The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In this lecture I would like to speak about certain colorations regarding the characteristics of the present spiritual life, which our lecture work will have to assume. We must not limit ourselves to focusing our speech merely on understanding the intellectual side of social issues, but we must work to make the world aware of how, with regard to certain things, people must feel differently from the way they currently feel, especially in the supposedly influential circles. For what lives outwardly in institutions, what happens outwardly in people's social actions, depends entirely on the way people think, feel and will. That is why I have emphasized so strongly that the human being as such must be placed at the center of the social as well as the whole view of life and the world. But we ourselves must develop a sense of how misguided and lost the life of feeling has become in the present day. We must have a keen sense that it is precisely through this often quite perverse life of feeling that the civilized world has come to its present situation. We should make such things clear to ourselves by means of examples. And we should also make them clear by means of examples from the world. We can easily find such examples if we just discuss the treatment that the anthroposophical movement is receiving in our time, with a certain objective sense.

When discussing social issues, the moral aspect must always be emphasized. This consists in the fact that the leading people of the immediate past have allowed events of the time to unfold in a rather irresponsible manner. Is it not the case that the leading circles were only concerned with the staging of the course of the world in the sense in which modern technology and the forms of materialism that have emerged in recent times support the course of the world, and how the course of the world is supported by them? And it is quite clear: no attention has been paid to the influence that this course of the world must have on the countless people who, as the proletariat, have been formed precisely by this course of the world. All this has really been allowed to happen with a carelessness that now, of course, appears tragic, but which must be clearly recognized if any improvement is to occur.

A glaring example of this carelessness is, of course, this, which I have mentioned several times before: at the end of the 1960s, Austria had a Minister of Police, Giskra. Even then, there were some people who pointed out that a social question was looming on the horizon of modern civilization. And when certain questions were put to him about the social question, this police minister replied: “Austria knows no social question. That stops at Bodenbach!”

Now, this burying one's head in the sand, this ostrich-like policy, has been pursued to the greatest extent by the leading circles in modern times. And this, my dear friends, must be seen through, it must be sharply brought to the present. For one can say: Unscrupulousness has gradually moved out of the external world and into thinking itself, and there it asserts itself, unfortunately unnoticed by very many people. This results in a coarsening of thinking, and this coarsening of thinking is usually denied, especially by today's intellectual people. I would like to illustrate what I have just said with a recent example.

You see, a certain Count Hermann Keyserling, who founded a so-called “School of Wisdom” in Darmstadt, is still a plant from the circles that have operated with the greatest carelessness and unconcern for the course of world events. His bookshop advertises this “School of Wisdom”. And a booklet has just been published that bears, as you may admit yourself, the rather pretentious title 'The Path to Perfection'. This booklet needed to be advertised by the bookstore. The following is added to this advertisement on the outside of the so-called belly band: 'Responding to Rudolf Steiner's attacks'. The bookshop then adds in its announcement: 'Count Keyserling's position on Theosophy in general and on Steiner's Theosophy in particular is communicated in the 14th chapter of his last book 'Philosophy as Art' under the title 'For and against Theosophy'. Rudolf Steiner found it necessary to respond to these entirely objective statements, which proclaimed the truth, with personal insults.” This is the kind of advertising that the bookstore writes for this ‘school of wisdom’! Now it is really necessary, if a social recovery is to occur in the present, to keep an eye on people like this Count Hermann Keyserling and to really say openly and frankly to the world what has been discovered by looking at them. For the pests of contemporary civilization must be exposed.

What this Count Keyserling's inner and intellectual dishonesty is, may be seen from the way in which he proceeds in this writing, which, incidentally, contains the beautiful sentence: “Only the members of the student community are entitled to longer personal discussions with Count Keyserling outside of the general members' meetings. For them, he is available to speak to, by prior appointment and with the exception of Saturdays and Sundays, if he is not traveling, every afternoon between 3 and 5 o'clock in the school premises at Paradeplatz 2, entrance from Zeughausstraße. Should anyone, without being a student, wish to take advantage of the headmaster's time in matters of wisdom, the management reserves the right to charge special consultation fees for the benefit of the school in such cases."

My dear friends, it is certainly justified to laugh at such things; but the things are not ridiculous. It is precisely in these things that the original damage to our social life lies. For you will find the following sentence on page 47: You know that I have, with a certain ruthlessness, but it is necessary in such cases and is well considered, characterized the dishonesty of Count Hermann Keyserling with regard to my dependence on Haeckel, which he has maintained, here in a public lecture, in due form characterized the untruthfulness of Count Hermann Keyserling with regard to my dependence on Haeckel. In response to this characterization, he writes the following sentence: “.... and instead of correcting a possible error on my part, which I would gladly accept, because I did not have time for special Steiner source research... Steiner simply accuses me of lying...” So, this man has the nerve to suggest that anyone can write any untruth and get no other kind of a rap on the knuckles for it than to have it corrected! Just imagine this intellectual laxity, almost working towards it: you can write anything, and the other person is obliged to correct it. If we were to work in this way, we would end up in the social mire. And to write in such a way: “I have no time for too much specialized research into Steiner's sources...” what does that really mean? It really means: I am not taking the time to check exactly what I am writing. And such a man claims that as his good right!

My dear friends, we must have a sense of the perverse intellectualistic sentiments of the present. If we do not acquire this sense, we cannot confront the present with the exposure of this swamp, and then all the rest of our talk is in vain. I must keep repeating that mere defense is of no use. We must take what is used as an attack against us only as a symptom, in order to characterize the intellectual decay that exists. For humanity must know how it is actually being led spiritually today.

This is in contrast to the beautiful denunciation carried out by a Basel university professor who always pops out of the woodwork like a brownie in the night and is perhaps called Professor Heinzelmann for this reason. Dr. Boos has indeed struck out in a somewhat sharp manner in a reply to certain attacks. It was claimed in Swiss newspapers that anthroposophy was borrowed from various ancient writings; something was said about the Indian Vedic and Vedanta literature, the Bhagavad Gita was mentioned, and among the things that were mentioned was also the Akasha Chronicle! Now, you see, Dr. Boos was probably right when he said: to claim something like that is to provide proof that one is telling a deliberate untruth; because the person who says something like that must know that if he goes to the bookcase, he cannot take out the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and then the Akasha Chronicle one after the other. That was how the matter was presented. So they must know that they are writing a falsehood. That “Brownie” from Basel now writes, after I have characterized it accordingly, that my characterization is a “completely new definition of knowing untruthfulness”; I would have provided the definition on page so and so much, an objective untruthfulness is present where one incorrectly asserts something that one should actually know; this contradicts the previously familiar definition of “knowing untruth,” which consists in asserting something “against better knowledge.”

So this university professor writes that there is a definition on that page. But there is no definition at all! I only said that what he says about the Akasha Chronicle is really asserted against better knowledge. So, it is simply lied that there is a definition on that page. People are being hoodwinked by being distracted from the real issue: that it is precisely the assertion against better knowledge that matters.

You see, these are seemingly pedanticities. In reality they are not, but they are what is most necessary today in the moral relationship: that we assert the point of view to the leading personalities, how morally marshy thinking has actually become. And this moral marshmallow is basically spread over the whole of intellectual life today.

Now it is true that this moral decay comes from two sources: firstly from scientific life itself, and secondly from journalism. But that cannot prevent us from seeking out these things wherever they assert themselves and bringing them to people's attention again and again.

And if we want to make it clear, especially to the people of the present day, who are so difficult to understand, how necessary it is for intellectual life to become independent, we will be able to do so by pointing out what has become of intellectual life under the leadership of the state and the economy. It is quite natural for us to present these things in a purely descriptive way, without becoming polemical, and I might say with the same tone with which we endeavor to present any other objective fact. This does, of course, presuppose that we care about such things. And we must be able to have that in general: a clear, open view of what is happening, of what is going on around us. I have already emphasized this from other points of view.

It will not be difficult to show the harmfulness of much of what is found in this brochure by Count Keyserling. Because, isn't it true, in this brochure, where the talk is of that blissful atmosphere into which those who devote themselves to the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt are welcomed, sentences of this caliber can be found: “This” - the atmosphere - “will soon mean such a factor of power that the mere stay in its rooms will be enough for the receptive novice to grasp emotionally what is striven for in it.” Then further: “But the creation of a certain cultural atmosphere does not mean the main intention underlying the School of Wisdom. The atmosphere is the basic prerequisite for achieving more important things. This, however, consists in promoting the called individual not only through the involuntary unconscious influence of a certain lifestyle and the level of being of the leading personalities, but also through intensive private treatment.” And again: “He may hold any world view, adhere to any political program, believe in any faith, pursue any interest; he may be young or old, man or woman: in the School of Wisdom he will learn to relate any ‘being’ to a deeper ‘being’.” At another point, it is emphasized how beautiful the School of Wisdom is because it does not concern itself with whether, for example, people who speak of free money are right or not, or whether other directions are right or not; the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt considers it a small matter whether anyone is right or not in any direction. Rather, all these directions should come together on the ground of the Darmstadt parquet! Because all these arbitrary interests, arbitrary beliefs, arbitrary human conditions are caused there to “refer an arbitrary existence back to a deeper being.”

You see, basically this is only the dark side of something that cannot really get any better unless spiritual life is placed on a completely new and free foundation. For anyone who wants to talk about the recovery of social conditions today must be fully aware that we are at an important moment in the development of humanity in world history, that certain things are simply being sought by working them out of the depths of the human soul. And one of the most important impulses to work out of the depths of the human soul is to overcome the old compulsions in the relationship between people.

Please note this formula: overcoming the old compulsions in the relationship between people. We look back at the social conditions of humanity. We find that in ancient times there existed the institution of effecting social stratification on the basis of mere blood; by virtue of being born of this or that tribe, of this or that family, one was lord, the other servant, one the commanding, the other the dependent. The further back we go in the development of mankind, the more we find that social life was built on such blood and hereditary relationships. They have partly been preserved in the consciousness of the people. What still exists today as the class consciousness of the nobility ultimately stems from ancient times and is essentially a continuation of those social demands that were based on blood in ancient times.

Now, in more recent times, another stratification has been superimposed on this social stratification. And this other one is based on economic power. The social stratification that arose from blood ties has been joined by another stratification that arose from modern economic conditions: the stratification that arises from economic power. Those who are economically powerful belong to a different class from those who have nothing, who are economically powerless. This has been superimposed on the old. Basically, much of our present social conditions are still based on the survival of the old constraints. Today's human consciousness is rising up against this. And basically, a large part of what we call the social questions is based on this democratic rebellion against the old constraints. Therefore, the question arises: how should we act in this regard?

And here we must realize that without the emancipation of the free spiritual life from the other members of the social organism on the ground that I have just characterized, a lasting social state cannot be created. If the spiritual life is really placed on its own ground, then there can be no social coercion in this spiritual life, but only the relationship of free recognition. And this free recognition will arise of its own accord within social life. To put it crudely: You would hardly hire someone as a music teacher who had never played a musical instrument in their life, and democratic sentiment will never demand that absolute equality should prevail among all people with regard to appointing a music teacher. Rather, in completely independent free recognition, someone will be appointed as a music teacher who knows and is able to do the things that are necessary to be a music teacher. And one will not be able to deny recognition to the one who knows and is able to do the things, when there is nowhere something that is practiced by force; recognition will arise all by itself.

In a free spiritual life, there will be a great deal of things that are similar to building on authority. But it will be a building on self-evident authority everywhere. For what is the rebellion of countless people in the present time against all authority based on? This rebellion is based on nothing other than the fact that people perceive that economic conditions impose forced subordination on us, and we do not recognize that economic conditions impose forced subordination on us. Nor do people recognize that forced subordination is imposed by political or blood relations. And this is opposed by the historical element, which I have characterized as the democratic feeling that is now emerging from the depths of humanity. And since, of course, the broad masses have learned from intellectuals and spiritual leaders not accuracy but superficialities, they take history to mean that they reject all authority in economic life. And now the third, intellectual life, is also taken into the bargain, because it does not appear before the soul-eyes of men in its own particular essence. It can only do so when it stands actually in direct free self-administration. The necessity for the liberation of intellectual life must be made clear to people from the most diverse backgrounds.

And we must also emphasize the following: there must be a sphere in which people can truly feel equal. This is not the case today because, on the one hand, the state has absorbed spiritual life and, on the other hand, economic life draws it in, so that it draws the authoritative from both sides into its being and there is actually no ground on which people who have come of age can feel completely equal. If the ground is there on which people who have come of age can feel completely equal, can someone really feel: I am equal to every other human being as a human being. - Then he will also recognize authority in the area where he cannot feel it because it is an absurdity, or he will recognize associative judgment.

Something will arise again – it is not yet opportune to tell people this today, but I am telling you – something will arise that is like what played a certain role in ancient times from different circumstances. Take a village in ancient times: the pastor was a kind of deity in the truest sense of the word. But there were occasions when the pastor appeared purely as a human being among other human beings. They valued this very much. If we now have, on the one hand, spiritual life with the recognition, the free recognition of self-evident authority, and on the other hand, economic life with group judgment, which is based on the confluence of the judgments of associated human beings, and in between a place where people meet without distinction of the rest of the authoritative - and that would be the case if the threefold social organism were there - then it would actually have a real effect in the very deepest sense on solving the social question. But in the deepest sense it must be the case that the teacher, the spiritual person - I mean this symbolically now - takes off his toga when he appears on the ground of the social state life, and that the worker can take off his blouse when he the ground of the social life of the state, so that in fact people meet from both sides in the same uniform, which need not be a uniform in the ordinary sense, but can be equivalent when it is based on the legal-state.

We must attach great importance to the fact that such, I would say, moral impulses, which also live externally, really do come back into human society. For savagery and barbarism would undoubtedly occur if what a true Marxist regards as the ideal social order were to be realized. On the other hand, we can be quite certain of one thing: if the broad masses of the people, after the experiences they have had in Europe in the last few months, listen in the right way, unperturbed by their leaders, long enough, to what the meaning of the threefold social organism is, then a light must finally dawn on them.

But at the same time as this action is being taken, something else must be done: the moral decline, as I have just characterized it, must be brought to consciousness in the judgment of the present. We must prove quite palpably where people simply fall out of morality in their judgments, as is the case with Count Hermann Keyserling. For the man is to a high degree a sand-in-the-eyes-scatterer, and one must only place such a specimen of a human being in front of the contemporaries in the right way. Then one has done something extraordinary morally.

You see, after Count Hermann Keyserling had done, or had done through his bookstore, all that I have mentioned to you, he then accomplished the following. He says: “I only touch on the case in order to make it quite clear by his example how carefully one must distinguish between ‘being’ and ‘knowing’. I cannot possibly have a favorable impression of Steiner's being; noblesse oblige – by this he means: noblesse oblige one not to call a liar a liar – “... but as an expert I still find him very remarkable and advise every critical mind with a psychic disposition to take advantage of the rare opportunity of the existence of such a specialist to learn from and with him. I am familiar not only with his most important accessible writings but also with his cycles, and from them I have gained the impression that Steiner is not only extraordinarily gifted but actually has unusual sources of knowledge at his disposal. He lacks any finer organ for the sense, and therefore must find all wisdom abstract and empty that does not relate to phenomena; but what he presents about such phenomena deserves serious examination, however absurd some of it may sound at first and his style as a revealer of his essence inspires so little confidence, which is why I deeply regret that his action against me, which came as a complete surprise to me, deprives me of the opportunity to make personal contact with him. For it remains true, as I wrote in the same essay that provoked Steiner's anger in defense against his opponents, that an important person should be judged solely by his best qualities; interest in his knowledge and abilities must not be affected by his infirmities and faults. On the same day that I received Steiner's diatribe, I recommended to a student of mine the serious study of his writings and even joining his society, since this seemed to me to be his path and I did not consider contact with the questionable aspects associated with Steiner to be dangerous in his case. One should never forget that every being is multifaceted, that no bad quality devalues the good; and that the character of a society depends entirely on the spirit of its predominant members. The Anthroposophical Society can still have a future if it abandons dogma and sectarianism, if it gives up its dirty agitation and truly becomes what it is supposed to be according to its statutes.

So, as you can see, for those who, unfortunately, are also numerous in the Anthroposophical Society, there is plenty of opportunity to say: Yes, what does Steiner want? Keyserling praises him to the skies! But for me it is not about whether he praises me, but whether he is a pest of civilization or not. Because it seems to me that everything Keyserling says in the end is such that I can only characterize it by saying: This man tries to cover up everything that his superficiality inflicts on the world behind what I can't call it otherwise in this case, adulation. I say this simply because I am fully convinced that Count Keyserling does not have the slightest organ for understanding the things he praises here.

And this must be much more important to us: to go into this objectively, to show the world in our lectures – I have only cited Count Keyserling as an example today – what superficiality and unjustified aspirations there are today. If the world realizes what kind of people are leading it, then it will gain an understanding for the liberation of the spiritual life. For it will be impossible for such heroes to emerge from a free spiritual life. Quite certainly, my dear friends, the earthly life that man spends between birth and death will never produce anything but angels. And only someone like Professor Rein in Jena can make the strange claim that anthroposophical morality is actually meant for angels, as he once did in an article. But even if there are bound to be all kinds of strange eccentrics in the free spiritual life, the majority will not be able to do so, but the majority will be educated differently, precisely because of the inner strength and impulsiveness of the spiritual life. Of course, it is easy to give the world the kind of empty thoughts that Count Keyserling gives, if one has acquired one's social position through old blood ties, as Count Keyserling has, and if one perhaps receives some support from other quarters, which need not be mentioned here, for the establishment of such “schools of wisdom”. But such folly will never be able to arise in a free spiritual life. Because there will certainly be enough people who reject such ideas.

You see, what was important to me in that lecture was to point out the emptiness and abstractness of Keyserling's arguments, the lack of reality in them. And anyone who remembers well will know that I first characterized this emptiness and abstractness, this insubstantiality, this empty verbiage, and then added: Anyone who indulges in empty abstractions and empty verbiage is then compelled, when he encounters something of substantial content, to resort to untruth. That was the context. And at that time, it was the context that was essential. And what has been made of it now? It would be interesting to hear what a man who has been accused of suffering from emptiness, from intellectual and spiritual shortness of breath, has to say in his defense. But the count has the following to say in his journal “The Way to Perfection,” “Communications from the Society for Free Philosophy,” “School of Wisdom.” He says, and he means me, that he finds my wisdom bloodless, abstract and empty and claims that he can always say in advance what people of my ilk might bring forward; the essence of my philosophy is “spiritual shortness of breath, an inner gasping for air,” and I “don't have a clue about anthroposophy, not even a blue one.” So you see, the way I have given this characteristic characterizes Count Keyserling himself. But in this respect he is really only an example. It is precisely that which is contained in the present spiritual life as the main tone that ultimately leads back to such things.

The development of abstract intellectual life in recent centuries has indeed given us the opportunity to see outstanding scholars in various fields who, when it comes down to it, are unable to formulate a single correct and meaningful thought. A good example of this is the excellent biologist Oscar Hertwig from the University of Berlin. When you read his book criticizing Darwinism, you cannot help but say: This is a person who must be considered completely significant in his field. And the book 'The Development of Organisms', it is said, is a good book. But one needs nothing to write such a good book as to be immersed in the mechanism of thoughtless experimental research, to be diligent, to be promoted a little - he was indeed pushed into a certain clique as a Haeckel student - and can be a very important person there if the circumstances are favorable. He is so important that he was even chosen to add something to the wisdom of the former German Emperor Wilhelm II in Berlin, and he was allowed to present him with particularly sensational findings from research into lower organisms! Now, soon after the book on Darwinism by Hertwig was published, which is an excellent book in its field, Hertwig also published a book on social issues. This is nothing more than a compilation of pure nonsense, line after line. Why? Well, you see, with the book 'The Becoming of Organisms' you didn't need to think. One was completely immersed in the mechanism of modern scientific endeavor. But to make a sound judgment in the social sphere, it is necessary to begin thinking for oneself. So it turned out that the great scholar cannot think in the simplest, most primitive way.

We have to grasp the fact that we live in a so-called scientific and intellectual life that can basically be conducted to the exclusion of any real independent thinking. And as such a spiritual life became more and more prevalent, real thinking, meaningful, substantial thinking, increasingly disappeared.

And then we experienced the strange phenomenon that people wanted to test children's abilities with experimental psychology, by incorporating some nonsense words into their memory in order to determine this memory, or similar gimmicks that are passed off as “exactly scientific”. These are even more rampant in America than in Europe, but they have already come up quite high in Germany. By introducing this into school life, it means nothing more than that we have so strongly emphasized the human being out of social life that the teacher no longer has a relationship with the child, that he no longer comes from the child, but that he has to determine through apparatus what the person in question is capable of. And if Bolshevism continues in Russia for a long time, this method will perhaps be used in Russia to a very considerable extent instead of examinations. Children will be tested like machines to see if they are good for anything in life. This is one of Lunacharsky's ideals.

These things must be characterized impartially, then perhaps, little by little, we will evoke in the people of the present day a feeling that so palpably shows how we need a renewal, a fertilization of intellectual life, and how this renewal, this fertilization, can take place on the basis of the isolation of the intellectual from the other social elements. We must try to illustrate these things in terms of contemporary phenomena, which we present in all their starkness.

On the one hand, it is necessary to show people the necessity of the separation and free organization of spiritual life by looking at the threads of spiritual life in the present. On the other hand, it is necessary to show everything that ultimately shows how economic life must be based on the associative principle.

Above all, a sure judgment must be called for in order to prevent the individual from doing anything in economic life that cannot be fruitfully integrated into that economic life. In the spiritual life, it is the case that the judgment must always ultimately come from the individual person; therefore, through a free spiritual life, the individual person must be able to fully come into his or her own; the state must be brought about in which each person can individually come into his or her own according to his or her abilities. In economic life, this would be of no use at all. On the contrary, it would be harmful because the economic judgment of an individual person has no value at all. It can never be rooted in reality.

Anyone familiar with anthroposophy will readily understand this. For what constitutes spiritual life ultimately flows from within the human being. A person must shape what he brings with him through birth out of himself. Admittedly, he shapes it through interaction with his environment. He also acquires experience, be it external, be it internal, be it physical, be it spiritual experience. But the process that unfolds must come from his very individual abilities. Now, if we want to intervene in economic life, we have nothing in our humanity that could be as decisive for social life as the individual abilities of the individual.

These individual abilities enrich the general life of humanity when they are applied by the human being. If he simply applies them, community life is enriched. In economic life as such, that is, insofar as one is dealing with the exchange and valuation of goods, nothing is present from the human being other than his needs. Man, as it were, knows nothing about economic life and its necessities as an individual through anything other than his needs; he knows that he has to eat and drink to a certain extent, he has individual needs. But these individual needs are only important to himself, only to himself,

What a person produces intellectually has significance for everyone else; what he produces intellectually is, in fact, a priori socially significant. The needs that a person has, and for the sake of which he must desire that there be an economic life, have significance only for himself. Economically, he can only know how to provide for himself. But this in no way provides a social yardstick, nowhere the basis for a social judgment. For it simply excludes what is to be effective in the social life if one has only one yardstick for what one needs oneself. Therefore, a social judgment can never be built on that knowledge, which is taken from one's own needs. The individual has no basis for social judgment. If he acts from what he is as an individual, that is, simply takes his needs into account, then applies his intellect and abilities, not to produce something for the general public, as in intellectual life, but to satisfy his needs, then he acts under all circumstances as an anti-social being.

That is why all cleverness is of no help when it comes to economic judgments. I must again and again cite the example of the defense of the gold standard in the course of the 19th century. If you read the parliamentary reports and other things that, for example, also originated from practitioners in defense of the gold standard in individual countries, you can actually find a great deal of individual acumen everywhere. What was said was actually completely clever, one might say. One gains respect for human capacity when one still reads the speeches that were held about the gold standard today. But just what the cleverest people said always culminated in the fact that the gold standard would contribute significantly to promoting free trade in the world. And the reasons that were put forward to support this judgment, that free trade would result from the gold standard, are actually indisputable. But the opposite has happened everywhere! Everywhere in the wake of the gold standard, the need for protective tariffs and the like has arisen. Everywhere, free trade has been restricted. And this example shows to an eminent degree that individual human cleverness is of no help when it comes to economic questions, even if it is as prominent as it was in the 19th century. It is a mistake for individuals to want to act economically on the basis of individual judgments.

The necessity of associations follows with apodictic certainty. Only when people who are active in the most diverse branches and elements associate with each other, and what one person knows in one field is supplemented and expanded by what another knows, only then does a common judgment arise that can then be transformed into economic action and lead to social recovery. There is no way to escape the necessity of association, if one simply points out this basic fact. Furthermore, what happens to economic life as such under the influence of threefolding? What do we actually have in economic life? We have three factors.

The first is that which arises from expertise in the production of this or that. Whether you want to mine coal, grow grain, raise livestock or supply some industry, you have to be an expert in the field.

The second thing is that, in our present economic life, the movement of goods, of the necessities of life, must be properly directed. Trade must be conducted in the right way. Goods must be transported to the places where they are needed. For only there do they have their real value. Otherwise they are not commodities, but only objects. One must distinguish between them. Something, even food, can, when it is in any place, be merely an object and not a commodity. For if there is an enormous amount of food of a certain quality in any place, without people needing it, there are only as many goods as people can use up. The others are merely objects, and they only become commodities when they come to the places where they can be used. Without trade, no object is a commodity. This is the second point. But this second point is intimately connected with human labor. For the transformation of natural and other objects from objects into commodities occurs precisely through human labor. If you think about it, you will find that this transformation of objects into commodities is actually quite equivalent to the expenditure of human labor. The labor begins with what we take from nature. It is always possible to trace it back to the object's character, and if you can trace it back to that, then you cannot speak of any economic character of the object. It only becomes economic when it comes into circulation. Only then does it become something that has significance for the economy as a whole. But this is connected with the overall structure and development of human labor, with the type and time and so on of human labor.

The third thing in the economy is that you know what is needed. Because only by knowing what is needed over a certain territory can you produce in a reasonable way. An item that is produced too much will inevitably become cheap; and an item that is produced too little will inevitably become expensive. The price depends on how many people are involved in the production of an item. That is the fundamental and vital question of economics, that it starts from the satisfaction of needs, and from the free satisfaction of needs. What is at issue here cannot be determined by statistics because it is part of a living process. It can only be determined by people associated with a particular territory simply becoming humanly acquainted with those who have this or that need, know the sum of the needs humanly and can negotiate from a purely human, living point of view, not from a statistical point of view, how many people are needed to produce an item. So that in the life of the association, one has first of all those people who set out to educate themselves about the existing needs in a given area, which of course arises from economic foundations, and develop the will to initiate negotiations about how many people in any economic sector must produce so that the needs can be satisfied. All this must be linked to having a sense of the freedom of needs. In no way should any opinion prevail among those who have the task just described, whether any need is justified or not, but it must be merely a matter of objectively establishing a need.

Combating senseless needs, luxurious, harmful needs, is not the responsibility of the economic life of the association, but only of the influence of the spiritual life. Meaningless and harmful needs must be eliminated by educating people in spiritual life to refine their desires and perceptions. A free spiritual life will certainly be able to do this. To put it bluntly: cinemas must not be banned by the police, but people must be educated in such a way that they do not acquire a taste for them. That is the only healthy way to combat harmful influences in social life. The moment needs as such are assessed by the economy or the state, we no longer have a threefold social order, but a chaotic mixture of spiritual, economic and other interests. The threefold social order must be taken seriously down to its innermost fibers. Spiritual life must be truly placed on its own footing. It is not free when some kind of censorship authority exists, when this or that can be forbidden in the sphere of human needs. No matter how fanatical you are, you can rail against cinemas; that does not affect the free spiritual life. The moment you call for the police, the moment you shout: That should be forbidden, you impair the free spiritual life. This must be remembered, and one must not shrink from a certain radicalism.

So initially, the associations will have to deal with people who inform themselves about the needs within a certain territory and then initiate negotiations, not make laws, about the necessary production.

So you see, you can characterize the matter somewhat differently, then perhaps it will even, I would say, seem somewhat more mundane. But finally, by way of illustration, it can also be said that initially the associations will need objectified agencies and agents who are not only interested in ensuring that the person for whom they work sells as much as possible, but who also ask themselves: What needs are there? – and who are then experts in how to produce in order to satisfy these needs.

Thus we have, I might say, the first link of the associations. The second link is taken from the series of those who have to supply the market, who, therefore, when a product is manufactured somewhere, have to arrange for its transportation, or initiate negotiations for it to be transported to the place where it is needed. So we find, so to speak, experts in consumption, experts in trade and, thirdly, experts in production. However, these are taken from the free spiritual life, because this includes everything that flows from the spiritual into productive life through abilities.

You see, representatives of all three limbs of the social organism will be present in the economic associations; only the associations themselves will belong only to the economic link and will only deal with economic matters: with the consumption, circulation and production of goods and the pricing that results from this. Therefore, in the threefold social organism, there are corporations that have sole competence within the respective link. In the economic associations, nothing but economic issues are discussed; but in the associations, of course, the people who have their abilities and competencies for the negotiations come from the free spiritual life and the legal-state. It is therefore not a matter of placing the three elements of the social organism schematically next to each other, but of having administrations and corporations with expertise in the individual matters. That is what it is about.

The details will be clear to you from the “key points”. First of all, it is a matter of always appealing to the intellectual life with regard to capital, by saying: the person who has brought together the means of production through his abilities remains in the business as long as these abilities are present. Determining this is a matter for the intellectual life. Then it still attributes so much judgment to him that he can determine his successor. That also belongs to the free spiritual life. And if he cannot or will not do it himself, the free corporation of the free spiritual life decides. You see, everything that is a function of abstract capitalism passes over into the work of the free spiritual life within economic life. It is exactly the same as in the human organism. The blood is connected with the circulatory system, but it passes into the head and pulses through it. It is exactly the same with the real social organism. Therefore it is, in a sense, fatal that, especially abroad, particularly in Nordic countries, there has been such a strong tendency to speak of a “tripartite division” of the social organism instead of “tripartition”. This “tripartite” social organism naturally gives rise to terrible misunderstandings. It is a division that is not a division. The individual members must interact with each other. We must create a clear understanding of this.

And we can hope that the reasonable bourgeois, like the proletarians, will gradually come to understand the matter. We already had the beginnings of this in Stuttgart in 1919; elsewhere, a start may have been made here or there. But the opposition from all sides has become so active that we, with our few people, have not been able to hold out for the time being. Therefore, we have now called upon your strong forces so that a kind of strengthening of our advocacy for the threefold social organism can occur. It is now absolutely necessary, I would even say urgent, that a strong push be made for everything that emerges from anthroposophical spiritual science and what threefolding of the social organism is. Because in a certain respect, it is still a matter of our temporary existence or non-existence. We should not deceive ourselves about this.

But we must work towards great clarity in everything. That is why I have tried again to give as clear an idea as possible of associative life. If anyone wants to know more about associations, we can do that this evening by answering all kinds of questions. It must be a constant feature of our lectures that we strive for clarity and that we try to evoke an understanding of how lack of clarity in our public and social affairs has brought about our present situation. I will give you an example of this.

When you are asked about this or that today, people come to you with schematic questions. They ask you: what about capital, what about small businesses, what about land and so on? Well, with regard to healthy social conditions, the land question is settled in my “Key Points”, although it seems to have only been touched on in a subordinate clause. But everything that is otherwise discussed today stems from the fact that land is involved in our social life in an incredibly convoluted way.

When the newer economic life arose and imposed the character of a commodity on everything, for example, labor, so that everything can be bought, then land also became a commodity. You could buy and sell it. But what is actually involved in this buying and selling of land? If we want to understand this, we have to go back to very primitive conditions, in which the feudal lord had acquired a certain piece of land either by conquest or in some other way, and gave it to those who were to work it, who then, in kind or in other forms of payment, gave him a certain quota in return, which initially meant the origin of land rent. But why did the people give this rent to him, to the feudal lord or to the church, to the monastery? Why did they give it to him? What made it plausible for them to make such payments? Nothing else made it more plausible for them than if they, as small owners, worked on their land and soil to till and harvest it, since anyone could come along and chase them away. Being able to work the land requires protection of the land and soil. Now, in most cases, the feudal lords themselves had an army, which they maintained from the tributes, and that was for the protection of the land. And the land rent was paid not for the right to work the land, but for the protection of the land. The right to work the land had arisen entirely out of necessity, since the landowner himself could not work all the land. This had nothing to do with any other circumstances. But the land had to be protected. And that is what the dues were paid for. In the same way, the dues were paid to the monasteries. The monasteries themselves maintained armies with which they protected the land, or they were bound by some kind of treaty here or there in such a way that the land was secured by some other power relationship. If you trace the origin of the land rent, you have to see it as a tax for the protection of the land and soil. If we consider this original meaning of the land rent, we see that it refers to times when very primitive conditions prevailed, when, in economic terms, sovereign feudal lords or monasteries ruled who obeyed no one.

These conditions ceased, first in the West and only later in Central Europe, in that certain rights that the individual had - in certain areas of Germany they ceased to be individual rights at the very latest - were gradually transferred to individual princes, which was by no means an economic but a political process. The rights were transferred. With the transfer of the rights, the protection of the land was also transferred. It then became necessary for the prince to maintain the armies. For this he naturally had to demand a levy. Gradually, the systematization of the tax system came about, which weighs so heavily on us today. This was added to the other, but curiously the other remained! It lost its meaning, because the one who was now the landowner no longer needed to spend anything on the protection of land and property; the territorial prince or the state was now there for that. But the land rent remained. And with the new economic life, it gradually passed into the ordinary circulation of goods. The fact that the connection between land rent and land lost its meaning meant that land rent could be turned into a profit-making object. It is pure nonsense that has become reality. There is something in the process of circulation of values that has basically completely lost its meaning, but which is still treated today as a commodity.

Such things can be found everywhere in our economic life. They have arisen from some justified things. Something else has taken the place of these justified things. But the old has remained. And some new process has taken it up and introduced the senseless into social life.

If you now simply take economic life as it is – if you are a professor of economics and thus have the task of thinking as little as possible in the sense I have characterized it before – then you define the land rent as it is written in the books today. And as something so senseless, it also figures in life today. So you can see how much work there is to be done to make people understand that we not only have nonsense in our system of thought, but also everywhere in economic life. And when the individual sighs under economic life, it is actually from such undergrounds. What is needed today is to arrive at a more thorough, unprejudiced, comprehensive thinking than that which can be developed by sitting in today's educational institutions.

For ultimately, what kind of thinking is being developed there today? The thinking that is perhaps characterized by mathematics is being developed. But it is being developed in such a way that it stands apart from all reality. Then they develop the kind of thinking that can be learned through experimentation, that can be learned through systematics. They develop the kind of thinking that has finally become a mere formality in the hands of people like Poincare, Mach and so on, something that they merely call “summarizing external reality.” In short, they do not develop any kind of thinking at all! And because they do not develop any thinking, they cannot do anything in economics at all.

Indeed, a method of economics has gradually emerged – Lujo Brentano handled it particularly cleverly – that develops out of understandable needs the theory that one should not think at all about what economic life should be, but only observe it correctly. Well, one should imagine how one is somehow to arrive at a science of economic life by mere observation! It would be like advising the pedagogue to just observe the children. It would never be possible to develop an activity from it. That is why our economic theorists are so terribly sterile, because they have the method of passively confronting external reality.

And the other side of the coin becomes apparent when people really do start to intervene in economic life. On the one hand, they developed a science that only observes. But when war came to Central Europe, they were suddenly supposed to intervene in economic life, even to the point of influencing price formation. What was the result? The economist Terhalle summarized the results: First, he said, and he cites countless scientific proofs in his book on “Free or Fixed Pricing?” First: things have been done in such a way that you can see that the people who did it didn't know what was important at all. Secondly, they are based on theoretical schematisms that have so little to do with reality that, by applying them, they ruin reality. Thirdly, in influencing the formation of prices, it has come about that individual trades have not been helped but harmed; and fourthly, honest craftsmanship and trade have been harmed in favor of profiteering! Just imagine what it means for an official economist to have to judge the political and governmental economic activity of recent years on the basis of economic research: that it has favored profiteering at the expense of honest trade and craftsmanship! One has only to sense what this actually means. These things must be said to people, as clearly as possible, so that one can see how powerless our civilization has become in the face of reality.

