The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me?

A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times?

Dr. Steiner: You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing.

Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs—the nose, mouth, and lungs—but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it.

Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present.

You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.

Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being.

Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body.

What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it.

The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere.

What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.

Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?

Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.

What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person.

Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time—about fifteen minutes—before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord.

You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism.

Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body.

All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system.

What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think.

Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen.

When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs.

Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb.

You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen.

Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen—in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison.

Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide.

In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it—curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line.

People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition.

Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood.

In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today.

Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages.

Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats—one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air—the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter. Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth.

You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter—well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter, and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three—spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth.

Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four: breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four, now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron.

This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves—that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal.

You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter.

This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism.

So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path.

This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity.

We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity.

Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything.

In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being—although the earth was then a kind of comet—he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother”—Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother.

So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state.

In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe.

Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day.

Now let me figure something else for you—the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life.

Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today—the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations—then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe.

One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man—a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.

A question is raised concerning why, in one family, four mute children were born along with normal children. In his youth, the father of the children tore the tongues out of birds. Could the four mute children be his punishment?

Another question: Influenza, in which people suffer from double vision, is so frequent now. What is the cause of this?

Dr. Steiner: Were the children who cannot speak born one after the other in this family, or were the children who could speak born in-between?

The Questioner: The mute children were born one after the other.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to speak about such a case when one is not thoroughly familiar with it. We shall take up the question about influenza later. This first case, however, is difficult to judge when one is not familiar with the details. Much depends, for example, on whether a speaking child was born between the mute children; whether, after a certain moment in time, the speaking children were born and the mute children after, or whether the mute children were born first and the normal children after, or whether they were born alternately. Muteness in children naturally can be caused by any number of factors. If these children can hear and are only mute, not deaf—mute—something about which one can sometimes be in error of course—if they truly hear, and the problem therefore lies in the speech apparatus, then one must figure out how the father or mother could have influenced it.

Without thoroughly knowing this case, however, it is really risky to talk about it. One would have to know the age of both parents. Much depends on whether both parents were already old when they had the children or whether they are still young. Another factor is whether the mother or the father is the older. Much depends on all this.

Then, the character of both parents also plays a part. Whether or not it is important that the father tore out the tongues of birds in his youth, as you say, can be determined only after all the other questions have been answered. Such a consideration depends on whether the man was perhaps cruel in his youth. The characteristic of cruelty as such does come into consideration. To speak of a punishment, however, is out of the question here. First, punishments do not exist and second, if they did, this certainly would not be a punishment for the father! To say that the children were born mute to punish the father for his cruelty reminds me of the story of the boy whose hands froze and who said, “This serves my father right for not buying me gloves!” When somebody is as terribly afflicted as these four children, it is not a punishment for the father; he is much less affected than the four children, although his cruelty must be considered.

Again, certain other definite matters must be considered here. In relation to children's age you can see that if a person develops a quality as a youth—let us say one develops a quality of cruelty or something similar at age eleven, for example—the onset of such a tendency always recurs after about three and a half years. This individual would then express cruel tendencies again at fourteen and a half or fifteen, then again at eighteen, at twenty—one and a half, and so forth.

Imagine, if conception occurs during the period when such a tendency recurs, the conception itself can be a kind of cruelty and naturally can work harmfully. In this roundabout way, all such matters naturally can come under consideration. A connection can only be claimed, however, if all other factors have been excluded. I have told you what a difference there is between winter births and summer births. One would have to determine from the ages of these children whether the earlier births perhaps occurred in the summer or in the winter, and so forth.

This is why I say that to approach the problem conscientiously, one must know all the details. When you become acquainted with the whole case, we can talk about it. I would be glad to do so. You do not know, for example, whether the four mute children were the older or the younger ones. It must definitely be established whether or not this tendency to bring forth mute children was later cured or whether it appeared only after the four speaking children were born, in which case, the reason would have to be discovered somewhere after the birth of the fourth child. So, we would first have to be familiar with all the factors.

Regarding the question about the flu, it is related to all the diseases, such as bronchitis, that can afflict the human head or the organs of the upper chest, but I will refer particularly to illnesses such as diphtheria and influenza that are so widely prevalent just now. These diseases afflict the upper part of the human body, and they have a definite peculiarity. They can best be studied by examining diphtheria; here one really can learn the most.

You know well that those who study medicine in the ordinary sense today do not know much about the flu; therefore, the descriptions given by doctors of the symptoms that appear with the flu are quite inexact. When I see people suffering from influenza, I must always turn my attention to something other than the symptoms that the doctors pay heed to, because the flu is actually a kind of brain illness. The flu is really an illness of the brain! I shall say more about this later.

The following points especially must be taken into consideration regarding diphtheria. First, if you look at a child suffering from diphtheria—adults can also suffer from it, you know—you can see a membrane in the throat. This membrane, this formation of tissue, is usually what can cause suffocation in diphtheria. This formation of tissue is thus the first important factor. The second thing one notices in diphtheria is that the heart of a diphtheria patient is always assaulted. The heart does not function properly. The third aspect of diphtheria is that even if the patient is not strongly afflicted by the membrane in his throat, he nevertheless has a hard time swallowing because of a kind of paralysis of the throat that occurs in addition to the membrane. Finally, the same symptom that is nowadays observed in those suffering from influenza also appears in diphtheria patients: their eyes begin to cross and they see double. These are the most important symptoms of diphtheria that can be noted in the upper part of the body. A form of kidney ailment, unobserved in those who suffocate and die, appears as an aftereffect in the diphtheria patients who recover.

What does diphtheria really consist of? Diphtheria can be understood only when one knows that man is actually kept alive from two directions—from the outside in and from the inside out. Man lives first from within his skin. The skin is a tremendously important organ, and man really lives within the skin, within his surroundings. It is like this (sketching).

Diagram 1.

Here is the skin; I have already talked about it. The skin is constantly in contact with the outer air, with the external world, which causes it to become calloused. In humans it only becomes a little calloused and then sloughs off. The skin all over man's body constantly sloughs off. Man is continuously sloughing off his entire body. He is continuously exchanging his physical body because of outside influences. You can imagine what a tremendous influence the air has on the living body when you consider the following. Think of a being that lives entirely in water. The skin it forms will be quite soft. The water itself causes it to form skin that is quite soft. Particularly through the influence of sunlight, the soft skin is pulled forward, and the being in the water becomes a fish. You can hardly see the jaw of a fish, because it is entirely covered with skin. Now imagine that this creature does not live in water but in the air. If this being lives in the air, it cannot form the soft skin. If this being who has lived in the water could not form the soft skin, his jaw would no longer be inside; the whole inner jaw would lie outside, and he would be a bird. The jaw of the fish in the water is simply covered with soft skin. By virtue of living in the air, the bird is equipped with an exposed jaw, a jaw lying completely outside. Thus you see the influence exerted on a creature from outside. Man, however, can form soft skin with other organs, but this soft skin is always being sloughed off, worked off.

Diagram 2.

Aside from this life proceeding from the outside in, there is also a life going from inside out, particularly from the kidneys. Both must be active in the human being. Activity both from the skin inward and from the kidneys outward must be at work. The heart occupies a position in between and is highly sensitive to too much activity from outside or inside. The heart can sense when the kidneys begin to be overly active, and it also senses when the skin's activity begins to be too strong or too weak.

Now, what happens in the case of diphtheria? In diphtheria, the skin suddenly becomes weak and subdued. The activity of the skin is too weak, so a person with diphtheria suffers from too little exchange of air through the skin. Indeed, this is the main problem. The skin, including the skin of the nose exposed to the external surroundings, does not breathe enough, and it becomes too weak. The in-streaming activity, indicated in my sketch by the arrows, no longer functions properly, and the heart senses this. The heart also senses that the kidneys work upward. What is it that the kidneys are doing? The heart can no longer restrain the activity of the kidneys, which shoots upward. Long before inflammation of the kidneys, that is, nephritis, sets in, the activity of the kidneys is already shooting upward. Because the skin activity is no longer working effectively from outside, superfluous skin forms on the inside. Because the, skin's activity from the outside is not working properly, a superfluous skin is formed, filling everything out, because the kidneys' activity is too strong.

When a person becomes afflicted with shrunken kidneys, which can occur when the kidneys' activity is deficient, you can see an indentation here on the head. There is a connection between the kidneys and this section of the head. As soon as the kidneys' activity is not working properly, this indentation occurs. You can see in every person who has kidney disease this indentation in the head. Beneath it lie the optic nerves. When the indentation occurs, the optic nerves become inactive. In the case of ordinary kidney shrinkage, the patient begins to see unclearly. When shrinkage does not occur but nephritis sets in instead, the kidney activity shoots up into the head and exerts an influence on the optic nerves.

