased to exist, it is really grotesque to think that the government should take the place of private employers. People think that something which no longer exists can replace the employers and they blunder over this problem. Modern thinking and feeling have really ended in a blind alley!

To-morrow we shall speak more in detail concerning the question of how a government or any other community can or cannot take the place of private employers.