If we do not clarify such things as I have just told you with regard to land rent, we will not be able to show people the necessity of the associations; because just imagine the associations installed in the most makeshift way: immediately, experience reveals how damagingly all the unnatural things in economic life affect the formation of prices. This cannot come to light, of course, if economic life is organized in such a way that the agents go out into the countryside and do business for the individual enterprises. There they cannot be confronted with the connection between production and consumption. They do not have the interest to focus on how much should be produced. For them, only the one self-evident “truth” applies, that their master can produce as much as possible. This interest in the master's production being as strong as possible must be replaced by the positive knowledge: how many producers must there be, because we have seen that there is such and such a demand for an article, so that it must be ensured that not too many and not too few work on the territory in question for this purpose? The objective interest must take the place of the interest in the individual entrepreneur. That is what matters in the association.

Now we have to show people how economic life, because it has so many absurd elements in it – because in addition to the land rent, there are many others – is already pushing for integration. The cartel system, with the quota allocation of profit, demand, sales and so on, the merging, the amalgamation – what does it arise from? In Europe it takes more the form of a cartel, in America more that of a trust. It arises from the fact that the individual can no longer produce due to the many absurd elements that are in economic life. Just think how different it is today, when everything is pushing towards large-scale enterprise, than it was when the sole trader or small business owner was part of economic life. What can a person ask today if they want to start their own business? They can only ask how the market for a particular product is doing, whether there is demand for a particular product. A product that is in demand seems promising, a product that is not in demand does not seem promising.

In the past, when the number of entrepreneurs was small, it did not matter much; only when there were too many did the individual ones perish. But suppose that everything tends towards large-scale enterprise, when it is noticed that a particular article is needed and that something can be earned from it. By setting up the large-scale enterprise, you abolish the very thing from which you concluded that it was necessary to set up the large-scale enterprise! Because everything tends towards large-scale enterprise, what used to be decisive for the individual small entrepreneur is no longer decisive. This is why the necessity for mergers arises. And so we have cartels, trusts and so on, because the leading circles were quite careless with regard to consumption. Because they did not care about it, these mergers arise only out of the interests of the producers. Consumption is not taken into account.

The essential thing is that it is shown: You can no longer get by in economic life without association. Therefore, the one-sided associations of cartels and trusts, which, however, arise from mere production interests, must be supplemented by being based on an understanding of consumption, on an insight into the needs of a particular territory. Thus the trusts and cartels, by being caricatures of what should arise, show how necessary it is to move in a certain direction, in the direction of association. One has only to look at what kind of associations should now be created.

Characterization must be based on real life in all cases. Then perhaps we shall be able to make people understand how necessary associations are for economic life. And so it will actually be a matter of giving the lectures you now want to give in terms that are as clear as possible. The prerequisite must be that what is given in the “key points” is basically a kind of axiom of modern social life. It is never necessary to prove the Pythagorean theorem in all its individual objects. But it must prove itself in all its individual objects. Just as little is it necessary to prove the insight into social conditions, as it is gained, in detail; it is proved as such by its content, like the Pythagorean theorem. And one has only to show how things must be integrated into life. This must be taken into account.

And I would like to say this: Let us really consider our activity in such a way that it connects with what has already been done. That is why I said yesterday: It is necessary to look at our movement as a whole and not to be embarrassed to present what has been done to the people and to tell them that it is there. We have an experience again and again, in fact in a truly alarming way: When I go somewhere to give a lecture, there is a table of books at the entrance of the hall. It is only looked at if I do not mention any of the books. If I do mention one, it is bought. Usually there are not enough of them available. The others are passed over. Well, I always regret that there are so many books. You can't mention them all in a single lecture. Therefore, we must also face the present with a sense of reality. I recommend that you do not disdain any opportunity to recommend the Dreigliederungszeitung where you can, because we must reach the stage where the Dreigliederungszeitung becomes a daily newspaper. But we will not reach that stage unless we make it more popular than it is. So, we must face reality to that extent. But don't forget to recommend something else as well! Otherwise the other things will be returned unpurchased in huge numbers. It may look strange to say such things in serious lectures, but if we don't say them, they are very often not done either. And we have come together to agree on the things that should be done. Because we want to do something in the near future.

If you look around in the somewhat more experienced economic literature, you will at least notice in many cases that a certain remark can be found somewhere among the authors, which goes something like this: the economist should not concern himself with how the people are educated or what is good for the people with regard to their needs. From another point of view, I have already pointed this out, he should leave that to the ethicist, the hygienist and so on.

If you take such a remark seriously, then it actually means nothing less than proof of the necessity for the threefold social organism. For what is being said? It is being said: If you think in terms of economics, nothing comes of it that could somehow aim at ethics, at hygiene, but what should aim at ethics, at hygiene, must come from another side.

If we now think of such a remark, which until today was actually only meant theoretically, exploited practically, it is said that it is necessary that economically real judged, that is, that the economy be designed so that only only those things that are purely economic, that disregard all ethics, all hygiene and so on, and that, alongside them, there are real administrations that are there for the ethical permeation, for the hygienic development of social life. These will lie in the free spiritual life.

And for you it will be an important pedagogical-didactic point of view to show that the foundations for this are present everywhere and that, if used in the right way, they lead to conclusions regarding the threefold social order. One can say that economists, if they really think economically, cannot think differently from the way it should be thought in the associative member of the social organism. But the things that are thought in this way do not remain in books; there are instances that also transfer them cleanly into reality.

I mention this today, when I want to point out more methodological things, precisely in a methodological way, to make you aware that wherever the threefold order is mentioned, one can start from things that people have already thought of somehow. Only today no one has the courage to draw the consequences from them. The essential thing for us is to draw the necessary consequences for social life.

Likewise, you will have to deal with other questions if you want to focus on social issues. If you familiarize yourself with the development of economic thought, you will find that a whole series of utopian ideas have emerged in recent times. We need only go back to the eighteenth century to find such utopian ideas, perhaps because the older ones are less relevant to the present day. But since the eighteenth century a whole series of social utopias have been conceived. Why did such utopias arise? This is important for you to know so that you can incorporate it into the overall attitude of your lectures.

You see, the following is available for intellectual life. Basically, it leads back to ancient wisdom and the customs associated with it. Take, for example, what we have in Europe today as a completely decadent intellectual life: on the one hand, Catholicism and, on the other, the highly filtered modern educational life, which is also still fed by ancient religious ideas; they are everywhere. You can follow them right into the materialistic parts of medicine; and they are in philology, these offshoots of theocratic or theological thinking. So if you consider how all modern thinking is thoroughly impregnated with this element that leads back to ancient wisdom, you will understand that in the whole way in which intellectual life, I should now say, administers itself - for it has already has become anarchic in that it has not been drawn into the tight fetters of state life, you will notice that the threads can also be seen in the administrations, which were in the constitution of the territories where ancient wisdom held sway. In the church you see it in the structure of the hierarchies. This leads back to the views of ancient wisdom. In jurisprudence, you may only see it in the struggle that is the struggle of materialism against spiritualism in the external life, in the struggle waged by lawyers and judges against the wearing of robes in court proceedings. In the robes you have the remnants of the old way of thinking; in the fight against the robes you have the modern materialistic way of thinking. And that has a much greater significance than one might think. And if you consider all the formal aspects of the doctoral degrees at some of our universities, you will easily be able to trace the threads back to the old theocratic element. In this respect we have something in it all that people have lost sight of, but which points back to the past, to the fact that people once knew how to manage spiritual life. Even if we no longer have this spiritual life in our present time, we have the forms in it; and I might add, we are even still stuck in them like discarded clothes. We need new forms everywhere. These will be found in the free spiritual life.

The other point is this. In England, for example, the political-democratic element developed out of the church-democratic element. This came about simply because the ecclesiastical background was stripped away and the democratic form of thinking was revealed. But in fact the political-legal element has gradually emerged everywhere from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element. It is just that it is no longer noticed so clearly in other places. For example, there is a secret connection between the entire system of civil servants, at the top of which one can imagine the absolute ruler “by the grace of God”, which latter reveals the origin from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element, because only the one who was appointed by spiritual authorities was “by the grace of God”. The entire body of civil servants is simply the ecclesiastical hierarchy that has become secularized. But the other side, which basically also developed out of the theocratic-ecclesiastical element, is the military. This is perceived as paradoxical by people today. But the military is only that which, like the shadow of an illuminated object, follows the whole organization of the state. And so, I might say, a certain way of handling the state has gradually emerged during the separation of the secular element from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element. This can be seen in all its details when we consider the transition of the forms of administration, as they were still clearly manifested in their theocratic-hierarchical form in those times when Charlemagne attached importance to being crowned by the Pope in Rome, how ecclesiastical life then passed over into the profane, how, as a latecomer to this transition, for example, the first state posts in France were filled by cardinals. If you consider this, you will be able to grasp everywhere the emergence of this modern political-legal element in the handling of the theocratic-ecclesiastical element and the independence of its administration. One could handle these things independently.

Now modern economic life is pushing its way into this, which has indeed produced instinctive practices, but so far not something that has been as internally permeated as the old hierarchical-ecclesiastical and state-militaristic elements. These two elements have brought the world to a tight uniform. By contrast, it was only in recent times that the urge arose to consciously penetrate what has become the predominant feature of modern life, namely the complex economic life, which in older times did not need to be thought about because it was drawn from inexhaustible sources. It is true that the necessity has arisen to find a certain way of handling economic life. But this way of handling has not yet been found.

And basically, the first attempt to bring something into economic life that can be paralleled to the state and the church element, is the associative principle. It is the first attempt to really found something organically in economic life. Because that has not happened before. And the most diverse theoretical attempts to develop a way of thinking, to organize economic life as such, these are the utopian theories, which were always infected by what had been inherited from the past. People still thought: If you organize, you have to organize in the same way as it is in the ecclesiastical-hierarchical or state element - after all, people were not aware of this.

And the practical expression of this in the outer world is the appearance of economic liberalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Why did this economic liberalism appear? What is it? It is an appeal to the efficiency of individual economic personalities. It was the same in the theocratic-hierarchical element. Before an organization could be found, it was necessary to appeal to the leading individuals. The same applied to the state element. Before passing over to a parliamentary system, it was necessary to appeal to those who had the ability to administer the affairs of the state. Economic liberalism is nothing more than this appeal to the individual efficiency of the personality in the economic field. It is only because things in the world have developed more rapidly that it has become necessary to find something that really paralyzes the harmful effects of the absolutist individual.

Surely you only need to study the constitution of the Catholic Church to see that in this Catholic Church, which simply preserves an ancient administration of spiritual life, you will find everywhere that the institutions and organizations are aimed at banishing the harmfulness of individuality. It is precisely through this that individuality can come into its own in a certain way.

I once attended a conversation in Vienna in which a professor at the Viennese theological faculty, who had somewhat liberal tendencies, but only indulged them in the most cautious way, complained that Rome was choking him completely and not allowing him to express anything from the lectern. It was discussed at length why, for example, in Innsbruck, where the same subject was taught by a Jesuit, he was allowed to express himself on the same topics in the freest manner. And those who were experienced in such matters said to themselves: Yes, it does not matter to the Catholic Church, for example, that exegesis is not also freely taught at the university, but rather that the individuals within it give an absolute assurance that, despite their liberal views, they are firmly within the organization, and of course the Jesuit is particularly good at achieving this, firmly within the organization. Then he is also allowed to take his special liberties. For the organization does not destroy individuality. It is not destroyed at all. The individual personality is free to a high degree in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholicism. But those who take things similar to Protestantism are choked, who take things so that they take dogmatics seriously; the Catholic only takes symbolism seriously. For them, there is always the danger of throwing off the robe. But that must not be. Within the church, anything can happen; outside the church, no one may place himself.

Of course, something like this cannot be imitated. But it can be cited as a characteristic example of what has been found on the other side: older times appeal to individuality, but have such an organization that individuality cannot be harmful. In the life of the state, the time has also passed when it was realized that these two sides must be present.

In economic life, it is a matter of finding the transition from economic liberalism to the principle of association. We are only in the middle of what needs to be done. This is what the world-historical moment actually reveals to us in this respect: the principle of association in economic life means nothing other than what must necessarily come about in the face of the degenerations of economic liberalism. And in modern times, precisely because thinking is inactive in a certain sense, people have not yet found the courage to move on to action, to move from liberalist thinking to active thinking. But the attempt has been made everywhere. If you pay attention, you can see some interesting experiences.

Recently I picked up the little economics book from the Göschenschen collection. It talks about economic liberalism and says: “It became necessary to move from an individualistic economic system to a kind of social economic system.” And so it was necessary to transfer more and more of the individualistically established to the state administrations: state socialism! So no trace of an understanding of the necessity of the association principle, but: state socialism! And in another part of this little book by Göschenen, which was also written by a fox, but not such a bad one, I found the following sentence: And the World War has shown us how right this way of thinking was; he means: to gradually transfer what individuals have achieved to the state. I said to myself: Now I have to turn to the title page. In which year is it still possible for a person to write that? I found: 1918! It was the last date when one could write this without being called a fool. [Interjection: Excuse me, Doctor: 1920! - Mr. Blume shows the latest edition]. It is questionable whether it is still in the latest edition. This is marked “reprint.” If it is still in there, it is because things would have remained in their folly even in 1920. Indeed! He did not feel the need to correct the matter after two years! They are not clever, these foxes. I opened to the title page, “1918,” and said: Could conditions still be such that one could believe that the transfer of what emerged from the old system as a world economy into a state economy or even into a city economy - I would like to remind you that the municipalities in particular are on the verge of ruin and will all collapse soon - was absolutely right?

What I am trying to suggest is that modern thinking has not yet found the real, correct transition from liberalist economics to associative economics.

Perhaps it will not be possible at all for anyone to grasp the associative principle correctly if they do not at the same time fully embrace the threefold social order. For in the unified state, what works properly in the threefold social organism will actually have a harmful effect. And this must be emphasized, at least in the nuance that you give to your lectures, that, for example, anyone who comes and says, “Yes, we want to leave spiritual life to the state. We don't want threefolding.” But twofolding – something similar was even proposed in the Weimar National Assembly – yes, but twofolding! It is possible to separate economic life! But it is not possible for the reason that a separated economic life, organized associatively, would in fact contain within the associations people who are completely dependent on the state and who have not grown out of the free spiritual life, and these people would then influence economic life in the state's interest. Thus the whole of economic life would take on the state mentality.

Likewise, we would never establish truly independent schools like the Waldorf School if we admitted that teachers were taken from state institutions, that the state license of the teachers would have to be taken along with the teachers. If one says that we could establish an independent school but could only achieve it if we found state-approved teachers, then that shows that one does not understand the matter. For that means nothing other than this, that one sticks to the old and just spruces it up in the modern sense, thus throwing dust in people's eyes. And the times are too serious for that. What should be advocated in terms of threefolding is what the real threefolding holds, even at the risk that the practical arrangements cannot be made immediately because of people's resistance. The most important thing today is to get the idea of threefolding into as many minds as possible. This is the quickest way to bring it into practical realization.

And now a few words about the method by which you cannot present the idea of threefolding without taking as a basis, in a tactful and didactically correct way, spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy. This can be clearly seen from the development of thinking in the social life of modern times.

There have been all kinds of utopian ideas, and the system that has become popular in the broadest sense among the proletarian population has developed: the Marxist system. Of course, this Marxist system has taken many forms. Revisionism on the one hand, Leninism on the other. This is a kind of radicalism that says: We know full well that Marxism does not solve the social question, but it works towards the radical destruction of everything that exists, and then another humanity will come along to rebuild it. But the Marxist system is at the root of all this. Karl Marx knew how to find his way into the souls of the modern proletarian world. And that is why it is also possible for the leaders of the proletarian world to influence the proletarian world with Marxist ideas. In a sense, it must even be said that this Marxism – not so much as it lived as a theory with Karl Marx, but rather as it lives in the views of the broadest proletarian masses – is, in terms of its form, the most modern social conception of life in terms of world view. The others, regardless of whether they are advocated by practitioners or university professors, are actually always somewhat backward.

Precisely because Marxism is the most modern form, it must also be sharply envisaged by those who now want something really radical. Today, one cannot simply speak to the masses without having a clear, at least intuitive, understanding of what Marxism means. The essential thing about it is that Marxism is the Weltanschhauung and outlook on life which best corresponds to the whole social situation of the modern proletarian. It is simply adapted to the whole social outlook on life of the modern proletarian. And if you fight Marxism purely theoretically, you are actually doing something that does not correspond to reality. They fight against Marxism without realizing that they have allowed the reality to develop in such a way that the modern proletarian has become what he is. This can be traced back to the carelessness of the rest of the population. But by allowing him to become what he has, he could do nothing but take Marxism as his world view and outlook on life. For this Marxism contains within itself, for the proletariat's conception, the threefold order of human social life. By becoming a Marxist, the worker has, from Marxism, his view of the threefold order of social life, which is appropriate for his class. That's what he has in there.

For you see, in modern times it has become more and more the custom to distract from consumption and its understanding and to look at mere acquisition. In doing so, one only had to let enough of this acquisition go so that the social organism could still be administered. One was only interested, whether aristocrat or bourgeois, in as much of the proceeds of the acquisition as one got and had to give up so that the whole thing could be held together at all. How did this work out for people who, through old privileges or other circumstances, were inside the real social organism? They tried to get as much as possible out of their earnings. They did not care about consumption and only grudgingly paid the taxes necessary for the cohesion of the whole. What did the modern proletarian do? He just stood at the machine and was outside of capitalism. He categorically refused to pay certain taxes if they were not knocked down. For he had no interest in the reality of the old social organism; he was only interested in what remained from the acquisition. Since he was not involved in the administration of capital, this only became the subject of a critique of what he calls surplus value. The proletarian's relationship to surplus value, criticizing it, is the same as the bourgeois's, when he grudgingly approves the taxes. By approving the tax, the bourgeois has not progressed to what lies behind it. The proletarian has not progressed either. But he has practiced critique. He has looked the surplus value in the eye and practiced critique. This shows, then, that the point is to add the positive to critique. That would, of course, be the associative principle. But it is in the theory of surplus value that which, within a worldview and conception of life, embodies the economic element for the proletarian.

The second thing that lives in Marxist theory, insofar as it is the proletarian's conception of life and worldview, is the class struggle, which, in his view, must be. That is the political and legal element. Through the class struggle, he wants to fight for his rights, he wants to organize labor, and so on. So the second area of social life is included. It is only the flip side of what it is like for the bourgeois and the aristocrats. They cannot get out of their class. They do not have the talent to go from the class-based to the general human. The worker does this consciously, but of course he takes his class with him. So in Marxism we also have what has developed in modern life as the political and legal element, which has not yet found the transition to the truly democratic element, which has not been carried out anywhere, but to which we must come, where, on the basis of the state-legal sphere of the social organism, all people who have come of age are equal before the law. That is more or less what the classes concerned have always meant until now. When, say, before the French Revolution, there was essentially an aristocratic element, this was quite democratic among itself, but below its class, the human being simply ceased to exist, he was no longer a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Then the bourgeoisie came along. That, too, was quite democratic among itself. But below that, the human being ceased to exist. What everything tends towards in modern times is general democracy. The one who stood outside the social organism, like the proletarian, constituted his own class against the others in the place of the general human, which can be defined in such a way that in all that is to be democratically parliamentarized, all people, whatever they may represent, all people who have come of age, face each other as equals. Thus, I would say, we also have in the class struggle that which we must characterize something like this: the proletarian knows that something completely different must come, he is modern in this respect, something must come that is quite different from what has existed so far. But he has not learned the general human. Therefore, he starts from his class instead of from the general human.

And within the Marxist philosophy and outlook on life, the proletarian also has a place for the spiritual. This is the materialistic view of history. In the materialistic age and in the whole education of the modern proletarian, who only comes into contact with the mechanism of life and not with the psyche and the spirit, this spiritual life quite naturally became the materialistic conception of history in the proletarian's view. But this represents the spiritual element in the world and in life.

So, in proletarian Marxism, you have the ultimate radical expression of what modern humanity actually wants and in which it does not know how to help itself. And you have to counter this with something that is just as well-founded as proletarian Marxism is for the proletariat. What is the essence of this proletarian Marxism as a worldview? The essence of proletarian Marxism as a worldview is disbelief in man.

This disbelief in man was justified in the times of the original wisdom of mankind, for then it was divine powers that sat within the human being and guided him. People knew they were dependent on what they unconsciously recognized from the depths of their souls as the revelations of the gods as guiding forces for life. Then there was disbelief in man and faith in the gods. When the state-administrative and the official-military elements had been separated out from the old theocratic-ecclesiastical element, this unbelief in man still existed. For then arose the belief that man as such cannot direct the destinies after all, the state must do that. The state became an idol, a fetish. And this led man, who was now harnessed into the state system, to disbelief in man, to belief in the external fetish. Of course, as soon as God comes down, he becomes more and more of a fetish. Proletarian Marxism is the third and final stage of disbelief in man. For the proletarian says to himself in his materialistic philosophy of history: it is not man who directs fate, but “the forces of production” that direct him. We stand there powerless as human beings with our ideology. The course of history is determined by the course of the production processes. And what human beings are within these forces of production is only the result of the forces of production themselves. Disbelief in man and real belief in the tangible fetish! There is no fundamental difference between the African savage, who has reached decadence in a different way, worshipping an external block of wood, making it into a fetish, or the European proletarian, who regards the means and processes of production as directing history. In principle, there is no difference in logic; it is our magic superstition! And we must look at this sufficiently. In various ways, people have come into decadence. In Africa, there was also an original wisdom. Then it deteriorated in administration; we see this in Egypt. Then it decays. Fetishism is not what stands at the starting point, but what occurs in decadence. At the starting point, pure belief in the gods is everywhere, and only in the decline does fetishism arise. Within the civilized areas, instead of worshipping external wooden blocks, the “forces of production” were worshipped. The prayers were, of course, also arranged differently. But “the forces of production” and “production processes” were made into idols. It is the last phase of unbelief in man, the phase of economically superstitious thinking. There is no difference in principle between an African savage who goes to his idol with a magic spell and a modern proletarian gathering to thrash out Marxist phrases. The prayer sounds different, but one must be clear about what the inner essence of the matter is.

This must be contrasted with what is now not unbelief in man, but faith in man. And ultimately it is essential that faith in man be found, the faith that the directing forces for life reveal themselves within man. Man must come to himself, to full self-awareness. He must find the possibility to say to himself: All externals are superstition. Only the directing forces within oneself are to intervene in life!

But for this, courage is needed to go beyond mere passive prayer and to have an active prayer in the grasp of the divine in the will. This transition to active prayer, to inner activity in general, this transition from disbelief in humanity to faith in humanity, is what must be present in your hearts and souls as enthusiasm. You must feel that you are at the turning point in history, where people must be led from disbelief in humanity to faith in humanity.

You don't need to tell people, but you must go on the podiums with this awareness, with the awareness that you have to teach humanity that the guiding forces of life must be actively grasped within, that life in the future must be organized in such a way that people say to themselves: I must be the one to do things.

It was the last superstition of civilization that people did not have faith in themselves, but that they had faith in “the forces of production” arranging life. And from this superstition arose the terrible worship of the rear in the East, where an attempt was made to imbue with willpower that which is not determined by willpower. The personality that ideally unites two unrelated things, inner passivity in conviction and activity in action, whereby one destroys the other, is Lenin. Lenin is the personality that most purely crystallizes in new times that which comes from ancient times. He most purely crystallizes what the real impossibility, the real destructive urge, the real ruinous urge has become.

What leads to construction, what leads to the re-imbibition of real life forces into social life, is, if we can find the possibility, to create in man out of disbelief in man, belief in man, a belief that ultimately expresses itself as follows: Whatever I experience as luck or misfortune, or as social institution, or as something in the outer life, I myself will make!

You cannot instill this in people without at the same time steeling them with your words. You have to bring people to have confidence, to have faith in their own being. And that is what you must strive for, at least in your heart. How you do it may depend on your abilities today. But if you devote yourself to the matter with good will, it will soon no longer depend on these abilities, but the necessity of the time will take hold of your abilities. And you will rise above yourself precisely in bringing this belief to people, so that in the place of unbelief in people, faith in people must come.

That is what I wanted to say to you before you go out to give your lectures. Feel the strength that can lie in saying to yourself: I have to bring about the conviction that the last doubt and disbelief in man in relation to man will be transformed into faith in man, into the inner activity of the human being! Because this is what matters when striving for real progress. Everything else will only lead to the propagation of that which is decadent. Do not uphold what is destructive, but rather apply Nietzsche's words to me: Let it still be pushed so that it perishes more quickly! But love what is not of yesterday and today, but what is of tomorrow!

I want you, my dear friends, to go out as people of tomorrow and to shape your words in the coming weeks from the consciousness of the people of tomorrow.

My dear friends! You have requested that we meet here to discuss matters that are closely related to your profession, and I may assume that this request of yours has arisen from the realization of the seriousness of our situation, a seriousness that becomes particularly apparent when one tries to work from a religious point of view in the civilizing life of our time. And I may further assume that you are primarily not concerned with what could be called a theological matter, but with a religious matter. It is indeed true that the burning question of our time is not only a theological one. One might think that even with a good deal of goodwill, some people could come to terms with the theological question in a relatively short time. But what must be clear to anyone looking impartially at our time is precisely not the question of dogma, not the question of theology, but the question of preaching and everything connected with it, the question of religion and especially of religious work as such. But with this we are pointing to a much broader and more comprehensive question than the theological one could ever be.

If one takes the religious standpoint from the outset, then the aim is to find a way of making the spiritual worlds with their various forces of activity accessible to people, initially – if we limit ourselves to the religious – through the word. And here we must be clear about the fact that the whole of our more recent development in this respect presents us with a question of the very deepest seriousness. He does not overlook the question who thinks that from the starting point on which the older people among us still place themselves today, something else could arise than actually the complete disintegration of religious life within our modern civilization. Anyone who believes that religious life can still be saved from the old assumptions is actually taking an impossible point of view. I say this in the introduction not because I want to start from some kind of spiritual-scientific dogma from the outset – that should not be the case – but because what I say simply shows up the unbiased observation of life in our time.

We must be clear about whether we can find an echo in the hearts of our contemporaries today when we preach, when we speak of those things that must one day be spoken of within true Christianity. And I assume that these days here will be such that we will discuss the matters that are actually on your minds in question and answer and disputation, but today I would like to touch on some of the issues that are actually at hand.

We must be clear about the fact that what has emerged in the last three to four hundred years as scientific education in humanity has already drawn a wide circle around itself. Those who are older can still notice the difference that exists in this respect between what was available in the 70s or 80s of the last century and what surrounds us today. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, you could still talk to a large part of the population about questions of spiritual life that arose from the traditions of various denominations and sects, and you could still find hearts and souls in which such talk resonated. Today, we are basically facing a different time. Of course, there are still many people who have not taken in much of the newer education that has found its way into our civilization; and we could still speak to these people about such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, without something like resistance immediately asserting itself in these hearts. But even this will not last much longer. For a certain popular view of education is spreading with lightning speed, penetrating into the broadest masses of people through the literature of newspapers and popular magazines, and basically also through our school education. And even if this educational outlook does not directly develop ideas, feelings that rebel against such concepts as Christ, redemption, grace, and so on, do flourish, we must not forget that these ideas, which are absorbed, are cast in forms that simply give rise to an inner resistance to actual religious life in the broadest circles, unless a new starting point is sought for it. We should not deceive ourselves on this point.

You see, if the view of education continues to spread, which, based on seemingly established scientific premises, describes the universe in such a way that it began in a certain mechanical way, that organic life developed from mechanical tangles, and then, for my sake, the external-physical , then, if the facts are traced that have led to such hypotheses, so that one forms ideas about a corresponding end of the earth or our planetary system from them, then, for all those who seriously and honestly accept these ideas, the religious ideas, especially of Christianity, no longer have the possibility to flourish.

That this is not already very much in evidence today is only because there is so little inner honesty in people. They simply allow the mechanical-physical order of nature and Christianity to coexist and even try to prove theoretically that the two things can go side by side. But this only serves to obscure what is felt in every unbiased soul. And even if the intellect seeks all possible harmonies between Christianity and modern science, the heart will extinguish all these attempts at mediation, and the consequence can only be that there will be less and less room for religion in the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings.

If we do not consider the question from these deeper perspectives, we fail to appreciate the seriousness of the situation in which we currently find ourselves. For the difficulties indicated are encountered not only in theology, but most of all where they are not clearly expressed, where they remain hidden in the subconscious of our fellow human beings; one encounters them precisely when one does not want to practice theology but religion. And that is the important thing that must be understood above all else.

You see, the Ritschl school with all its offshoots is particularly characteristic of what has happened in this field in more recent times. This Ritschl school is still regarded today by many people working in the field of religion as something extraordinary. But what exactly is the Ritschl school? The Ritschl school takes the view that the last few centuries, especially the 19th century, have brought us a large amount of scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is dangerous for religious life. The Ritschl school is clear on this: if we let scientific knowledge into religious life, whether it be for criticism or for the formation of dogmas, then religious life will be undermined by it. So we have to look for a different starting point for religious life, the starting point of faith.

Yes, now, in a sense, we would have split the soul in two. On the one hand, we would have the soul's theoretical powers of knowledge, which deal with science, and on the other hand, we would have the establishment of a soul realm that develops very different abilities from the realm of knowledge: the realm of faith. And now there is a struggle, a struggle by no means for harmony between science and religion, but a struggle to exclude science from religion, a struggle for an area in which the soul can move without letting scientific thinking in at all. To allow as little as possible – if possible, nothing at all – of any scientific knowledge to enter religious life: that is the ideal of the Ritschlians.

But now, regardless of whether something like this can be established theoretically, regardless of whether one can persuade oneself that something like this dichotomy of the soul could exist, it is nevertheless true that for the actual life of the soul, so much rebellious power comes from the subconscious against this dichotomy of the soul that precisely religious life is undermined by it. But one could disregard it oneself. One need only go to the positive side of Ritschlianism itself, then one will see how this view must ultimately lose all content for religious feeling itself.

Let us take the most important forces that play a role in religious life. First, there is the realm of faith – whether or not this leads into knowledge is a question we will discuss later – secondly, there is the realm of actual religious experience – we will also take a closer look at this realm of religious experience later – and thirdly, there is the realm of religious authority. Now, one might say that since Luther, Protestantism has done an enormous amount to clarify, explain and so on the concept of authority. And in the struggle against the Catholic Church, one might say that Protestant life has extracted a pure perception with regard to the concept of authority. Within Protestant life, it is clear that one should not speak of an external authority in religion, that only Christ Jesus Himself should be regarded as the authority for individual souls. But as soon as one comes to the content of religious life, that is, to the second point, from the point of view of the Ritschlian school, an enormous difficulty immediately arises, which, as you know, has very, very significantly confronted all the newer Ritschlians. Ritschl himself does not want to have a nebulous, dark, mystical religious experience, but rather he wants to make the content of the Gospels the soul content of religious life. It should be possible for the religious person to experience the content of the Gospel, which means, in other words, that one should also be able to use the content of the Gospel for the sermon. But now the newer Ritschlians found themselves in a difficult position. Take, for example, the Pauline Epistles: in them, of course, there is contained a whole sum of Paul's religious experience, of a religious experience that is, from a certain point of view, entirely subjective, that is not simply a universally human religious experience to which one can relate only by saying to oneself: Paul had this experience, he put it into his letters, and one can only relate to it by saying: I look to Paul, I try to find my way into what his religious experience is, and I enter into a relationship with it. But that is precisely what the newer Ritschlians want to exclude. They say: what is subjective religious experience in this way cannot actually be the content of general Protestant belief, because it leads to simply recognizing an external authority, albeit a historical authority, but one should appeal to that which can be experienced in every single human soul. Thus the Pauline letters would already be excluded from the content of the gospel. For example, the Pauline letters would not be readily accepted into the content of general preaching.

Now, if you look at the matter impartially, you will hardly doubt that what the Ritschl School now presents as the rest that is to remain as objective experiences can, for an impartial consideration, only be considered a subjective experience. For example, it is said that the account of the life of Christ Jesus, as related in the Gospels, can basically be relived by everyone, but not, for example, the doctrine of vicarious atonement. So one must include in general preaching that which relates to the experiences of Christ Jesus, but not something like the doctrine of vicarious atonement and other related things. But on unbiased examination, you will hardly be able to admit that there is such a core of general experience in relation to Christ Jesus that could be appealed to in a very general sermon. The Ritschlianers will just end up, if they are unbiased enough, feeling compelled to drop piece after piece, so that in the end there is hardly much left of the content of the gospel.

But if the content of the gospel is no longer part of the sermon, if it is no longer part of religious instruction at all, then we are left with nothing of a concrete content that can be developed; then we are left only with what could be described as the general – and as such it always becomes nebulous – as the general nebulous mystical experience of God. And this is what we are encountering more and more in the case of individual people in modern times, who nevertheless believe that they can be good Christians with this kind of experience. We are encountering more and more that any content that leads to a form — although it is taken from the depths of the whole person, it must still lead to a certain formulation — any such content is rejected and actually only looked at from a certain emotional direction, an emotional direction towards a general divine, so that in fact in many cases it is precisely the honest religious-Christian endeavor that is on the way to such a vague emotional content.

Now, you see, this is precisely where the Protestant church has arrived at an extraordinarily significant turning point, and even at the turning point where the greatest danger threatens that the Protestant church could end up in an extraordinarily bad position compared to the Catholic church. You see, the Catholic principle has never placed much emphasis on the content of the Gospels; the Catholic principle has always worked with symbolism, even in preaching. And with those Catholic preachers who have really risen to the occasion, you will notice to this day – yes, one might say, today, when Catholicism is really striving for regeneration, even more so – how strongly symbolism is coming to life again, how, so to speak, dogmatic content, certain content about facts and entities of the supersensible life, is clothed in symbols. And there is a full awareness, even among the relatively lower clergy, that the symbolum, when pronounced, penetrates extraordinarily deeply into the soul, much deeper than the dogmatic content, than the doctrinal content and that one can contribute much more to the spread of religious life by expressing the truths of salvation in symbolic form, by giving the symbols a thoroughly pictorial character and not getting involved with the actual teaching content. You know, of course, that the content of the Gospel itself is only the subject of a lecture within the context of the Mass in the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church avoids presenting the content of the Gospel as a teaching to the faithful, especially in its preaching.

Anyone who can appreciate the power that lies in a renewal of the symbolic content of the sermon will understand that we are indeed at this important turning point today, that the main results of Protestant life in recent centuries have been very, very much put in a difficult and extremely difficult position in relation to the spreading forces of Catholicism.

Now, when you see how the Protestant life itself loses its connection with the content of the Gospels, and on the other hand you see how a nebulous mysticism remains as content, then you can indeed say: the power of faith itself is actually on very shaky ground. And we must also be clear about the fact that the power of faith today stands on very shaky ground. Besides, one really cannot avoid saying to oneself: No matter how many barriers are erected around the field of faith, no matter how much effort is put into them, no matter how much barriers are erected against the penetration of scientific knowledge, these scientific findings will eventually break down the barriers, but they can only lead to irreligious life, not religious life. What the newer way of thinking in science can achieve, insofar as it is officially represented today, is this – you may not accept it at first, but if you study the matter historically, you will have to recognize it – that ultimately there would be such arguments as in David Friedrich Strauß's 'Alter und neuer Glaube' (Old and New Belief). Of course the book is banal and superficial; but only such banalities and superficialities come of taking the scientific life as it is lived today and trying to mold some content of belief out of it.

Now, as I already indicated earlier, we absolutely need such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, in the realm of religious life. But how should the unique effect of the mystery of Golgotha be possible in a world that has developed as it must be viewed by today's natural science in its development? How can you put a unique Christ in such a world?