Diagram 3.

Now, you see, the optic nerves are such that when the head is viewed from above, they proceed back from the eyes. They cross in the brain, the two optic nerves, and continue on to the hindbrain. The optic nerves must be in good condition if we are to see well, because we see with both eyes. The moment these optic nerves that cross are not working properly, we see double. The optic nerves only need to be a little numbed and the crossing not made properly for us to see double. You know how a person who enjoys drinking can tell whether or not he is still functioning when he gets home: he places his hat at the foot of the bed, gets in bed, and if he sees one hat he is still all right, but if he sees two, he is not! This is easily done. So, because the blood circulates too fast, too much alcohol numbs the optic nerves, with the result that a person who has drunk too much has double vision.

The kidneys' activity also has a stimulating effect on the optic nerves. If the optic nerves do not interact properly at the point where they cross, man will see double. This is the case, for example, in diphtheria. You can see, therefore, that diphtheria is caused by a disorder in the skin's activity. Therefore, a future, more successful cure for diphtheria will consist above all of treating the patient in the right way with baths; he will have to be given such baths that will immediately stimulate vigorously the skin's activity. Then the formation of membranes will cease, and the patient's skin will begin to function properly again.

Treatment with modified virus vaccine is effective in the case of diphtheria, because the body is thus given a strong impulse to become active, but it has unfavorable aftereffects. Particularly if a child is treated with vaccine, it will later suffer a hardening of its organization. One therefore must strive actually to replace treatment with vaccine with that of bathing, especially in the case of diphtheria, which is based primarily on the defective activity of the skin. One can see how skin actually must receive special consideration. It is indeed true that diphtheria is more frequent now than in former times. Of course, one must consider centuries, not decades. According to all that is known of earlier ages, however—though many diseases naturally existed then that were much worse; people were afflicted with bubonic plague and cholera—diphtheria was more rare. This is connected with the fact that, in general, the European way of life increasingly leads in a direction in which the skin's activity is no longer supported. Certainly, people who have money bathe a lot, and so forth. The point, however, is what a person bathes in. Here you can see the ill effect of civilization in the fact that bald-headed people are much more numerous today than in former days. The growth of hair is also an outer activity. Just as plants grow from the soil, so the growth of hair is affected from outside. Not enough attention is paid today to the skin's activity. Do not assume that bathing with cold water, as practiced by Englishmen nowadays, has such good effects. What counts is what a person bathes in. Of course, it is also wrong for a person to cause too strong an activity of the skin by superfluous bathing. At any rate, in the case of diphtheria, one must try above all to bring about a proper activity of the skin.

This is also connected with a factor that affects people's offspring. Take a mother or father whose skin is too sluggish and doesn't slough off easily enough. This is most difficult to determine and takes a very sensitive insight into human peculiarities. The average layman cannot easily judge whether or not a person has callous skin, but some people do possess a much tougher skin than others. This is difficult to determine, because the skin is actually transparent. As it sloughs off, it appears to be colored differently because of what is underneath. Our skin is really transparent. If the father has a skin that is much tougher than it should be, the activity of the bones is also influenced thereby. As you know from what I have recently explained, the production of the blood depends on the activity of the bones. If the father has such callous skin that it reminds you of hippopotamus hide, he will produce white corpuscles that are too weak. This, in turn, influences his sperm, and his children will be weak from the beginning. So, one can say that if the father is a “hippopotamus,” it is possible for his children to be born with rickets—an English illness—for the children to be born weak and to be susceptible to tuberculosis. This is how these things are related.

If the father's skin is too soft, something that can be noted particularly when anxiety and so on easily cause blushing, then his bones become too hard, but this has little ill-effect.

If, however, the mother's skin is too soft, alternating between blushing and paling, her bones become too hard and she does not produce red corpuscles properly. Her child will acquire already at an early age, tendencies to all kinds of ailments such as rheumatism and particularly illnesses like measles, scarlet fever, and so on, diseases that are related to the metabolic system. These facts are all related.

Diagram 4.

Now, as for the flu, it really comes from a brain ailment. The lower part of the brain, located under the optic nerves, suffers a form of paralysis. The flu consists of a paralysis of that portion of the brain that lies quite near the optic nerves. Since this is a very significant part of the brain, an influence is actually exerted on the entire body. Proceeding from this paralysis in the brain, something in the human being becomes ill in the case of ordinary flu. Above all, the spinal cord is affected, since this part of the brain goes right into the spine, from which the nerves extend to all the limbs. The person thus gets aches and pains in his limbs, and so on.

Recently, an interesting case of flu occurred that is most instructive. I have told you that the brain not only consists of solid substances but that it is also surrounded by cranial fluid. Particularly in the vicinity of this part here (pointing to sketch), which is incapacitated during flu, much cranial fluid is present. This recent case of flu was extraordinarily interesting, because the patient had one illness after another as aftereffects: pneumonia with high fever, then a fall in temperature, followed by pleurisy with high fever, and then again a drop in temperature. This was followed by peritonitis with high fever that finally fell, then a kind of general paralysis, and so on. This case of flu took a different direction from that of the usual flu. What happened here? You see, when studying this with the ordinary means available to medicine, it is extraordinarily difficult to figure out. The patient, a seventeen-year-old girl, was asked when she recuperated to tell what went through her mind during the time of her illnesses. Quite strangely, the following was determined.

Her parents and the doctor freely discussed her condition in the room in which she was resting, thinking it was all right to do so since she was constantly delirious. Indeed, during her delirium she did not appear to be aware of anything, but when she became well, she could repeat everything that had been discussed in her room. She knew and could relate it. This could be confirmed. Comprehension was therefore absent while she suffered from this severe case of flu and the subsequent illnesses; the conversations, however, remained in her memory. Much is retained in the memory after all, that at the moment may not be comprehended. This shows that it was not the solid part of the brain that was affected but the surrounding fluid. This influenced the rest of the body even more, because, when the solid part is partially numbed, the ensuing symptoms must be brought about through the working of the solid part of the brain on the spinal cord. The fluid, however, constantly flows up and down through the spinal canal here (see sketch on p. 103). Hence, if the fluid in the brain is afflicted, afflicted fluid also appears in the spinal canal, and from here it passes into all the limbs. It thereby gradually causes inflammation everywhere. Because it was the cranial fluid that was inflamed, and not the solid part of the brain, however, a more counteractive, healing force was present and—though in this case it was almost like a miracle—the girl recuperated in spite of having suffered from every possible illness.

Although various remedies must also be administered, in such illnesses it is essential that the body be given adequate rest and quiet. The patient must therefore lie in bed, and care should be taken to keep the room at a constant temperature and with even lighting, because rest is brought about not only by stretching out on a bed. One is also made restless by being hot one moment and frozen the next. But if the body is left totally to its own devices with steady warmth and light, it can itself endure even the worst attacks of pneumonia, pleurisy, and peritonitis. The human being is capable of that. Even with the worst illnesses that display the symptoms mentioned, it is more a matter of proper nursing care than of remedies. In general, proper care has great value.

You can recognize the significance of proper care from the following. When a limb is inflamed or injured, the best thing to do is simply to put a ligature on it somewhere above the affected area; it must be done correctly, however. In this way, the more delicate activity of the body, the etheric activity, is brought into play, and healing begins. So, when a hand or finger is ulcerated, a ligature is applied between it and the body, and then it heals quickly. The forces of healing must be summoned everywhere within the body itself. Naturally, cases vary. One must always consider the individual and know him well if one wishes to cure him; one must have insight into how a person is. In dealing with a patient suffering from diphtheria, for instance, it is under certain conditions best to place him in a rosemary bath so he can smell the rosemary. Repeated long rosemary baths will strengthen the activity of his skin. Sufficient rosemary must be added to the water, however, so that the patient constantly smells it during the bath. The activity of the skin is stimulated, and the patient will improve without being treated with vaccine. It really depends upon being able to arouse in the right way with the remedies the patient's own bodily resistance.

Of course, if a remedy isn't effective one time, people immediately consider it to be a bad remedy. You must realize, however, that with some people there is nothing to be done. Often, the remedy is used when it is too late to do anything, or else the dose would have to be increased so much that it would be enough for a horse; the patient wouldn't be able to tolerate it and would die of the remedy.

One must remember that the flu actually has its origin in an ailment of the brain. You will have perceived that a flu patient is always in a kind of doze, because the most important areas of the brain under the optic nerve are numbed. Thus he comes to doze. Now you can also grasp that when paralysis is located in the upper sections of the brain, the point of the intersection of the optic nerves is affected and the person sees double. All this shows you that double vision can come about quite naturally in influenza.