You can put forward an outstanding man; but then you will always see, when you try to describe the life of this outstanding man, that you can no longer be honest if you do not want to avoid the question: How does the life of this most outstanding man differ from that of Plato, Socrates or any other outstanding man? One can no longer get around this question. If one is incapable of seeing any other impulses in the evolution of mankind on earth than those which science, if it is honest, can accept today, then one is also incapable of somehow integrating the Mystery of Golgotha into history. We have, of course, experienced the significant Ignorabimus of Ranke in relation to the Christ question, and it seems to me that here the Ignorabimus of Ranke should play a much more significant role for us than all attempts, emanating from Ritschlians or others, to conquer a particular field as a religious field, in which Christ can then be valid because barriers are erected against 'scientific life'.

You see, I would like to get straight to the heart of the matter in these introductory words; I would like to get you to think about it: how can one speak of ethical impulses being realized in some way in a world that operates according to the laws that the scientist must assume today? Where should ethical impulses intervene if we have universal natural causality? — At most, we can assume that in a world of mechanical natural causality, something ethical may have intervened at the starting point and, as it were, given the basic mechanical direction, which now continues automatically. But if we are honest, we cannot think of this natural mechanism as being permeated by any ethical impulses.

And so, if we accept the universal mechanism of nature and the universal natural causality, we cannot think that our own ethical impulses trigger anything in the world of natural causality. People today are just not honest enough, otherwise they would say: If we accept the general natural causality, then our ethical impulses are just beautiful human impulses, but beautiful human impulses remain illusions. We can say that ethical ideals live in us, we can even say that the radiance of a divinity that we worship and adore shines on these ethical ideals, but to ascribe a positive reality to this divine and even to state any kind of connection between our prayer and the divine and its volitional impulses remains an illusion.

Certainly, the diligence and good will that have been applied from various sides in order to be able to exist on the one hand, on the side of natural causality, and on the other hand to conquer a special area in religious life, is to be recognized. That is to be recognized. But there is still an inner dishonesty in it; it is not possible with inner honesty to accept this dichotomy.

Now, in the further course of our negotiations, we will probably not have to concern ourselves too much with the very results of spiritual scientific research; we will find content for the religious questions, so to speak, from the purely human. But I would like to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, which does indeed produce positive, real results that are just as much results as those of natural science, is not in a position to stand on the ground of general natural causality. Let us be clear about this point, my dear friends.

You see, the most that our study of nature has brought us is the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy in the universe. You know that in the newer science of the soul, in psychology, this law of the conservation of energy has had a devastating effect. One cannot come to terms with the soul life and its freedom if one takes this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seriously. And the foundations that today's science gives us to understand the human being are such that we cannot help but think that this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seems to apply to the whole human being.

Now you know that spiritual science – not as a dogma of prejudice, but as a result of [spiritual research] – has the knowledge of repeated earthly lives. In the sense of this knowledge, we live in this life, for example, between birth and death, in such a way that, on the one hand, we have within us the impulses of physical inheritance (we will come back to these impulses of physical inheritance in more detail). The world in which we live between death and a new birth includes facts that are not subject to the laws of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. If we seek the spiritual connection between our present life and our next life on earth and further into the lives that no longer proceed physically, but that, after the end of our earthly existence, proceed spiritually, if we draw this connecting line, we encounter world contents that do not fall under our natural laws and therefore cannot be conceived under the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. What, then, is the connection between that which plays out from an earlier life into a later one, and that which a person then lives out in his deeds under the influence of earlier lives on earth? This connection is such that it cannot be grasped by natural laws, even if they extend into the innermost structure of the human body.

Every effect of that which was already present in me in earlier lives, in the present life, is such that its lawfulness has nothing to do with the universal laws of nature. This means that if we have ethical impulses in our present life on earth, we can say with certainty that these ethical impulses cannot be fully realized in the physical world, but they have the possibility of being realized from one life on earth to the next, because we pass through a sphere that is released from the laws of nature.

We thus arrive at a concept of miracle that is indeed transformed, but can certainly be retained in terms of knowledge. The concept of miracle in turn takes on meaning. The concept of miracle can only make sense if ethical impulses, and not just natural laws, are at work. But when we are completely immersed in the natural world, our ethical impulses do not flow into the natural order. But if we are lifted out of this natural context, if we place time between cause and effect, then the concept of miracle takes on a completely new meaning; indeed, it takes on a meaning in an even deeper sense.

If we look at the origin of the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we do not see the same forces at work as in the universal context of nature today. Rather, we see the laws of nature being suspended during the transition from the pre-earthly metamorphosis to the present-day earthly metamorphosis of the earth. And when we go to the end of the earth, when, so to speak, the Clausiussche formula is fulfilled and the entropy has increased so much that it has arrived at its maximum, when, therefore, the heat death has occurred for the earth, then the same thing happens: we see how, at the beginning of the earth as well as at the end of the earth, natural causality is eliminated and a different mode of action is present. We therefore have the possibility of intervening precisely in such times of suspension, as they lie for us humans between death and a new birth, as they lie for the earth itself before and after its present metamorphosis, the possibility of intervention by that which is today simply rejected by natural causality, the possibility of intervention by ethical impulses.

You see, I would say that humanity has already taken one of the two necessary steps. The first step is that all reasonable people, including religious people, have abandoned the old superstitious concept of magic, the concept of magic that presupposes the possibility of intervening in the workings of nature through this or that machination. In place of such a concept of magic, we now have the view that we must simply let natural processes run their course, that we cannot master natural causality with spiritual forces. Natural causality takes its course, we have no influence on it, so it is said, therefore magic in the old superstitious sense is to be excluded from our fields of knowledge.

But, as correct as this may be for certain periods of time, it is incorrect when we look at larger periods of time. If we look at the period of time that lies between death and a new birth for us humans, we simply pass through an area that, before spiritual scientific knowledge, appears in the following way: Imagine we die at the end of our present life; we first step out of the world in which we perceive the universal natural causality through our senses and our intellect. This universal natural causality continues to rule on earth, which we have then left through death, and we can initially, after death, when we look down from the life in the beyond to this one, see nothing but that effects grow out of the causes that were active during our life; these effects, which then become causes again, become effects again. After our death, we see that this natural causality continues.

If we have led a reasonably normal life, then this life continues after death until all the impulses that were active during our earthly life have experienced their end in earthly activity itself and a new spiritual impact takes place, until, that is, the last causalities cease and a new impact is there. Only then do we embody ourselves again when the spiritual gives a new impact, so that the stream of earlier causalities ceases. We descend to a new life, not by finding the effects of the old causes of our former life again – we do not find them then – but we find a new phase of rhythm, a new impact. Here we have, so to speak, lived spiritually across a junction of rhythmic development. In the next life we cannot say that the causes that were already present in the previous life are taking effect, but that in our human life they have all been exhausted at a crossroads – not yet the effects of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, which will only be exhausted at the end of the earth's time. But all that concerns us humans in terms of ethical life has been exhausted, and a new approach is needed. And we take the impulses for this new approach from the spiritual life that we go through between death and a new birth, so that we can connect with those impulses that shape the earth out of the ethical-divine. We can connect with them when we are in the world ourselves, from which the new impulse then flows. So that we have to say: If we now look at our life between birth and death, there is certainly no room for the superstitious-magical, but in the next life the connection is such that one can really speak of magic, but not of an immediate influence of the spiritual into the physical. That is the important thing that one gets to know through spiritual science, that there is not simply a continuous stream of causalities from beginning to end, but that there are rhythms of causality that pass through certain periods of time, which are not even terribly long in relation to the entire development of the earth; they arrive at the zero point, then a new causality rhythm comes. When we enter into the next rhythm of causality, we do not find the effects of the earlier rhythm of causality. On the contrary, we must first carry them over into our own soul in the form of after-effects, which we have to carry over through karma.

You see, I just wanted to suggest to you that spiritual science really has no need to accept anything from those who want to regenerate religion today – for many, this would mean the acceptance of a new dogmatism –; I just wanted to suggest that it is possible for spiritual science, for the science of the outer world, without prejudice to the seemingly necessary validity of the laws of nature, to give such a configuration that man in turn fits into it, and fits into it in such a way that he can truly call his ethical impulses world impulses again, that he is not repelled with his ethical impulses towards a merely powerless faith. At least this possibility must be borne in consciousness, for without it one is not understood by those to whom one is to preach.

I would also like to make a point for you here that I have often made for the teachers at the Waldorf School, which forms an important pedagogical principle. You see, if you want to teach children something, you must not believe that this something will be accepted by the child if you yourself do not believe in it, if you yourself are not convinced of it. I usually take the example that one can teach small children about the immortality of the soul by resorting to a symbol. One speaks to the child of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis and draws the comparison by saying: Just as the butterfly lives in the chrysalis, our soul lives in us, only we do not see it; it flies away when death occurs. Now, there are two possible approaches to such teaching. One is to imagine: I am a terribly clever guy who doesn't think that using this comparison says anything about immortality, but I need it for the child, who is stupid, you teach them that. If you are unbiased, you will soon recognize that this sublimity of the child's perception cannot lead to fruitful teaching. What you do not have as a conviction within yourself will not convince the child in the end. Such are the effects of imponderables. Only when I myself can believe that my symbol corresponds to reality in every single word, then my teaching will be fruitful for the child. And spiritual science, of course, provides sufficient occasion for this, because in spiritual science the butterfly that crawls out of the chrysalis is not just a fictitious symbol, but it is actually the case that what appears at a higher level as immortality appears at a lower level. It is ordained by the Powers That Be that what is the transition of the soul into the immortal appears in the image of the butterfly crawling out.

So, if you look at the picture as if it were a reality, then the teaching is fruitful, but not if you imagine that you are a clever fellow who forms the image, but if you know that the world itself gives you the image. Thus the imponderable forces work between the soul of the teacher and the soul of the child; and so it is also in religious instruction, in preaching. One must have in one's soul the full content of the foundations for that which one presumes will be understood by those to whom one speaks. Indeed, one must not even have concepts that contradict this matter. I would like to express myself as follows: Suppose you are a person in the sense of today's Ritschlianer or something like that, who is thoroughly religious in terms of soul immortality, the existence of God and so on, but at the same time you are weak enough to accept the Kant-Laplace theory, and in fact as it is taught by today's natural science. The mere fact that this Kant-Laplacean theory is in your mind and is an objective contradiction of what you have to represent as the content of your Christian confession, already that impairs the convincing power that you must have as a preacher. Even if you are not aware of the contradictions, they are there; that is to say, anyone who wants to preach must have within himself all the elements that make up a consistent worldview. Of course, theology will not be of much use to us in preaching; but we must have it within ourselves as a consistent whole, not as one that exists alongside external science, but one that can embrace external science, that is, relate to it sympathetically.

We can look at the matter from another side. You see, in philosophy, in science, they talk today about all possible relationships between man and the world around him; but the things they talk about are hardly found in the people who, as simple, primitive people, even among the urban population, are listening to us today, uneducated. The relationships that our psychologists, for example, posit between the person who observes nature and the person himself are not real at all; they are actually only artificially contrived. But what lives in the simplest farmer, in the most primitive person in our world, is that deep within himself he seeks — I say seeks — something deep within himself that is not out there in nature. He searches for a different world view from the one that comes from nature, and one must speak to him of this world view if the feeling that he has as a religious feeling is to arise at all. Primitive man simply says, as it lives in his subconscious: “I am not made of this material that the world is made of, which I can see with my senses; tell me something about what I cannot see with my senses!” This is the direct appeal that is made to us if man is to make us his religious guides: we should tell him something about the positive content of the supersensible world.

All our epistemology, which says that sensory perceptions and sensations are subjective or more or less objective and so on, is of little concern to the vast majority of people. But the fact that something must live in the world that does not belong to the sensory world by its very nature is something that people want to learn about from us. And here the question is: How can we meet this need of the human being? We can only do so by finding the right path from the subject-matter of teaching to the cultus; and I will say a few introductory words about this question tomorrow. Today, I would be very grateful if you would express yourselves so that I can get to know your needs.

Perhaps we will arrive more at formulating questions than at answers, but it would be quite good if we could formulate the main questions. During my time here, I would like to give you what can lead to such a handling of the religious, which, I would say, lies in the profession of the religious leader, not in theology. So it should be aimed at religious practice, at the establishment of religious institutions, not so much at theological questions. But if such questions are on your mind, we can also talk about them. I would ask you, if we are talking about what is particularly on your mind today, to at least formulate the questions first.

A participant suggests that Mr. Bock from Berlin formulate the questions.

Emil Bock: Last night I reported on what we in Berlin have tried to make clear to ourselves in our inner preparation, and we have tried to distinguish between different sets of questions. And in connection with what we have heard, we can now formulate the one question that combines three of the areas we had distinguished: the questions of worship and preaching and the question of the justification of the community element in the community. Yesterday evening I tried to make this clear by referring to the church-historical trend of the community movement. And there we actually found that for us it is about a clarity of the relationship between anthroposophical educational work on religious questions and purely religious practice, so either in worship, the relationship between ritual and sermon, or, with a transformation of what must take place outside of the cult, the relationship of the service as a whole to the religious lecture work or the religious ritual to teaching children, because what is ultimately gained through symbolism has not yet been realized by the human being. Now the question for us is: to what extent does it have to become conscious at all, and if it has to become conscious, how does it have to be done and balanced between the symbolic work on the part of the person and the part of the person that simultaneously tries to develop an awareness of it, which in turn will be divided into several problems when we consider the diversity of those we will face later? For many people may not have the need to raise the impulses into consciousness, while many people may first have the problem of consciousness at all.

And so the question arose for us: How do we actually harmonize the striving for a communal religious life with the striving for a vitalization of the I-impulse? For we have to reckon with the fact that, as far as we can see, in the case of many people who belong to bourgeois life, what would first come into question would be a proper independence for the individual through religious practice, a connection to the forces of the I, while in the case of many other people we would have to bring about a regulation of a lost sense of self. This is what we sensed in the question of communal forces, in a way that we could understand in relation to the Moravian Church in church history.

This is how I have now described the one complex of questions that was important to us last night. But we also had three other areas that raised a number of questions for us, and the first of these was the purely organizational. If we prepare ourselves, make ourselves capable and draw the consequences for our personal field of work, which then arise when we realize that, after all, it is a matter of founding communities according to a new principle, then the question is before us, and this is in every case, of course, differentiated in practice, depending on the situation in which the individual stands: What preparatory work do we have to do? Can we do preparatory work through lecturing? How can we practically distribute ourselves to the points where something needs to be worked on, and how can we work out something together about these things? It was clear to us that, of course, we do not expect things to be made easy for us now and that we will get a place. We are prepared to create such fields of work. But perhaps there is something to be learned about how this can be made easier for us in a certain sense. Then there is a great deal that is perhaps purely organizational that we would like to ask about during our discussion.

The second point, in addition to purely organizational matters, was our relationship to theological science. Above all, there were two questions: firstly, the theological training of those who later have to work in such communities, insofar as such training can come into contact with university activities and we can learn from it. Then there is the question of the new understanding of the Bible, which, after all, presupposes a theological education that goes beyond a knowledge of the anthroposophical worldview to a certain extent, as a technical education. Perhaps there are some practical questions in one heart or another; perhaps one or the other has more of an inclination for scientific work, and it would be interesting for all of us to see how this theological-scientific work can perhaps be made fruitful for the religious life of the present.

And then, last of the six areas we see – and this is probably the one that can least be formulated directly in questions – is the question of the quality of the priesthood that we must expect of ourselves if we set out to work on something like this. But then something practical comes together again very closely, about which one should already ask, that would be the question of the selection of the personalities who should then finally enter into this work, because somehow we must also orient ourselves as to how we should select ourselves, quite apart from where the decision about this will initially lie for the direction of self-evaluation. I think I have roughly said what it was about last night.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the questions that must be asked at this turning point, to which I have alluded, and this will actually be the content of our being together. We must, in particular, be clear about these questions and also about some things that, I would say, form the prerequisite for them. I would just like to point out a few things after the questions have been formulated, before we discuss them: It is the case that we are living in a time in which such questions must be judged from a highest point of view, also from a highest historical point of view. It is not at all in the direction of the spiritual scientist to always use the phrase; “We live in a transitional period.” Of course, every period is a transition from the earlier to the later, but the point is to look beyond what is considered a transition to what is actually passing away. And in our time, there is something that is very much understood in the process of transition: human consciousness itself. We are very easily mistaken if we believe that consciousness, as it still manifests itself in many ways today, is, so to speak, unchangeable.

We say to ourselves today very easily: Yes, there are people who, through their higher education, will want to become aware of the content of the cult; other people will have no need for it, they will not strive to bring it into conscious life at all. You see, we are living at a point in the historical development of humanity when it is characteristic that the number of people who want to be enlightened in a suitable way about that which is also a cult for them is increasing very rapidly. And we have to take that into account. We must not form the dogmatic prejudice today that you can enlighten him, but not her. For if we assume today that people who have attained a certain level of education do not want to be enlightened, then we will usually be mistaken in the long run. The number of people who want to achieve a certain degree of awareness of the symbolic and of what is alive in the cultus is actually growing every day, and the main question is quite different, namely this: How can we arrive at a cult and symbolic content when we at the same time demand that, as soon as one consciously enlightens oneself about this symbolic content, it does not become abstract and alien to the mind, but rather acquires its full value, its full validity? — This is the question that is of particular interest to us today.

If it is not too religious, you can refer to Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which emerged from a person who, if you want, if you want to squeeze the concepts, can be spoken of as a person who always dreamed about such things. One also speaks of the fact that Schiller interpreted Goethe's dreams. In a certain respect, however, Goethe was much more aware of what lived in his fairy tale than what Schiller became. But his consciousness is one that can live in the image itself; it is not that abstract consciousness that one experiences today solely as consciousness. Today one confuses understanding with consciousness in general. The one who visualizes is believed to be not as conscious as the one who conceptualizes. Conceptualization is confused today with consciousness.

We will have to talk about the question of the consciousness and unconsciousness and superconsciousness of a cult and a symbolism, which must indeed occupy our present time in the very deepest sense. For on the one hand we have the Catholic Church with its very powerful cult and its tremendously powerful and purposeful symbolism. What tremendous power lies in the sacrifice of the Mass alone, when it is performed as it is performed in the Catholic Church, that is, when it is performed with the consciousness of the faithful, which is present. And the sermon by the Catholic priest also has a content that relates to symbolism, and in particular it is very much imbued with will. [On the other hand,] the Protestant development of the last few centuries has led to the development of the cultus being transferred to the actual teaching content, to the teaching content. The teaching content is now that which tends to have an effect only when it is attuned to the understanding of the listener or reader. That is why Protestant churches face the danger of atomization, the danger that everyone forms their own church in their hearts, and precisely because of this no community can be formed. And this danger is one that must be countered.

We must have the possibility of forming a community, and one that is built not only on external institutions but on the soul and inner life. This means that we must be able to build a bridge between such a cult, such a ritual, that can exist in the face of modern consciousness and yet, like the Protestant confession, leads to a deeper understanding of the teaching.

The teaching content individualizes and analyzes the community until one finally arrives at the individual human being, and even analyzes the individual human being through his or her tendencies. A psychologist can see the conflicted natures of the present day; they are individualized right down to the individual. We can actually see today people who not only strive to have their individual beliefs, but who have two or more beliefs that fight each other in their own souls. The numerous conflicted natures of the present day are only a continuation of the tendency that individualizes and analyzes the community. Cult, symbol, and ritual are synthetic and reuniting; this can be perceived everywhere where these things are practically addressed. Therefore, this question is at the same time the one that must be really underlying the question of the community movement.

The question of anthroposophical enlightenment and purely religious practice must in turn be detached from our present-day point in time. Today, however, we are experiencing something tragic; and it would be particularly significant if a force could emanate from your community here, so to speak, that could initially lead us beyond this tragedy. If one has such an explanation, as it arises, I would like to say, as a religious explanation in consequence of the entire anthroposophical explanation, which, after all, has not only religious but also historical explanations, scientific explanations, and so on, if one considers these religious explanations of Anthroposophy , the ideas one encounters and, as a consequence, the feelings that arise from them, cannot but lead to a longing for external symbols, for images, in order to take shape. This is so often misunderstood that Anthroposophical ideas are already different from those ideas that one encounters today. When one is exposed to other ideas today, whether from science or from social life, they work in the sense that they are called enlightened in the absolute sense, and in the sense that they criticize everything and undermine everything. When one is exposed to anthroposophical ideas, they lead to a certain devotion in people, they are transformed into a certain love. Just as red blood cannot help but build up the human being, so the anthroposophical ideas cannot help but stimulate the human being emotionally, sensually, even volitionally, so that he receives the deepest longing for an expression of what he has to say, in the symbolic, in the pictorial at all. It is not something artificially introduced when you find so much pictorial language in my “Geheimwissenschaft”, for example; it just comes about through expressing oneself pictorially.

In Dornach — those who have been there have seen it, later on it will be seen in its perfection — we have at the center of the building a group of Christ figures: Christ with Lucifer and Ahriman, both of whom are defeated by him. There, in the Christ, a synthesis of all that is sensual and supersensual is presented to the human eye. Yes, you see, to develop such a figure plastically, that does not come from the fact that one has once decided to place a figure there, so that the place should be adorned. It is not at all like that, but when one develops the anthroposophical concepts, one finally comes to an end with the concepts. It is like coming to a pond; now you cannot go any further, but if you want to get ahead, you have to swim. So, if you want to go further with anthroposophy, at a certain point you cannot go on forming abstract concepts, you cannot go on forming ideas, but you have to enter into images. The ideas themselves demand that you begin to express yourself in images.

I have often said to my listeners: There are certain theories of knowledge. Particularly among Protestant theologians there are those who say: Yes, what one recognizes must be clothed in purely logical forms, one must look at things with pure logic, otherwise one has a myth. Isn't that how people like Bruhn speak? He works very much against anthroposophy by saying that it forms myths, a new mythology. Yes, but what if someone were to ask the counter-question: just try to fathom the universe with your logic, without passing over into the pictorial. If the universe itself works not only logically but also artistically, then you must also look at it artistically; but if the universe eludes your logical observation, then what? In the same way, the outer human form eludes mere logical speculation. If you take the true anthroposophical concepts, you get into the picture, because nature does not create according to mere natural laws, but according to forms.

And so it can be said that as anthroposophy comes to fruition today, it takes into account what is at play in the hearts of our contemporaries, [the need] to get beyond intellectualism. This is actually admitted by every discerning contemporary who is following developments. They realize that we have to move beyond intellectualism, in theology too, of course. But most do not yet realize that this flowing into the pictorial, which then becomes ritual cultus in the sphere of religious practice, has just as much justification and just as much originality as the logical.

Most people imagine that pictures are made by having concepts and then clothing them in symbolism. This is always a straw-like symbolism. This is not the case [in Dornach]. In Dornach, there is no symbol based on a concept, but rather, at a certain stage, the idea is abandoned and the picture comes to life as something original. It is there as an image. And one cannot say that one has transferred a concept into the image. That would be a symbolism of straw.

This striving to overcome intellectualism is there today, this striving for a spiritual life that, because of objectivity, passes into the pictorial. On the other hand, there is no belief in the image at all today. This makes it tragic. One believes that one must overcome the image if one is really clever; one believes that one only becomes conscious when one has overcome the image. — Such images as in Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily are always divested of their reality when one tries to explain or interpret them by mental maziness. One can only lead to the fact that the person concerned can take up these images, that they can become concrete for him, but not mentally comment on them. This is what distinguishes what I have contributed to the interpretation of Goethe's fairy tale from what the other commentators do. They make comments and explain the images mentally.

For what the real imagination is based on, the mental explanation is just as foreign as what I say about the Chinese language in German, for example. If I want to teach someone Chinese, I have to lead him to the point where he can grasp the Chinese language in its entirety to such an extent that he can enter into it. And so one must also prepare for real pictorial thinking; one must proceed in such a way that the person concerned can then make the images present within himself and not have to attach an explanation to them.

That is the tragedy, that on the one hand there is the deepest need for the image, and on the other hand all belief in the image has actually been extinguished. We do not believe that we have something in images that cannot be given in the mind, in intellectual concepts. We must first understand this when we talk about the question of symbolum and consciousness in the near future. In particular, we will only be able to fruitfully answer the question of how to balance the subconscious and the conscious, which plagues so many people today, when we are clear about this matter.

So I would like to ask you to consider what I have now suggested about the relationship between the concepts of the intellect and the real images until tomorrow. From this point of view, we will also find that we can enter into community building, because community building depends very much on the possibility of a cult. The practical successes of community building also depend on the possibility of a cult.

You see, when people get to know India and the Indian religions, one thing is always emphasized with great justification: Of course there are many sects in India; these have a very strong sense of community that extends to the soul and can manifest itself in practical community life. In some respects, of course, the version that has to take place in the East can compete with many of the principles on which the brotherhood is based. This is often based on the fact that the Oriental in his individual life does not really know what we call subjective, personal conviction in relation to the community around him. The Oriental, if he participates at all in spiritual life, does not understand at all that one cannot have one's own opinion about everything, for example about a community and a body of teaching; that is something he does not understand at all. Conceptually, everyone can have their own opinion; the only thing that is common there is only the image, and one is only aware that the image is common. It is peculiar that in the West there is a tendency to place the emphasis on conviction, and that this leads to atomization. If one seeks conviction and places the main emphasis on it, then one comes to atomization. This does not occur if one seeks commonality in something other than conviction. Conviction must be able to be completely individual.

We must ask ourselves the question: On the one hand, the self stands as the pinnacle of the individual life, while on the other hand, Christ stands as the power and essence that is not only common to all Christians, but of which the claim must be made that it can become common to all human beings. And we must find the way to bridge the gap between the very individual self, which to a certain extent wants to believe what it is capable of, and the commonality of Christ.

We shall then have to devote special attention to the question of forming communities, and, as the Lord very rightly said, to the preliminary work for this. For these are, of course, matters that will meet with quite different difficulties. On the one hand, we are today almost dependent on conducting preliminary work through instruction in such a way that we find a sufficiently large number of people in whose souls there is initially an understanding of what can actually be wanted. On the other hand, we are faced with humanity that is completely fragmented. The simple fact that we appear with the pretension of knowing something that another person might have to think about for a day to judge is almost enough to get us dismissed right now. The effect from person to person is extremely difficult today. And of course this also makes the formation of communities more difficult.

Nevertheless, if you want to achieve something in what you have only been able to strive for by appearing here, then we will have to talk at length about the question of forming a community and, above all, about the preparatory work for it, which should essentially consist of us feeling, already spiritually, as community builders. And we can hardly do this other than by – perhaps it will not be immediately understandable at first hearing what I want to say, because it touches on one of the deepest questions of the present – first of all trying to refrain from lecturing other people as much as possible. People just don't take lectures today; this should not be our main task.

You see, however small the success of anthroposophical work may be, which I have had to set myself as my task, in a sense this success is there, albeit in a small circle; it is there. And what is there is based on the fact that I actually — in the sense in which it is understood at our educational institutions — never wanted to teach anyone in a primarily forceful way. I have actually always proceeded according to a law of nature, I always said to myself: the herrings lay an infinite number of eggs in the sea, very few of them become herrings, but a certain selection must take place. And anyone who knows that that which goes beyond the materialistic continues to have an effect, knows that even the unfertilized herring eggs already have their task in the world as a whole – they have their great effect in the etheric world, the selections only take place for the physical world – then comes to terms with this question: Why do such herring eggs remain unfertilized? That which remains unfertilized has its great task in another world. These unfertilized herring eggs are not entirely without significance. And that is basically how it is with teaching people. I have never believed, whether I have spoken to an audience of fifty or to one of five hundred (I have also spoken to larger audiences), that one-half or one-quarter of them can be taught. Rather, I have assumed that among five hundred there will perhaps be five who, at the first stroke, will have their hearts touched by what I have to say, who are, so to speak, predestined for it. Among fifty people, one, and among five people, one in ten. It is no different, and one must adjust to that. Then what happens through instruction in the present time cannot happen through selection. People come together with whom one has found an echo. Selection is what we must seek first today; then we will make progress.

It takes a certain resignation not to live in this sense of power: you want to teach, you want to convince others. But you absolutely must have this resignation. And why people so often lack it depends precisely – I am only talking here about people who practise religion – depends precisely on their theological training. This theological training is basically based entirely on the fact that one can teach everyone, that one should not actually make selections. Therefore, ways and means must be found to include in the theological training, above all, the emotional relationship to the content of the spiritual.

You see, unfortunately even theology has arrived at the point of view that knowledge of God is always more important than life in God, the experience of the divine in the soul. The experience of the divine in the soul is what gives one the strength to work with the simplest, most unspoiled people, and that is what should actually be developed. Recent times have worked against this completely. The more we strive to seek abstract concepts of some kind of supersensible being, and the less we absorb this supersensible being into our souls, the more we will work against it. We really need a life-filled preparation and education for theological science. And of course something esoteric comes into play here, you see, where we have to point to a law that already exists. First of all, you have to have within you what I mentioned earlier: not only as a clever person, how are you supposed to teach a picture or something to someone else – you have to have that to the full – but you must also have the other, that you must always know more than what you say. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. But if you take the standpoint that is actually held today in the professorial world, that one should only appropriate that which one then wants to communicate to others, then you will certainly not be able to achieve much with religious communication. For example, when you speak about the Bible, you must have your own content, in which you live, in addition to the exoteric content, which is nothing other than an esoteric content expressed. There is no absolute boundary between the esoteric and the exoteric; one flows into the other and the esoteric becomes exoteric when it is spoken out.

This is basically what makes Catholic priests effective. That is what praying the breviary consists of. He seeks to approach the divine in a way that goes beyond the layman by praying the breviary. And the special content of the breviary, which goes beyond what is taught, also gives him strength to work in preaching and otherwise. It has always been interesting to me – and this has happened not just once, but very frequently – that Protestant pastors who had been in office for a long time came to me and said that there should be something similar for them [to the Catholic breviary]. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not speaking in favor of Catholicism, least of all the Roman one. There are pastors who have been in office for a long time who have said to me: Why is it that we cannot come into contact with souls in the same way as a Catholic priest, who of course abuses it? — That is essentially because the [Catholic priest] seeks an esoteric relationship with the spiritual world.

This is really what we are striving for in the threefold social organism. The spiritual life we have today as a general rule — we are not talking about the other one — the spiritual life we have is not really a spiritual life, it is a mere intellectual life. We talk about the spirit, we have concepts, but concepts are not a living spirit. We must not only have the spirit in some form or other in the form of concepts that sit in our heads, but we must bring the spirit down to earth, it must be in the institutions, it must prevail between people. But we can only do that if we have an independent spiritual life, where we not only work out of concepts about the spirit, but work out of the spirit itself.

Now, of course, the Church has long endeavored to preserve this living spirit. It has long since disappeared from the schools; but we must bring it back there and also into the other institutions. The state cannot bring it in. That can only be brought in by what is at the same time individual priestly work and community work. But it must be priestly work in such a way that the priest, above all, has within himself the consciousness of an esoteric connection with the spiritual world itself, not merely with concepts about the spiritual world. And here, of course, we come to the great question of selection, to the judgment of the quality of the priests. Now, this judgment of the quality of the priests is such that it can very easily be misunderstood, because, firstly, many more people have this quality than one might think, it is just not developed in the right way, not cultivated in the right way; and secondly, this question is often a question of fate. When we come to have a living spiritual life at all and the questions of fate come to life for us again, then the priests will be pushed out of the community of people more into their place than out of self-examination, which always has a strongly selfish character. It is true that one must acquire a certain eye for what objectively calls upon one to do this or that.

Perhaps I may also tell you what I have said in various places as an example. I could also tell other examples. I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and wisdom. Two Catholic priests came to me after the lecture. You can imagine that Catholic priests have not read anything by me, because it is actually forbidden for them, and it is basically the case that it is considered an abnormality for a Catholic priest to go to an anthroposophical lecture. But they were probably harmless at the time; they approached me quite innocently, since I did not say anything in this lecture that would have opposed them. They even came to me after the lecture and said: Yes, actually we cannot say anything [against what you have presented, because] we also have purgatory, we also have the reference to supersensible life after purgatory. Now in this case I thought it best to give two lectures. 'Bible and Wisdom' I and II, and in the first lecture nothing was said about repeated lives on earth, so they did not notice that there was a contradiction to the Roman Catholic view. Now they came and said that they had nothing against the content, but the “how” I said it was very different, and so they believed that they could not agree with this “how”. Because the “how” would be right for them, because they spoke for all people and I only spoke for certain prepared people, for people who therefore have a certain preparation for it. After some back and forth, I said the following: You see, it doesn't matter whether I or you—you or I, I said—are convinced that we speak for all people. This conviction is very understandable. We might not speak at all if we didn't have the conviction that we formulate our things in such a way and imbue them with such content that we speak for all people. But what matters is not whether we are convinced that we speak for all people, but whether all people come to you in church. And I ask you: do all people still come to church when you speak? Of course they could not say that everyone still comes, but they had to admit that some do not come. That is objectivity. For those who do not go to you and who also have the right to seek a path to Christ, I have spoken for them. — That is how one's task is derived from the facts.

I just wanted to show a way to get used to having one's personal task set by the question of destiny and also by the great question of objectivity. I wanted to show how one should not brood so much, as is the case today, over one's own personality – which, after all, is basically only there so that we can fill the place that the divine world government assigns us – but rather we should try to observe signs from which we can recognize the place we are to be placed. And we can do that.

Today, when people speak from their souls, they repeatedly ask: What corresponds to my particular abilities, how can I bring my abilities to bear? This question is much, much less important than the objective question, which is answered by looking around to see what needs to be done. And if we then really get seriously involved in what we notice, we will see that we have much more ability than we realize. These abilities are not so much specific; we as human beings can do an enormous amount, we have very universal soul qualities, not so much specific ones. This brooding over one's own self, and the over-strong belief that we each have our own specific abilities that are to be particularly cultivated, is basically an inward, very sophisticated egoism, which must be overcome by precisely the person who wants to achieve such qualities as are meant here.

Now I think I have told you how I understand the questions. We can think about the matter until tomorrow; and if it is all right with you, I would like to suggest that we meet again tomorrow at around 11 o'clock. And I would ask you not to hold back on any matter, but we want to deal with the things that are on your mind as exhaustively as possible.

My dear friends! Of the two areas that you yourselves also spoke about yesterday, it seems to me necessary that we deal first with the one that will have to provide the foundation for all our work. Of course, we must first prepare the real ground, and in our time that can be nothing other than community building. We will be able to deal with what is to develop on this real ground all the better in our discussions if we first talk about this community building.

On the one hand, it is undoubtedly the most difficult of your tasks, although it is easy to underestimate, but on the other hand, it is also the most urgent. You can see this from the form that the youth movement has taken. This youth movement, as it lives today in its most diverse forms, has a clear religious background, and this religious background is also always emphasized by the understanding members of the youth movement. And if you look at this youth movement with an open mind, what you notice about it is what is intimately connected with the building of community.

Consider the following phenomenon of this youth movement: it emerged some time ago, years ago. How did it emerge? Initially with the express aim of joining one group with another. It emerged explicitly under the motto of union, of group formation; and the significant thing is that in recent years this youth movement has undergone a metamorphosis into its opposite in many circles. Even those who may have taken it most seriously in those days now advocate isolation and a hermit-like existence. They emphasize the impossibility of joining forces with others. And why is that so?

Perhaps it is, when viewed symptomatically, something that is one of the most significant social phenomena of our time, particularly in central, southern and eastern Europe, that the striving to be a spiritual hermit has emerged so rapidly from the striving for community building in the youth movement, and that there is actually a certain fear of union. If you are familiar with the youth movement, you may find something different here and there, but if you look at it impartially, you will see that the decisive impulses of this youth movement will have to be characterized as I have done.