This should by no means be taken lightly. I once had a friend who at that time was thirty years old, ten years younger than me. He was cross-eyed, but here you have the opposite problem. In flu or diphtheria, a person becomes temporarily cross-eyed because something is internally out of order, but my friend was permanently cross-eyed and, of course, was unhappy about it because not everyone is totally without vanity. There was something in his body that caused his left and right sides to work inharmoniously. This is what caused his crossed eyes; his eyes were crossed, and he also stammered. Both afflictions had the same origin. On some occasions he overcame his crossed eyes and stammer quite well, but there are those who have little compassion for such people and complain about their afflictions. Once, for example, a person who was not too tactful said to my friend, “Tell me, Doctor, do you always stammer, or only occasionally?” The man could barely come out with, “N-n-not always, o-o-only w-when I m-meet a p-person, whom I find t-t-t-totally d-disagreeable!” This same man could recite long poems without stammering, and he didn't stammer when he was full of enthusiasm about something. The stammering is not the point, however; I only mention it because it is connected with this man's crossed eyes.

Now, my friend was a bit vain and wished to correct his condition. As you know, that leads to an operation, because crossed eyes are corrected by cutting one of the eye muscles. Crossed eyes are eliminated by this operation. Since, in my friend's case, his crossed eyes were so deeply rooted in his organism that he also stammered, I was terribly concerned when he decided to be operated on. I knew that when some brain ailment occurs a person can be temporarily cross-eyed, but when a person is permanently cross-eyed, as was my friend, his brain has become adjusted to this condition. If an eye muscle is cut when the problem is so deep-seated that a stammer is also present, then the opposite effect is brought about. By trying to correct the crossed eyes with an operation, a brain ailment is produced by that part of the brain being ruined where the optic nerves intersect.

Well, my friend was not to be deterred, and so he underwent the operation. If I had expressed my reservations concerning such an operation, those who imagine themselves to be real medical authorities would have been ready to call me an idiot, since one who asserts something that is not found in their books is called an idiot. As you can imagine, I naturally tried in some way to deter my friend from having this operation, but I could not come right out and say, “If you go through with this operation, you may possibly suffer a brain ailment.” He would not have believed me since all the doctors had told him it was a simple operation. Since he knew that I was not really happy about his intention to have the operation, he told me nothing about it. One day, he visited me with a black patch on his eyes, which he removed and said, “Now look, aren't my eyes straight now?” They were, but I remained apprehensive. Well, two weeks hadn't passed before he fell ill with a brain ailment. Naturally, this brain ailment was not diagnosed as such by the doctor; what do ordinary doctors know of these relationships! How did the brain ailment manifest itself? There was some blood in his feces indicating that it made its appearance in the guise of an intestinal illness. The man became afflicted with an intestinal illness, but it was none other than the brain ailment because, as I have explained, the intestines and the brain are connected.

When this happened, I knew it was caused by the operation, and I lost hope for him. The most famous doctor in town was called. He diagnosed typhoid. What else could he say, when the contents of the intestines showed blood and had the peculiar consistency of pea soup? If he has blood in his feces and intestinal contents with the consistency of pea soup, he must have typhoid! It was not typhoid, however; it was the illness—really of the brain—that was the result of the inappropriate operation for his crossed eyes.

So here the opposite case occurred. This man died soon afterward. The doctor who had treated him for typhoid fever had admitted him to the hospital. I went there after his death and met his medical attendant. As such people are wont to do, he immediately greeted me with, “The Professor wrote `typhoid' on the chart. He is supposed to have had typhoid? Well, that's how much our doctors know!” After all, the attending personnel believe what the doctors proclaim least of all!

It really is quite upsetting to see the human organism treated in such a one-sided manner. If I were to tell a doctor what I have just told you concerning the appearance of an illness resembling typhoid that was a masked ailment of the brain and the result of an operation for crossed eyes, he would consider it pure nonsense. He wouldn't believe it, because he doesn't truly know the relationships within the body but is only familiar with theoretical relationships. As a result, such things will happen as in this anecdote I'll tell you. It is only an anecdote, but it has truth in it. A person is brought to the hospital. The doctor who is chief of staff examines him, assigns him to a certain ward, and gives an order concerning treatment to his assistants, saying, “When I return tomorrow, this patient will be dead.” He no longer concerns himself with this case until a few days later. Then he says, “There is still a patient in Room 15; he must be dead.” “No,” he is told, “that patient feels better and is getting well.” The doctor replies, “Then you've treated him the wrong way!”

Of course, this is a joke. But it is like this when theory is put in the place of true practice. Practice means learning to judge each case on an individual basis. The moment a question is raised concerning the connection between double vision, which is always a form of crossed eyes, and the flu, attention must be drawn to how, on the one hand, a form of double vision is caused by flu, which is a kind of brain ailment and, on the other, how the brain ailment can come about when a person is cross-eyed and the problem is so deeply rooted that left and right do not fit together.

All processes in the human being proceed outward from within and inward from without. If a person is crossed-eyed for internal reasons and this condition is externally corrected, he can become ill inwardly; in man, one never deals with a single activity but with two activities that meet in the heart. The heart is in-between and is affected when one does away with crossed eyes externally. The heart is also affected if something is not working properly inside. The heart is not a pump but a most delicate apparatus, which really perceives everything that is out of order, as it were.

Let us assume that I injure my knee externally or that by some circumstance, perhaps through drinking, I become afflicted with rheumatism. Then, internal activities are out of order, and inflammation results in that area. The processes that begin within are out of order. In such cases the heart is always influenced and doesn't work properly. Therefore, the heart's function can be influenced from within as well as from without. In all illnesses in which this is the case—that is, when something is wrong with a process that keeps it from running its course outward from within or inward from without—it will be noted that it comes to expression in the heart. One must know the correct relationship, however, between what is an outer process and what is an inner process when a person is cross-eyed or stammers, if one wishes to weigh the consequences of eliminating the condition. Operations for crossed eyes must always be weighed as to whether one should or should not do them. That is the important point.

The spiritual constitution is such today that we are getting to know grave and significant truths and insights, as you have seen. I have had to emphasize that the insights which humanity currently finds acceptable will not be adequate for the future. But we must know the reasons why such insights are not adequate, if we are to connect ourselves in all seriousness and dignity with the impulses which really have to be given for the further evolution of humanity. What I want to say today is perhaps best understood if I start by going back to the fourth post-Atlantean period. As you know, this began in the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha and ended in the fifteenth century after the Mystery of Golgotha when human beings essentially related to the environment, the outside world, in a very different way from the way in which we inevitably must do today. I have often stressed that human evolution has to be taken seriously. Souls change much more than we believe, and it is part of the sheer modern laziness of mind to think that the inner life was just the same in ancient Greece, say, as it is today. Today I will merely consider one aspect of this: the relationship to the world around us.

Lazy thinkers will say: The Greeks and the Romans perceived the world around them and we, too, perceive the world around us; there is no appreciable difference. Oh, but there is an appreciable difference. It is actually true to say that today, at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, people perceive the world around them, in so far as it is perceptible to the senses, in quite a different way from the ancient Greeks, for example. The Greeks also saw colours and heard sounds; but they still saw spiritual entities through the colours. They did not merely think spiritual entities, for there made themselves known to them through the colours.

In my book Riddles of the Soul¹ I attempted to make this peculiarity of the Greeks into a thread running through the whole book. Modern people think thoughts. The Greeks did not think thoughts in the same degree; they saw the thoughts which came to them out of the world they perceived around them. Instead of merely being blue or red, the blue and the red in the world around them told them the thoughts which they would then think. This created an intimate relationship to the world. It also created an intense feeling of being connected with an environment which had spiritual qualities. The nature of the human constitution was totally different in the fourth postAtlantean period, and perceptions were therefore different.

In the evolution of the present earth, distinction must be made between major epochs, a general description of which is given in Occult Science—first and second age, Lemurian age, Atlantean age, our own post-Atlantean age and two which are to follow. We may say that during the Atlantean age both the earth and humanity had reached their midpoint. Up to then everything was growth and development. In some respect this has not been the case since the Atlantean age. It certainly is no longer the case where the earth is concerned. When we walk on the soil today—I have mentioned this on a number of occasions—we are walking on something which is crumbling away; it is no longer something that is growing, as it was in early times. Before and until the middle of the Atlantean age the earth was much more of a growing, sprouting organism. It then started to develop cracks and fissures, we might say; and it was only then that the rocks of today, with their cracks and fissures, developed. This is something known not only in anthroposophy today. You find an excellent description of the breaking up, shattering, of our present-day earth in Eduard Suess's outstanding scientific work The Face of the Earth.² Using broad brush-strokes he presents the outer conformation of the earth today—its face, as it were—by outlining the properties of minerals, rocks and the different formations to be found both on and in the earth, as well as the properties of organic life forms in the realm of the earth. Basing himself entirely on scientific facts, Suess comes to the conclusion that the earth is decaying and crumbling away.