Now, what is the underlying reason for all this? The underlying reason for all this is that the religious communities have not been able to hold this youth within themselves. It is quite obvious that this youth movement does contain a clear religious impulse. Originally, if we may say so, it was a rebellion against the principle of authoritative life, of paternal life, of looking up to the experience of older people, that gave rise to this youth movement; it was a shaking of the human, paternal principle of authority. The times developed in such a way that people simply no longer believed in their fathers, that they simply no longer had any inner, subconscious trust in their fathers. But man needs man, especially when it comes to action and work. People sought unification, but they could only seek this unification with spiritual life, which is anchored in the hearts of people today when they live and are raised in our ordinary schools, under our religious impulses and so on. Of course, religious longing stirs in young people precisely when something is not right in the external religious life, but it stirs as an indefinite, abstract feeling; as something nebulous, it stirs. On the other hand, it is precisely in connection with this religious urge that the longing for community life arises. But from all that young people could receive, from all that is available, the possibility of real community building does not arise, but rather – if I may express myself somewhat radically – only the possibility of clique formation. That is, after all, the characteristic of our time: that wherever the desire for community arises, what actually arises everywhere is not a real inner sense of community, but the sense of forming cliques, that is, of joining together through the accidental community and feelings of community for what is nearest at hand. What leads one person to another by the accident of place, the accident of circumstances, and so on, leads to the formation of cliques. But these cliques, because they are not based on a solid spiritual foundation, all have the seed of dissolution within them. Cliques dissolve. Cliques are not lasting communities.

Lasting communities do not exist under any other condition than that they are based on a genuine shared commitment in communal life. And for anyone who is familiar with the history of social life, there was nothing surprising in the fact that what only contained the beginnings of cliquish behavior could not develop into community life, and that therefore these young souls became reclusive, received the urge within themselves not to join, and even developed a certain fear of joining. Everyone goes more or less their own way, I would say, who has fully participated in the youth movement. But since this youth movement emerged from a shock to the paternal authority principle, it must be said that this historical life of more recent times does not contain the seeds for real community building.

What you must seek first and foremost is the formation of a community. And if you want to arrive at a goal that is true and rooted in reality, you will have no other choice than to practice threefolding, to be truly aware of how to practice threefolding. In your profession, you absolutely do not need to agitate for threefolding in the abstract. In your profession, it is particularly possible to work very practically for threefolding. But there is no other way than to seek out the way to those to whom you want to speak. A real way must be found to found communities.

Now one need not believe that by doing something like this, one must become a revolutionary in a certain radical sense. There is no need for that at all. It may happen in one case that you get into some kind of regular ministry, into a preaching job, in the completely regular way. It may also happen that you succeed in directing the external material conditions here or there in such a way that you found a completely free community. But such free communities and those in which one strives to bring freedom into religious life must belong together; and that can only be the case if, in a certain way, what you strive for – please do not misunderstand me here to misunderstand me, it is not to preach the pure power principle, but the justified power principle —, if what you strive for becomes a power, that is, if you have a certain number of like-minded people. Nothing else will make an impression on the world. You must actually have the possibility of having people as preachers over a large territory who are from your very own circles. To do this, it will be necessary to make the circle you have now at least ten times larger. That will be your first task, so to speak: to seek out such a large circle of like-minded people, initially in the way that the smaller circle came about. Only when people in the most distant places – relatively distant places, of course – see the same aspiration emerging, when there is cohesion with you over a larger territory, will you be able to proceed to such a community formation, regardless of whether you have come to the ministry of preaching by a path recognized today or otherwise.

You will be able to work in such a way that you can truly bind your parishioners to you inwardly, emotionally. When I say “bind,” it does not mean to put on slave chains. To do that, however, the parishioners must gain the awareness through you that they live in a certain brotherhood. The communities must have concrete fraternal feelings within them and they must recognize their preacher-leader as a self-evident authority to whom they can also turn in specific questions. That means that you must first of all establish a self-evident authority in these communities, which you do not need to call fraternal communities or the like in an agitative way, especially with regard to economic life, however strange it may seem at first. It must be possible for advice to be sought from you in economic matters and in all matters related to economic affairs, based on the personal insight of the community members. It must be possible for people to feel that they are receiving a kind of directive from the spiritual world when they ask the preacher.

You see, when you can look at life, then what should actually be giving direction to it comes to you in seemingly small symptoms. I was once walking down a street in Berlin and met a preacher I had known for a long time. He was carrying a travel bag. I wanted to be polite and asked him some question. The next thing, of course, was that I asked him the question that arose from the situation: “Are you going on a trip?” — “No,” he answered me, “I'm just going on an official act.” — Now you may see something extraordinarily insignificant in it; but from the whole context, the matter seemed extraordinarily significant to me. The pastor in question was more of a theologian than a preacher, but he was a very earnest man. He had the things he needed for a baptism in his traveling bag and yet he spoke and felt in such a way that he could say to someone whom he could reasonably expect to understand a different turn of phrase: “I'm going to an official function.” — That is something like a policeman, when a thief is to be sought, he also goes to an official act.

It should disappear completely from the preacher's work that the connection with the external state or other life should somehow emerge in his consciousness. The whole emotional tenor of the words must express the fact that what is being done is being done by a personality who acts out of the consciousness of her God, out of the free impulse of her human personality. The consciousness must be present: I am not doing this as an official act, I am doing it naturally out of my innermost being, because the divine power leads me to do so.

You may consider this a minor matter. But it is precisely this tendency to regard such facts as unimportant that is perhaps the most important factor in the decline of religious activity today. When, on the other hand, such things are regarded as the main thing, when a person is imbued with the direct presence of the Divine in the physical, right down to the most minute sensation, and when the preacher feels such authority that he knows he am bringing divine life into it, I am not performing an official act in the modern sense, but am carrying out a commission from God – only then will he transmit to his parishioners that which must be transmitted as imponderables.

This seems to be quite far removed from economic life. And yet, as things stand today, we must not consider the things we are striving for here in Stuttgart in the field of threefolding to be decisive for other areas of life. We are working out threefolding from the totality of the social organism. But for your profession, it is a different matter. For your profession, it is a matter of permeating each of the three limbs — which, even if they are not properly organized, are in fact still there — with religious life; so that, although complete freedom of action prevails within the communities, within which, of course, economic life also takes place - it must, so to speak, be a self-evident prerequisite that in economic matters, where it is a matter of spiritual life flowing into the community, the decision is made by the preacher, by the pastor. There must be such harmony, and above all, the pastor must live in intimate connection with the entire charitable life of his community. To some extent, he must be aware of the balance of social inequalities. This must be striven for in the community. One must actually be the advisor of the men, and one must also be, to some extent, the helping advisor of the women; one must help the women's charity, and so on.

Both men and women must, when it comes to organizing their economic affairs, economic aid, and economic cooperation in a higher sense, unquestionably have the natural feeling that the preacher has something to say. Without an interest in economic life, a participatory interest, religious communities cannot be established, especially not in today's difficult economic times.

Is that not right? We can initially present such things as an ideal, but in one area or another we will have the opportunity to approach the ideal to a greater or lesser extent. Of course, you will face endless resistance if you strive for something like this. You will be rejected, but you must make your parishioners aware of this, and through their desire, the necessity to achieve this guiding influence of the preacher in economic life will become apparent.

At this point, I must say that much must remain an ideal. Above all, what must be the part of the one who lives as a preacher in a community in terms of legal and state life must still remain an ideal in many cases today. I will give a specific example. The fact that religious life has increasingly lost its real foundation has led to things that seem extraordinarily enlightened to today's people, but that have thoroughly undermined religious life from within social life. One example is the view that is held today about marriage legislation. There is no doubt that marriage legislation — whether conceived in strict or less strict terms, depending on other circumstances — is necessary. But it is necessary, under all circumstances, that this marriage legislation be integrated into the threefold social organism. For this, however, it is of course necessary to have a clear sense of marriage as a distinct institution that represents the threefold social organism. It is, first of all, an economic community and must be integrated into the social organism in so far as it has an economic part. Thus, a connection must be sought between the economic community that marriage represents and the associations. Today, little more can be thought of this, but this awareness must arise from within the communities, that above all the economic side of marriage must be supported by the measures of the associations, by the measures of economic life.

The second thing is that the legal relationship is clearly perceived as a relationship in itself, and that the state has only to intervene in the legal relationship of marriage, so that marriage between a man and a woman is only of concern to the state insofar as it is a matter of law, which originates from the state.

On the other hand, you will have to claim the spiritual blessing of marriage as your very own within the religious community in a completely free way based on your decision. So you will have to strive for the ideal that the religious blessing of marriage is placed within the freedom of religious decision and that this decision is fully respected, so that it is seen as a basis for the other, so that the trust that exists in the community is actually sought first for the marriage decision of the pastor or the preacher. Of course I know that such a thing is perhaps even regarded by many Protestant people today as something quite out of date, but again I can only say: that such things are regarded as out of date shows the damage of civilization, which inevitably undermines religious life.

So you will have to make your parishioners aware that the actual inner spiritual core of marriage has to do with religious life and that threefolding must certainly be practised in this area, that is, all three parts of marriage must gradually find their expression in social life, that is, all three things must be included. One should not imagine threefolding in such a way that one draws up a utopian program and says that one should threefold things. One threefolds them in the best way when one grasps that threefolding is implicitly contained in every institution of life and how one can shape the individual things in such a way that threefolding underlies them. Perhaps in your profession, in particular, it is not necessary to place too much emphasis on representing the threefold social order in the abstract; but one must understand how life demands that this threefold order comes about, that is, that each of the individual limbs of the social organism is a truly concrete, existing reality.

Of course you will meet with great resistance to this today, but it is precisely in such matters that you can, if you start by educating your community, best develop the relationship between the free spiritual life – in which, above all, the religious element must be included – which is to be, not in, I might say, benevolent mutual addresses, that one tolerates each other, but by actually presenting what is demanded by the matter as one's ideal. Of course, you must be prepared for the greatest resistance.

And thirdly, you must have the opportunity to develop what the free spiritual life should mean in the threefold social organism. Today, in the general social organism, we no longer have a spiritual life at all; we have an intellectual life, but we have no spiritual life. I would say that we have no dealings between gods and humans. We do not have the awareness that in everything that happens externally in the physical world, the divine work should be there through ourselves, and that the real, true spirit should be carried into the world, that therefore both the actions that take place within economic life, as well as the legal determinations that take place within state life, and in particular that the education of youth and also the instruction of old age must be the free deed of the people participating in this spiritual life. — That is what must be understood.

Therefore, you will have no choice but to fight for your complete individual authority for the free will. Of course, this is something that our time demands: that the individual who preaches preaches under his own authority. You see, in this area, one simply has to look at the tremendous clash of contradictions that prevails in our time.

When I go to a Catholic church today and come to the sermon, I know that the preacher is wearing the stole. I know that when he is wearing the stole, the person standing in the pulpit and preaching is not at all relevant to me as a human being. This is also really in the consciousness [of the Catholic priest]. As a human being, he does not feel responsible for any of his words, because the moment he crosses his chest with the stole, the Church speaks. And since the declaration of infallibility, the Roman Pope speaks ex cathedra for all things to be proclaimed by the Catholic Church. So, in [the Catholic preacher], I have a person in front of me who, at the moment [of the sermon], completely empties himself and doesn't even think about somehow representing his opinion, who is absolutely of the opinion that he can have a personal opinion that he keeps to himself, that doesn't even have to agree with what he speaks from the pulpit, because a personal opinion is out of the question there. The moment he crosses his stole over his chest, he is the representative of the church.

You see, that is one extreme. But it is there, and it will play a major role in the cultural movement that is just around the corner. Because as corrupting as we have to regard this power, it is a power, an immense power; and you cannot approach it otherwise than by becoming fully aware of it. They will have no other way of fighting. You will encounter this power at every turn in your life. It is spreading in an immeasurable way today, while humanity sleeps and does not notice.

On the other hand, the task of the time is to trust in – if I may call it that – divine harmony. And that, my dear friends, has absolutely not been understood in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. But it is something that should be understood in the most urgent sense in the present. In my “Philosophy of Freedom”, the legal system is also based on the individual human being acting entirely out of himself. One of the first and most brilliant critics to write about my Philosophy of Freedom in the English Athenaeum simply said that this whole view leads to a theoretical anarchism. This is, of course, the belief of today's people. Why? Because modern man actually lacks any truly divine social trust, because people cannot grasp the following, which is most important for our time: When you really get people to speak from their innermost being, then harmony comes about among people, not through their will, but through the divine order of the world. Disharmony comes from the fact that people do not speak from their innermost being. Harmony cannot be created directly, but only indirectly, by truly reaching people at their core. Then each person will automatically do what is beneficial for the other, and also speak what is beneficial for the other. People only talk and act at cross purposes as long as they have not found themselves.

If you understand this as a mystery of life, then you say to yourself: I seek the source of my actions within myself and have the confidence that the path that leads me inwardly will also connect me to the divine world order outwardly and that I will thus work in harmony with others. This brings, firstly, trust in the human heart and, secondly, trust in external social harmony. There is no other way than this to bring people together. Therefore, what you must achieve if you really want to have a social effect through your profession, a divine social effect, a spiritual social effect, is the possibility to really work from within, that is, everyone for himself, because he has found himself, has the possibility to be an authority.

The Catholic preacher acts without individuality, crosses the stole and is no longer himself, he is the Church. The Catholic Church has the magical means to powerfully influence social life without trust [in individual strength], through external symbolic soul activity. This was necessary to establish social communities towards the end of the 2nd millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha and was most ideally developed in ancient Egypt. In a roundabout way, which can be traced exactly historically, this has become the inner essence of the Catholic Church. The essence of the Catholic Church is that it still stands today at the point of view of the Egyptian priests and their social life in about the second millennium BC. The Catholic is an influence of the old into our time.

In contrast to this, there is a need today to really stand on the standpoint of our time, not to feel that we are anything other than the bearers of divine life within ourselves, which has become intellect. You have to fight for the freedom of speech so that no one can tell you what to preach, and that there is no norm for the content of the sermon. That is what you have to fight for. Otherwise you will not be able to found communities unless you make it a principle to fight for the freedom of preaching.

With this, I have first outlined in some detail what must, so to speak, lead to the formation of a community from within. If you are able to realize these things, then you will also, in turn, encourage young people to form a real community, whereas young people have only been able to form cliques out of themselves. I am convinced and have full confidence that if such communities can be brought into existence, then the young people will gather in such communities and something useful can come out of it, whereas perhaps 15 to 20 years ago the young people sought union in the so-called youth movement, but were leaderless because they no longer believed in their fathers and thus strove towards community building without any real inner impulse. All that came of it was the formation of cliques. Today, people's souls are hermits. But if there were a possibility of coming together, they would join immediately, and where truly free communities arise, that is, communities with inner freedom, young people in particular would flock to them.

You see, in such matters we naturally have a difficult time with our anthroposophical movement. Because of its inner nature, this anthroposophical movement today can be nothing other than a completely universal movement. It must, so to speak, extend itself to all areas of life, and we are in an extraordinarily difficult situation with regard to the anthroposophical movement. We are in the difficult situation that on the one hand a certain anthroposophical good must be communicated to the world today - it must go out into the world, because the world lacks the opportunity to receive spiritual content - on the other hand, the desire to form communities, to form anthroposophical communities, is arising everywhere. Call them branches, call them what you will, the endeavour is there to found anthroposophical branches. And because the anthroposophical movement today still has to be something universal, these anthroposophical branches cannot really come to a real life, because they oscillate back and forth between the religious element and the spiritual element, which is more directed towards all branches of life. Naturally, they do not develop a true sense of brotherhood; they do not even grasp their social task, which consists in founding small communities as models of what is to spread throughout humanity. But either they degenerate into a mere transmission of the teachings, or they feel the human resistance to unification and split into opinions, quarrel and the like. But if we ask ourselves where the fault lies, we find it not in these communities but in the fact that today one cannot really find a true connection to religious life by penetrating the spiritual world with insight. Among all the denominations that exist today, anthroposophists cannot find a religious life. These communities must first come into existence. They cannot come into being in any other way than by people seriously considering all the things that can lead to the founding of such communities. I believe that the external possibilities, the possibilities for establishing institutions, will not be so difficult to find if the attitude that I have tried to characterize for you today really takes hold, provided there are enough of you. If you have ten times as many people who are preparing to fulfill the preaching profession throughout Germany, over a larger territory, then you will also have the opportunity to come to community building out of this attitude. But community building is the foundation. Only when we have become clear about this can we talk further about worship and preaching.

Now I would like to ask you to speak up and ask questions about your own specific thoughts, desires, and so on. Perhaps you have had concerns about some of the things I have mentioned, or you feel that one or the other question has not been fully addressed, that you need more practical information.

A participant: Even if the practical side comes about easily, it may be that this or that practical matter is of the greatest importance to us now, especially since some of us are already in certain practical situations. Therefore, I would ask you to perhaps tell us something about the possibilities for connecting. Initially, there are two possibilities for connecting, either perhaps from the church or from the existing anthroposophical communities. Is it at all possible to connect from church work afterwards? This fear that it cannot be found still holds back many of us, although they could already enter into church service. What should happen then? The question of practical matters is perhaps already included, but the fundamental question of the possibility of making contact is already contained in it, because there is simply no clarity in our own movement about where we can make a practical connection right now. Would we be wasting an opportunity if we entered the church service now in the hope of being able to make a connection later? Should we not rather do something else, because we have to make a connection somewhere.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is such that the answer to this must be a manifold one. It cannot be given in the same way because, despite the difficulties that the church presents today, there are still possibilities to work from within the church that should perhaps not be left untapped. If you take into account the particular circumstances here or there, you will be able to say that, given the nature of the community as a whole, you can found your community yourself, if you seek out the existing forms of the ministry, but then gradually lead the community out of the current church circumstances, while you would not be able to get the community members together if you placed yourself outside the church and simply tried to gather them. On the other hand, in certain fields it will no longer be possible to work outside the Church at all. In such cases it is of course absolutely necessary to try to found free communities. But I would recommend under all circumstances not to approach the matter with the aim of forming a union with the anthroposophical branches and so on, and not to aim at working out of anthroposophy itself, because in that case you would be pulled down before you got anywhere. Anthroposophy as such will simply be attacked in the most outrageous way from all possible sides in the near future; and in order to arrive at the formation of a quiet community within this battle, you see, the strength that you have today, even if you were ten times as numerous, is not yet sufficient. We do not yet live in social conditions that would make it possible to develop religious communities from anthroposophy itself. They have to form religious communities for themselves and then seek union with the anthroposophical movement. The anthroposophical movement – I can say this quite openly – will never fail to support this union, of course; but it would not be good to form ecclesiastical communities out of the anthroposophical 'communities', so to speak.

You see, when we founded the Waldorf School - it is not an example, but there is at least a similarity - we did not set out to found a school of world view, a school of anthroposophy, but merely to bring into pedagogy and didactics what can be brought in through anthroposophy. I was quite insistent that Catholic children should be taught by Catholic priests and Protestant children by Protestant priests. Now, however, it has become clear that, because the first core of the Waldorf School was working-class children, a great many children would have had no religious instruction at all. And so it became necessary to provide an independent anthroposophical religious education. But I am very particular, especially in my own behavior in this matter, that this anthroposophical religious education does not fall into the constitution of this school, but that it comes from outside in the same way as Catholic and Protestant religious education, so that the school as such gives this religious instruction out of itself, but simply allows the Anthroposophical community to give this Anthroposophical religious instruction to those children for whom the parents want it, just as Protestant religious instruction is given to Protestant children and Catholic religious instruction to Catholic children. In this area, we must be serious about the fact that the spiritual works only through the spiritual. As soon as we would make a school constitution to incorporate religious education into the school curriculum, we would probably achieve more at first than we are achieving now, but slowly dismantling it. We must have faith in the spirit to work through itself. And that is why we in the anthroposophical movement face the great difficulty that as soon as we establish a branch, we do so in the physical world; and there, of course, people always strive to work through external means. But anthroposophy cannot work through external means today; it can only work through that which is in it as spiritual content that works on people. These two things are always in conflict with each other: external branching out – internal effectiveness. This fights terribly with each other. And that would even change into a healthy one at the moment when a community could really be formed out of the religious spirit. Now, of course, it is a matter of overcoming, I would say, higher inconveniences, so to speak.

You see, when I speak to Swiss teachers about the liberation of intellectual life, the liberation of the teaching profession, even the best of them usually reply: Yes, in Switzerland we are actually quite free, we can do what we want at school. — But no one does anything other than what the state wants. In terms of freedom, they are basically as unfree as possible; they just don't feel their unfreedom, they feel their unfreedom as freedom because they have grown so inwardly together with it. We, in turn, must first learn to feel the unfreedom. I was once able to feel it in a very strange way at a threefolding meeting I had held in Switzerland; I would say it was more in a humorous way. During the discussion, someone had become extremely heated in a certain fanatical way about the fact that in Germany, laws and police measures were used to command everyone to behave loyally, to worship the monarchy loyally, and so on, that all this was a commandment. He became so terribly heated about it. I said to him: It may well be that Republicans get worked up in such a way against the monarchy, but I remember that when the German Kaiser was in Switzerland a few years ago, the people behaved in an extremely devotional manner, so that at that time in Zurich the image of devotion far surpassed what people were used to in Germany. — To which he replied: Yes, that is precisely the difference between Germany and Switzerland: in Germany, it is all compulsory, the people have to do it, but we do it voluntarily. —- That is the difference between free people and those who are unfree.

Well, it is not true that we have to, and that all people have to – it is completely international in our time – we actually have to learn what it means to be a free person. And that is why I believe that it must actually be possible to tie in with where some freedom is still possible within the church, to found these free communities from within the church itself.

I am not unaware of the difficulties, but it is true that you only have to consider the real cultural conditions, especially in Central Europe. A certain kind of community was formed at the time – and we really must learn from history – when Old Catholicism emerged after the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. Now, if you take Old Catholicism in terms of its content, it can be said to have the same in terms of doctrine and priestly behavior as the Protestant pastorate. It is already inherent in Old Catholicism, which has only preserved in a popular way a cultus that we will talk about later. One can say that Old Catholicism, precisely because it arose as a reaction, already contained within it that which, by itself, could have led to the free formation of congregations outside the Church. Now you will know, of course, that Old Catholicism in Germany was received with great enthusiasm. Parishes were formed here and there, but they could not live, could not die. Of course, at that time, because one could not form such parishes within the Catholic Church, they had to form themselves. There was no other way. In Switzerland, where much more of the Old Catholicism has been preserved – because there are many Old Catholic communities there – it has recently become quite blatantly clear that these communities are continuing a conservative life, but are no longer growing, but rather remaining small, even shrinking, so that they are already on the ground of a descending development. This is the difficulty of forming free communities today.

Therefore, it will be necessary to save as many people as you can – not from the church, but from those people who have not yet been able to decide to leave the church in order to found free communities with you – to really grasp them in the church and bring them out. If things develop in this way, you can be quite sure that the connection with the anthroposophical movement will be achieved. For the anthroposophical movement, although it will have to fight terrible battles, will nevertheless establish its validity, even if it is only possible with many sacrifices on the part of those working in it, with great sacrifices. It will establish its validity , but it will hardly be in a position today to found a branch of religious life out of itself — that is why I always spoke today of the special nature of your profession — it will hardly be in a position to shape communities in a particular religious sense. It will be necessary for what I always emphasize to become truth: The Anthroposophical Society as such cannot found new religious communities and so on, but one must somehow form the religious community out of oneself, or - as far as one can - form it with the human material that today, purely out of prejudice, still stands within the old church. But perhaps you can formulate the question further so that we can talk about it in more detail.

Dr. Rittelmeyer – he just got sick – would have had the opportunity, given the way he had behaved towards his parishioners, to found a completely free parish in the middle of Berlin. And once it has a certain power, a certain standing, is it large, then you don't dare approach the pastor in any way. Is it actually your opinion that one should not have this last remnant of consideration for the church?

A participant: I think it will be especially difficult to work in the church, and I don't yet see clearly to what extent we could do that even now. We will have to wait until we can go out together to do the actual work. Would it perhaps be possible to look for points of contact in the church now? But then we would already be scattered until we are ready to go out together.

Rudolf Steiner: As long as you do not have a preaching ministry, you cannot seek such connections now. You must seek what is the preparation for religious work, of course independently of the church, at least inwardly independently. As long as you are, so to speak, students, you cannot seek union with the church. You can only look around to see where it would be possible to pull such congregations out of the church. And if you should find that this is impossible in Central Europe, then you should still proceed to the free formation of congregations, and you should seek the means and ways to proceed to this free formation of congregations.

Now, of course, I would only have two objections to an absolutely free establishment of a congregation, that is, one of you goes to place X and the other to place Y and simply, by preaching first for five and then for ten or twenty people for my sake, gradually creates a free congregation. The only difficulty I can see is that this path is, first of all, a slow one – you will see that it is a slow one – it is the safest, but a slow one. And the second is the material question. Because, isn't it true that if things were to be done this way, it would be necessary for this matter to be financed in the broadest sense, to be properly financed, so that a community would simply be established by you yourselves, and that the financing of this community would be sought.

Now I must say that this would, of course, be the best way; even if it has to be fought for with external material means, it would naturally be the best way. But I must tell you quite frankly that all these paths require great courage on your part. It takes great courage for you to join in the struggle that naturally arises, to join in the difficulties, in the struggle, for the financial foundation as well. It would, of course, be best if we could raise sufficient funds to make you completely independent, so that you could simply choose whether to collect here or there, even if it is only from the smallest circle, my community. It will come about. It takes courage to believe that it will come about. It will come about, but of course you need the financial basis, and there are extraordinary difficulties standing in the way of this today. The community of all today's positive confessions will soon be there, which most strenuously opposes the fact that something like this is done. And you cannot do it in detail, you have to organize it as a large movement. You actually have to establish a community out of all of you who set themselves this goal in life and for whom a financial foundation is then sought.

Now, you can do the math. It would be enough, if, let us say, there were two hundred of you, because this way is, so to speak, a very safe one and does not depend on such speed. Now you can calculate for yourselves what is needed annually. As soon as you have the means to do it, you can do it. Then it is the safest way. But then it is also the most visible way, and that would actually be the more natural one. But in today's social and economic conditions, raising these funds in Central Europe – and that is what it could be about – is extremely difficult. Because you won't find any possibility to do something like this in another empire, in another country. So in both Eastern and Western Europe it is absolutely out of the question; in Central Europe it could be done for internal reasons, and a great thing would be done with it.

Werner Klein: I must say in this regard that I have so far only seen this path, the latter, and actually still consider it the only viable one. We have major difficulties with financing, of course, but we could work to eliminate them. I also believe that you can keep your head above water with your own resources if you create your own field of activity in a city, perhaps try to get money from lectures. You will be able to make friends who will help you. But you can also get into a profession – after all, we live in the age of reduced working hours – so you will be able to fill a less significant position at the town hall or somewhere where you can make a living if necessary, in order to gain the time to pursue what is on your mind. I believe that you will be able to survive. But alongside that, a generous organization would have to be set up and an attempt would have to be made to at least obtain funds. And according to what lives in all of us in Germany, this general yearning for something new and strong, I believe that many things will be found. That will depend on us. — But now, for the first time today, I see the second way in connection with the church and I believe that one can go hand in hand there. The path of the free community requires a completely different tactic, a joint approach to the goal, and a joint approach at a joint point in time, but still each for himself when one emerges as a larger movement; while the other tactic is that everyone starts working on their own and tries to create a new community from the church. The one will not interfere with the other. At the moment when we are perhaps so far along on this safe but also more difficult path that we can, to put it bluntly, get started, then those who have so far taken the other path will join us in our work and then, with can support us with fruits that have already shown themselves to be real and positive, while, if we succeed in one area or another in following up the successes in one or the other area, that would only be to be welcomed and regarded as a factor in itself. If we really want to achieve something socially in view of the social and religious hardship today, then only this first, sure way seems to be available. We must try it in any case. If we fail, we will still take the other path, and if it is taken simultaneously by those who already want to work in order to fill the interim period, it is to be welcomed. If we want great things, we must also strive for the great and try.

Rudolf Steiner: It is indeed the case that here in Stuttgart we have had some experiences with the difficulties that confront something like the surest way that has been characterized here. Of course, I am entirely of the opinion that this path can be taken if sufficient effort is put into it. But please also be aware of the difficulties that are encountered in all areas today. There is an extraordinary amount of goodwill in saying that one can also take on some position and work alongside it in the way that is desirable. But it is an open secret that students at German universities will face terrible financial difficulties in the coming years. People have thought of all kinds of impractical things; even a professor came to me and said that we should think about setting up printing presses because students will no longer be able to afford to print their dissertations, and they should print them themselves there. Of course, I do not have the slightest sympathy for such material inbreeding; because I do not know how the students should earn anything by printing their own dissertations. I thought it would be more rational to abolish the forced printing of dissertations altogether – for the time of need. – So, one thinks of all kinds of impractical things, but the matter is a very serious one. For example, it would be an extremely appealing idea to me if the “Kommende Tag” were able to provide a certain material basis for at least a number of students, that is, it would have to, let's say, take on a group of students in its enterprises for three months on a rotating basis, while employing others for the next three months. Then the latter could go back to university and study. So that would be a nice idea to implement, if it were possible. But in our own company, the moment we tried to implement something like that, i.e. hire a number of students, we would immediately have a revolution by the trade union workers, who would tell us: that's not on. They would throw us out. And, wouldn't you agree, something similar would happen, even if it wasn't exactly in the form of being thrown out, but probably in the form of not being let in. Besides, I don't see any real possibility of being able to pursue such a profession alongside a job, even with today's shorter working hours, where you can give yourself completely, because it requires complete devotion to really fulfill such a profession, which you want to pursue. I don't see any real possibility.

You see, we are simply faced with the fact that today, due to the difficult living conditions, people are actually not as strong as they should be. So I fear that such a path, where the person in question would have to rely on himself in financial terms, would at least lead to a slight neurasthenia. It also seems rather unlikely to me that under present-day conditions it is possible to earn a living by lecturing and working independently in this way. You see, intellectual services are paid for in the old currency, and one has to eat in the new currency. If you take the payment for intellectual performance, then in the old currency you get 30 marks, and in the new currency you would have to spend 300 marks. So this matter would of course be difficult. On the other hand, it would be really worth working for a financing in the broadest sense.

I also think that working together with the church, which seems to be more appealing to Mr. Klein than to some of you, is not a lost cause. Because combining this work with the church would, I believe, have advantages.

You can do both. I still think that experience today suggests that if you first succeed in creating free congregations from within the church, you will find followers simply by your approach. You will find followers. Because it is no exaggeration to say that there are many pastors and priests in the Protestant religious communities today who would like to get out of their jobs and just need a nudge. If you succeed in drawing these people out of their communities, then you will find that some of the pastors currently in office will follow you. That would be a good addition. It would enable the movement to grow rapidly. You would find support from those who, on their own, simply cannot muster the initiative. If the impetus were provided from outside, you would find support.

That would, of course, be extremely desirable if we could somehow at least tackle the question of financing. I deliberately say “tackle it somehow”, because if this financing question is properly tackled, then it is likely to succeed. Tackling it is much more difficult than succeeding once it has been properly tackled. For what is lacking today in the broadest sense is the active cooperation of people in the great tasks of life. People everywhere have become so accustomed to routines that one does not really gain sufficiently active collaborators for the most important tasks.

I believe that we should perhaps make use of our time, and because we have now come directly to the practical issues, which should be discussed preliminarily, I would ask you to come at half past six this evening for the continuation.

Rudolf Steiner: I think it would be best if the honored attendees could express their views on the matters we have begun to discuss today, so that we can get to know each other's wishes and intentions. You certainly have questions about one or two things based on what I have presented.

Emil Bock: ¹ This afternoon, the participants instructed me to report the results. We initially discussed the various options and finally agreed that all of the options would be considered and then we made it clear: In any case, it is about the collection of people and the collection of money and in which direction we want to organize ourselves and whether we only want to strive for a loose association. We agreed that everyone should take the initiative where it seemed advisable to them and then chose a place to which letters would be sent regularly as soon as the need arose, so that we would move into a circular letter organization. What we can do publicly in a religious way can only happen in church. What we do afterwards, we have to wait and see once we have people. Regarding the question of joining, we have been able to make it clear that joining can only be possible if one of those who are now participating in the course is a guarantor. The central office for these letters would have to be transferred to Berlin, so that the initiative for everything possible must be collected and given from Berlin. The gathering of people could be tackled immediately. Then the preparation of an administrative office: the only question is who should be considered. However, we do not want to collect the money in such a way that it goes under the name of our association, because that would also bring us into the public eye. The idea was considered of whether we could attach our administrative office to the “Kommenden Tag”, or what other possibility might present itself.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, so you thought that it would be best to have a loose union of those who might want to join this committee, a central office in Berlin for collecting letters, and the collection of money in a way that the “Kommende Tag” would initially handle. The latter matter is, of course, something that we would also have to make more tangible. Now, isn't it true that the looser union should also be discussed from the point of view of how quickly those present imagine the matter should proceed? After all, they are mostly older people who will soon be coming out into the world, aren't they?

A participant: Different.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course they are different. But in addition, the situation today is such that it is indeed necessary not to lose time when doing something like this. There is no doubt that, for example, much more would have been achieved by the threefolding movement if time had not been lost all the time. And so I would also think that here it is advisable to try not to lose any time, but of course it cannot be rushed either. Have you formed an idea about how you might be able to go public with the matter at the point in time when you want to start collecting money on a large scale? You want to avoid the public in a certain sense. Do you have any particular reasons for this? Let's try to discuss this question.

A participant: I would just like to say that, from what I have experienced in the various cities so far, I have the feeling that there is actually no reason to avoid the public. The lectures are always only of a spiritual scientific nature. I am convinced that more people would join immediately if it were not just spiritual scientific lectures, but if it were to shape culture.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to hear specifically what your objections to publicity are. The reasons may be very important.

A participant: We have considered that it must come down to a cultural struggle, and that we have to wait with the founding of communities, and also with the proclamation of the idea in general. As soon as a request for money appears in public, it is reason enough for us to be met with the greatest difficulties. These were our reasons for waiting with the church planting itself; because it is about the same thing.

Another participant: We believe that we cannot appear as active participants in the founding of the community...

Rudolf Steiner: Well, yes, wait with the founding of the community... A participant:... with the public appearance.

Rudolf Steiner: But what do we do while we are waiting? The task at hand is to find ten times as many people as there are here. That is what you are aiming for with the letter. I believe that if you do it skillfully, it is not that difficult to get ten times as many people. In particular, among the theological student body, there will probably be ten times as many people. You yourself came together relatively quickly. There will undoubtedly be no shortage of people among the theological students. It all depends on the form in which you try to finance the matter. Of course, it's not an easy thing, because it will only succeed if it is done relatively quickly. And the idea is, of course, quite good to first form a loose union and to seek out, through correspondence, all those students who are inclined towards such a cause. How many are you now?

A participant: Eighteen.

Rudolf Steiner: Eighteen students, ten times as many is 180. As soon as you have 180 to 200, then it would indeed be a matter of getting down to work; and then the question arises as to what could be done to be able to act as quickly as possible. Of course, working through an exemplary cult – as good as it is in itself – is not designed to work quickly. So the question arises as to whether one should not prepare a calm but very clear presentation of the main points, which could be printed, during the collection through correspondence. This does not need to be published , but which would have to be used to collect money, which would be presented by those personalities who are trying to collect the money, to people who are believed to have money for such a thing. How this could be done by the “Coming Day” is, of course, somewhat difficult to imagine. The “Coming Day” could, of course, be involved in the administration, but how the “Coming Day” could advocate for such a cause with its name is a little questionable. Did you mean that the “Coming Day” as the “Coming Day” takes the matter in hand?

A participant: We only saw the advantage in the fact that they already have many addresses and administrative experience. It does not have to be “Tomorrow”. We have to appoint someone to do this who will then work with “Tomorrow” for practical reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: I do understand the matter. It is perhaps not even an impractical idea to think of someone who might be very interested in this matter. One could think of Heisler for this task. One could think of something so that he or someone in the same situation would be the best person for this position. But how do you feel about a kind of calm, objective, purposeful presentation that you would have to disseminate so that people could educate themselves about what they would spend money on.

A participant: I believe – for my part – that at the moment when the decision is made to undertake major financing, the hidden aspect will have to be abandoned in any case.

Rudolf Steiner: But it is possible that someone like Heisler would be entrusted with the financial work, so to speak, and that one would not shy away from letting the matter as such come to the public's attention. On the other hand, I would say that you could avoid having your name and the names of others who join you become known, so that no one needs to know that you belong to this movement if it is somehow a matter of a pastor or preacher within the church. There is no need to be questioned about it. The participants in this loose association need not be brought to the public, but only the idea and the thing as such.