This, however, is also true for all physical creatures which inhabit the earth. They are on the downward curve of evolution and have been so, essentially, from the middle of the Atlantean age. Evolution does, however, go in waves and it is possible to say that the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greek and Roman civilization, was a kind of recapitulation of what existed in the Atlantean age. Up until the time of ancient Greece, therefore, it was not so clearly evident that humanity was on the downward curve of evolution. It was a feature of ancient Greece that the inner life was still in complete harmony with physical development—I have spoken of this before. That harmony was, of course, greatest in the middle of the Atlantean age, but it was recapitulated in ancient Greece. The total human constitution of the ancient Greeks has been discussed on a number of occasions, especially in our characterization of Greek art, which we know to have come from quite different impulses than the art of later periods.³ The Greeks still had an inner feeling for the etheric in the human form; they did not need the models we need today, because they felt the form inside themselves. We are thus able to say that until the time of ancient Greece, the living human body was determined and maintained by the immediate environment. Human beings were intimately bound up with the space immediately around them.

This changed with the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. Strange as it may seem to you, it is nevertheless true to say: We really are no longer in this world to take care of our own organization. We do still incarnate, but no longer in order to take care of our own organization. This organization evolved until the middle of the Atlantean age, or until ancient Greek times. Then, human bodies were as perfect as they can be during time spent on earth. It will not be until the Jupiter epoch that humanity achieves a higher level of physical perfection. Now, we are really here to be part of a downward curve of evolution, to incarnate in order to learn and experience all manner of things by the very fact that we are in bodies which are dying, increasingly crumbling and withering away. I am using fairly radical terms. The fact is, however, that anything we inwardly develop and inwardly are, will no longer become part of the outer physical body to the same extent as it did in the past. The consequence of this will be all kinds of changes in development.

In March this year, a very important person died in Zurich—Franz Brentano.⁴ You will find a memoir in my book Riddles of the Soul,⁵ which is due to appear shortly. The book will have three parts and an appendix. In the first part I am discussing the relationship between anthropology and anthroposophy; in the second part I am showing the attitude of modern ‘scholars’ to anthroposophy, giving Dessoir⁶ as an example; and in the third part I intend to show how Franz Brentano, a man with a fine mind, was held in thrall by modern science, but nevertheless came as close as anyone can get to anthroposophy with his psychology. The appendix will give brief outlines of aspects which in the present situation can only be touched on, though they might well provide the subject matter for several volumes. I have made it into a number of short chapters in the new book because the times are getting more and more difficult today and the situation does not permit a more extensive treatment. With some of the things which are written in this manner for the present time, one does have the feeling that one is in a way writing something of a testament. Those who are inwardly conscious of the whole weight of present events will no doubt know what I mean.

One of the many things Franz Brentano's sensitive mind has produced is a treatise on genius.⁷ Oddly enough, Brentano is actually showing that there is no such thing as genius, demonstrating over and over again that a genius has the same inner qualities and impulses as anyone else, that memory and the ability to make connections are merely more flexible and comprehensive in the case of a genius, etc. Franz Brentano creates an idea of genius which differs a great deal from the usual idea. We have to admit that our usual idea of genius tends to be pretty vague, like all the stereotyped ideas people have today. In general terms we may say that Brentano's characterization of genius does not agree with the idea of a genius as it has existed until now; it does, however, agree with what genius will be in the future, for it will not be the same in the future.

In the past, people were geniuses because their souls still had the power, through heredity or education, to send impulses into the physical body which caused the Intuitions, Inspirations and Imaginations of a genius to arise unconsciously. The power of genius was therefore available when the body was still in the ascendant. In future, bodies will be in the descendant and the power will no longer be available. Anything resembling genius in the future will arise because the individuals concerned, whom we may also call geniuses, see more deeply into the spiritual world which is all around them. Thus the impulses will not come from their unconscious physical aspect but out of deeper insight into the world of the spirit. The changing nature of genius provides an excellent demonstration of the break which has occurred between evolution as it was in the past and evolution as it will be in the future. We might say that in the past genius arose from the body, but in the future this will be replaced by something which comes from insight into the realm of the spirit. A mind sensitive to present developments like that of Brentano would be aware of this, just as Suess, looking at the earth, realized that it is now in the process of dying.

What lies behind it all? The fact that human beings now relate to their environment in a different way. The space around us no longer speaks to us in the way it did when human bodies were ‘fresh’, as it were. The world around us is one of space, but it no longer yields up the spiritual element. Colours no longer speak to us as elements filled with spirit, sounds no longer reveal the spirit that is in them; they have become substantial. And human nature has become more inward. It is strange to say, is it not, that the superficial human beings of the present time really and truly have become more inward. On the other hand human beings of today may be said to be superficial because in their present incarnation their inner constitution is such that they simply cannot reach their own inner being. They do not become aware of their inner nature; they do not gain the power to know themselves; they do not discover what they really are.

Someone who sees the world with the eye of the spirit sees many people today who simply are not themselves. Bodies are walking around, and the soul is not entirely inside them. Why? Because it is no longer the soul's task to enter fully into the body, which is beginning to crumble away; instead the soul's task is to prepare for what will happen on Jupiter. Our souls are even now making preparations for the future.

This is the situation we must penetrate with a perceptive mind. We are entirely constituted to hear the words of a cosmic spirit: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ But it will be a long time before human beings are prepared to grasp this truth. Yet in spite of our outward superficiality we are truly less and less of this world. This, however, should not be confused with something else. People might well believe they could now walk around like Nietzsche's followers who called themselves ‘tawny beasts’, saying: We are in the world of the spirit; we do not belong to the physical world. The answer to this must be: The part of yourself of which you have knowledge does belong to the physical world; the rest is occult; it is hidden.

Nevertheless, we have the task of using all our powers of insight and all our inner strength to become aware of the essential element in us which can no longer give itself completely to the body, nor penetrate the whole body. We must see ourselves as candidates for the Jupiter age. This will only happen gradually, however. For the time being, human beings still continue in what they receive from their environment. It means that they continue in something which is below them. With every incarnation we withdraw more and more from the body, so that to some extent we are hovering above it.

If this were not the case, and people had to depend entirely on being like the ancient Greeks, the prospects for the further development of humanity would be dire indeed. Strange as it may seem, conscientious occult research aiming to penetrate the laws of human evolution reveals a truth which may well cause dismay at first sight. It shows that in a time not all that far ahead, possibly as early as the seventh millennium, all women will be infertile on earth. The withering and crumbling of human bodies will go so far that this will happen. Just think—if the relationships that can only come into their own between the inner life and the physical body were to continue unchanged, people would no longer find anything to do on earth. The fact is that women will no longer be able to have children, even before the earth has gone through all its stages. Human beings therefore have to find a different way of relating to earthly existence. The final stages of earth evolution will make it necessary for them to do without physical bodies and yet be present on earth. Existence holds more mysteries than people would like to think when they base themselves on the primitive ideas of modern science.

There was an instinctive feeling for this in the twilight of the fourth, and the dawn of the fifth, post-Atlantean age. Things were said then which relate to developments in our own age. They could not be understood, however, and people often did not even properly understand human nature. Think of the seemingly brutal teaching of St Augustine, for example, and also of Calvin, that some people were destined to be blessed, others to be condemned, some to be good, therefore, and others evil. Such was the doctrine. It seems brutal. And yet, seen in the right light, such doctrines do not seem entirely wrong. Many things which seem wrong are also to some extent relatively right. Knowledge of human nature at the time of St Augustine and in the centuries which followed did not actually relate to the human mind and spirit—as you know, the human spirit was decreed to be non-existent at the Council of Constantinople—but to the human being who walks the earth. Let one try and put as clearly as I can what this is really about.

You may meet one person and then another, and in St Augustine's terms we might say: this one is destined for good, and that one for evil. But only the outer physical body, not the individual personality. The latter was not even discussed in Augustine's day. If you have a number of people you may say—but it only has come to have meaning in more recent times and it would have been meaningless at the time of the ancient Greeks—These are human souls; they do, of course, fashion their own destinies. No impulses come to them from predestination. But they dwell in bodies destined for good or evil.

As earth evolution progresses, human beings will be less and less able to develop their souls parallel to their bodies. Why, then, should it not be possible for an individual to incarnate in a body, the whole constitution of which destines it for evil? The individual can still be good inside such a body, for the connection with the physical has become less close. This, then, is another awkward truth, but a truth which we must make our own.

In short, human beings are becoming more and more inward and we must seriously come to realize that during the final epochs of earth evolution they will withdraw from the outer physical body. It will however, need the brutal reality of the facts to get human beings to accept these things, and this can only be gradually, as I have said on a number of occasions. The facts will force them to know these things.