In Heisler's case, it doesn't do any harm, because he won't get a pastorate anyway.

A participant: I am not reflecting on a position within the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You are not reflecting on a position within the church?

A participant: No, I would not do that.

Rudolf Steiner: There are certainly such candidate preachers who are already so compromised that they can quietly let their names be known. Otherwise, the names of this loose association need not be known. Of course, no one denies their affiliation; but it is only necessary to say so when asked. That seems to me, after all, to be the best that can be done. And you don't think that among the younger people already in pastor positions there will be a number of those who would join your circle, who have thus already entered [into a church office]?

A participant: It is questionable to what extent people already have a relationship with anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it would be necessary, though, to have a certain core of personalities who are anthroposophists. But it doesn't really seem necessary to me that everyone should be an anthroposophist. Isn't it true that if there is a certain core of energetic personalities, then the whole thing can take on an anthroposophical character simply through the importance of these personalities, without excluding those who are not anthroposophists. You see, the best anthroposophists are usually those who were opponents at first; or at least the best include those who were opponents and have slowly come to anthroposophy. We must not imagine that many of those who have sought their way to a religious world view in the modern sense can be brought to anthroposophy in the twinkling of an eye by a short reading. There will be a certain reluctance in many. Above all, one will not easily get away from the belief that certain research results of anthroposophy are excluded by dogmatics. Many will still believe that repeated lives on earth are irreligious and un-Christian. And it is not really desirable today to exclude all those who cannot yet see this, because the actual religious relationship must be maintained. Just as one could, I might say, be a good Christian at the time of the founding of Christianity without knowing that the earth was round or that America existed, and on the other hand, Christianity was not shaken by the discovery of America, so someone can be a good Christian without having access to the truth of repeated earth lives. Because basically, an essential thing about being a Christian is one's relationship to Christ Jesus himself, to this very concrete being; that is the essential thing. The essential thing about Christianity is a personal relationship with Christ Jesus. And a doctrine as such, which is certainly secured as a doctrine, which is precisely a doctrine about the world context, cannot actually be the hallmark of Christianity in a person. One is a Christian naturally through one's relationship to Christ, as one is a Buddhist through one's relationship to Buddha, not really through the content of the teaching. One needs the content of the teaching, as we will present it in the sermon, but one is not really a Christian through the content of the teaching. No one today can be a Christian in the sense that one must understand it, who does not have a positive relationship to the supersensible Christ-being.

Therefore Adolf Harnack is no Christian to me. A man who is capable of saying that Christ can be taken out of the Gospels and that only the Father has a place in them is not a Christian. In his view, Christ is no different from Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. If you take Harnack's book The Essence of Christianity and cross out the name of Christ and put the name of Yahweh everywhere, you will see that the meaning is not changed. It simply replaces the faith of Jesus in the Father with the knowledge of the essence of Jesus himself. It actually recognizes only one great teacher about the religion of the Father in the Christ. But that is actually the negation of Christianity, not the essence of Christianity. And that is why I think it is not necessary for us to swear people in, so to speak, to the doctrine of reincarnation or karma, because that is something that people find difficult to come to terms with; they will come to terms with it in time; I just think that since you are anthroposophists yourselves and will be able to win over a large number of anthroposophists, the matter will already have the necessary anthroposophical character. The content of anthroposophy itself ensures that the matter has an anthroposophical character, if it succeeds at all. And it must succeed because it has many conditions for success within itself.

A participant: At the University of Münster, the theologians wanted to free themselves. There you would find theologians who meet our needs. The question is whether there will be many anthroposophists there.

Rudolf Steiner: I believe that the ground was prepared in Münster by Gideon Spicker; he was a professor of philosophy in Münster, after all. You know nothing about him?

A participant: Only that the exams were then designed differently. Another participant: In Leipzig it is exactly the same.

Rudolf Steiner: You are bound to find a prepared soil among the younger theologians.

A participant: The theologians who want to free themselves from the church are mostly people who can no longer accept the Trinity doctrine and do not want to recognize Christ as a supersensible being, or they are people from the community movement.

Rudolf Steiner: If there is a core of anthroposophists, it is not a hindrance if we also have these personalities in the loose association. It seems to be a proof that, for example, Mr. Rittelmeyer came to anthroposophy immediately after he wrote this little work about the personality of Jesus. From this point of view, which you have just characterized, it is actually written. It was written with the intention of presenting Jesus Christ as a strong religious personality, but leaving the whole question of the supersensible, of the symbol and so on, completely out of the discussion. So it was entirely what one might call enlightened Protestantism. And then he joined us and relatively quickly recognized the necessity to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and to come to terms with a supersensible conception of this Mystery of Golgotha. So I believe that if they are just people who are seriously studying — they don't have to be swots, but they have to be serious students — then it doesn't hurt if they come from an enlightened Protestantism. You see, the best candidates you could wish for would actually be those young people – there aren't many of them, there are only a few at most – who have just finished their Catholic theology studies and have broken with the Catholic Church completely; they would be the best candidates you could wish for. There is no denying that Catholic theology, as theology, has an extraordinary amount of substance. People are well trained, and that remains. And then, when they are out – as a Catholic theologian, you are of course kept in iron shackles – when they are out, anything can be done with them. I only mention this – there are not many such people, but just a few – to emphasize the possibility. And then, the enlightened Protestants should not be underestimated.

A participant:... people who strive to have something certain, get so far in science that they can no longer recognize the supersensible being of Christ and yet somehow have a longing for it...

Rudolf Steiner: That was the case with Rittelmeyer. He could not possibly have arrived at anything other than a somewhat stronger and also very spirited Weinel view of the simple man from Nazareth. That was the personality of Christ in Rittelmeyer. And very quickly he had arrived at the supersensible view of Christ. So I believe that you need not fear to bring people up.

A participant: The most difficult question remains that of financing.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the question of finance remains difficult, but it remains difficult until we have the money; it is indeed the case that every new 10,000 marks must present new difficulties. These are difficulties that simply have to be overcome. I do believe, however, that many bitter experiences have to be overcome; many bitter experiences will be made. But I believe that someone like Heisler might not be the wrong person for the job, because, of course, he is embittered by his own fate, but on the other hand he is convinced of the necessity of such things. And he is of a respectable age – excuse me, you are all younger than he is – which one acquires when one has to take on everything that comes along when one collects money. It is not a pleasant thing.

Emil Bock: Now there is still the question of whether anthroposophists who are not theologians could be brought in for our purposes.

Rudolf Steiner: [Do you mean] with this question whether Anthroposophists should be included in this looser association who are not actually in a position to enter the priesthood?

Emil Bock:... who can enter into the situation, who are currently in a different profession.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, of course the question then is what such people should do. At most, they would be considered for fundraising. But it is not easy to muster the necessary enthusiasm for this if you are not involved in the matter. There may of course be individuals, but I believe that these individuals are already so overwhelmed with all kinds of work that they could hardly devote themselves to such a thing in any other way than as a secondary occupation. But I do not actually know of anyone who, without aspiring to a preaching office, even in the freest form, could be useful as an anthroposophist. For anthroposophists are generally so attached to anthroposophy itself, which is something of a religion — yes, how shall I put it? — a kind of religious satisfaction, they are not so much out to regenerate the religious community itself. They would have to be theological anthroposophists, and one would have to look for them among them first. They are certainly not so rare since Rittelmeyer's activity has existed. I think you will find many among theologians; and especially since the book that Rittelmeyer published as a collection, you will find many among theologians. Whether they are all useful is another question. But otherwise, I think it would greatly improve the movement.

Emil Bock: Of course they would have to change tack when they get to know the idea.

Rudolf Steiner: Would many of the students want to change direction? Do you mean students from the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education?

A participant: Students who do not study theology because, although they have a strong religious interest, they do not want to study what is currently taught in the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You mean that they would also muster active enthusiasm?

A participant: Yes, if there is an opportunity to work in this sense.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it is definitely possible, if you have looked at the personalities, to join these personalities, to approach them. I have seen that the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education Work, especially when it endeavors to spread anthroposophy itself in the individual branches of anthroposophical higher education work, places more emphasis on an interest in natural science than on theology itself. The theologians themselves should be interested in this.

A participant: Will we be able to wait until one of them has completed the specialized theological examination?

Rudolf Steiner: You think it would take too long? A participant: I don't know how necessary it is.

Another participant: There are some of us who have not yet expected to finish with the theological exams, but want to use the preliminary studies to strive towards this goal, which is to be addressed here.

Rudolf Steiner: Now the question is whether those you are referring to, having realized how necessary the matter is, will not turn to the preaching ministry after all, even if they have so far thought that they would not complete the exam but do something else. Of course not. This is connected with a very general cultural idea. You see, the ideas that Spengler described in his 'Decline of the West' are really more well-founded than one might think. They are so well-founded that one can say that if only cultural tendencies were at work, without a new impact, then what Spengler calculates would come about would come about. We are in the midst of a full decline, in a full current of decline. On the other hand, you must not forget the corruption of culture. The corruption of the general intellectual life is not limited to the more educated classes, but is very widespread. It is actually the case that the majority of the population is affected by it, and the religious impulses that may still have existed in the 70s and 80s have already disappeared among the less educated people today. So we are in the midst of a complete current of decline, and it is hardly possible to get out of it unless religious life as such creates new impulses. And so I certainly believe that those who, having undergone theological studies and having the opportunity to do so, should act as priests. It is necessary that precisely those who have studied theology should act as priests, because we need it so badly.

A participant:... but then also within the church?

Rudolf Steiner: Within the church? I would like to stick to what I have said. You can stay within the church if you can gradually lead the members out of the current church communities; you can therefore turn to the establishment of free congregations. I do not believe that the church as such can be reformed or regenerated in any way, that is not the case. The church community is so corrupted that we can only count on the fact that one leads them out [...] and founds something new with them [...] [further gaps in the transcript]. On the other hand, to think of a reform of the church itself, I may say – this is not just my opinion, but this is an objective realization of the facts – that these church communities are doomed. Except for the Catholic Church, of course, which must be understood in such a way that it is not at all doomed, because it works with extensive means and must therefore be regarded as something completely different.

A participant: We are partly philosophers and partly natural scientists, having dropped out of an unsatisfactory course of study in theology. Should we do a doctorate and then turn to studying theology again after the doctorate? Or should it be said that, given our background, we can start religious work right away?

Rudolf Steiner: You see, that is merely a question of the success that we will have. In this respect, we must not underestimate the transitional character of our work. When the Waldorf School was founded, I had nothing in mind but the purely personal suitability of the teachers, and the pedagogy and didactics were developed in a relatively few weeks. Such a thing must simply be possible in the transitional state. I do not believe that any of you who, let us say, failed in their studies of theology, turned to some other field of study, became philosophers or natural scientists, that any of you need to strive for anything other than formally completing the academic program. This is something that is desirable, but not absolutely necessary. It is desirable that the academic side should be concluded in some way, let us say with a dissertation. On the other hand, we do not need to consider in the least that someone would need to return to their theological studies. We must regard it as absolutely right, even for the transitional period, not to adhere to the old system of examinations and the like; of that there is no doubt. If, for example, Mr. Husemann has even finished his studies in chemistry and is preparing his rigorosum in chemistry, then nothing prevents him – if he would otherwise like to become a preacher – from becoming a preacher as a chemist.

You know, the nested study of theology – you don't have to take this as something that might be offensive – it is even a hindrance to the work of the preacher and the pastor in the community. It is a fact that the theological student does not learn enough about the world; he is actually too unfamiliar with what his task is. He is placed in it and is supposed to carry out such agendas as I have described in economic life. So a special course of study like today's 'theology course, where you become an entirely impractical person - I don't want to offend you with that - is not suitable for that. It is actually the case, as I have experienced, that, for example, excellent theological graduates really hardly knew what the Pythagorean theorem says. These are exceptional cases, but they do occur. But quite apart from the fact that they are not up to date in real practical life, which is above all needed, with the discussions about the validity of dogmatics, with the discussions about what is done in theological faculties, with that we certainly do not solve the world's problems. One could even well imagine that non-students with a certain religious genius could also be among us; one could well imagine that.

What we do need, of course, is for you to find the person within you before you leave here, to whom you could, as it were, transfer the secretariat of your loose association. It would be good if we could then stay in contact with this person, precisely from the “Coming Day”. But now you have the Central Office for Letters in Berlin.

A participant: We had thought of another place in Tübingen, which is still close to Stuttgart.

Rudolf Steiner: And what would the tasks of this center be?

A participant: So that these things that could be solved in relation to Stuttgart could be solved through personal contact.

Rudolf Steiner: What other tasks would the central office have? Searching for such personalities and then, don't you think, you are thinking of such a position separately from how Mr. Bock imagines it as a follow-up to the “Kommenden Tag” (The Coming Day).

Emil Bock: First of all, the financing would have to be tackled, work would have to be done in various places. A great deal has to be collected at a central office, so the central office would have to have full authority. We have taken Berlin because that is where most of us are.

Rudolf Steiner: So you would then think of having central offices in Berlin and Tübingen for finding suitable personalities and here in Stuttgart a personality who would prepare the financing?

Well, I can't make any kind of binding statement for the “Kommende Tag” at this moment, but it is my opinion that such a thing, if it is considered, could be done. Could it not be – of course I do not want to give any binding advice regarding the choice of personality, I am only giving Heisler as an example –: If Heisler were commissioned to start with the financing question and this were done in connection with the “Coming Day” , one would have to think about creating the position for Heisler right away, and of course I would have to bring that up for discussion in the “Kommen Tag” so that you would know what could be done on the part of the “Kommen Tag” when you leave here. I think that a lot of transitions from one to the other naturally lead a bit into the unknown. It seems to me that it would not be a bad idea if we were to create such a central office right away, which would start work, so to speak. Of course, it can't be too early, because I appreciate all the reasons against proceeding too quickly. But really, what can be done by such a center after two years or after a year can also be done today. I cannot make a binding statement today on behalf of “Kommendes Tag”, but it seems to me that if it is thought of at all, not under the name of “Kommendes Tag”, but in connection with it, then it would actually have to be done immediately.

A participant: Do we have the material basis? If you employ someone, you have to have the salary for him.

Rudolf Steiner: Well now, the question is of course whether a way out could not be found after all in this direction, whether in a sense the concern would now already be for the salary of this particular person. Will you still be here the day after tomorrow? We can talk tomorrow or the day after tomorrow about how to solve the problem of finding such a person immediately. Of course, it is not possible for you to arrange financing for the person so quickly, as they should take charge of the financing themselves. We can talk about it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But in principle, would you be opposed to starting the matter immediately, if possible?

A participant: I would also like to ask whether we could now agree on the person in charge of the position.

Rudolf Steiner: I will only say this: I always start from real, practical points of view, and there are reasons that could probably make the realization very quick if Dr. Heisler could be considered. With him, the matter could probably be dealt with more quickly than if it were a matter of choosing any other person.

• 1. Note from the editor: Only a few of the participants were known to the stenographer. Therefore, the names of some of the individual participants are missing from his documents. So where it says “a participant” below, this means that the name of the person concerned was not recorded by the stenographer.

My dear friends! Today, we will first continue our reflections from yesterday and then see how we can further develop the matters touched on yesterday. Yesterday, I wanted to talk to you about the inner side of community building in the religious field. I would now like to move on to the second area, which you yourselves have identified as particularly important to you: to the cult.

It is absolutely true that without the inauguration of a certain cult with its so-called symbolism, the religious deepening of humanity cannot be brought about, and I would like to explain this to you with a few words, because one can only work within a field if one understands the conditions and forces involved.

You see, in more recent times, the whole process of human development in the civilized part of humanity has basically taken on an intellectual form, a form that makes mere concepts in their abstractness the content of consciousness. And such a thorough feeling has arisen from it that one can only gain real insights in this abstractness, that this feeling has passed over to actually only appreciate the abstract content of consciousness in a certain way. Now one can understand that this abstract content of consciousness had to be appreciated at a time when the assertion of the individual emerging from the whole human being was increasingly emerging as a human demand. After all, abstract content of consciousness presents us with something completely universal. One has the feeling that through abstract world comprehension one can bring all understanding of the world into the individual human being.

Where should our concepts reach? They should initially suffice to comment on that which presents itself to us in the sense world as perception, in the most diverse ways, and to find laws there, the so-called laws of nature or historical laws. But then this intellectual content also sets about forming hypotheses about that which is not perceived, partly such hypotheses that extend to that which is not perceptible in time and space, partly to that which is not perceptible for reasons of principle. The beginning and end of the earth, for example, is not perceptible in time and space. From the intellectualism of modern times we have received hypotheses about the origin of the earth and about the end of the earth arising out of physical and geological connections. We have hypotheses regarding the spatial, let us say, about the inner nature of the sun or other world bodies, such as the world nebula, as they are called, and so on. One usually does not consider that when one says that the sun is so or so constituted, that this is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one even believes that one has a physical result in this hypothesis. The physicists would be very astonished if they could perceive, could see, what really is at that point in space, where they put a kind of very thin gas out into space as a solar ball. In reality, there is not something comparable to our gases, not even to our ether, at that point; it is not just empty space at that point, but something that we describe as negative in comparison to the intensity of our empty space; it is a recess in space at the point where we speak of the sun. There is not only space emptied of matter, there is not even the intensity of the void that we usually call space in the abstract. There is less present at the point than space, and in this way we move from the physical to the spiritual. One can only speak of the sun in a spiritual sense.

I only mention this today to draw your attention to the way in which intellectualism, which is perfectly justified in the field of natural science, has taken hold of all fields in recent times. It then extends to the imperceptible, to the world of molecules and atoms, which, in principle, cannot be perceived for the simple reason that heat, light and sound are said to arise from the movements of these molecular and atomic structures, so that nothing perceptible is introduced into the atomic world. Something is hypothetically introduced that is supposed to be present.

Thus, intellectualism has spread over the temporal and spatial of the external world of space and time and over the unperceivable in principle; but it has also spread over everything that is historical and over everything that is religiously historical. If you follow the entire literature and scholarship of the Gospels, and indeed all of 19th-century biblical scholarship, it will become clear how this entire biblical scholarship gradually moved from a completely different kind of soul content to an intellectualistic grasp of the Bible and the Gospels. It can be said that by the end of the 19th century, so much intellectualism had been applied to the Gospel that there was actually nothing left of the Gospel even for theologians. It must be characteristic that this intellectualism has taken on those forms that it shows, for example, in the theologian Schmiedel, where we see that the personality of Christ is no longer inferred from what is in the Gospels, but a number of passages in the Gospel are sought where something detrimental is said about Christ Jesus, where, for example, it is said that he did not care about his mother and siblings. And from this small number of defamations, which are compiled about the personality of Christ Jesus in the Gospels, it is concluded that they must refer to something true, because one would not, if one wanted to invent something, have added such a defamation, but one would have invented hymns of praise.

Now you can see the depths to which the intellectual approach has sunk in its attempts to get at the Gospels at all. I mention this because it has emerged from the theological side, for what has been achieved by the non-theological side in terms of extravagance has, after all, reached the point of the monstrous. You only need to remember that there is extensive psychiatric research on the Gospels today, that we have literary works today that clearly express the view that one cannot understand what the Gospels actually contain and that describe the messages [in the Gospels] as abnormal things, as one would view things from a psychiatric point of view. It is even the case that the origin of Christianity is assumed to be a mental illness of Christ Jesus, which has had an infectious effect on all Christians. Thus, the origin of Christianity is derived from the mental illness of Christ Jesus, which he fell prey to.

It would be an understatement to say that any description is too strong when one wants to point out that the entire so-called intellectual life of the present, which moves in intellectualisms, must actually lead to the undermining of precisely the Christian-religious element, and with the greatest speed. The fact that this fact is not sufficiently examined is one of the great damages of our time. If one were to look at it, one would come to the conclusion that, above all, those who take religious life seriously must ensure that this religious life is wrested from intellectualism.

I do not want to dwell critically on the fact that in the last four centuries, through Protestantism itself, a great deal has been done to achieve this intellectualism in the religious sphere as well. More and more, perhaps unconsciously, one finds a pagan element in the cult and the symbolism. Now, what has prevented us from adhering more to the cult and to the symbolism does not lie in the feeling that we have something pagan in it, but rather it lies in the fact that we no longer have any sense for those forms of expression that lie in the cult and in the symbolism. Consider this: through intellectual comprehension of the world, man is led to believe that he can make sense of the whole world with the content of his soul, that he can bring everything into intellectual concepts. Therefore, the intellectual man feels in possession of the whole world when he has his intellectual concepts. It is precisely because man deceives himself into believing that he has grasped the entire content of the world, it is precisely through this universal element that man feels intellectually satisfied and believes that he no longer needs any other element to comprehend the world, to feel the world. It is understandable that intellectualism has been able to gain the upper hand in our time, because man believes that he can understand the world in intellectual terms. But because man is satisfied in this way, in that he seemingly gets the whole world into his ego, he loses the social connection with the rest of the world, and that which should live as a social being is atomized, atomized right down to the individual. We have already seen this in the youth movement in modern times, that simply by the prevalence of the intellectualist, people fall apart into individual atoms, so that everyone wants only their own religious belief. They are absorbed in saying that religion is a thing that cannot go beyond the human skin. That is what indicates the reasons why the universalistic intellectual life in particular fragments and atomizes religious life, so that the particular form of modern science must undermine religious life. And the strongest force for the destruction of religious life is actually present in those university and other educational theologians who have adopted the scientific thinking of our time in order to understand the religious, the facts of religion as such.

Not as much is being done to undermine religious life through the laity of today as through modern theology; and it is a pity that such efforts have not made more progress than those of Overbeck, which were set out in the extraordinarily significant book “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” in which the case is made that the modern theologian is unchristian. Overbeck, the Basel church historian, who was a friend of Nietzsche and on whom he had a very deep influence, wanted to prove that modern theology is the most un-Christian, has completely thrown off Christianity and contributes most to the undermining of Christianity because it has become purely intellectualistic through the universal suggestion that intellectualism has exerted on the modern educated world. Until you realize that modern theology, as it is taught at the modern faculties, leads to the undermining of Christianity, you will not get the right impulse into your endeavors.

Now, what is at stake is that we learn again to progress to a form of experiencing the world other than the purely intellectual one, and the other form consists precisely in the pictorial, in that which can pass over into cult and into symbolism.

You see, when we set up the Waldorf School here – I would like to show you things from the perspective of the here and now – when we set up the Waldorf School here, the first thing that had to be done was to act more in line with the spirit of the times and to make it clear to the world that our aim in setting up this Waldorf School was not to found a school of world view. It is the worst slander against the Waldorf School when people outside say, and this is already being repeated as far away as America, that it exists to teach anthroposophy to children. That is not its purpose! It is not a school of world-view. What can be gained through anthroposophy can be incorporated into pedagogy and didactics. Only that which can be fathomed by anthroposophy should lie in the pedagogical treatment itself. Therefore, from the very beginning — because it cannot be any different as long as you have not yet worked — we have had a Catholic priest teach religious education to Catholic children and a Protestant priest teach religious education to Protestant children. Now, the Waldorf School was initially created for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria workers; they were the foundation. Many children of Social Democrats and dissidents came along. The question arose: should these children grow up without any religion? There was a certain kind of concern. But there were also parents who did not want their children to grow up without religion. So we were obliged to give some kind of anthroposophical religious education, just as we had Catholic instruction given to Catholic children and Protestant instruction given to Protestant children. And most children found it useful, at least I think so, isn't that right?

Ernst Uehli: By far the majority.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, by far the most children. On the other hand, there are a relatively large number of children who are taught Catholic religion, and the children taught Protestant religion are in the minority. Well, we couldn't help it, we certainly didn't want to take business away from the Protestant religion teacher, and at first we even thought it was unfortunate for our school when the Protestant religion teacher once said that he couldn't really make any progress because the children were gradually moving over to the Anthroposophical religion lessons. It was up to him to keep them. We couldn't help it if they ran over. We don't have anthroposophy as just any subject in the school curriculum, but just as the Catholic and Protestant religious education is brought in from outside. We have tried to get a methodology for it and so on. All this is, of course, in its infancy, because things that work with reality cannot be created overnight; it is something that can only come from practical, extensive experience, but it must be started with that. From an unbiased observation, the need arose – and this is important for our consideration yesterday – to add a cult to religious instruction, namely our Sunday activity, which two of your colleagues observed last Sunday. Of course, this is also something that is just beginning. So far, we have a ritual for such a Sunday activity — every Sunday — and a ritual for children who have reached the age of fourteen, the completion of elementary school, and who in this ritual first experience what is thought to be experienced through confirmation. But you have to look at it all as being at the beginning, but the necessity to move on to a kind of cult, to a kind of working through ritual, that has arisen entirely from the matter. And if you follow your matter with real inner participation, you will have no choice but to say to yourself: cult, ritual, symbolism must be added.

Because, you see, it is the case that all religious life must disappear if it cannot represent reality, if religious life is only supposed to be something that can be spoken of in such a way that everything can be expressed in intellectualized thought. Then this religious life cannot be cultivated at all. Something must be able to happen through religious experience; there must be processes that, as such, as processes, have not only an eternal significance [for man], but are something in world events.

And here we must admit that everything we intellectually grasp in our soul, everything that modern science recognizes as a scientific achievement – not what we form in our soul as living concepts , we gradually acquire during our childhood, and this then transforms itself in the course of our lifetime – but the intellectualized content, even if it extends to the most complex natural laws, is mortal with us.

Do not take this sentence lightly. That which is the intellectual content of the soul is, at best, only an image of the spiritual; it is mortal like the human body. For it is precisely the intellectual that is completely mediated by the body. All soul experiences that are mediated intellectually arise after birth and perish at death. That which is eternal in the soul comes only after the intellectual. So, no abstract concept goes through the gate of death with us, but only what we have experienced in life beyond abstract concepts. That is why many souls from the present population have to lead a long 'sleeping life' after death, because they were only involved in intellectuality and because intellectuality fades away after death and it takes a long time for a person to acquire a super-intellectual content, which he can then process for the next life on earth. It is a fact that much of the present life is lost to man in his overall development through intellectual life.

This is regarded as foolishness by our contemporaries today, at least by our theologians; but it is a proven spiritual-scientific result. The fact that our entire education today is based only on intellectualism, the fact that we are so proud of this intellectualism, means that we deprive the human being of immortal content to the same extent that we instill this mortal intellectualism into him from the most diverse points of view. You must take this to heart.

My dear friends, it is absolutely right to statistically count how many of a population are non-literate, how many can read and write in relatively early childhood. But if education is built only on intellectualism, as it is in today's schools, then this means killing the soul-spiritual and not awakening the soul-spiritual. This is how it must be for the earth. But on the other hand, a counterweight must also be provided. That is why we do not have an intellectual approach to teaching reading and writing in our pedagogy and didactics at the Waldorf School. Here, too, the child learns from the pictorial, from the artistic, precisely in order not to kill everything immortal. It learns by being given the letter out of the pictorial, the abstract out of the concrete pictorial, which is our letter today, in order at least not to take from the child what is still a real soul life. This pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf school always emerges from the anthroposophical understanding of the whole of human life. And the strong hatred that is shown towards it shows how much people feel that here, once again, something is being addressed that has been extinguished in the outside world over the last three to four centuries – albeit to the detriment of the life of modern humanity. We should hardly be surprised that religious life has been dampened, because we have a science that simply can no longer talk about the immortal. And the further culture that has emerged shows even more clearly that science has become nothing but a bauble; a froth of thinking has shown itself in the general culture of humanity.

We have a word for “immortal” in the newer languages; but man has only done so out of his egoism, out of his desire to be eternal. We have a word for “immortal,” but we have no word for “to be unborn.” We do not have a word for “to be unborn” that can be used in everyday speech. But we would have to have that, as well as the word “immortal.” We see only one end of life when we speak of the eternal in the soul. And with this goes hand in hand the atomization, the fragmentation, the weaving of the intellectual into the individual life, where today it is even sought in the subconscious, as in the James School in America and so on. If we are serious about cultivating the religious, we must confront this with the power of the image, of action, of ritual in the best sense of the word. Just consider – I will show it with an example – what this ritual as such means.

I certainly do not want to do the opposite of the iconoclasts who wanted to eradicate images and the cultic stormers who wanted to eradicate cult, and I do not want to express the opposite of that here today. But I would like to use an example to show what the cult means.

Take the Mass offering. The Mass offering cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a Roman Catholic institution. It must not be, because the Mass offering goes back to ancient, pre-Christian times. It can be said, however, that the Mass offering was shrouded in the mysteries of the ancient cultic rites in the mysteries, that it has been greatly transformed over time; but as we see the Mass offering today in Roman Catholicism, it is just something that has been partially transformed from the Egyptian and Near Eastern mysteries.

And what was it then? What was that ritual that eventually developed into the Mass Sacrifice, the meaning of which only the most initiated Catholics really know, while the broad masses of Catholics have some idea of it? What was it that underlies the Mass Sacrifice?

It was an outward image of what is called initiation or ordination. It is absolutely so. If one follows the Mass sacrifice and disregards what has been added to the basic components – partly quite rightly, partly through misunderstanding – if one looks only at these basic components, then the Mass sacrifice is an outward pictorial expression of initiation or ordination.

The four parts are: the reading of the Gospel, the offertory, the consecration – transubstantiation – and communion. The essence of the Mass lies in these four parts.

What does the reading of the Gospels mean? It means the resounding, the revelation of the word into the community. This is clearly based on the awareness that the word only has real content when it is not discovered by man through intellectual work, but when man experiences the inspired word that comes from the spiritual world. Without this consciousness, without the awareness that the supersensible world is embodied in the word, the reading of the Gospel would not be a real reading. Thus, in the first part of the Mass Sacrifice we have the divinely glorified proclamation of the teaching. What the supersensible world gives to man in the sensual world, we have in the Gospel reading.

What the human being can give of himself to the supersensible world, what is attempted of him in the offering of the sacrifice, so to speak as a counter-gift, the real prayer, that comes before us figuratively in the offertory. The offertory, the sacrifice, symbolically expresses what a person can feel in his soul as a sense of consecration to the supersensible. This is said through the symbolic action of the offertory, in a sense in response to the gospel reading. This is the second part.

The third part, transubstantiation, the change, consists in the fact that it is symbolically represented that consciousness which develops in man when he feels the divine substance within him, when he feels the divine substance in his own soul. For the Christian, this transformation is nothing other than the expression of the Pauline saying: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. He does not just sacrifice himself, he becomes aware that the supersensible lives in himself. This is what is meant by the image of transubstantiation. And it is always a beautiful and significant side effect of transubstantiation that, while the Holy Sacrament is being raised up over the chalice, the faithful are actually supposed to close their eyes and turn inward, so that they experience transubstantiation not through outward looking but through their innermost consciousness. It is also significant that the Holy Sacrament actually consists of the bread and the bread holder, which has a moon-shaped form, so that in the Sacrament Symbol, which envelops the Holy Sacrament (see drawing $.100), sun and moon are present in the picture, which clearly indicates that in the times when the sacrifice of the Mass was being developed in its original form, there was an awareness of the connection between Christ and the sun and between Yahweh and the moon. What the world has received in Christianity and what has been built on the lunar religion of Yahweh is fully expressed in this placement of the host on the lunar form, and it is truly a symbol of the confluence of the mortal in man with the immortal.

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And the fourth part of the Mass is Communion, which is meant to express nothing other than this: after the human being has grown together with the supersensible, he allows his entire earthly being to be poured into union with the supersensible. This fourth part pictorially represents what the person to be initiated, the one to be initiated, also had to experience in the older and newer mysteries.

The first main section consists of learning to transform what one receives as knowledge and feeling for the world into an abstract form, so that one can say with inner honesty: In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word everything came into being. — I ask you, my dear friends, to consider how far modern Christianity has strayed from an understanding of the Gospel of John. Consider that today, in general, there is only the awareness that the Creator of the world is found in the Father God. God the Father, who is also confused with the Jewish god Yahweh, is regarded as the Creator God, whereas the Gospel says: “In the beginning was the Word, and all things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — That which we have within us as something created is the creative, the word in the truest sense of the word, and one should actually have the idea of the Father God that he subsists in everything, and in the Son of God he has given the world that which signifies the creative of the world.

I only want to say this because the understanding of the person to be initiated has to advance to the fact that the word that is proclaimed sounds entirely from the supersensible, while our word that is currently in vogue sounds from the intellectual, from the transitory. That is the first act of initiation: that the content of the soul is formed into a word as a supersensible revelation, as a real event, an event that emerges from the Angelion All, from the sum of the spiritual world. What is raised up out of the spiritual world and takes on the form of a word in us is the first act of the sacrifice of the Mass. In the conscious speaking through itself one should become aware that this is a proclamation of the supersensible, and that it does not represent a proclamation of the sense world.

The second thing is that through sacrifice man enters into a real relationship with the supersensible. If we can find a way to hint at the sacrifice, that is, to hint at the counter-gift to the divine, then we actually have before us in all its many-sidedness what must surely be there. You see, in modern times Catholicism has allowed itself to become obscured. Modern Catholicism actually wants to receive everything from the Godhead and give nothing back to the Godhead.

Now, we did not want to go against the prejudice of today's world too much in our ritual [the Sunday service at the Waldorf School]. But we were obliged, simply in the question of the one who performs the sacrificial act, to address the child, asking whether it wants to strive for the Spirit of God, and in response: “Yes, I will seek Him, I will seek for the Spirit of God,” to give at least a hint in words of the real relationship. Something should happen, something should be said, when each child is asked whether he wants to seek the Spirit of God. We had to at least hint at the Lord's Supper [in our Sunday service], and the rest just has to come later.

Now, you see, in the third act, it becomes clear that the supernatural is not merely present, but that the human soul can connect with it. And in the fourth act of the Mass, during Communion, the fourth act of initiation is then depicted, which consists of man completely permeating himself with the supersensible, so that he feels himself to be only an external sign, an external world symbol, that he makes the word true: Man is the image of the Godhead.

The awareness of these connections has been so lost that today one can only point them out with certain difficulties. One can therefore say that in the sacrifice of the Mass – which of course cannot simply be taken over from Catholicism, but must be developed in the sense of our present time – one has before one's eyes that which so often presents the profoundly significant spiritual path of the human being in the image. And so it should be that we accompany important stages in life with such ritualistic acts, such as the transition from school to life, but that we also work with adults through ritual, that is, through the image, because the image works not only on the intellectual, but on the whole human being. If I am to grasp something intellectually, then I grasp it entirely within myself. When I stand before a picture, it goes much deeper into the layers of my humanity than the intellectual aspect does. And when what happens through the ritual enters into the members of a community, they experience something supersensible together, and what is atomized by the teaching material is synthesized in the act of worship. What is reproduced in the teaching material, if you put it in abstract terms, from intellectual forms of ideas, which leads to fragmentation, to analysis in the individual, is reunited, synthesized, when one tries to speak in images.

You see, in modern times only one community has actually learned to speak in images, but that is a community that abuses this symbolic, imaginatively inspired speech, namely Jesuitism. And you see, I must keep pointing out how, in Jesuit educational institutions, but precisely to the detriment of humanity, it is taught quite methodically to always summarize something when you have taught something.

I will give you a very vivid example, because I myself once experienced the tremendous significance, theoretically I might say, since I wanted to see for myself how the thing works. It was about a famous Jesuit pulpit speaker – it was ten years ago – he preached about the institution of Easter confession. He wanted to reduce to absurdity what the opponents of Catholicism say: that Easter confession, the demand for Easter confession, is a papal and not a supernatural institution. He wanted to reduce this to absurdity before his faithful. I also looked at it. If Klinckowström, that was the name of the Jesuit preacher, had wanted to teach his former audience in the abstract form in which one otherwise preaches, in this way, as one is accustomed to preaching in the Protestant area, he would not have achieved anything; he would not have achieved the slightest thing. He did it in the following way, by saying in summary: “Yes, my dear Christians, you see, when we say that the Pope has instituted the Easter confession, it is really as if we were saying the following: Imagine a cannon, and at the cannon stands the gunner; the gunner holds the fuse in his hand, and then the officer stands a little further away. What happens? The gunner holds the fuse, the officer gives the command; and at the moment when the officer gives the command, when the word of command sounds, the gunner pulls the fuse, the gun goes off, and through the powder in the gun, everything that happens when the gun is fired is produced.” “This whole congregation was like one soul when this image was vividly presented to them.” ‘Now,’ he continued, ”imagine that someone came and said that the gunner did everything, that everything actually happened through him. But he only pulled the fuse at the officer's command, and the officer could not have ordered the shot without the powder. Those who say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession go much further, because that would be the same as if someone claimed that the gunner, if he only pulls the fuse at the officer's command, invented the powder! It is just as wrong when people say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession. He was only present, he, as the representative of the transcendental world, pulled the fuse."

Everything was imbued with the truth of what Father Klinckowström proclaimed. It is not that this was due to the particularly happy disposition of this priest. You can see for yourselves that it is part of the Jesuit method of teaching to express everything in such images. There is even a work of literature today – why it has been published? I have not checked it; the Catholic Church will also have some kind of intention there, because it always has intentions -, in which it is described in detail how to move the index finger when speaking this or that word, how to move the hand when saying this or that. There are even drawings for this; there is a methodical work down to the smallest detail, a work that is incorporated into the picture. And one must just say: Why is no attempt made to develop that which is developed for the harm of people on the one hand, also for the good of people? Because it can also be developed for the good, it can and must also be developed for the good, the strength must come from the earnest spiritual intentions to transform the abstract into the pictorial, and this pictorial must be experienced with the community. In this way the soul of the community is uplifted, and only in this way is the sense of community truly established. The cultic service is what holds the community together; without it the community can only disintegrate. To oppose this on theoretical grounds is to start from prejudice.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a friend of our cause, an Old Catholic pastor – as such, he reads the mass in German, in the national language, and performs other rituals in the national language – did not want to perform the rituals in the strange translation that one reads in many cases today. He prompted me to bring some of the practicable Catholic rituals into the form that was actually originally in them. Only through this does one see how the spiritual world in these things comes to life in many ways, and one sees what has been distorted since the time of Jerome.

Now, you need not think, as has often been said, that I am somehow tainted by Catholicism when I talk about the Catholic Church's worship. I just want to see things objectively and draw your attention to the fact that it is quite impossible to truly cultivate religious life without making the transition to worship, to speaking in the symbolum. No matter how well you know how to convince, how to work through intellectual presentation, in the religious field you will only achieve something if you can let the theoretically presented in your speech fade away into the symbolum in the appropriate places. You must experience the symbolum yourself as a truth, so you should only think of such symbolic representations that are really connected with what is real in the world.

But there are still many difficulties to be faced, and I want to draw your attention to them. Take for instance the following case: someone is supposed to imagine the physical becoming of a human being on earth. Yes, if you turn to science today with all the things it gives you about the female ovum, the male fertilizing cell, the growing out, the growing in of the fertilized ovum and so on, then despite the scientific achievements, despite the fact that one must admire what has been achieved through purely scientific thinking about such things, you do not get ideas that help you to grasp the being, but you get ideas that directly cover the truth piece by piece. You see, the most important component of the human, the animal, the organic in general, is protein. Compare the constitution of albumen with the constitution of any mineral substance in the world. It is so different that today, of course, the scientist says – and he is right to say so – the constitution of albumen is an extraordinarily complicated one, we cannot get at it, and we cannot find a bridge between any crystallized, inorganically constituted matter and what is present in albumen as a constitution. But, you see, today's science does not know that if we have any — I will draw it symbolically — inorganic form, which we can simply follow in this way (a), and we compare it with the protein constitution (b), then we initially have something that appears to be tremendously complicated; in all the substances of our food, everywhere in the organic, this seemingly complicated constitution fits in. We then say: the inorganic is more intricately constituted in the organic, and only then is the human body, for example, built up from this intricately constituted organic substance; this happens through cell division, through a certain configuration of the tissue, and so on. But the whole thing is, isn't it, nothing but nonsense. Because what really happens is the complete annihilation of all inorganic forms. The complexity of the protein consists in the fact that everything inorganic comes into chaos. The protein is always on the way to chaos, in order to dissolve the form corresponding to the inorganic and to transfer matter into chaos; and the matter that is most strongly transferred into chaos is that which is present in the fertilized egg cell. This is simply matter driven into chaos. The entire earthly natural law can no longer do anything with this chaos; it is eliminated. To have become albumen at any level means to be eliminated from the earthly natural law. And what is the consequence? That the extra-earthly natural law, the constellation of the planets, the whole extra-earthly world begins to act on this chaos in order to give this chaos a constitution again. Through the transmutation into protein, the matter enters into chaos, and thus becomes ready to receive again; not only to receive from the earthly, but to receive its constitution from the whole universe, from the cosmic. And in this consists the reproduction of the human head, which after all reproduces the vault of heaven.

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Of course, we will only have a true natural science when we go beyond these earthly things. The whole of natural science has become accustomed to deriving everything purely from the inorganic. Today, natural science is something that leads to everything dying, because natural science only accepts as valid for the intellect what can be researched in abstracto. At the moment when you have to think about the transition from that which can only be investigated in intellectual form to chaos, you have to stop thinking and start looking, and move on to a different kind of knowledge. And that is where the difficulty lies. For you see, intellectualism not only makes us into people who reject the pictorial, it even prevents us from getting out of the intellect and forming pictures ourselves. Once you have become completely intellectualized and abstract, you simply cannot do it!

The fact is that this intellectualistic culture of modern times has such great power over people that they all seem like someone who, as a little girl or even as a little boy, wants to learn to embroider in a Waldorf school and only manages to let the different threads run from top to bottom and from bottom to top; he can embroider, but he cannot create real pictures. He cannot do that. The soul activity of our modern culture, in which we have harnessed ourselves, presses so hard that no one has the spirit to be flexible enough to realize that in the egg white, everything is simply erased by these scientific results, and that matter is opened up to conception from the cosmos. This is what then points to the necessity of seeking religious renewal through anthroposophy. That is why I emphasized yesterday: Of course it is the case that we must also draw on those from today's preaching stand who come with an honest heart as so-called Protestants and who therefore reject what I have just discussed today. But the effective core on which everything should be built must actually be anthroposophists. For anthroposophy seeks to achieve what is sought in vain everywhere else: it seeks to lead to a true grasp of reality. Without having gone through this process ourselves, this coming out of the natural scientific comprehension of the world, which has already taken hold of theologians today, we will not be able to find symbolic images with which we can truly express ourselves before the believing community. And if one can approach this anthroposophical grasp of the world — you can follow it everywhere in my cycles —, at certain points one simply has to let it run out into the picture. And if you read my “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science), in which I described the preliminary stages of the earth as the sun and moon, I was speaking only in images. When I say that something looks like a taste sensation, then a whole dozen of scientists like Dessoir, Oesterreich and so on cannot understand it, cannot do anything with it.

In the practical exercise of the ministry, anthroposophy is what is meant by inspiration, so that one can actually enter into the handling of the symbolic, the ritual and the cultic, and thereby have the possibility of forming a community. Otherwise one will only have the opportunity to speak to individuals. The formation of communities will never be achieved through the abstract in life.

I would like to present the matter so far and then continue it tomorrow and move on to the actual content of the sermon. We will be back tomorrow at 11 a.m., and I suggest that we also continue our discussion today about the other areas today at 7 p.m.

Now I would just like to say: Yesterday I suggested to the gentlemen from “Der Kommende Tag” that a kind of bridge should be created through “Der Kommende Tag” to what is to take place in your circle here. I have emphasized the most important thing, namely that this matter be financed, so to speak. However we think of our matter, it must be financed. It must lead immediately to the free formation of communities, even if this must be won primarily from the present church. I must say that I believe that if we work in a truly appropriate way, it could be possible to get so far in three months that the financing work will pay for itself. In other words, I think that there will at least be enough to pay for the financing work and to fill a position with someone who will start this work. “Der Kommende Tag” will agree to take care of these three months; and I believe that you have agreed to ask Dr. Heisler to take on this financing work. Initially, the matter will be on firm ground if Dr. Heisler takes it on. I am thoroughly convinced that when one has come as far as we have with such a matter, one cannot afford to wait long, because circumstances are pressing, and one often does not notice how strong the forces of decline are today, and how easy it can be to miss the boat altogether if one waits too long.

We would be much further along with the threefold order today if the matter had been properly grasped back in the spring of 1919. At that time, a cultural council was established on the basis of my cultural appeal. It was rightly imagined that people in office and dignity would also make the matter their own. They even took people in office and authority into consideration, and they worded the matter in such a way that they did not get too many goose bumps, because they wanted to appear realistic. But of course the people could not be kept in line. It is true that they could not be kept in line and that nothing helped. They will therefore be forced to turn to young people, to the younger generation, who have realized that the older generation has simply grown old and can no longer keep up. We must try not to lose any time. That is why I would like to say to you that we should try to build a bridge across, because I believe it is a legitimate feeling that, for this in particular, the financing, if it is done properly, cannot be too difficult. You will find people who are sympathetic to this, and I believe that Dr. Heisler's eloquence will find open doors if he limits himself in the next few months to persuading individuals to open the stock exchange or write the bills. Of course, you can't win people over with lectures. People won't give anything away there. You have to go to the individuals. He will have to see his task as spending all his time going to the individuals. The only unpleasant thing is that you are dismissed with words – but only with words, other cases have not yet occurred. There is no other way, you just have to accept it, and in the majority of cases you are not dismissed with words. For example, in the collection of the Swiss “Futurum AG,” I heard from all the gentlemen who were commissioned with the collection that a single instance of being thrown out with words had taken place; otherwise, people limited themselves to being extremely friendly and amiable and finding the matter extremely interesting, but just not opening the stock market. Some people then write a letter afterwards; of course, there is no need to answer that. Of course you have to realize that you will only achieve something in a small percentage of cases, but you just have to try. It's no different than having to work only towards selections, having to try a lot to have success in a few cases.

Would it perhaps be possible to discuss something else, or to pursue this further? Perhaps some of you have something to say about this. We will then extend the discussion this evening to include all three main topics that you mentioned yesterday.

Gottfried Husemann: I think we would like to talk about the extent to which we now have to prepare ourselves for the preaching profession, for speaking in a pictorial way. We cannot expect the university to prepare us for this.

Rudolf Steiner: Are you saying that something can be done in this direction? Positives, right? In these lessons I can only give the guidelines; of course I cannot go into individual points. To go into details requires at least a fortnightly course. So, one could certainly think along these lines, that if our circle has grown in the next few months, we will organize such a course, which will then give in a fortnight what is taught in the teaching institutions under the title 'symbolism', but which is actually nothing. Only in the Catholic Church faculty does symbolism still mean something. You may not yet see its inner structure quite clearly.

You can see this inner structure best from the facts. I have experienced that a large number of Catholic priests who held a position as a high school teacher - which was still quite common in Austria at the time - or who had read as a university lecturer not only at the theological faculty, but also at the philosophical and other faculties, that such Catholic priests - they were mostly religious who were later called modernists - have been reprimanded by Rome. Now I once spoke with a man who was tremendously significant in exegesis, and I asked how it was that he had been reprimanded by Rome for the content of his speech, which actually did not deserve a reprimand at all, while – if if one starts from the point of view from which the reprimand was issued, one had to say that Professor Bickell, who belonged to the Jesuits, went much further than just being an extreme liberal, but was persona grata in Rome. I told him that, and he replied: I am a Cistercian, and [in Rome] one expects of the Cistercians that the moment they no longer say what the content established by Rome is, they might then follow their convictions and gradually depart from Catholicism. — This is assumed with Cistercians. With the Jesuits, as with Professor Bickell, one knows that, however liberally they speak, they are loyal sons of Rome; they do not stray [from Rome]; one is quite certain about them, they are allowed liberalism, they may base their teachings on completely different things than on the doctrinal material.

The Catholic Church does not have this lack [of flexibility], so it is much more viable in its approach. For example, about forty years ago I once got into a conversation with a Catholic theologian who was a professor at the Vienna Theological Faculty and so learned that people said of him that he knew the whole world and three more villages into the bargain. He was a profoundly learned Cistercian. Even a Cistercian was able to discuss the subject matter in the following way. During the conversation, we came to speak about the [dogma of the] conceptio immaculata, and I said to him: Yes, you see, if you remain within Catholic logic, you can admit the immaculate conception, the conceptio immaculata Mariae. That is not the dogma of the immaculate conception of Jesus, which has always been there in the Church. But the immaculate conception, as it is claimed by Catholics on the part of St. Anne, that is, the ascent from the immaculate conception of Mary to the immaculate conception of St. Anne? If you use the same logic, you have to go further up through all the following generations. – Yes, he said, that doesn't exist, we can't do that, logic doesn't demand that. We have to stop at St. Anna; if we went further, we would end up with “Davidl,” and with Davidl we would have a bad time with the conceptio immaculata. –

Such words do not express a pure sense of truth. When the man speaks outside the Church, a completely different formulation of the truth impulse speaks, and that is present everywhere [in the Catholic Church]. The concepts are formed in such a way that they can be assimilated by the broad masses – they are not formed according to any kind of logic – that is what makes Catholicism so great. This cannot be approved of in any way, but it must be recognized. You have to know who you are dealing with.

It is the case, for example, that a real engagement with the world – in the sense of thinking, not only in an intellectualist sense, but in the sense of pure thinking, is engaged with the world – is sometimes present in Catholic priests to a certain extent. I have met many Catholic priests through the circumstances of my life. Among them was the church historian at the University of Vienna. The man was an extraordinarily interesting person, but very traditionally Catholic, so Catholic that he even admitted that he no longer goes out on the street when it is dark in the evening and the lanterns are not yet fully lit. When I asked him why he no longer walked on the streets, he said: “There you only see people in vague outlines, and in Vienna you also encounter Freemasons, and you can only see a Freemason in sharp outline because you can only pass him if you can clearly distinguish yourself from him.” You can be absolutely learned and steeped in all of theology and still have the opinion that it means something in the real world when you walk past a Freemason without rejecting him through the sharp outline. The auras merge, and it is not possible to have such a mishmash of Catholic priest and Freemason.

Ernst Uehli: The Catholic Church has worked very much with legends; and I think it is true that the Catholic movement has been very much supported by the legend. It is easy to imagine that a future church community could lead to a new formation of legends.

Rudolf Steiner: That is how it is. And if you read some of my lectures that I gave in Dornach, you will even find the attempt to express certain things that can now be expressed in legend form. I gave whole lectures in legend form; and I draw your attention to one thing. I once tried to characterize the essence of the arts. You cannot get into the essence of the arts with concepts; everything that is built up in the abstract remains external. If you want to depict such a thing, you have to resort to images. The booklet 'The Essence of the Arts' is presented entirely in images. And here again one is misunderstood. When I had spoken these words entirely out of my imagination, an old theosophist stepped forward and said, “Yes, so you have transformed the nine muses.” – Wasn't it? It was as far from my mind as anything could be to think of the nine muses; it all resulted from the necessity of the case. It was far from my mind to reheat old stories, but one could think of nothing else but that it was an abstract procedure.

So it must be said that the need to resort to images is definitely there again. For example, we still don't have an image for a very important thing. Consider the abundance of bull legends, bull narratives at the beginning of the 3rd millennium at the transition of the vernal point into the constellation of Taurus. Consider the legends of the Argonauts' journey when, in the pre-Christian 8th century, the sun entered the constellation of Aries. Now it is in the constellation of Pisces. This legend still has to be made up. We need a pictorial legend. Although the matter is already alive, we still have no legend for it. This imaginative element still needs to be developed. And so there are numerous other things that today only live in the abstract, that should be transformed into images from world events. This needs to be worked on. It is through this that we must find our way back to the world. Today, the world is actually only that which can be grasped intellectually. What is the world for today's human being? One could almost say: for the intellectual man of today the whole cosmos is nothing but rigid mathematics and mechanics. And we must again come to go beyond mere mathematics and mechanics, we must come to the imaginative, to the pictorial and also to the legendary.

We just have to realize that research such as that presented by my late friend Ludwig Laistner in his book 'The Riddle of the Sphinx', which is about sagas, myths and the formation of legends, can be of great help. I would like to emphasize that Ludwig Laistner knew nothing about spiritual science. I would just like to say that the book can help with research, although Laistner traces all myths and legends back to dreams. But it is interesting to follow how he does not seek the formation of legends in the insane way in which today's Protestant and Catholic researchers seek them, by saying to themselves: the ancient peoples made things up, they imagined the gods in a thunderstorm, and in the struggle of winter with summer. As if people had never known a peasant mind; the peasant mind never writes poetry. These people, to whom the poetry is attributed, are as far from poetry as the peasants are. It was all imaginative. Ludwig Laistner traces everything back to dreams; nevertheless, it is interesting [to read how he sees a connection between a person's inner experiences in the Slavic legend of the Lady of Noon and the legend of the] Sphinx in Greece. That is why the book is called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. Legends must flow out of life, now in full consciousness. This is extremely important.

Rudolf Steiner: I think this should be a kind of discussion hour again, and I think you will have a lot on your minds. Please feel free to express yourselves in all directions!

Emil Bock: The question of worship is close to our hearts because we cannot create the new form of worship on our own.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it will of course be necessary to develop some symbolism in this direction, that is to say that in the cultus we have spoken of, we develop individual examples of cultic forms, so to speak. The shaping of the cultus is actually such that one comes to it when one has the prerequisites for it. Of course, it is definitely a matter of becoming accustomed to the pictorial shaping of what one is so accustomed to today, to look at it intellectually. And Mr. Uehli, I believe, said something today, didn't he, about something cult-like, as it is practiced in the Waldorf School. That it is difficult to shape the cultic aspect may be clear to you from the fact that for a long time all cults have been limited to adopting the traditional. All the cultic forms that exist today are actually very old, only somewhat transformed in one way or another. And in the time when humanity lost the ability to create pictorially, in that time, cult was also fought against in a sense. Perhaps it can help you to understand cult if we add a few words to what we said this morning about a very different form of cult.

You know that wherever real community is sought, inner community, that cultus plays a certain role. I only remind you that when the somewhat questionable Salvation Army movement spread, even this Salvation Army movement sought a certain cultus; and it is also known that even the temperance movement has very few cultic surrogates. Wherever the aim is to achieve a true community movement, there the striving for some form of cult is everywhere.

Now, as you know, the Freemasonry movement in modern times is a very extensive community. Isn't it true that this freemasonry movement also seeks to achieve the cultivation of community through cult, and one can say that the freemasonry movement shows how cult must become when it turns into a purely materialistic movement. For actually the freemasonry movement is the materialistic form of a spiritual movement.

You see, the secret of the human essence is essentially part of the rituals and symbols of the Masonic movement. If you want to look at the human being and study the actual essence of the human being in its connection with the world, then today the materialistically minded researcher will tell you: the human being actually only has the same muscle forms, the same bone forms as the higher animals, even the same number of these organic forms – he is a higher developed animal, a transformed animal. That is, after all, what more or less clearly expressed underlies our current knowledge. This realization is immediately dispelled when one considers how humans integrate into the cosmos quite differently [than animals]. The essence of the animal – if one disregards the individual forms of deviation, which are everywhere, after all – the essence of the animal is that its backbone is built on the horizontal. Please do not misunderstand what I mean by this. Of course, an animal can sit up like a kangaroo, and that can seemingly make its spinal column form an angle with the horizontal. But that is not actually required by the organic constitution. Similarly, certain birds, parrots, can have a more or less upright posture; but the animal's plastic structure is not designed to lift the spinal column out of the horizontal. In contrast to this, the essential thing about man is the formation of his spinal column in a vertical direction. Man has thus formed the spinal column in a vertical direction. This gives one of the essential characteristics for distinguishing man from the animal world. You just have to bear in mind that you cannot consider a being in the world in isolation.

You see, when someone looks at a compass needle, it does not occur to him to say that the compass needle takes on a certain direction through that which is only in it, but he says quite naturally that the earth has a magnetic north and south pole, and the compass needle is directed by the whole earth. Only when it comes to the organic does man prefer to explain everything that is in the organism only from the organism itself, and not to relate the human being at all to the whole universe. But the person who sees through things also relates the organism to the whole universe. The fact of the matter is that systems of forces run through the whole universe; some circle the earth horizontally, while others act in such a way that these horizontal forces are interspersed with forces that run in a radial direction, so that the human being aligns his spine with the radial forces. In this way he is integrated into the universe quite differently from the animal, which has its backbone, the most important bodily line, integrated horizontally, that is, parallel to the earth's surface. Now, many other things depend on this.

You see, the human brain, which weighs 1300 to 1400 grams, would, if it were to exert its full weight, immediately crush all the blood vessels underneath the brain. The brain is quite capable of crushing the blood vessels with its weight. Why doesn't the brain crush them? Because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. The cerebral fluid oscillates through the arachnoid space, which is formed by the spinal column on the inside; the cerebral fluid flows up and down under the influence of breathing. The entire brain floats in cerebral fluid. From physics, you may know that a body loses as much weight as the displaced fluid volume weighs, so that instead of weighing 1300 to 1400 grams, the brain exerts a maximum of 20 grams of pressure on the blood vessels. So you see, the human brain is designed not to insist on its heaviness, but to have an uplift, to escape heaviness. This is only possible if the human spine is vertical. In animals, the whole heaviness of the brain presses, and that is because the arachnoid space goes horizontally into the brain. The circulation that is caused takes place in a completely different way.

One must not only look at the structure of the human being, but also at the position in the universe. So that one can say: If one considers the outstanding position of man in the universe, several important lines arise above all. (It is drawn on the board).

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Firstly, the line parallel to the earth's surface, the horizontal. Secondly, the thing that distinguishes humans from animals: the fact that the backbone is vertical to the horizontal. You have drawn two shapes with this: firstly, the horizontal, and secondly, the right angle. If you are aware of the significance of the horizontal line, which basically creates animality, and the significance of the right angle for the placement of man in the universe, then you associate certain ideas with the horizontal line and with the right angle, which can thus become symbols.

Freemasonry, which seeks to characterize the essence of man, has the spirit level and the right angle among its symbols. The other symbols are also modeled on the forces of the universe. How they are modeled on the forces of the universe will become clear from the following consideration.

If we imagine the earth here; man moves on the earth, let us say so, so I will draw it radially, then it is the case that man here has his direction in the vertical and that the way he connects to the center of the earth is a triangle. You have the triangle again as a symbol in the Freemasons' cult. Everything in this Freemasonry is — in the first degree — taken from the configuration of the human being. There you see the formation of symbolism. Symbolism is there where it occurs in its reality, not arbitrarily invented. You only come to the symbolism when you study it in reality. Symbolism is grounded in the universe, it is there somewhere. It is the same with the cult.

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You see, in his temporal life between birth and death, man is constituted in such a way that he has within him the forces that continually kill him. These are the forces that solidify him, that are effective in the formation of the bone system, and that, in their morbid development, can lead to sclerosis, gout, diabetes, and so on. I would say that these forces are found in every human being, as forces of solidification. That is one system of forces. The other system of forces that a person has within them is what continually rejuvenates them. This system of forces is particularly evident when one falls prey to pleurisy, feverish illnesses, in fact, anything that burns a person internally. In the anthroposophical world view, I have called the solidifying forces Ahrimanic forces, and the forces that lead to fever, which are therefore warming forces, I have called Luciferic forces. Both forces must be kept in perpetual equilibrium in the human being. If they are not kept in balance, they will lead the human being to some pernicious extreme, physically, mentally or spiritually. If the feverish and solidifying forces, the salt-forming forces, were not kept in constant physiological balance, then man would necessarily end up either in a state of sclerosis or in a feverish state. If man develops only the powers of understanding, if he is inclined only towards intellectualism, he falls prey to the Ahrimanic; if he develops only the fiery elements, passion, the emotional, then he falls prey to the Luciferic. And so man is always caught between two polarities and must maintain his balance. But think how difficult it is to maintain balance. The pendulum that should be in balance always tends towards a deflection. These three tendencies: the tendency towards balance, the tendency towards warmth and the tendency towards solidification are in man. He must maintain himself upright, so that man can be seen symbolically as a being who continually seeks to maintain himself upright against the forces that continually endanger his life.

This is represented by the third degree of Freemasonry. The Mason who is initiated into the third degree is symbolically shown how man is threatened by three unruly powers that approach him and endanger his life. This is done in different ways. The simplest form is this: a man is presented in a coffin and three assassins creep up who want to kill him. In the contemplation of this threefold danger in which man is immersed, he is taught an awareness that he is in danger of death at every moment and must rise up.

Thus, in this symbolic clothing, man experiences a kind of real cultic action; he experiences something really important in a ceremonial way that is connected with life. And so it is indeed that one must try to get to know life, because then the symbols arise out of life. The dark side of Freemasonry is that although these symbols are used, although rituals are performed – in the first three degrees of Blue Masonry, in high-grade Freemasonry there are many other things – and that this ceremonial is drawn from ancient traditions, but that they are no longer understood. There is no longer any connection with the origins, which I wanted to present to you in a brief sketch. People only look at the ceremony and - and this is the dangerous thing - they get stuck on the ceremony; they are not introduced to the ceremony in such a way as to gain access to the spiritual through the ceremony.

You see, another way in which, relatively late, even as late as the 18th century, one still had a very vivid sense of the pictorial visualization of the secrets of the world, is for example this: If you open some books with pictures that were still in circulation in the 18th century – they were in circulation to make people aware of things that cannot be grasped by the intellect – you will see a picture that keeps recurring: a man with a bull's head and a woman with a lion's head. The man with the bull's head and the woman with the lion's head stand side by side. At first glance, the image is shocking for anyone who does not look at it more closely. But it is indeed the case that we human beings are actually constituted in such a way that we are most perfectly shaped in our physical body. That is where we are actually human. The physical body, as you will find described in my 'Occult Science', is the one that goes back to the oldest foundations; it is the most perfect. The human ether body is shaped like the physical body. If the physical body could be removed from the ether body, it would only adapt to the astral body, then this ether body would probably take on an animal form to the annoyance of many people, because then it becomes the expression of the emotional, the passionate. It is shaped in different ways in different people.

If we regard the male head, the etheric head, as an expression of what lives in the emotional nature, then, taken as a type, as an average, there is something bull-like in the male head. In the female head, as soon as one looks at the ether head, there is something lion-like. These are average forms. One can also feel this morally if one opens oneself to what the nature of woman encompasses, how she is the type of the lion-like. One can feel the bull in the man and feel the lion in the woman.

These are things that seem to be merely figuratively spoken, but they are taken from the supersensible nature [of man]. When the astral body [is considered] taken out of the physical body, it takes on complicated plant forms, and the human ego is a purely mineral, crystal-like being, it is completely geometrically shaped. So that one can say: In form, man is human in the physical body, in the etheric body he is actually animal-like, in the astral he is plant-like and in the I he is mineral-like. When one knows all these things, then one comes to realize how, in an earlier clairvoyant state, people really knew about higher worlds and formed these images from these higher worlds.

Now, this is just to indicate how symbols came into being and how they then traditionally propagated themselves. In our time, it is only possible to arrive at symbols if one delves lovingly into the secrets of the world; and only out of anthroposophy can a cult or a symbolism actually arise today.

You see, it is necessary to start from the elements. The first thing is that one grows into the genius of the language itself. Our language, especially where civilization is at its highest, has taken on a terribly external, abstract form. We speak today without feeling in our speech. You see, our way of speaking today is actually something terribly inhuman, because we no longer live in our language. Take the German word “Kopf”. When we feel it, we also feel how it is completely connected with the round form, with the rounded. On the other hand, the Romance word 'testa' is related to the idea of making a will, bearing witness, establishing something. It comes from a completely different background. And if you feel what is in the two words, you also feel the difference between the Romance and the Germanic element. The Germanic element forms the word from the plastic, the Romance, the Latin element forms it from the soul's manifestations. Take the word 'foot', which is related to 'furrow'; 'pied' is related to 'to set up'. This can be seen throughout the language, and you can feel it everywhere, how the special world feeling actually comes to light in the genius of the language. Consider how strongly the pictorial quality of language was still felt in the time when Goethe was writing. Do you remember the scene where the poodle appears on the stage, following Faust and Wagner, and where Wagner talks about the poodle and says, “he doubts” — by that he means that he moves his tail; with the word “doubt” he expresses the movement of the tail. If you look at what is still alive in the picture and compare it with our abstractions today, you can really feel your way into the pictorial way in which the genius of language has worked, by observing how the word “doubt” contains this wagging, this to and fro.

This is the first element of the pictorial soul life when one lives into the pictorial language. It is really the case that one grows into the pictorial language if one only wants to; and that is already a good education of the soul, to grow into the pictorial language. Today we speak in abstracto, the words no longer mean anything to us. You see, in my homeland a certain kind of lightning that you see in a special way is called “Himmlatzer”. I would like to know how one should not feel the image of lightning in “Himmlatzer”, the word paints it. And so it is also quite possible, if you go more into the dialect-like, into the dialects, to grow even more into the pictorial. One should educate oneself to have the pictorial in language. Today it is sometimes almost impossible to express something that one has because the pictorial quality of language has been lost. Of course, one must disregard all artificially induced things. Anyone who is in any way eccentric will experience what happened to the Falb. He was walking with a friend and speaking animatedly – and stepped into a pool, and thought – pool? — temple! — Of course, one must not be eccentric by seeking external similarities. One must delve inwardly into the imagery of language. Then one will really understand the word “two.” Originally, the “two” was not thought of in terms of adding one and one, but rather the “two” was thought of in terms of dividing one in two. The older way of forming numbers is based on analysis, not synthesis. You can still see this if you take, for example, Arabic arithmetic in the 12th century AD.

An interesting booklet has now been published by our friend Ernst Müller about Abraham Ibn Ezra – I will give you the exact title tomorrow – which deals with numbers and is extremely interesting for understanding the earlier way of forming numbers. If you follow this, you will find, without making any crazy claims, the similarity of the word “two” with the word “doubt”; you will also be led to the suffix “el”. In this way you can find your way into the imagery of language. This is the alphabet of pictorial imagination.

Furthermore, it is about finding your way into the whole complicated way in which, for example, a human being is constructed. I have given some examples today. As I said, if you arrive at real knowledge in this way, the images first arise for the symbolism, and then you come to really understand historical life. Then you also come to be able to imagine cultic acts.

Take the following example. You see, the Greeks did not yet have the possibility of having the concepts completely separate from the things. Just as we perceive colors, the Greeks perceived the concepts in the things; for them, they were perceptions. If we start from this, we really come to understand how humanity has changed since the time of the Greeks. If, for example, one wanted to depict a type of altar that would be more suitable for the Greeks, one would depict it in bright colors. If one wanted to depict an altar that would be suitable for a person who lives more in the modern world, who is not attuned to bright colors (the Greeks did not perceive colors in the way we do), one would have to build it in a more blue color today.

If you want to approach a community with a cult today, you would have to make it extraordinarily simple. A complicated cult would not satisfy people today, so you have to make it extraordinarily simple. Above all, we need an expression of the inner transformation of the human being in the cult everywhere. This inner transformation of the human being, which one could call the pervasion of the human being with Christ, for man is actually not born at all in a state in which he is already permeated with Christ from the outset, as a result of heredity; he must find Christ within himself. This could now be expressed symbolically in the most diverse ways through simple but effective cultic acts.

Let me give you an example: if someone were to formulate a saying, it would consist of seven lines. In the first three lines one would express essentially how the human being still stands under the influence of the conditions of heredity, how he is born out of the father principle of the world. The fourth line, the middle one, would then show how these principles of heredity are overcome by the principles of the soul. And the last three lines would show how, through this, the human being becomes a seer of the spiritual. Now, one could read such seven lines to a community in such a way that one presents the first three lines with a somewhat more abstract, rougher language, then in the middle, the fourth, one transitions to a somewhat warmer language, and the last three lines are presented in elevated language, with a raised tone. And one would have in it a simple cultic act that would represent the becoming-Christed and becoming-spiritualized of the human being.

It is not important that something like this is explained afterwards – that is precisely what should not be done – but it should be made tangible. The image should be felt, and one should act accordingly. So you see how it is possible, after all, to ascend to the cultural. Then one must get a feeling for how everything that relates to the thinking is similar to light, and how everything that relates to love is similar to warmth. Now think what a means of expression you have in language when you can, wherever you wish to express something tending towards the thinking, associate it with light. When you say, “Let wisdom illuminate the human being,” you have said something real. You will feel how the thinking is actually the captured light that becomes a thought. Likewise, when speaking of love, we everywhere use images taken from warmth relationships. If one says, “A common idea spreads warmly over a community of people,” then you have the image of warmth in it, but you have spoken in real terms. Thus, when you feel the inner wisdom of language, you enter into the pictorial realm.

This is one such path, and I will give you very detailed examples later when we meet again. One can even develop modern culture on the basis of these things. Today I just wanted to hint to you at the practical way in which one is actually led. But it is always about our — forgive the harsh expression — emaciated souls. We are not human at all, we have become so dead through materialistic education. Today man feels everything separately. He does not feel at all that his nerves are the receptacle of light, that his nerves are glowing with light. He believes that vibrations are at work. But it is from light that the thought is formed. It is not just an image, but reality, when it is said: “Man is permeated by thoughts”.

This is far too little known, which is why it is not possible to visualize it. But I believe that if you read my book “Die Geheimwissenschaft” (The Secret Science), for example, and immerse yourself in how I present the three metamorphoses of Moon, Sun and Saturn, in order to visualize how it all unfolds in pictures, then you will be able to visualize it all by yourself. If you do not stop at the abstraction or even believe that I have constructed or invented something, but if you feel the necessity that it must be presented in this way, then you already have a school for pictorial imagination. And there is every reason to move on to cultic actions. From what I have presented, one must also acquire a feeling for the inner numerical structure of the universe.

Today, of course, people often laugh when you talk about the number seven or the number three. But these numbers can easily be empirically derived from the universe. I would like to know how anyone can avoid thinking of the number three when they think of a human being. Man is, after all, a threefold being, and if you think about it properly, you come across the number three everywhere. If, for example, you are speaking to a group of children, or to older children, “May the light of your thinking shine through you,” you have not finished speaking until you also say, “May the life of your feeling stir you,” or “permeate you”; and “May the fire of your will empower you.” The elements combine of their own accord, and this then flows over into the form of the ritual. You have to get a feeling for the fact that something is incomplete if you just say, “May the light, your thinking, illuminate you.” It is just like putting up a human head alone. That cannot be, I cannot imagine that someone just puts up the human head, it cannot be like that, something else is needed. So I must also have the feeling when I say: “The light, your thinking, illuminates you,” that is not complete, I must also say: “The life, your feeling, permeates you” and “The fire, your will, empowers you.” If I take only one, I have just as much as if I only have the human head. So you come to think of the other. Then one enters into the self-creative aspect of the world's numerical organization, and so the cultic form arises out of the thing itself:

May the light of your thinking permeate you. May the life of your feeling imbue you. May the fire of your will empower you.

This is, after all, the basis of what Mr. Uehli will have told you today [about the Sunday lesson in the Waldorf school]. It is all there in the formula; it is formed in this way everywhere. It is so difficult to understand when it occurs in life.

You see, if you were to take a piece out of my Philosophy of Freedom, a chapter, it would be almost like cutting off a limb of the human being. It is only intended to be read as a whole, because it is a special form of thinking. It is not a combination of individual parts, it has been allowed to grow. And that can be further developed.

Paul Baumann: Doctor, could you tell us something about the musical element in the cult?