Looking at the way people appear on the outside today we get one image. Looking at the way they do not immediately appear on the outside we get another image. Today the two images are no longer in complete agreement, and they will agree less and less as time goes on. It is really necessary for people today not to rely entirely on outer appearances if they want to form an idea; they have to base their ideas on the things which influence human beings out of the spirit.

In the future, ideas like these will be particularly vital in everything connected with politics, the social sciences, and so on, and especially also the sphere of education. Ideas coming from the natural and not from the spiritual world can no longer adequately meet human needs. Hence the inadequate political and social theories we have today. People want to base their judgement only on their physical environment; they do not want to be inspired by anything of a spiritual nature. This is the reason why their theories and political programmes are so inadequate. We are living in an age when programmes like the one which Woodrow Wilson is presenting are no longer appropriate;⁸ the age demands world programmes created out of other depths. It will need the assistance of the spirit to make world programmes today.

People have not yet reached the point, however, where they can really be conscious of the truth of everything I have just told you. They are lumbering behind. They have been people of the fifth post-Atlantean age for a long time, but they still want to think like people of the fourth post-Atlantean age. That was right, it was great and truly in harmony in ancient Greek times. It is utterly wrong, however, to think like a Greek today.

The Greeks were given everything they needed from their environment, an environment which no longer exists today. In many respects one first of all notes a form of hatred or dislike arising—hatred being merely another aspect of fear—when it comes to taking an inward look at the human being. People want to limit themselves to the outer aspect. And so we get echoes of the past that are nothing but echoes of a time when human beings were not fully in control of their lives.

A very interesting phenomenon, one I would ask you to take a really good look at, is the following. Imagine we have a number of people putting their heads together, in a meeting, let us say—illuminated minds are meeting all the time nowadays. Well, the actual spiritual element has already separated to some extent; it really is no longer entirely present in those heads, for it has become inward. If there are thinkers present at the meeting, even superficial thinkers, the real heads are hidden from view—the people who are sitting there are not aware of them. And so it may be that you get meetings, or individuals, with old ideas running on like clockwork in those visible physical heads. These people have no idea of the demands of our time, but their automatic minds may bring up all kinds of echoes from the past. It is interesting that such things happen every now and again.

In 1912 a science called eugenetics was established in London.⁹ People tend to use high-falutin' names for anything which is particularly stupid. The ideas you find in eugenetics really came from people's brains and not from their souls. What are the aims of this science? To ensure that only healthy individuals are born in future and not inferior ones; economics and anthropology are to join forces to discover the laws according to which men and women are to be brought together in such a way that a strong race is produced.

People are really beginning to think in this way. The ideal of the London congress, which was chaired by Darwin's son,¹⁰ was to examine people of different classes to see how large the skulls of the rich were compared to those of the poor, who have less opportunity for learning; how far sensibility went in rich and poor; how far the rich could resist getting tired and how far the poor would do so, and so on. They want to gain information on the human body in this way which may at some future date enable them to establish exactly the following: This is how the man should look, this is how the woman should look, if they are to produce the true human being of the future; he should have such a capacity for getting tired and she such a capacity; this size skull for him, and a matching size for her, and so on.

Those are the rumblings, natural rumblings, in brains which are emptied of soul; ideas rumbling about which had reality in the Atlantean age. Then there really were laws which enabled people to determine size, growth, and all kinds of things by cross-breeding and the like. It was a science that was widespread in Atlantean times and—as I mentioned yesterday—sorely misused. Atlantean science worked on the basis of physical relationships and it was known that if such a man was brought together with such a woman—differences between men and women were much greater at the time—the result would be such and such a creature, and then a different variety could be produced—just as plant breeders do today. The Mysteries brought order into this cross-breeding, where related and different elements were brought together. They established groups and withdrew anything which had to be withdrawn from humanity . The blackest of black magic was practised in Atlantean times, and order was created by establishing classes and taking these matters out of human control. This was one of the factors which led to the nations and races of today. The issue of the nation as an entity is coming up again in our present time; it is an echo of the soulless brain from Atlantean times. There is so much talk about national issues today. But it is only the body speaking. The spirit has withdrawn and already belongs to a totally different world today. There you have the discrepancy between the reality and the speechifying about the ‘principle of nationality’ which goes on today. This will never lead to anything good; if politics are based on issues relating to nations, which are no longer issues of the day because the soul belongs to entirely different orders and realms than those which come to expression in our physical nature, this will inevitably take us into chaos over and over again. All this must be known, and it can only be known through anthroposophy. Those rumblings in brains emptied of soul are the reason why ideas that human beings should be produced on the basis of certain laws are now coming up again.

Something else also reveals the rumblings of outdated ideas, ideas which can still be active in dried-up brains but which no longer come from the soul. The soul needs to be made strong, so that anthroposophy can enter into it. Then people will speak out of their individual reality again.

You have no doubt heard of all the nonsense we get now, with all kinds of different people shown to be what they are in the light of psychopathology. All it needs is for someone to write a decent poem; the doctor will immediately tell you what illness he has. So we get all kinds of treatises—on Viktor Scheffel from the psychiatrist's point of view, on Nietzsche from the psychiatrist's point of view, and on Conrad Ferdinand Meyer from the psychiatrist's point of view.¹¹ Reading between the lines we feel the authors of these books are saying: Pity he did not get treatment in time. If he had had treatment at the right time, someone like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, for example, would not have written the kinds of things he has written, for they are entirely written out of a diseased state.

It is very much in the spirit of our time that no attention is paid to the growing inwardness of individual human beings. Sometimes this must inevitably have the effect, especially in someone like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, of the outward, physical body showing signs of disease, so that the inner life can achieve the highest spiritual level in a work of art, quite independent of the physical body.¹²

I am not bringing these things up in order to criticize them. From the purely medical point of view they are, of course, correct; there is nothing to be said against them. It is equally possible to do something else from a purely medical point of view. You can take the gospels and show, from a number of things, that Jesus Christ—that strange individual—existed because some quite specific pathological elements had come together. Such a book has in fact been written, and anyone can read it.¹³ Another book shows that everything which came from the individual called Jesus could only have come from this individual because he was suffering from a particular disease.

We must penetrate all these things with our understanding if we are to enter into present developments. I especially want to discuss the education issue in this context, to show you that today growing children cannot be considered in a way which focuses only on things which come to outward expression. If we were to do so, our efforts at education would sometimes simply fail to reach the element which is now becoming more and more inward. Such things are not properly taken into account today, and this is why there is so little understanding and so much philistinism. In some respects, philistinism is the opposite of a true understanding of human nature, for philistines always like to stick to the norm. Anything which does not fit in with this is considered abnormal. But this will not help us to understand the world around us and, above all, other human beings. One of the things we should encourage in our Anthroposophical Society is to learn to understand human beings so that we may give due regard to the individual nature of others. Individuals differ much more from each other than one thinks, for the human soul no longer relates entirely to the body and this makes human beings very complex today.

This, of course, has other consequences, though the matter is dealt with rather clumsily today; we must hope that anthroposophy will help people become less clumsy about it. Just consider, in ancient Greece the whole body was filled with the whole soul, and they were in agreement. Today this is not the case, for the bodies are partly empty. I am not saying anything derogatory about empty heads; they will stay empty as part of evolution. In reality, however, nothing stays empty in this world. The heads are merely empty of something which was destined to fill them at another time. Nothing is ever completely empty.

With the human soul withdrawing more and more from the body, the body is increasingly in danger of being filled with something else. And if human beings are not prepared to take up impulses which can only come from spiritual knowledge, the body will be filled with demonic powers. Humanity is facing a destiny where the body may be filled with ahrimanic demonic powers. So we have to add to what I said yesterday about future development: there will be people in future who are Tom, Dick and Harry in ordinary life, which is something determined by social circumstances, but their bodies will be empty to such an extent that a powerful ahrimanic spirit can live in them. One will be meeting ahrimanic demons. Human beings will not be what they appear to be. The individual person will be deep down inside, and outwardly one will get a totally different picture.

This shows the complexity of life to come. It is reasonable to say that there will be situations in future when it will be difficult to know who one is dealing with. Ricarda Huch's longing for the devil really arises from what will be coming in the future. The institutions and ideas, especially the social ideas people have today, are abstract and crude; they are clumsy in the face of the complexities that are lying ahead. And because people are not able to have ideas or concepts about the true nature of things, they are sliding more and more deeply into chaos—the events of the war make this quite clear. Chaos is arising because reality has changed; reality is becoming fuller and richer than anything people are able to think of or create in their heads. And we shall have to be clear in our minds that we are faced with a choice: To go on beating each other to a pulp, shooting at one another, in the way we do now, because we do not know how to bring order into the world or, start to develop concepts and ideas to match the complexity of the situation.