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: we human beings are placed in the world in such a way that — if I may use a pictorial image (diagram 2 is drawn on the board) — on the one hand we are organized in our heads. This organization of the head is essentially conditioned by the fact that the external world penetrates into it and is inhibited everywhere. Everything that penetrates from the world into the head is actually reflected in the head, and what we perceive outside is the reflection, that is, what we usually have inside in our waking consciousness. And if you take the human body, especially what is made of the eye, but also of the other sense organs, then you find that it all tends to be defined at the back; something is mirrored. On the other hand, the human being develops the bone system, the muscle system and so on. In the case of the head, we actually have the round, closed skull capsule. Then we have the tubular bones, the muscles and so on (see plate 2). The head is actually quite impenetrable for what affects it, just as the mirror is impenetrable for light; that is why it reflects. This is different in what is broadly termed the limb-metabolic-organism; here the world reaches into the tubular bones and muscles, so that one can say: In the head organization everything is repelled, but the limbs absorb, so that actually the processes of the limb-metabolic organism are brought about from outside through the way in which I am integrated into the world organism. Nothing is repelled; it is, as it were, organized through, it is taken in. And that then accumulates, especially in the lungs. The lungs are such an accumulation organ where the external world takes shape. And a second, already sieved accumulation is in the organ of hearing. The organ of hearing is actually a lung at a higher level. Anyone with an eye for it can see even in the structure of the outer ear how it is not formed like the eye. The eye is formed from the outside in. The ear is closed and encloses what is the actual sensory organ. So everything that is visible on the ear is formed in such a way that the human being is formed from two vortices. One of these is thrown back, reflected, and actually returns to itself; the other forms an organism, develops the form, and meets the first, and they then come together here (see plate 2), so that everything that comes from the outside inwards is reflected here and gives the ordinary memory, for example the memory for the images seen. On the other hand, that which builds up the human being is movement, it is movement throughout, it is forms of vibration that run within him. I have told you about the brain water, haven't I? Man is 92% water and only 8% solid; what is solid is only incorporated. The whole is all movement. What organizes the human being out of movement, that organizes him out of the word. Man is truly the Word made flesh in the most literal sense, and this Word made flesh comes together with that which is reflected in it, so that we can say: We are built first of all for the visual, but this is organized entirely for being reflected back; and then we are built for the auditory, for that which forms the human being, for sound formed into words, which then accumulates in listening, which becomes heard sound.

The human being becomes aware of the external world through the direct or the transformed visible. Through that which becomes sound in himself, which becomes musical, the human being is the being who rises from the sphere of the musical and is fertilized by the sphere of the optical, of the visible, so that the musical is indeed that which continues to work in us from the world. We are built through music; our body is an embodied music. This is the case in the fullest sense. And light plays a role here (see Chart 2) and is reflected. This also accounts for the great difference between ordinary memory, which we have in relation to the outside world, where we retain the visual, and musical memory. Musical memory is something quite different – it will also seem wonderful to you – musical memory arises in the opposite way, it arises from the accumulation of the sound that flows through; in this way, the human being throws back his own nature within himself. It is therefore that which works musically in the human being, his very innermost nature.

Now you may think that we place images in some way, whether we place them visibly before people in worship, or whether we evoke the images by speaking, and then we imbue these images with the musical, whether with instrumental music or song. It is nothing other than the fact that, fundamentally, the two main principles of the world are juxtaposed. What the human being is as a creature of light is brought into connection with what the human being is as a creature of sound. And through this, the cult [...] becomes a polarity. Admittedly, this is already the case with the word, and the older cults did not use abstract speech for this reason either, but rather the recitative, which already has something song-like about it. And this recitative, which played such an important role in the ancient sacrifice of the Mass because the Mass was sung, was intended to represent the interpenetration of the luminous with the tonal, so that in the cult the musical that which most essentially internalizes man, that which furthers the mystical element, while the rest furthers that which furthers the pantheistic, the outpouring of man to the universe.

We thus have the possibility, on the one hand, of driving man into expansion through everything luminous and conceptual, and on the other hand, of leading him into contraction, into the absorption of the supersensible through the musical. And while, for example, the non-musical, the luminous in cult is suited to teaching us a sense of the world, the musical is suited to deepening our sense of the I to the point of the divine. The ideal would be to take the luminous to a certain degree and then let it merge into the musical, letting it merge quite organically into the musical. In this way, one would actually have recreated the human being in his constitution through cult.

Gottfried Husemann asks whether the church music of the past, for example Bach, is still needed. Would the new cult not also need a new kind of music?

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that if one is obliged to do something quickly today, then one will revive these older musical things. But it is certainly the case that people can no longer develop an entirely inward relationship to these older forms, just as an adult cannot develop the same life forms as a child. It is absolutely necessary that musical forms be created out of today's feeling. Naturally, one must begin where one has the possibility to do so. You will have noticed that where we do eurythmy and work with music, our friends have already found quite good musical forms out of the musical feeling of today. This will be based on the fact that more and more people will relearn in the musical sphere, just as in the pictorial sphere. There are indeed tentative attempts, which need not be condemned, but one must know that they are just tentative attempts, and the same applies to the musical sphere, for example with Debussy, who lives in the individual note, who lives in the individual tone. But it must not become tone painting. It is the case that more and more will be experienced of what arises in the individual tone as a secret, and then one will seek to analyze the individual tone. Perhaps one will have to expand the scale, insert some tones, but mainly one will enrich by experiencing the character of the individual tone. And thereby special musical possibilities will arise. [To Mr. Baumann:] You also hope that one will then experience melodies in the individual tone? — It is actually the case that you can. There is then a training opportunity. There the anthroposophical musicians will have to meet the others halfway. I am absolutely convinced that anthroposophical musicians will still have a great deal to do, that anthroposophical musicians in particular will have a great mission. Before Wagner, old music was actually at an impasse. But Wagner did not really advance music. He broadened music by bringing a side-current into it. One can see this as great and ingenious, but it is still a side-current. One will have to take up the development of music before Wagner and find there precisely that which can give much to culture. Until then it will, of course, be very good to use older works. There are actually some truly wonderful things there, both in Protestant and Catholic church music. For the modern person, the relationship will no longer be a completely inward one; one will have to try to delve into the musical itself.

Emil Bock asks a question concerning the Quaker movement.

Rudolf Steiner: I have always had the feeling with the Quakers that this is actually a movement that comes specifically from the Anglo-American element. I have not been able to find any significant predispositions in Central Europe for the kind of community building that comes to light in Quakerism. I am not familiar with this endeavour from my own experience and therefore cannot know whether anything fruitful can come of it or not, but I doubt that something similar to Quakerism can arise out of the Central European spirit. You see, the Anglo-American element actually experiences religion in a completely different way than the Central European can experience it. The Central European experiences religion first and foremost in thinking. That is the archetypal phenomenon. It is a mysticism thoroughly illuminated by the intellectual light. This is everywhere, even where very radical religious forms and sectarian aspirations arise. In Central Europe you will find everywhere mysticism illuminated by the light of thinking, while the Anglo-Americans let the religious element be immersed in the instinctive part of man. Of course this appears in different ways, and it would be interesting to investigate somehow from which blood mixtures the Quakers recruit themselves. One must go to the instinctive, blood-related, and there one will find the subsoil. You will see that one will surely find something like an instinctive disposition there, but the Central European never founds anything community-building on instinctive dispositions.

This is really a clear difference between the West, the Center and the East. The West seeks the higher more or less in the subconscious, in the center one seeks it in consciousness, and in the East one seeks it in the superconscious, there one is always looking up. The American especially looks to the earth and expects everything from the earth, the Russian - even more the Asian - actually always looks up. The Central European looks straight ahead. It is already the case that we could end up on dangerous ground in the religious field in particular if we were to imitate the actually Western element. We must not do that in any field. It has caused us great damage in science and leads to rigidity in the religious field in particular. We have to work more with the soul than with the body.

Emil Bock: We have heard that there are already rituals that have been handed out on occasion: a baptismal ritual, a funeral ritual, and an adapted version of a mass. I would like to ask whether there is a possibility that we could get to know such pieces in order to live into them.

Rudolf Steiner: Certainly, these things would be considered as starting points. The funeral ritual came about because a member of our movement wanted such a funeral ritual. Of course, we had to tie in with the usual funeral rituals, but by translating the usual ritual, not lexicographically, of course, but correctly, something essentially different emerged. I would ask for these things back some time and would very much like to use them as a basis for our course consideration. I will simply ask our friend to transcribe them and then perhaps send them here; that is quite possible. In the case of the Mass offering, I initially only gave a translation of the [Catholic] Mass offering, but something new actually emerged. But I only got as far as the offertory with the translation, it is not finished yet. In the Old Catholic service, the Mass is read in the local language. Our friend went so far as to read the Mass in this translation up to the offertory in the Old Catholic service.

Things take time, and we have little time. But all of this can really be made available to you. Of course, it would be necessary to create a new baptismal ritual in particular, because the old baptismal ritual is not entirely suitable because it was always aimed at baptizing adults, and then it was transferred to the child. If you want to baptize children today, a [new] ritual must first be found. Elements for this already exist, which I can also make available to you. The baptismal rituals have grown out of baptisms for adults. When you baptize a child, you are speaking to an unconscious person, and it must be a corresponding action. The child knows nothing about it. We must not go so far as to rebel against infant baptism itself, but many things need to be renewed in the ritual. If you take the St. John's baptism, it is based on the fact that the person was submerged in the water, the adult was submerged. You know that a person can be brought to the point where his earthly life appears to him in a mere tableau. His life appears to him in a kind of tableau, and through this he experiences unconditionally that he belongs to a spiritual world. He has an experience of belonging to a spiritual world. This is actually also expressed in the baptismal ritual. We cannot do that with children. We need a ritual for children that expresses how the child is accepted into our community, and the communal religious supersensible substance that lives in the community must flow over to the child. We must express this in the baptismal rite, and it can indeed be done.

You see, there has been no reason in the anthroposophical movement to develop these things in a concrete way for the simple reason that we wanted to avoid them. There have been more than a few cases where people wanted to introduce such things. I always rejected it for the reason that, of course, it would have killed the anthroposophical movement stone dead from the start. We just had to stick with what was more or less allowed.

Twenty years ago it was more, today it is less the case that the Catholic Church regarded the ritual as its monopoly. We would have been killed on the spot, and so there was little reason to develop the ritual in that direction. The other thing, where the form of a ritual was developed, was interrupted by the war, where one could no longer continue; because as soon as these things would have been continued, one would have been treated as a secret society.

These are the reasons why the ritual side has not been developed within the anthroposophical movement. But it will be possible to develop it in your movement, because it can be regarded as something quite natural for ritual to be developed in a religious movement. Even though Protestantism has a certain horror of the cultic, I still believe that [the necessity of ritual] could be felt again.

A participant: To begin with, Catholics have more sacraments than Protestants. What is the basis for this and what is the actual significance of the ritual of Holy Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: What is contained in Catholic dogma goes back to certain forms of older knowledge. It is imagined that between birth and death, the human being passes through seven stages. First, birth itself, then what is called maturing, puberty, then what is called the realization of one's inner self around the age of 20, then the feeling of not corresponding to the world, not being fully human, that is the fourth. And then, isn't it, the gradual growth into the spiritual. These things have then become somewhat blurred, but one imagined the whole human life, including the social one, in seven stages, and one imagined that the human being grows out of the spirit between birth and death. The Catholic Church does not recognize pre-existence in more recent times. There is only one thought of God, and this growing out of the thought of God is presented in seven stages. These seven stages must be counteracted by other forces. Birth is an evolution, maturing is an evolution, and each form of evolution is counteracted by a form of involution: baptism for birth, confirmation for puberty. Every sacrament is the inverse of a natural stage in evolution. One can say that Catholic doctrine presents seven stages of evolution, to which it juxtaposes seven stages of involution, and these are the seven sacraments, four of which are earthly, namely baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of the altar, and penance. These four are as universal as the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. As you go higher, you come to the spirit self, the spirit of life and spiritual people. Just as the shining in from the spiritual world, the last three sacraments are those that go into the social: marriage, ordination and extreme unction. The penetration of the spiritual world is expressed in ordination. So these are the seven sacraments, of which the last are extreme unction, ordination and marriage. They are simply the sacraments of the inverse processes for the natural processes that take place for humans, and the corresponding cultic acts are also set up accordingly.

The concept of the seven sacraments is certainly not arbitrary. What is arbitrary is to limit these seven sacraments to two. This happened at a time when people no longer had a feeling for the inner numerical constitution of the world. It is these things, of course, that make truly serious Catholic priests, especially those in religious orders, such opponents of Protestantism. They all consider it to be a form of rationalism, something that knows nothing. There are genuine spiritualized natures among the clergy – the Jesuits, aren't they, they are prepared – I found one among the clergy of Monte Cassino, Father Storkeman, with whom I also spoke about Dionysius the Areopagite, who showed me the altar where he usually says mass. He spoke to me about his feelings at mass, and you could see that it had nothing to do with the usual confession of the Catholic Church.

And another time, in Venice, there was a patriarch who was a terrible fellow. Another, a younger cleric, preached, and I could see occultly that the one who had preached was truly spiritualized. The sermon was also really very fine. It is precisely through the ceremonial that individuals who stand out show themselves. I also saw one read the mass on the lower ground floor [of a church] in Naples, where I could really see the transubstantiation that underlies the Catholic transformation. It is actually the case that when transubstantiation is performed by a real priest, the host acquires an aura. Now, you may believe that or not, I can only relate it.

There is no need to hold back [saying this]: there is an inner reality to the cult, that is undoubtedly the case. You can see the damage in Catholicism when you see what it has been, and what was lost in the rationalist period. It makes no sense that [Protestantism] took two out of seven sacraments; there is no reason for that.

Emil Bock: May we also ask what the significance of laying on of hands was in the early days of Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: You must be clear about the fact that humanity has undergone a development and that certain spiritual forces that were present in prehistory are increasingly receding as humanity becomes more intellectual and develops freedom. Certain powers in relation to natural life have definitely declined, and that is why we do not understand many things that are told in biblical history and that mean something quite different from what man associates with them today. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in modern times, something like Socrates' relationship with his students is viewed in a mean and disgustingly mean way. People talk about a kind of homosexuality, whereas it points to a side of the powers of the soul where something was achieved not only through the word, but also through the presence of Socrates with his students. The human presence meant something to them. It is a disgusting slander of things when today the concepts of homosexuality are applied to these things in Greek culture. And so it is with the touch of the laying on of hands. The hand of a person essentially not only has a feeling meaning, but it also has an emanation, and in earlier times the emanation was stronger, it could have a healing effect. I have often expressed this in lectures in a certain formula: human life is a whole, and childhood belongs together with later life. No person attains the power to bless in later life who is not able to pray in childhood. Anyone who has never folded their hands in prayer as a youth can never hold their hands in blessing. The laying on of hands was simply an initiation process [.. gap in the postscript], what is involved there, is involved in the laying on of hands. That was something that was trained earlier, and the healing effect of laying on hands should definitely be considered. Isn't it true that today's people are no longer in the same situation, they are not encouraged to develop something like that in their youth. Such things were taught in the past, they were a reality once. But it is not out of the question that in a more spiritualized future these things will be taught again. Would you not consider that desirable? — The folding of the hands is a preparation for blessing. Likewise, for example, in older Catholicism it was taught that If you learn to kneel, you will learn to say the 'Dominus vobiscum' in the right way. Do you find that strange? You know how to say the 'Dominus vobiscum', don't you? You learn to say it by kneeling, otherwise it is not as powerful.

A participant: It has been said that the priests in ancient Egypt had an extraordinary position of leadership. We have heard that initiates have led humanity, that they have worked through real thoughts. The question is how this would have to be modified today by the new.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it must become new in so far as we must no longer return to this strongly unconscious, atavistic element, but we must go through the much more conscious element, taking more account of the fact that every human being must develop into a personality. Even today in Catholicism, the personality of the priest is completely suppressed. When the stole is crossed, the priest is only a figurant of the church, he is no longer a human being. We must not cultivate this. In the Egyptian priesthood, in particular, much was based on the fact that, as long as the highest priest lived, the others were only allowed to be figurants. Only when he died could another enter. There was always only one. We must exclude all this today.

A participant: What about the priest's vestments?

Rudolf Steiner: The liturgical vestment came about in such a way that one imagined the coloration of a personal feeling in relation to the real, so, for example, one imagined the blessing priest. This naturally gives a very definite coloration of the astral body, and the liturgical vestment is formed accordingly. Isn't it so? When blessing, one's own personality is absorbed into the supersensible world and the blessing is allowed to flow over to the congregation; this gives a blue undergarment and a red outer garment. One simply models the astral body. The same is true for the other acts, for praying and so on. For example, they imagine that one has an outpouring of the spiritual. This can be followed quite precisely: the coloring of the astral body – the priestly robe. The liturgical robe is simply the coloring of the astral body. This could certainly be recreated, and the only question is to what extent humanity is ready to accept something like that again.

I had an excellent Protestant clergyman as a friend who had a great ideal, that is, he had many very beautiful ideals, but among others he had one, and that was the abolition of the Luther skirt. He wanted to go like an ordinary dandy. It embarrassed him that he could not go like a dandy when he was a pastor. Therefore, it was very painful for him not to be able to walk around in this modern, aesthetic man's garment, where one is clamped in two stovepipes. This monstrosity is, of course, regarded today as the only possible garment, and anything else that may arise is considered to be something foolish. The greatest folly is our man's suit. A human race that puts on a tailcoat and a top hat – it is obvious that such a human race cannot have any understanding for cultic vestments. This must be cultivated again in humanity. Perhaps when women can also take up this profession, when female preachers come along, there will be a way to arrive at cultic vestments sooner. Because women will have to do something to get to the pulpit. But today men want to do it like a Swiss speaker. He thought it was right, for example, not to give sermons, but to give speeches while walking back and forth on the lectern with a cigarette in his mouth. That's how he gave his lectures.

That's right. You know that cult robes were not limited to the church, because judges also had cult robes – and if you asked a judge today to put on the old cult robes, he would also remonstrate against it – yes, even the court ceremonial went hand in hand with a kind of cult robe. And finally, at the universities, you still have the rector's robes, which always pass from one rector to the next. In this respect, we just need to change our aesthetic ideas, and that's that.

The science of spirit, about which I have had the honor to lecture for many years now, here in Stuttgart, as well as in other places, is, I believe, based upon a need arising out of the cultural and spiritual life of the present time. It does not arise simply because someone may feel it to be a good idea. In order to realize that it is just at the present time that this science has to make a start, it is perhaps necessary to see how particular spiritual impulses arise at certain moments during the whole evolution of human spiritual and cultural life. It is not so difficult to see that the science of spirit has a connection with the present time similar to the connection that the Copernican outlook had with its time. Just as the latter could not have existed at an earlier period, so, too, with the science of spirit. We only have to compare, on the basis of true knowledge, the way the scientific outlook obtains its results—and has obtained them for some time—with the way this outlook is taken up by the widest circles of humanity in order to provide a basis for questions concerning the soul and the spirit. We need only to look at the method of research and the way it has spread and to compare it with the scientific outlook of centuries ago, which had prevailed for thousands of years of human evolution. In those earlier times people looked at nature and its phenomena in quite a different way from today and the last two, three, four hundred years. In earlier times when people looked at nature and its processes they took something spiritual, something of a soul nature, into their own soul and spirit life. It was not like today when the phenomena of nature are investigated purely as phenomena, as far as possible eliminating everything of a spirit-soul nature.

This is not a criticism of the modern scientific outlook—on the contrary. The success of the scientific outlook, which certainly has a significant purpose both for the present and the future, is due to its efforts to eliminate everything of a spirit-soul nature from the observation of natural phenomena. It concentrates solely on observing processes in nature without bringing into these processes anything of a spirit- soul nature. On the other hand it has become absolutely necessary to satisfy the unquenchable need of the human soul to approach the great riddles of existence scientifically from a different viewpoint. It is just because natural science has to keep to its serious and conscientious method and is obliged to eliminate spirit-soul nature that a science of spirit, based on the example and ideal of natural science, must take its place alongside natural science, working in the same way as natural science, but from different sources.

It cannot be said that the present time has got very far in formulating a view about the relationship of natural science to any endeavors of a more spiritually scientific kind. It is just the most serious questions about the life of the soul and the spirit, about the eternal nature of the being of man, about human freedom and all that is connected with it, that are excluded and have been banned from the outlook based on natural science since the middle of the 19th century. And it is a fact that great and outstanding scientists of the present time find themselves in a strange position. We have already seen how it is only recently that outstanding scientists have shaken off the scientific romanticism of Darwinism prevalent in the second half of the 19th century.

We could take hundreds of scientists and thinkers to illustrate our point, but we shall take one as an example. We have seen how a scientist like Oskar Hertwig has managed to bring the fantastic tendencies of naturalism, which have threatened to run wild, back on to a saner basis. And a book such as Oskar Hertwig's Das Werden der Organismen, Eine Darwinische Zufallstheorie, a book by an eminent pupil of Haeckel,—such a book, even from a scientific viewpoint, has great significance. Much could be added in this respect that is equally significant or nearly so. We can see from such achievements, which cannot be sufficiently recognized in their own sphere, what predicament serious scientists are in regarding questions of the soul and spirit. In reading Oskar Hertwig's influential book we have just referred to, we cannot help being aware of a certain feeling or attitude toward questions of spiritual life. We find that a scientist like Oskar Hertwig makes quite clear that he cannot approach questions of the soul or spirit with the means at his disposal, the means of a stringent science. On one page he says this clearly and definitely: Science can only concern itself with the transitory sense world; science cannot approach the eternal in human nature.

So far, so good—and one would think that the way is now open for a science of spirit, for the scientist himself points out that a science of spirit should exist alongside natural science. But, unfortunately, there is something else to be found among scientists, which is not said explicitly, but which can be read quite clearly between the lines. The opinion is spread abroad—albeit unconsciously—that the method employed by the scientist is the only exact one, and that it is possible to be scientific only so long as one keeps to the outer sense world.—People then believe that a departure from the sense world is bound to lead into a world of fantasy and dreams.—What is so dangerous in this is that it is not clearly expressed, but arises as a kind of feeling out of what is achieved and spreads into the widest circles of people. It is to be found in those who believe they understand a lot about the scientific outlook and wish to draw conclusions affecting spiritual life from the scientific outlook, and also in those who think themselves enlightened because they read the supplement of their local paper every Sunday which breathes this kind of feeling I have described as spreading into the widest circles.

Thus, on the one hand, the scientific outlook points with great emphasis to the need for the coming into being of a science of spirit, but on the other it takes the ground away from under its feet. This was crystallized in a famous speech by Dubois-Reymond, the great physiologist, which I have referred to here in Stuttgart, and which he gave before an obviously enlightened meeting of scientists in Leipzig in the 70's. It was crystallized in his lecture, The Limits of Natural Knowledge, where he stated that natural knowledge is not able to give any information about even the simplest phenomena of the life of the soul, and that science comes to an end where the super-sensible begins.—With this it is admitted on the one hand that natural science is not able to say anything about the super-sensible, but on the other it emphatically takes away the ground for all super-sensible investigation. The science of spirit has to struggle against these aims and efforts today. For it sets out to face and treat scientifically the questions which the human soul turns to in great longing—the question of the eternal nature of the human soul, of the freedom of human action and the countless other questions which are connected to these two main questions.

But now from another viewpoint we come to much the same result. If in trying to inform ourselves about such matters we turn, not to science, but to the work of philosophers, we find just as little satisfaction there. What is offered is, on the whole,—for someone really seeking spiritual substance in cultural life—nothing more than a collection of abstract concepts, which do not offer anything pertaining to the pressing questions about the life of the human soul and spirit. But it is perhaps just in this subject that we can ascertain why it is not possible at the present time to find out anything substantial about these questions outside the actual sphere of the science of spirit. And it is just the work of philosophers which reveals something rather odd, which is also the reason why I have called today's lecture a study of man as a being of spirit and soul.

In looking into a modern textbook on psychology or into anything philosophical in order to inform ourselves about the questions we are considering, we come across a way of regarding things which, even if we go beyond purely materialistic thinking, is completely tied up with the idea that man is a being of body and soul. This idea of man as a being of body and soul governs the enlightened and impressive philosophers of today. It is therefore imperative to show that this outlook leads us astray when it comes to investigating the complete being of man. If in investigating the human being we start with the premise that everything that arises in connection with the soul and body should be divided into body and soul, we are doing the same as a chemist who assumes from the start that a substance he is investigating can have only two constituent parts. Therefore when he makes his chemical analysis, he finds he cannot get very far. Another person discovers that a result was not possible because the substance the chemist took was composed of three elements, and not of two as the chemist had imagined. It is just the same with the way people look at the being of man. It is imagined that we have to find two elements, body and soul. In fact, we can make progress only by dividing the being of man into three parts: body, soul and spirit. Otherwise, we always arrive at an impossible mix-up between spirit and soul, which is no more use for acquiring enlightenment concerning the human being than a mix-up of the bodily life and soul life which comes about through not differentiating them .properly. What is really meant by dividing man not only into a being with a soul and a body on the one hand, but into a being with a soul and a spirit on the other, becomes clear in looking at the way the physical sciences of man, biology, physiology, anatomy, and so on, arise out of purely human experience, out of the experience of physical life of the human being. Let us take a particular case. The human being experiences hunger, satisfaction, need to breathe, and so on, in life. These are immediate, I would like to say, inner experiences. In the first place they are really dependent on material substances, but hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe, are also experienced in the soul. The scientist investigates the bodily basis of hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe, and the like. If we want to found a physical science, a science of the human body, we cannot stop at the fact that hunger is experienced in different ways. If we wanted to experience being very hungry or not very hungry, very thirsty or not very thirsty, or different kinds of hunger or thirst, we would not be able to found a science of the physical body. We have to go beyond the purely inner experience and investigate the body with scientific methods. We then discover that hunger, thirst, the need to breathe, evolve certain chemical, physical processes in the physical body and we arrive at a physiological and biological science of man. We have to go beyond what we experience purely inwardly, and subject the body by itself to scientific investigation.

Just as on the one hand we have to go beyond our immediate experience to lay the basis for a physical science, just as the body provides the physical basis for our soul experience, so on the other we have to go beyond our soul experience to find the spiritual reality that underlies it.

In examining our physical nature the ordinary scientist discovers certain physical processes in the digestive system which correspond to the inner experiences of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe. The question is bound to arise: Is there something—if I may use what is naturally a paradoxical expression—that corresponds to the soul experience from the other direction, which could be called a kind of “spiritual digestion” as compared to physical digestion? Of course it sounds like a paradox, speaking on the one hand about ordinary digestion, which is perfectly acceptable because it belongs to the province of a recognized science, and on the other hand about a spiritual digestion, a change which takes place in the spirit. Nevertheless we shall attempt to show today that this paradoxical expression does in fact correspond to a real situation.

It is no more possible to arrive at a science of spirit by investigating inwardly the nature of the soul, which surges to and fro in our thinking, feeling and willing as our inner experience, than it is to found a physical science only on the basis of an inward observation of hunger, thirst, and the need for breath. We have to appreciate that as far as our normal, everyday consciousness is concerned, our physical nature only reveals its outer surface. What does the human being in his everyday life know about all the complicated processes, the physical, chemical processes, which physical science brings to the light of day as the basis of what we experience as hunger, thirst and the need to breathe? Just compare what we see of the body in everyday life, which is more or less its outward form, its capacity for movement, its physiognomy, just compare this, which is something everyone can know about without bothering about science, with the picture of the human being as shown in anatomy, physiology or biology, and you will see how our ordinary experience of our bodies is related to the investigation of science.

But now on the other hand it is also a fact that the spirit reveals itself no more to the human being than does the body reveal itself beyond its outward form, and that from the sphere of the spirit just as little or just as much is hidden to the human being as is hidden to him in ordinary life of those processes which have first to be investigated by science.

What is it then that belongs to the spirit which is actually orientated toward our inner experience? We shall see today that the part of his spiritual life that is orientated toward the human being, but which he does not always even recognize as such, is nothing other than what is encompassed in the simple, unequivocal but significant word “I.” This “I” we shall see belongs to the spirit, but it is related to the whole spirit in the same way that our outward form, our physiognomy, the movement of our limbs which is all orientated toward the ordinary body, are related to physiology, biology, to the science of the body. We can never arrive at a science of the body by feeling a little or very hungry, or by comparing one state of hunger with another, or by immersing ourselves in our hunger; neither can we arrive at a science of the spirit of the human being by immersing ourselves in our experience of feeling, thinking and imagination. We have to realize that so-called mysticism, which is supposed to be an immersion in one's own inner being, and which seeks to experience this inner being in a somewhat different way from our normal experience, that mysticism, this kind of inward immersion, cannot lead to a science of spirit any more than a differentiated experience of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe can lead to a science of the body. We have to start with our purely inner experience of hunger and thirst and proceed from there to the body, to the things that are arrived at through scientific method. Likewise we have to start with our purely mystical soul life and proceed from there to what lies spiritually outside this soul life. And this spiritual nature has naturally to be investigated according to scientific method in the strictest possible way, just as the life of the human body is investigated.

Now it is true that the methods of investigating spiritual life are in fact spiritual, and therefore are quite different from the means employed by natural science. And so my first task is to indicate the purpose and significance of the methods used by the science of spirit. It is not possible to embark upon the investigation of spiritual life without first having arrived at certain things in ordinary, everyday soul life. Without having reached a certain point in our ordinary soul life, in which we follow the course of our own inner being, we are not able to train ourselves to be a scientist of spirit. As long as we are satisfied with our ordinary, everyday soul life, as long as we derive full satisfaction from mystical experience and revel in it in order to immerse ourselves in our soul life, we shall never be able to train ourselves as real scientists of spirit. The preliminary qualification for the science of spirit is that in a particular respect we feel the insufficiency of our ordinary soul life as a result of our own experience of it.

I have pointed out in earlier lectures that it is particularly a study of the so-called border areas of science that can help us to acquire this feeling. In dealing with this subject I am fond of citing a really significant question which arises in connection with these border areas, and which the eminent scientist, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, came upon as he was struggling to clarify his own outlook. He came to ask—and you can find this in his beautiful treatise, Die Traumphantasie—what is the real connection between the soul and the bodily nature? And here he lighted upon a real question relating to the border-area of human knowledge. Vischer says: it is quite certain that the soul nature cannot be in the bodily nature, but it is also just as certain that it cannot be sought outside the body.—Hence he arrives at a complete contradiction. Such contradictions often arise where we do not simply consider knowledge as concerning outward, tangible facts alone, but where we really have to struggle inwardly to acquire our knowledge. Those who know what it is to have to struggle for knowledge speak of hundreds of such border-points occurring in knowledge. It is only a superficial mind which, when faced with such questions, is content to say that human cognition can go only a certain distance and no further. In contenting ourselves with this information, we are blocking our own way to a real science of spirit. For here we are not concerned with evolving all sorts of logical thoughts about such questions, but with steeping our wrestling souls in them and really experiencing them, and this means giving up the logical approach where it can no longer be applied. We have to get to the heart of what for normal human cognition is a contradiction in such a border-area, and feel the full weight of it on our souls.

If we do not simply regard these questions as comfortable cushions upon which to rest and proceed no further, but if on the contrary we really seek to experience them, then we find that it is just what lives and moves in such a living contradiction that kindles our inner soul life in a way that does not happen in normal life, that it is at just such a point as this that our inner soul life can reach a stage beyond its normal experience. In order not to become lost when we reach such a point in the experience of a border-area, we have to be able to grasp inwardly how in certain moments of his life the human being is unable to get beyond himself, but yet is able to point to something beyond himself. What is needed is that a particular inner feeling is developed which can be the result of living at such border-points of knowledge. This feeling can be characterized in the following words. It can be characterized very easily, for the experience which this feeling brings is something that cuts deep down into the soul. If we experience the questions of the border-areas properly, we do not say that there are limits to human knowledge, but we say that we are unable to cross the threshold with all the things we have acquired through our thinking and research into the outer sense world. We can impose a certain resignation, a certain renunciation upon ourselves, we can learn at such points not to want to judge the super-sensible with what we have learned and experienced in the sense world.

It is here that the main obstacles lie for most people in entering upon the science of spirit. They see the limits of knowledge but they do not then have the courage to renounce or resign. They do not say that they cannot try to enter into the spiritual world with what they have learned and experienced in the sense world, but they try to penetrate beyond these limits, even if only in a negative sense, by using the kind of concepts and ideas acquired in studying the sense world. The one person does it by constructing all sorts of hypotheses about what could exist in the super-sensible, the other by rejecting the super-sensible completely on the basis of his study of the sense world; in other words, taking upon himself the capacity to make judgments about the super-sensible with the concepts he has acquired from the sense world. Those also have not understood the experience of the border-areas of knowledge who, like materialists, monists and the like, begin to decide that nothing exists beyond the sense world on the basis of the ideas and concepts acquired through the life of the senses.

This is the point where something quite special must arise within human soul life, where what I have just characterized, this renunciation of the concepts acquired through living in the sense-world, where we do not just wish to make a statement or bring something intellectual and logical to expression, but that this renunciation becomes an inner intellectual virtue, something that—if I may be excused the phrase—cuts into human soul life, so that at certain points we really acquire a subtle feeling that we should not proceed further with what we have learned in the sense-world. For if this renunciation is not just a logical admission or an intellectual conclusion, but an inner virtue, then this virtue arising out of the renunciation radiates toward the inner life of the soul, and then what we have renounced outwardly is taken up into the inner life of the soul. The renunciation makes us fit for undertaking in course of time the two spiritual functions necessary to penetrate from the sphere of the soul in human experience into the spiritual world. For this two inner functions are necessary, but which, as you can see from my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, involve many individual functions and exercises, which are contained in these two main aims, for which there are two main functions. The first is that we achieve real self observation; the second consists in striving to experience the soul-spirit sphere that is no longer dependent on the bodily nature, but proceeds purely in the spirit. However paradoxical it may appear to present-day humanity, it must nevertheless be said that this second function consists in the human being forming his soul-spirit life in such a way that when he investigates the spirit, his soul-spirit experience is no longer in the body, but outside it. This is no doubt something that appears quite ridiculous to those who think they keep firmly within the province of the scientific outlook. But the science of spirit will bring home to people that many of our ideas will have to be changed, even into the opposite of what we are accustomed to, just as the Copernican outlook meant a complete reversal in the way people thought about the relationship of the planets to the sun.

What is normally called self-observation, an introversion of the soul, is not what is meant by true self-observation by the science of spirit. It is true that one can start from this brooding in oneself in order to find the way one has to go toward true self-observation, but real self-observation has to be taken in hand much more seriously and much more energetically. For it includes something which even earnest psychologists maintain is impossible. I have already pointed out in earlier lectures that when philosophers speak about the human soul they find it characteristic that in certain respects the life of the soul is not able to observe itself. They point out that if we have learned a poem by heart and then wish to recite it, but at the same time observing ourselves as we recite, we begin to falter and interrupt ourselves. It is not possible to carry out something and at the same time stand by and observe ourselves. This is cited as being something characteristic of the human soul, that it cannot do this. Now it must be said that those who find that this is in fact so, that it is impossible, will not get anywhere with the science of spirit, because this “impossibility” is just what the scientist of spirit has to achieve. The ability or capacity which is brought to our notice in normal life when we observe ourselves reciting and make ourselves falter, this ability has to be acquired by the scientist of spirit. We have to be able to split our soul-life wide open so that we can observe scientifically what we ourselves do. It is not all that important to learn a poem to achieve this, although this is one way of doing it, providing we do the necessary practice, and it is also good preparation for the real exercise of self- observation if we do it. It is a form of preparation to achieve reciting a poem with all its shades of feeling sufficiently automatically—if I may use such a crude expression—that we do not interrupt ourselves when we observe ourselves while reciting. The important thing, however, is not to concentrate on the outer aspects, but to apply such activity to the life of the soul itself. This means that we have to observe how one thought follows another, our thinking and imaginative life, so that at the same time we can allow the thought processes to proceed while on the other hand we can observe them in full consciousness. It would lead too far now to describe how this is done, but you can read about it in my books, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment, in Riddles of Man, and similar books. It is absolutely possible to achieve real self-observation in this way. It is not then a mere intellectual process, but it is something real, for it is a first beginning of the emergence of the spirit- nature out of the soul-nature. The experience of the soul is observed by the spirit which has really tried to separate itself from the soul-nature. But this is only one aspect of what can be observed.

Now it is necessary to add that renouncing entering the super-sensible with the concepts and according to the laws taken from the sense world becomes a virtue and permeates the entire life of the soul, and when this has happened it not only produces the kind of modesty we are used to from normal life, but it produces an inward, intellectual modesty and humility which make us suited in the first place to exercising self-observation of the kind I have just been speaking about. We are not intimately organized enough, as it were, to be able to carry out such self-observation until we have radiated this intellectual virtue over our own souls.