A spiritual movement must exist where people seek to develop concepts which meet the real situation. There will be vast numbers of people in future who want to stick to the rumblings of the past—today they are still in the minority. Their concepts, ideas and actions will be based on the outside world around them and on the fact that their bodies are being filled with the ahrimanic spirit which wants them to form such ideas. We should not fool ourselves, for we are faced with a quite specific movement. At the Council of Constantinople it was decreed that the spirit did not exist; it was dogmatically stated that the human being consisted only of body and soul, and it was heresy to speak of a human spirit. In the same way attempts will be made to decree the soul, the inner life, as nonexistent.

The time will come—and it may not be far off—when quite different tendencies will come up at a congress like the one held in 1912 and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of spirit and soul. ‘Sound’ people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be considered to be sick and—you can be quite sure of it—a medicine will be found for this. At Constantinople the spirit was made non-existent. The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug. Taking a ‘sound point of view’, people will invent a vaccine to influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never even gets the idea that there is a soul and a spirit.

The two philosophies of life will be in complete opposition. One movement will need to reflect how concepts and ideas may be developed to meet the reality of soul and spirit. The others, the heirs of modern materialism, will look for the vaccine to make the body ‘healthy’, that is, makes its constitution such that this body no longer talks of such rubbish as soul and spirit, but takes a ‘sound’ view of the forces which live in engines and in chemistry and let planets and suns arise from nebulae in the cosmos. Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity.

People who think that playful ideas will help them to look ahead to the future are very much mistaken. We need serious, profound ideas to look ahead to the future. Anthroposophy is not a game, nor just a theory; it is a task that must be faced for the sake of human evolution.

• 1. Steiner, Rudolf, Riddles of the Soul. Translated by Eva Frommer. Rudolf Steiner Press, Bristol 1994.
• 2. Eduard von Suess (1831–1914), Austrian geologist born in London, Professor of Geology in Vienna from 1875 to 1901. He was the founder of the ‘new geology’ and a member of the Lower House in Austria. His most important work, Das Antlitz der Erde, was translated into English in 1904–1910.
• 3. The major lecture given by Rudolf Steiner on this subject was in Dornach on 24 January 1917. This lecture, entitled ‘Griechische und Roemische Plastik—Renaissance-Plastik’ (Greek and Roman sculpture—Renaissance sculpture), has been published in Kunstgeschichte als Abbild innerer geistiger Impulse, GA 292. It has not yet been translated into English.
• 4. Franz Brentano (1838–1917), Catholic priest who abandoned the priesthood in 1873. Professor of Philosophy at Wurzburg 1872–1880, senior lecturer at the University of Vienna 1880–1895.
• 5. Steiner, Rudolf, Riddles of the Soul (see Note 1 above). The parts are: Anthropology and anthroposophy; Max Dessoir on anthroposophy; Franz Brentano, a memoir; outline extensions.
• 6. Max Dessoir (1867–1947), Professor of Philosophy in Berlin.
• 7. Das Genie, lecture given in the hall of the Engineers' and Architects' Society in Vienna, published in Leipzig in 1892.
• 8. Woodrow Wilson, see Note 2 of lecture I.
• 9. ‘Eugenetics’ or, more commonly, ‘eugenics’, a term coined by Francis Galton (1822–1911) in a series of articles on ‘Hereditary talent and genius’ published in 1865. The term is now generally only used in the applied sense, whilst the scientific discipline is now called genetics.
• 10. Leonard Darwin (1850–1943) was Chairman of the Eugenics Education Society from 1911 to 1928; his book The Need for Eugenic Reform was published in 1926.
• 11. Paul Moebius (1853–1907): Goethe, 2 voll, Leipzig 1903; Nietzsche, Leipzig 1904; Schopenhauer, Leipzig 1904; Ueber Scheffels Krankheit, Halle 1907.
• 12. The 1941 German edition has the following additional sentences at this point: It is easy to see why people have no mind for such things today, materialism being so prevalent. They have to be said, however, for they are realities. The future will show that all efforts which do not arise from the Spirit will not be for the good, but will increasingly lead to chaos. These are facts which have to be reckoned with.
  
  The shorthand record does not include these sentences and it is assumed they got into the earlier edition by accident.
• 13. De Loosten (Dr Georg Lomer), Jesus Christus vom Standpunkte des Psychiaters, Bamberg 1905. Also, Emil Rasmussen, Jesus. Eine vergleichende psychopathologische Studie, Leipzig 1905.

We are going to continue on the same theme, as this will provide a background for the evaluation of the significant events which now present themselves to the human mind, events in which humanity is now caught up and which are more significant than is often realized today. I have sought to show that momentous occurrences in the spiritual world form the background to these events. I have also spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early 1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the human realms. As I said, from that time onwards they have been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are now moving among us.

Inevitably the question must arise as to the actual nature of the battle which raged in the spiritual regions between the 1840s and the 1870s, and of the activity of the spirits of darkness since November 1879.

The story of what was behind this significant battle, or we might say behind the scenes of world history, can only unfold slowly and gradually. Today we shall first of all consider some ways in which a reflection of the battle was cast on human regions. I have often drawn attention to the great turning-point in the evolution of modern cultural spheres which came in the early 1840s. This was the turning-point which brought the full impulse for the development of materialism. Materialism could only develop in consequence of major occurrences in the spiritual world which then continued in a downward direction and gradually caused materialistic impulses to be instilled into humanity. If we consider how events in spiritual regions were reflected here on earth, two things are particularly evident.

The first is that the purely physical intellect and a culture based on this showed a tremendous upsurge in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, much more so than people imagine today—future observers will see this more clearly. It is reasonable to say that anyone who studies the evolution of humanity and has an eye for more subtle elements in human life will note that there has never been such an upsurge in subtlety of conception, acumen and critical faculties for the adherents of materialism as during those decades. All the thinking I have characterized, thinking that leads to technical inventions, to criticism and to brilliant definitions, is physical thinking and is bound to the brain. A materialist who wanted to describe human evolution would have reason to say: ‘Humanity has never been as clever as during those decades.’ It really was clever. If you study the literature—here I mean not only fine literature—you will find that at no other time were ideas so well defined and critical thinking so well developed as in those years, and this was in all kinds of areas. We see a mirror-reflection develop in human souls of the aims certain spirits of darkness were seeking to achieve in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century, always hoping for victory.

They sought to get possession of an ancient inheritance of humanity. This was something we referred to yesterday: Through millennia, the progressive spirits of light guided humanity by means of blood bonds. They brought people together in families, tribes, nations and races, uniting those who belonged together on the basis of truly ancient human and world karma. With their feeling for those blood bonds people then also had a feeling for missions which went a very long way back in the world, missions designed to make the blood bonds—which, of course, came from the earth—part of the general human karma. If one turns one's attention to the spiritual world during the 1820s and 1830s, when the souls which were later to enter into human bodies were still in that world, one finds that the souls which were about to descend had certain impulses which, among other things, were due to the fact that for millennia they had been bound to particular families, tribes, nations and races each time they were on earth. From the 1840s onwards these souls were meant to make the decision to enter into particular bodies. For the spirits of light who sent their impulses into human souls were, of course, guiding human evolution according to the old blood bonds. And so the human souls in the spiritual worlds had certain impulses to follow the ancient human karma on entering into bodies which were to be the population in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The spirits of light were using the old measures of controlling and guiding those souls.

The spirits of darkness wanted to gain control over this. They wanted to drive the impulses of the spirits of light from those human souls and bring in their own impulses. If the spirits of darkness had won the battle in 1879, the relationship between human bodies and souls would have been utterly different from what it actually has become in people born after 1879. Different souls would have been in different bodies, and the plan according to which human affairs on earth were ordered would have been according to the ideal of the spirits of darkness. But it is not. Thanks to the victory that Michael won over the dragon in the autumn of 1879, this could not happen.

During the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the battle was reflected on earth in the particular acumen, critical faculty and so on, which I have described. As I have said before, mere speculation does not get us anywhere; it needs genuine spiritual observation. Speculation could never show that the very qualities of the physical intellect which I have mentioned are a reflection here on earth of the battle over reproduction, over the way in which generation follows generation. These things have to be observed. Anyone who thinks that the right connections between the physical and the spiritual worlds can be found by using the physical intellect is very much in error. This approach will normally give the wrong result, because the rules of logic used are those of the physical sciences. These apply only to the physical world, however; they do not apply to the relationship between the physical and the spiritual worlds. This, then, was one way in which the battle for the blood was reflected.

The other way—this again is something I have mentioned before—was the emergence of spiritualism in the 1840s and later. Certain groups, and they were far from small, sought to explore the connections with the spiritual world by using mediums, that is essentially by physical means. If this had succeeded, if the spirits of darkness had been strong enough to gain the victory over Michael's adherents in 1879, spiritualism would have spread enormously. For spiritualism gets its impulses not only from the earth, but is also governed by influences coming from the other world. It is important to be very clear that this is not a matter of choice; it is not possible to be easygoing and say: ‘Either we accept such things or we refuse to accept them.’ It certainly is not like this. The things that happened in spiritualistic circles partly represented a significant intrusion of the spiritual world; they certainly arose from impulses which came from the spiritual world and were often closely bound up with human destinies. They were nevertheless a mirror-reflection of the battle which had been lost in the spiritual region. This is also why spiritualism lost momentum and became so strangely corrupted after that point in time. It would have been the means by which people's attention would have been drawn to the spiritual world, and it would have been the only means if the spirits of darkness had gained the victory in 1879. If they had won, we would live in a world of indescribable acumen which would apply to all kinds of different spheres in life. Speculations on the Stock Exchange, which are sometimes quite dimwitted nowadays, would have been made with incredible acumen. This is one aspect. On the other hand, people far and wide would have sought to satisfy their spiritual needs by using mediums. So there you have what the spirits of darkness intended: physical acumen on the one hand, and a way of seeking connection with the spiritual world based on reduced consciousness on the other. Above all else, the spirits of darkness wanted to prevent spiritual experiences, living experience of the spirit, from coming down into human souls; this was bound to come about gradually after their fall in 1879.

The kind of spiritual experience which is utilized in the spiritual science of anthroposophy would have been impossible if the spirits of darkness had been victorious, for they would then have kept this life and activity in the spiritual regions. It is only because of their fall that instead of merely critical, physical intelligence and the mediumistic approach, it has been and will increasingly be possible to gain direct experiences in the spiritual world. It is not for nothing that I recently told you how the present age is dependent on spiritual influences to a far greater extent than people believe. Our age may be materialistic and want to become even more materialistic, but the spiritual worlds reveal themselves to human beings in many more places than one would think. Spiritual influences can be felt everywhere, though at the present time they are not always good ones.

People often find it embarrassing to admit to others their knowledge of spiritual influences, but many things they do, or initiate, are done because something appeared to them in a dream which was a genuine spiritual influence. Ask poets why they have become poets. Speaking of the time when they first began to be poets they will tell you that they had spiritual experiences which came as in a dream, and this gave them the impulse to be creative. Ask people who have started journals why they did so—I am giving you facts—and they will speak of what they call dreams, though this was actually the transmission of impulses from the spiritual to the physical world. And there is much more of this, also in other areas, but people will not admit to it, for they think if they tell someone: ‘I've done something or other because some spirit or other appeared to me in a dream,’ the other person will call them idiots. This, of course, is not a nice thing to hear. It is the reason why we know so little about what really goes on among people today. The things which now happen sporadically in one place or another are merely the vanguard of what will happen more and more: spirituality will come to human beings because Michael won his victory in 1879. The fact that we have a science of the spirit is also entirely due to this. Otherwise the truths concerned would have remained in the spiritual worlds; they could not have come to dwell in human brains and would not exist for the physical world.

You have been given images which may serve to demonstrate the intentions of the spirits of darkness in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s when they fought the followers of Michael. These spirits have been down here among human beings from the autumn of 1879. They have failed to achieve their aims: spiritualism will not become the general human persuasion; people will not grow so clever from the materialistic point of view that they fall over themselves with their cleverness. The spiritual truths will take root among human beings.

On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.

It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible.¹ I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life—‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists.

A beginning has already been made, though only in the literary field where it is less harmful. As I have mentioned,² learned medical experts have published books on the abnormalities of certain men of genius. As you know, attempts have been made to understand the genius of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Viktor Scheffel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Goethe, by showing them to suffer from certain abnormalities. And the most astounding thing in this field is that people have also sought to understand Jesus Christ and the Gospels from this point of view. Two publications are now in existence in which the origins of Christianity are said to be due to the fact that at the beginning of our era there lived an individual who was mentally and psychologically abnormal; this individual went about in Palestine as Jesus Christ and infected people with Christianity.

These, as I said, are the beginnings in the field of literature. The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption—oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered—people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field—the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the spirits of light.

The first step must be to throw people's views into confusion, turning their concepts and ideas inside out. This is a serious thing and must be watched with care, for it is part of some highly important elements which will be the background to events now in preparation.

I am choosing my words with great care. I am saying ‘in preparation’ because I am fully aware that to say ‘in preparation’, after the events which have taken place in the last three years, is something significant. Anyone who is able to see more deeply into these matters knows them to be preparations. Only superficial people can believe that this war, which is not a war of the old kind, will tomorrow or the day after be followed by a peace of the old kind. You have to be very superficial to believe this. Many will believe it, of course, if outer events appear to be in accord with the notions some people have; they will fail to realize what actually lies dormant beneath the surface.

It is interesting to consider the decades from the 1840s onwards, both in general and in detail. We have had a general characterization of them in these last weeks, and I have to some extent gone over this again today. A study of representative figures—the spiritual impulses which power evolution come to expression in such figures—will show that the general insights gained also prove true in individual instances. Let me give you an example which may seem to be a minor one. It is something I also mentioned last year.³

Numerous commentaries have been written on Goethe's Faust. Oswald Marbach's⁴ commentaries do not lack depth; they are in some respect profound. It is fair to say that the people who have been least profound are the literary historians, for it is their academic duty to understand such matters, which, of course, tends to be an obstacle to real understanding. Oswald Marbach wrote well about Faust because he was not really a literary historian. He lectured on Goethe's Faust, mathematics, mechanics and technology at Leipzig University, and at the present time the mysteries of the cosmos are easier to penetrate by studying Marbach's mechanics and technology than by applying the ‘modern science’ of historians and literary historians. However, we do find something quite peculiar in the case of Oswald Marbach. He spoke on Goethe's Faust during the 1840s but had ceased to do so by the end of the 1840s, nor did he speak about it in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He only started to lecture on Goethe's Faust again in the late 70s. In between he spoke only on mathematics, mechanics and technology, that is he devoted himself to the sciences which offered the best opportunity, especially at the time, to foster one's acumen and critical faculties. It is most interesting to see how he refers to this in his preface: “Thirty or forty years ago, I used to lecture on Goethe's Faust at Leipzig University—the book was published in 1881—but I have only taken the subject up again in recent years (1875). Why such a long interval? Many factors were involved, outer and inner ones, both subjective and objective. I grew older and finally old and so did my students: semester by semester they grew more and more morose. (People were getting more clever, but for anyone who looked more deeply also more morose!) Open interest of the spirit in the spirit was getting less and less and we lived in an age when usefulness counted more than beauty. For thirty years I yielded to necessity rather than to my own inclination and put philosophy and poetry aside, teaching the exact sciences of mathematics, physics and mechanics instead.”

This was the time of materialistic acumen. One sentence in the preface is tremendously interesting, for it points directly to what mattered at this time. Marbach states that in his conscious mind he always thought he was doing exactly what he wanted to do in the past, whether interpreting Faust or lecturing on technology. However, when he took up Faust again to interpret the work, he had to confess he had been under an illusion, for he had merely obeyed the spirit of the time. It would be good if many people could realize the extent to which they are under illusions. For it was the ideal of the spirits of darkness before 1879, and has been even more so since they walk among us in the human realms since 1879, to spin a web of illusion over human beings and into human brains and let illusions stream through human hearts.

Something else is of interest when one considers such an individual who is representative, as it were, of the influences which heaven brought to bear on earth. He says—and this is in accord with history—that in the 1840s he would mostly speak about Faust, Part 1 at the university, for there was no interest in Part 2. When he started to lecture on Faust again—and we can now say this was after Michael's victory over the dragon—his exposition would mostly be on Part 2. The age of acumen and critical faculties was indeed a time when access to Part 2 of Goethe's Faust was difficult. Even today this work, which is one of the greatest affirmations of Goetheanism, is relatively little understood. Efforts at understanding are, of course, liable to make us feel ill at ease, for nowhere else is the atmosphere in which people live today treated with such humour, such irony, as in Part 2 of Goethe's Faust. People live in a social atmosphere today which has been gradually evolving since the sixteenth century. They hail everything which has been achieved from the sixteenth century onwards as great and glorious achievements of our time and positively wallow in those achievements. Goethe was not only a man of his time; he was inwardly able to look ahead to the twentieth century and wrote Part 2 of Faust for the twentieth, twenty-first and later centuries. This will be only understood in the future. Hidden below the surface is a humorous and ironical look at developments since the sixteenth century, written in grand style. Consider the way Goethe lets the much admired advances on which civilizations live today be presented to Faust as a contrivance of Mephistopheles. Thus not only the paper spectre of the golden florin,⁵ but all the glorious developments from the sixteenth century onwards were the creation of Mephistopheles. In time to come, humanity will see the magnificent irony with which the creations of that time are treated in Part 2 of Faust. On the one hand, we have Faust in his quest for the spirit, and on the other, Mephistopheles, representative of the spirits of darkness, who invents everything humanity has come to depend on and will depend on more and more, especially in the twentieth century.