But, on the other hand, something else is necessary. What then is attained when we achieve such self-observation? What is achieved when self-observation is practiced is that what normally disturbs the human being when he carries out a soul function is taken in hand, and our will is strengthened and driven out of the sphere of the soul into the sphere of the spirit. Then there is something further that has to be striven for: the will itself has to take on a new direction, has to acquire a new mode of activity in the soul. This can happen only if the human being does not employ the will as he normally does in ordinary life in carrying out outward functions, but if he employs it in carrying out inner functions. In living in his sense perception and in the ideas and images derived from these perceptions, the human being is accustomed in the way and sequence in which his thoughts are constructed to being led by the sense world. He allows one thought to follow another because he first experiences one event in the sense world, then a second one, and so on.

The human being allows his thoughts to follow the sequence of outer events and in ordinary life he hardly ever gets used to leading his will into his thought life, into the inner processes of his soul, which are to be perceived just by this true self-observation. But this he has to do if he is to become a scientist of spirit. He has to try—for a long time, energetically and patiently—to lead his will into his thinking and power of imagination. Again and again he has to try to carry out a process of the soul which in an objective and genuine sense can be called meditating, an inner reflection, though not a dreamy, mystical reflection, but one which represents a real process in the inner life, so that the will is really led into the thinking. Whereas we are normally accustomed to arranging our ideas according to outer events, we endeavor in moments set aside for the purpose, to formulate ideas whose sequence is determined solely by the inner will working according to a much greater view of life. We guide the will into our life of images and ideas. In this way we come to recognize what sort of relationship can exist between the inner will of man and his life of images and ideas. We do not become acquainted with this at all in our normal consciousness. In order to make this point perfectly clear, I would like to give the following illustration. Imagine a person living in a semi-sleeping state in dreams. He knows full well that these dreams are pictures passing before his soul according to certain laws. These pictures surge to and fro. Because they appear, so far as normal life is concerned, as dream pictures, the human being cannot control them with his will. If in his semi-sleeping state he were able to pull himself together to such an extent that he could control the sequence of dream pictures, he would then more or less be in the position I have been talking about, where our own will controls the ideas and images we ourselves make.

But this is not the point that matters ultimately. Everything we have discussed so far is only a preparatory exercise. For we naturally do not arrive at anything real only by the inner will controlling the sequence of ideas, which we know are not remembered, but arise out of the body. We do not arrive at anything special by piecing together ideas we have made, and can survey. But we do attain something when we set to work on the exercises with the mood which makes the renunciation into an intellectual virtue. Then we gradually notice something quite special in the life of the soul. And I may be allowed to say that what I have to say here about the science of spirit, by means of which we can really penetrate into spiritual spheres and which should be imagined as already having attained a certain development, and which also empowers one to say something about the spiritual world, that it should not be thought that it is like maintaining that natural science has its strict method which takes years to learn, and now the science of spirit comes along and talks about such inner ideas and images. This is not the case. Those who have acquainted themselves with biology and physiology, and know about their scientific methods and have then taken up the science of spirit know that however difficult it may be and that however much patience is demanded over the years by scientific method, significant results can be experienced in the science of spirit only if even more patience and even more work, even when this work is purely spiritual, are employed. Years of inner work are necessary to achieve anything of any consequence that can penetrate into the spiritual world, work which has been characterized as the leading of the will into our thought life by means of the inner functions or exercises which you can find in the above-mentioned books. We only have to know the one and the other to realize that the seriousness of the one is not inferior to the seriousness of the other. But what is important is not that we do the exercises, but that we achieve what we are able to achieve by means of the mood of renunciation. And we gradually notice that it is not our will alone, not the will which we have led into our thinking and imagination, that lives in what happens in our souls, but something else lives in them.

In our observation of the outer world we see how one event follows another, how one object is related to another, and how the sequence of our ideas follows what we see, follows the thread of outer events. Now we discover what it is that permits one idea to arise out of another, what it is that ensures that we do not add just any soul experience to another, but order such experiences according to an inner process. We discover a continual current in the life of the soul. Just as outer sense-nature is inner physical nature, so spiritual nature lives in the life of the soul. Whoever believes that we can still act arbitrarily or out of prejudice does not know this inner necessity. It is just as much a necessity as is necessity in ordinary life, and it fashions an inner, spiritual experience just as our ordinary experience comes to us by necessity according to the course of events in the physical world.

One who has had to do with the science of spirit for decades may well be allowed to speak of his experience, and this is, that this experience reveals what it is like through its own nature, its own character; arbitrariness ceases, and it is the spirit that orders the sequence of soul experiences. This comes to light when we set out to penetrate a particular sphere of the spiritual world with assumptions, acquired according to our images of the sense world, that spiritual beings or processes have to behave in a particular way. In countless cases—and this is so significant, so incisive for a true scientist of spirit—we experience that things turn out to be quite different from what we had expected, having formed a judgment according to the standards of the outer sense world. It transpires that on this path once we have grasped the inward spiritual necessity, we achieve results that cannot in any way be imagined on the basis of what we know from the sense world, because as far as the sense world is concerned they are quite contradictory. In experiencing this, which can in no way be compared to anything in the sense world, we know what it means to say that the spirit, which we have discovered, orders the sequence of our soul experiences just as our ideas which we formulate about the outer sense world are ordered according to the physical sequence of events.

And these two things come together: what we have acquired in inner strength by means of true self-observation, and what we have acquired of the objective course of the spirit, which is like the course of the outer sense-world. These come together and lead the human soul into a region of the spirit to which it belongs with its spiritual organs, just as the ordinary scientist is led into the bodily organization when he proceeds from hunger to non-physical processes in the body. When we use the soul as the starting point for investigating the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life take on a new aspect. When the scientist of spirit is touched in this way by the real form, the real character, of the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life become quite different. This happens, above all, when, by means of the spiritual nature he has acquired through self-observation, the human being has come to recognize the spiritual which gives direction to the soul life. It is only then that he is able to formulate a true idea, a true concept, of what we call the ego of the human being, which bestows as much of the spirit on the human soul as is bestowed of the body on normal human consciousness by the visible form and physiognomy. We cannot investigate the ego by philosophizing about it, but only by making the will into thinking and the thinking into an act of will. By means of self-observation the will becomes an instrument of thinking and the thinking an instrument of will. This is a 'change of spirit' rather like the change of matter which is sought and found in the physical world in our digestion. We then approach the ego not by philosophizing, speculation or hypotheses, but we first acquire a real spiritual observation of the ego and are only then in a position to formulate a correct view of it. This correct view of it proves to us that it is impossible to achieve such a view of the ego in ordinary life, in our ordinary consciousness. The picture which this ordinary consciousness (which is also prevalent in natural science) has of the ego, is that the latter gradually evolves as the body grows. A child does not appear to have an ego. As the body develops and gradually acquires its proper configuration the ego appears to wrestle its way out of the body. This view is held as a matter of course, and with the normal outlook of today it is not possible to arrive at any other view. And this is just what one has to achieve as a scientist of spirit—that one has to give the ordinary outlook its due in its own sphere and not become intolerant because one realizes that only one view is possible in the sphere in which materialism can operate.

In achieving spiritual observation and observation of the ego it is possible to see where the error of the ordinary outlook lies. It can be characterized in the following way. If we reflect about the relationship of the lungs to the air, we know that lungs and air belong together. But because in this case ordinary observation suffices to ascertain the true relationship, no one knowing things only from a superficial viewpoint would come to any other view than that air comes from outside, penetrates into the lungs, is then breathed out of the lungs and returns to the atmosphere outside. Because this kind of observation suffices, no one could maintain that the lung itself creates the air, that the air which is breathed out somehow has its origin in the lung itself, that the lung produces air. Our ordinary observation gives us insight into the relationship of the lungs to the air. Likewise our higher, spiritual observation gives us insight into the human ego. When we can use this observation which I have described, we know that the human ego is no more connected to the bodily nature, that is, to everything we have inherited from our father and mother, than the air which comes from outside has to do with the lungs. We get to know the ego as it really is and we know that in taking over what is inherited at birth or conception, in a sense it inhales out of the spiritual world. As a mass of air that at a particular moment is in our lungs, has flowed in from outside, so the ego flows out of the spiritual world into the bodily nature, out of the world in which it existed before the body could even be thought of in terms of conception and birth. Likewise, when the human being goes through the gate of death it flows out again, just as air which has been used up by the body flows out again from the lungs. We get to know the connection of the ego to a spiritual world that is independent of the world of the human body, just as in physics we learn about the connection of air to a greater mass of air which is independent of the human lung. This is how we rise to real knowledge of the ego, and it is the first thing we come to know about the nature of the ego. From this point we learn more and more by intensifying our spiritual observation by means of the methods described in the above-mentioned books. We learn about the ego as something independent of the life of the body in the same way that we learn about the body by using hunger and thirst as our starting points for investigating the chemical and physical processes of the body with physical methods. Only we discover the spiritual, which gives us our first view of the ego, as a state where the ego is embedded in spiritual beings. In order to know the physical body in all its aspects, we divide it into its various members. In a similar way we have to link the ego to other spiritual beings, which can be observed by spiritual observation with the methods I have described. The ego is linked to them and we find a complete ego-organism. This then extends beyond the individual life of the body.

Starting from the ego, from the part of our soul life that is directed toward the ego, we find that it is embedded in a spiritual life that exists before birth and continues after the gate of death is passed through. In the spiritual world we find a soul-spirit world that in the first instance is independent of the physical world. The ego belongs to this soul- spirit world. The first entities that we find there are spirit- soul beings with whom the ego of man is connected, beings that are human souls before or after death, with whom the human being is himself connected, and also other beings. When we observe the sense world we find a kingdom below man, the animal kingdom. In the soul-spirit world we find first of all a sphere to which the human ego belongs, which it fits into organically, where it performs its transformation of spirit, its spiritual digestion—a spirit-soul sphere which in the first instance is of a purely spirit-soul nature. Then we find a sphere ranking above this one, just as the animal kingdom ranks above the plant kingdom, and it ranks higher because in these higher spheres beings are to be found which are not only connected to us in our soul and spirit nature, in our inner life, but which are still more powerful because they bring about the harmony existing between the spirit-soul and the physical-bodily nature. For our spirit- soul nature has to be brought into relationship with our physical-bodily nature. This relationship is brought about by higher spiritual beings than we first meet.

Having made a start with spiritual investigation, we should not hesitate to speak about these real, concrete, spirit- soul beings that we really discover. The spiritual regions are discovered in which the ego performs its transformation of spirit, just as the physical kingdoms are discovered when we direct our attention to the animals, plants and minerals. And we discover further where lies the mystery of the soul entering and leaving the body. For we come to know how the relationship of the ego to the body of the human being works.

Here, it is true, we are entering a sphere which is quite remote from the present-day outlook, but which in future will have to become more and more a part of this outlook. If we observe the ego in this way we find it is related with the spirit-soul beings of the higher spiritual spheres, which range above the purely natural spheres. But in the transformation of spirit, which is analogous to the transformation of matter in digestion, the ego undergoes a certain process. To begin with, it can only be associated with spirit- soul beings. This is the case before birth and after death, where it has a purely spiritual being for its organization and this is linked to the rest of the spirit world. As the ego proceeds through the spirit world, as it develops in the spirit world, it increasingly acquires a self-orientation and becomes gradually separated from the spirit world. The picture we have of the ego from the science of spirit is that long before birth or after death it has a special connection to many, many spiritual beings. Then as its development proceeds, it separates itself off and becomes in a sense dependent upon itself. It is in undergoing this separation and limitation that it evolves the power of attraction toward the bodily nature. This power of attraction impels it to unite itself—as the air unites itself to the lungs—with the bodily nature that arises in the course of human generations as a result of heredity. The ego enters into this when it comes from the spirit world.

Thus we gain a true view of the eternal working within the bodily nature of man, within the human being as a whole, not by philosophical speculation, but by laying bare this eternal, by entering into the eternal ourselves with our souls. This is the way spiritual observation works. We must be quite sure to realize that everything I have described—the striving for self-observation, the striving to guide the will into our thought and imaginative life, the striving to attain the transformation of spirit—that all this is really only a preparation. Everything else has to be waited for. Just as we have to wait for what the sense world speaks to us when it approaches the soul from outside, so we have to wait for what the spirit-world speaks to us. Self-observation, the guidance of the will into the thought and imaginative life, these have to be striven for in order to prepare the soul to experience the spirit. Spiritual life then begins, but it has to penetrate toward the sphere of the soul and of the spirit.

Thus I have outlined the ways which lead us to see our real soul life in thinking, feeling and willing as an expression of the spiritual, just as hunger, thirst and the need to breathe are an expression in the soul of what lives in the body. This then leads to the differentiation of the eternal-spiritual from the soul nature.

Tomorrow we shall have to describe how something of the eternal in the human being finds its way into ordinary consciousness as a revelation of the unconscious. My intention today was to show how we rise from the sphere of the soul to the spirit. This description, which is a description of knowledge gained by the science of spirit, appears, it is true, to be paradoxical to the normally accepted concepts of today. But you will perhaps have seen that the science of spirit takes its science just as seriously as does natural science. Natural science leads to the perishable and transitory, the science of spirit leads to the eternal, to the imperishable, without which the perishable can[not], in fact, be explained. Thus we can say that from the vantage point of the science of spirit we are able to have an overall view of what is portrayed in natural science. It is only then that we can really appreciate the value of natural science, and are then in a position to judge it. If we get no further than natural science we arrive at the judgment or belief that a stringent science is only possible within the sense world, that it cannot rise to the eternal. If we take up the science of spirit, we know why the natural scientist has to say this if he does not get beyond the position of natural science. But by developing our normal consciousness, by laying bare the spiritual forces slumbering in the soul, we recognize that man can penetrate into the eternal of his own being, into what is really immortal in himself, for this immortal part of him, in fact, makes its own existence known itself. The red color of the rose does not have to be proved. The spirit in us that goes through birth and death also testifies to its own existence when we are able to observe it.

Anyone basing his observation on the science of spirit has an overall view of natural science as well, and he also gives the latter its due. He does not do what those who follow only natural science do, who—consciously or unconsciously—undo what the science of spirit does and wish to take the ground away from under its feet. We may well say that the scientist of spirit has nothing to be afraid of. He need not fear the objections which come from various quarters, for he knows what these objections are worth, and can also recognize why they have to be made. He is quite justified in thinking that he does not need to try to prevent someone from recognizing the methods and progress of natural science. On the contrary. The scientist of spirit is able to say to someone wishing to go into natural science: Go your way to natural science and if you do not only look at it with the eyes of the natural scientific outlook, but with the eyes of the spiritual way of investigation, you will not only find no contradiction between natural science and the science of spirit, but you will also find everywhere in natural science the confirmation and revelation of what the science of spirit says. And we should not believe that the scientist of spirit has any wish to prevent those whom he addresses from following any particular religious confession. It is the greatest misunderstanding of all to believe that we wish to set up any sort of religious gulf between a religious approach and the science of spirit. Dr. Rittelmeyer has shown quite clearly in an admirable article in Christliche Welt how in a quite objective way the science of spirit can be a foundation for religious life, that it does not take anyone away from true religious life, but, on the contrary, leads them toward it.

The science of spirit does not need to keep people away from religious life. Just as it can say: go to natural science in order to realize what the science of spirit is, so it can also say: go to religion, come to know religion, experience religion, and you will find that what the science of spirit is able to give to the soul gives religious life its foundation and strengthens it.

Go out into life itself and you will find that the concepts given in the science of spirit do not deaden you to life or make you unfit for life, but that they make the spirit mobile, agile, and place the human being into life, ready for action. Practical life, too, will be a confirmation and proof of what the science of spirit is able to give to the human being.

Because natural science has to keep to its own course, has to direct its attention solely to nature and may not mix nature with anything of soul and spirit, it is imperative for the science of spirit to find its place alongside it as equally justified. The science of spirit must penetrate from the soul to the spirit, just as natural science has to penetrate from the soul to the physical body. The time will then come when the real essence, the real basic concept of the science of spirit, will be understood, when the intentions of the scientists—to take the ground away from the science of spirit—will be seen in their true light. Forty or fifty years ago Dubois-Reymond was able to say: “Science ends where the super-sensible begins.” In the future this saying will be confronted by another arising out of the spiritual scientific view: What was really happening when natural science wanted to formulate a system of thought, a view of the world that is super-sensible, when it restricted itself to nature above? In a sense one could see that there is something that surrounds the human being in his existence and in which he has his roots, that comes from a particular origin. One saw it rooted in the spirit, but could not penetrate into this spirit.

The science of spirit shows how we can penetrate into spiritual life. The kind of position which natural science has occupied regarding the spirit—if I may use the comparison—is rather as if one were to see a tree which has its roots in the ground. The tree cannot be seen entirely, for the roots are in the ground. The tree is then dug up in order to see it in its entirety, for nothing of the tree may remain hidden. The tree will dry up and will no longer be able to flourish.—This is what has been done by the scientific outlook. It has dug up the being of man out of its foundations in order to acquire an overall view. The resulting view is then like the tree that has been taken out of the ground. The tree has to wither away, and the life that arises out of this view of the world has to wither away. Once this is realized, the way to the science of spirit will be found.

In order to acquire an overall view, the being of man has been deprived of its roots. For the sake of life, for the sake of real life, the human being will once again be immersed in what is popularly called the unconscious, but which, when it is revealed in the sphere of consciousness, can be raised into the sphere of real knowledge of the super-sensible. Then the time will come when the view will be firmly implanted in the human mind that the eternal core of man's being is rooted in the spirit and that if we want to get to know the human being in his entirety we have to penetrate to the spirit. Then it will no longer be said, as Dubois-Reymond did, that science cannot find the super-sensible, not even in its simplest form of manifestation, that this is where science stops, but the science of the future will say that all science that is not rooted in the super-sensible will not be in a position to explain existence, will not be able to lead us into the life of existence, but will only be able to kill existence. It will not be said that science ends where supra-naturalism, the super-sensible, begins, but, the life of science ends where the human being no longer takes his stand in the super-sensible, and the death of science enters where the super-sensible is abandoned.

I had intended during the time I am able to spend here to give a kind of supplement to many of the things which I brought before you last year in our introductory educational courses. However, the days are so few, and according to what I have just learned there are so many things to be done during this time, that I am hardly able to say whether we shall get further than these scanty words of introduction today. It is hardly possible to speak of any kind of program.

What I would like to speak of in this introduction is this: to what I gave you last year I should like to add something about the teacher himself, about the educator. Of course what I shall have to say about the nature of the teacher should be taken quite aphoristically. It would indeed be best if it were to take shape in you gradually, if it were to develop further through your own thinking and feeling.

It is especially teachers whose attention should be drawn to the fact—and in doing so we are taking our stand on an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and it is our intention to shape out of this the education necessary for the present time—it is this crucial fact above all, to which attention should be drawn: the teacher must really have a deep feeling for the nature of the esoteric.

In our time—an age of democracy and journalism—it is of course true that we hardly have a real sense, a valid sense for what is meant by the esoteric. We believe today that what is true is true, what is right is right, and that it should be possible to proclaim what is true and right before the world, once it has been formulated in a way one deems to be correct. Now in real life this is not so: here matters are quite different. The essential point is that you can unfold a certain kind of effectiveness in your actions only if the impulses that produce them are guarded in the soul as a most sacred, hidden wealth. And it would be necessary for the teacher especially to guard much as sacred, hidden wealth, regarding it as something that plays a role only in the proceedings and debates taking place within the body of teachers. The meaning of such a statement is not particularly clear to begin with; nonetheless it will become clear to you. I should have to say a great deal to make it fully understandable, but it will become clearer if to begin with I say the following.

The principle I have just stated has a universal significance, embracing the entire civilization of our time. If we think of the education of young people today, we must always bear in mind that we are working on the feelings, the ideas, the will impulses of the next generation. We must be clear that our present work is to prepare this next generation for definite tasks that will have to be accomplished sometime in the future of mankind. When something of this sort has been said, the question at once arises: what is the real cause for mankind having fallen into the widespread misery in which it is today? Mankind has come into such misery because it has for the most part made itself dependent, dependent through and through, on the manner of thinking and feeling peculiar to western man. We can say that if someone in Central Europe today speaks of Fichte, Herder, or even of Goethe, then—if he is active in public life (say as a journalist, as a writer of best-selling books, or the like)—he is much farther removed from the true spiritual impulse living in Fichte, Herder or Goethe when he is active or thinking in Berlin or Vienna, than he is from what is being felt and thought today in London, Paris, New York or Chicago. Fundamentally speaking, matters have gradually worked out in such a way that our whole civilization has been flooded by impulses arising from the world view of the western peoples; our entire public life lives according to the philosophy of these nations.

We have to admit that this is particularly true where the art of education is concerned, for from the last third of the 19th century onwards the peoples of Central Europe have taken their lead in such matters from the people of the West. It is taken for granted today among men who debate educational matters among other topics that they should utilize the habits of thought that come from the West. If you were to trace back all the educational ideas considered reasonable in Central Europe today, you would find their source in the views of Herbert Spencer or men of his sort. We do not pay attention to the numerous pathways by which the views of such men enter the heads of people who set the tone in spiritual matters in Central Europe. Nonetheless these paths exist and are to be found. And if you take the spirit of an educational philosophy such as appeared through a man like Fichte (I will not lay any special importance on its details), you will find it not merely totally different from what is generally considered sensible pedagogy today; it is fact that the men of our time are hardly capable of bringing their souls into the way of thinking and feeling that would permit them to conceive how the intentions of a Fichte or Herder might be developed farther. Thus what we experience today in the field of pedagogy, in the art of education, what has become the rule there, is precisely the opposite of what it ought to be. Let me draw your attention to something Spencer has written.

Spencer was of the opinion that object lessons should be so handled that they would lead over into the experiments of the naturalist, into the research of the man of science. What, according to this, should be done in school? We should teach children in such a way that when they are grown up and the opportunity presents itself, they can pursue further what they have learned from us in school about minerals, plants, animals, etc. and become then proper scientific researchers or thinkers. It is true, this sort of idea is frequently contested; nonetheless it is done in practice, and for the reason that our textbooks are written with this in mind (and it would occur to nobody to alter, re-think or do away with textbooks.) It is a fact, for example, that textbooks about botany are written more for a future botanist than for human beings in general. Similarly, textbooks for zoology are so conceived that they serve the future zoologist but not human beings in general.

Now the peculiar thing is, that we should be striving today for precisely the opposite of what Spencer laid down as a true educational principle. It would be hard to imagine a graver error in elementary school teaching, than to train children to deal with objects, say plants or animals, in such a way that, if pursued further, the child could become a botanist or zoologist. If, on the contrary, we could plan our lessons, when presenting facts about plants or animals, so that it is made difficult for children to become botanists or zoologists, we would then be closer to the mark than if we were to follow the Spencerian axiom. For nobody should become a botanist or zoologist because of what he learns in elementary school. A man should become a botanist or zoologist solely because of his special gifts, and these reveal themselves quite simply in the choice that must result when life unfolds within a true art of education. Because of his talent! Which means, if his gifts predispose him to be a botanist, he can become one; if he has the natural ability to become a zoologist, he can become one. This must come about through the individual™s ability, i.e. through his predetermined karma, the laws of destiny. This must follow from our insight: in this child a botanist is hidden, in that one a zoologist. It must never be the result of an elementary school curriculum designed to prepare him for this scientific speciality. But just reflect on what has happened of late. It has come about, sad to say, that it is the scientists who have designed our education. People accustomed to thinking scientifically have the largest voice in education. That is to say, it has been deemed that the teacher as such has something in common with the scientist. This has gone so far that a scientific training is taken to be a teacher training, whereas the two must be different, through and through. If the teacher becomes a scientist, if he gives himself up in the narrow sense to thinking scientifically—this he may do as a private person but not as a teacher—then he deserves what frequently happens, that the teacher cuts a ridiculous figure in his class, among his students, among his colleagues, and he is poked fun at. Goethe's 'Baccalaureus' is not such a rarity at the higher levels as is ordinarily supposed.

And truthfully, if we were to ask ourselves whether we should be more on the side of the teacher when the students poke fun at him, or more on the side of the students, then, in the present state of affairs in education, we would sooner take the students' part. For the direction things have taken can be observed best in our universities. What are our universities in fact—institutions for teaching mature young men and women, or research institutes? They try to be both, and precisely for this reason they have become the caricatures they are today. People usually go so far as to point to this as a particular advantage of our universities, that they are at one and the same time teaching and research institutions. But this is the very thing that introduces into the higher centres of learning all the harm that is done to education when it has been planned by scientists. And then the mischief is passed on down the line to the secondary schools and ultimately to the elementary schools as well. This is what we cannot sufficiently bear in mind: an art of education must proceed from life and cannot issue from abstract scientific thinking.

Now this is the peculiar state of affairs: to begin with, out of the Western culture comes a pedagogy with a scientific, even a natural-scientific basis, and on the other hand we have a forgotten pedagogy based on life, a pedagogy drawn directly from life, when we recall what lived in Herder, Fichte, Jean Paul, Schiller and similar minds.

It is, however, the world-historical mission of the Central European peoples to cultivate this particular pedagogy, to have so to speak, an esoteric task of developing this pedagogy. There is much that will become possible for mankind to do as a community, and this must be so, if there is to be improvement in social matters in the future. But what is emerging as an art of education from the whole of the spiritual culture that is specifically Central European this the peoples of the West will not be able to comprehend. On the contrary it will infuriate them. We can first speak to than of this when they decide to take their stand on the esoteric foundations of spiritual science. With regard to all those things which have been looked upon with such pride over the last 40 years in Germany, on which the claim to major advances in Germany has been based, Germany is lost. All that points to the dominance hegemony of the Western peoples. There is nothing to be done about it, and we can only hope that we arouse sufficient understanding for the Threefold Social Order, so that on the basis of this understanding, the peoples of the West will take it up.

With regard to what has to be given for the art of education, we have something to give the world from Central Europe which nobody else can give—neither an Oriental, nor a man from the West. Yet we must have the discretion to keep this in those circles capable of understanding it. We must know how to guard it, with a certain confidence, knowing that it is this guarding which gives effectiveness to our affairs. We have to know what things to be silent about in the presence of certain people, if we want to be effective. Above all we must be clear that we cannot hope to influence the mode of thought, proceeding from the West, which is indeed indispensable for some branches of modern civilization. We must know that we have nothing whatsoever to hope for from that quarter for what we have to foster as an art of education.

Herbert Spencer has written something of unusual interest about education. He compiles a list of axioms, or 'principles' as he calls them, concerning intellectual education. Among these principles is one on which he lays great emphasis: in teaching, one should never proceed from the abstract, but always from the concrete—one should always elaborate a subject from an individual case. So he writes his book on education, and there we find, before he enters into anything concrete, the worst thickets of abstractions, really nothing but abstract chaff, and the man fails to notice that he is carrying out the opposite of the principles which he has argued are indispensable. We have here the example of an eminent and leading philosopher of the present time, in complete contradiction with what he has just advocated.

Now you saw last year that our pedagogy is not to be built upon abstract educational principles, upon this or that which might be affirmed, such as that we shouldn't introduce things to the child which are foreign to his nature but rather develop his individuality, etc. You know that our art of education should have its foundation in genuine empathy with the child's nature, that it should be built up in the widest sense on a knowledge of the evolving human being. And we have compiled sufficient material in our first course, and then later in the teachers' conferences, concerning the nature of the growing child. If we as teachers were able to engage ourselves with this unfolding being of the child, then out of this perception itself would spring awareness of how we should proceed. In this regard we must as teachers become artists. Just as it is quite impossible for the artist to take a book on aesthetics in hand, and then to paint or carve according to the principles laid down there, so should it be quite impossible for the teacher to use one of those instructors' manuals in order to teach. What the teacher needs is true insight into what the human being is in reality, what he becomes as he develops through the stages of his childhood. Here it is above all necessary that this be clear: We are teaching to begin with, let us say, the six or seven year old children in a first class. Now our teaching will be bad every time, will never have fulfilled its purpose, if after working for a year with this first class we do not say to ourselves—who is it now that has really learned the most? It is I, the teacher! If on the contrary we are able to say to ourselves something like this—At the start of the school year I was equipped with noble educational principles, I have followed the best authorities on teaching, I have done my best to carry out these principles.—If we really had done this, we would most certainly have taught badly. But we would most certainly have taught the best of all if we had entered the classroom each morning in great trepidation, without very much assurance in our own capacity, and then at the end of the year could say, it is really I myself who have learned the most. For our ability to say this depends on how we have acted, on what we have done, on always having the feeling: 1 am growing by helping the children grow. I am experimenting, in the purest sense of the word. I can't really do very much, but a certain capacity grows in me by working with the children. From time to time we will have the feeling, with, one or another kind of child there is not much to be done, but we will have taken pains with them. Through the special gifts of other children we will have learned certain things. In short we leave the campaign quite a different person from when we entered it; we have learned to do what we were incapable of doing when we began teaching a year before. We say to ourselves at the end of the year—yes, now I can really do what I ought to have been doing. This is a very real feeling in which a secret lies hidden. If we had really been capable, at the beginning of the year, of everything we were able to do at the year's end, then our teaching would have been bad. We have given good lessons because we have had to work at them as we went along. I must put this in the form of a paradox. Your teaching has been good if you did not know to start with what you have learned by the end of the year; your teaching would have been harmful, had you known at the beginning what you have learned at the end. A remarkable paradox!

For many people it is important to know this, but it is most important of all for teachers to know it. For this is a special instance of a general truth and insight: knowledge as such, no matter what its content, knowledge that we can grasp in the form of abstract principles, that we can bring to mind as ideas—such knowledge can have no practical value. Only what leads to this knowledge, what is on its way to this knowledge, is of practical value. For the kind of knowledge we gain after a year's teaching, achieves its value only after a man has died. This knowledge only rises after the man dies, into the kind of reality where it can then shape him further, can develop his individuality further. Thus it is not ready-made knowledge that has value in life, but the work that leads to this finished knowledge. And in the art of teaching this work has especial value. In reality it is no different here than in the arts. I cannot consider anyone a right-minded artist who doesn't say to himself on finishing a work: only now are you able to do this. I don't consider a man properly disposed as an artist, if he is satisfied with any work he has done. He can have a certain egotistical respect for what he has made, but he can't really be satisfied with it. In fact, a work of art when finished loses a large share of its interest for the man who made it. This loss of interest comes from the intrinsic nature of knowledge that is being gained when we make something. On the contrary what is living, what is life-spending in it, lies precisely in that it has not yet become knowledge.

Ultimately, it is the same with the whole of the human organism. Our head is as finished as anything could be, for it is formed out of the forces of our previous earth-life and is 'over-ripe'. (Men's heads are all over-ripe, even the unripe ones.) But the rest of our organism is only at the stage of furnishing a seed for the head of our next incarnation. It is full of life and growth, but it is incomplete. Indeed, it will not be until our death that the rest of our organism shows its true form, which is the form taken by the forces active in it. The constitution of the rest of our organism shows there is life flowing in it; ossification is at a minimum in these parts of the body, while in the head it reaches a maximum.

This proper sort of inward modesty, this sense that we ourselves are still in becoming—this is what must sustain the teacher, for more will come from this feeling than from any abstract principles. If we stand in our classroom, conscious of the fact that it is a good tiling we do everything imperfectly—for in that way there is life in it—then we will teach well. If on the other hand we are always patting ourselves on the back over the perfection of our teaching, then it is quite certain we shall teach badly.

But now consider that the following has come to pass. You have been responsible for the teaching of a first class, a second and third class, etc., so that you have actually been through everything that is to be experienced—excitements, disappointments, successes too, if you will. Consider that you have gone once through all the classes of an elementary school and at the end of each year have spoken to yourself in the spirit I have just described, and now you take your way back down again, say from the eighth to the first class. Yes, now it might be supposed that you should say to yourself- now I am beginning with what I have learned, now I shall be able to do it right, now I shall be an excellent teacher! But it won't be that way. Experience will bring you something quite different. You will say to yourself at the end of the second, the third and each of the following years just about the same (and out of an attitude proper to it): I have now learned by working with seven, eight and nine-year-old children what I could learn only in this way. At the end of each school year I know what I should have done. And then when you have come the second time to the fourth or fifth school year, again you will not know what you should really do. For now you will correct what you came to believe after teaching for a year. And thus, after you are finished with the eighth school year and have corrected everything once more, and if you have the good fortune to begin again with the first class, you will find yourself in the same position. But to be sure you will teach in a different spirit. If you go through your teaching duties with inwardly true and noble and not foolish doubts, such as I have described, you will draw out of this diffidence a new and imponderable power, which will make you particularly fitted to accomplish more with the children entrusted to you. This is without doubt true. But the effect in life will actually only be a different one, not that much better, just different. I would say the quality of what you are able to make out of the children will not be much better than it was the first time; the effect will simply be a different one. You will achieve something qualitatively different, not achieve much more in quantity. You will achieve something different in quality, and that is really enough. For everything that we acquire in the way described, with the necessary noble diffidence and heartfelt humility, has the effect that we are able to make individualities out of those we teach, individualities in the widest sense. We cannot have the same class twice over and send out into the world the same copies of a cut and dried educational pattern. We can however turn human beings over to the world that are individually different. We bring about diversity in life, but this does not derive from the elaboration of abstract principles. In fact this diversity of life is founded on a deeper grasp of life, as we have just described.

So you see what matters more than anything else in a teacher is the way he regards his holy calling. That is not without significance, for the most important things in teaching and in education are the imponderables. A teacher who enters his classroom with this conviction in his heart achieves something different from another. Just as in everyday life it is not always what is physically large that counts, but sometimes it is precisely what is small, so it is not always what we do with big words that carries weight. Sometimes it is that perception, that feeling which we have built up in our hearts before we enter the classroom.

One thing in particular is of great importance, however, and that is that we must quickly cast off our narrower, personal selves like a snake's skin, when we go into the class. The teacher may (since he is 'only human', as is often said with such self-complacency) on occasion have experienced all sorts of things in the time between the end of class on one day and the beginning of the next. It may be that he has been warned by his creditors, or he may have had a quarrel with his wife, as does happen in life. These are things that put us out of sorts. Such disharmonies then provide an undertone to our state of soul. Of course happy moods can arise also. The father of one of your pupils who likes you particularly may have sent you a hare, after he has been out hunting, or a bunch of flowers, if you are a lady teacher. It is quite a natural thing to carry moods of this kind around with us. As teachers we must train ourselves to lay aside these moods and to let what we say be determined solely by the content of what we are to present. Thus we should really be in a position as we picture one thing to speak tragically (but out of the nature of the thing itself) and then to shift over to a humorous vein as we proceed with our description, surrendering ourselves completely to the subject. The important thing however is that we should now be able to perceive the whole reaction of the class to tragedy or sentimentality or humour. If we are able to do this, then we shall be aware that tragedy, sentimentality and humour are of extraordinary importance for the souls of the children. And if we can let our teaching be buoyed up by an alternation between humour, sentimentality and tragedy, if we lead over from one mood to the other and back again, if we are really able, after presenting something for which we need a certain heaviness, to pass over again into a certain lightness (not forced, but arising as we surrender ourselves to the content), then bring about in the soul's mood something akin to in and out- breathing in the bodily organism.

As we teach, our object is not simply to teach with and for the intellect, but rather to be able to really take these various moods into account. For what is tragedy, what is sentimentality, what is a heavy mood of soul? It is exactly the same as an inbreath for the organism, the same as filling the organism with air. Tragedy means that we are trying to contract our physical body further and further so that in this contraction of the physical body we become aware how the astral body comes out of it, more and more as we do so. A humorous mood signifies that we enervate the physical body, but in contrast we expand the astral body as much as we can, spreading it out over its surroundings, so that we are aware, say when we do not merely behold redness but when we grow into it, how we spread our astrality over the redness, pass over into it. Laughing simply means that we drive the astral out of our facial features; it is nothing else but an astral out- breathing. Only we must have a certain sense for dynamics, if we want to apply these things. It is not always appropriate on the heels of something heavy and sustained to go straight over into the humorous. But we can always find the ways and means in our teaching to prevent the childish soul being imprisoned by the serious, the breathing between the two soul moods.

These are some instances, by way of introduction, of the sort of nuances of soul mood that should be taken into consideration by the teacher as he teaches, and which are just as important as any other aspect of teaching.