Much which will help us to be on our guard may be found hidden in Part 2 of Faust. It is a profoundly significant symptom that someone who had used physics, mechanics, mathematics and technology to learn the secrets of the age felt drawn to speak about Part 2 exactly when the victory had been won over the dragon. For decades before this he would speak only of Part 1, which alone could be understood at the time.

We have seen, especially also in the course of last year, that anthroposophy is gradually helping us to bring life into things which Goethe was only able to present in images, and to discover their deeper meaning in Part 2 of Faust.⁶ Anthroposophy clearly cannot be derived from a study of Faust, but it is certainly true that anthroposophy throws a new and much clearer light on the impressive images Goethe has given in Part 2, and in his magnificent discourses in Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years.

Here we touch on a trend which will have to gain ground under the influence of the progressive spirits of light as time goes on, to counter the efforts of the spirits of darkness; and it will gain ground if human beings are on their guard against the spirits of darkness. These last three years have been a challenge to be watchful and on our guard, though the numbers of souls able to perceive the call are as yet far from adequate. We have been able to see the opposite trend at work here, there and everywhere. It is particularly when spiritual life is beginning to be possible that the spirits of hindrance are very much to the fore. We have seen characteristic things and we shall see more of them. Even just to hint at such things is liable to create continuous misunderstanding. The spiritual atmosphere in which people live today is impregnated with the will to misunderstand to such an extent that one's words are immediately interpreted as something different from what they actually mean to convey. One has to use human words, and these have all kinds of associations.

Today, so many people base their judgement on national passions that if one has in some way to characterize someone who belongs to a particular nation, simply as a human individual who is here on earth, this is taken amiss by people who also belong to that nation, despite the fact that something said about individuals who are involved in current events, for example, has nothing to do with one's views of some nation or other. The belief that the tempest now raging is caused by the things that everybody is talking about today is especially harmful because it is especially senseless. The causes are much more deeply hidden and initially have really nothing to do with national aspirations in some respects—please note I am saying in some respects. National aspirations are merely made use of by certain powers, but the majority of people are so superficial that they do not want to know about this. It will be some time before an objective view is taken in this area.

Large sections of humanity find it easiest to ascribe greatness and far-sightedness to ideas which have arisen in a brain as limited as that of someone just out of teacher training college who is let loose not just on a class of school children, but in this case on the whole of humanity. As I said on a number of occasions, it did not need this terrible time which has come upon us to form an objective opinion on Woodrow Wilson from the point of view of spiritual science. I spoke of this in the lectures I gave in Helsingfors in 1913; you can read it up in The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita.⁷ There I spoke of the world schoolmastery of Woodrow Wilson and the shallow superficiality of the man. In those days, however, you were outside the Spirit of the time when you spoke about Woodrow Wilson like this, for his grammar-schoolboy essays on independence, culture and literature were then still being translated into European languages. It will be a long time yet before people will feel embarrassed at taking seriously the grammar school level policies of Woodrow Wilson.

Spirits of darkness are at work everywhere to befog human minds. One day people will waken from the mists and vapours in which they are now asleep and they will find it hard to understand how people could have allowed themselves to be kept on leading-reins by Woodrow Wilson and his wisdom in the early twentieth century without feeling embarrassed. A moment of waking will only come when people begin to feel embarrassed at policies which are possible today.

It is difficult to say truth-inspired things today because they sound too much in opposition to the ideas which have been inculcated into people's heads. And it is difficult to form an independent judgement in the atmosphere which has been produced not only during the last three years, but also through everything I have called a social carcinoma in the lectures I gave in Vienna.⁸ It is necessary to take these things with profound seriousness and not apply to them the concepts and ideas which people have been in the habit of using as their criteria. It will be necessary to realize that the present time demonstrates the inadequacy and indeed the utter uselessness of the ideas humanity has come to accept, and that in terms of world history it is indecent for people to base their judgement on the very ideas which have led to present events when those events clearly show them to have been wrong. Do people think they can cure the ills of the present time by applying the same principles which have brought them about? If so, they are utterly deceiving themselves.

Humanity has a certain sum total of cultural achievements which come from older times. These are now being used up. Every day brings evidence of their being used up without anything new taking their place. People are so little prepared today to understand and see through such things in their full seriousness. Many are still thinking exactly the as they did in 1913, in the belief that the understanding they had in 1913 will also be adequate for 1917; they do not have enough sense of reality to see that this kind of thinking has a great deal to do with the events of the year 1917, having brought them about, and that it cannot cure the ills we experience now, in 1917.

The need of the present time is that we go deeply into the events which have occurred since the fall of the spirits of darkness; we must gain as much insight as possible into the events of the 1880s, 1890s, and the first two decades of the twentieth century. People are utterly confused in their judgement with regard to them.

Neither do they have a real idea of the radical difference in the way people felt and reacted after 1879 compared to the way they did before 1879. Going into something like Part 2 of Goethe's Faust will also help us to progress; this work could not be understood in Goethe's time because it is a critique of what Goethe perceived to be the content of the twentieth century. Characteristically, someone like Oswald Marbach only found access to Part 2 after the fall of the spirits of darkness.

These are the insights and impulses which will help us to grow inwardly so that we may meet the needs of our time. Many of the needs sown before 1879 have not come to fruition, and in connection with this there is a significant question which should really cast its shadow on every human soul. Today I want to put it merely as a question.

The events in which we are caught up today indicate where humanity stands now. What matters now is not merely to understand them, but to find a way out of them. Yet while there is so little will to penetrate the deeper, real impulses which have led to the present age, practical minds will not be able to understand these matters. It is wrong to think that no one has sufficient insight into the current situation. People simply do not want to listen to them, just as they do not want to know about such a thing as Goetheanism, which is also like the voice of the twentieth century. Yet this voice will only be rightly understood if people seek to understand, seriously and in all dignity, the profound significance of the fall of the spirits of darkness in the autumn of 1879. To understand the present time, it will be necessary to understand the spiritual evolution of humanity. That is why I spoke of Oswald Marbach, whose poem I gave you last year to let you see how he looks at the past and ahead to the future. He wrote the poem to mark the anniversary when Goethe found entry into communities then called Masonic or the like, though in the eighteenth century this meant something different from what it means today. Goethe's viewpoint allowed him insight into many of the mysterious impulses which go through the world, things that people are too superficial to want to see. Oswald Marbach wrote these verses to mark the anniversary of Goethe finding his way to the world of the spirit:

With you, my brother, father, sublime master,
We now join hands across a hundred years
To mark the steadfast love which does unite
And closely bind all independent minds;
Greatest of spirits, mind most independent,
All our endeavour is to reach your heights;
We dedicate ourselves to you! We dedicate our sons,
So that one day achievement be the crown.
You strove as we now strive; yet the soul of your endeavour
To gain self-knowledge that will lead to wisdom
Was always life itself with vigour lived,
Was power creative, actively progressing
To works which rise into the light,
In glorious beauty for eternity:
Like Israel you struggled against God
Until you won the victory o'er yourself!
The mystery which now for ever binds us
Will not be told to unenlightened souls;
Yet make it known to all the world
In deeds of purest love that never tire,
In the clear light which spirit gives to spirit,
In life eternal which shall never fade.
Lead on then, Master! Where you went before
We're drawn to follow in most ardent longing.

Such is the mood that must unlock the ‘gates of fulfilment’.

• 1. See fourth to last paragraph of lecture 5.
• 2. See lecture 5.
• 3. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlaeuterungen zu Goethes “Faust”. Band I. GA 272. Not available in English.
• 4. Oswald Marbach (1810–1890), Professor of Technology in Leipzig, poet and writer; head of ‘Balduin zur Linde’ Freemasons' Lodge. Goethes Faust, Teil I and II erklaert, 1881.
• 5. Faust 2, Act 1, Scene 2: in the imperial palace, Mephistopheles tells the emperor and his advisers that paper money will solve the financial crisis. Scene 4 describes the rapid spread of paper money.
• 6. During 1916, the work on stage productions with eurythmy of scenes from Part 2 of Goethe's Faust which had started in 1915, culminated in a number of performances. See the lecture of 4 November 1916 (GA 172) in The Karma of Vocation, tr. by 0. D. Wannamaker, rev. by G. Church. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 7. Steiner, R. The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita. Tr. by G. M. Adams, rev. by D. M. Bugbey. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 8. See Note 2 of lecture 1.